Diegetic Soundtrack Usage / Video Games

Examples of Diegetic Soundtrack Usage from video games.

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Examples:

• PAYDAY 3: Get close enough to the traffic in No Rest For The Wicked or Dirty Ice, and you may hear "Razormind" from PAYDAY 2 playing from a car stereo.
• ANNO: Mutationem: The Start Screen of the Mysterious Console DLC uses an 8-bit rendition of the main theme.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Luigi's Mansion:
    • Luigi hums or whistles along to the Background Music.
    • If you look at the map in dark rooms (or just listen very closely), you can hear the ghosts singing along with the Background Music as well.
    • The Game Boy Horror's "ringtone" is a 8-bit version of the same music.
    • In the Music Room, all the instruments can be individually activated to play an orchestral arrangement of the Super Mario Bros. theme song. Doing this is also the first step to capturing the room’s boss, Melody Pianissima.
  • The subspace (behind-the-door) world in Super Mario Bros. 2 plays the first game's theme. The Super Mario All-Stars version of SMB2 reuses SMB's corresponding version.
  • The music box in Super Mario Bros. 3 plays the original Super Mario Bros. theme song.
  • After the Special World BGM in Super Mario World loops for about 2 minutes, it transforms into the Super Mario Bros. theme.
  • At the beginning of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Mario is heard humming the Super Mario Bros. theme while in the shower.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door uses the title theme from Super Mario World to let you know Peach has sent an e-mail.
    • The game also uses the ice world theme from Super Mario Bros. 3 when you receive a message from a mysterious informant, "Mr. X".
  • Anything in the Paper Mario/Mario & Luigi series that would logically play music WILL play something from Mario's old days. Case in point: the record player in Boo's Mansion from the first Paper Mario, dust and all.
    • And some things that wouldn't logically play music; there's a vase that's also in Boo's Mansion that, if Mario jumps into it, makes him into an 8-bit Small Mario while the Super Mario Bros. theme plays.
    • Leaving the new chapter screen on long enough will also cause it to start playing
    • And Mario will whistle his original theme music in Super Mario RPG when he hops in the shower at the inn in Marrymore.
    • Also in Super Mario RPG: "Long, Long, Ago." You went behind a curtain in Booster Tower and Super Mario Bros. theme from 1-1 started playing. Mario also turned back into his 8 bit sprite.
  • In the Hilarious Outtakes for Mario Power Tennis, the Super Mario Bros. theme plays as a ringtone — on Wario's cellphone, of all things!
  • It is also a ringtone for a cell phone item in Mario Party 3.
  • In Super Mario 3D Land, Mario hums the classic theme music after receiving the picture between Worlds 5 and 6.
  • In Super Mario Odyssey, the musicians in New Donk City start playing the Super Mario Bros. theme when fully assembled.
• In Tomb Raider: Anniversary, upon hearing a music box play the Tomb Raider main theme, Lara comments "What a lovely tune!"
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • In Grand Theft Auto III, the ringtone in Claude's pager is the opening of the song "Grand Theft Auto" from the first, top-down GTA.
  • This reappears in Grand Theft Auto IV as one of the selectable ringtones on Niko's cell phone.
  • It also shows up in the Rockstar North logo in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
• In Gears of War 5, during a fight with Rejects inside a musical theatre, a stage play rendition of the Gears of War theme playing over the speakers lends the combat music for the section.
• In Honkai: Star Rail, the in-universe song If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking, heard in Penacony, features the game's main title motif.
• In the game Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy you find an elevator which is playing a muzak version of Cold's "with my mind" (A song made for the game).
• In Trapt, the first "Dark Illusion" (a kind of particularly gory and lethal traps inset in the enviroment) that the player is likely to find, is "The Man-Eating Music-Box" — which plays the game's "Melancholy Theme" as it crushes the helpless victim within its gears...
• In Suikoden V, a group of Dragonhorse Knights plays the game's main theme on flute, as part of an 'Ancient Ritual'.
