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The live experience is thrilling and if some dramas can replicate that and present a story to an audience as new and no-one knows what's going to happen, then that 's good storytelling. That's the way it should happen. — Russell T Davies.
They pulled it off! A legitimate Twist Ending!
An episode that suddenly sets the Story Arc moving in a very different direction, metaphorically hitting the viewer over the head with a sharp shock. Frequently the result of The Reveal (possibly of The Mole), a Luke I Am Your Father, a Tomato Surprise, all at or other such surprising twist. Sometimes carries a significant dose of Mood Whiplash along with it. Multiple Whams are best used in short series (26-52 episodes) or series that have an impressively developed Myth Arc.
More often than not, they like to connect these major episodes with some sort of Milestone Celebration.
The term was coined by J Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, which is very liberally sprinkled with them.
Compare Genre Turning Point. Contrast with Breather Episode. Related to Drama Bomb. Similar to a Wall Banger, except not all Wham Episodes are bad — in fact, they're supposed to be shocking (only in a good, or entertainingly bad, way). If the Wham seems to come out of the ass, then it's a Shocking Swerve. In most cases, the Wham Episode makes things worse. Ideally followed by nothing being the same anymore. Tends to be followed by a Time Skip. If you're playing a video game and the wham lies in the challenge, it's a Difficulty Spike.
Not to be confused with a BLAM Episode, which is a Big Lipped Alligator Moment spanning an entire episode.
Abandon all spoiler avoidance hope, ye who read here!
Examples:
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Comics
Films
- Being a Prequel, the wham is kind of dulled since we all knew it was coming, but Revenge of the Sith. Anakin turned to The Dark Side, The Republic giving way to The Empire, the Jedi Order all but wiped out and the few survivors forced into hiding, Padmé dead... and basically, an all-around Downer Ending.
- George Lucas is known for making his movies very family friendly, and both Episode I and II have serious moments but are relatively light. Episode III featured Anakin slaughtering Jedi "younglings" heartlessly, which is so vicious that it probably caught everyone off guard.
- The Empire Strikes Back is most famous for Luke I Am Your Father, but even still in this movie the only victory the heroes have was escaping by the skin of their teeth.
- The 2009 Star Trek movie. The Vulcan homeworld is utterly annihilated, along with all but about 10,000 inhabitants. I mean, damn.
- Each of the Saw movies ends with one, but Number 3 definately gets the prize for the death of Jigsaw.
- Trilogies love doing this, usually at the end of the middle chapter.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ends with the death of Jack Sparrow, and the reappearance of Barbossa, who turns out to be Not Quite Dead.
- The Matrix Reloaded ends with Neo's meeting with The Architect, sealing mankind's fate by choosing to save Trinity, and somehow demonstrating his powers in the real world. Oh and Smith is in the real world too. The entire second half of Revolutions contains much more wham however.
- The Empire Strikes Back. You know why.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey. "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
Literature
- Even if you know the ending to Of Mice and Men, you will shit yourself reading the penultimate chapter.
- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: "Arabella", the final chapter of part two.
- The Wheel of Time manages to pull this off in several installments, most notably the endings of books 2 Rand revealing himself as the Dragon Reborn by fighting in the sky with Ba'alzamon, 3 the claiming of Callandor and Rand actually declaring himself the Dragon Reborn, 6 the battle at Dumai's Wells and the aftermath where the Aes Sedai swear fealty to Rand, and especially 9 the cleansing of the taint from saidin. Robert Jordan was quite good at these.
- A Storm of Swords, the third book of A Song Of Ice And Fire, ends with many devastating events, including deaths of many major characters. This was originally meant to set up for a five-year timeskip. When the author couldn't get it to work, the rewriting of the plot ironically caused a five-year delay for the next book.
- The first book's ending arguably contained even more WHAM, what with the grand execution and all...
- Philip Pullman's Northern Lights ends with Lyra's realization that she had traveled so far, and gone through everything, just to ultimately give her father Roger as a human sacrifice. Lord Asriel kills him to rip open the boundaries of their world, revealing that the carefully crafted fantasy world that the book has been entirely set in up to that point is actually one of many — and that our world is also one of them. Then he declares war on God.
- The even bigger Wham in this event was when Asriel and Coulter, supposedly deadly enemies, run to each other and have a lovers' embrace, less than a minute after Roger's death. Their previous behaviour throughout the entire book was suddenly cast in a very different light.
- JK Rowling has at least one Wham Chapter per Harry Potter book.
- Ashes of Victory in David Weber's Honor Harrington series upsets everybody's applecart at the end! First, a "chess fork" assassination attempt forces Honor to save Manticore's Queen at the cost of losing the Prime Minister, and his death puts the government into the hands of the opposition; then a military coup by "traditional conservatives" takes out the Soviet-inspired Haven government, leaving both major players in reboot mode.
- As the Meta Plot of the series is a retelling of the great Anglo-French war In Space, this is based on the "Peace of Amiens" and the transition of power in France from the Committee of Public Safety to Napoleon I, and was planned out pretty much from the start. Except of course for Napoleon being killed by Louis Saint-Just and Layfayette killing Saint-Just and establishing a peaceful and stable Republic.
- While the other novels work well with plot twists, the last quarter of the fourth Temeraire novel, Empire Of Ivory, is probably the most staggering example. It sees the destruction of every English port in southern Africa by an army of dragon-riding tribesmen; a plan to effectively commit genocide upon the other dragons of Europe by sneaking an ill dragon into Napoleon's air corps, which would spread the plague that nearly wiped out England's dragons throughout the entire Eastern Hemisphere, but also would surely provoke a bloody invasion attempt by Napoleon; and Laurence and Temeraire committing treason to deliver the antidotal mushrooms to the French forces before it's too late. The end has Laurence and Temeraire returning to England, to what will surely be Laurence's court martial and hanging.
- The end of Amber and Iron (the second book in the Dragonlance trilogy about Mina) contains a huge wham. In a tabletop-game world carefully balanced between good and evil, the idea that there's another goddess that nobody knew about, including her is not just unexpected, it seems downright impossible.
- The last few chapters of The Fall of Hyperion are all wham. First the Ouster invasion fleet turns out to have been flying at the Hagemony for centuries at sublight velocity to avoid detection, then we actually meet the Ousters and the "invasion fleet" turns out to be a fleet-full of cybrids sent by the Core, who turn out to be located inside the Portal Network, leaving the only solution as the destruction of said network, and as such human civilisation. Somewhere in the middle of all this Kassad goes toe-to-toe with the Shrike. And then the Time Tombs open, and we find out who Moneta really is.
- Star Trek: Destiny, in which the Borg launch an invasion of the Alpha Quadrant, destroying several dozen worlds and annihilating forty percent of Starfleet, before every single drone is liberated all at once, wiping out the collective once and for all.
- The Pillars of the Earth takes a hard left turn when William raids Kingsbridge, nearly burns it to the ground and kills dozens, including the book's main character.
- The Book of Amber. That series has one every few pages... "Wow! Everything I knew was wrong! Again!" indeed.
- This
 coffee-table book about Googie motel architecture. Beautiful pictures of stylish but fading architecture; and then you get to the chapter on the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
- Animorphs. Book 23, The Pretender. Tobias learns that Prince Elfangor, the Andalite which gives the five humans their ability to morph, was his father. All the more gut-wrenching because the entire plot of the book was, up that point, about him possibly finding a home and discovering it was a just a ploy by Visser Three to see if he knew anything. Guess which character is The Woobie in the series?
- Also, book #49, in which the Yeerks (finally) figure out that the Animorphs are human. Cue the eponymous heroes going "Oh Crap."
- The last two chapters of Mistborn book two. Everything that happened in the story up to this point was a Xanatos Gambit by the real, godlike Big Bad. The world is ending, everything you know is a lie, the prophecies are wrong and reality has been edited. Good luck. There are more than enough clues up to this point for the reader to figure out that things aren't quite as they seem, but nothing will prepare you for this.
Live Action TV
- One of the first Whams was when Thomas asks Ivan, "Did you see the sunrise?"
- Too many to list in Babylon 5, but most notably "Into the Fire" which resolves the series' main conflict — half-way through the fourth season, out of five planned seasons. (To be fair, the show was in danger of being canceled after the 4th season and only after Straczynski had wrapped up the main plot threads he was told he would get a 5th season after all.) It easily could have been the series finale and left fans wondering "now what?"
- "Intersections in Real Time" was the originally planned season four finale. The plot was always going to wrap up with "Into the Fire", it's the stuff that comes after that would've continued into season five.
- "And the Sky Full of Stars" is considered to be the first Wham Episode of the series.
- Though the season finales deserve special mention
- Season 1's "Chrysalis": Garibaldi discovers an assassination attempt on the president - which ultimately succeeds — and is shot by his own right hand man in the back, his survival unclear. Delenn disappears in a Cocoon, her survival equally unclear.
- Season 2's "The Fall of Night": Kosh's "real" appearance is revealed, The Shadows are revealed to the public (which by Delenn's words would cause them to attack prematurely), the Government Conspiracy within Earth becomes abundantly clear to the viewers.
- Season 3's "Z'ha'dum": Sheridan's wife is revealed to be Not Quite Dead after a Face Heel Turn, the Shadows' agenda is revealed and they suffer a major loss, Sheridan is presumed dead, Garibaldi is missing.
- Season 4's "Rising Star": The civil war is over, Sheridan is president of the new Interstelar Alliance, Sheridan and Delenn marry
- Season 5's "Sleeping in Light": Sheridan dies, Babylon 5 is decommissioned, overall a major Tear Jerker
- Star Trek The Next Generation pulls off an extremely well-done Wham Episode with "The Best of Both Worlds". The Enterprise crew always manages to somehow best their foes, but this time they're up against the Borg (who owned them pretty badly the last time they met). Not only do the Borg abduct Captain Picard but they turn him into one of them. The Enterprise crew can't rescue him; forcing Riker to order the Borg cube destroyed...with his Captain on it. Adding spice to the scene was that Patrick Stewart was rumored to be trying to renegotiate his contract at the time and it supposedly wasn't going so well. One of the greatest cliffhangers in TV history and a major turning point in all of Star Trek.
- The appearance of "Tasha Yar" at the end of the "Redemption" episode is a
subversion aversion major failure to perform this trope, in that it is clearly intended to be a Wham Event, except that the Half Human Hybrid, Time Travel angle never affects any story at all, and Sela is just another scheming Romulan commander scheming her schemes until she's replaced by the next scheming Romulan commander.
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine takes a drastic turn with the second season finale "The Jem'Hadar." While previous episodes are either self-contained or part of a brief or occasionally-visited Story Arc, this episode introduces a new antagonist and kicks off a Story Arc which grows increasingly important over the rest of the series.
