Late Arrival Spoiler / Video Games

• AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative defies this: the game starts with a quiz show where the host will break the fourth wall to question the player about whether they remember the events of the first game. If the player says they're not familiar with the Cyclops Killings, or fails to answer a few questions about it, some minor dialogue that spoils the events of the first game will be cut out. It also defies this in that Date has his appearance from the former game; only if the player passes the quiz will he explain to the audience why he still looks as he did in the first game, when a player who beat it would expect him to look somewhat different.
• Aliens: Colonial Marines, by virtue of being a P.O.V. Sequel to the 1986 film, spoils the climax of the movie (and its offscreen result) by necessity. The Hadley's Hope colony on LV-426 was almost completely destroyed due to an atmosphere processor explosion caused by the main characters in the film.
• Amateur Surgeon: Amateur Surgeon 4 casually says early on that Dwayne Pipe and Hubris D'Obscene were the Big Bads of the previous games in the series (where their identities as such were meant to be plot twists).
• The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) gets this in spades. In addition to being released a week before the actual movie was released in theatres, the game is a sequel to said film and spoils several plot points in its opening mission. This includes the Lizard's tear through the city, Dr. Connors being locked up, Connors' engineered virus/antivenom and Captain Stacy's death.
• Another Code: Happens at the last minute in the original Wii version of Journey into Lost Memories. The plot of the previous game, Two Memories/Trace Memory in part addresses the murder of Ashley's mother, Sayoko, and the big reveal at the end concerns who her murderer was. While the sequel would talk about the murder of Ashley's mother right from the start, as well as the fact that her killer recently got discovered, they step-around revealing who said killer was for most of the game; the character even gets their own profile where they're displayed with a generic silhouette and their name is shown as "???". That is until the game's climax, where Bill Edward's identity as the killer is very bluntly dropped into conversation, as though they stopped caring. Downplayed in the "Recollection" remakes, where you have to play the Two Memories half of the story before playing Journey into Lost Memories, so there's no need to be coy in that version.
• In Arcaea, the difficulty scale originally went from 1 to 9, then 9+ (10 since version 3). Level 10 (11 since version 3) was reserved for a couple of hidden "boss" songs, and as such its very existence was a spoiler. However, the HARDCORE TANO*C collaboration introduced the song "SAIKYO STRONGER", the Future chart of which is plainly stated as a level 10 (now 11) chart even if you haven't bought the song or unlocked the chart yet.
• Ubisoft quickly learned that when you have a prolific franchise like Assassin's Creed whose entire Framing Device is a massive spoiler, you can't keep the cat in the bag for long. The existence of the Animus and the real protagonist, Desmond Miles, was kept heavily under wraps during production of the first game, even after Kristen Bell accidentally leaked part of the plot in an interview. Since then, the developers have been surprisingly coy when dealing with the modern-day plotline in each game; in previews they'll mention Desmond and the Animus every now and again, but all but the bare essentials of Desmond's plotline in each game is a tightly-guarded secret, with the developers only ever showing gameplay from inside the Animus. Former franchise director Patrice Desilets even got in on the act by teasing that Brotherhood's cliffhanger ending almost made Nolan North Rage Quit the studio.
  • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag would be the first in the main game series to not follow Desmond Miles, with the new Animus operator being an anonymous researcher at Abstergo Entertainment, but a story mission reveals that Desmond Miles wasn't a consensual "Sample 17" donor... because Abstergo simply took the DNA samples from his corpse soon after his death at the conclusion of Assassin's Creed III.
• Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy, in addition to starting with the protagonists of the previous game split up (which happens in that game's ending), has Serri, a party member whose motivations are impossible to describe without spoiling the previous game's journeys to the Underworld and the history of the Oren.
• That the Player Character is a bhaalspawn and the half-sibling of Imoen and Sarevok was considered by many as a huge twist in Baldur's Gate. That is spoiled in the intro and trailers of the sequel.
• Batman: Arkham Knight: The Game of the Year edition gives you some extra skins for the Arkham Knight, which reveals his identity as Jason Todd/Red Hood before you even start the game.
  • One of the post-release trailers for the first wave of DLC also had Mark Hamill's Joker hallucination as the first thing you see.
• Blaster Master Zero: Even if you didn't already know Eve was a Ridiculously Human Robot, it should be easy to make that connection if you realize all the MA pilots from the sequels are assisted by their support droids.
• BlazBlue. Kokonoe's a catgirl, Ragna and Jin are brothers, Hakumen is future Jin, and Hazama is Terumi. The first two barely count as spoilers, since they're both casually mentioned in the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot. The opening wall of text for Hazama's Arcade Mode route in Continuum Shift reveals his status as The Man Behind the Man and Continuum Shift II has a new opening FMV that shows Noel turning into Mu-12. Likewise, Chronophantasma wastes no time in "reminding" players that Ragna's kidnapped little sister Saya is the Imperator of the NOL, though this has the effect of covering up an even bigger twist, one that players might only guess in advance if they were privy to sidestories and/or XBlaze.
  • Rhythm Game Spin-Off Eat Beat Deadspike-san has Super-Deformed versions of every character in the song select screen. This includes Susanooh, whose very appearance spoils the big twist of BlazBlue: Central Fiction.
• In Borderlands 2, most of the DLCs canonically take place after the main storyline is completed, but can be played during it if the player is prepared enough. As a result, large chunks of the story are spoiled, especially in the Headhunter DLCs. Upon starting the fifth Headhunter DLC, "Son of Crawmerax", you'll hear the three Vault Hunters from the first game spoil the following: that Handsome Jack is dead, Mordecai is training a new bird to replace Bloodwing, and Roland is nowhere to be found. Likewise, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep spoils the fact that Roland is dead and the group are struggling with how to break the news to Tina.
• Invoked by BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm. New players are encouraged to start with this entry instead of seeking out the (dated and amateurish) original, so all the relevant plot points are laid out right at the start, by way of a text file included in the download. Pieces of the first game’s ending are shown in this one’s opening cutscene, including Boxxyfan's defeat and Catie's coronation.
• In the second half of Brütal Legend, Ophelia undergoes a Face–Heel Turn and commands the Drowning Doom. Of course this was spoiled quickly by the game's commercial, magazine coverage, the demo, and the Drowning Doom being a playable faction in the game's multiplayer.
• The first trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 blatantly spoils the fact that the death of Imran Zakhaev (the Big Bad of the first game) is what directly causes the antagonist of the sequel, Makarov, and his splinter group to seek revenge.
  • Likewise, Modern Warfare 3's trailer spoils the fact that Vladimir Makarov is still alive and well after the events of the second game, and that tensions between Russia and the U.S. have escalated into all-out warfare. The cutscene before the prologue also blatantly spoils the fact that Shepherd was the Big Bad of the second game and Soap and Price were the ones who killed him.
• Cassette Beasts: Lenna, the protagonist of Lenna's Inception by the same developers, has a cameo in post-game as a Superboss. In her post-battle dialogue, she casually mentions that she's an Archangel turned human, which was the main plot twist in her debut game.
• Castlevania
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2: Every trailer and piece of advertising will instantly give away The Reveal from the first game that Gabriel Belmont became Dracula.
  • Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow casually mentions that Soma is Dracula, which is a late-game spoiler for Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.
• Cave Story:
  • The WiiWare version originally contained some extra playing modes in addition to the original game, none of which require any sort of unlocking. So you can spoil the boss fights by playing the Boss Rush game before the main game, or you can spoil the existence of a character who's introduced one-third into the game by playing "Curly Story" first. The modes were later patched so that you need to unlock them first in order to play them (as with the future versions of the game).
  • The Cave Story 3D box art makes it quite obvious that the main character is a robot.
  • The main character's name is "Quote". This was originally a secret that was only revealed on the very hard to unlock path to the Golden Ending, but it's now being used casually by official sources like it's nothing. Quote even appears as a playable character in the fighting game Blade Strangers and the Nintendo Switch fighting-puzzle game Crystal Crisis with his name in full display, so the spoiler is pretty much impossible to avoid. Admittedly, talking about the character otherwise would be hard, since he has No Name Given until The Reveal, though later releases of the game called him "Mr. Traveler".
• In the DS version of Chrono Trigger, the dojo section features pictures of the various techs in action. This is fine as they're only unlocked after you learn them. However, some of the first techs unlocked show Magus in your party, who won't join you until near the end of the game. The SNES version's manual also contained a profile on all recruitable characters, including this surprise character.
• Crysis 3: The trailers freely call the protagonist Prophet. Alcatraz? Who's that?
• Dead by Daylight:
  • The Saw Chapter DLC spoils several plot points from the first three Saw films: first, that John Kramer is Jigsaw; second, that Amanda is his apprentice, not his victim; and third, that Kramer, Amanda, and Detective Tapp are all dead. Given that the DLC was released shortly after the eighth film had just left cinemas, the developers likely assumed it would be a case of It Was His Sled.
  • The Silent Hill chapter casually gives out Heather's real name of Cheryl Mason. Considering that Silent Hill 3 was released for the PS2 all the way back in 2003, it's easy to assume that it's another case of It Was His Sled.
• Deadly Rooms of Death: The title of The City Beneath spoils a surprise at the end of the previous game, Journey to Rooted Hold. The title of the next game, The Second Sky, does the same for the ending of The City Beneath.
• The marketing and trailers for Dead Space 2 assume that the viewer knows that Isaac Clarke is the only survivor of the events from the first game, and that every other character from the first installment (including your girlfriend Nicole, who is now showing up as a hallucination) has died). Likewise, the Severed DLC mission spoils the fact that Gabe and Lexine Weller are the only ones who survived the events of Dead Space: Extraction.