• In Castlevania 64, Malus plays a haunting song on his violin. The song is actually Bloodlines from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood with a slower tempo.
• Ace Attorney:
  • The ringtone of Godot's cell phone in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations happens to be the same music as his own Leitmotif.
  • Wesley Stickler's cell phone ringtone in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is one of Klavier Gavin's band's songs, Guilty Love, sped up to almost double the tempo.
  • Klavier himself plays a recording of Guilty Love by way of an introduction in court. It's somewhat safe to assume that every single repeat of the theme tune afterwards is just Klavier toeing "play" on the CD player beneath his bench.
  • Even Phoenix's cell phone is like this: his plays the Steel Samurai theme song.
  • In case 1-5, Ema Skye's cell phone plays the Steel Samurai theme song as well. This allows Phoenix to pass it going off in the parking garage as his when the detective at the scene asks what just happened. Or, possibly, he set it to the Steel Samurai theme tune because of this incident (in cases 1-1 to 1-4, his cell phone had a generic ringtone).
• One of the characters in Wild ARMs 5 has the first bars of the theme of Wild ARMs 2 as a ringtone.
• Characters using the /bored emote in World of Warcraft will sometimes whistle a few bars of the in-game music.
• Portal includes radios that play a very perky, jazzy version of the end credits theme "Still Alive".^note And by the time you've finished "Transmission Received" you may well wish they didn't.
• At the very beginning of No More Heroes, Travis whistles the game's theme.
• Persona:
  • The Velvet Room theme, Aria of the Soul, is actually playing in the Velvet Room. According to the pianist, Nameless, the song is responsible for opening the soul of whoever is using the Room and allowing them to fuse Personas.
  • At the beginning of Persona 3, the Main Character listens to a remix of "Burn My Dread," the opening theme, on his headphones.
  • Persona 3 Reload: In the 2D anime cutscene where Yukari takes a shower under the influence of the Lovers Shadow during the Shirakawa Boulevard operation, she hums a small portion of "Memories for You," the game's ending theme whose riffs are prevalent through the game's soundtrack.
  • During a certain event in Persona 4, "Burn My Dread" (the same one from Persona 3) is playing as a video in the background. Likewise, "P3 Fes," the opening theme of Persona 3 FES, plays inside of Club Escapade when the Investigation Team visit there during their free time. The game also has an in-universe example of a sort: if you talk to Teddie outside Mitsuo's video-game-themed dungeon, he complains that the music from it is stuck in his head.
  • In Persona 5's post-credits cutscene, the opening theme "Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There" starts off just playing on the radio, but becomes the main BGM in the last 20 seconds or so.
  • In Persona 5 Strikers, Sophia will occasionally hum some songs in the game. When she's introduced to the Phantom Thieves at their hideout, Sophia hums a few notes of "Life Will Change." Sophia will also occasionally hum the game's ending theme (To Wish/Towards a Dream), a habit she picked up from her creator, Kuon Ichinose.
• Max Payne 2 has a janitor singing the game's Theme Tune ""Late Goodbye", along with one of the enemies playing it on piano. In all three Max Payne games, using a piano will have Max play a rather unskilled rendition of the main theme song. He does a better job the second time you try.
• In the King's Quest Fan Sequel The Silver Lining, clicking the "talk" icon on Graham will cause him to whistle a variety of tunes which would be well-known to adventure game fans, including the King's Quest theme, the Space Quest theme, the Leisure Suit Larry theme, and the Monkey Island theme.
• Duke Nukem 3D has several references to the main theme, "Grab Bag" — Duke whistles it during the end of the second episode, and it also reappears in muzak form in the Atomic Edition level "Shop & Bag".
• Final Fantasy:
  • Inverted in Final Fantasy VI; the first time in the game that Celes's theme is heard (indeed, hers is the only one that doesn't play during the rename screen) is when Celes sings it in an opera.
  • Also, in Dissidia Final Fantasy Kefka sometimes hums the Victory Fanfare when he wins.
