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Freeze Frame Bonus / Video Games

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Freeze-Frame Bonus in Video Games.

  • ANNO: Mutationem:
    • In Ann's Flashback Nightmare at the beginning, there's a very brief instant image of her walking through an Eldritch Location with a huge glowing cross emanating in the distance.
    • When C starts to undergo a Villainous Breakdown, there are brief flashes of scenes showing The Consortium's staff being assaulted by variants that have gotten loose as a result of the Enemy Civil War.
  • Arthur's Nightmare has one in the ending. As the protagonist (who's all but stated to be a less-than-content fan of the original show) goes to delete a whole folder of rants about the series from his computer, other folders with similar labels from other PBS Kids series (specifically, Cyberchase, Dragon Tales, and The Magic School Bus) can be seen briefly.
  • BlazBlue:
    • The last hit of Taokaka's Astral Finish is actually delivered by Jubei, swiping in from the top-right of the screen. In Taokaka vs. Jubei matches, Torakaka delivers the last hit instead.
    • If Noel misses her Muzzle Flitter command grab, she does a split-second Wild Take with comically-panicked eyes before landing. Similarly, Bang has a split-second look of surprise on whiffing his Daifunka super.
    • When Hakumen draws his BFS, most of the blade actually goes through the side of the sheath so he can do it in one fluid motion. In The Anime of the Game, this is deliberately played up as a dramatic magic effect.
    • Electrical attacks (eg. Rachel's lightning, Kokonoe's traps) cause X-Ray Sparks, each unique to the character. While some versions are obvious like Hakumen's entirely-mechanical insides and Arakune having no bones at all, subtle details include the tiny robot inside Carl's hat and Relius Clover apparently having an artificial arm.
  • There are a couple of them in Brain Dead 13:
    • One of the many things that fly out of Fritz's coat when he's falling down the stairs is a porno mag with Vivi's (clothed) breasts adorned on the cover.
    • Also, if Lance can't make a choice in Vivi's Salon quick enough, Vivi will quickly expose his neck (and his bare chest and man nipples for a bonus!) before sucking his blood!
  • The various games of the Call of Duty franchise is known for packing an incredible amount of plot-relevant information in the introductory cutscenes of each mission. Most notably, the seemingly purely decorative rapidly scrolling text at the end of each mission intro in Call of Duty: Black Ops III is actually a coherent narrative that, if taken at face value completely undermines the story of the video game proper and turns it into a "Shaggy Dog" Story.
  • During the Chapter 3 execution in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, the blackened is briefly shown naked when screaming orgasmically.
  • Devil May Cry:
    • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: The introductory cutscene to every Mission incorporates the mission number somewhere, often very briefly such as the 9 on a fallen 9mm shell case or a 20 in the clouds above the level. Some are fairly obvious, such as the corpses of the demons killed by Lady's bike exhaust in Mission 3 forming the number 3, or Mission 5's intro fading out on a spray of blood shaped like a 5. Looking at the stills for each cutscene in the Demo Digest theater feature will most likely reveal all of these instances.
    • Devil May Cry 4: Those with a careful eye will be able to spot Dante perched casually atop one of the nearby buildings watching Nero's opening fight with the Scarecrows — slow-motion is all but required at first because it's only seen as the camera follows Nero's high-speed aerial acrobatics. Dante also shows up near the end of the prologue, just as Director Hideaki Itsuno's credit disappears.
    • Devil May Cry 5:
      • Nero doesn't have Red Queen with him when he and V escape from Urizen in the prologue. Instead, Griffon is carrying the sword using his talons as he quickly flies in the background.
      • Using Photo Mode, fans have noticed that Blue Rose has armor piercing and hollow point bullets, matching the early description of how Blue Rose fires two shots where the first bullet breaks the demon's armor and the second bullet causes extra damage.
      • In the secret ending of Dante and Vergil in the Demon World, the bullets leaving Ebony and Ivory are armor piercing and hollow point, respectively, matching their weapon flavor text of Ebony being used for long distance and heavy power, while Ivory is used for rapid fire.