• Despite being set in an Alternate Universe from Undertale, Deltarune still manages to spoil several plot points from it. For this reason, the creator has strongly recommended against playing Deltarune first:
  • The player's nature as a different being from both the character the player names and the Player Character is spoiled in the opening cutscene, with the voice asking for name the created character, then asking what the player's name is, before finally throwing out the custom character and putting the player into Kris. Meanwhile, in Undertale, the twist of the player character being different from the named human is only revealed during the True Pacifist ending, while the player's existence is revealed at the end of the Genocide route.
  • Toriel's and Asgore's status as exes is shown in the epilogue of the first chapter when visiting Asgore's shop, while in Undertale, the reveal of Asgore's appearance is meant as a twist.
  • While not seen, Asriel is mentioned at the beginning of the game, as Kris shared a room with him before he went off to college and he's supposed to be coming home to visit soon. In Undertale, Asriel is associated with a dump truck's worth of spoilers due to being Toriel and Asgore's son, his role in the backstory including his death, the fact that he was resurrected as Flowey, and the role he plays in the True Pacifist route.
• Destiny 2: Virtually every expansion following Forsaken spoils the events in that storyline, like Cayde-6 dying, the mass breakout at the Prison of Elders, and the very existence of Riven, the last Ahamkara. This became especially pronounced after the Newbie Boom caused by the game going Free-to-Play.
• Devil May Cry 4:
  • The "History of DMC" video unlocked by beating this game gives away all of the spoilers and plot twists from the first three games.
  • Gloria is actually Trish in disguise. Later installments or related media casually revealed it because this game's Special Edition, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Devil May Cry 5 have Palette Swaps of dark-skinned Trish in white clothes (matching Gloria's colors) as unlockable cosmetics or Downloadable Content. It's also revealed in one of the Pachislot spin-offs' cutscenes.
• Devil May Cry 5: The trailers for the Special Edition don't bother to hide any of the big plot twists or spoilers from the story, most notably the revelation that Vergil finally returns in a fully canon capacity, but also stuff like V being part of Vergil, Dante's Sin Devil Trigger, and biggest late-game spoiler of all; Nero is Vergil's son and he unlocks his own true Devil Trigger at the end of the story when Dante and Vergil are fighting.
• Flonne in nearly all her appearances after Disgaea: Hour of Darkness appears as a fallen angel, clad in red, which was the result of the Good Ending of the game. It's practically impossible to avoid by now, being spoiled as early as the opening movie for Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories.
  • On a similar note, Priere from La Pucelle has always (except one time) appeared as a Demon Lord, which was what happens to her in the evil ending. Even the Updated Re-release puts Demon Lord Priere on the cover, which makes sense considering it adds an extra story featuring her. While the Demon Lord ending isn't the regular end, it's what is pretty much canon at this point, and hardly a secret to anyone who's somewhat familiar with her anymore. Speaking of which, most of the characters from the Nippon Ichi games that make future appearances will very likely have something spoiled about them, as if they practically expect the players to know about them already.
• Mostly averted with most franchises/movies represented in Disney Infinity (such as The Force Awakens for example) except in moments that are very much It Was His Sled moments. (Such as Syndrome.) However, there are two big moments (relating to Zootopia and Finding Dory) where it's played straight: A Zootopia based Power Disc enables Nick Wilde to wear the police officer outfit he gains at the very end of the movie, and the Finding Dory Play Set is clearly set after the events of the movie itself, thus former Marine Life Institute residents Destiny, Bailey, and Hank are already living at the Great Barrier Reef with Nemo, Dory, and the others.
• Dragalia Lost celebrated its second anniversary with the event "Forgotten Truths" which details the origin of the game's Big Bad, Morsayati, even having him as the event's raid boss. However, the event also includes portions of chapter 14 which reveals that Morsayati loses this position to player who have yet to reach said chapter. Due to this, when the event was added to the compendium a few months after its initial run, it was made a requirement to get past chapter 14 before it can be played.
• The Eternal Gods: Part 1, the first DLC for Doom Eternal, presumes that the player has played and completed the basegame, as it spoils the ending and almost all of the plot twists (VEGA being Father, the Icon of Sin being destroyed) in its opening crawl.
• The NES version of Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones changes the plot from the Japanese version by revolving around the Lee brothers trying rescue Marian once again, which spoils the fact that she is restored back to life at the end of Double Dragon II, since that game's plot revolved around aveging her apparent death at the hands of the Shadow Warriors.
• Dragon Age:
  • The entire prologue of Dragon Age II spoils the first several hours of the first game, such as the loss of most of the Ferelden army at the ill-fated Battle of Ostagar, Loghain's betrayal and the death of King Cailan, as well as the destruction of Lothering at the hands of the Darkspawn horde.
    • The entire game can be considered this and a First-Episode Twist due to the Framing Device. The opening states outright that Thedas is currently on the brink of a World War and the Chantry has fallen to pieces, due to something that the Champion and their friends did. Varric then proceeds to explain how Hawke became the Champion of Kirkwall and How We Got Here.
    • The trailer also revealed the death of the Viscount and that Hawke will eventually be forced to fight the Arishok. What it doesn't give away is that this happens 2/3 of the way through the game and isn't remotely the end boss.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, it's generally not considered a spoiler that the Player Character's title is "The Inquisitor", and players openly call their characters by that title in spoiler-free discussions, even though, story-wise, the player character only receives that title after the first act, after Corypheus destroys Haven and the Inquisition moves to Skyhold.
  • Marketing and promotion for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has freely and heavily emphasized Solas' antagonistic role — it even has an Antagonist Title using his Nom de Guerre. This would be a huge spoiler to anyone who hasn't finished Inquisition, where Solas keeps his identity as the Dread Wolf secret and is a party member for the entire main adventure.
• Many works parodying or otherwise discussing EarthBound reveal the final boss's weakness.
• The Earthbound fangame Cognitive Dissonance spoils the entire first game by necessity, including that Giegue is the Final Boss and Queen Mary is Ninten's grandmother Maria. It also spoils that Porky is a major antagonistic force and that Giegue ends up losing his mind and becoming the Eldritch Abomination Gigyas from Earthbound.
• The Elder Scrolls: The blurb for Daggerfall on Bethseda's site and in the Elder Scrolls Anthology mentions the Numidium, and tells you its backstory. This is information you don't find out until almost the end of the main quest. During the original release, the only thing the player knew going in was that King Lysandus was not at rest, and that a letter from the Emperor had gone astray. ^note The spoilers aren't even accurate either; they state the Numidium has recently been unearthed in the Iliac Bay region. It's Tiber Septim's Totem that has been unearthed; the Numidium was reassembled at some point in the past (presumably somewhere in Cyrodiil) after the Blades had tracked down all of the fragments.
• If one plays Endless Frontier and Project × Zone without playing Namco × Capcom, one of the biggest plot twists is spoiled to the player because of Saya coming Back from the Dead and is willing to work with Reiji. Of course, then again...
• The reveal trailer for Endless Ocean: Luminous casually spoils the Anomalocaris, a previously-believed extinct creature which could be found in its predecessor, Endless Ocean: Blue World.
• Etrian Odyssey:
  • Etrian Odyssey: Despite being a remake of this game in the series, Etrian Odyssey Untold has late arrival spoilers for the series. The intro features scenes of futuristic technology, and early on in the story mode you visit a ruined high-tech facility, and Raquna reveals she's from Ontario — which is heavily implied to be exactly where it sounds like. The fact that series is set in a post-apocalyptic future Earth was originally a twist revealed extremely late in the original version of the game.
  • Etrian Odyssey Nexus: In Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, there is a secret class available in the last quarter of the game, the Imperial class; the name of the class is a reference to the Empire of Yggdrasil where people of this class come from and which is the highly-advanced aggressor country in opposition to the civilizations and races of the other three lands. Nexus has this class available to recruit right from the start, with their position in the class list (classes are organized by debut game) making it clear which game they're from.
• Fallout
  • Fallout 2's manual included the Vault Dweller's memoirs, which was essentially a spoiler and walkthrough for the first Fallout.
  • The fact that the vaults were made for Vault-Tec and the U.S. government to experiment on the residents was only revealed by Big Bad Dick Richardson late in Fallout 2, but every subsequent game makes no effort to hide it.
  • One of the Funko mini figures for Fallout 4 is of Curie after her consciousness is uploaded to a Synth body.
  • Also in 4, practically everybody knows by now that one of your companions, Nick Valentine, is a synth, even people who haven't played the game. This is actually a minor twist that the game conceals prior to you meeting him, and can make for an awesome surprise for any player lucky enough to avoid this particular spoiler. Fortunately, the same has not happened with the other secret synth in your party (Paladin Danse), whose reveal is much more impactful on the plot.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The opening cinematic for Final Fantasy IV DS just assumes that you already know the whole plot, and it spoils, among other things, that Cecil has to fight Kain at one point, that Cecil becomes a paladin and fights against his own inner darkness, that Kain is intensely jealous that Rosa is with Cecil, that the Tower of Babil is actually the storage place for a giant mech that can destroy the world and the Red Wings and Dwarves are going to fight it, that Rydia eventually returns and can even summon the Leviathan that seems to kill her, they reveal the final team including Kain, and finally as the coup de grace they reveal the Lunar Whale that takes you to the moon. Of course, this is a grand tradition with the game; the original American release revealed in the instruction manual that FuSoYa would be joining your party, and was from the moon. Also, when you meet Jammingway and he shows you the music player; the character playing (and adding lines of narration to) the music is Edward, who at that point in the game, is presumed dead. If you haven't played the game before and don't know that he's alive; this is kind of a giveaway, because using a dead character for the music player would be... kinda...
