Bizarro Episode / Video Games

• Crash Bandicoot:
  • Every cutscene in Crash: Mind Over Mutant, which seems to follow a different art style every time.
  • Crash Boom Bang has a jarring aesthetic and plot compared to most Crash games, largely due to its anime influence, being one of the few Japanese-developed games in the series. The story itself involves an aristocrat getting the cast to search for an ancient artifact.
  • Crash Tag Team Racing is the first game developed by Radical and it shows. Their humor is full throttle here and the characterizations are at their most aggressive. The story itself? Cortex and the bandicoots' battle has ventured into a theme park owned by an eccentric German cyborg who has lost the power gems to maintain it. A mystery ensues to find the culprit and the gems...through a racing contest. Oh, and the thief was a giant sentient Wumpa fruit.
• The King of Fighters: The King of Fighters XI stands out from the rest of the series for how unconventional its characters are in many aspects. It is a much further departure from 2003 and breaks decade-long traditional team compositions (Kim and Duck King in the Fatal Fury team?). A lot of long-standing characters like Leona and Andy are missing, and even Mai and Robert had to wait for the PS2 version to be added back. XI includes newcomers from Fu'un Series and Buriki One, two series that were never represented before and after this game (as of XV). Even the final boss, Magaki, is quite unusual for his shoot 'em up pattern attacks. By The King of Fighters XIII, what's established in this game was sweeped out of the window and the series has rarely acknowledged this again.
• The Stanley Parable puts the player in one if they should deliberately take the wrong paths, basically frustrating the Narrator. The player might find themselves going around in circles while Stanley slowly goes crazy as he realises he's not real; they might find themselves following the Stanley Parable Adventure Line™ in a futile effort to get the story back on track; they might even end up in a museum full of trivia about the game's development, after which a second narrator begs them to break the cycle by turning the game off.
  • In Ultra Deluxe, pretty much every ending featuring the Reassurance Bucket becomes one of these, as all the characters seem to be obsessed with it. Taking just the three examples above, they respectively become Stanley walking in circles going crazy due to having the wrong bucket; an intervention staged by, among others, the Narrator, the Adventure Line™, and Stanley's mannequin wife to get him to destroy the Bucket; and visiting a museum about buckets which the second narrator begs you to stop abusing.
• The World Ends with You has Another Day, you can access this episode after you complete the main storyline and takes place in an alternate universe where Tin Pin Slammer is Serious Business. And it gets even more confusing when the Joshua and Hanekoma from the main game show up and challenge AD Neku. The former has a Boss Rush and the latter is the strongest Bonus Boss in the game.
• The "What If?" mode in Spider-Man (2000). It took the base plot and added tons of silly lines. "Doc Ock has trapped me... and I can't stop dancing".
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert had two: the secret Giant Ant missions and one multiplayer map set on the moon which randomly reassigned all the units' weapons, so you had helicopters firing flamethrowers and V2 rockets.
• The Fallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues. You come across a drive-in theater with a strange movie-projecting satellite that teleports you to a strange old-world research facility in a crater, where you have your brain, heart, and spine replaced with cybernetic implants by incompetent Mad Scientist Brains In Jars who are all drugged out of their gourds, an area exhibiting all the craziest pre-War SCIENCE! (and since this is Fallout, that's really saying something), a gun with a living dog brain as a component, a talking stealth suit that calls you her best friend and plays pranks on you, a base full of talking appliances who all hate each other, and a surreal conversation with your own brain in a tank, who sounds suspiciously like Seth McFarlane even if you're a woman. OWB in all its Bizarro glory is often considered one of the best parts of New Vegas, and has won awards above and beyond the base game.
• City of Heroes had this issue with the Mission Architect system. Due to the overwhelming amount of player-made content in the database and a ratings system that leaves something to be desired, it's inevitable that bizarre Story Arcs will come up fairly frequently. If the first time a player tries the system results in having one of these thrown at them it can easily be the last time they will ever bother with the Mission Architect. Which is why a number of authors have been taking it upon themselves to review arcs and compile lists in the official forums make it easier to find the "good stuff".