- And while the Wham quotient is only amplified with the season three opener "The Search, Part I", which ends on a cliffhanger with Sisko, Dax, O'Brien, and Bashir's seeming death or capture, the brand new Defiant seemingly destroyed, and Odo finally meeting his people.
- A particularly notable example is the 2-part episode "Improbable Cause"/"The Die Is Cast", with a Holy Shit Quotient reading that's off the charts: Garak blew up is own shop, Tain is working with the Romulans to destroy the Founders, Garak is willing to forget that Tain tried to kill him and rejoin the Obsidian Order, Tain orders Garak to torture Odo and he DOES, Odo admits he wants to rejoin the Founders, the leader of the Tal Shiar is actually a Founder and the entire plot was a means to eliminate both the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar in one fell swoop ... whew.
- Yeah, THOSE are the major examples of a drastic turn. I mean, it's not like there's an episode where the Dominion attack Deep Space Nine, and not only does Starfleet lose the station, Bajor and the gateway to the Gamma Quadrant, but the next series begins with very little evidence that they'll be re-take it any time soon.
- Lost does this a lot. It tends to cross over with Mind Screw. Notable examples:
- "Raised by Another": It's revealed that Ethan wasn't on the plane. Then he captures Claire and Charlie.
- "Exodus, Part Two": The Others confirm that they are in fact real by blowing up the boat and kidnapping Walt.
- "Man of Science, Man of Faith": Someone's living in the hatch! And Jack's met him before!
- "Two for the Road": Michael murders Ana Lucia and Libby, then sets "Henry" free.
- "Live Together, Die Alone": Turns out that guy living in the hatch crashed the plane. And the hatch blows up. And Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are captured. And someone in the outside world learns where the island is.
- "The Man from Tallahassee": Apparently there's a magic box that lets you imagine whatever you want out of it. And Locke's dad came out of it.
- "Catch-22" and "D.O.C.": Someone arrives on the island. And she says that the wreck of Flight 815 was found, with no survivors.
- "Through the Looking Glass": The flashback is actually a flashforward! Some people get off the island, but they aren't happy about it. Also, a lot of people (mostly Others) get killed.
- Special mention must go to the season four finale: in "There's No Place Like Home, Part II": Ben moves the island, Michael and many of the Flight 815 survivors are blown to pieces, Locke becomes the leader of the Others, and Desmond reunites with Penny before they send the "Oceanic Six" on their way....and in the flash-forward, Locke is dead.
- And the Season Five finale "The Incident: Parts One/Two" tops them all: we finally meet Jacob, and it turns out he's interacted with all the main characters at important moments in their lives. It turns out that the guy we've believed to be Jacob all this time is actually his nemesis, which carries some pretty staggering implications, especially about Jack's dad. It turns out Locke is still dead, and the man walking around alive is actually Jacob's nemesis, who manipulates Ben into killing Jacob. And in the past, the eponymous Incident occurs, so at first it seems Jack's plan to change the past has failed. Then Juliet is dragged into the Swan pit, turns out to be not quite dead, and sets off the nuke herself. Just to make it clear how totally wham this is the ending title card is flipped to black text on a white background. Nothing Is The Same Anymore Boom.
- An incredibly startling example is from Alias — in one episode Sydney was suddenly able to bring SD-6 crashing down, take down The Alliance, and hook up with Vaughn, essentially changing the entire premise of the show. This falls under the category of Retooling as well as a Wham Episode.
- Especially notable as this wasn't a premiere or Cliffhanger finale. This happens in the middle of Season two with almost no warning.
- Not to mention the episode when she wakes up in an alley, with a new scar, and goes on to discover that she's missing 2 years of her life, everyone thinks she's dead, Vaughn has married, etc., etc.
- Star Trek Enterprise: The destruction of Florida radically alters the theme of the show.
- The4400, first season finale, when you find out who sent the 4400 back and why.
- And the episode before: I am not Kyle Baldwin.
- Season 2 premiere: the mysterious ray wakes up a comatose scientist, who's going to help the 4400.
- Season 2 Finale: Richard finds his daughter, Isabelle, now a 20-something woman, and Jordan Collier, previously shot to death, is seen in disarray, walking on a beach.
- Cold Case's 4th season finale Stalker, at the end of which Lilly is shot. Makes the pair with Into The Blue, in which we find out at the end that Lilly has dreamed the whole episode after her car has been thrown into the river and is rescued. Not only that, we also hear her father's letter to her, in which he tries to explain to her why he left her, her mother and her sister.
- ''I see that ski accident has been pretty kind to you, ''Alexander Meade''.'' ''My name is Alexis.
- The Season 1 finale of Six Feet Under, in which we find out that Nate has AVM.
- Not to mention the season four episode, "That's My Dog." Yikes.
- EUReKA, Twice In A Lifetime: Every single weirdness has happened because the future has been altered by Henry to avert his girlfriend, Kim's death because of the mysterious Artifact. And in the following episode, Henry discovering that the accident that killed Kim and had three men die of Spontaneous Combustion, with Series Regular Nathan Stark being saved in the nick of time, was caused by Beverly's removal of a minuscule component. Also, the discovery that Allison's son Kevin was down there too.
- Harpers Island, episode 12, Sigh: Trish, after having seemingly successfully escaped John Wakefield, sees Henry and runs out to him, thinking she's safe, only to find out that Henry is the second killer and be stabbed to death by him.
- The frequent plot twists in Heroes regularly shed new light on existing character relationships and allegiances.
- But the revelation that in four years, Sylar will make a Heel Face Turn has to top most of them.
- The new Battlestar Galactica does this kind of thing with awesomeness, and on a (very) regular basis:
- In "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II", Commander Adama stages a military coup, Gaius Baltar finds out the "shape of things to come" (it's a child), Sharon learns that she's a Cylon, and then she shoots Commander Adama twice in the chest.
- In "Resurrection Ship, Part II", the Resurrection Ship is destroyed, robbing Cylons of their capacity to resurrect, Admiral Cain and Commander Adama nearly assassinate each other but hold off, Cain is killed anyway by the escaped Cylon on Pegasus, Roslin promotes Adama to Admiral in the wake of Cain's death and the Pegasus has truly joined the fleet.
- In Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II", Baltar becomes the new President, Cylon sleeper agent Gina blows up the Cloud Nine (among other ships), the narrative skips forward a year, everyone is living on New Caprica, Starbuck, Chief Tyrol and Lee Adama are married, and just about everyone is captured by the Cylons. Apollo also gets fat.
- In "Exodus, Part II" (beginning to notice a pattern with the part two's, anyone?), Colonel Tigh euthanizes his wife, the Pegasus is destroyed, everyone escapes New Caprica, Baltar goes to join the Cylons, and the crew compliment of the Pegasus are merged with Galactica.
- In "Cross Roads, Part II", Baltar is surprisingly acquitted, Roslin's cancer comes back, four characters are revealed as Cylons (including one who was all but ruled out before then), and Starbuck comes back from the dead (after being gone for three episodes) before telling Apollo that she's been to Earth.
- "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?" A big fat hybrid-induced jump, that's what.
- In "Revelations," they finally find Earth! Except it's been devastated by some nuclear apocalypse.
- In "Sometimes A Great Notion", Dualla goes on a lovely date with Apollo, kisses him goodnight, and, once she's alone in her quarters, promptly shoots herself in the head. The 13th tribe of humanity were in fact Cylons. And the fifth is Ellen Tigh, who's dead. Maybe...
- In "The Oath", Gaeta of all people, having suffered the cumulative effects of one too many Wham Episodes and a case of Break The Cutie and Freakout, leads a godsdamned mutiny against Adama, leading to the Galactica going through an extended period of bloodletting as comrades turn on each other in large numbers.
- Doctor Who does this. A lot.
- Occurs twice in "Earthshock" with two major surprises. One, the return of the Cybermen, after seven years of not appearing on the series and two, the death of Adric, which remains to this day the only instance of a long serving main character being killed off. They both have additional WHAM effect from being one of the most unexpected twists in Doctor Who history, John Nathan-Turner declining a Radio Times front cover to mask the return of the former.
- Russell T Davies attempts this with every season finale of the new Doctor Who; Your Mileage May Vary on how successful he is. (The general problem is that the first part (or second if there are three episodes) of his season finales tend to be colossal wham episodes - Utopia, The Sound of Drums and The Stolen Earth, for example - but they're undermined by the fact that the latter part tends to get resolved by a Reset Button or Deus Ex Machina).
- The Tenth Planet had a wham at the very end, in the form of the Doctor's first regeneration.
- Part 4 of The Daleks' Master Plan had two whams in the deaths of Katarina and Bret.
- The episode "Innocence" in the second season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer in which Angel loses his soul, does a Face Heel Turn and becomes the Big Bad, all because Buffy gave him a moment of perfect happiness (and her virginity) at the end of the previous episode.
- On the Buffy note, the Season 5 episode "I Was Made To Love You." After a standard humor-tinged Monster of the Week episode where the Scoobies chase down a renegade sexbot, Buffy comes home to find that Joyce has died of an aneurysm.
- The season 5 finale, where Buffy rescues Dawn by killing herself for real.
- "Seeing Red": Warren kills Tara, triggering Willow's Face Heel Turn.
- Before all that, there were the "What's My Line?" episodes, introducing a second slayer
- Torchwood has had a few. "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" and "Reset" were pretty shocking, but "Exit Wounds" beats them both for sheer "wham".
- Children of Earth is pretty much one great big wham miniseries, between the destruction of the Hub, Ianto's death, and the United Nations collaborating with the militaries of the major world powers to abduct 10% of the Earth's children and surrender them to an alien race. Probably the biggest individual wham is the revelation that the reason the Four-Five-Six are essentially intergalactic druglords who deal in prepubescent children because their hormones are a euphoric among their species.
- The cynical viewer strongly doubts that the destruction of the Hub or collaboration on the part of governments will make ONE DAMNED BIT of difference in the eventual new series, rather than replacements and papering-over and never mentioning it all again.
- Even Power Rangers managed this. Season 5, Power Rangers Turbo, got rid of everyone in the Competence Zone (almost to the point of a Re Tool) just before the halfway mark, replacing them with a kid genius Cousin Oliver and a new Alpha robot who said "Yo, yo, yo!" instead of "Ay-yi-yi-yi!" so they needed a Wham Episode for the season finale. Part one of "Chase Into Space" ends with Zordon captured, the Command Center and Zords destroyed, and the Big Bad crowing in triumph... until The Man Behind The Man's messenger requests her company. Part two ends with the Cousin Oliver talking NASA -- er, NASADA into loaning the Rangers a space shuttle and choosing to stay on Earth with his wayward father while the others... well, the title is pretty self-explanatory. To the drive the point home even further, the credits run next to a still shot of the Rangers' shuttle with a To Be Continued message beneath it, rather than the then-usual outtakes reel. While it was followed by fan favorite Power Rangers In Space, which verges on a Wham Season, Turbo remains the only season in the franchise after the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (when the seasons ended on cliffhangers) where the villain wins in the end.