  • Nintendo and Square Enix both promoted the Nintendo Switch port of Final Fantasy VII by referencing the scene of Sephiroth (through Jenova's shapeshifted body) killing Aerith in the Temple of the Ancients.
    • This continues the grand tradition of spoiling her death for Americans that began with the original TV commercials for the game.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core stars a protagonist who is a spoiler. His existence, appearance and role are almost entirely unknown until Cloud untangles his Tomato Surprise, very late in the game. Mails sent to this protagonist casually drop facts like SOLDIERs being implanted with Jenova cells (a major spoiler in the original, since it explains that Cloud's reason for wanting to hunt down Sephiroth isn't simply revenge), and - well, when Cloud shows up and he's a Shinra grunt rather than a SOLDIER First Class, that twist is ruined for you.
    • The truth about Cloud was already prematurely spoiled in 1999, in Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring, where his alternate costume was a Shinra infantry uniform.
    • Also, Zack dies at the end, which is why he's not in the main game. And if you have played the original, you know Zack dies, which puts both games in the uncomfortable situation that any of the two games spoils the other, so no matter in which order you play it, you're still screwed.
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake was influenced by the fact that Sephiroth, who in the original is held back and only mentioned, has become such a popular character that even people who know nothing about Final Fantasy know who he is and what he looks like, and by Aerith's death approaching It Was His Sled territory. The story adds more Sephiroth early on in the game and adds scenes that show Aerith and Cloud are, on some level, aware of her eventual fate.
  • The ending of Final Fantasy XII left you hanging right up until the moment before the credits on whether or not Balthier and Fran die in a heroic act. Unfortunately, shortly before the game was actually released in North America, there was already a trailer for Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (the Nintendo DS sequel) circling the web which revealed them to be alive and well. Any English fan who saw the trailer before reaching the end of the first game were therein stolen any and all suspense on the reveal that Balthier and Fran lived after all.
    • Their survival was hinted by Penelo, who pointed out that their airship couldn't have been stolen if the original owners were retaking it. They also received a letter presumably from Balthier and Fran, as it included Ashe's wedding ring that Balthier 'looted' from her (which he said he'd return if he found something of greater value).
  • In Final Fantasy XIII one of the main goals of the main characters is to find a way to free Serah from her crystalline form. Given she is the prominent main character in the sequel, knowledge of the second game ruins any suspense.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII's trailers frequently refer to Serah's death in Final Fantasy XIII-2.
    • One of the issues in Final Fantasy XIII-2 was whether there was a way to release Vanille and Fang from the crystal spire, especially after it is discovered to be crumbling. Vanille shows up in the first section of the final game.
  • Much of the promotional material for Final Fantasy XIV's third expansion Shadowbringers (including promoted merchandise, the game's official Twitter account, and a minion players can obtain in-game) shows the Crystal Exarch with his hood down, which not only reveals his identity to players currently working through Shadowbringers, but also that the bus G'raha Tia was put on at the end of A Realm Reborn comes back to those in the middle of the game.
    • The key visual artwork for the fourth expansion Endwalker features him and Estinien (who had been Commuting on a Bus since Heavensward and strongly opposed to working with the main characters) in prominent positions among the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, heavily implying if not outright spoiling that they've officially joined the party by then.
  • For the PC port of Final Fantasy XV, a lot of the cover art focuses on old bearded Noctis. How he comes to be a middle-aged bearded dude is one of the final plot twists in the game - he spends 10 years sealed in a crystal to gather the power to kill Ardyn.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy, while not requiring you to play the games to understand its own story, spoils major plot elements of the games it draws its characters from, such as casual mentions in the story mode that Garland is more than just the first boss, Golbez is really Cecil's brother, The Emperor takes over Hell, Terra is half-Esper and Kefka is a god, and Jecht is the Final Aeon. Particularly jarring is the mere presence of some characters, like the Cloud of Darkness who is never mentioned at all in Final Fantasy III until the tail end, and is in Dissidia presenting the game. Also Ultimecia, who is only revealed 2/3 of the way into Final Fantasy VIII, and who you only see during 2 to 3 cutscenes.
    • The FFIV spoiler is particularly jarring, because they do manage to mask a perfectly equivalent spoiler from Final Fantasy IX - it's never mentioned that Kuja and Zidane are also brothers.
• The opening sequence of Final Fight 2 begins with a shot of Cody punching out Belger from a high-rise building.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Even though The Binding Blade was released before The Blazing Blade, the fact that the latter was the first Fire Emblem to be localized outside of Japan means that most players did not know that Sheltered Aristocrat Zephiel was to become the former's nihilistic Big Bad, making his ending scene in The Blazing Blade more of a Twist Ending than the Foregone Conclusion it was to those who had played The Binding Blade first.
  • Promotional material for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn seemed to consider that the Black Knight's identity was common knowledge, even though the fact that he's Zelgius is not revealed until the start of Part IV.
  • In Fire Emblem Gaiden, Alm learning that he's actually the long-lost prince of Rigel was a late-game plot twist. However, the DLC level in Fire Emblem: Awakening that allows you to recruit Alm is pretty blatant about it. The remake, Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, also includes loads more foreshadowing than the original version did. This is less of a deal for Japanese players who might have played Gaiden, but for western players who may not have, it severely lessens the surprise at the end.
  • Fire Emblem Heroes naturally has a lot of this, due to featuring characters from across the entire series who often allude to their own games in dialogue.
    • From Gaiden and its remake: Rudolf is actually Alm's father, and Berkut goes insane and sells Rinea's soul to Duma for more power.
    • From Genealogy of the Holy War: Seliph mentions his father's death, Julia is identified as his half-sibling (which was a major reveal in Genealogy of the Holy War but Heroes has the two fight together in a Paralogue called Family Bonds), and it is heavily implied something tragic happens to Eldigan.
    • From The Blazing Blade: Zephiel is the nihilistic villain he was in The Binding Blade, Matthew's dialogue references Leila's status as The Lost Lenore, and Ninian is actually a dragon.
    • From Radiant Dawn: Sanaki appears in the Sibling Bonds paralogue (though her sibling wasn't released until nearly a year later and is never directly identified as such, the fact that she even has a sibling isn't revealed until late in the game). The Black Knight's identity is a double subversion; his first appearance was under the Black Knight identity and didn't spoil anything, but his second appearance is under his real name of Zelgius, with his Black Knight weapon and armor sans helmet.
    • From Awakening: In addition to the masked stranger being Chrom's daughter from the future Lucina, Robin is shown to be the intended vessel for Big Bad Grima.
    • From Fates: Conquest: A variant of Takumi shows him as the possessed Final Boss of Conquest.
    • From Three Houses:
    • The Flame Emperor's identity is a double subversion; their appearance under that identity didn't spoil anything, but then a variant of Edelgard was released with the epithet "Flame Emperor", giving it away. In addition, a variant of Edelgard shows her as the monstrous Final Boss of the Azure Moon route.
    • A major twist regarding Claude is his half-Almyran heritage, which is very subtly alluded to throughout certain points in the game and only revealed outright to the player at the very end of his route; The Verdant Wind ending cards are also the only place where the player can learn that he's also Almyran royalty. His Brave variant openly titles him "Almyra's King," with the Brave variant of Dimitri even hanging a massive lampshade on it, and his Legendary variant also openly draws attention to his Almyran heritage.
  • Given Three Hopes is a spin-off to Three Houses and assumes the player is familiar with it, the opening cinematic depicts Flayn and Seteth fighting alongside Seiros herself, which spoils the fact that they're the Saints Cethleann and Cichol respectively and thus Really 700 Years Old.
  • Fire Emblem Engage spoils several important details of its emblems' home games, such as when Ike brings up his father's death without warning during his paralogue. (Though then again, fathers dying is a very well-established franchise trope...) More blatantly, Sigurd - whose home game is not currently playable by any legal means in English - reveals during a mandatory cutscene barely half an hour into the game that he left a child behind through his own death. At the very least he doesn't specify how, when, or why he died, leaving open the possibility that this was a situation more like Ike and his father.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • The fact that the animatronics are haunted by children who were murdered by a Serial Killer was originally a well-hidden secret, but this got focused on more and more as the series went on.
  • The existence of Foxy and Golden Freddy - neither one is shown in the first game's trailer and are effectively surprises for players flying blind. Later games don't even try to pretend the two (particularly Foxy) don't exist, though Golden Freddy still isn't advertised even as his significance grows. This also applies to BB — while he does appear in the second game's trailer, he looks more like a decorative statue than a surprise animatronic, but later games aren't so coy regarding his true nature.
• God of War:
  • In the opening cinematic of God of War II, we learn that Kratos is the God of War, not Ares.
  • The God of War Collection has helpful trophy descriptions, viewable as soon as you start the game, such as "Daddy Issues: Defeat Zeus."
  • Also, if you happen to speak Greek, the goddamn title song is a spoiler, as the lyrics, translated, are:
    The end begins! The end begins! The end begins! The end begins now!
    Betrayal, rage, rage! The end begins now!
    I will kill him! I will kill him!
    Patricide! Genocide!
    I will kill them all! Olympus shall fall!
  • The fact that Kratos himself killed his wife and daughter was a major revelation halfway the first game as we were lead to believe that Ares did (Though Ares actually planned this murder). This is casually mentioned at the beginning of all the next games including prequels.
• In Grand Theft Auto V, the Online mission features the player escorting Tao Cheng (the son of Wei Cheng) to Marlowe Vineyards to have a meeting with Avery Duggan and ends up becoming an ambush, when driving back to the Pacific Bluffs Country Club, Tao mentions that he almost died in that area where the player drops off and he will never forget that event, this makes Ending C from the Single Player portion canon.