      • In the opening cutscene, one of the stickers on Nico's van says "IF YOU CAN READ THIS MY RIFLE WILL KILL YOU BEFORE YOU HEAR ITS SOUND".
      • In the cutscene where Dante receives Dr. Faust from Nico, the Devil May Cry neon sign on her van blinks in time with the background music's beat. The camera does have multiple shots of the neon sign though, even if it's just for a few seconds each.
      • When Nero separates Dante and Vergil from clashing in the cutscene of Mission 20, his spectral wings' talons are also holding up their swords. He really didn't want them to kill each other.
    • Vergil's Judgement Cut End actually utilizes doppelgangers/spectral clones that either do all the slashing for him, or he moves in a blinding-fast speed to create after-images while slashing, but they're too fast to be noticed at first glance. In the Special Edition of Devil May Cry 4, the "after-images" are visible on the first few frames of the start-up animation. In Devil May Cry 5 and its Special Edition, they are noticeable throughout the entire attack when the game is slowed-down frame-by-frame, or when Nero uses the Ragtime Devil Breaker to slow down the in-game world itself.
  • The ending of Dragon Age II has one. Look at the book Varric and Cassandra are handling at just the right moment and you'll see an illustration of Shale chasing pigeons and another of a woman who looks an awful lot like Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins.
  • In the intro of The Elder Scrolls series spin-off game, Redguard, the camera pans over a library. There is a set of five books where, if you pause, you can see that the books have the following titles: The Elder Scrolls Arena, The Elder Scrolls Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls Morrowind (which was in pre-production), The Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and The Elder Scrolls Romanelli (this is simply a meaningless placeholder name since Bethesda hadn't settled on "Skyrim" yet). The amazing thing is that Bethesda had already decided on "Oblivion" for a title as far back as 1998 (Oblivion being released eight years later) and they had decided on making a fifth game down the line.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy VII Remake: Zack surviving the Shinra ambush is punctuated by a Stamp dog chip bag flung by the wind. What's significant about this is that the Stamp depicted in the image is a terrier while the Stamp depicted throughout the game is a beagle. Which ends up having a lot of implications for the future games.
    • Final Fantasy VIII has two:
      • The giant TV screen outside the Timber TV station, when not in use for the president's broadcast, is covered with a strange rolling pattern of red noise. If you freeze-frame a shot of the TV screen it's possible to make out the text that the "noise" is made up of, lines reading "IAMALIVEHEREBRINGMEBACKTHERE" and "IWILLNEVERLETYOUFORGETABOUTME". These messages are coming from Sorceress Adel, whose imprisonment in an orbital tomb is the source of the radio interference.
      • During the end FMV sequence, near the end of Squall's epic breakdown/hallucination scene, there's an extremely brief shot of Squall with an empty black void where his face should be.
    • Final Fantasy XIII had Siren, who was Boduhm's Fal'cie, almost completely removed from the game, except for one of the flashbacks when Serah tells Snow she's a l'cie.
  • Just before the Twilight Thorn appears in Kingdom Hearts II, there is a moment when Roxas turns around to see it appear. Just before it cuts to a close up of Roxas, you can see an Organization member, if only for a few frames.
    • They also have this Played for Laughs blink-and-you’ll-miss-it "Like an Old Married Couple moment" between Leon and Aerith in the second game during the crisis at Hollow Bastion, when Leon, having to go retrieve the anti-virus for the computer, asks Aerith if she'll be OK on her own, and she shuts him up with nothing but a Death Glare.
  • Halo has these a lot of times on the bullet casings coming out of guns. However, in 2, on Legendary, you can see Jason Jones (Co-Founder of Bungie Studios) wearing only boxers with his hands behind his head, kneeling. What the hell were Bungie doing when that was taken? Wait, don't answer that.
  • Haunting Ground: The opening cinematic has Fiona awake in the cellar of Castle Belli, with nothing but a bedsheet to cover herself. If you pause at exactly 2:49, you can see she isn't wearing anything underneath it.