  • In Final Fantasy X, the chocobo caretaker in the SS Liki ship sings the chocobo's theme a bit when trying to talk to her after the cutscene.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud must play a tune on the piano in Tifa's house in order to obtain her ultimate limit break. It turns out to be the game's main theme, and is vaguely familiar to Cloud...
    Cloud: I've heard this somewhere before. Managed to play well.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, the game's end theme, "Eyes On Me," is a hit pop song in-game and is first heard as an instrumental piano piece played at a nightclub by Julia Heartilly, who is soon inspired to write lyrics for it thanks to Laguna's influence.
  • The game's end theme in Final Fantasy IX, "Melodies of Life," is also important in-game. Zidane first hears Garnet/Dagger singing it on "la" in Dali and later in Lindblum. He asks her what it is and she admits that she doesn't know, and can't even remember where she learned it, but singing it comforts her when she feels sad or lonely. Zidane says that it must be a mystical song. He later hears her singing it in Dali and when she stops, he tells her that it's okay for her to kee singing "'Cause it's our song, right?" As they float out to sea on a boat, they hear the song coming from the Eidolon Wall and hearing it causes Garnet/Dagger to have a flashback and remember some of the details of her early childhood. Finally, at the end of the game, everyone believes Zidane to be dead, but he comes back. Garnet/Dagger asks him how he survives and he explains "I didn't have a choice. I had to live. I wanted to come home to you. So... I sang your song. Our song." The game ends and the full vocal version of the song plays during the credits.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, at the end of the Dorn Mheg dungeon, the standard victory theme plays as normal after defeating the final boss. After you trigger the subsequent cutscene, you and your Scion companions get surrounded by a faerie orchestra congratulating you by... playing a rendition of the game's victory theme on in-universe instruments.
  • Occasionally after defeating enemies in Final Fantasy XV Prompto will hum the classic Victory Fanfare. Similarly, in Final Fantasy VII Remake Barret also occasionally hums the Victory Fanfare after battles.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Every appearance of the "Song of Storms" since the melody was introduced has been played by a character in-game. In Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Oracle of Seasons, it is played by Guru-Guru on his phonograph. Additionally, Majora's Mask has Link learn the song from the ghost of one of its composers.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The first and second phrases of the title theme are played in-game as the Earth God's Lyric and the Wind God's Aria, respectively.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:
    • This game has the Song of the Hero, aka Link's Bootstrapped Theme and the main theme tune for the entire Legend of Zelda franchise.
    • Zelda plays the game's theme, the Ballad of the Goddess, on her harp. The Ballad itself is an inverted cameo of Zelda's Lullaby from Ocarina of Time — this is Foreshadowing, as Zelda is the Goddess, reincarnated.
  • Ghirahim, Midna and Yuga can be heard humming their leifmotifs in their respective games.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The traveling bard Kass does this regularly. He plays the Lon Lon Ranch theme from Ocarina of Time whenever you see him at one of the various stables around Hyrule. When giving you a shrine riddle, he plays the main theme tune of the game. When you solve all eight shrine riddles, he'll return home to Rito Village, where he'll play one final song for you at night, which contains the aforementioned Song of the Hero. Finally, completing a sidequest involving his daughters will have them sing the Dragon Roost Island theme from The Wind Waker whenever you visit the village.
  • Hyrule Warriors:
    • Lana sings part of The Legend of Zelda when summoning enemies.
    • If you use a glitch to let Zelda use Lana's Summoning Gate, she'll sing Zelda's Lullaby instead (seen here). invoked
    • Linkle sings the famous "Got Item" jingle as a taunt.
    • Twili Midna's victory scene will have her hum the start of Midna's Lament, and a Twilight Wolfos will proceed to mimic her.
• Metal Gear:
  • At one point in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots you have to follow a man disguised as PMC soldier. How do you recognize him? He is whistling the game's theme tune. (Or you can be uncreative and use the Solid Eye).
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The latter half of the theme tune to Peace Walker. is recycled as the track for the "Sortie Prep" menu. Snake can also acquire it as a cassette tape.
