Noodle Incident / Video Games

Noodle Incidents in Video Games.

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• Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp turned Clone Andy into a unique, fully playable CO with his own separate dossier and theme music. His "hits" is listed as "whatever Andy likes" while his "misses" is listed as "Ladybugs (they're scary)", leaving one to wonder exactly what happened in that clone's short "life" to make him scared of ladybugs.
• The backstory of Afterparty is that the main characters, Milo and Lola, died at a frat party and went to Hell. We don't know exactly what happened, but the aftermath of the party looks like a scene from a slasher movie.
• When the Blacker Baron first appears in Anarchy Reigns, Jack notices he's wearing a pair of flaming gloves, which he notes were taken from a "pyromaniac sex freak" they hunted down. "You... do know where those have been, right?"
• Animal Crossing:
  • A Peppy villager may tell you that something in your house reminds her of something. "Let's just say it involved me and a pan and a really angry chef, and leave it at that!"
  • In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, if you ask Blathers about the snapping turtle, his dialogue will mention the time one chased him across a parking lot, forcing him to seek shelter atop a parked car.
  • During the piñata time at your birthday, a jock villager can mention that he wanted to put fireworks inside it, but the others stopped him because "it's a fire hazard" and begged him to "not make it like last time".
• ANNO: Mutationem: While Ann is chatting with her sister, Nakamura, they bring up how Ayane visited The Sicilian Jar to try out one of the bar's heaviest drinks and had an embarrassing spectacle after taking a few sips.
• Arknights has the Flame Demon Incident, which revolved around Ifrit and also heavily involved Silence, but aside from that fact, that it took place in Rhine Lab and that it caused Saria to defect and stirred Silence to bring Ifrit to Rhodes Island, nothing much is known. Ifrit herself doesn't offer much of a starting point and her perspective doesn't really help, and Silence has been especially tight-lipped about it. This is finally explored in the side manhua.
  • There are many cases of vague events that are alluded in the Operators' profile as a part of the game's world-building; things like the implications that Siege is Victoria's heir-in-hiding, Mostima's disgrace that turned her into a fallen Sankta ^note  detailed in Guiding Ahead Nightingale's captivity and her rescue by Shining and Nearl ^note  at least partially discovered in chapter 10 , the entire 'Kazdel matter', and the incident in Andreana's childhood that turned her superhuman like the Abyssal Hunters. This is done likely to give story fodders for events, as one of the Noodle Incident — the Ursus Self-Governing Students' flight from Chernobog, is later told in "Children of Ursus" event. When Istina says that it's better if the Doctor doesn't know, boy, she's completely serious.
• ARMA III had something go down involving Private Nelson◊ and goats in the first campaign mission...
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: Shaun and Rebecca's wedding night had something happen, if Rebecca describes the event as "dumping data into the Assassin servers and backing out before anyone noticed". It's never brought up again or explained further but, because they're Assassins, it likely involved something weird, illegal, Abstergo, or a combination of the three.
• Batman: Arkham Knight: During a conversation between militia members, one mentions seeing the Joker on TV when he apparently ran for president of the United States prior to the events of the series. According to other members of the militia, "They never found out how he got on the ballot".
• In Bayonetta 2, the demon Alraune is absolutely enraged to see that Bayonetta's contract is Madama Butterfly and goes on a rant about how much she detests Butterfly, mentioning that even the "passing millennia" did not quench her hatred for her. What Madama Butterfly did to Alraune is anyone's guess. Lampshaded by Bayonetta:
  Bayonetta: I don't know what you did to piss her off, but whatever it was, nice.
• Best of Three: Helen compares 3Nigma's pranks to a "crypto-chain letter" incident in high school. Grant says that "by the time it reached me the computer guys had already solved it". Helen comments, "bastards", and the exact details are never explained.
• Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite used to be a Pinkerton Detective. However, he was fired for "Behavior beyond the Acceptable Bounds of the Agency." Given their reputation, especially in the era of the game, one has to wonder how exactly someone could be kicked out for that.
• One of the many complaints in Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain was how on earth is Vorador alive. In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Vorador is visibly executed by Moebius, and his head is displayed on Moebius's statue in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. Word of God said that before the events of Blood Omen 2, Vorador had been resurrected, but who or how was never really explained.
• Bugsnax:
  • Your boss at the beginning brings up some past incidents involving both Elizabert Megafig and your unnamed journalist character. Apparently Elizabert had some embarrassment involving "Grumplantis", and your character did a story on "Grumpfoot", which turned out to be a lost football mascot.
  • For a more tragic version, Gramble's background seems to involve some people he cared about abandoning him, but the events are never explained.
  • Wambus's description of Cromdo is, "I trust him as far as I could throw him...which is 31 feet as of last Tuesday." Cromdo being who he is, it's not hard to infer the general cause, but the specific incident is not explained.
  • During their expedition to Broken Tooth, the player can ask Floofty if they know any plant experts besides Shelda. Their response is to mention that Wambus knows quite a bit about plants, but he vowed never to speak to them again after the "Noodler Incident".
  • If you get Shelda to ask Floofty for scientific advice on Broken Tooth, they'll snidely inform her that if she intends to trap them in a spell circle again, they could leave at any time and were merely acting.
• Borderlands:
  • When we first meet Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2 (mission: A Train to Catch):
    Tina: So Roland told me you were comin'... I still owe him for all that buttcrap with General Rancid.
  • In the "Claptastic Voyage" DLC for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, you discover that Claptrap has — at some point — burned down a church. The dialogue afterwards reveals that no less than four of Claptrap's fellow Vault Hunters have, in unexplained circumstances, done the same. The only exception is Wilhelm, which might at first seem odd since he has no morals whatsoever and only cares about getting paid, but that's actually why it makes sense for him to be the exception. Money is his sole motivation to do anything, so if nobody has paid him to burn down a church, then he won't.
    Claptrap's Consciousness: Okay, so I accidentally burned down the church. But which one of us here can say we haven't?
    Nisha: Eh, fair enough.
    Aurelia: [smugly] Never by accident.
    "Jack": Yeah, hear you on that one.
    Athena: Me! ...Not counting that time.
  • Zane of Borderlands 3, given that he's had a long career in the mercenary game, is basically a walking archive of these. And with the way he words it, there's a distinct possibility that some of these have happened to him on multiple occasions. To wit: ^noteHe once killed a man for some Hyperion brand underwear. His record for dropkicking a human brain is twenty one meters. He used to take jobs from dinosaurs (but stopped after the last one's check bounced). Some of his best nights started with a decapitated head. A room full of dead smugglers reminds him of his first piano recital. He's punched statues in the crotch before. He got stuck to a rocket once. He's been stabbed with a cactus. He apparently shot down a moon once.
• Call of Duty:
  • Beirut in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This may have to do with Soviet special forces operation in Beirut in October 1985, but all the player as Soap hears about it is:
    Kamarov: Hm... I guess I owe you one.
    Gaz: Bloody right you do.
  • Funnily enough, this comes up again in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), during The Stinger. When Kamarov shows up to brief Price on Al-Asad, he first hands him a pack of cigars, saying "I owed you... for Beirut."
• In Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle, one is mentioned involving a young Morgane, a strong magnet, and a compass^*A modicum of navigation knowledge, or an interest in literature of the times of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, can let you figure out they probably hid the magnet somewhere near the compass, making it point somewhere completely wrong and leading the ship to get lost. We apologize for ruining the mystery.
  Morgane: I'm sure they'll find that ship one day.