• In Guilty Gear, Ky and Dizzy are "married" as of Overture and onward into Xrd -SIGN-. They have a son named Sin, who is one of the main protagonists in both Overture and Xrd.
• Gwent: The Witcher Card Game: Significant events from the Witcher trilogy and book saga are spoiled by cards. Examples include:
  • Birna Bran's punishment of being Chained to a Rock at sea, ala Prometheus.
  • The death of Milva.
  • Gwent offers two divergent possible solutions to the quest to determine the ruler of Skellige, showing both Cerys an Craite with a suite of Queensguard and Svanrige an Tuirseach's flavor text naming him king.
• Half-Life: Alyx runs with the expectation that you've at least played the Half-Life 2 Episodes prior, as their major highlights are revealed as early as the opening blurb, and one of them is also a major plot point this time around.
  It is five years before the collapse of the Citadel,
  and the death of Eli Vance.
• Halo:
  • Throughout the development of Halo: Combat Evolved, the existence of the Flood was kept a secret. Afterwards, they were still considered spoiler material, and magazines avoided directly referring to them. Then the second Halo novel, adapting the original game, was called Halo: The Flood. And just to drive the point home, the cover of said novel was a picture of Master Chief fighting the Flood.
  • The confirmation that Halo 4 would feature Master Chief spoiled the fact that Master Chief didn't really die at the end of Halo 3, which can be seen after 3's end credits.
• The video game conventions the player takes no notice of initially in Haze are supposed to be Painting the Medium, as it turns out they're actually being implemented on the Player Character. This Plot Twist would be more of a surprise if it hadn't been spoiled by every single preview of the game after a certain point. Those frathouse manchildren who are your comrades in arms? They're actually on drugs, and literally can't register the death and destruction they cause.
• The Impossible Quiz becomes Unwinnable by Design if you use any skips until the final questions. The Impossible Quiz 2 references this in its instructions, while also informing you that yes, you are allowed to use skips and still win in this game.
• Just looking at the covers or screenshots of Jak II: Renegade and Jak 3 spoils the fact that Daxter doesn't turn back to normal in the original game.
  • Speaking of Daxter, just immediately before the Final Boss, the player is treated to a cutscene in which Kor explains his plan to Kaeden that he will masquerade himself as an elderly man should the Metal Bugs fail to take over Haven City, which means that one of the major spoilers in the sequel is un-spoiled should someone choose to play this game after The Precursor Legacy but before Jak II.
• A teaser trailer for Jet Set Radio Future (circa 2001) had text reading "DO YOU KNOW?" and then displayed the JSRF logo as Potts (in his anthropomorphic, playable character form) dances around in the background. People who did not know that he was an unlockable in the first game and saw this trailer were most likely thinking, "Why is the dog on rollerblades and dancing?"
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven spoils pretty much the entire series, including parts that were not yet covered by the anime adaptation at the time of its release. Considering how said anime is the source of much of the series' modern popularity, and a very large portion of fans have not yet read the manga, this blocks a large portion of the fandom from being able to fully enjoy the game. For example:
  • The first 8 chapters of the story mode are set during or after on of the parts, and open with a recap that spoils most of what happens in that part, including character deaths. The second chapter of the story mode is the part 5 chapter, a part which was not yet adapted when the game came out, meaning that an anime-only watcher can't even play the story past chapter 1 without seeing major spoilers.
  • Just looking at the character select screen can spoil major plot twists:
    • Kira Yoshikage changing his appearance using Cinderella is something that happens more than halfway into part 4. His second identity takes up a separate character slot.
    • The mafia boss Diavolo's name and appearance are a mystery until near the end of part 5. Hovering over his icon will spoil both of these things.
    • The fact that Pucci has an evolving Stand only comes up towards the end of part 6. It's pretty much impossible to explain the playstyle of "New Moon Pucci" without spoiling that.
    • Diego from an alternate dimension, with The World for a Stand was the final battle of part 7 and a huge Wham Episode.
• Present in the Kingdom Hearts series:
  • Due to Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, if you didn't know that Roxas is Sora's Nobody, and that he was a member of Organization XIII, then you're in for a bit of a shock.
  • Chain of Memories (which was released for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance) assumes that the player has played the original game (which was released for a rival console system, namely the Sony PlayStation 2). In other words, this trope comes into play especially, if a player didn't have a PS2, but did have a GBA and was interested in the series.
  • Later on, Kingdom Hearts II spoils the events of Chain of Memories, which did have a PS2 re-release (Except in Europe)... after KH2 came out. In other words, Square-Enix really wants you to know this already.
  • The trailer for Dream Drop Distance spoils Birth By Sleep. Specifically, it shows Vanitas unmasked. Those planning on playing Birth by Sleep should avoid watching the end of the trailer. The game itself also manages to contain one for another game. You see, the first world you visit features characters from The World Ends with You. Including Joshua. Story cutscenes don't directly state, but very heavily imply, that he's a Physical God. Which is, like, you know, the biggest plot twist in TWEWY! Granted, most of it doesn't make sense unless you've played the original game, but even if you haven't, it's pretty obvious anyone who sprouts angel wings and flies away probably isn't a normal human teenager like their appearance suggests.
  • The big Plot Twist in Kingdom Hearts II was that the villain from the first game wasn't who he said he was, and it turned the entire series on his head. Ten years after the fact, good luck trying to get into the series without someone talking about it nonchalantly. While he's still referred to by his fake name, nothing in the games even try to cover it up.
  • If you haven't played Dream Drop Distance on 3DS, don't look too much at the HD 2.8 cover. The cover groups all the protagonists of the three games - Aqua and Mickey for 0.2; the Foretellers for Back Cover; Sora, Riku, Donald, Goofy and Axel for Dream Drop Distance. This obviously spoils that Axel, or rather his human counterpart Lea, joins the good guys in DDD.
• In The King of Fighters series, no game after '97 does much of anything to hide the fact that Yashiro, Shermie, and Chris are in fact Orochi cultists (e.g. '98 referring to them as the Orochi Team, rather than New Faces Team or Band Team).
• Lakeview Cabin Collection effectively spoils that the original game was a bit more than just a 'cabin simulator', freely advertising itself as a homage to '70s and '80s style horror flicks.
• The prologue screen in the Sega Genesis Beat 'em Up Last Battle isn't so much of a prologue as it is a plot summary of the whole game itself. This is partly because Last Battle was originally a Hokuto no Ken game that was rebranded and lazily localized for its overseas release.
• Left 4 Dead 2 revealed in The Passing DLC that Bill died on their way to Georgia. When The Sacrifice DLC came out, along with a comic that shows the events that took place before and during The Sacrifice, people that didn't play The Passing were quite surprised to see Bill getting Killed Off for Real, especially so considering The Sacrifice came out for both games, but The Passing was only for 2.
• The Legacy of Kain series spoils itself in the openings. This is especially the case for the opening cinema of Soul Reaver 2.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • It is revealed halfway through The Wind Waker that your pirate acquaintance Tetra is actually Princess Zelda; a revelation that happens to shock her as well. Phantom Hourglass, being the direct sequel, reveals this during the opening cinematic. Surprisingly averted in that game's distant sequel follow-up, Spirit Tracks, as since the prior games make it clear that Tetra sees Zelda as her alter ego rather than other way around, the few callbacks to the character refer to her solely as the late "Queen Tetra".
  • Twilight Princess HD puts spoilers right on the front of the box. Namely the appearance of Ganondorf, as well as Midna's true form; the latter also showed up in the manual of the original version of the game, though both instances at least don't explicitly draw a connection between her and the imp riding Link. Oddly, the HD box art pushes Zant into the corner where you can barely see him, despite the fact that he's the main adversary for the majority of the game.
  • Hyrule Warriors, being an Intra-Franchise Crossover, spoils most of the represented games that released prior; if the character is a fighter in the game, expect to have major reveals about them or their role in their installment's plot within their character bios, if not outright spoiled through gameplay. So it's best not to pick it up unless you're perfectly fine with getting spoiled on all the reveals listed above, as well as those within Skyward Sword (Ghirahim's true form and identity as a sword spirit, the name of his master (Demise), Demise having a connection to Ganondorf, and the existence of the Groosenator). The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess also get additional spoilers in the form of the King of Red Lions being Old Hyrule's last king and Zant's true unhinged personality, respectively. A Link Between Worlds, which was the most recent mainline game at the time, is the only one not to have its events spoiled; despite being a playable character, Ravio's true identity isn't even alluded to.
• Little Tail Bronx has a couple cases:
  • The European boxart◊ of Solatorobo: Red the Hunter shows both Red's human-looking Trance form (though it doesn't identify it as anything) and advertises the fact that you uncover the "mysterious origins" of the world. Both of these elements do not even show up until the second half of the game— before that, Red cannot access Trance and the setting's origins aren't alluded to.
  • The promotional material for Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 puts no effort into hiding that the Tarascus is a former Berman tank with the same capabilities as the Taranis, nor does it hide how previous Big Bad Shvein Hax has somehow survived as the AI for the Tarascus.
• Preview material and the back of the box for Live A Live's 2022 Video Game Remake don't bother to hide the existence of the game's unlockable eighth chapter and its protagonist.
• Some editions of The Longest Journey include a trailer for the sequel, Dreamfall on the disc. If you watch that trailer it makes it pretty obvious that April won't become the next guardian at the end of the first game.
• The intro of Lufia: The Legend Returns spoils part of the ending of Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, namely that Lufia dies (though she gets better). The rest of the game will likely spoil the why, as it's the same reason Seena has to die.