  • Henry Stickmin Series has one on the Triple Threat path of Completing the Mission. After Henry Stickmin and Ellie Rose sabotage the rocket launch, they leap from the rocket and plummet down to their chopper, where Charles Calvin picks them up. If you look carefully, you'll see the chopper's blades are actually barely moving, so Henry and Ellie aren't chopped up by them. As soon as they get in, Charles starts the chopper and gets away. If you listen, you can also hear the alert sounds about how the chopper's blades aren't moving.
  • Illusion of Gaia: when some of the monsters explode upon death in typical NES- and SNES-era video game fashion, you might be able to see a screaming face appear in the fire. This can be seen, in particular, when the giant centipede boss of the Great Wall is defeated since a dialogue box opens and pauses the game mid-explosion.
  • During Deathstroke's victory screen in Injustice: Gods Among Us, he sits down in front of a computer waiting for his next contract. Just before the shot of him sitting comes up, there is a shot of the computer's "Cotract Pending" screen, where names like Judas Contract, H.I.V.E. and Doom Patrol can be seen along with "open contracts" for characters like Dick Grayson (a.k.a. Nightwing), Kyle Rayner (a Green Lantern member also known as the superhero Ion), Garfield Logan (a.k.a. Beast Boy) and Floyd Lawton (a.k.a. Deadshot).
  • In Katawa Shoujo, in Hanako's Act 2 opening video, during the segment with people rushing all around her, a sharp-eyed viewer may spot that Hisao was standing there the whole time.
  • The trailer for League of Legends' release on Mac was full of allusions to various characters. Some of these are directly panned over, but others are only visible for a split-second. Examples include a crayon drawing of Mordekaiser and the full contents of the weapons board, including Soraka's bananas.
  • The "20 Years of PlayStation" trailer for LittleBigPlanet 3 has some PS1 games lined up on a shelf. They read Spyro the Dragon, Gran Turismo, Croc, and Oddworld.
  • All of the characters' info cards in Lollipop Chainsaw. The game displays each one for about two seconds each, so you won't have enough time to read all of the info on them.
  • Quite a few glimpses of shadowy figures, eerie black vapors, and the Ager brothers are scattered here and there in The Lost Crown. Most are distant background glimpses, but if you watch the corners when Nigel is in danger, you're likely to see the last of these lurking in the shadows very close to him.
  • The introductory cutscenes in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Console) have loads of text that can only be seen if you pause at the right time. The Compsognathus intro in particular includes Foreshadowing for the Brachiosaurus level and a Breaking the Fourth Wall joke.
  • Mega Man ZX Advent has one in the form of Model P, when you open the Transform menu as it, for a single frame it has the face of Model PX from the original game instead. (Video
  • In the ending cinematic of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty while Snake is talking to Raiden, if you pause at the right point, and zoom into the crowd, a still-living Vamp is clearly visible.
  • The mission intro cutscenes for Modern Warfare.
    • Even more so for Black Ops, if you can manage to read through the microfiche dossiers before they are redacted. They give you a pretty good backgrounder on all of the characters, and the plot.
  • Mortal Kombat 9: A couple. One at the start of Stryker's Chapter in Story Mode reveals that Kabal has an engagement ring on his finger. The other? Take a good look at the figures in the tubes when Kitana confronts Mileena. The scary demon that occasionally pops up in the Krypt? Turns out it's one of the rejected clones.
  • No More Heroes has the entire backstory of the Final Boss, which is told entirely in fast-forward. Travis explicitly fast-forwards it, to avoid raising the game's age rating. (Here it is slowed down.)
    • In the second game, second-to-last boss Alice Twilight burns a few pictures before her showdown with Travis. If you somehow take a good look at these pictures, you'll notice she has a husband and son and some form of link with similarly-named Margaret Moonlight.
  • Phantom Doctrine: Many details of level design and decoration can only be seen if you zoom in, and the only way to zoom in is to prepare an attack on someone who happens to be standing in the right spot. These sorts of things are mostly posters, but you can also find an executive toy swinging away on a desk.
  • When Myriam Scuttlebutt drops her laptop in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, her wallpaper is a picture of her standing beside the friends Juniper, Hugh, and Robin, foreshadowing her desire to be a part of that group.
