Ass Pull / Video Games

• Batman: The Telltale Series has one that might be one of these, depending on your choices. If you've chosen nothing but nice responses to Harvey Dent, this character's descent into Knight Templar villainy comes out of nowhere and is awkwardly hand-waved as being brought on by Lady Arkham's drugs.
• The last part of BioShock is devoted to disguising the protagonist as a Big Daddy, in order to get Little Sisters to help you, because, as Mission Control suddenly claims, that's how their programming works. Except that the Sisters had already helped you in your normal form before, and also there's a chance you had been curing them and freeing them from their programming throughout the game up to that moment.
• After BioShock Infinite came under criticism for having Daisy Fitzroy abruptly jump off the slippery slope and attempt to murder a child to establish that she wasn't so different from Comstock, the Burial at Sea DLC included an obvious Author's Saving Throw where it's revealed she was secretly working with the Luteces the entire time and engineered the situation to force Elizabeth to kill her, and had no intention of actually harming the child. Problem is, despite being obvious in intention, this reveal comes out of nowhere with absolutely no foreshadowing whatsoever, has little impact on the plot of Burial at Sea or the original game, and undermines Elizabeth's Character Development by taking agency away from her decision to kill Fitzroy. As a result, many fans — even ones who felt Fitzroy had been mishandled in the original game — viewed the twist as nonsensical and detrimental to the game as a whole.
• The final mission of Call of Duty: Ghosts has the heroes attack a train carrying the game's Big Bad, Gabriel Rorke. The train gets hit by a Kill Sat, knocking it into the ocean, and Rorke then gets shot in the chest with a .44 Magnum Hand Cannon at point-blank range. The bullet pierces through him, cracking a window, leading to the whole train being flooded. You and your brother barely make it out alive... then the game has a Sudden Downer Ending where Rorke somehow survives all of that without giving any explanation as to how, knocks you and your brother out with little resistance despite suffering what should by all means be fatal wounds, and drags you off to be brainwashed into a Face–Heel Turn.
• Cave Story: Killing the final boss causes the floating island to fall. However, killing the True Final Boss causes the island to stop falling. Sloppily handwaved with something vague about "negative energy". And those three brief sentences are all the information the game gives you on this matter, in stark contrast to the nicely fleshed-out backstory of the Final Boss and the True Final Boss themselves.
• In the 37th case of Criminal Case: Pacific Bay, we see Holly Hopper, the apparent Utopian leader, commit suicide to escape arrest. In the next case, it's revealed that the suicide was faked after all and that Holly is alive enough to become suspect again in Case 38. Not all fans were pleased with this development.
• A bizarre example happens in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. During the final chapter, it's revealed that protagonist Hajime Hinata is actually Izuru Kamukura, one of the two main antagonists in the game. The game makes zero effort to foreshadow this or even let players know that the character exists. Instead, it was foreshadowed in Danganronpa Zero, which was not released for Western audiences. The odd thing is if somebody were to read Zero, it may actually come across as a Captain Obvious Reveal.
• The true ending of Dead Rising 3 has the revelation that Isabela Keyes has pulled a Face–Heel Turn and is so obsessed with finding the immune Nick Ramos that she started the outbreak and killed thousands purely to flush him out. The biggest trouble is this comes in the form of a Motive Rant recorded on a laptop in a Post-Credits Scene that comes right out of nowhere, adds absolutely nothing to the plot, and doesn't even remotely change the events of the game — and it comes at the price of completely negating the genuine heroism she displayed across three prior games by turning her into a Karma Houdini who did a backflip over the Moral Event Horizon. Fans were pretty torn about it.
• Detroit: Become Human: The late game revelation that Alice is an android. Other than some very sparse hints that can only really be picked up on in hindsight, it doesn't seem to make any sense at all. Half of Kara's story consists of providing Alice with human necessities, such as food, warmth, sleep, and shelter, usually with a lot of risk and effort considering they're on the run from the law. Alice herself never mentions she doesn't need these things, which would save Kara the trouble. Alice even gets sick at one point, complete with a fever, which is later explained away by a mention of child androids being able to mimic human illnesses for a more authentic experience. Altogether, it comes off as incoherent and pointless.