- Part of the reason later seasons would end with the good guys winning is because "...in Space" would bring the continuous storyline of the first six seasons to a close, with later seasons adopting the new-cast-and-story-every-season formula of the Super Sentai series upon which they are based, with later seasons having only minimal connection to the original six-season continuous plot.
- Then we have Power Rangers RPM, a wham season. The premise kills off 99.9% of humanity (including anyone from previous seasons not dead of old age and all of their descendants). There are not-so-subtle hints throughout that the entire planet has been nuked (as in with actual nuclear weapons). One of (if not the first) episodes involves a prison brawl. We see people actually die onscreen with alarming regularity (although they don't use the word). And so on. Describe the plot to anyone for the first time and they generally refuse to believe you.
- Angel, "Reunion": Angel locks the entire Wolfram & Hart Special Projects Division in a room with a pissed off Darla and Drusilla, then returns home and fires Wesley, Cordelia, and Gunn.
- Can you say A Hole in the World?
- Angel has a number of these, with possibly the largest being "Shiny Happy People", since the events of the entire show up until Jasmine are shown in an entirely new light.
- Supernatural fans are still reeling from the Season Finale, No Rest For The Wicked, which had Dean getting sent to hell for the summer, Sam's powers coming back and Lilith only just starting her reign of Nightmare Fuel.
- Except that they'd been leading to Dean going to Hell for the entire season. Not really a twist when they've been angsting about it the whole time. Fits more into Anyone Can Die or Tonight Someone Dies
- The trilogy of What Is And What Should Never Be/All Hell Breaks Loose. What Is set up how much of a broken basket case Dean really was and All Hell took it to astonishing new lows (selling his worthless soul). The demon gets killed (but it's an anti-climax if there ever was one), a whole new war has begun, Dad gets out of hell and Sam might have come back wrong. Yay?
- The Season 1 finale has Sam, John and Dean barely escaping from YED at the very end of the episode, heading for the ER, only for the Impala to be slammed midconversation by a demon-driven semi. Fade out with everyone incapacitated (or worse) on the side of the road...
- Lazarus Rising. Dean crawls out of his grave, fresh from Hell, which is pretty standard stuff for these guys. They spend the episode searching for the baddie that brought him back, and when Dean and Bobby finally manage to summon it for questioning at the end of the episode, it turns out his resurrection was performed by something we didn't believe existed in this verse- an Angel of the Lord (and a Badass Longcoat Angel of the Lord at that). Because God commanded it. (!) Because we have work for you. (!!!) Guess we're not just chasing around the freak of the week anymore...
- In Firefly's relatively short run, it only managed to get in a couple of Wham Episodes which included "Heart of Gold," where at the end Inara announces she's leaving the ship because she's getting too attached to Mal.
- There was also "War Stories," where we get one hell of a whammy regarding River, who was previously just a broken, insane girl with some Psychic Powers. Then she gets the gun from Kaylee, and we get our first extremely blunt and direct look at what the Academy was really doing to her.
- Farscape, the season one episode "Nerve". Up until this point the series had been a relatively standard space opera, albeit with lots of creativity and a couple of great episodes along the way, but with "Nerve" the plot suddenly kicks in a big way and things will never be the same again.
- CSI, the eighth season finale. Savvy audiences will compare it with the previous season finale, and its outcome, but then they remember that Gary Dourdan left the show and they're hit with the realization of his character's fate.
- Stargate Atlantis season five episode First Contact fits this trope nicely. In my opinion, Season 5 was plodding along clumsily, the series was not going to be renewed and it was like watching a sick sheep dog being taken to the barn to be shot. Then WHAM — a favourite character from SG-1 (Daniel Jackson) arrives, a new species is introduced possessing technology that easily beats the Lantean/Ancients tech that was always the reliable fail-safe for our heroes, pretty much everything else gets a huge shake up. And then in the conclusion, it is revealed that the new enemies are, in fact, rogue Asgard at the end of this two parter the show returns back to the status quo, but given SG-1's track record of bringing back years old plots down the line, in all likelihood we would have seen them again if the show hadn't been canceled.
- Greys Anatomy pulled off two Wham Episode twists in the same episode. Halfway through the post-Super Bowl episode "It's the End of the World", a simple surgery becomes a bomb threat, and the end of the episode results in a character stabilizing the bomb panicking and fleeing, leaving the title character to keep it stable. If Christina Ricci weren't so adorable in bangs, Pyro Skittle would publicly damn her.
- And then in part 2 ("As We Know It"), the doctors have successfully defused the bomb and give it to the bomb squad leader, who takes it out only to have it explode in his hands.
- The season 5 finale: O'Malley joins the Army, and none of his friends like it, so they plan an intervention. Later, a guy comes in with a totally crushed face; he saved a girl from being hit by a bus only to be hit himself. He tries to convey something, but can't hold a pen to write. The gang gets ready for the intervention only to be told O'Malley left that morning instead of working a full final shift. And then the guy with the crushed face conveys something to Meredith that tells her...he's O'Malley.
- Not to mention that Izzie is probably dead by the end of that episode. O'Malley and Izzie meet up at the end of the episode and it's implied that they are in the afterlife. This Troper was simultaneously heartbroken and outraged while remaining suspicious. One of them, probably O'Malley, will likely stay dead, but the episodes leading up to the finale were almost all Crowning Moments of Heartwarming and TearJerkers, so killing off two major cast members led to major HULK-SMASH type rage.
- NUMB3RS season 4 finale: in the last 5 minutes, not only does Megan Reeves get a Fond Farewell lasting exactly 38 seconds (!), but Charlie loses his security clearance due to an act of protest against anti-terror policies ... and yet the show promises it's To Be Continued...
- The Office pulls off one of these almost every season, usually as part of the season finale.
- In the Season 2 finale: Jim gets promoted to a new job away from Scranton, and before he leaves he confesses his feelings to Pam, then kisses her.
- In the Season 3 finale: Jan gets fired and shacks up with Michael! Jim ditches his girlfriend to ask out Pam! Ryan the temp gets promoted to Michael's Boss!
- In the Season 4 finale: Jan is pregnant! Andy proposed to Angela — and she accepted! Jim didn't propose to Pam! Angela and Dwight naked in a cubicle!
- In the Season 5 finale: Pam is pregnant! Not as shocking as other seasons, but still pretty exciting!
- The last episode of Season One of Queer as Folk has Justin getting smashed in the head with a baseball bat, and the episode ends with Brian and Michael sitting outside his hospital room, Brian in tears, and nobody knowing what's going to happen to Justin.
- This packs even more punch when you think of all the things that Brian's been through in that season, and that is what makes him cry.
- The final scene of NCIS season four and the season five premiere reveal that not only is Tony's girlfriend the daughter of arms merchant La Grenouille, but his entire relationship with her was part of an undercover operation to take La Grenouille down. This pays off a year's worth of careful and subtle foreshadowing and casts an entirely different light on many of the events of the season, as well as on Tony's characterization.
- Subtle? A large portion of the fandom was rooting for the plot to be resolved during February sweeps because being treated like idiots gets really old, really fast.
- How could you forget the end of the 2nd season? Kate takes a bullet for Gibbs. Gibbs kills her shooter... Kate gets up, groaning from pain she still has despite a bullet-proof vest taking the hit. Tony comments on her heroism, Gibbs says that for once, Tony's right. Kate mentions how she thought she'd die before she ever heard Gibbs say th—BLAM!! R.I.P., Rosefern.
- The 05/27/96 episode of WCW Monday Nitro featured the shocking return of Scott Hall and the beginning of a landmark storyline in the industry, one that would effectively swing the balance of power towards WCW (legitimizing the company in the eyes of the mainstream public) and keep it there until the WWE came back with a vengeance a couple of years later.
- The 04/13/98 episode of WWE Raw had the company teasing a match between "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Vince McMahon, leading to the creation of their own Wham storyline which not only broke WCW's 84 week long winning streak in the ratings war and swung the momentum right back at the WWE's favor, but kept it their permanently long after WCW has been destroyed.
- Ultimate Force, a British SAS show, killed off 3 of the 5 man band in the first 5 minutes of Season 3, including the central character, and put it's mission control on a bus, as part of a retool to a longer format.
- Carnivale, episode "New Canaan". Series finale. Four words: "This is your house."
- Also, the season 1 finale. Full of Holy Craps.
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles has had a few, like the car bombing at the end of "What He Beheld."
- "Hello, Mister Ellison. My name is John Henry."
- John's "I knew the whole time and did nothing" speech to Jesse. He goes from emoJohn to John Connor in one scene.
- "On The Lighthouse." There's a second machine intelligence operating in the present of similar design to John Henry, based off Cyberdyne technology. And it wants both John Henry and the Connors dead.
- Nothing compared to "Adam Raised a Cain." Our heroes find out about John Henry, and Weaver finds out about our heroes. Derek is dead. Sarah is captured by police. In one episode, everyone becomes exposed, and the team gets cut down to John and Cameron alone.
- Piffle. Born To Run had far more Wham than any of those. John Henry has taken Cameron into the future with him, and John and Catherine Weaver follow after them. Now it's just John and Weaver in the future, where they shortly meet Derek Reese, who lets slip that in this universe - presumably due to John's teleportation into the future - John Connor never existed. And then Kyle Reese and Allison (from Palmdale) show up. Then the show was canceled.
- Dollhouse, "Man on the Street", which was meant to be the big turning point of the first season is a quadruple wham. Sierra's handler has been raping her. Millie is a doll. Echo got a secret imprint. There are 20 dollhouses.
- And the ultimate Wham Episode: "Briar Rose". Alpha returns, and Echo is his lover.
- Well, not really, in the next episode "Omega" Dr Saunders is actually Whiskey, a doll who was retired into the medical staff after Alpha slashed her face up and Echo has been imprinted with the same imprint Whiskey once had which was programmed to be in love with Alpha while they did an engagement.
- "Epitaph One" Welcome to the future. Your humanity has been wiped.
- Primeval. Episode 3, season 3. Helen is an alarmingly good shot.
- The events of season 1 finale of WMAC Masters. What was once an Anvilicious Aesop-of-the-day show becomes a mystery thriller.
- The West Wing, Season 4. The episode called "Commencement" is the second-to-last episode written by Aaron Sorkin before he left the show: Amy Gardner asks Donna straight-out if she loves Josh, Toby proposes to Andy (and she says no!) before her water breaks and she goes into labor, and then Massive Attack's "Angel" starts playing, which leads to... "Bookbag is taken! We have an agent down! Go to Code Black!"
- No one can say they weren't warned, as Bartlett explicitly foreshadows the "nightmare scenario" way back in the first season episode "Mr. Willis of Ohio."