• LEGO Adaptation Game:
  • LEGO Star Wars:
    • The Episode VI Jabba's Palace level in LEGO Star Wars II features radios that play a rock version of the Imperial March. Bonus: Headbanging Gamorreans. This song was originally featured in Star Wars: Force Commander, an old PC game. Entitled the "Rage Mix", it was once available for download, too. An archive of that page is here.
    • You can also hear the disco version of the Star Wars opening theme in the first game by completing a quick side puzzle on Kamino.
  • LEGO Harry Potter:
    • In Years 1-4, the beginning of the last level of year one has Ron playing the main Harry Potter theme, horribly off key.
    • Likewise with the Lego Star Wars II example above, radios in Hogwarts play a disco version of a different segment of the same Harry Potter theme.
• Star Wars:
  • In Jedi: Fallen Order, when hacking other droids, BD-1 will sometimes beep the "Rebel Spaceship Fanfarre" leitmotif (also titled "TIE Fighter Attack" on the A New Hope OST).
  • In Star Wars: Republic Commando one of the elevators on a Republic ship has kind of a muzak version of the Imperial March playing in the background. Fortunately, it's accessible in the game's files.
  • In Star Wars: Battlefront II, Stormtroopers will occasionally whistle the Imperial March.
• The protagonist's ringtone in Time Hollow is a MIDI version of the main theme.
• A trailer for Sonic Unleashed (also included as part of an intro video in the game itself) begins with Sonic whistling the tune from Sonic 3 & Knuckles's Angel Island.
• Deus Ex Universe:
  • In Deus Ex, using a piano will play a few notes of the opening theme.
  • In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, music from the first game can be heard on radios and whistled by NPC's.
• If you activate the piano in the second level of NightFire, he will play the James Bond theme.
• In TimeSplitters Future Perfect, there is an organ in the second level. One of the songs is the theme song from Anaconda, a minigame in TimeSplitters 2.
• In Space Quest VI: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier, Roger will whistle his own theme song if he stands still long enough.
• Devil Survivor's Haru frequently performs "Reset", the game's opening theme. The instrumental version is practically her Leitmotif.
• The Simpsons Game contains a puzzle in which the player must guide Homer or Bart over FAO Schwartz-esque floor tiles to play the first few bars of the show's theme song. Bart reacts to the puzzle's solution by shuddering, "That tune...it's been haunting me for years!" This also serves as a Call-Back, since one episode (season 5's "Lisa vs Malibu Stacy") ends with Homer doing pretty much the exact same thing.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man 7 contains an example — in the introductory cutscene, Mega Man is helmetless and is riding in a truck to the intro stage. When he puts on the Metool helmet, a short theme with an abrupt, dissonant Record Needle Scratch-esque ending plays. Mega Man then dons his iconic blue helmet, and the recurring "Robot Master Selected" theme plays.
  • The Mega Man X series uses a rocking metal cameo of the musical stinger that plays when you pick a robot master in the first Mega Man game.
  • Vulutron the Condoroid from Mega Man ZX Advent is a unique example. His Idle Animation (or rather, your Idle Animation when you transform into him) makes it seem as though he's bobbing his head to the Awesome Music of his stage, the Scrapyard.
  • At the end of her concert in Mega Man Star Force 3, Sonia Strumm performs a new song she's composed called "Shooting Star," which happens to be the game's opening theme.
    • Similarly, the anime's opening themes are eventually revealed to be songs written and sung by Sonia.
• In one of the Hot Springs events of Tales of Symphonia, the female characters are singing the game's opening, "Starry Heavens". It's of course Lost in Translation in the US and European versions as the opening J-pop song is replaced by an original instrumental work.
• Monkey Island:
  • In The Curse of Monkey Island the clock at the town centre on Plunder Island plays LeChuck's theme every hour.