• The ending of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter was received as badly as it was for this reason and several others. None of the Raposa, the mannequin characters, or even the player avatar even exist. The entire game is the dream of the minor character Mike, who fell into a coma after a car accident that killed his parents and burned half of his sister Heather's face, hence why half of Raposa Heather's face is dark. Very little of this was foreshadowed beforehand, and what was foreshadowed was done so rather poorly: Mike was nowhere to be seen in the first game, and the entire reveal makes little sense given the events thereof. The whole gist of the series is that you are the Creator, and then this random kid whose existence was never even alluded to shows up out of nowhere and, by the end of the game, retroactively usurps your title.
• Parodied with the ending to Earthworm Jim 2, when at the very end Jim unzips his body and reveals that he was a cow all along. And so was Psycrow. And Princess Whats-Her-Name.
• Half the plot-relevant elements of Fahrenheit are ass pulls, mostly owing to how the game was initially intended to be much longer than it actually wound up being, and the developers were simultaneously given less and less time to finish the game. These include the Big Bad being a Mayan oracle, the homeless banding together to observe people in silence, an artificial intelligence born from the Internet revealing itself as a secondary antagonist, the Indigo Child, and the true origin of Lucas' newfound superhuman strength.
• Final Fantasy Brave Exvius:
  • The very infamous "Akstar Asspull" that reveals that Akstar is really a disguised Rain from 50 years in the future. Not only did the time travel plot thread come out of nowhere (apart from a non-canon Story Event for Japan's 3rd anniversary and some flavor text on a Global-exclusive unit), it directly contradicts other plot points such as Rain being a Lethal Chef while Akstar is a Supreme Chef and the fact that Rain is incapable of using the shapeshifting magic that Akstar used to conceal his identity. Both those points heavily hint Akstar has a connection to Lasswell rather than Rain. This twist was so disliked it led to many Japanese fanartists simply deleting their Brave Exvius art.
  • The medicine made from the Tear of Provenance removing immortality. It had been used on characters before with no such caveat and comes across as an excuse to depower the Sworn Six. Even worse, it's not used on the one character who wanted her immortality removed and simply disappears for no reason, in of itself another Ass Pull.
• Fire Emblem Fates has a few cases.
  • Chapter 25 of the Birthright route, "Traitor Revealed". It turns out there's been a traitor within your group the whole time; this fact has been foreshadowed by Iago. However, the traitor turns out to be Takumi, with Iago having been secretly controlling them this whole time. However, this makes no sense for a number of reasons:
    • Azura already "cured" Takumi of his Demonic Possession earlier in the game, and there were no hints whatsoever that this curing wasn't complete.
    • Other routes reveal that the one responsible for Takumi's Demonic Possession is definitely not Iago, nor does Iago have any connections to them. Iago has also never shown any hints of having brainwashing powers anywhere earlier in the game.
    • The brainwashed character has been playable and under your control ever since they joined the army, meaning that if the player has been making an effort to use them, they're doing the exact opposite of what a brainwashed traitor would do: they've done nothing but help you.
    • And finally, this twist doesn't make a difference to anything in the end, as said traitor is immediately de-brainwashed via The Power of Friendship without a fight, and the brainwashing plays no further role in the chapter, or indeed the rest of the game.
    • While it is mentioned that Iago had been getting new powers from Garon, whom the third route reveals does have a connection to the one responsible for Takumi's possession, this is done briefly enough that many fans were still left baffled by it.
  • The most controversial one by far is a late-game reveal on the Revelation route: it turns out Mikoto and Arete were sisters, making Corrin and Azura cousins. Not only did this annoy shippers due to pulling Surprise Incest on them out of nowhere, but this reveal has no impact on the plot and is never mentioned again. It also means Mikoto is actually from Valla, not Hoshido, despite having a Japanese-inspired name, looking somewhat Japanese, and acting like a Yamato Nadeshiko.
• Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: A seemingly Well-Intentioned Extremist, King Travant of Thracia, murders The Hero Sigurd's sister Ethlyn and her husband Quan, the rulers of the Manster District, and he kidnaps their infant daughter Altena and raises her as his own. While his acts are heinous and he clearly is working against Sigurd, what we do know is that he also seeks to improve the welfare of his country. The midquel, Thracia 776 (where Quan and Ethlyn's son Leif is the main character), reveals that the Loptr Church manipulated Travant into killing Quan and Ethlyn. It comes off as kind of cheap.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
  • In the final cutscene of the Crimson Flower route, Byleth collapses upon Rhea's death, and the Crest Stone of Sothis within them, which was keeping them alive, dissolves. But then they're miraculously revived and their hair goes back to its original color. Not only is it never explained how Byleth can continue living despite having no heart, but Rhea can die in Silver Snow's final chapter and is heavily implied to die on Verdant Wind, and Byleth suffers no ill effects in either case, and nothing happens to Sothis' Crest Stone. The only explanation for this working differently on one route is Rule of Drama and Rule of Symbolism.