  • In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet:
    • In the base game ,during the final story battle, the AI Professor Sada/Turo is taken over by the Paradise Protection Protocol. The pre-fight text is glitchy and moves quickly, but while it's flickering, you can see the statement "AI Sada/Turo has no intention of fighting anymore!" flash by.
    • During the ''Teal Mask" DLC, when you are told the true tale of Ogerpon, a half-obscured figure can briefly be seen in the upper right corner of the screen when the Loyal Three assault Ogerpon. This comes into play in the "Mochi Mayhem" Epilogue chapter, where the figure is revealed to be Pecharunt, the creator and original master of the Loyal Three.
  • In Portal 2, during a later test GLaDOS tells you a supposedly sped-up version of the instructions for that chamber. Slowing it down reveals it to simply be a line from Moby-Dick.
  • Punch-Out!! The NES version has a bearded guy in the crowd who never moves. He only nods in one occasion: When you can One-Hit Kill an opponent.
  • In Silver Falls Gaiden: Deathly Delusion Destroyers and Ruby River, the loading screens provide background information about Silver Falls and the surrounding world. Most of these go by so fast, they can only be read on multiple viewings or if you take a screenshot with your phone. Your efforts will pay off; there are at least a hundred different tidbits, Noodle Incidents, and shout-outs.
  • Skullgirls:
    • At the end of Filia's Hairball special, for a brief moment her face is obscured and Samson looks straight at the camera.
    • If Ms. Fortune loses with her detachable head detached, she'll try and raise her eyes with a completely ridiculous expression on her face before flopping down again.
  • Throughout Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, there are cutaway scenes of Sly's ancestors when their section of the titular book is retrieved, with a shadowy owl silhouette seen for a fraction of a second in each one. This ends up becoming a plotpoint as Sly notices it to and how they're similar to the police images of Clockwerk, leader of the Fiendish Five, leading to the reveal that he's an Eternal Arch-Enemy to Cooper's family line.
  • Whenever you launch Sonic Dreams Collection, a boot-up sequence happens very briefly, with different messages appearing on it for a split second each time.
  • In Sonic Unleashed, a Dreamcast with controller is briefly seen just prior to Dr. Eggman firing the Wave-Motion Gun to fracture the planet and awaken Dark Gaia. It's in the frames where you get an overhead shot as Eggman has his finger in the air. He also has the Dreamcast in his Egg Mobile right before Dark Gaia emerges and swats him away.
  • In the "Raphael Trailer" for The Stanley Parable, the trailer lists a list of emotions that you can feel throughout the game, including, "Orange", "Being at the Beach", and "Being the Beach".
  • Super Hot has a rather fascinating and hilarious in-plot EULA that scrolls by at lightning speed.
  • Some of the Star Bit "constellations" seen in the backgrounds in both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, which only appear when Mario is traveling from one planet to another. You need to get those Star Bits immediately before Mario finally arrives on the next planet.
  • Super Metroid:
    • A small blip flying away from Zebes's ruins at the end of the game, indicating that the creatures if they were rescued have safely made it off the planet. This ends up being extremely important in Metroid Fusion, as the animals return in that game and help Adam pilot Samus' ship, saving her life at the very end.
    • The other is far less significant but still awesome nonetheless: During your escape from Ceres at the beginning of the game, one of the doors will actually explode behind you, leaving behind an impassible hunk of glowing hot metal. This one is a lot more likely to go unnoticed, due to all the other explosions and random chaos on screen (not to mention that your escape is timed). It's also the only instance of a door exploding in the entire game.
  • Super Robot Wars loves to do this especially with the ultimate attacks of Banpresto Original major villains.
    • In Super Robot Wars Z, the enigmatic Asakim Dorwin's Ley Buster attack ends with a Mind Rape that's designed to fuel Wild Mass Guessing. Most of the images that flash across the screen are (probably) merely gothic artwork with meaningless symbolism, but if paused at just the right time, others show possible clues to his past and connection with other characters and plotlines. It doesn't help that he even tells his opponent that he'll show them "my past, my sins, my fate, and my despair".