- "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part I". Who's been hit? The President, who's mostly fine, and Josh, who is very not.
- Season 3 of Desperate Housewives has "Bang". Bree snidely informs Metcalf that her husband had an affair, instigating her to take a supermarket hostage with Lynette, Edie, and Susan's daughter inside. This intense episode managed to tie all the housewives plotlines together as well as kill off an extremely annoying character in a surprisingly poignant way.
- House has had three so far:
- The season one episode "Three Stories" has House holding a lecture on diagnostic medicine. About two-thirds into the episode, the ducklings (and the audience) figure out that one of the patients he talks about is himself. The rest of the episode then tells us what happened with House's leg and essentially what screwed up his relationship with Stacy.
- Season four's "House's Head" focuses on House having been in a bus crash and being unable to remember anything from just before the crash happened, except that someone on the bus is sick and needs help. He realizes that he saw a symptom in the driver and goes through a variety of methods to try and trigger his memory and save the driver. It turns out that the driver wasn't the sick person at all — Wilson's girlfriend Amber was.
- Season Five has a whole chain of Wham Episodes, starting with Kutner's sudden and unexplained suicide and then having House suffer increasingly upsetting hallucinations. In the second to last episode of the season, we get House and Cuddy finally sleeping together, only to find out in the season finale that most of that episode was a hallucination; House was alone the entire night, House just started hallucinating that Cuddy was there instead of Amber. The "lipstick" he toys with throughout the episode is actually a bottle of Vicodin, after he hallucinated beating his addiction. Yeah. The end of the episode has House check into a psychiatric ward, no longer able to tell what is real and what is not. Can I get an order of "OMGWTF" to go?
- The Shield's season five finale because in that episode Shane drops a grenade on unsuspecting Lem killing him.
- Fringe: "There's More Than One of Everything"(1x20). William Bell lives in an alternate universe where the Twin Towers never fell, Jones sees Bell as a father figure, and, oh yes, Peter died before he turned ten and the one we know was kidnapped by Walter from an alternate universe.
- How about in the Red Dwarf season 7 ep "Ourobouros" when Lister discovers that he's his own father, and a version of his girlfriend from a parallel dimension is his mother?
- Rescue Me's episode "Happy" saw a character death that forever altered the characters on this show, especially Tommy.
- Stargate SG-1 has a few, but one that stands out for many fans is season 7's "Heroes". O'Neill gets shot in the gut, and a previously unintroduced member of the SGC is seriously wounded, a red herring to make the viewer think he'll be Killed Off For Real. But part of the way through his videotaped "final message" to his wife, the viewer realizes that the person that died was Dr. Janet Fraiser, a fact hammered home a few seconds later by her brutally sudden caught-on-camera death scene.
- 24 hasn't been mentioned yet? Basically every single episode has at least one dose of wham in it, the whole series is practically built on it, and some episodes take it to almost absurd, shocking levels.
- Flash Forward 2009, which had been pretty slow-moving plot-wise for a long time, had a huge wham episode in the form of "The Gift", in which Al Gough kills himself in order to save a woman he knows from his flash forward will die in an accident he causes (obviously, he's alive in his flash forward), proving that you can, indeed, fight fate.
- Veronica Mars — "Not Pictured." Veronica was raped at Shelley Pomroy's party. Aaron is dead on Duncan's orders. Weevil is in jail for murder. And, oh yeah, Beaver's a raging psychopath who blew up the bus, raped Veronica, and threw himself off the roof of the Neptune Grand. Damn.
Manga & Anime
- Twentieth Century Boys uses this in full force when Friend is murdered. Halfway through the series. As an extra jab they reveal his identity right after.
- Episode 6 of Kemono No Souja Erin.
- One episode of Excel Saga does this and follows through with Nothing Is The Same Anymore. It'd be a good example of the latter trope too, but that gets twisted round in the last episode, titled Going Too Far for a very good reason.
- For those interested Excel is the epitome of a Genki Girl, and often is a Spanner In The Works for her idol, bosh, and MAJOR crush Ilpalazzo, who wants to conquer the city. After an alien invasion ends up destroying the town, Excel gets lost and Ilpalazzo begins his conquest of the city, ordering his men to kill her. She defeat all of these men, come to his tower, and bangs on the door until her hands are bloody, asking just to see him again. He shows up and shoots her, then leaves her to die in the sand.
- Trigun has two, ignoring episode 12 where it underwent Cerebus Syndrome, and episode 18. Episode 17: We get to see first hand how Vash blew up July city. Episode 24: Vash kills Legato. The manga also has one at the end of the original's run, where Vash meets up with Knives. The results are similar to that of episode 17 of the anime.
- Every episode from 20 to 24 has an increasing magnitude of Wham.
- The graduation episode in Mai-Otome.
- The attack of the Bodolzaa fleet — and its outcome — in Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
- In Suzumiya Haruhi, despite brief references to the supernatural, Haruhi appears to be an excessively Genre Savvy Cloudcuckoolander who can't tell fantasy from reality... then comes episode five (chronologically third): Yuki, the girl who had just been sitting there reading when the club started, is an alien drawn to the planet by a cosmic disturbance three years before. Mikuru, whom Haruhi grabbed at random because she thought she was cute, is a time traveller there to understand the time travel threshold, three years before. Itsuki, who was inducted due to Haruhi's obsession with the idea of a mysterious New Transfer Student, turns out to be from a group of espers who gained their powers in a cataclysm three years before. What are the odds? High, once you learn that Haruhi herself is a godlike being, unwittingly responsible for all three phenomena. And there are nine episodes to go.
- Technically the wham episode chronologically would have been Episode 4 (Broadcast Order Episode 10), where one of Kyon's classmates traps him in an artificial world and tries her best to kill him to see what Suzumiya will do, only to be stopped by the aforementioned Nagato Yuki, wielding reality-overwrite powers. And then he meets Mikuru's future self. This is around the point where Kyon realizes he has to believe all these weird outlandish stories.
- Episode 8 of Simoun. And 14. And 16. And... oh, heck, pretty much the entire second half of the series.
- Death Note Episode 25. Light wins.
- Episodes 12 and 13 of Gun X Sword, wherein Van catches up to the Claw, learns an unpleasant fact about Dann, and is forced to kill a close friend. Also revealed: Michael, Wendy's brother, now serves the Claw.
- The final "attack" of the Individual Eleven in the second season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Twelve terrorists join together to commit their greatest and final "attack", all of them bringing katanas with them. A police team is racing against time to stop them, when a news-helicopter spots them first on a skyscraper roof, broadcasting everything on live-TV. And without any warning they pull out their swords and cut each others heads of! This troper kept shouting "Holy Shit" for hours later.
- Sailor Moon has various Wham Episodes; one example might be the first Mimete episode, where you find out that ChibiUsa's new friend Hotaru's dad is the season's Big Bad.
- Also, in the previous season, when ChibiUsa is revealed to be Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen's daughter, and by association, later, that Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen are going to be King and Queen of Crystal Tokyo.
- Episode 20 of Kurau Phantom Memory offers a major change in the premise of the series by introducing Rynax with evil plans to take over the world, who want to use Kurau for their purposes.
- Bleach does this so hard in the Soul Society arc even the audience feels is visibly shocked. All those conspiracy theories weren't even close.
- To clarify: Remember that nice looking guy who was murdered mysteriously awhile back? Not only is he not dead, he's behind it all.
- The Mobile Suit Gundam saga provides multiple examples. In fact, you can consider the first episode of The Original Series a meta-Wham Episode for the entire anime industry, as it was the first Real Robot anime.
- Episode 41 of The Original Series ends with the Zeon firing the Solar Ray Kill Sat that destroys a third of the Federation fleet and kills both Degwin Zabi the leader of Zeon, and General Revil the commander of the Federation Fleet. The real Wham? Earlier in the episode Amuro attacks Char, but Lalah Sune the woman both men loved intercepts the attack dying. The result is that Char now hates Amuro for killing Lalah, while Amuro hates Char for letting Lalah fight. The rivalry ends in Char's Counterattack when both die during the battle.
- G Gundam has episode 14, which reveals that Domon's teacher, mentor and father figure Master Asia is working for the Devil Gundam and brainwashed 4 other pilots. It also introduces the rest of the Shuffle Alliance 4 pilots who are supposed to work together with Domon to protect the Earth. Episode 42 reveals that Doctor Mikamura, Domon's girlfriend's father, betrayed his best friend Domon's father by revealing to the Neo-Japanese government the Ultimate Gundam. It also reveals that the implied Big Bad is good, and is a captor of the actual Big Bad.
- There are two in Gundam SEED: the first is when The Hero is apparently killed by his Forgotten Childhood Friend and Rival, triggering a chain of Heel Face Turns that lasts for the rest of the series. The second is when the Cool Ship's crew is betrayed by their own superiors and deserts, instead opting to Take A Third Option and turn the war into a Melee A Trois.
- And let's not forget that Gundam 00 has been basically pulling Wham Episodes rapid-fire since the Thrones came out of the sky. Let's just say fans have been spending the last two months screaming at their screens when yet another cliffhanger gets thrown out there.
- Let's not forget Zeta Gundam which is more of a string of wham episodes than anything else. Most notable are episode 3 where Camille's impulsiveness causes the death of his mother. Then of course, episode 50 with one of the bleakest endings in all of anime.
- Even Gundam ZZ has a few episodes that threw this troper off. The episodes dealing with the Colony Drop on Dublin are especially jarring when longtime Gundam survivor Hayato dies a classic, Tomino-esque pointless death. This means that Karaba's down the drain and the Argama and company are literally the last line of defense against Neo Zeon. The aftermath, including Puru's death are no less shocking and this "unserious" installment in the franchise doesn't give us a Breather Episode until we get back in space.
- Two such episodes occur in Mai-HiME:
- The first "wham" comes at the end of episode 8, when Akane goes into hiding after watching her boyfriend Kazuya die, showing her (and the viewers) the true cost of protecting the ones you love. This one was immediately followed by a breather Beach Episode, which still managed to sneak in a little plot and Character Development unexpectedly.
- However, an even bigger "wham" hits at the end of Episode 16. Searrs is supposedly defeated, and everybody's declaring their friendship with one another. Good times to be had, right? Not So Fast Bucko! There's still that pesky little matter of eliminating the other HiME to prevent the world from being destroyed. So much for eternal friendship... thanks for nothing, Nagi!
- Episode 28 of Rurouni Kenshin introduced Saitou Hajime with a bang and officially kicked off one of the series' pivotal arcs. This is more obvious in the manga, which changed from small arcs barely connected to each other to large arcs that follow one another closely; the "Wham" aspect, however, is more pronounced in the anime, as it had just come off a string of lackluster Filler episodes, making the coming episode a real shocker (which was even reflected in the previous episode's more ominous Post Episode Trailer).