  • In the final chapter of Silver Snow, leaders of the Church of Seiros go berserk and some transform into monsters. You are then told immediately after this that high ranking Church members are implanted with part of Rhea's Crest Stone as a ritual. This was never hinted at anywhere prior, and it still doesn't explain why they share Rhea's insanity when she goes berserk. In practical terms, this plot point only exists to give the final battle Mooks to fight. (Since all the route's antagonistic factions are defeated at this point)
• In FTL: Faster Than Light, a few Random Events cause a squad of hostile infantry to teleport onto your ship. If you have a supershield (the green shield that layers on top of any existing standard shields, which Zoltans come pre-installed with), it can block enemy ships' teleporters from beaming their crew to your ship, and enemies can likewise do the same...however it is no good against this kind of invasion. The game does acknowledge that this shouldn't be possible, but it does so in a poorly-written Lampshade Hanging: "You don't know how the intruders managed to get past your Zoltan Energy Shield!" However, as of FTL: Advanced Edition, the player can also bypass supershields with an augment, and if this sort of event happens while you have a supershield, the game will explicitly state that the enemies have that augment.
• God of War: Chains of Olympus sets up Morpheus, the god of dreams, as the villain for most of the game, seeing as how he's putting every mortal and god to sleep. But then comes the last five minutes and, surprise! Persephone was behind everything the whole time! In fact, the entire plot thread on Morpheus gets dropped when she enters the plot and is never mentioned again.
• In the Sega Genesis and MS-DOS ports of Golden Axe, after defeating Death Adder, it's suddenly revealed that he was Just Following Orders given to him by Death Bringer, resulting in an additional stage and boss fight. In the original arcade game, Death Bringer did not exist, and the player won after defeating Death Adder. In addition, the aforementioned ports are fairly faithful renditions of the arcade game until The Reveal, leaving no room for foreshadowing.
• Haunting Starring Polterguy: In the very end, an anvil falls from the ceiling and turns Polterguy, who was briefly turned into his human form, back into his ghost form. This comes completely out of thin air and makes no sense. It's presumably made by the Sardini Company, but they just were scared out of their house for the fourth time and Vito does not seem to have any supernatural powers.
• In the various endings of Heavy Rain, the killer is revealed to be one of the player characters, the private detective. The problem is that the game allows listening to the characters' thoughts as part of the mechanics, and the detective's thoughts make it look as though he isn't aware of things that the killer would know. Further, it renders a previous plot point (Ethan's strange visions of things only the killer would know) completely inexplicable. According to Word of God, the odd nature of the twist is partly the result of story changes late in production when it was too late for complete rewrites; the game originally had supernatural elements and a psychic connection formed between Shelby and Ethan, which would've explained the visions.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • While KH is no stranger to Kudzu Plot twists, Dream Drop Distance is especially infamous among the fandom for having one Infodump Retcon after another during The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Turns out everything since the first game was All According to Plan for the Big Bad via never-before-seen Time Travel magic, and the χ-blade forging method from Birth by Sleep was actually incorrect this whole time. The only Foreshadowing the former even remotely had was a wordless Optional Boss who just happened to wield a few time-based attacks — and in another game altogether (the aforementioned BBS), no less — while the latter literally comes out of nowhere just to set things up for III.
  • Kingdom Hearts III has a downplayed example in Xigbar being Luxu from Kingdom Hearts χ. While III does a decent job of foreshadowing this twist, the same can't be said for anything before Re:coded's secret ending from the II.5 HD ReMIX collection (which is rather vague by itself). Xigbar had already been an established character for around ten years before that scene, having played important roles in II, BBS, and 3D, but none of those games ever gave the indication that Braig/Xigbar was actually someone from the distant past manipulating events in the present.
• At the end of Last Case: The Disappearance of Amanda Kane, the protagonist is abducted by aliens. Up until then, the game was merely a Film Noir with no hint of any Sci-fi presence in sight.
• L.A. Noire has Phelps cheating on his wife with the junkie Elsa. While the story does try to foreshadow the event by having Phelps see the person at the club a few times, there's absolutely no build up leading to the event and there's not even any hints at a possible troubled marriage. Said event advances the plot further and kickstarts Phelps's snooping around into a big conspiracy, but none of it would have happened if it wasn't for that event that got Phelps publicly ousted.