• In the Castlevania mythos, the titular castle was sealed within an eclipse, and its master was Killed Off for Real, in a climactic battle in 1999. However, that's all we know of the event — it is only ever referenced in the Aria and Dawn of Sorrow games set after that battle, where the reappearance of Castlevania is cause for much concern. As of this writing, IGA has expressed reluctance to tackle the issue, as fan expectations about exactly what happened in 1999 have only increased over the years.
  
  Portrait of Ruin also mentions the battle of 1999, despite taking place before it. At one point the characters mention a prophecy that Dracula will be finally defeated for good in a battle in 1999. This prophecy is cited as the reason why PoR's main character Johnathan Morris has the Vampire Killer whip, which is usually used only by members of the Belmont family. In order for the prophecy to come to pass no Belmont is allowed to touch the whip until 1999.
• In Chrono Cross, the rise of Porre as a military superpower and the fall of the Guardian kingdom came across as this to many players, especially since Crono, Marle, and Lucca returns home after beating Lavos in the first game. Even the DS Updated Re-release of Chrono Trigger, which reveals Dalton as having masterminded the fall of the Guardia, sheds only a little bit more light.
• Close Your Eyes:
  • Besides that the year is 2057 and that the events are implied to be set after or during World War V, we don't really know what happened. However, we get a clue as to what may have happened to the V.I.E.W employees (or a number of them), with the signs warning about the Husks (specifically that they can kill).
  • How the Witch came to be. While we do know the Cognitive Transfer program lead to her being, we don't know if she's a variant or if hers was botched, somehow, as she doesn't look too much like Husks (but speaks for them) and the other half of her essence is stored in Cecily Newman. Cecily's chart at the beginning of the game seems to imply the latter, but how that happened isn't clear either.
• The Closer: Game of the Year Edition: While the manager of the New York Yankees is fine with our titular hero going on an epic journey to remake himself as a pitcher (and believes the personal re-examination that may occur along the way would be beneficial), he makes it clear that the Closer's contract forbids any attempt to get in touch with existential mystery. We're not given any meaningful backstory to this clause, only that it came into effect weeks after Alex Rodriguez began reading Nietzsche while drinking mescal. And the manager got a tattoo of Ganesh in that timeframe; he still hasn't found it by the beginning of the story.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: The Panther King constantly threatens his subordinates by telling them "Don't make me take out the duct tape again".
• The Council references many of Louis and his mother's past adventures, most commonly "that time in Venice", which they promised never to talk about again. Apparently they delivered, and then kidnapped, Lord Mortimer's newborn son. (The mother died in childbirth.) Why they couldn't get an actual doctor to help, or where the baby went after that, is never explained.
• Crash Tag Team Racing: In a game filled with absurd characters, elements and occurrences, among the most absurd is Stew randomly bringing up the time he stuffed a baked ham into a woodchipper. He doesn't provide a reason for why he did that, exactly.
• Darkest Dungeon
  • One of the things a character can say while camping is "This reminds me of that time in the Weald — just without all the spiders."
  • A character with the "Deviant Tastes" quirk gets banned from the brothel and cannot use it to recover stress. If you try to have that character use it, they will remark that they're no longer allowed in there due to a "misunderstanding."
  • A character with the "Witness" quirk will refuse to take part in prayer after witnessing something disturbing during a prayer session.
• The bios in Dawngate has quite a few, but special mention goes to Varion's bio, which refers to a literal "noodle incident".
• Deadly Rooms of Death: In the City Beneath, Beethro encounters a guy in the City dealing with the fallout of one of these. He tries to explain, but Beethro cuts him off when it becomes apparent that the story will be long and boring. Anyway, the result was that this guy had to nail every chair in the Rooted Empire to the floor, because of a horrible accident involving two serpents, an orb, and a tar baby.
• In Dear Esther, we do know that the titular Esther passed away in some kind of accident, but it's not exactly said what led up to said accident. However, it's implied drinking (may have) had something to do with it.
• Deep Rock Galactic:
  • Whatever it is that happened to Karl. It may or may not have been fatal, it may have involved colossal amounts of Skull-Crusher Ale and a pickaxe, and it definitely made him a legend worthy of admiration and avenging to the dwarven miners the company employs. His life as a whole also counts, going by the tidbits dwarves mention, like comparing his capacity for beers to a Glyphid Dreadnought's bullet-tanking capacity.
  • The various PSA screens warn that some manner of "Incident" happened in the Space Rig's bathrooms; whatever happened, it seemingly began when someone didn't flush and the Level 4 bathrooms are still closed for maintenance because "the clog is not yet cleared".
  • When you unlock the Colette Wave Cooker (a microwave raygun), Mission Control informs you that you're not allowed to use weaponry for cooking or anything besides combat, to avoid a repeat of an incident involving a flamethrower in the Mess Hall.
  • One Prestige Assignment unlocks a new Gloomstalker Mk3 helmet and a somber black armor paint scheme named for Black Crag, "That place we no longer speak of, but all carry in our hearts. Honour. Courage. Death."
• Destiny:
  • Lord Shaxx wears a helmet with one horn on it. It used to have two horns, but one was busted off and nobody seems to know how or when it happened. Shaxx himself refuses to explain, claiming nobody could handle it. Various hints seem to indicate he lost it to Fallen during the Battle of the Twilight Gap, but that's all that's been revealed. Shaxx's reaction upon realizing that Saint-14 learned that much seems to suggest the incident was actually pretty embarrassing and he's been trying to cover it up.
  • Fenchurch Everis was permanently banned from the Tower some years prior to the series, but we never learn what he did to piss off the Vanguard so badly. The most hint we've gotten is a lore entry where Fenchurch asks his niece to talk with Commander Zavala and remind him that what Fenchurch did was "merely a jest".
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Two Belltower soldiers can be heard talking about the Red Dust Operation. The Texas Secession is mentioned in the Sarif Lobby, which was a Noodle Incident, until Word of God explained it.
• Disgaea:
  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: At some point, Laharl is blackmailed with an "embarrassing photo", but we're never shown what it is. Laharl, Etna, and Flonne have some interesting reactions to it, though.
  • In Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance, one of the Nether News reports is on a Sea Angel, whose interview was canceled due to a "grotesque sight". The only hint as to what happened is the report telling viewers to look up "buccal cones".
• Out of the 100+ heroes that are in Dota 2, hardly a single one has a bio that isn't chock full of them.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, some of your party members will reference various noodle incidents — such as Zevran's mention of the stages of lanthrax poisoning ("I watched a man go through all seven once!"), Alistair's childhood ("I locked myself in a cage once, when I was a child, for an entire day. Ahh, good times..."), and the time Leliana rode on the vanes of a windmill.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • If one of the party banters can be believed, Aveline and Anders once painted each other's toenails (though, considering how poorly they get along, this may just be him being sarcastic).
    • Isabela is behind a few noodle incidents, such as a bar fight that turned into a twenty-person brawl in the streets and a letter apologizing to Hawke because she was "expecting treasure, not spiders". Hawke can mention the last time she was certain she'd found the Relic, leading them to spend most of the day searching the Wounded Coast, only to find a chest containing "several badly written poems... and an old boot". In Legacy, she misunderstands Fenris's attempt to ask her about the time she freed some slaves and informs him that she didn't ask for the goat, and the fire was accidental.
    • Party banter between Isabela and Anders implies a possible Forgotten First Meeting and drunken liaison, as both frequented the Pearl back in Ferelden during the Blight and Isabela vaguely remembers hooking up with an apostate at one point. Then she starts fondly reminiscing about Anders's "electricity thing", prompting Hawke or Varric to cut that conversation short.