  • In Escape from Monkey Island, you can talk to Edward van Helgen about a horrific sea voyage where he and his crew were haunted by a diabolical, cacophonous melody coming from the wreck of a ship they had visited. Most of his crew went mad and threw themselves into the sea. When Guybrush asks him how the tune went, van Helgen will hum the classic theme to the Monkey Island series.
  • In Return to Monkey Island as part of a puzzle, Guybrush must figure out the notes for LeChuck's theme and play them using skulls.
• In Fallout 2, a mentally-retarded janitor can be found singing (with a considerable stutter) the song Maybe, the theme from the first game. It's a place to boost your Karma Meter by either praising him for it, or telling him to shut up.
• While a bit of an Easter Egg, each of the buttons on the main screen in the Peggle series makes a little "bloop" noise when the mouse rolls over it. These aren't random; playing the closest thing to a theme that Peggle has (Ode To Joy) produces a little congratulations scene.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver have Team Rocket hijack the radio tower as part of their plan to find their missing boss, Giovanni. The music that plays on all radio broadcasts while they do this is the same theme that plays when a Rocket Grunt challenges you to a battle.
  • Pokémon Black Version and White Version as well as the sequel Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 let you talk to npcs who will play along to several town themes. The version of these town themes on the Super Music Collection releases include the added npc instruments, implying that the tracks are incomplete without theme.
  • The gym leader battle theme in Pokémon Sword and Shield incorporates crowd chants when the gym leader dynamax, since these are the first gyms to take place in a sports-like arena. The Champion Cup fight themes for Hop, Marnie and Leon also includes chants for the same reason.
  • In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Giacomo actually says that he wrote the Team Star Boss theme that plays out of the gigantic starmobile speakers and possibly even wrote all of the Team Star related music. The gym battles are once again a public affair with crowd chants accompanying the gym leader's final pokemon/
• The alien shopkeeper who sells you weapons in Xenon 2 Megablast is listening to a tinny version of the game's theme tune when he appears, then turns it off to do business.
• Mass Effect:
  • In the elevators in Mass Effect, one of the tunes piped in is a muzak version of the game's main theme.
  • In the Mass Effect 3 Downloadable Content, Citadel, if she was romanced by the player, Tali sings the game's love theme, mentioning that it's the main theme of the Show Within a Show, "Fleet and Flotilla". The "Vigil" tune from the first game also makes a reappearance as a piano tune in the Citadel DLC.
• The close of the first act of Dragon Age: Inquisition features a choral version of the game's main theme.
• In Halo 2, the Prophet of Regret holograms chant the series' theme tune.
• The elevators in GoldenEye (1997)'s Control Center play a muzak version of the Bond theme.
• Several characters in the Ys series have their leitmotif played on an instrument, eg "Feena" on harmonica, "Niena" on ocarina, and "Olha" on flute.
• At one point in Heavy Rain, Norman Jayden plays his own theme song as a Lonely Piano Piece.
• In an old DOS game called Normality, the opening cutscene shows the protagonist being arrested for whistling. The tune he was whistling was the game's theme tune.
• At least one song in every Silent Hill game after the first includes a part of the track playing notes from the original game's theme. Namely Theme of Laura, Hometown, One More Soul to the Call, and Hell Frozen Rain.
• The Pikmin will hum the first few bars of their theme tune when traveling. An Easter Egg sees the Pikmin hum the song used in Japanese advertising for the game, "Ai no Uta," in-game.
• Although a Dolled-Up Installment, Super Spy Hunter has a remix of the Peter Gunn theme (aka the original Spy Hunter theme) in its second stage.
• The lyrics to "Dragonborn", the theme music of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, can be found in an in-game book, Songs of Skyrim, along with a translation. "Dragonborn" also "quotes" a fragment of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's main theme.
• In the Japanese arcade game, Super Sentai Battle Dice O, Dragon Ranger plays a bit of the game's theme song on his Zyusouken while using his special attack.
• Conker of Conker's Bad Fur Day is apt to whistling the theme to Windy & Co. when left idle in the main area of the game.