• This can be applied to the ending of Legendary, wherein Deckard's Signet is revealed out of entirely nowhere to be the blueprint for the construction of another Pandora's Box.
• LEGO Island 2 brings us the constructopedia. It's a book that supposedly holds the island together, and if a page is torn, the building assigned to it falls apart. It's not mentioned anywhere in any of the other two games in the series, nor is any hint of its existence made until the Brickster needs it. It's just a simple Plot Device that was pulled out of thin air so they could give the Brickster a reason to pull the entire island apart in one fell swoop. It's even more glaring if you played the first game, where the Brickster actually goes to the trouble of tearing the buildings apart individually.
• In Mass Effect 3 has an example that quickly became infamous: The Citadel houses an incomprehensibly ancient AI that created the Reapers to save organic civilization from the synthetic war they would "inevitably" bring upon themselves. By killing all life and assimilating the remains. This is in complete and utter contrast to what little there was established of the Reapers: narcissistic, power-hungry machines with a major disdain for any sort of life that wasn't them, who certainly were not controlled by an A.I. and were not benevolent at all. It also reveals Shepard can use the Crucible to control the Reapers or pacify them by merging synthetic and organic life, which is presented as ideal compared to destroying them. That it can do this comes out of nowhere, and the series has presented those options as a bad thing until this last minute, as those advocating such was due to their being indoctrinated by the Reapers. This led to backlash and possibly the resignation of BioWare's founders. It is telling that one DLC was essentially dedicated to retconning in foreshadowing of the A.I.'s existence.
• Mega Man:
  • It's a staple for the series to have the original Big Bad (Dr. Wily for Classic, Sigma for X, etc.) continue being the Big Bad for every game later down that line, even when it appears to be someone else at first (Wily blackmailing Dr. Cossack to kickstart Mega Man 4, the Repliforce being manipulated by Sigma in Mega Man X4, etc.). So, Mega Man X8 delivered a twist the fans weren't expecting: Sigma is not the Big Bad of X8, and instead he's just an Unwitting Pawn. Maybe. Given that the New Generation Reploids have Sigma's DNA in their Copy Chips, are outright called his children by Sigma himself, and basically continue from where Sigma left off, Lumine's claim about New Generation Reploids having the ability to go Maverick "at will" is very questionable, meaning Sigma having his usual Hijacked by Ganon credentials reversed on him might've actually turned him into the Greater-Scope Villain of X8.
  • Mega Man X5 was supposed to be the Grand Finale for the X series and things would pick back up in Mega Man Zero. But Executive Meddling caused Mega Man X6 to continue the X series into a Post-Script Season. Zero was thought to have died in X5, but he can be encountered during X6 in perfect shape, with the instruction manual retconning his status from KIA to merely "missing." When Zero reunites with X, he claims to have hid himself to repair himself, but no solid reason is given how he did this — he just shows up. A conversation between Zero and one of Dr. Light's holograms in the same game, however, has him admit to having no idea how he was brought back to perfect working condition, wondering if the good doctor was responsible. Dr. Light probably wasn't responsible (as his hologram in X5 notes that he can't enhance Zero's performance in the same way he can X because he's (implicitly) unable to analyze Zero), but X6 also features Isoc, a Mad Scientist Reploid who does appear to have knowledge of Zero's inner workings and is suggested to be a vessel for Dr. Wily, the man responsible for creating Zero in the first place. While X6 doesn't fully clear up matters (Isoc disappears from the plot altogether at endgame, with his lifeless body discovered and seemingly missing its CPU) and anything related to Isoc became an Aborted Arc after, Isoc's apparent hand in Zero's return does at least match up with the (Lost in Translation) implication in X2 that Serges of the X-Hunters is also Wily as well as official confirmation that Sigma's unseen benefactor in X5 was indeed the doctor himself.
• Messiah: You are just a tiny little cherub whose only powers are Not Quite Flight and the ability to possess people. The final boss? Satan himself. Surely you stand no chance? Gee, guess what, right before the final encounter it's revealed that your possession ability somehow also can generate magical projectiles that specifically hurt this final boss.
• Metal Gear:
  • The truth behind Liquid Snake's possession of Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots succeeded in pissing off some fans of the series. Basically, it turns out at the end that you were never fighting Liquid and that Ocelot was using a combination of drugs, nanomachines, and hypnotherapy to make himself think he was Liquid for his most complex Gambit Roulette to date. However, this not only cheapens Liquid's character but effectively and retroactively renders the final boss fight meaningless by turning it into something completely impersonal and rendering the victory hollow. Knowing Hideo Kojima, this was probably completely intentional.