• The PlayStation remake of Lunar: Silver Star Story is horrible about this. You should have absolutely no doubts in your mind as to who the Goddess is and what the Magic Emperor does with her, since Dark Althena is right on the box. It kind of sucks the suspense out of the plot. It does not help that the game allows you to play Alex's Ocarina to hear the soundtrack, one of the BGMs blows the identity of the Magic Emperor by using the full name of the track, "Magic Emperor Ghaleon".
  • For the remake of the sequel, Lunar: Eternal Blue the characters section of the manual labels Nall as ??? to avoid revealing his identity as the dragon companion from the first game, in human form and only shows a silhouette of Ghaleon. However, the standees that come with the game feature all the characters with their names labelled at the bottom, including Ghaleon and Nall.
• Back before Infinity came out, the idea that the protagonist in Marathon might be the 10th Mk. IV cyborg was seen as a wild and hotly contested piece of Fanon by most players. Now, of course, many descriptions of the game refer to him simply as "the Marathon cyborg", even though this still hasn't been made entirely explicit by the game itself.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect 2's marketing runs on the fact that players are aware that Shepard destroyed Sovereign in the first game (which ruins the impact of Shepard's supposed "death" and reappearance). Likewise, the Xbox Live Marketplace spoils a DLC mission titled "Normandy Crash Site". Wonder what that's all about?
  • Mass Effect 3's trailers showcases a number of characters from the previous games, including ones who took part in the titular suicide mission of the previous installment (including Garrus, Tali, Jacob, Miranda and Legion). Ashley/Kaiden also show up front-and-center in the trailers, making the whole sequence where they're paralyzed by the Collectors in ME2 (and eventual rescue) a non-surprise. To make things worse, the Xbox Live Marketplace spoils the fact that you can recruit a Prothean squad member in the "From Ashes" DLC pack. And the existence and impending return of the Reapers, which was a fairly shocking twist in the first game when Shepard speaks to Sovereign, is more or less the entire conflict of the third game, shown front-and-center. The fact that Sovereign is a Reaper is The Reveal of ME1, but someone who has caught as much as a glimpse of ME3 promotional materials will immediately figure out the truth about Saren's alleged geth dreadnought.
    • To go with the aforementioned XBLM spoiler, the existence of Javik in the third game is itself a spoiler for the second. Once you've seen him, the fairly major reveal that Collectors are Reaper-mutated and controlled Protheans is beyond obvious.
• In the Mega Man Battle Network series, it is an open secret that Baryl, the Big Good of Team Colonel, has joined the WWW between the fifth and sixth games.
  • Lan and MegaMan.EXE are twins, MegaMan was built from the consciousness of his brother, Hub. This was a reveal in part 1. It's pivotal and relevant to the plot of several games afterwards, mostly the third.
• The Metal Gear franchise has many examples of this:
  • It's hard to find anyone who doesn't know the big twist of Metal Gear (the fact that Big Boss is actually the game's Big Bad) to the point of it becoming It Was His Sled, since it's the main plot point that the later games in the series always bring up.
  • Metal Gear Solid both uses and averts this. Snake explains to Naomi about how he and Gray Fox battled each other to the death in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which was a huge spoiler (and particularly infuriating for fans considering Metal Gear 2 wasn't released outside of Japan at the time, unless they played the fan-translation). However, the game also averts this by not mentioning the bigger twist involving Gray Fox in that game: the fact that he had been the real identity of "Snake's No.1 Fan", the person who fed him anonymous information, and Frank Hunter, Natasha Marcova's fiancee. This is probably because Metal Gear Solid repeats that twist to a tee, even with the same character: "Deepthroat" is Gray Fox, who signs off from his first call after calling himself "one of your fans".
  • In Metal Gear Solid 2, despite the promotional material and packaging hiding the twist, the manual has to tell the player (by necessity) that Snake is not the only playable character. The game is taught in game design courses and referred to by almost everyone who plays the game as being fourth-wall breaking, insane and incomprehensible (thereby spoiling most of the shock value to new players).
  • The main selling point of Metal Gear Solid 3 is that it chronicles Big Boss' Start of Darkness. It was originally meant to be a reveal in the first Metal Gear, but now doesn't need to be spoiler-marked.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4, Snake's role as the main character spoils one of the plot twists from MGS2. In addition, the reason behind Snake's attempted suicide at the end of the game spoils the whole plot twist of FOXDIE in the original game for anyone who's paying close attention. Also, his rapid aging spoils the Les Enfants Terribles project.
  • The very first trailer for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes revealed the fact that Paz Ortega Andrade wasn't as innocent as she seemed. This was the major twist of Peace Walker.
  • The marketing for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will have anyone who didn't play MGS4 asking, "Wait, why is Raiden a cyborg?" It also spoils the "former child soldier" plot for those who didn't play MGS2.
  • Metal Gear Ac!d casually drops colossal spoilers for the canonical series in the names of character card abilities, like Fortune's ability ("EM Device", which lets you dodge bullets) and Liquid Snake's ("FOX-DIE", which boosts your abilities ridiculously for a short time before killing you). Even so, the first game was comparatively gentle compared to the second, which had an upgrade mechanic which would boost your card's abilities but virtually always rename it to the character's real identity if there was one ("Solid Snake (MGS1)" becoming "David", "Alice Hazel" becoming "No. 16"...)
• Metro Exodus: For anyone who hasn't played the preceding game in the series, Metro: Last Light, Exodus is already a spoiler from the very beginning for new players, because it canonically takes place after Last Light's Redemption (Good) ending. Colonel Miller is a good example of the game's literal Walking Spoiler in the beginning level, Moscow, where he survives in the prequel's Grand Finale (Battle for D6), whereas in the non-canon C'est La Vie ending, he was killed along with Artyom.
  • The game's second DLC, Sam's Story, is another example, since it takes place after the game's Your Destination (Good) ending.
• Metroid:
  • As the Trope Namer for Samus Is a Girl, the main character's gender falls into this trope. The original NES game had multiple endings, with this reveal being hidden behind the best ones. Almost every installment afterwards has similar endings where you see her outside of her Powered Armor, but are also pretty open with communicating that Samus is a woman during gameplay itself — feminine grunts when she takes a hit, occasional glimpses of her face through her visor, her suit dematerializing when you die, etcetera. And of course, the manual for the second game (and every subsequent game) also outright states Samus's gender (unlike the first game's, which hid it by using male pronouns). The 2004 remake of Metroid 1, Metroid: Zero Mission, even goes as far as adding a new playable epilogue where most of it is spent as Samus outside of her armor in a lengthy Stealth-Based Mission.
  • Metroid Dread has only two pieces of foreshadowing for one of the endgame twists, and one of them requires you to be familiar with Metroid Fusion and its late game reveal that the AI for Samus's ship contains the brain and personality of her former commanding officer, Adam, as denoted by it usually calling her "Lady".
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War doesn't even try to keep the big twist from the first game Shadow Of Mordor secret, that the wraith animating Talion is Celebrimbor.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • During the Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance - Mortal Kombat: Armageddon days, it was treated as a huge spoiler that Liu Kang dies, and that his body is resurrected by Raiden. In Deception trailers and walkthrough guides, his zombie appearance was for the most part well-hidden and omitted. Come Armageddon, and he is seen near the end in the game's intro. While it CAN still surprise a player (as he is given a proper entrance when he confronts his murderer, Shang-Tsung) the cat is out of the bag,
  • Likewise, Raiden becoming corrupted. Deception's intro ends with his Taking You with Me attempt, and he is implied to have been Killed Off for Real... until he is unlocked, and we see that he had become a Dark Messiah. While this was not as hidden as Liu Kang was, this spoiler is also casually shown in the subsequent games, including the intro of Mortal Kombat 9, that will leave plenty tilting their heads at why Raiden had suddenly become evil, and is also an alternative costume piece for 9 and Mortal Kombat X as nothing more than for aesthetic reasons. That is, until Dark Raiden returns to the fray at the end of X as a surprise, but time will tell if this too would remain a Late-Arrival Spoiler or not.]
• In the first game in the Myst series, the central plot discoveries are that Atrus is still alive, and both of his sons are evil, so contrary to the implied setup you need to Take a Third Option and help neither of them. If you read the back of the second game's box prior to playing the first game, you will already know #1, and taking even a cursory look at any publicity for the third or fourth games will almost certainly tell you #2. Justified in that the later plots build directly on these points, and there would be virtually no way to advertise without spoiling them, but the functional result is that every major plot point in Myst will already be known to you if you've read the blurbs for the sequels.
• Mystery Case Files: Rewind, as a nostalgic revisit of the entire Mystery Case Files franchise, spoils quite a bit of the earlier games in the series, but special mentions go to the return of the quite unexpected Big Bad from Huntsville. Therefore, the game manages to spoil the ending of the first game of the series sixteen games and thirteen years later.
• The Neptunia series have a character named Yellow Heart which in the game she is introduced in is revealed to be Peashy. She fell into this trope when she was announced as a playable character in Re;Birth1.
  • Arfiore was always a notable recurring boss throughout this series yet is also this after she is revealed to be the Deity of Sin. Her DoS form is one of the biggest spoilers of the game yet is completely revealed in later games outside Re;Birth1.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: The spirit meter mechanic of Mask of the Betrayer is explicitly stated by the manual to be a spoiler; this doesn't stop every review from detailing it. It didn't stop Atari's PR Department from making it a selling point either.
• Nights of Azure: Those who want to play the first game unspoiled may wish to avoid all promotional material related to the sequel, as it heavily features former main character Arnice after she became the Nightlord, which spoils most of the endings of the previous game.
• Nintendo Wars:
  • The promotional work for Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising prominently features the Black Hole army, whose existence is the major plot twist in Advance Wars 1. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp tries its best to avoid this by initially hiding Advance Wars 2's artwork on the Campaign select screen and warning players that attempt to play the AW2 campaign before finishing AW1.