• Crimzon Clover has a pretty typical Shoot 'Em Up setting consisting of tanks, aerial battleships, anti-siege laser turrets, and other mecha as enemies. But then there's the third stage out of five, which takes place in a cave full of giant flowers and creepy spiders out to get you with the same kind of Bullet Hell that the mechanized enemies spit out. There isn't really a plot to the game, but it's still such a strange change of pace. The music is noticably different in tone from the usual high-octane electronica with rock elements: the regular theme, "Transparent Stream", sounds unusually ethereal and calm, while the alternate theme (and the default for Unlimited difficulty), "Evil Miasma", sounds like something out of a horror game. After this stage, it's back to the usual blasting bombers and tanks into scrap metal.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The fight with Sephiroth in the first Kingdom Hearts. It's a tournament at Mount Olympus, but at the end no trophy is given, no victory pose happens and it seems like nothing happened at all. The only thing that happens is that you get a new Keyblade. That's it. The Final Mix actually added a scene where Cloud and Sephiroth fight and then disappear in a clash. Which only makes things more confusing.
  • Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts II has absolutely no plot relevance and features the characters singing in order to keep Ariel happy with undersea life. Even bizarre is the fact that the entire story of the world is based on mini-games and seems to just be an excuse to put the world in the game. Also odd was how nobody seemed to remember any of the events that happened in Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts; except for who Sora is. Ariel just forgot how the last time she made a deal with Ursula ended, and Ursula forgot dying.
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. The other games in the series are relatively tame pirate adventures in spite of some magical elements and a bunch of anachronisms, but the second game features some extremely Mind Screwy episodes, and at the end, it outright implies that the protagonist is a kid in a modern Disney-style theme park who imagined that he was a seventeenth-century pirate (which would explain all the anachronisms). The next installment The Curse of Monkey Island, which was made without the original creator of the series Ron Gilbert, shrugged off this plot element as an illusion caused by a voodoo curse, and the subsequent games never brought it up again. Return to Monkey Island actually brings this back, explaining that the boy was Guybrush's son, Boybrush and Chuckie was indeed his brother. The game is based around Guybrush telling Boybrush a story of a new adventure and calls back to every other game in the series.
• Medal of Honor: Underground has the unlockable bizzaro missions, "Where Beagles Dare" and "Panzerknacker Unleashed!" - you're assigned to infiltrate a secret Nazi lab in the Alps allegedly conducting artificial intelligence research, only to find out the place is occupied by dogs. From regular guard dogs to andromorphic dogs on two legs capable of firing machine-guns and operating tanks. You then enter the facility's interior only to find out every personnel inside are robots resembling toy soldiers straight out of "The Nutcracker" and have to fight your way out. Note that at no point in regular gameplay does such oddities occur - the rest of the (normal) game have you fighting Germans in the second World War.
• Metal Gear Solid Mobile. It takes place at a weird point in continuity and gives Snake technology that he shouldn't have yet in addition to making him confront The Patriots long before he should even know they exist; Otacon, instead of being chipper Codec support, is the "ninja"; and everything is revealed to be All Just A Virtual Reality Simulation Snake has been placed in by The Patriots for a reason that is not revealed and never will be. Snake also gets his memory of the events erased, but Otacon doesn't, thus implying that in addition to providing needlessly cryptic advice through sinister channels he then kept the entire ordeal and critical information secret from Snake for at least two years.
• Star Fox:
  • Star Fox on SNES combines this with an Easter Egg — "Out Of This Dimension", where paper airplanes are enemies and the boss is a Slot Machine. Then there's the ending. An endless minigame. The fate of everything is left unexplained.
  • Star Fox Adventures. As it's well known by now, the game started out as an original IP by Rare called Dinosaur Planet before it was changed to be a Star Fox game. Rather than the traditional Rail Shooter like the other games in the series it was an Action-Adventure Zelda-like game with Fox using a staff rather than a blaster. The game also transplanted the fantasy and mystical elements from Dinosaur Planet making the atmosphere stand out much more compared to the other Star Fox games which were typical Sci-Fi games.
• Happens halfway through Kid Icarus: Uprising, when the main plot is completely put on hold when an utterly random alien invasion by a race of beings known as the Aurum forces all of the main characters to work together to stop it. This lasts for about 3 chapters and only gets a few mentions afterwards when the Chaos Kin and Dyntos use their powers to recreate Aurum soldiers to fight and test Pit.