  • Conker also whistles his theme tune during the "It's War" chapter to pass the time after waiting for an electric chair to finish frying its patron, as seen at 6:47 in this clip.
  • Windy theme's also heard in the radio during the intro to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
• Quintessence - The Blighted Venom: The opening song (To Realize) is not only played in-character, but exists in universe before hand, and has some plot significance. (Not much, though some.) And played by the main characters; one using an ocarina (Reivier) and one using a piano. (Lunair) Sadly not at the same time.
• Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 has Macross 7's Basara write a song that he wanted to record with Lynn Minmei; it doesn't actually get played until the final battle, where it inspires the heroes to say "Screw Destiny" and fight the insanely powerful Final Boss. The song is, of course, the theme song for Alpha 3 itself. Bonus points since Yoshiki Fukuyama of JAM Project (the band who originally did the song) provides Basara's singing voice.
• In Lunar: The Silver Star, Lemia's regimental band, if given the opportunity to play, will perform the game's opening theme.
• The menu theme of the Kingdom Hearts series, "Dearly Beloved," appears as a solution in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]. Two Sound Ideas are needed, the melody and the chords, and the resulting harmony seals a dark magic away. Also an example of Title Theme Drop, since it is the only music playing during those cutscenes.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, the ringtone for the Gummiphone is Sora's own leitmotif.
  • In the same game, Sora's theme plays when solving a puzzle in Toy Box.
  • Also in the same game, when the party reaches Olympus, one of the very first things they notice is the lack of a fanfare. Later on in the world, when they encounter a battle, they notice a fanfare.
• In Skullgirls, one of Big Band's attacks allows you to take out a trumpet and play random tunes. Should you play the first four notes of the game's theme tune in B flat, you'll activate his level 5 super, Satchmo Solo, which gives him free time to play on his trumpet and lets him go crazy with his Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs.
• In Spider-Man (2000), Spider-Man can casually hum the theme song from his '60s animated series. When confronting Venom, the villain will do the same, but end the hum with an evil laugh.
• In Koi Iro Chu! Lips, Nagisa sings the OP, "Honey", at karaoke in her route.
• In Mother 3, DCMC's Club Titiboo encore number, "King P's Theme," is a rock remix of the bad guys' Leitmotif.
• In Chapter 5 of Twisted Wonderland, the song the characters sing for the VDC auditions is a portion of the chorus for the opening song "Piece of My World" by the band Night Ravens.
• Tsuki Adventure: Tsuki can use the ukulele to play along with the Background Music at the carrot farm and Mermaid Coast.
• Night in the Woods: Saleem is a violinist who can be found playing along with the Background Music on a roof in Towne Centre.
• In Disco Elysium, Little Lily hums the melody that plays in the Whirling-in-Rags/Traffic Jam area.
• Przygody Reksia: In the third and fourth game, Kretes occasionally hums the background soundtrack if the player stands still.
• In Detroit: Become Human, it's possible for Markus to play the game's opening theme, Kara's theme, or his own theme on the piano.
• In Hollow Knight, a peaceful track often plays in safe rooms that contain a Save Point. In the tramway and the Queen's Gardens, there are rooms with speakers that play a low-fidelity version of this melody. You can destroy the speakers, which abruptly stops the music.
  • It can reasonably be assumed that in The Eternal Ordeal, Zote's theme is actually being hummed by the Zotelings themselves.
• Star Trek: Armada: One of the special weapons on the Klingon Fek'lhr class science vessel is the "death chant", which is Jerry Goldsmith's "Klingon Battle" theme first composed for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: One of Dys' friendship events has him share a song he's listening with Sol. When this happens, the song turns out to be "The Child You Were," which is essentially the game's ending song, via Background Music Override.
• In Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers:
  • The diegetic music in the Galaxy Galleria software store is a PC speaker medley of theme tunes from previous Sierra games, including Quest for Glory, Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, Leisure Suit Larry, and King's Quest.
  • The Monolith Burger muzak is a bossa nova arrangement of Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon's main theme, which also played at the Monolith Burger joint in said game.

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