  • The plot twist from the second game, which is that Hawke kills Sturm, is mentioned twice in general conversation in the next game.
• Persona
  • Persona 4: Naoto Shirogane is a girl. This was a major twist at the time, but quickly became one of the first things fans learn about Naoto, or even the series. Merchandise, Persona 4: The Animation, and the pseudo-canon light novel sequel Persona x Detective NAOTO don't shy from this fact.
  • In the Fighting Game Spin-Off, Persona 4: Arena Ultimax, every character from Persona 3 is playable, except for the protagonist and Shinji, since both of them suffer Plotline Deaths during 3's story. The story mode also blatantly states multiple times that Tohru Adachi was the murderer in Persona 4, because he's a playable fighter and there's no other way to explain what he's doing here.
  • The rhythm game Persona 4: Dancing All Night, as with Ultimax, inexplicably has Adachi among the DLC cast, which hints he may be more than he seems to be.
  • In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Teddie is happily frolicking through trailers in his human form. Blonde, blue-eyed Bishōnen Teddie was a spoiler on-par with Naoto's reveal in the original game, to the point that the game's opening even attempted to disguise the fact that Teddie was going to be a fully-fledged party-member even though the opening demo most definitely didn't), but in Persona Q, it is treated as an incidental quirk of his character.
  • Persona 5:
    • Goro Akechi is the one who sells Joker out during the Niijima's Palace heist. This was widely speculated to be the case even before the game came out, so no-one was surprised when datamines of digital preloads of the game revealed it to be true. Later merchandise, including a set of GraffArt merchandise based on key scenes for each of the Phantom Thieves, as well as the reversible cover for Volume 11 of the game's Animated Adaptation, make no effort to hide that Akechi is also Black Mask.
    • In a subtle example, Akechi isn't present in a fair amount of promotional material for the game, which was done to hide that he joins the Phantom Thieves later on despite his public dissaproval of them, yet he's present on the box art and the game's title screen. The fact he's also playable in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth doesn't help matters either.
  • Persona 5 Strikers features Lavenza as the Velvet Room attendant from the beginning. Her very existence as the combined true form of Justine and Caroline was a late-game reveal in the original Persona 5.
• Pokémon:
  • Upon release, the fact that beating the Elite Four was only the halfway point in Pokémon Gold and Silver was a mind-blowing revelation, as was Red's existence as a Superboss when you complete the Kanto half of the game. These days, expect those two things to be brought up whenever a Pokémon fan starts talking about why they love the Johto games. The Nintendo DS remakes didn't even bother to hide the former reveal, as your map now allows you to view Kanto from the start, and NPCs will talk about the neighboring region regularly.
  • It was impossible to see any commercials for Pokémon Platinum that didn't spoil Cyrus's status as Team Galactic's boss or the fact that he tries to summon a legendary or two. Guess they assumed that everyone had played Pokémon Diamond and Pearl...
  • Once the official website's Pokédex updated to include the Pokémon from Pokémon Sun and Moon, it made no effort to hide the relationship between Cosmog and Solgaleo/Lunala. For that matter, it also didn't hide the fact that the Ultra Beasts are part of the Pokédex despite the game building them up as separate creatures from Pokémon entirely.
  • The official website for Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon not only completely spoils the twist of Nebby evolving into the mascot legendaries, but also spoils the twist that Lusamine is the Big Bad of the original Sun & Moon games. Granted, the previous website already spoiled the former (as mentioned), and most fans had figured out the latter prior to even Sun and Moon's release.
  • The Direct trailer also gives away the Ultra Beasts being normal Pokemon, if the Pokedex in the site didn't give it away already. Note how the title for UB Burst (Blacephalon) and UB Assembly (Stakataka) appearing is "New Pokemon?"
  • Nintendo seemed to feel that anybody interested in buying the Sky edition of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers should've already known the parts of the plot from Time/Darkness. This was to the point that they included an animated special that spoils the entire game up to that point as a pre-order bonus. A special which also aired on television shortly before the game's release. Add to this the clear hints in the commercials and the info on Sky's website and it was all over.
  • Munna from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity appears in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon as a recruitable NPC; her dialogue stating her status as The Atoner gives away that she is one of the previous game's villains. Hydreigon can also be seen hanging around and seems particularly cheerful, considering what he had allegedly done to her.
  • A promotional poster for Ultra Sun And Ultra Moon spoils that Lillie gets a Costume Evolution and Expository Hairstyle Change partway through Sun and Moon.
  • Pokémon Masters's trailers (and the game itself, for that matter) is aimed at dedicated Pokémon fans, and as such contains a few spoilers regarding every major character in the series, such as Lusamine being the mother of Gladion and Lillie.
• Valve's Marketing Team spoiled the fact that you are hundreds of years in the future in Portal 2, and that GLaDOS is still alive, and back online. Anyone who hasn't played the original game won't be surprised at the twists in the original game.
  • The mere fact that GLaDOS is a self aware machine is a spoiler. You don't learn until late in the first game that the malfunctioning, seemingly helpful voice helping you is a maniacal killing machine. Yet the commercials for Portal 2 were spoken by GLaDOS.
  • The opening cutscene of the Portal level pack in LEGO Dimensions casually mentions the fact that Wheatley nearly destroyed Aperture Science in Portal 2; a fact that is constantly referred back to as you go through the levels. The game does show some mercy, however, since it doesn't tell you how he came close to destroying the facility, though Wheatley does mention he's sorry for attempting to "bump Chell off" at one point.
    • There's another minor spoiler in that game's Portal 2 Adventure World, which features the wheat field that Chell sees after escaping Aperture.
• Following the events of the first Professor Layton game, the young heiress Flora Reinhold comes to stay with the Professor. If you haven't played through the first game yet, this is a spoiler for at least one plot element. However, she is clearly present in the second and third games, (occasionally) promotional art, and the prologue to the prequel movie, Eternal Diva.
• In the original Puyo Puyo Tetris, the characters go to find the Keeper of Dimensions so they can stop their two dimensions from merging; the Keeper turns out to be Ex, who doesn't appear until late in the story mode. In Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, he appears right at the beginning and restates his status of Keeper of Dimensions.
• Q.U.B.E. 2 assumes the player is familiar with the plot of the first game's Director's Cut, meaning the plot misdirection in the latter (e.g. 919's claims that you're actually in an underground government testing facility) can immediately be taken as bullshit by those who've already played the sequel.
• Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 (and further games in the Bubble Bobble series): The boys? They were transformed (before) into bubble dragons. Family confusion and Red Herrings aside, the Attract Modes show this.
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal contains one line which spoils both Ratchet & Clank (2002) and Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando. Ratchet explains that Captain Qwark teamed up with Drek in the first game and alludes to, but doesn't explain, his involvement with the Protopet project in the second. The former is actually spoiled before that, as a photo of the two is shown on the screen.
  • Being the final volume of a trilogy, A Crack in Time outright summarizes Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty in its unskippable intro FMV (as the game needs to install data, so interrupting it would otherwise corrupt).
• Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare starts at a point that was near the very end of the original Red Dead Redemption, so a lot of spoilery stuff is liberally stated. For example, Luisa, Bill, Dutch, and many others are dead, Reyes has taken control over Mexico, and Ross has released John's family from captivity.
  • The postgame of Undead Nightmare also reveals that John dies. It doesn't reveal how it happened though.
• In the original Resident Evil, S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team leader Albert Wesker isn't exactly the nice guy he first appears to be, but he ends up dying in the end of the game. His return from the dead was actually a huge surprise twist in Code: Veronica, but the subsequent Code: Veronica X re-release spoils this by showing Wesker's face on the title screen. This re-release even had a bonus DVD titled Wesker's Report offered as a pre-order bonus, which explains away the events that led to Wesker's resurrection. Every sequel and prequel afterward involving Wesker makes it obvious that he's a villain. That's not even counting his role in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, where he's working with Doctor Doom of all people. In Resident Evil 5, Wesker dies for real this time, or so it seems.
• Rune Factory Tides Of Destiny had its manual list Mikoto as an available bachelorette, spoiling the fact that she is a woman. The player might be able to figure this out themselves while playing the game, but Mikoto doesn't officially reveal herself to be a woman until a post-plot point, when she actually gets romanced.
• The Sam and Max: Season Two (a.k.a. Beyond Time and Space) Collector's DVD cover spoils what their spaceship really looks like. Same goes for the Wii port's box art.
• 2001's Silent Hill 2 waits until near the end of the game to reveal an important aspect regarding protagonist James Sunderland — that he is suicidal and initially went to the titular location planning to kill himself. Its Video Game Remake, revealed 21 years later in 2022, has its promotional material casually give away this detail, complete with its teaser trailer having an obvious shot of a despondent-looking James gripping onto a noose, contemplating whether or not to hang himself.
• In Shadowrun Returns, anyone familiar with the tabletop setting will know that the Universal Brotherhood is a front for the Insect Spirits, but your character won't learn that until near the endgame.
• In Shadowverse, Yuwan's story takes place at the same time as "The Morning Star" chapter, which takes place after every other character's story. Naturally, it spoils tons of events that occur. This is especially jarring since the later chapters in each character's stories are meant for veterans with better decks to deal with the illegal decks the AI uses, while Yuwan's story is meant to be a tutorial for Portalcraft like the other characters' early stories.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: The premise spoils the ending of Shantae: Risky's Revenge, which has Shantae losing her powers. The trailers are even explicit about it, with the first line being about how "Shantae's magic has been stolen".