    • Most of Hawke's first year in Kirkwall becomes this, due to Varric not actually meeting them until Act I. We never find out the circumstances of how Hawke met and became friends with Lady Elegant, Tomwise, and Worthy.
    • Why did Varric name his crossbow Bianca? "There was a girl, and I made a promise." It's the one story he can never tell. (On the other hand, it may be coming up in the comics continuity...) It still applies in-universe:
      Merrill: You can't say that! Now I want to know even more!
      Varric: That was the idea, Daisy.

      Varric gives a bit more detail when Bianca's namesake shows up in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The two of them almost started a clan war, which just raises more questions.

    • A female Hawke can open a letter meant for Carver, where a girl named Peaches alludes to an illicit rendezvous they had in her father's barn back in Lothering. Isabela also mentions seeing Carver "and his chin" regularly in the Blooming Rose, chatting up one of the prostitutes he has a crush on.
    • If Merrill is romanced, it's mentioned that she apparently swings on the chandeliers in the Estate, destroys cupboards whilst climbing on them (both usually with Sandal as her partner in crime), and Hawke has to routinely apologise to their various neighbours when Merrill wanders into their gardens with no shoes on and starts picking flowers before cooing at their attack dogs.
    • In both of the first two games, it is a big mystery how Sandal keeps showing up alone and surrounded by the corpses of Darkspawn or demons and abominations.
      Sandal: Enchantment?
      The Warden: You're surrounded by Darkspawn corpses! What happened here!?
      Sandal: Enchantment!
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition:
    • The player is given the option of sharing a backstory specific noodle incident that involved a rabbit and was so scandalous that the Inquisition would be ruined if it became public knowledge.
    • A human warrior or rogue did something at an Antivan opera that got their aunt to stop speaking to them for three months.
    • A human mage did something during their Harrowing that got them in the Ostwick Circle's history books while the First Enchanter declared that they will never speak of it again.
    • The elf was helping to set up camp in a ruin when the hunters started hearing noises from a nearby abandoned fortress, and it ended with a bunch of people running naked out of said fort.
    • The dwarf was gathering collection money and ran afoul of an old seamstress that terrified the Inquisitor's boss out of collecting money from the seamstress ever again.
    • The Qunari and their mercenary band were hired to escort a caravan. It ended with one of them telling one of the caravan's donkeys that they won't mention it again if he doesn't.
    • Dorian bemoans the bizarre ideas that people outside of Tevinter have about his homeland, including cows flying over the Imperium's capitol. Then he remembers that that one did actually happen, and specifies that the cows didn't have wings.
    • One of the mercenaries under the Iron Bull's command is a dwarf who was exiled for blowing up part of the Shaperate.
    • Blackwall was once sent on a disastrous search-and-rescue mission to the Silent Plains. After the people involved endured a two-day Mushroom Samba because they lost their food to a flash flood and were left with nothing except wild berries that turned out to be hallucinogenic (Blackwall thought a ring of nugs was singing sea shanties), they awoke to find themselves surrounded by ghasts, who had stolen their weapons and armor. Blackwall's response to the Inquisitor asking how they got out of that one is simply...
      Blackwall: You'd be surprised what a man armed with a rock and a headache can do.
    • During the peace meeting in Orlais, the Inquisitor can overhear a dowager talking about how her various husbands died. The first eight had clear, if increasingly bizarre, causes of death, but all she says about her ninth and thus far final husband is that it was the most violent tailoring accident anyone had ever seen.
    • A conversation between Cullen and a messenger refers to a training exercise the Iron Bull carried out that required every shield in the armory.
    • Varric threatens to unleash his editor on someone, mentioning in passing that he means his actual editor, who once killed a man over a semicolon.
• Dragon Ball Fighter Z: During a conversation with Goku, Cell will remark that he also got stronger in Hell, which makes Goku ask what Hell was like for Cell. Apparently, it wasn't pleasant, as the bio-android refers to it as "a place full of sorrow and misery" that also had "...other things" he refuses to elaborate on. Given what we know about Frieza's personal hell, the possibilities over what could make Cell want to avoid the subject entirely are endless and highly amusing.
• In Dungeon Siege II: Broken World, Celeb'hel wants to cast a spell that will allow him to impose his will on the world. He says that this particular spell was cast twice before in the history of Aranna, but the Ancestor of the Azunites says that neither casting had the intended effect; we aren't told what exactly happened.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • Dwarven crafts, engravings, and statuary frequently represent events from the world's randomly-generated history. Unless you have a spare copy of that world to look at in Legends Mode, you'll end up with a bunch of images of some random creature you've never heard of doing something irrelevant.
  • General consensus among the fans is, if your Dwarf Fortress experience doesn't leave you with at least one story like this, you haven't been playing long enough.
    Reddit user: I had a game where a kitten killed a cyclops, but beyond that my experience mirrors yours.

    It's especially likely to give such a treatment to yourself if you start playing the game again after a long time with an already up-and-running fortress◊. Perhaps you had a reason to have senseless walls, far too many gorillas in far too tiny a pasture, over thirty caged troglodytes, your fortress mayor chained up, someone's pet also tied up at the edge of your territory, four squads trying to kill a parrot that's underground for some reason, and your best carpenter hospitalized with shattered kneecaps, but you are probably not going to remember what it was.

• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In the series' lore, the Republic of Hahd was such an incident in the early 3rd Era for the Sumerset Isles and the Empire.
  • Every game in the main series except for Daggerfall has the Player Character start off as a prisoner. Only Arena bothers to explain why you were in prison to begin with^note You were a member of the Imperial court in the way of Jagar Tharn's plans. This still leaves open what crime he put you in prison for, and whether he framed you or took advantage of something you'd done., though Skyrim does at least suggest that you were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why you were in that "wrong place" is still left up to the player's imagination. Oblivion has a dialog option that states the Player Character (that deserves repeating: the character you play as) doesn't know either.
  • The series has M'aiq the Lair, a recurring Easter Egg Legacy Character. M'aiq is a known a Fourth-Wall Observer (and Leaner and Breaker) who voices the opinions of the series' creators and developers, largely in the form of Take Thats, to both the audience (given the ES Unpleasable Fanbase) and to Bethesda itself. He also has a number of comments about various noodle incidents he has been involved with, most of which are equal parts bizarre and funny. For example, in Skyrim, he mentions that he was once Soul Trapped and very much did not appreciate the experience.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
    • The "A Night to Remember" Daedric quest relies heavily on this trope, as you traverse half the map trying to figure out just what the hell happened when you were blackout drunk. All you get out of the NPCs is that it was something involving a magical staff, a wedding to a hagraven, and some poor farmer's goat in Rorikstead. Even going all the way through the quest never fully reveals what occurred.
    • A particular radiant conversation amongst Dark Brotherhood members seems applicable: "But really. A horker, some twine, three wood elves, and a hatchet? Points for creativity, if nothing else."