- The second Wham occurs when the restaurant Kenshin frequents is destroyed, and Enishi announces his Jinchuu on Kenshin, changing the manga from the previous stereotypical shonen battle, to a more personal series.
- Another Wham is when Kenshin tells everyone he used to be married.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion has several towards the end. Episode 18: The dummy plug is activated, and the pilot of Unit-03, who is revealed to be Touji, is mortally injured. Episode 19: Unit-01 shows undeniable proof that it's alive. Episode 23: Rei dies. But no worry, clones of her are being bred in the deepest levels of the NERV facility. Episode 24: The replacement for Unit-02 arrives, and befriends Shinji instantly. Too bad he's the final angel.
- Episode 15 of Kiddy Grade ends with the destruction of GOTT headquarters, with the following episode introducing Eclair as acting chief of the "new and improved" GOTT ...or so one would think.
- Episode 22 of Code Geass is pretty much the nuclear bomb of wham episodes; a thirty second scene causes the entire show to do a 90-degree turn on its plot axis, and depending on what camp you fall into, at this point the show either poorly attempted to recreate the death of Lalah Sune and forced it or filled in nicely.
- Episode 6 of The Daughter of Twenty Faces comes out of nowhere and sends earthquakes through the viewer's previous suppositions about the show and its content.
- Episode 3 of Martian Successor Nadesico announced to the viewers that this would not be a Super Robot show where nobody really died by having Gai, the Hot Blooded otaku, get shot and killed without ever seeing it coming.
- Also, episode 13: the heroes capture an enemy mech and it has a cockpit full of Gekiganger 3 merchandise, thus proving that the "alien invaders" are actually humans.
- Naruto has plenty, which is a given considering it is a Shonen manga. The end of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc and the entire recent Pein Invasion Arc are the most well known.
- Guyver: There are a few, especially as it's a constantly-escalating plot, but the most infamous is when Sho's father becomes an unwitting Enzyme-type Zoanoid who rips the Guyver's brain out, forcing the Guyver to kill him on autopilot.
- Episodes 13 and 20 of Macross Frontier.
- Bokurano: Every time a detail is revealed about the battles that take place in Bokurano can qualify as part of a Wham Episode. In particular, one occurring in both the second episode and chapter where it turns out whoever is chosen to be the main pilot for a battle dies as soon as the fight is over and still later when it is revealed that when a battle is over, whoever loses has their entire universe destroyed. Those two points end up setting the tone and sense of desperation for both versions of the series.
- The Generals of Central revealing that they knew King Bradley was a Homunculus in the manga version of Fullmetal Alchemist, and Mustang had revealed to them that he knew the truth. They then disband Mustang's group forcing Fuey, Breda, and Falman are forced to the borders of Amestris, and Riza Hawkeye becomes King Bradley's secretary, so that she can be used as a hostage.
- Pales in comparison to the meeting between the Elric's and Father. In the course of a chapter its revealed that Father is not Hohenheim (but he knows him), he can prevent anyone from using Amestris alchemy, but Xing Alchemy can function. Scar finds out that the Homunculi started the Ishval War, and Lin is possessed by Greed. The next chapter reveals that Greed has no memories of his past life, and Lin is still in there.
- We also find out later that Hohenheim IS basically the Philosopher's Stone, as well as possibly the founder of modern Alchemy. Small wonder his kids are prodigies.
- Chapter 100, full stop. Arakawa's sent the HSQ through the roof before, but this one takes the cake. You have been warned.
- And let's not forget the first anime adaptation, such as when Hughes died, or when it turned out that the Homonculi were behind the Ishvalan war, or the second to last episode. What, the other side of the gate is our real world? And you mean to tell me that alchemy is powered by the deaths people in this world? WHAT, Envy is really Hohenheim and Dante's son? HOLY CRAP did Ed just die?!
- One Piece has these from time to time, but none more powerful than Chapter 513 of the manga, in which the entire crew get teleported away by Bartholomew Kuma, Luffy's in the middle of a Heroic BSOD, Zoro's still injured, and the crew is scattered across the seas. This troper could only say one thing after these events. Oh, SHIT!
- Not to mention Chapter 562, in which everyone is fighting, all is good, and then all of a sudden, with no warning whatsoever, Squad stabs Whitebeard through the chest. Good lord...
- To this troper, the 7th episode of Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai. From a wonderful comedy to a heart-wrenching love drama... this troper had to sit and sulk for some 5 minutes before he could move on.
- Even more so episode 9, which reveals the causes of the jumps.
- Magic Knight Rayearth. Last episode of the first season. The Princess is the Big Bad and not the Damsel In Distress. The Dragon got killed trying to save her from death. The Princess' Superpowered Evil Side emerges and battles the girls. The Power Trio has to kill her against their will, otherwise Cephiro dies. The Princess dies smiling and sends the three broken kids back home. . HOLY S...!
- The episode of Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~ with the reveal of Sora's terminal heart condition totally detonated the lightheartedness of the show.
- The first three episodes of Ga-Rei -Zero- are Wham Episode. First, the supposedly-main-characters are killed in episode 1. Then, the bloody murderer in the episode before is introduced as a lost member of another squad. And then, in the third episode flashback begun, which has nothing similar with the high body count of the first two episodes.
- Slayers is usually free of these, being more comedy-oriented. One notable exception occurs towards the end of Slayers Next, when Gaav survives Lina's Ragna Blade, then Fibrizo reveals himself and effortlessly kills Gaav. It's striking because up to this point Gaav had been clearly presented as the antagonist and Fibrizo does not appear in the opening credits (OK, he does, but you only realize this after The Reveal is pulled off). The series' tone shifts entirely after this episode as the humor is toned down and characterization kicks into full speed.
- Episode 4 of Diebuster: Up till this point, Nono has been basically a tag along to the Topless, hoping that she could gain her own Buster machine to defend Earth from the Alien Monsters. When archaeologists on Titan discover what they believe to be an ancient, incredibly powerful Buster machine, Nono violates orders to get close to it. As punishment, the Serpentine Twins, Leaders of the Topless, send her on a Snipe Hunt to Pluto to retrieve what may possibly be an intact Buster Machine, that crashed there some years previously. When the Titan excavation completes, three things are revealed simultaneously: The Alien Monsters they've been fighting up till this point aren't Alien Monsters at all, but part of a forgotten defense system designed to destroy threats to Earth; The "Buster Machine" on Titan isn't a Buster Machine at all, but one of the real Alien Monsters from Gun Buster; and that Nono is actually Buster Machine No. 7, the control unit for the Defense System and one of the most powerful Buster Machines in existence.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Episode 8. Kamina dies.
- Tenchi Muyo! gets one in OAV 3, Episode 6. After spending the past five episodes setting off conflicts and sitting back to watch, Zetto decides to take direct action against Tenchi, by BLOWING UP HALF OF EARTH. And I don't just mean half the surface, I mean all the way down to the core and back out the other side. And just to cap it off, after giving Tenchi a cheery "Yo", he waves his hand and vapourises most of the moon. This later reveals a slightly subverted Wham when Tenchi manifests himself as God.
- Clannad ~After Story~ episode 16. Even though the drama of the recent few episodes had revolved around the possibility, nothing can prepare you for the sheer impact of Nagisa's death in childbirth.
- And the same goes for ~After Story~ episode 22, where Tomoya initiates a Time Skip thanks to the death of the girl from the illusionary world, who is actually Ushio after she loses her memories when she died, by obtaining a light orb, and using said light orb, travels back in time and is given a second chance to witness Nagisa's childbirth. This time around, she lives.
- The Recap Episode of all things, can be considered a Wham Episode because it's confirmed that the reality where Nagisa, Ushio, and Tomoya died really happened.
- While watching a series of Breather Episodes in Gaiking Legend of Daiku Maryu, this troper grew annoyed at the repeated instances of comedy when by all rights the series should have been building up to a tense conflict or something'', due to the show's habit of having episodic chapters and an occasional multi-episode arc. Then came episode 28... wherein Smug Snake and Magnificent Bitch Proist singlehandedly delivers sucker punch after sucker punch to the protagonists, seemingly convinces a young girl to kill her own father, and just continues to make a living hell for everyone. With the exception of the whole "Limitation Syndrome" episodes, all those other light-hearted episodes seemed a lot more appropriate and necessary, with Proist rapidly become just as hated as Fucking Ribbons.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has one HELL of a wham episode when the Ala Alba are on a trip to the magical world. They arrive in the magical world, everything is fine, and then, out of nowhere, the big bad shows up, stabs the hero through the chest, and beats the crap out of everyone while destroying the area they are in. THEN, even after the hero stands up and his life is saved, the big bad STILL scatters the entire team, plus 5, across the entire magical world, where 3 of them end up in slavery, 1 is captured, later 2, while having THEM blamed for his attack and hunted as wanted criminals, and just, this entire arc has been a giant Wham Episode.
- Special mention should also go to pretty much everything that happens when Kurt Godel is around. Let's see reveals the identity of Negi's Missing Mom, as well as the fact that said Missing Mom is widely (but probably falsely) believed to be responsible for a genocide, claims to be The Man Behind The Man who's responsible for pretty much everything bad that's ever happened to Negi, and trigger's Negi's Superpowered Evil Side. And he's currently poised to deliver a ton of previously unheard backstory.
- Chapter 271 might have topped it. The Lifemaker is back. This cannot possibly end well.
- Digimon Tamers goes from fantasy-violence kiddy hero show to mind-rape extravaganza when Beelzemon kills Leomon, later following up with possibly the most destructive and disturbing Big Bad in Digimon history, the D-Reaper, possessing Juri's voice, memory, and for a while, her very appearance.
- Haibane Renmei goes from peaceful Slice Of Life to Tear Jerker drama after chapter 6, when Kuu takes the Haibane Flight.
- In Chapter 16 of Tegami Bachi, Lag encounters his old friend Gauche, and learns that he lost all his memories, joined an anti-government organization as a "marauder," and has a mysterious girl with him who has the same name as the dog that used to be his dingo.
- Episode 9 of Baccano!: Want to know what happened in the time gap between the end of episode 2 and when Jacuzzi discovered the bodies? Well, now you do (Not for the faint of heart, we assure you).
- After two rather light-hearted seasons that got no more serious than the previous show, Yu-Gi-Oh GX suddenly pulled season three on us, which got as dramatic as the end of the second season about ten episodes in. The really dramatic turning point, though, is the duel again Professor Satou where Judai starts to crack, we see a crazy guy with petty motives that aren't, quite. The first duel where Judai really isn't enjoying himself, and at the end Satou dies by falling off the bridge. And it only goes downhill from there.
- Witch Hunter Robin: Episode 12.
- Chrono Crusade, ep 19. The Big Bad has been subverted so far, everyone's enjoying a carnival... and Mr. Big Bad himself comes out of nowhere, assembles all his MacGuffins in one slick move, and accomplishes the very thing the heroes have been trying to prevent him from doing!