• In Skullgirls, the existence of The Trinity as real gods instead of just religious figures and also being the creators of the Skullheart is not told in the game until the very end. The Indiegogo campaign to fund new characters, however, had 2 of the 3 members of The Trinity as possibilities with a bio telling who they are.
• Bentley's surprise crippling at the Bittersweet Ending of Sly 2: Band of Thieves was used as a device to show that the gang's trials and travails affect them permanently, despite the Saturday-morning-cartoon art direction. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves showed him in a wheelchair (if a tricked-out one, since Bentley is the team's Gadgeteer Genius) on the front of the box.
  • The back of the instruction manual for the Greatest Hits re-release of Sly 2: Band of Thieves has an ad for the then-upcoming Sly 3 featuring Bentley in his wheelchair and foreshadowing Murray's brief absence from the team.
• Splatoon:
  • The series takes place thousands of years after humanity wiped itself out, which was originally only mentioned through the Sunken Scrolls found near the end of the first game's single player campaign. At least until the announcement for the 10th North American Splatfest (Past vs. Future), wherein Callie mentions wanting to meet an "odd 'human' thing" from the past. This was also the first Splatfest after the Christmas Newbie Boom. By the sequel, the series had no problem throwing this bit of trivia around, and it proves so integral to the plot of the third game's main campaign that it's easy to forget that it started as hidden background lore players had to go out of their way to find.
    Pearl: I went digging in my backyard earlier today, and I found some old bones!
    Marina: Human bones, huh? Yeah, those things are everywhere.
  • The fact that Callie and Marie, the Idol Singer duo that host the first game, are Agents 1 and 2 of the New Squidbeak Splatoon was already a minor plot twist that most players would consider a Captain Obvious Reveal. But since they go on to only appear in the single-player campaigns after that installment, later games have no qualms with immediately letting newcomers know their mission control also have day jobs as celebrities: Splatoon 2's Hero Mode campaign starts with Marie being taken aback when your player character (Agent 4) doesn't recognize her as a famous pop singer, while Splatoon 3 has them call their base in Alterna "Squid Sisters Camp" and casually chat about future plans for music collabs and podcast episodes.
  • The last Shifty Station level ("M.C. Princess Diaries"), which served as the stage for the final hours of Splatoon 2's Splatpocalypse event, assumes that you've beaten the Octo Expansion DLC campaign, as it is located off the coast of Inkopolis, right in front of the wreckage of that mode's final boss. Said wreckage can still be seen in the city's waters five years later as well, visible from Splatoon 3's version of Hammerhead Bridge, with Deep Cut also having a chance of mentioning it directly when announcing the stage.
    Shiver: You know, that odd statue that emerged near Hammerhead Bridge is still there...
    Big Man: Ay! Ay? Ay! (Oh, yeah! Why doesn't anyone talk about that anymore? It's so weird!)
    Frye: They still have boat tours that'll take you right up next to it.
• StarCraft suffers quite severely from this, thanks to the fact that the expansion pack "Brood War" centered around the Queen of the Blades, formerly known as Sarah Kerrigan, even going as far to have her get all the attention for the merchandising. In case there was a chance that someone didn't recognize her, Starcraft 2 instead used a flashback of New Gettysburg in their commercials and promo material.
  • In Starcraft II, the official site description for Heart of the Swarm gives away the ending to Wings of Liberty that Kerrigan gets deinfested.
• Star Wars Legends: Numerous previews of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords spoiled the big plot twist of the first game, as did many articles about the game beyond a few months after its release that refer to the main character as Revan. Star Wars: The Old Republic continues this tradition since that character is heavily involved in the lore.
• Sunless Skies will spoil one of Fallen London's deepest secrets right off the bat: the cosmology of its universe and the true nature of the stars as the settings' nigh-omnipotent gods. Them being killed off is the main premise of Sunless Skies.
• In the second Super Robot Wars: Original Generation game, two villains (Axel Almer and Einst Alfimi) are supposedly killed off, but they come Back from the Dead and perform a Heel–Face Turn in the half-sequel Original Generation Gaiden (which is not quite a Gaiden Game). In an actual Gaiden Game, Endless Frontier EXCEED, they casually appear on the cover as main characters. This will be especially jarring if EXCEED is released in America, since the game where they were killed off was localized while the one where they came back wasn't.
  • One of said characters appeared as a playable character in a preview for the upcoming "Second Original Generation".
• Super Mario Maker 2 has one for the 3D World theme. Bowser's cat form, Meowser, appears as a boss you can place in the levels. However, this form was a late-game surprise in 3D World, specifically being a One-Winged Angel moment during the final boss battle.
• Super Smash Bros. has pretty much everything in the game, be it trophy descriptions, spirit abilities, Snake Codec/Palutena's Guidance conversations, or even a character's moveset potentially serve as this for the source material. Some examples include:
  • Nintendo doesn't seem to consider Sheik's identity in Ocarina of Time as much of a spoiler (to the point it reached It Was His Sled status), what with Zelda's ability to turn into Sheik in Melee. This was mitigated somewhat from the fourth game onwards, when the removal of transformations made them separate fighters on the roster, but Sheik's trophy description in that game still gives it away, her Palutena's Guidance has Pit ask the rest of the Kid Icarus: Uprising cast if they're actually going to pretend that the character isn't just Zelda dressed as a ninja, and (in the fifth game) one of the loading screen tips plainly states this. That said, people who learned this information from Smash are often surprised to learn that Ocarina of Time is the only mainline game where Zelda disguises herself as Sheik.
  • Fans of the EarthBound series that haven't played its sequel, Mother 3, may want to avoid Brawl. Brawl includes one of the last areas of the game as a stage, the next-to-last boss of the game serves as a boss in the Subspace Emissary mode, and Lucas's trophy text mentions how he would eventually have to fight his brother Claus in the end. Possibly in response to this, Lucas's trophy in Wii U/3DS doesn't mention anything about the plot of the game, and while New Pork City returns in Utimate, Porky himself is one of the few major characters from the EarthBound series to lack any appearance as a spirit (while the Absolutely Safe Capsule, a device connected to Porky and eventually his eternal "prison", does, it explicitly uses the sprite without him inside).
  • As stated, the trophies you collect are prone to this as well. These can and have included spoilers for major character deaths in other games; for example, Melee has the trophy description for Custom Robo 2's Annie end by saying, "At the climax of the story, Nanase fell prey to temptation and stained her hands with the illegal robot Majei. This act ultimately set the stage for her undeniably tragic end".
  • Palutena's reveal trailer for the fourth game not only states casually that Pit had to fight Palutena before, which by itself is a major spoiler for Kid Icarus: Uprising, but that she was also controlled by the Chaos Kin at the time (the game initially leads you to believe she'd done a Face–Heel Turn of her own free will).
  • Upon seeing Lucina as a playable character in Wii U/3DS, it doesn't take a lot of brain effort to deduce that she is the Masked stranger that was impersonating Marth in Fire Emblem: Awakening, especially since she's wearing the same clothes as Marth, is a Moveset Clone of the character, and that the hat Kirby gets for copying her is specifically her mask (which also appears within one of her taunts). It also doesn't help that Lucina is the first Fire Emblem character to have both Figma and amiibo available, and the former comes with the Compressed Hair and the Cool Mask.
  • In the case of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, the 3DS version of Wii U/3DS lacks any major spoilers, but the Wii U version features a clearly labeled trophy of Mecha-Fiora as an item in Smash Tour, and the trophies for Xord and Jade Face spoil major plot points regarding Faced Mechon. Ultimate' adds Mecha-Fiora to Shulk's Final Smash, and Sakurai even pointed out the change in the E3 2018 Direct.
  • Wii U/3DS also attempted to undo the massive spoiling of Porky's role in Mother 3 by having his trophy's list of appearances only show EarthBound... even though it reuses his design from Brawl, and explicitly states that he appears in Mother 3 anyway.
  • Metal Sonic's trophy in 3DS alludes to his role as the main villain of Sonic Heroes, which is only revealed after beating all the character routes to unlock the "Last Story".
  • Many of the spirits in Ultimate reference certain plot points from their games of origin, such as Paz's spirit battle having the occasional rain of Bob-ombs, and her ability allow the player to spawn with one Bob-omb equipped, both in reference to her death by surgically implanted bomb. But the most blatant examples are the ones that can be enhanced, with a lot of these enhanceable spirits gaining a form that spoils a major plot twist in their original game, such as Rodin transforming into his Superboss form.
  • The trailer for the Hero managed to do this to Ultimate itself, as the very first shot of the trailer briefly shows the secondary antagonist of World of Light, Dharkon. Those who hadn't reached the point in the mode where the character is revealed ended up being treated to the game's Plot Twist just by showing it onscreen.
  • One of the loading screen tips regarding the titular character of Bayonetta mentions that her real name is Cereza, which spoils a major twist from the first game — the mysterious little girl who follows Bayonetta around during the game (and who is also named Cereza) is actually Bayonetta's child self, displaced from her correct time. Furthering this is that this loading screen tip appears in Ultimate, where Cereza the little girl also appears as a spirit.
  • Ultimate added the Northern Cave, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of Final Fantasy VII, where it depicts an abridged version of the events that happen at the end of the game. Sakurai's presentation of Sephiroth even has him explaining what exactly happened in the end of the game, with him giving a spoiler warning before pointing out that he is talking about a 20-year old game and that he isn't sure that the events will play out the same in Final Fantasy VII Remake.
  • Ultimate added Pyra and Mythra as a two-in-one fighter. Never mind the fact that in the original game, Pyra is presented as a single entity at first and Mythra's existence is only revealed several hours later, but their "true" form also appears as a Spirit, which is a massive, late-game spoiler.