    • One quest involves being handed the item "Pelagius's hip bone" (yes, it is an actual pelvis) from an apparent beggar who is asking you to look for his master (who is on "vacation"), and entering a forbidden wing of the Blue Palace because said master is speaking to an "old friend" there, then suddenly getting a loading screen after making their way through the wing before being plopped into a mysterious misty forest clearing, where Sheogorath (the equivalent of a God of Madness) is in conversation with Pelagius (the same man whose hip bone... yeah, it's his pelvis). In this conversation, he says this:
      Sheogorath: You are far too hard on yourself, my dear, sweet, homicidally insane Pelagius. What would the people do without you? Dance? Sing? Smile? Grow old? You are the best Septim that's ever ruled. Well, except for that Martin fellow, but he turned into a dragon god, and that's hardly sporting... You know, I was there for that whole sordid affair. Marvelous time! Butterflies, blood, a Fox, a severed head... Oh, and the cheese! To die for.^{Spoilery possible explanation}These are all items and elements related to the previous game's more prominent questlines, including one from Shivering Isles which sees the player character taking up Sheogorath's mantle; it's likely this Sheogorath was once the player character in question but adapted to the role"
• Endless Space 2: The Sophons apparently accrued a list of these in their ascent to their stars, according to their prologue. While crashing test rockets and setting off artificial earthquakes in the name of science probably has its goals, it's hard to imagine what kind of experiment they were running that ended in accidentally blowing up their moon.
• Enemy Front: You're a war photographer in the middle of Nazi-occupied France in World War II, where you're chosen for your job because of some past incident in Spain that you repeatedly brought up in cutscenes. It's most likely from the tail-end of the Spanish Civil War, but it's not outright confirmed.
• Evolve:
  • Slim has apparently had worse food than not-fully-dead grilled canyon eel.
  • If Bucket gets eaten by a plant, sometimes he'll say:
    Bucket: Did somebody replace my lubricant with bacon grease again?!
  • The time Abe, Sunny, and Parnell were hired to investigate why a station had gone dark. All we know is that it was the fault of "a bunch of rebels with an Armored Unit", and ended with Sunny ramming their ship into the side of the station.
• FAITH: The Unholy Trinity: The details of the first attempted exorcism of Amy are left vague, to cover up either how horrifically it ended or that it never happened in the first place.
• F-Zero:
  • The "great accident" that is mentioned in every other character profile in GX. All that's known is that Pico played some major role in it, and it was apparently such a nasty event that the F-Zero Grand Prix was shut down for several years because of it. Given that the race routinely involves racers dying in crashes without comment, one has to wonder what the scope of this incident was.
  • The comic that was featured on the F-Zero X website (and came with certain editions of the game) mentions another great accident in F-Zero's precursor, F-MAX, that killed a great number of people, including The Skull (he got better) and a royal scion racing in it and caused the sport to get shut down.
• Fallen London: Plentiful, as the game's narration loves to leave details up to the player's imagination, but some of the most important ones are "Whatever happened in the Second City?" (don't ask the Masters about this one, it pisses them off), "Why do the Masters hate Egyptian stuff?", "What the hell is wrong with Neath-snow?" (attempts to investigate tend to go wrong, and one microscope used in these endeavors can be found at the Museum of Mistakes, only the lenses anywhere close to intact), and "Who is Mr. Eaten?" (A good question. Not a wise one). Though there are answers to almost all of these later on, and by the end-game your character is bound to know the whole deal about each and every one. Except the last one, unless they were insane enough to chase that questline and you're masochistic enough to finish it.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • Incident Playtime, which had cyberdogs and took a sizable chunk out of the budget of the Big Empty. Given the fact the female cyberdog was in heat, let's just say that it was mating season and a lot of sterilization (of both the cyberdogs and the resulting mess) was involved...
  • Not to mention the fact the Big Empty, AKA Big Mountain, used to be an actual mountain with underground facilities underneath it, instead of a gigantic crater, until an incident that isn't quite elaborated upon. SCIENCE leads to this kind of thing often, seems like.
  • With no established personal history, most of the Courier's backstory is this. Various dialogue options can mention various places they may have visited, such as New Reno, and a male Courier with the Lady Killer perk can imply they fathered a child in Montana, but these are entirely optional.
  • Pete, the historian of the ordnance-obsessed Boomers, will tell the player that the Boomers "haven't detonated any atomic warheads since before [he] was born". There's no option to ask him to elaborate on this, and he doesn't do so on his own.
• The "Baconslicer Incident" from Fantasy Quest leaves even grizzled ogres trembling.
• In Far Cry 4, Yogi and Reggie mention being unable to return to India after an incident with "so many cows" that ended up receiving at least ten million hits on YouTube. Reggie also mentions Yogi being put in an ambulance after a mishap at a Spiral Tribe party.
• Fire Emblem Fates features a few in support conversations:
  • Elise hears a rumor that Benny eats mountains, and asks him whether or not this is true. His response is "Not anymore since the accident."
  • Sophie asks Hisame for help learning how to use chopsticks, since she somehow managed to burn her house down the last time she tried. How exactly she managed to do this goes unexplained.
• In the Perseus Mandate Expansion Pack for First Encounter Assault Recon, a certain "Amarillo" incident is called upon several times. The conversation snippets tell the player that in it, a target that was meant to be captured alive was killed by accident, and according to Chen, even being yanked by a supernatural force into a dark nook and being savaged half to death by a bunch of semi-invisible demonic entities that he barely manages to fight off is only "almost as bad".
• Five Nights at Freddy's: The first three games in the series all have a Noodle Incident which gives hints about the backstory and highlights the stellar job that Fazbear Entertainment is doing. To wit:
  • Five Nights at Freddy's:
    • During the first night, you get a call from a co-worker telling you that the robot mascots tend to wander around at night, and haven't been allowed to roam during the day since "the Bite of '87". "It's amazing that the human body can live without the frontal lobe..." The fourth game seems to present an explanation... but according to Word of God, what we're actually seeing is a different incident; we still don't know what exactly went down in 1987, other than some vague hints near the conclusion of the second game.
    • The Phone Guy's explanations about the animatronic's behavior imply that the player's predecessors didn't exactly meet a pleasant end. You can also find hints about an incident involving the murder of several children, giving a potential explanation of why the Fazbear animatronics are out to get you.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 2 drops hints that there was another restaurant before the two, but gives no details about why it closed down. The murders happen before Night 6, but the player isn't given the details beyond the murderer using a spare costume, "a yellow one", and that now the animatronics are acting up^note the killscreen minigames and the Night 4 interlude hint that The Puppet had something to do with the latter. When you finish Night 6, you're shown a newspaper article detailing the Toy Animatronics getting scrapped, heavily implying that the Bite of '87 occurred and that the player was either an observer or the victim of the whole affair.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 3 reveals 'yet another incident happened sometime before the original game which led to Fazbear Entertainment's recently introduced animatronic/costume hybrid suits getting boarded up in safe rooms that the animatronics couldn't enter, and both being stricken from the record. It's a major bit of Foreshadowing of Springtrap's true nature.
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game:
  Peter: No names, Ray. I don't want to get too attached to this kid. Remember what happened to the last one?

  Along with other lines, the implication is that the last test subject, I mean rookie, was testing something potentially dangerous and ended up in New Jersey. Possibly by explosion.

• Girls' Frontline: What exactly happened the last time AK47 and her squad hit the bottle too much is a mystery. All that is known is that a stolen car was involved, the base's whole monthly business went in fines and/or legal fees and all alcohol on the base is now rationed and watered down.
• GoldenEye (1997) has one mission where (on the higher difficulties) Bond has to plant explosives in a missile silo and get out before the automatic timer reaches zero. One of the pre-mission briefing files talks about having to work quickly once the first set of explosives is planted — that particular memo ends with "remember what happened to 004 in Beirut."
• Grand Theft Auto V has a number of noodle incidents the player can find Trevor in the midst of when switching control to him, including (but not limited to) being chased by the police, waking up drunk in strange locations (one of the best being at the bottom of a drained pool with a crashed helicopter), chasing a burning car while apologizing for flashing the driver, tying businessmen to the underside of a pier while criticizing trickle-down economics, waking up on a mountain in a bloodstained dress, and waking up in the middle of the desert in his underwear while surrounded by corpses.