• Dynasty Warriors has never placed any priority on accuracy, historical or otherwise, so it has had its share of weirdness. However, by far the most bizarre battle (which is also really, really difficult) is the Battle of Jian Ye in DW4. Your forces start in the north, and you have to fight your way to Sun Jian in the south. In between are Taishi Ci, Zhou Tai, Huang Gai, and Jian's three offspring, Ce, Quan, and Shang Xiang. Just a really big battle, right? Except that almost immediately after it begins, three duplicates of Sun Jian appear, and dispelling any one merely causes another to appear elsewhere. Furthermore, the Sun kids cannot be killed; if defeated, they simply flee the battlefield and return at full health in about a minute. So, just gotta bite the bullet, charge straight to the real Jian, and cut him down? Well, that is the correct course of action... unfortunately, this doesn't end the battle; it simply switches command to Ce, and although he'll be killable now, Quan and Shang Xiang still won't. Not until you've slain him, Quan, and Shang Xiang...in that order!...do you prevail over this nightmare. Needless to say, good luck finding any kind of justification for this in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
• The Hildibrand Returns quests added with Final Fantasy XIV patch 2.1: Investigating a group of relatively well dressed zombies, meeting Hildibrand, pursuing a duelist and weapon thief which seems to be recurring series character Gilgamesh, and Hildibrand in his restored dapper glory... backlit by the light reflecting off a bald robbery victim's head.
  • Hildy returns again in a couple of other questlines in the first two expansions. The Heavensward one is probably the least wacky, though it's still notably more lighthearted than the main story.
• The Citadel downloadable mission for Mass Effect 3. Especially if one decides to play it late in the game when the last thing Shepard and his/her crew should be thinking about is throwing a party. It does get a Hand Wave in that the entire plot takes place over one, maybe two days while the ship (which was launched halfway through a refit) is down for maintenance.
• 'Salvation', the 19th mission of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is just... weird. Amidst a bunch of rather dark missions about a group of soldiers and civilians fleeing for their lives from a mad dictator in a post-apocalyptic world and a spreading disease that causes plants to burst from the victim's skin, you get a surprisingly easy mission where you have to fight a ragtag group of fanatics that worship an earthworm believing it will cure them. As soon as you finish it, it's never mentioned again and you're once again trying to escape Grayfield's men as if it never happened.
• 'Solo' from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is a very bizarre chapter. It comes just after Ike and co. captured Daein Castle only to find Ashard already abandoned it a while ago. Before they go to seek him out, an NPC tells them to go to Palmeni Temple. It's important they go there for the plot, but since there has to be actual gameplay there, the devs threw in a strange mission where a Filler Villain bandit takes a group of priests hostage and forces them to be literal human shields, and the player is expected to shove them out of the way, sliding puzzle-style, to complete the chapter without killing any. The boss himself also indulges in far more Black Comedy than is usual for the game. You beat him, he dies while ranting that he should've brought more priests... or babies, and this is all never mentioned again. The truly bizarre part is the post-chapter event is a highly emotional and plot-relevant Wham Episode... that has nothing whatsoever to do with the battle itself.
• Corpse Party—THE ANTHOLOGY—Sachiko's Game of Love ♥ Hysteric Birthday 2U from the Corpse Party series. The main games are about avoiding horrible, bloody deaths at the hands of an Enfant Terrible. In 2U you're throwing her a birthday party, filled with Fanservice, meta humour, and general wacky hijinks, that every character promptly forgets once they're dumped back into their regular old gore-fest (save for a vague reference here and there in Blood Drive).
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Even by the series' usual standards, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is just downright insane. The plot involves a portal suddenly opening up over the Mushroom Kingdom, causing the Raving Rabbids to come through it and invade the Kingdom. Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi then fight back with arm cannons, laser guns, and bazookas as they journey through a discombobulated version of the kingdom alongside four good Rabbids dressed like them, blowing up bad Rabbids all the way, including Rabbid versions of characters like Donkey Kong. While it's just another day for the Rabbids, for the Mario series, this is unlike anything the series has ever seen. And then it got a sequel.
  • Super Mario Bros. 2. Adapted from the Japanese video game Doki Doki Panic, its game mechanics are a little skewed compared to both earlier and later installments and the game itself is an adventure based on a dream Mario had. A Pragmatic Adaptation, however, in that the Japanese sequel of the first game is a Mission-Pack Sequel and Nintendo of America thought back then it wouldn't sell well in the United States. Plus, many elements from the game including the Shy Guys and Birdo would go on to become franchise staples.
• League of Legends had an out-of-universe one in the 8.11. To make a long story short, some badly thought out adjustments made marksmen champions absolutely useless, forcing teams to go to some pretty absurd lengths to balance a team without using one. Supports going mid, duo bruisers botlane, and more were a feature of that meta. Riot eventually wised up and un-nerfed marksmen, which stopped the hilarious insanity but meant that an entire class wasn't completely irrelevant any more.