• The reveal of SHODAN (the primary antagonist of the original game) in System Shock 2 (which occurs roughly halfway through the game) is considered by many to be one of the most shocking and surprising plot twists in any survival horror game in recent memory. It probably would have been a bigger surprise if it wasn't already spoiled by the game's boxart (which has SHODAN front and center) or the game description on the back of the box.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Destiny: Like the Tales of Symphonia example, the game's case spoils the fact that there are two explorable worlds, which is supposed to be a major plot twist that is only revealed halfway through the game.
  • In Tales of Destiny 2, there's no way to play through the game without learning Leon betrayed the party and died in the first game. There's also a whole museum dedicated to the events of the first game, but it's at least an optional area.
  • Like the example of Mother 3 and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, English players who never played Japanese version of Tales of Graces, but will play its expanded version Tales of Graces f in 2012, will no doubt be spoiled by the very cover if one looks close enough that both Asbel's eyes aren't the same color, even though they are throughout the most of the game, and Richard and Sophie wear some new clothes not present in the main arc, implying that Richard and Sophie don't die at the end.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, the fact that there are actually two worlds is supposed to be a big reveal several hours into the game. Of course, it's impossible to read anything about this game without that fact being spoiled, including the back of the game case, where it says, "The line between good and evil blurs in this epic adventure where the fate of two interlocked worlds hangs in the balance." Mithos being the Big Bad is frequently mentioned, although it's not always mentioned that he's Mithos the hero.
  • Tales of Xillia 2 made no effort with both its boxart and trailers to hide the fact that Gaius and Musee, the primary antagonists of the prequel, end up doing a Heel–Face Turn after their defeat. There's also little attempt to hide that Milla survived the events of the first game, when her supposed death is a major plot point in the first game.
  • Tales of Link: Character profiles and/or alternate forms very often spoiled twists from their native games, such as Caius's wolf form from Tales of the Tempest.
  • Any escort titles of this series featuring Crisis Crossover in general never shy away from spoiling the big twist or who is the Big Bad of the each games.
• Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters, and Mega Man X5 onward. Not so much of a secret now than how Mega Man X4 revealed the fact that Zero was created by Dr. Wily, huh?
• If you got on Team Fortress 2 after Meet the Pyro came out, but hadn't seen it yet and noticed that you had "Pyrovision Goggles" added to your inventory, well... the big surprise of the short was ruined for you.
• Tekken: Kazuya Mishima being Evil All Along was a big twist when it was revealed in Tekken 2. Later games have openly treated Kazuya as a villain, such as Tekken 8 flaunting Kazuya's status as the Big Bad.
• In the Trails Series, there tends to be a lot of these, as the series is at 12 games and counting as of 2022, with big reveals generally not treated as secrets at all in successive games. Such reveals include:
  • Sky FC: The existence of Ouroboros, and that Joshua was once a member.
  • Sky SC: Renne is an Ouroboros agent, Olivier is an Erebonian Prince, and Kevin is the fifth Dominion member.
  • Sky The 3rd: Kevin changes his Red Baron from Heretic Hunter to Thousand Hand Guardian.
  • Zero: Rixia is an assassin and Renne gets adopted by the Brights.
  • Azure: KeA is an artificial Sept-Terrion, Mariabell is an alchemist who is recruited into Ouroboros, and Ian is the one who killed Guy.
  • Cold Steel 1: Sharon is an Ouroboros agent, Crow is head of the ILF.
  • Cold Steel 2: Crow dies, Osborne isn't dead, and is Rean's father, and Rufus is an Ironblood.
  • Cold Steel 3: Alisa's father is alive, and chief of the gnomes. Cedric, Rutger, Arianrhod and Osborne being Awakeners. Crow also comes Back from the Dead and is brainwashed for most of it.
  • Cold Steel 4: Rean accidentally triggers the war between Erebonia and Calvard plus the surrounding countries, Ishmelga was the one behind the curse, Arianrhod is killed off by Rufus, and there are two endings in the game where a player is railroaded first in the normal ending before players can see the Golden Ending.
  • Reverie: The masked C is revealed to be Rufus who is the third protagonist of the game, Lapis is the administrator of Elysium, and the Big Bad of the game is a What If? version of Rean if he went through with the normal ending of Cold Steel IV.
  • Daybreak 1: Barkhorn is actually still alive as Bergard Zeman, Van is a Sealed Evil in a Can for a demon, and Agnes is the daughter of Calvard's newest president Roy Gramheart.
• A September 2019 trailer for Trials of Mana's then-upcoming Updated Re-release spoils that Charlotte is half-human and half-elf. This was a twist in the original game.
• In the Uncharted series, Sully's continuing presence in the sequels make it clear that he survives his "death" from early on in the first game which was treated as a legitimate twist in Drake's Fortune.
• Undertale:
  • Groove Coaster, Taiko no Tatsujin, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have all spoiled the fact that MEGALOVANIA is Sans' Battle Theme Music, even after the game's official soundtrack went out of its way to include an unused Boss Remix of his regular Leitmotif to serve as a red herring.
  • Groove Coaster also spoils the existence of Undyne the Undying by having her appear constantly in the background of the "Battle Against a True Hero" beatmap.
  • Mettaton, the local Tin-Can Robot, having a much more humanoid EX form was meant to be a surprise for his boss fight; however, with official merchandise and blog posts on the game's official Tumblr page depicting him in this form, it's not much of a surprise anymore.
• Warframe couldn't even wait longer than the next major update to casually toss around spoilers for major story quest "The Second Dream". The quest revealed that the Tenno are really children who gained powers after an accident in the Void, and they've been remotely piloting Warframes in a kind of lucid dream ever since the Old War. The next major update after its release featured another major story quest, The War Within, that served as a sequel to The Second Dream; take a guess as to what all the promotional material showcased. To make matters worse, the splash screen when loading up the game was changed to show off this spoiler front and center.
  • The Plains of Eidolon update made it even harder to avoid these spoilers. The main feature of the update was the eponymous open-landscape area, which was placed on Earth to make it accessible to new and veteran players alike. During the day, the Plains offer typical open-world fare with Grineer outposts to raid, fish to catch, and gems and ore to mine; at night, however, Sentients come out to prowl, and the only way to defeat them is to utilize the highly-spoilerriffic mechanic introduced at the end of The War Within, namely the ability to switch to your Operator during combat, a fact the patch notes heavily hint at. Said mechanic has also been tightly integrated into the overhaul of the Focus system, itself now considered an open secret; while the U18 patch notes were hesitant to even mention its name, PoE's patch notes went ahead and spilled the beans on everything, with only a brief warning at the start of the section to inform players of potential spoilers. The update's hype site also joined in on the fun, sandwiching a section on Focus 2.0 right at the page's halfway point.
• The Witcher Saga ends with Geralt and Yennefer dying pointlessly and Ciri disappearing into worlds unknown. Anyone who plays the first game, which acts as a sequel to the books, will have this spoiled right from the start.
• The trailers of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt present the titular Hunt as a mysterious and unknown menace, when the readers of the original books, as well as the people who simply paid close attention to the last chapter of the previous game already know that they are a race of imperialistic elves from another world.
• In World of Warcraft, players who don't haven't completed Drakuru's quests in Grizzly Hills (and who may not have even met him), will likely have the twist spoiled if they complete Drak'theron Keep with a player who has his last Grizzly Hills quest, which reveals that he's working with the Lich King. Similarly, the Black Knight is listed as the prerequisite for the achievement for completing the Trial of the Champion, spoiling the twist that he comes back from the dead. Icecrown Citadel raids often advertise themselves as being up to Saurfang, which prematurely reveals that Varok Saurfang's son was reanimated as a death knight after the Wrathgate battle.
  • Due to the nature of questing through Northrend, players are much more likely to run into this in Zul'Drak, the zone after Grizzly Hills, when they begin the Ebon Blade quests and see that Drakuru is a Scourge commander running a necropolis.
  • The current loading screen for Northrend shows the Lich King is not Arthas, thus spoiling the final encounter of ICC. When players defeat the Lich King, Bolvar Fordragon takes Arthas' place, because without a Lich King the Scourge will go out of control.
  • Due to its lore-heavy nature, World of Warcraft spoils a lot of twists about its predecessor, Warcraft III. Namely, Arthas as the second Lich King, what happened to Illidan, the Blood Elves, and so on. Warcraft III however does not spoil as much about Warcraft II in comparison, what with the two stories focusing on completely different sets of characters each time.
  • then again, Warcraft III's box art spoiled it's twist. It shows a composite portrait of Arthas, which even the most clueless person could readily interpret as indicating his fall to the dark side. But knowing the twist does not in any way spoil the experience of the game: it only leaves you wanting to know how Arthas could possibly be corrupted.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • The final chapter of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 directly shows the origins of the Big Bad of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and reveals that that game's protagonist's final objective is to commit deicide.
  • The premise of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 reveals that the worlds of the first two games are directly connected, a fact that was only revealed at the very end of the second game after it (and Xenoblade Chronicles X prior) treated the series as a Thematic Series ala Final Fantasy.
  • Midway into Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it's revealed in a rather dramatic fashion that one of your party members is a Blade who covered up her Core Crystal to pass as a normal human (or more accurately a Gormotti). Said character returns in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, wearing an outfit that exposes her Core Crystal.
  • The ending of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 briefly features a picture showing, among other characters, Pyra and Mythra, now existing in separate bodies, effectively spoiling the ending of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The same picture also reveals that Azurda regains his adult Titan form eventually.
• The cover of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Spirit Caller, a video game based on the events of the first and part of the second seasons of the show, spoils the fact that Syrus is promoted to Ra Yellow, even though he even starts off in Red in the actual game.

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