    Somewhat mitigated by Word of God confirming later that Liquid was still in fact possessing Ocelot during the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and that Ocelot only removed the arm to replace it with a decoy before the events of Metal Gear Solid 4, confirming why Ocelot spoke with Liquid's voice during his possession in 2 but not 4, and why his arm was now metal when he took off his coat during the final boss fight of 4 after clearly having an organic arm replacement when rolling up his sleeve at a few points in 2. This also confirmed in the process that Ocelot did inherit his father's spiritual medium abilities and unintentionally used them to revive Liquid, just not for as long as he acted like it did, therefore avoiding a retcon (for once). The rivalry also remains deeply personal even with Ocelot in Liquid's place, when taking Ocelot's history with Big Boss into account and Snake being Big Boss's clone. Hence why the health bars evolve from "Solid Snake vs. Liquid" to "Naked Snake vs. Ocelot" to encapsulate the two series-spanning rivalries, even if neither Big Boss nor Liquid were actually there for it. The twist is still an ass pull, but the effort to make it still fit in with the established lore makes it more downplayed.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was marketed as the story about the fall of Big Boss and his descent to evilness due to his thirst for revenge and his mistrust of the establishment. Some powerful images from the trailer showed Big Boss with a bloodied and demonic face, walking through a fiery corridor with a grim expression. Except that's not Big Boss, but his right-hand man, after some Magic Plastic Surgery and memetic hypnosis to make him look like and think he was the big man. Meanwhile, the real Big Boss had been developing his own plans offscreen, making the whole game inconsequential from a plot standpoint except as one long, overly extended explanation for how Big Boss could survive the Final Boss fight in Metal Gear to show up again in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
• Mischief Makers: The Beastector turning out to have originally been human. It has no bearing on the overall plot and comes out literally at the end of the game. The only hint to it prior is Merco mentioning Earth as one of the Empire's targets after his boss fight with Marina.
• The ending to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is confusing and makes the entire plot and events irrelevant: both Guybrush and LeChuck are suddenly transformed into 6-year-old brothers and appear in an amusement park, then leave with their parents. This may be a silly swerve in keeping with the game's wacky theme, but it doesn't make a lick of sense. It might have to do with Ron Gilbert not planning on another sequel. But another one was eventually made (without him) and it just handwaved this bizarre ending. Gilbert eventually returned to the series with Return to Monkey Island, which handwaves it in a totally different way. His version interestingly still allows the games made without his involvement to exist.
• Mortal Kombat 9: The ending where Quan Chi reveals that Shao Kahn sold him the souls of fallen Earthrealm warriors makes very little sense when you consider that it was never shown that such a deal was made and that Kahn should have no jurisdiction over souls that aren't his. It's just a plot device that the writers pulled out of their rectums without even explaining it. Also considering that the Netherrealm has been described as only being able to accept evil or tainted souls. A rule that was VERY CONVENIENTLY ignored here in order for this to work.
• Lampshaded twice in Mystery Science Theater 3000 Presents "Detective" (which riffs on the actual Interactive Fiction game Detective).
  • The player character is tasked with finding the man who murdered the mayor, but spends most of the game wandering around and finding little concrete evidence about the murderer's identity. Then, apropos of nothing, one room description dumps several bits of exposition all at once:
    You are outside. It's bitter cold and you pull your jacket around yourself. To the north is a nice, warm Holiday Inn hotel, where the killer is rumored to be staying.
    All: WHAT?!?
    Crow: Where did we hear THAT?!
    Or you could go to his favorite hang out, the Wall, to the west, or to the east is the place where he is supposed to be working, the Doughnut King.
    Mike: Wow! And we figured all that out just by entering this room!
    Tom: That was first-class detective work!
  • Similarly, when the player character inexplicably manages to get pictures and secret Xerox copies of the drivers' licenses of every person at the Holiday Inn's fifteenth floor, the riffers respond with another collective Big "WHAT?!", followed by:
    Mike: Uh...folks, we're completely lost here too.
    Crow: At this point the game has finally thrown up its hands and said, "I just don't know."
• No More Heroes plays this for laughs in the final cutscene of the real ending, when Henry reveals he's both Travis' long lost twin and Sylvia's husband.
  Travis: What the hell? That's the craziest shit I've ever heard! Why would you bring up something like that at the very last minute of the game?