• Grim Fandango: According to Domino, Manny got drunk at a Christmas party and punched someone he hated, like every good Christmas Party ever.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • In the opening Asuran quests (the Synergetics questline), your character refers often to a "sewer incident" involving his krewe's invention, a teleportation device.
  • In Hoelbrak, a brief snippet of conversation is overheard where a Norn tries to apologize for accidentally setting his wife's mother on fire at a moot.
• Half-Life 2 has a "cat incident", involving two teleporters, Dr. Kleiner, Barney Calhoun, and a cat.
  Barney: You mean [the teleporter]'s working? For real this time? Because I still have nightmares about that cat.
  Alyx: What cat?
  Dr. Kleiner: Now, now, there is nothing to be worried about, we have made major strides since then. ...Major strides.
  Alyx: [louder] What cat?
  [later as Alyx is stepping into the teleporter]
  Dr. Kleiner: [checking the readings] Conditions could hardly be more ideal.
  Barney: That's what you said the last time.
  Alyx: [in the teleporter] Hey uh, yeah, about that cat...
  [one in-game week later]
  Barney: Did you hear a cat just now? ...That damn thing haunts me.

  According to Half-Life: Raising the Bar, the cat in question was turned inside out. There is a Steam achievement in Half-Life 2 that you can get for breaking a small test-teleporter during that scene. It's titled... you guessed it: "What Cat?"

• Happy Tree Friends Adventures: In the upcoming Happy Tree Friends Adventures Legends, we can see Brandy as a gravestone, confirming that he is dead in the Happy Tree Friends Adventures universe after his debut in Happy Tree Friends Adventures 6. It is unknown how exactly he died.
• Helltaker:
  • During one of the game's advice conversations, Zdrada mocks Malina's fetish for turn-based strategy games by bringing up an incident in which Malina got so turned on that she did something, but Malina cuts Zdrada off before she has the chance to say what it was.
  • In the game's epilogue, the police arrive at Helltaker's home. When Helltaker asks Cerberus what happened, they state that they've "screwed up", though seem to be to embarrassed to say what actually happened. Apparently, this isn't the first time they've caused trouble, but it's the first time they've done something so bad that the police have gotten involved.
  • Upon meeting Beelzebub, Helltaker learns that they apparently did something so awful, even by demon standards, that they were banished out of Hell and sent to the Abyss. What they did, however, is left unknown.
• Hitman: Absolution: Lenny Dexter had a member in his gang called Darian, who attempted to swindle Lenny's father for some money. After he was caught, he was apparently subjugated to brutal torture methods that involved heavy loss of blood and a painful death from his injuries. If the player pulls out a baseball bat in front of Lenny, he whimpers and begs 47 to not do the same thing that happened to Darian.
• Hollow Knight: Oro, one of the Nailmasters, did something in the past that caused bad blood between him and his brother Mato, but neither of them will explain what it was. Their other brother, Sheo, has no idea either and wishes they'd just get along.
• Hotline Miami: During the outro scene of the "Neighbors" chapter, Beard mentions that there is "a chill in the air", and briefly alludes to a mysterious event which occurred in San Francisco that he never elaborates on.
  Beard: I haven't felt this way since San Francisco...
  • However, it is revealed in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number what the significance of this line was; in the year 1986, a Russian nuclear weapon was dropped on the San Francisco area, obliterating Beard and everyone else who was there at the time.
• House of Ashes: Near the end, the clean-up crew sent to contain the flow of information about the alien vampires mentions how it reminds them of something that happened in a place named Winterhold. Given the nature of the Dark Pictures Anthology, there's a decent chance that this will eventually be explained. For now, though, very little is known about it, except that it apparently involved vampires, was pretty gruesome, and was also covered up by some of the same operatives.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory:
  • Iris Heart racks up quite a few of these, partially as a result of being prone to acts that can't be shown without raising the game's rating. She even has one before her first on-screen appearance: we never find out exactly why Noire wants to stop Plutia transforming at all costs, just enough hints it's almost surprising when Iris Heart suggests Noire has virginity left to lose.
  • Another early one (and her first appearance, natch) has her arrive to bail her friends out after a Hopeless Boss Fight, carrying two Plot Coupons and dragging the unconscious mouse/rat/Pikachu-knockoff thing that had them behind her. The villain tells her not to be so proud she beat the items out of a rat, to which Iris Heart replies she didn't just take them, they were payment for services rendered. It isn't revealed what happened between her transformation and arrival, but from what we find out about her, the implications are... unsettling.
• Jack Move: The circumstances that led to the death of Ryder's roommate, Ming, is mentioned that he had ran off to handle some thugs who were harassing Ryder before it resulted in him getting killed.
• Jak II: Renegade: Who knows what happened with the wumpbee nest on Jak's ninth birthday?
• One of these is the reason the janitor from Kindergarten is required by law to stay at least a mop's length away from children. All he tells you about the story is that it happened because he was "morbidly curious" and that it ends with someone on the end of a mop. Not at it, on it.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Donald, while trying to wake up Goofy after he's seemingly killed by a falling rock, apologizes about an incident involving ice cream. Whatever incident he's referring to is never explained.
  • Kingdom Hearts III:
    • According to Ienzo, there was an incident between Lexaeus and Roxas that makes it so that Aeleus doesn't want to talk to Sora. Ienzo tells Aeleus to let it go, but what exactly happened is never elaborated upon.
    • Apparently, there was an incident in the past that caused Donald to learn Zettaflare. What exactly happened in that incident is left unknown, but judging from Goofy's reaction when he sees that Donald is about to cast the spell, as well as what happens to Donald immediately after, it wasn't pretty.
• King of the Castle: Two for the price of one when the Grave Beast event is solved by hiring a wizard, as Athmorel mentions an ill-advised past "fling" with its creator, Yammarhux the Unhinged, and expresses a certain amount of joy that Scrampton, the wizard of the sea, "ate him".
• In The Last Express, we learn early on that Robert Cath is upset with Tyler Whitney over an incident in Cuba. It is never explained what happened: while Anna Wolff says she remembers that Whitney was trying to raise money to start a revolution in Cuba, Cath, who is posing as Whitney at the time, avoids the subject by saying "Mexico, and it wasn't me".
• In Left 4 Dead 2, Ellis tries to regale his new friends with stories about his buddy, Keith, who apparently has a tremendous misfortune and frequently becomes involved in fantastical acts of self-endangering stupidity. However, Ellis is most often interrupted with "Is now really the time?", so we don't get to hear how Keith survives. If Ellis's tall stories are to be believed, Keith...
  • Suffered from third-degree burns to the majority of his body (on two separate occasions; making fireworks and deep frying a turkey). The second occasion happened before he'd healed from the first one, amazing the doctors to the point they brought in doctors from other parts of the country to view the damage (none of them had seen burns of that severity on top of existing burns before).
  • Was tear gassed by the police (the effects of the gas blinding him for a whole year).
  • Snuck a paintball gun onto a rollercoaster to invent a new sport. And then fell off the coaster and had to dodge carts because the carny wouldn't stop the ride.
  • Was buried alive after falling down an open manhole.
  • Was nerve gassed and cluster-bombed by the US Military.
  • Ran himself over with a riding lawnmower he fashioned into a bumper car.
  • Received an "I'm a Moron" tattoo on his forehead for a $200 dare.
  • Ate three pounds of raw chicken (the resulting salmonella paralyzed his right foot and obliterated all memory of his brother, Paul).
  • Tried to stage a recreation of a colonial war in his garden, but only ended up with a raccoon fight.