    • Super Robot Wars Alpha 3's true final boss Keisar Ephes has an ultimate attack that, if you freeze the animation in certain places (it can be viewed on YouTube), shows the boss standing on a pile of all of the guys you can recruit, as if foreshadowing his victory. Unlike other examples, it's more just for Oh, Crap! factor.
    • If you pause during the An Ares' strongest attack in Super Robot Wars Z3: Tengoku-hen, images of Barbiel in despair and Supreme God Z can be seen.
  • Super Smash Bros.:
  • In the Team Fortress 2 official short "Meet the Spy", pause at the beginning scene where it shows the list of alerts. You'll see some pretty funny ones listed. There are actually large numers of jokes and Easter Eggs hidden in the various Meet the Team videos that can only be spotted by pausing the video and knowing where to look.
    • Extreme slomo videos have revealed that airblasted rockets, which appear to change direction instantly, actually stop and spend a few milliseconds rotating to the desired direction before flying off again.
  • At the end of There Is No Game, a fake blue screen of death appears, a tease that Mr. Glitch has survived Game and GiGi being merged into the source code. At the bottom of the screen the following text is displayed: "Screenshot or videocapture in order to read this text is totally forbidden."
  • TimeSplitters 2 does the same as Unreal Tournament (you can zoom in and see a tiny head using a sniper rifle at point blank). Team Fortress 2 also does it with the Eyelander/Skullcutter's kill animations. Furthermore, you can make a ragdoll in Garry's Mod appear to have no head by simply deflating it until it becomes invisible. This is because it's a lot easier for both the programmer and the computer/console to simply scale vertices or force them all into one point than to actually add to or take away from the 3D mesh.
  • Several characters don't get closeups in the intro cutscene of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 but are still visible in the background in battling other characters.
  • Twisted Wonderland:
    • During the opening, if you pause during the split second Azul Ashengrotto's eyes widen, you can see a silhouette of his Overblot form.
    • Likewise, if you pause at the shot where Azul's contracts are scattered on a table, you can see what is presumed to be an Embarrassing Old Photo of his chubbier octopus form underneath one of the contracts.
  • Undertale:
    • There's one for the very first boss. If Toriel kills you, she has a unique sprite◊ for her reaction, only seen for a fraction of a second.
    • Sometimes when backtracking in the game, you may see that Flowey is there, and upon seeing you walk towards him, he goes back into the ground. This foreshadows that he's been following you throughout the whole game.
  • Unreal Tournament:
    • There's a smiley face painted on the front of the Flak Cannon's secondary fire shells, which is nearly impossible to notice in normal gameplay, except if you get headshot with a flak shell. Then that image is the last thing to go through your head.
    • The Redeemer missile object has "Adios!" scrawled on the side, fitting for a man-portable nuclear cruise missile.
    • Using console commands to drastically slow down the game speed (very drastically), it's possible to see exactly how the game handles decapitating headshots: the head of the character model simply shrinks down to a dot and a head gib is spawned. Not interesting from any plot perspective, but interesting nonetheless.
  • In Until Dawn, Matt jumps up in front of a mounted telescope while Ashley is looking through it. When this happens again with Mike looking through them, it is briefly visible that this time, the person jumping up is not human. Much later, Hannah's distinctive tattoo can be fleetingly seen on a wendigo when it runs past.
  • The WAHccollades trailer for WarioWare: Get It Together! features "absolutely-100%-real-definitely-not-fake-clearly-not-from-Wario-himself" reviews for the game, and there is a segment with a whole bunch of "awards" displayed onscreen, and if you pause the video during this segment you'll notice that some of these include "You didn't actually pause the video to read all of these, did you?", "For shame...", "You did?!", "Seriously, unpause it!" and "You got a lot of time on your hands, huh...".
  • There's a very minor one in the WildStar Flick "Adventures": there is a portrait of Ish'mael the Bloodied, the star of "Classes," in the Granok hide-out and he yelps when the door is slammed into his face.

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