  Henry: I would have thought you and the player would have at least expected a twist of fate of some kind.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire reveal the origins of Mr. Bonding, a man from Pokémon X and Y who goes around giving people Socialization Bonus powers, but is basically an extra. It's revealed that he was a man who felt powerless after being forced to fire people from the Mauville Corporation. The five Pokémon Center men (extras from the original Ruby and Sapphire games) fuse with the man and give him their power, and he uses it to share with people around the world. To put this already bizarre plot twist in perspective: fusion between people had never been established as part of the franchise's canon at any point, nor is the fusion ever explained at any point.
  • You can do this to the Show Within a Show movies your character appears in during Pokémon Black 2 and White 2: While in the filming studio, strongly deviating from the suggested script creates the Strange ending. Some of these are fairly straightforward, but most end in something weird happening out of nowhere. For example, in Brycen-Man the eponymous villain just gives up, in the last Red Fog of Terror you are revealed to be Evil All Along and two of the Timegate Traveller films can end with the hero being captured and enslaved at the end.
• Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones: After defeating the Vizir, Kaileena suddenly comes back as a ghost and conveniently destroys the dagger and the sands of time. This is odd because Kaileena didn't come back as a ghost when she was killed in the previous game and the game provides no explanation of why she couldn't do it before the Vizir's death.
• In the 2016 reimagining of Ratchet & Clank (both the video game and the movie it's a tie-in to), Drek succeeds in destroying the planet Novalis with the Deplanetizer weapon. This sends Ratchet into a Heroic BSoD and he retreats back to Veldin in doubt about whether he's cut out to be a hero, blaming himself for Novalis' destruction by the fact that he failed to sabotage the Deplanetizer. Clank eventually talks him back into rejoining the fight, mainly by highlighting the fact that the entire population of Novalis was managed to be successfully evacuated before its destruction. No, this fact was not brought up or foreshadowed before this little reveal.
• Princesses's Maid:
  • The Tatiana ending is this. Tatiana wants to be with you, but running away from her arranged marriage to a prince would be political suicide, and endanger her kingdom. Immediately after this, her sister Martha comes in and says that they won't have to worry about it... because she set the prince's room and board on fire. She framed Tatiana so she'd have no choice but to run away with the player character and have a "happy" ending.
  • Olivia's ending is also this, intentionally. The protagonist (Epponnie) reveals that they are an impostor: the real Epponnie sacrificed herself to seal an evil queen inside her body. The protagonist is that evil queen. She decides to conquer the world (off-screen) and end the game with a harem ending. Olivia is rightly confused by the turn of events.
• Parodied with the various Silent Hill joke endings. From getting abducted by aliens, to finding out a dog was controlling the town from the beginning, to teaming up with said aliens to destroy the town, to finding out the game is an elaborate set up for a surprise birthday party, they're all completely out of left field and have entered meme culture because of it.
• In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, the reveal of Penelope's Face–Heel Turn comes out of nowhere and doesn't fit what's been established. She wanted to eliminate Sly Cooper for holding her genius boyfriend Bentley back, it being implied she only "loved" Bentley so she could use him to make billions in weapon designs and/or world domination. The previous game portrayed Penelope as a straight-up Nice Girl, even compared to the other thieves Sly teamed up with, guilt-ridden when Murray is captured due to her plan, and despite seeing Bentley's genius only shows feelings toward him after he rescues her well afterwards. Even in this game, Sly had retired by this point and thus wouldn't be holding anyone back; in fact, Penelope's actions force Sly to un-retire, thus having the opposite effect of what she supposedly wanted. While there is foreshadowing, such as her disappearance prior to the beginning of the game and the mouse emblem throughout the level where the twist is revealed, nothing hints she's angry and bitter at the Cooper gang, instead of being held against her will and forced to assist Le Paradox.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Adventure, the concept of the Chaos Emeralds having both positive and negative energy isn't brought up until just before the final battle of the game, and it wasn't even foreshadowed before that. It just serves as a convenient way of letting Sonic become Super Sonic and get the edge over Perfect Chaos.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic uses Chaos Control, a move he had never used or learned to use before, to survive being blown up in the space pod he was trapped in by Eggman. While the idea arguably works on paper (particularly due to Sonic's possession of a fake Chaos Emerald, which Tails explains has the same properties as a real one if not the same output of power), the fact remains that Sonic only saw Chaos Control used once and had to learn to use the ability in a fly or die moment. Interestingly, the same game has one piece of dialogue during the Last Story's Final Boss where Shadow muses that it might be Sonic, and not him, who is the real Ultimate Life Form, and Gerard Robotnik's research of the ancient Echidna civilization spawned the theory that Shadow is based on the mural of Super Sonic found on Angel Island, but the in-story justifications are still rather flimsy.