• In Red Dead Redemption II, we have the episode called "A Quiet Time". After hearing the report that Micah Bell has been arrested and imprisoned in Strawberry, Arthur Morgan is told to take Lenny Summers to Smithfield's Saloon in Valentine to calm down with a beer or two. However, this is where the Mind Screw happens, because, after a drink, Arthur and Lenny end up getting wasted, leading to Arthur losing Lenny a few times and stumbling in random places, the two of them talking trash, Arthur getting into a supposed Bar Brawl about to start right before the Smash to Black to all the guys line-dancing with each other, followed by another Smash to Black to Arthur waking up outside and doing the Nature Tinkling before getting back into the saloon to find that everyone looks like Lenny! It only gets more hilarious when the real Lenny finds him and they slap each other, followed by another Smash to Black to Arthur finding himself about to drown his old rival outside for no apparent reason! One more Smash to Black, and we now find Arthur and Lenny trying to escape the lawmen chasing after them. No matter how well or poorly your escape attempt went, they will wake up with no memory of what happened on the previous night, but with Arthur getting so sick and hung over that he'll lean over and puke on the grass with a Vomit Indiscretion Shot. This funny drunken Bizarro Episode is considered as a lube-free mind-fuck! Period! Oh, and it can only get a few mentions afterwards by talking to Lenny about the funny bits or getting drunk with beer again.
• RuneScape: The "Broken Home" quest is unique among RuneScape's quests for being a Survival Horror game in the style of Resident Evil where you aren't allowed to fight any of the enemies and can only run or avoid them. It also is the first and still one of the only quests in the game that can be completed as many times as you want and gives bonus rewards for Speedrunning it and completing it without dying or using more than one healing item.
• Guilty Gear:
  • Guilty Gear Judgement basically reveals that Hell exists in the Guilty Gear universe, as the Big Bad of the game tries to tap into its power in a bid for godhood. This is never brought up again, and seeing as Judgement is a Gaiden Game, it's debatable whether it's even canon.
  • Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 has After Story C. The previous two after-stories showed what the major characters were up to after the events of the main story, and are mostly serious with a few moments of comedy. After Story C is a purely comedic faux-murder mystery where King Daryl and the paranormal research team argue over which of them was responsible for knocking over a giant pudding. It's completely disconnected from the main story, and ends with four people turning into rockets and rising off into the sky due to having unknowingly joined the patissiere's failed Deal with the Devil by tasting the pudding before it was ready to serve.
• The fourth game in the Mega Man Battle Network series is this, with an absolutely bizarre Random Events Plot that culminates in Lan and MegaMan using The Power of Love to fight an alien robot trying to drop a meteor on Earth. It's also jarringly out-of-sync with the rest of the series (which otherwise works as a continuous storyline), with its events either never getting mentioned again outside of easily-missed Mythology Gags or being outright contradicted (e.g., Lan and Raika acting like they have never met in 5, despite meeting in 4).
• Hitman: Absolution is considered the black sheep of the franchise; whereas the rest of the series is famous for setting stealth gameplay in a wide open sandbox with emphasis on Replay Value, Absolution is a vastly more linear Actionized Sequel with more mechanics leaning towards scripted gameplay events and cinematic moments. Plot-wise, it strays from the subdued Conspiracy Thriller and Spy Fiction identity into a much greasier grindhouse-flavored direction, with increased emphasis on Hollywood-style action and sex appeal. This direction strongly divided critics and audiences alike, and it seems that even IO Interactive consider this a failed experiment in retrospect, as their next game went back to basics and resumed doing what they did best, with the only real mentions of Absolution being a few secondary gameplay mechanics deemed worth keeping around.
• Cragne Manor:
  • The entirety of the meatpacking plant bathroom. The first thing you notice is a large pentagram on the ground. While trying to use the shower, you accidentally unleash a murderous boneless horse that was lurking in the pipes. You then lock yourself in a stall and use the toilet to Time Travel to acquire various odd things you need — including a bathroom reader book, Mountain Dew, Pepto-Bismol, and trilobite milk — to sacrifice and seal away the horse. If you sent the horse to the past, you get a small scene with it being discovered by two arguing paleontologists. There's also a journal kept by your Jerkass ancestor that details his various naughty deeds. It's completely bizarre even for Cragne Manor, and none of this is mentioned again once the room is over.
  • Going into the church's bathroom has you apply some lipstick and get put in the shoes of a high school girl. What ensues is a Catholic high school Teen Drama mixed with a Cosmic Horror Story, such as beating up the school's Alpha Bitch (because the voices in your head forced you to against your will) and asking out your crush to the dance (who leads you to have demon-induced convulsions).

---