- Episode 10 of Sola is this, when Matsuri reveals to Yorito that he's not a human, but rather a golem made of paper that Aono had made with her yaka powers and implanted with the memories of her dead brother, Yorito.
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle exemplifies this in Acid Tokyo when we find out that Syaoran was really a clone of the original the whole time, and he proceeds to eat Fai's eye and have a big epic battle with his original counterpart. Then Kurogane gets Yuuko to turn Fai into a vampire so he can survive, and in return he is the only person Fai can feed on (Ho Yay anyone?) After that we find out that Sakura was also a clone, and then there's the whole "WTF" moment when we find out... Syaoran's his own father? And Sakura's... His mother? And Yuuko... Was actually dead the whole time, and Buttchin is trying to keep her alive?
- For its 7 first episodes, Kannazuki No Miko is cute, sometimes silly, full of fan service of all kinds and touching, and if you don't sympathize with Chikane by the end of episode 7 you just have no heart (or don't like Schoolgirl Lesbians for some reason). You MIGHT sense episode 8 is going to be a turning point, but you sure as hell don't expect Chikane to respond to Himeko's apparently choosing Souma by raping her, stealing Souma's mecha and becoming the 8th and most badass of the enemies.That is, if you're not watching the show because of it.
- In a very interesting variation, the Saikoroshi-hen arc in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni Rei was one megas Wham Episode for Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, because before Rika returns to her original world that was post-Matsuribayashi-hen, she reveals that she is also Bernkastel, the Witch of Miracles. After declaring that she would no longer hold that role, the two entities separated. In a nutshell, every Rika Furude except the last one that survived is Bernkastel. And they're bitter, hence we got End of The Golden Witch.
Video Games
- At the very end of the normal ending of Aquaria, the protagonist, Naija, says a short sentence about how you need to search the game more closely. The sentence ends with two little words that turn the world upside down.
"You've reached an end, but it is not all I have to share. You've become lost along the way, concerned only with the immediate facts. Return to the waters, and follow the trails hidden in my memories... the story of my childhood. Find me... before the world is lost... my son..."
- Arc the Lad 2's first scene shows the slaughter of Elc's (the game's hero) people. Then the game's makers apparently decided to beat the record of Wham Moments done in a single video game, by repeatedly punching the player
- Ape Escape's Trick Castle. Though it seems like the last level, no sooner do you reach Specter and Buzz before they ditch you, leave you to fight an armoured warrior, you get transported back to the present day where the monkeys are already in charge of the city and the professor and Katie have been kidnapped.
- Baten Kaitos did this very well. Various events occur that would easily be explained if there was a spy in the party, you sit through quite a few cutscenes where the party wonders who the spy is...essentially it's so blatantly obvious, you feel it is likely a Red Herring. But there probably weren't any gamers who would have expected that not only was it NOT a Red Herring, but the spy in question was Kalas, the main character.
- And then there was Origins. Both Baten Kaitos frequently feature Breaking The Fourth Wall by way of including the player in the game as the main character's Spirit Advisor. Though said main character in Origins is somewhat surprised to find that that Spirit Advisor, and thus YOU, are actually a piece of an evil god, thus making Sagi one of those very same demons your party has been hunting up until now and not a spiriter as he had believed since he was a little kid. The fact that Milly is the daughter of the Big Bad (which was revealed at basically the same time) seems minor in comparison.
- Bioshock. All the events in Rapture Central Control. The dev team have actually stated that they set out to make System Shock 2 again.
- The last level of Braid. Especially when getting the final secret star.
- Call of Duty 4: "Shock and Awe". Also one helluva Player Punch.
- Not to mention the end of the game, when the big baddie and friends kill two and maybe three of your partners.
- Chrono Trigger does this by cranking the Holy Shit Quotient Up To Eleven when Crono gets vaporized by Lavos after an attempt to destroy the Mammon Machine fails.
- Dragonfable (from Artix Entertainment): Nythera apparently kills Warlic, thanks to the potions you helped her make. The fact that Warlic exists in the Adventure Quest game doesn't necessarily mean he gets out of this situation, since Nythera then shapeshifts into Warlic. Meaning she might be the Warlic we know in Adventure Quest.
- Grandia II is packed to the gills with them. The evil god-fragment possessing the main character's brother? Moves to possess the main character instead. The evil god separated into fragments and sealed away? Never died and the "seals" are actually devices to infect people with the fragments. The god of light who defeated the god of darkness before retiring to rest? LOST the war in the heavens. The kindly Pope who directs your party on your quest to save the world? Actually the Big Bad who wants to resurrect and then become the god of darkness. Well done, everyone!
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has one when the player contracts the 100% terminal, uncurable, Nightmare Fuel corprus disease.
- Eversion's World 4 takes this to horrifying levels. The stage starts off innocently enough as World 4-1, but after hitting the first block (which you are required to do), the stage suddenly everts to World 4-5, the music suddenly becomes much creepier, the cute, colorful backgrounnds are replaced with depressing amounts of orange and brown, and blocks now have freaked-out eyeless faces. But that is not the worst of it — now you have giant demonic hands suddenly grabbing at you from water pits.
- F.E.A.R. managed to have one of these at the end of the first game and Project Origin. In the first game, the final level reveals that the Point Man is the first prototype born from Alma and Project Origin reveals that the entire reason Alma was hunting Becket in the game was because she wanted to use him to get herself pregnant, and now she has what she wants.
- Final Fantasy VI has one halfway through the game, when Kefka succeeds in destroying the world. "On that day, the world was changed forever..."
- Chapter 5 of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. See Player Punch for details.
- The Freespace space sims are filled with Wham Missions. Especially the first nebula mission and the final mission in Freespace 2.
- Grand Theft Auto San Andreas has a big damn WHAM in the mission The Green Sabre. Not only are your best friends Ryder and Big Smoke revealed as working with the enemies (C.R.A.S.H. and the Ballas), but your brother Sweet is shot and arrested, Grove Street goes to shit, you lose all the territory you'd captured up to this point, and you're taken out in the middle of nowhere to do an errand for Tenpenny and Pulaski.
- The end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 qualifies it as a Wham Episode. If not Eli Vance's death, the unambiguous confirmation that Gordon Freeman is not the only human on Earth familiar with the G-Man.
- Halo has a couple of these. The Flood introduction from Halo 1 definitely fits, and even comes with a Genre Shift. The conversation with the Gravemind probably counts from Halo 2. The entire last half of The Covenant from Halo 3 is another good one.
- The ending to Killzone 2. Fan favorite Garza is dead, the ISA invasion has fallen apart, the Helgan's/Helghast's/Helgast's leader is dead (no more epic speeches), your favorite characters from the first game are dead and the Helgans are very pissed off at the death of their leader.
- In Knights of the Old Republic has a Wham Level after you're found the second-last Star Map when you're captured by Saul Karath, find out that the Jedi academy on Dantooine has been destroyed in your absence, Bastila is captured by Darth Malak and The Reveal that the main character is an amnesiac Revan.
- The Legacy of Kain series has quite a few of these. Among them are Kain's realization at the end of Blood Omen that he is the Balance Guardian and must kill himself if he wants to save the world, Raziel's discovery in Soul Reaver that he and all his brothers were Sarafan before Kain turned them all into vampires, and Raziel sacrificing himself to create the Balance Reaver for Kain at the end of Defiance.
- Also, not forgetting the entire ending of Soul Reaver 2. Who saw that coming?
- Especially the part where it is shown that While Kain may have raised human Raziel as a vampire, Raziel himself as a wraith was his human self's actual murderer, as well as all his 'brothers'.
- For that matter in Defiance, how about the fact that the heart of Yanos Audrin that Raziel was searching for to revive the ancient vampire (Who incidentally he himself killed as a human) was actually -inside- Kain the whole time keeping him alive?
- Live a Live, at the climax of Orsted's chapter.
- Mass Effect: Virmire. Not only does the mission there reveal the true nature of the Big Bad, and not only is it entirely possible that Shepard will be forced to kill Wrex before the mission is over, but Shepard must also leave either Kaidan or Ashley behind to die in a massive Player Punch.
- In Mortal Kombat Deception you find out that Noob Saibot is actually The original Sub-Zero from MK 1.
- The death of Wheely Engberg in Myst Online certainly qualifies, in this Troper's opinion: trapped underground for a few days, kept alive by a beast who the players weren't sure was helping her or just keeping her alive, then brutally slaughtered moments before rescue. Yeeeah.
- Planescape: Torment contains quite a few of these lovely little moments, usually when some plot-critical detail gets broken to you. The encounter with Ravel Puzzlewell is probably the best of the considerable lot.
- Doubly applies here because after this point, the game setting, pace and style changes so completely that, on returning the Sigil, it doesn't seem the same.
- Portal contains a Wham Level, which replaces the pristine test chambers with the dusty, decaying backstage, and the AI that was previously at least somewhat helpful is now plain out to get you.
- The ending of the second Sly Cooper game has Clockwerk killed for good, Bentley crippled, Murray leaving the team, and Sly in apparent custody (although he quickly escapes).
- Star Craft. Infested Kerrigan.
- Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2 when the Earth Federation and Neo DC surround the Inspectors, the Shadow Mirrors defect from the Neo DC and join the Inspectors attacking both the Earth Federation, and Neo DC kicking off the rest of the game. Only the arrival of the Einst, the death of the leader of the Neo DC, and the firing of the Tronium Cannon allows your forces to escape. The biggest wham is when Testuya announces to Captain Daitetsu that everyone escaped when he notices that Daitestu has died due to his injuries, leading them until his death.
- System Shock 2. SHODAN, anyone?
- The Tales series. Every single game, dead center of the plot. Frequently doubles as a Not So Fast Bucko.
- After clearing Day 7 of The World Ends with You, Neku starts the game all over again, from Day 1. Worsening matters is his new partner, Joshua.
- Is that all? What, you thought the game was going to be one week and all those other characters we had been shown would have just been forgotten? A much bigger wham is Day 5's ending, where With no lead-up at all, Rhyme DIES, Beat's forced to leave to survive, and Neku and Shiki are, once again, alone.
- Actually, that was Day 4. However, the ending to Day 5 qualifies as well, when you find out that everyone playing the Game is dead, including the protagonists.
- The climax of Chapter 3 of World of Goo, "Product Launcher." 'Product Z will change the world,' they said. Ohhhh yeah.
- TIE Fighter: The minesweeping mission where your entire wing turns against you. Including the Star Destroyer. Most of the rest of the game is taken up by dealing with the treacherous Imperials. It is the only mission in the entire series where the only primary objective is to survive.
- Super Paper Mario has Chapter 7 where you actually fail at recovering the Mac Guffin before the Void destroys Sammer's Kingdom.