  • The above example happens again in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), this time with Silver managing to use Chaos Control after getting trounced by Shadow. Aside of fan speculation that Silver is Shadow's Kid from the Future, there's even less plot justification than when it happened in SA2, with the only difference being that Silver is using a real Chaos Emerald.
• Played for laughs in South Park: The Stick of Truth, in which Princess Kenny betrays the group at the end. Morgan Freeman then shows up out of nowhere to explain the character's intricate backstory that was never foreshadowed in any way and only makes sense within the context of the LARP that the boys are playing in.
  • The sequel also plays this trope for laughs by giving you the option to play as a girl. Since it's meant to be the same character, somehow nobody noticed the New Kid was actually a girl during the entirety of Stick of Truth, not even her own parents! It's later revealed that your parents were lying about your identity to protect you from the government. Also played for laughs in the end, where Mitch Conner dies in a fight with his mother after learning his own tragic backstory of how his mom fucked his dad. Keep in mind that Mitch Conner and his mother is just Cartman doing handpuppets so it's just him weaseling out of trouble.
• Star Fox Adventures reveals right at the end that General Scales was probably unknowingly working for Andross the entire time, even though Andross was canonically dead, and had barely been mentioned in the game up until that point. Even with a Rewatch Bonus of knowing the twist beforehand, there is no concrete foreshadowing of it at all. Immediately following the reveal, the Final Boss is an Unexpected Gameplay Change to the Arwing. Up to this point, the Arwing sections consisted of flying through enough gold rings to reach your destination, each of which lasted a few minutes at most. The boss is at least as difficult as the final boss of Star Fox 64, a game built around the Arwing. All of this combined led to more than a few complaints about how the twist was pulled off.
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has a particularly infamous example. It turns out that the entire universe is a video game being played by extra-dimensional beings. The party discovers this by jumping through a portal into "4D Space" and coming out of a high tech television screen. Not only was this an ass pull for the game, but it was also a retroactive ass pull for Star Ocean and Star Ocean: The Second Story as well, and fans did not like it. This was partially retconned by The Last Hope's invoking of alternate universes, leaving an out for fans who hated the twist without completely retconning it for those who didn't.
• Akane's ending in Suika is just disturbing and comes out of nowhere. She apparently stabs Yoshikazu to death and hypnotizes his girlfriend into thinking that she (Akane) is him.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: When you are about to fight the final boss, Tabuu, in The Subspace Emissary (Brawl's Adventure Mode, Sonic the Hedgehog (who is not even a Nintendo character) appears out of nowhere and smashes his wings, significantly weakening him. The surprise effect was somewhat lost due to announcements that he would be in the game prior to the release of this game. His sudden appearance is a relic of Sega flip-flopping on whether they would allow Sonic to be in the game, forcing the designers of Brawl to crowbar him in at the last minute.
• System Shock 2: SHODAN infecting... or possessing... Rebecka in The Stinger comes out of nowhere as a blatant Diabolus ex Nihilo-style Sequel Hook, which are common in mystical horror stories or slashers but look out of place in a relatively grounded sci-fy story like SS2. Granted, with the reality warping abilities SHODAN demonstrated at the end it's not entirely inconceivable, but there was no foreshadowing and, of course, no explanation of why that power wasn't used against the player.
• Tears to Tiara 2: Monomachus' resurrection comes out of nowhere but a cryptic line from the dragons at his death a few stages previous, the mechanics of which are unexplained in the slightest except the dragons saved him when humans couldn't have.
• At the end of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes it turns out that one of the girls who are reading the story, and who's supposedly the granddaughter of Holmes, is actually the granddaughter (or possibly grand-granddaughter) of James Moriarty. Her mother was adopted by Sherlock Holmes when Moriarty died. While this isn't a bad twist per se, it still feels like a twist for the sake of a twist, quite disconnected from the rest of the story and which serves no purpose.