  • Lived in a graveyard for a year after he was kicked out of home. He was stabbed and robbed by a man wearing a bedsheet, pretending to be a ghost.
  • Nearly drowned in a Tunnel of Love.
  • Broke both of his legs after plunging his car over a cliff.
  • Tried to jump his car over a river while the bridge was raised.
  • Joined a couple in matrimony despite not being a minister. He would have been married himself, had he not run away from his own wedding.
  • And according to Word of God, Keith is not imaginary. To be specific, the producer said that Keith is an imaginary character, "but this is a video game, so aren't they all?"
• The Legend of Heroes - Trails:
  • Trails in the Sky: An incident is mentioned in FC's prologue, in which Estelle somehow managed to make eggs explode while frying them, Joshua decides to come and help with the cooking to prevent Estelle from setting the curtains on fire again.
  • Trails of Cold Steel: Crow mentions he became friends with Towa and the others through unexpected circumstances, but how he really got to know them wasn't brought up that much.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The King of Hyrule orders the road to Goron Village to be closed to Hylians due to Death Mountain's eruptions, but banning his people from journeying to Zora's Domain (via magic) is never explained.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: It's mentioned the Fishmen are willing to help Link because of a debt they owe to the King of Red Lions, but whatever favor he did for them to incur it is left a mystery.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: When asked about their past together, an embarrassed Kodah will confess that she once demanded Link make a choice whether he wanted to marry either her or Mipha.
• LEGO Island has one between the ambulance drivers Enter and Return that borders on Fridge Horror.
  [Enter and Return are picking up a stretcher with a choking victim on it]
  Enter: Well, don't drop him.
  Return: You mean like that other guy?
  Enter: Whatever happened to him?
  Return: Who?
  Enter: The other guy.
  Return: We dropped him!
  Enter: Well, don't drop him!
• Limbo: The kid and his sister are dead. We find that out in the ending and title screen. But how did they both die, and why is the rope ladder on their treehouse broken? Maybe it's best we don't know.
• Manafinder: King Vikar has several people exiled, including the player character, but game doesn't make it clear what crimes the exiled committed. In the Settlement, one of the rules is that the settlers can't ask each other about their pasts. However, some characters open up to Lambda about their pasts and indictments.
• In the Red Leaf High event of MapleStory, Athena Pierce will occasionally say "...And that was the time I ate an entire donkey."
• Mass Effect:
  • The setting has an entire Noodle War in its background with the Morning War between the quarians and the geth. Exactly what happened during the war is unclear, and we only get a vague understanding of how it was fought. All we really know is that a quarian freaked out when a geth asked, "Does this unit have a soul?", the quarians tried to destroy the entire synthetic race before it could rebel and destroy them, and the geth fought back. Many quarians tried to protect the geth and died during the war, and the conflict ended with only about sixteen million surviving quarians, whom the geth deliberately allowed to escape because they didn't judge themselves able to accurately judge the consequences of causing the extinction of another species. (By comparison, two other major wars in the setting's background, the Rachni wars and the Krogan Rebellions, are more extensively covered by the setting's lore). This makes sense: the Morning War only involved the quarians and the geth, and the quarians don't like to talk about it (as for the geth, well, they kill anyone entering their territory). Naturally the rest of the galaxy does not have detailed information on it.
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • The missions Jacob and Miranda went on (which are explained in the IOS game).
    • Jack's list of entertaining crimes, including dropping a starbase on a moon and hijacking a military craft. While she explains the starbase, sort of, the incident with the military ship is never explained other than "Shouldn't have left the thing unlocked. Besides, parades are boring. I helped."
    • Then there's Mordin mentioning how he's killed people with guns, knives, drugs, tech attacks, "once with farming equipment", but never with medicine! Mind you, in the DLC, you find out just what the farming equipment was. He killed a krogan civilian farmer by stabbing him in the face with a pitchfork during a black-op to spread a manufactured disease.
    • Kaidan mentions in Citadel that he once had an encounter with the vorcha mafia at a casino. His only elaboration is that he got 5000 credits and a bottle of whiskey out of it.
    • Then there was the time Garrus killed two mercs with one bullet. Rumor had it that it was actually three mercs, but what actually happened was, "The third guy had a heart attack. Not fair to count him."
    • Matriarch Aethyta uses a noodle incident to impress on Shepard why s/he shouldn't eat anything dextro-based.
    Aethyta: I once saw a krogan drink a liquefied turian on a dare six or seven centuries back. Nobody came out of that one looking pretty.
    • In Kasumi's loyalty mission, you can find the original Locust, infamously known as "the gun that killed two Presidents". Once the mission is over you can view the full story of the event in the codex.
    • A minor one from the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC: Thane's dossier mentions that he was responsible for an event on Omega called the "One-Hour Massacre".
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda:
    • Some of Cora's missions as a huntress, such as the time she saw an asari kill a krogan warlord with a pack of playing cards. "Choking hazard, apparently", Cora says.
    • Drack's own exploits, such as killing no less than three Spectres during the Krogan Rebellions (whether separately or all at once goes unsaid), the loss of Kesh's grandmother, and the time he killed a Thresher Maw with his bare hands. In the later case, he does start recounting it... only for Peebee and Vetra to insist he skip to "the good part", namely the bit where he just says "and then I killed it with my bare hands". Please recall that the average Thresher Maw is larger than a building and immune to tank fire. There's also the time he wrecked an APC by headbutting it. The only clarification he would give on that incident is that it "looked at him funny."
• In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Kevin reminds Raiden of something that happened in Montenegro in order to prevent the latter skipping out on an As You Know briefing.
• Metal Wolf Chaos gives us a Noodle War in the form of the Arizona Conflict/Insurrection that Michael, Richard, and several others are veterans of.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has the Horus Rebellion that's mentioned by two Federation members. Nothing else is mentioned about it besides the fact that it was apparently as bad as the events of the game. Likely also a Shout-Out to Warhammer 40,000.
• Monkey Island:
  • Guybrush Threepwood states that the Giant Monkey Head is the second largest monkey head he has ever seen. We never hear about the largest. It could also be a Shout-Out to Get Smart's Running Gag.
  • And then there's the intense, bizarre phobia of porcelain.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island includes a long scene where Guybrush tries to get the Idol of Many Hands from the Governor's mansion, almost all of which takes place outside of camera range, though the action prompts still pop up, saying things like "Hypnotize quarrelsome rhinoceros", and "Use staple remover on tremendous dangerous-looking yak".
  • After the Gainax Ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, series creators Ron Gilbert and David Grossman left Lucasarts, which means they weren't around to explain where they were going with it when the time came to make a sequel. So The Curse of Monkey Island opens with Guybrush lost at sea in a bumper car, having somehow escaped LeChuck's "Carnival of the Damned". On the other hand, Return to Monkey Island reveals that the boys were Guybrush's son Boybrush and his brother Chuckie.
  • Tales of Monkey Island starts at the end of an adventure we don't get to see. Apparently, it involved LeChuck being reincarnated as a walrus.
• Mortal Kombat 11: There are some references to a "Fiji Mission". Jaqui doesn't want anyone to know it, Future Johnny Cage couldn't help but tell it to his younger counterpart and Robocop thinks it's a "great story". Apparently, it involved uzis and umbrella drinks.
  • Dominic Ciancolo, voiceover director for Netherrealm Studios, has stated some extra information that only raises more questions: apparently it was a mission to infiltrate a terrorist organization that should have been simple but due to a combination of "sketchy intel," "pesky innocent bystanders," and a "particularly irate iguana," went sideways and now Jacqui refuses to speak about it.