- And if that's not bad enough, right after you finish that chapter, one of the members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad pops in and kills your whole party with a snap of his fingers in a brutal subversion of No Sneak Attacks. You all get better, but still, damn.
- The worst ending of Disgaea 2 is perhaps the most shocking moment in the entire series. It has to be seen to be believed. Warning, High Octane Nightmare Fuel taken to HSQ levels.
- Metal Gear Solid pulls out Whams at rapid fire speed. I am not kidding. The plot gets turned on its head so often that by the beginning of the second game you will understand that you can never possibly know what's going to happen next.
- The introduction of the Dji Cantos in Albion counts. Shortly after that, we find out that the company owning the ship knew that the planet they are trying to destroy had intelligent life on it, and is willing to destroy it regardless. It turns out the ship's on board computer has also been programmed to use any means necessary to keep the truth about the world a secret from the crew, killing everyone if necessary.
- The moment in Wild Arms 1 when Rudy sacrifices his left arm to escape from Zeikfried...and the subsequent revelation that he's actually an Artificial Human made of the same material as the Metal Demons Zeikfried led.
- Prototype's Web Of Intrigue videos go from interesting background to holy-shit-mindfuckery in a single sentence: "Tell me about PARIAH."
- Phantasy Star 2: There are several, some of which have become pretty common in RP Gs since, but one stands out. Midway through the game, you completely fail to stop the Big Bad and a Colony Drop utterly destroys the setting's primary homeworld, killing 90% of humanity.
- Deus Ex had its Wham fairly early on. Less than a third of the way in, you find out that your brother has been working for the terrorists all along. But then it turns out that the terrorists are the good guys and that you've been acting as the pawn of the Ancient Conspiracy, causing you to defect and go on the run.
- The Witcher ends each chapter with a Wham, but the end of chapter four, when hostilities between sects reach flashpoint indicates just how significantly everything will change. It accelerates from there through the crumbling, blazing city.
- Sam And Max season one had the last-but-one episode reveal the Big Bad of the season, The magician Hugh Bliss. This being a Sam and Max game, we can expect mindscrews, but still.
- Jade Empire, Act 4. You die, killed by the man whom, up until that point, you were trying to rescue.
- Ultima VII: Part 2: You finally catch up to Batlin, in order to stop him from performing the ritual to summon the Guardian. you fail, he fails, and your companions become avatars of unbalanced Chaos, bringing about near-Armageddon for the world
- Episode 4 of Tales of Monkey Island, featuring Morgan Le Flay's death, the revelation that the Voodoo Lady has apparently been behind everything in the entire series ever, the Marquis De Singe's death, Le Chuck revealing he never had a Heel Face Turn after all by killing Guybrush... and on top of that, Demon Le Chuck is once again voiced by Earl Boen, who had been replaced with two other actors!
- Especially well played considering they managed to name the episode The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood and STILL keep it a shocker. Considering this series' history, this troper fully expected the "execution" to either be cleverly staged, immediately undone with voodoo, or an Incredibly Lame Pun. Nope. As of the end of the episode, Guybrush is dead.
- Fallout 3. After trekking the wasteland searching for your father, discovering his role in Project Purity and eventually saving him from a virtual world run by a very creepy old man, you help him get Project Purity back online via a handful of small fetchquests. Then the Enclave show up and try to force your father to give them control over the entire operation. When the dust settles, your father is dead via Heroic Sacrifice and the Enclave have not only taken control over Jefferson Memorial, but have started pouring out into the Wasteland in their attempt to conquer it. Suddenly, the stakes are higher then ever.
- Fate Stay Night has at least three. The first would be in UBW when Saber's Command Spells are stolen and she is forced to maim Shirou while simultaneously taking way Avalon's protection. They go to rescue her before her will and sanity breaks and she becomes Caster's slave, but just before the showdown, Archer turns on Shirou and Tohsaka and sides with Caster, and the two barely escape with their lives. Because Archer shows a scrap of mercy. Then they go to Ilya for help... who is brutally murdered by a third party that makes Caster and Archer look like chumps (falsely, as it turns out) and once again they only live because their opponent didn't feel like killing them. Fortunately the low point of the route, but still. The second is Heavens Feel. Just Heaven's Feel. But relative to... itself, I guess, the moment Sakura snaps and Shinji ends up a headless corpse, at which point she also turns on Shirou/Tohsaka and reveals nigh omnipotent shadow based powers and the ability to spawn infinite monsters that are all as powerful as Tohsaka. And the third... Saber's death/rebirth/shoot the dog moment. Take your pick or lump them together. If it wasn't spoiled for you there is NO way you saw the main heroine turning, and the shoot the dog was barely more predictable.
Web Animation
- Broken Saints — Chapter 22 Act 2.
- The Final Fantasy crossover series Final Fighting Fantasy really starts to kick the plot into gear around chapter six, Epic. But emotionally, some would say the Wham Episode is chapter three, Gaiden, which was a considerable boost in storytelling style from the first two.
- Dead Fantasy — Part V shows us that characters are not in fact invincible and that these are life or dead fights and not some extreme battle exercises as many people thought.
Web Comics
- Something Positive gave us a wham in the "Just Today" story, where Fred and Faye spend a day together, and Fred struggles on how to tell her he has Alzheimer's. He decides to wait until tomorrow, which is where the wham comes in: Faye dies in her sleep overnight.
- Ahh, Gunnerkrigg Court. Where to begin?
- Chapter 6 — "A Handful of Dirt": Antimony's Emotionless Girl facade cracks, and she reveals that her father has disappeared. Mood Whiplash, indeed.
- Chapter 7 — "Of New and Old": Several teachers reveal that they knew Annie's parents. Annie reveals to them that she has Reynardine, then refuses to return him to their custody. Robot 13 returns, then attacks Rey and Annie. The chapter ends with Annie falling off a bridge, to her apparent death. (What was particularly cruel was that the first volume of the original print edition ended at this chapter.)
- Chapter 8 — "Broken Glass and Other Things": Annie discovers the riverbank is home to Regional Fairies on the Forest side and a malevolent, sword-wielding ghost on the Court side. And that the strange birds she's seen about the Court are actually robots. Annie herself turns out to be on a first-name basis with a Native American death god. She and Kat discover that the Court is far larger than they previously thought.
- Chapter 12 — "Mainly Involves Robots": Annie finds an entire society of Robots within the Court. Reynardine shows off his Big Badass Wolf form for the first time; more surprisingly, he's actually helpful for once. He informs Annie that relations between the Court and the Wood are uneasy, to put it mildly, and Annie's actions back in Chapter One may have sparked a diplomatic crisis. And he accidentally lets it slip that he has a cousin.
- Chapter 14 — "The Fangs of Summertime": Considering that this is the chapter that gave us the quote at the top of the Holy Shit Quotient article, it would be easier to just list the plot points that aren't spoileriffic Wham Moments.
- Chapter 21 — "Blinking": Annie had to lead her own mother to the afterlife. Jesus, that explains a lot...
- College Roomies from Hell: Mike finally
hatefucks gives in to April's advances, then brutally rejects her afterwards. April responds to this Marsha playing "pretend I'm going to slit April's throat" by running Mike through with a large knife, killing him. Arguably marks the point where CRFH hits full-on Cerebus Syndrome territory.
- You missed the motivation for that event. Satan was taking advantage of the deal Mike made during his short stay in hell. Mike agreed to give Satan 15 minutes in his body to protect Marsha.
- Not only that, but some of the 2009 strips imply that Mike is actually the Archangel Michael, sent to protect the earth.
- Yu+Me: Dream does this in Issue 9, which was kinda unexpected (despite, you know, the title) due to the readers' emotional investment.
- Tales of the Questor: Old Secrets story arc: Quentyn's town learns to its horror that an old forgotten debt incurred by Quentyn's predecessor has grown until most of the town will be literally repossessed. Quentyn, up till now struggling as an underappreciated hero most of his town sneers at, volunteers to renew the original quest to cancel the debt and the series becomes an extended adventure of The Quest that makes him a hero of great honor in his community and beyond.
- The Order of the Stick: Sure, it's a comedy, but don't try to tell me your jaw wasn't at the floor at some point between the Spot The Imposter arc and the timeskip.
- Especially since said timeskip happened in multiple chunks without the main character or the readers realizing it.
- The reveal of Roy's little brother.
- Nope, known since strip 113 and confirmed by the prequel books.
- The strip where Xykon kills Roy. For real.
- And just recently: V running away from the party, being owned by a dragon who turns out to be the mother of the one the party killed 400 strips ago, and then have the same dragon threaten to kill not V, but his/her children. We had no idea V had children!
- One spell: Familicide and one statement The three evil-broker's lied. V's actions aren't in any way influenced by the soul splice.
- And in the conclusion to the fourth story arc, Blackwing, Vaarsuvius' familiar reveals what he saw within the rift: a planet. Not the Snarl, which is supposed to be the overarching manifestation of chaos doomed to unmake the world, (although it's not incredible to discount it still being omnipresent in a way we've yet to understand) but a lone planet.
- Scary Go Round has a Wham Episode during the second Super Crisis Quests storyline when we learn that the character previously thought have been to be the Devil was just a character actor named Old Nobby, and the Devil was revealed to actually be crazy old Ralph after Nobby's death.
- Every hundredth or so comic of The Last Days of Foxhound is for the purpose of inducing WHAM, ranging from revelations of a Retroactive Conspiracy that controls the entire team, to Liquid unleashing his Crouching Moron Hidden Badass Made Of Iron powers, inflicting several literal whams on an unsuspecting Cyborg Ninja.
- When Alternate Zoe gets killed during the "That Which Redeems" story arc of Sluggy Freelance.
- When it is revealed why Hc is so interested in Oasis: Its not because she's immortal, its because she is a pyrokinetic. And in retrospect, the signs were all there.
- The 2nd to last comic of Chapter 9 in Megatokyo where Ed uses an army of Killballs to Combination Attack Miho, apparently killing her. The entire thing needed the 1st 2-page comic to be shown.
- And before that, when Erika asks if sleeping with Largo will make him go away, which lead to him becoming an incoherent, drunken mess for the rest of the chapter.
- Depending on how far you took the "world with game-like qualities" thing, when we find out that people literally pop into existence, fully formed in cities, you might be hit as hard as Parson was.
- Dominic Deegan, towards the end of the War In Hell story arc. Dominic, who had gained a reputation as a master strategist, seen bloody, bleeding, and crying out in vain for help was pretty jarring.
- Questionable Content — "Marten...do you like me?" Strip 500 et seq.
- The breakup most of a year into Punch an' Pie.
- After 1,000 pages of generally good progress on a resolution in Misfile it's finally revealed how long it will take Rumisiel to get back into heaven and fix things in this strip. 72 years.
- And then - someone left the door unlocked.
- Shades, Chapter 10 the bad guys get parliament suspended and put a puppet in charge of the UK
- This Irregular Webcomic strip.