• In Time Crisis 5: True Mastermind Edition, Time Crisis II protagonist and Mission Control Robert Baxter is revealed to be the VSSE traitor and the Big Bad of the game, having killed Christy, his ally and Keith's girlfriend, to keep his plans from spilling out and stealing a drug that can zombify its targets with the intent of creating a weapon that can spread the drug on a wide scale. The question is, why did this character do all of these things? At what point did they go rogue, assuming they weren't just Evil All Along? None of these questions are answered by current canon. Time Crisis 1, 3, and 4 as well as spinoffs Crisis Zone and Razing Storm have side modes in their respective console ports that add more to the series' lore, so it's possible that if there is ever a port of Time Crisis 5, these plot threads will be resolved.
• Wonder Boy in Monster Land: Surprise!! The final boss, the Dragon, is actually a robot. Possibly from space.
• After defeating Baby Bowser in Yoshi's New Island, adult Bowser appears out of nowhere from the future to prevent his defeat as an infant. The game itself even lampshades how sudden and forced his appearance is.
  Suddenly... warping through space and time... King Bowser appears!
• World of Warcraft:
  • The Reveal that Fenris Wolfbrother was Durotan's big brother and Thrall's uncle. Totally out of the blue, not supported by any prior lore and almost certainly just a hat trick pulled to make Fenris even more of a scumbag and account for Garad's absence.
  • Grom Hellscream's redemption at the climax of Warlords of Draenor (DRAENOR IS FREEE), not helped by Blizzard themselves admitting that the planned fate for this character changed while the expansion was already well into development (he was supposed to be the final antagonist in the expansion). Because of this, we have most of the expansion depicting him as a genocidal and unambiguous villain ultimately responsible for most of the Iron Horde's many invasions, campaigns, and atrocities, which is then suddenly forgotten as his victims, the two most prominent of whom have suffered not only the threat of their peoples' extinction at his hands, but also very personal loss, somewhat decide to let bygones be bygones after an Enemy Mine. That this occurred without Grom showing a single shred of remorse for bloodying Draenor with war and conquest makes it all the more jarring and nonsensical.
  • The idea that "There must always be a Lich King." At the end of Wrath of the Lich King, it's said that there needs to be a Lich King to keep the Scourge in check, and without one they'd destroy the world. The idea is based on the misconception that a leaderless army is more dangerous than one with proper direction. Arthas reveals (with a bit of Word of God and All There in the Manual) that the reason he didn't kill the players right away is that he was grooming them to be his champions, and that he was holding the Scourge back so that he could corrupt champions to ease a wound in his remaining mortal pride about being duped by Mal'Ganis. This itself is a swerve because he had already killed his "humanity" (meaning his good side) in a novel and again in a major quest chain, yet a piece of it (pride) still remains holding the Scourge back. There's also no explanation for why Bolvar doesn't have the same level of control over the Scourge as Arthas, and why he can't apparently order them to destroy themselves. Ultimately, the idea seems to exist solely to ensure that the Scourge are still an active force, and so Blizzard can reuse them when they want to.
  • A significant amount of lore in Shadowlands is considered this:
    • The very way the Shadowlands is depicted in the expansion contradicts earlier lore sources, including World of Warcraft: Chronicle, which then got an awkward Hand Wave that Chronicle was based on a Titan's view and thus inaccurate, in defiance of the pre-Shadowlands lore actually corroborating with Chronicle.
    • The way Frostmourne "takes the souls of its victims" by splitting soul shards off their victims and letting go of the remainder of their souls to the Shadowlands, which doesn't make sense when the souls (sorry, "soul shards") inside the blade have the full memories of the person when they were alive (compare Uther's soul released from Frostmourne to his soul depicted in Shadowlands, and you realize how little sense it makes), all purely to clumsy and awkwardly try to redeem Sylvanas.
    • The way necromancy works in Shadowlands compared to Battle for Azeroth contradicts many things already established about it several expansions ago (it got another awkward Hand Wave via Twitter, of all places). Fourth, apparently The Jailer has been manipulating everything behind scenes despite no actual lore ever supporting this.
    • Patch 8.1 revealed that Elune abandoned the night elves to die and go to the Shadowlands without trying to save them, believing that they would bypass the Arbiter's judgment and go to Ardenweald and not knowing that all mortal souls were being sent to the Maw, which is blatantly out of character and completely contradicts the novelizations of Battle for Azeroth lore, which indicated that she actually tried to help them by making their deaths painless when it was obvious she could not save her children.
• Parodied in You Were Hallucinating The Whole Time, which plays short segments of Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Pong, only to "reveal" that the player was hallucinating the whole time and was actually doing something heinous. This game is a parody of Spec Ops: The Line, which is notably not this trope if you paid attention but is instead a different trope.