• Moshi Monsters:
  • Apparently, one time, someone asked the villain Sweet Tooth their gender and didn't come back with the answer. All we know is that they were the last person to ask, they're still hospitalized, and they're "wearing a gobstopper".
  • When Dr C Fingz, a psychic creature, suggests that he save the day by singing a "Cosmic Harmony", the others say it is too dangerous because of what happened last time, which is never revealed.
• The game world in Nexus Clash is dotted with Exploration Badges, little notes on backstory events that one can find by searching certain places on the map hinted at in the lore. Since they grant Character Points, most people go looking for them eventually. The game's backstory is pretty exhaustive, so most of them are at least partially explained or linked to other pieces of the lore, but there are a few that are there to invoke this trope.
• No More Heroes III: It is never explained why Travis is in bandages and with a neck-brace during the introduction or how Naomi transformed into a cherry blossom tree.
• OMORI: The Branch Coral talks about how the wisest of the three Great Creatures was stripped of her wisdom and banished to The Abyss for committing an unspecified act of betrayal. It's implied that act of betrayal was Abbi trying to help Sunny come clean about Mari's death, but Omori sealed her in The Abyss so Sunny would not have to confront the Awful Truth.
• Pikmin 2: When you find the Broken Food Master (American English)/Divine Cooking Tool (British English) in the European/Australian version, part of Olimar's description is "I did try and be creative at cooking once before... but there are some things that are better left forgotten."
• Planescape: Torment:
  • There's one in the form of party banter. Various party members will ask Morte, a floating skull, what happened to his body, but he refuses to answer beyond "It's a long story and it involves the Head of Vecna." ^note He's lying; you learn later that his soul was condemned to the Pillar of Skulls when he died for telling a lie that resulted in someone else's death. The real Noodle Incident is the circumstances under which that occurred; they may or may not have involved you. Morte himself doesn't know.
  • There's also whatever your first incarnation did that got you into the huge mess that is the Nameless One's plight. The only thing we know is that it was unimaginably horrible, enough that the Practical Incarnation, who might we remind you faked loving a woman so she'd stick around as a ghost after death, doesn't even come close. Whatever it was, it was apparently so horrific that reality itself declared This Is Unforgivable!
• Plantasia: Before arriving at Jack's estate to grant him a wish, Holly's completed list of tasks to become a full fairy included solving the Sphinx's riddle, visiting the stone circle, and defeating a villain. It's anyone's guess as to how those went.
• In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, the seemingly mellow and laid-back Quagsire gives Scraggy some manner of punishment for his crimes that was terrible enough in the latter's eyes to make him obey his directions without question, on top of panicking if the former so much as emits a "Hmm?" in his direction. He goes on to note that he was once famous in the underworld, and Virizion also makes mention of him being quite the character back in his glory days, though specifics are never brought up.
• We never find out how Wheatley from Portal 2 recovered from being crushed to death. He tries to tell us, but the fact that Chell has to jump fifty feet in the air to hear what he has to say does not make his story more understandable. All we can deduce is that it involved a bird.
• Quest for Glory III:
  • Famous Explorer, in Famous Explorer's Correspondence Course, mentions East Fricana, where the game is set, but also mentions West Fricana, North Fricana, South Fricana, East LA, the Limpopo River, the Zezeboo Desert, and that time he met a girl named Boopsie, went exploring with Trudy Trueheart, and discovered the Great Lost City of the Brass Bikini.
  • Arne Saknoosen the earth pig has more stories to tell about things that are not in the game, such as the activities of the Aardvark Alliance, and how ants are quite the delicacy.
  • At the Welcome Inn, looking at a table will reveal it is The Fabled Table of Babel.
• Randal's Monday: Too many to count. Randal and Matt have gotten into a lot of shenanigans.
  Randal: Like what? When I gave that car load of nuns directions to a lesbian bar?
• In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, the duo comes across Qwark having an argument with his sidekick Skrunch with this exchange.
  Skrunch: [monkey noises]
  Qwark: I thought we agreed to put that jungle business behind us.
  Skrunch: [angrier monkey noises]
  Qwark: It was mating season! How could've I known she was your sister?
• In Ravensword: Shadowlands, the reason that Lamil is the former apprentice of the Archmage is that he once turned the Archmage's pet frog into a five-legged goat.
• Red Dead Redemption II: The details of the gang's botched Blackwater ferry robbery (also known as "The Blackwater Massacre") is never elaborated on very much. The thing we know is that it was a massive shootout between the Van der Linde gang vs the Blackwater Police and Pinkertons. Dutch Van der Linde also shot an innocent woman in head either before or during the shootout with the law and the exact reason he did this is never explained. It's also unexplained why exactly the heist went bad in the first place.
• Return to Zork has various characters making reference to a "boar in the forest" joke, which is always interrupted at inconvenient times. One could make the argument that the blacksmith's interruption, "Did you hear the one about the boar in the forest? Ooops, greasy fingers" is the whole joke, as it does gain laughs from the audience when you tell it at Chuckles Comedy Club. Eventually the player encounters a statue of a boar in The Forest of the Spirits, which must be struck by a sword to uncover one of the missing pieces of the Disc of Frobozz.
• In the MMO Rift, during one of the Storm Legion dungeons, a boss states he hasn't "had this much fun since the Blood Tornado Incident".
• Rune Factory 3: No one will explain to Micah what happened the last time Blaise drank wine. Whatever it was, it was public, it was embarrassing, and Blaise swore off wine because of it.
• In Runescape, you can learn the story of a minor quest character named 50% Luke if you wear a certain magical ring. You see, it all starts with this albatross... okay, the rest is kind of confidential, but the end result is a zombie pirate with a body half made of magical witchwood.
• Saints Row IV:
  • There's whatever reason Kinzie had for rescuing Keith David first. All she says is that he "was on the way" and cuts Keith off when he tries to explain. Keith just responds "Oh. Ohhhhhhh." and drops the subject.
  • A homie conversation between Shaundi and Fun Shaundi will have them recall "that time at the North Pier with Randall and Jackie". It involved fireworks and fuzzy handcuffs, apparently.
  • After creating your character, a cutscene plays where Pierce and King chew out the Boss for a problem that "alienated part of America/crazy people" and caused approval ratings to drop to (not by) twenty points.
  • In a homie conversation between Kinzie and Asha, we learn that the Boss has forbidden Kinzie from using the word "sisters" for some reason.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police:
  • In the Telltale episodes, the duo constantly refers to events that happen in other cases without getting into the specifics. Examples:
    Max: Great, now what am I going to do with the buckets of sea monster blood?
    
    Sam: Remember our old car, Max?
    Max: I said I was sorry!
    
    Sam: [looking at a dartboard with one dart in it] Someday we're going to finish that game.
    Max: I'm still trying to get the rest of the darts out of the police impound.
  • This is also present in the first game, Sam & Max Hit the Road. Early in the game you can... not go upstairs. When you try...
    Sam: We don't go upstairs.
    Max: Not since the accident.
  • These blend impressively seamlessly with references to older games; for someone who hadn't played the earlier games, things like the man locked inside their closet and Max's election to the presidency seem nearly as noodley.
• Shadowrun Hong Kong: Poetry slams are forbidden on the Shadowlands message board after an incident only known as "the Laughing Man debacle of '55". Apart from the implication that Harlequin was involved ("Laughing Man" is one of Harlequin's more well-known aliases), nothing is known. Granted, Harlequin is exactly the type of character who would do something to get poetry banned from an online forum either as part of something bigger or just for the laughs.