- Its Walky (back when it was still Roomies!) had Ruth die saving a drunk Danny from getting smashed by a semi. Prior to this, the strip was pure drama-free Sit Com. The shift in tone may have been 100% intentional, since the storyline immediately following that shifted the strip fully to Its Walky.
- Everyday Heroes had this literally when Jane Mighty (in her old life as "Iron Jane") discovered the truth about her team leader, Wrecking Paul: he was a serial killer who murdered her best friend right in front of her.
- Four in a goddamned row in 8-Bit Theater. The third one is, arguably, the whammiest because Fighter, for the first time in the comics 1,000+, seven year run, has actually shown anything but admiration and love towards Black Mage; and Black Mage, for the second or third time, has shown genuine affection for White Mage.
- And all three of them paling beside the revelation that Sarda is actually the Onion Kid, out for revenge against them for Black Mage mind raping him and killing his foster parents. Repeatedly.
- You have to admit that the fourth one was really whammy because Black Mage actually killed Fighter. Granted, he's been threatening to do that for years, but he actually succeeded in doing it this time.
- The MS Paint Adventures series Homestuck first seemed like a lighthearted Deconstruction of Sim-type games. Then the main character's house gets hit by a meteor, and we discover that the Beta version of the video game they're playing is essentially an Artifact Of Doom and is bringing on The End Of The World As We Know It.
- Girly: It was all a lie.
- Terinu: Leeza confronts her father after discovering that Humanity knew about the Dominion using the Ferin as power sources and committed genocide against them to disable the Dominion. Then her father throws her in jail to keep her quiet.
- Digger manages a fair few. the first That the Cold Servants are Hyenas came as no surprise to most as the nature of the dead god had been so heavily foreshadowed if they turned out to be anything else people would have objected. However Ed being Grim-Eye's father although foreshadowed was foreshadowed so subtly it came out of fricking no-where as far as most readers were concerned, but makes so much sense in hindsight and is such a heartbreaking revelation it jumps right off the HSQ metre.
- PvP, "Upstairs Downstairs": The butler did it!
- Dead Of Summer: The ending of Book 1.
Web Original
- lonelygirl15 contains plenty of these, but some of the most surprising examples include On The Run, What the F*@k???, 5:00PM, My Fatal Mistake, KIDNAPPED! and Bloodlines: Part 4.
- KateModern: Precious Blood, in which Lauren is abducted, the team discover a top secret Order base, the killer is (at last!) revealed to be Terry, Steve's faith is tested to breaking point, Steve and Charlie kiss, Gavin leaves for Manchester and the Watcher dies.
- Red Vs Blue Reconstruction — Episode 16. Then, Episode 19.
- Survival of the Fittest has recently revealed that Andrea Vanlandingham, a student thought to be dead, has actually taken off her explosive collar, and now plans to get off the island.
- Season 2, Episode 7 "Tempest" of The Leet World. Leeroy is kicked off the show, the box from Noonian is revealed to be a Red Herring planted by the Producer, and a video message from Leeroy reveals that the Noonian scientists have all been killed, and that the Producer has been dead for five years.
- Obligatory Whateley Universe example: in the novel "Christmas Elves", at the end of chapter 2, team sweetheart Jade Sinclair (The Chick) is stabbed through the heart while Fey is unable to stop it. Since this is a comic book world, she gets better. But then the cute kid of the team goes psycho and murders dozens of Mooks to rescue herself and Fey. And it's hilarious.
- AH Dot Com The Series: the first season ending episodes "Of Ships and Captains" and "Once More Into the Breech", which suddenly showed the very serious back-story that led, years in the past, to the current largely comedic rambling adventures of the battered old ship and crew — and then those events return to haunt them...
Western Animation
- The second season finale of Avatar the Last Airbender. When the writers promised a "surprising twist", they actually meant the exact opposite of the twist everyone was naturally expecting.
- These were the bread and butter of Transformers: Beast Wars, especially in the second and, to a lesser extent, third seasons... Heck, let's just call season two a "wham season" and be done with it.
- Not to mention The Transformers: The Movie, which killed off a lot of characters, in particular Optimus Prime. Sure, it was to sell toys, but that's still pretty gutsy for an 80s cartoon.
- The finale of Transformers Animated's second season definitely counts, too, seeing as it confirmed two long-running fan theories, namely that the Autobots' ship was really a dormant Omega Supreme, and that Sari is at least part robot.
- Following up on this, the three part opening movie for the third season was pretty much a wham episode, not giving us much time to recover from the previous episode as it promptly addressed almost every single problem of the finale, and managed to raise even more questions. It was also significantly darker than most of the series had been so far, namely with a more in-depth look at the unethical methods of the High Command and Blurr being murdered by being crushed into a cube onscreen.
- The second season finale in ReBoot, which kicked off it's first real Story Arc with a bang. The finale was set around an invasion by the web and an Enemy Mine situation. But all within the last few moments it ended up with Bob, who is in every regard the most important person on the show, being betrayed by Megabyte and exiled to the web, leaving the Bratty Half Pint as the designated hero to stop Megabyte. Compounded by the agony of the third season being stuck for so long in Development Hell.
- Used again early in season 3. Remember that new guy keeping Mainframe safe? Well we can kiss him goodbye too.
- Frisky Dingo does these quite a lot. The second season plotline of Xander and Killface running for President took a sudden turn when someone finally pointed out that, since Xander's only 32 and Killface isn't a U.S. citizen, neither of them can actually get elected President. In a rage, Killface cripples Xander, kills his cute animal mascot, and vows to finally destroy the world like he said he would in Season 1.
- "Homecoming" in American Dragon Jake Long.
- Justice League episode "A Better World" starts off looking like a Batman Cold Open with Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman fighting their way past Mooks to stop a Big Bad. It's Lex Luthor. No surprise there. But Lex taunts Superman about Supe's complicity in Lex's crimes because Supe always holds the Hero Ball like he's got crazy glue on his palms. Then come the 'whams': (1) Superman murders Lex Luthor; (2) he's glad he did it; (3) the camera pans out the window to reveal that Superman just killed the President of the United States; (4) then the JLA takes over the entire planet! Thank heaven it was an alternate reality. Until they figured out how to come to our world and do the exact same thing.
- The 3-part episode ending season 2, "Starcrossed", turns out to be a Wham Episode too. Hawkgirl is The Mole for the Thanagarian Empire, and always has been. She helps them take over the planet.
- Let's not forget the Justice League Unlimited episodes that dealt with the Cadmus Arc. About half of seasons one and two to be exact.
- Dragon Booster's plot changed significantly when Armaggedon showed up in talking amulet form, promising power for Moordryd, the antagonist, which led to him becoming the Shadow Booster and ultimately rebelling against his father. This had far more impact than Mortis revealing that he is Connor, Artha and Lance's dad, and not as dead as they thought. The lack of impact for the latter event was because the fandom had assumed that for months.
- Likewise, The Venture Brothers ended its first season on a traditional episode. But, it turns out this Adult Swim show doesn't make use of Negative Continuity, and in the first episode of season two, we find out that the titular brothers are still dead and that the Monarch's still in jail.
- Then there Brock suddenly up and quitting as he couldn't take the weirdness anymore at the end of Season 3. As well as the death of 24
- The first season finale of Teen Titans puts the every previous Story Arc episode in a whole new context when Slade reveals that all the villainous plans he set up were just tests of Robin's skill, who he wants to serve as his new apprentice. And is willing to kill all of Robin's friends to make it happen.
- Then there's the fourth season finale, where Raven voluntarily brings the world to an end. Seeing that Slade is a charred skeleton beneath his mask was just gravy.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man, "Nuff Said".
- Transformers Animated, the movie event "Transwarped". During and after this the series became noticeably darker and started featuring onscreen character deaths rather than the Or Is It approach used in earlier seasons, along with some rather disturbing material (see: Wasp).
- Predacons Rising. "Wasp forgive Bumble-bot... But Waspinator NEVER FORGIVE!"
- The Danny Phantom Season Two finale, "Kindred Spirits". For two seasons Vlad has mustered all his energy and strength to make Danny his son. Then we find out in "KS" that he had prepared a back-up plan to complete a perfect clone of him as a substitute (incidentally, that's also why Vlad gave Valerie her first ghost hunting suit) on the off-shot that the real Danny never will come to his side. Shit happens and one Villainous Breakdown later, Vlad changes his mind about the boy; that little bastard is DEAD MEAT.
- Your Mileage May Vary but the Season 1 finale of Star Wars The Clone Wars not only introduced an original character, Cad Bane, who immediately comes across as a Badass and unlike most villains thus far succeeds in his mission, nearly wiping out a room full of Senates and an unarmed Skywalker in the process but fueled the launch of Season 2 which in two episodes is already Darker And Edgier than almost everything the first season had to offer.
- Also worth noting is various episodes in the series achieved this status by totally reversing the "kiddie" status some of the earlier episodes gave the show. It is likely different for every viewer, but most agree that "The Rookies" was the one that paved way for the more mature episodes to come later in the series.
- The villains that paved the way for Cad Bane in the Ryloth Trilogy weren't too stupid either, but they each had a fundamental weakness The commander of the blockade did not expect Anakin's suicide run because of his pride, the droid in Innocents of Ryloth did not perceive the Twi'leks themselves as threats until they were ripping him apart, and Emir Tambor stalled long enough for Mace Windu to capture him because of his greed. Unlike these villains Cad Bane's only weakness seems to be that nobody else is as badass as he is.
- Code Lyoko has one in the Season 2 finale, where Aelita's memory is drained, and XANA escapes the confines of Lyoko. Followed by Franz returning Aelita's memory, which almost totally deletes him.
Real Life
- Look no further than recorded history.
- During WWII, only Nazi elite ranks knew details about the concentration camps and their purpose. As the Third Reich fell, word started getting out... and clarified our understanding of what Nazism really meant forever.
- Generation-defining moments (as in, "I remember where I was when [x] happened") tend to be these. Two prominent ones are the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the 9/11 attacks.
- And in between there were John Lennon shot and killed, the Challenger shuttle disaster, the Columbine High School shooting...
- Tuppence. The Berlin Wall. Overnight and world-changing, 9/11 scale.
- Subversion: Fall of the Soviet Union. Proclaimations of the end of the cold war and NATO victory abounded, phrases like 'lone Superpower' and 'Supremacy of Capitalism' were thrown about, claims by historians that this was 'The end of History', that Western style democracy and capitalism had triumped for all time... fast forward, War, Economic troubles and promises of Ecological apocalypse, like always. And Communism? There's a big fad in ASEAN Asia and Africa to call the 21st century the 'Chinese century'.
- The death of Michael Jackson: world renowned singer, dancer, and overall performer, artist of the top-selling album of all time, Thriller, and the biggest name in modern music history. No two ways about it.
- The day you found this website. Admit it.
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