• Octodad Dadliest Catch: Near the beginning of the "Silent, but Dadly" level ^note after escaping the break room but before going into the main area of the aquarium, you can overhear this bit of dialogue from two marine biologists.
  Marine Biologist #1: I saw an octopus zooming around the tanks earlier!
  Marine Biologist #2: You're hallucinating. There hasn't been an octopus in this place since...The Incident.
• Persona:
  • We never find out exactly what Mitsuru's "executions" in Persona 3 entail; all we know is that Akihiko gets very uncomfortable whenever the subject comes up and refuses to say anything about it. It's become a bit of a Running Gag, to the point where her title in Persona 4: Arena is "The Imperious Queen of Executions". Fanon tends to depict it as something... kinky in nature.
    
    The manga adaptation depicts the "executions" as a rage-fueled super-powered blast of ice magic, leaving several characters frozen even in the midst of a hot spring. This is actually alluded to in the game itself if you talk to your party members after the Kyoto field trip, and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth also alludes to it when Mitsuru threatens Akihiko and Shinjiro with freezing them when they are arguing while shrunken.
  • Persona 4:
    • It's occasionally mentioned that Kanji singlehandedly beat a biker gang while he was still in middle school. Actual information on how the fight went down is never given, but Kanji finally relents and says the only reason he got into the fight in the first place was because they were making too much noise and giving his mom a headache, and Deidara confirms he used a shield as a weapon. The opening video shows bits of Kanji's beatdown of the bikers.
    • It's never revealed what Adachi did to get sent to Inaba. Considering his actions later on in the game, it's probably something really bad. Adachi gets his own social link in Persona 4 Golden, which gives a bit more insight into his character and what might have happened. While bright, Adachi is also a big time slacker; he's unmotivated, tries to wiggle out of assignments, takes shortcuts when he can't escape said assignments, and uses every opportunity he can to goof off. Presumably, this attitude is what got him reassigned to the boonies.
  • In Persona Q, in the "You in Wonderland" labyrinth, when Teddie offers to take over map-drawing duty to show off his 'amazing art skills,' Yosuke shoots him down, recalling an unknown incident when Teddie designed a Junes flyer advertising a sale. The customers called it cursed and never came, and Yosuke's father called it 'legendary,' which Yosuke says was referring to how much their sales plummeted.
• In Silver Falls Gaiden: Deathly Delusion Destroyers and Ruby River, the loading screens provide background information about Silver Falls and the surrounding world. While these usually show up and disappear quickly, there are tons of strange, creepy, or hilarious tidbits.
  • Clementine Beaufort is the part-time bartender of the Dusty Cactus. Despite her cute appearance, she once took out a 230 lb drunk trucker with a single uppercut. This was apparently caught on video, and a still image from it is now hanging framed over the bar as a warning to rowdy patrons.
  • Sheriff Moss is considered an in-universe badass because he stopped a rabid coyote that had wandered into town and was attacking the bystanders. He subdued and captured this rabid coyote with his bare hands.
  • The classic Lord of Lumber Jacks contest was nearly ended forever due to a drunken brawl that resulted in two men and a raccoon being hospitalized. It returned under new management.
  • The family who owned the Golden Ridge Ranch mysteriously went missing. All attempts to move in and restore the ranch have failed within a month; apparently, it's so haunted that it's impossible to live there.
  • The Jen Ericsson food brand is plagued with factory production mishaps, like the time it somehow switched the bottles for ketchup and mayonnaise, or when they accidentally mixed maple syrup with mustard, or when they shipped salt shakers that lacked holes.
• In The Silver Lining, Hassan explains that he was almost executed and can no longer enter the Isle of Wonder. When Graham asks what he did:
  Hassan: Er... well, let's just say I had two gold earrings, Sire, and I'm not likely to get the second one back any time soon.
• Skylanders: Giants has a scene in which Captain Flynn needs some supplies and sends you to get them because "Unfortunately, due to a 'misunderstanding', I'm not allowed to set foot on this island. Heh, it's a long story." Later, after you have taken down an entire tribe of evil, elvish beings called Drow and taken a magical compass that they have been worshipping...
  Flynn: Wow, that went way better than when I tried it.
  Cali: Wait, you tried getting this before?
  Flynn: Hey, I said it was a long story!
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: Murray mentions that his master, The Guru, doesn't live in his hut anymore because of something Murray calls "the unspeakable". All known is that there's purple smoke, and that Murray had to apologize for a whole month before he was forgiven for what he did.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Eggman's explanation in Sonic Generations involving his defeat in Sonic Colors definitely comes off as this to those who had not played Colors, especially considering far more people have played Generations than they have Colors.
  • In Sonic Lost World, Tails mentions having once built a television set out of paperclips and having reprogrammed a supercomputer with nothing but dishwashing detergent and a toothpick.
• In the American Spanish localization of Splatoon, Callie mentions that Marie somehow got them both banned from eating at Mahi-Mahi Resort.
  Marie: You threw that handful of caviar at me first!
• Space Bomber throws a really weird one in one of the cut scenes. In the middle of all that battling against alien invaders...
  Alien Leader: [with fierce, glowing red eyes]: "You, degenerate President, we'll tell the world about your secret sex life!"
  The President: "No, please don't. Let's take a break in there... for a friendly talk..." [cue next level starting, and said incident is NEVER mentioned for the remainder of the game]
  • The above scene appears to be a Take That! directed at the then-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, considering the game is released back when Clinton's still in office (roughly the same time as the Monica Lewinsky scandal). Although the President in the game doesn't resemble Clinton to say the least...
• In Star Control 2, the Orz displaced the Androsynth, who were apparently conducting experiments with other dimensions. This made them visible to the Orz. Somehow this led to the Androsynth disappearing, leaving their cities behind in ruins. The Orz are/is very sensitive about the Androsynth, and will fight if pressured to tell about their fate. According to the Arilou, even knowing too much about other dimensions makes one vulnerable to extra-dimensional dangers, such as the Orz, and the Arilou suggest that this is what happened to the Androsynth.
  Arilou: If I tell you more, you will be able to look where you never could before, and while looking you can and will be seen. You do not want to be seen. The Androsynth were seen, and there are no Androsynth now. Only Orz.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In the prologue of Super Mario Galaxy, just right before she is captured by Bowser and carried off into space, Peach can be seen with a little white Luma in her hands (who will then help Mario save her from Bowser). However, it's never explained how, where, or when she got that Luma in the first place.
  • At the end of Super Mario Galaxy 2, Lubba actually tells Mario that he met Rosalina before. However, it's never explained when the two last met, and Lubba isn't even in the first Galaxy game at all.
  • Paper Mario: Sticker Star: The description for the "Pocket Watch" Thing mentions that it's been used to try to prevent "that unfortunate chowder incident" from having happened, but without success.
    While this thing can theoretically manipulate time, every effort to use it to go back and avert that unfortunate chowder incident has failed.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • "Meet the Medic":
    • This example, crossed with Orphaned Punchline:
      Medic: Vait! It gets better! Vhen ze patient woke up, his skeleton was missing, and ze doctor was never heard from again! [laughs before the Heavy starts to laugh] Anyway, zat's how I lost my medical license.
    • BLU Spy's severed but still living head is also being kept in the Medic's refrigerator for some reason^note a later released animated storyboard reveals that the Spy was decapitated during an attempt to infiltrate the base and then rendered immortal by a prototype Medigun.
      Spy: Kill me.
      Medic: Later.
  • In the 2011 Smissmas comic, the BLU Soldier acts as the Scout's court-appointed lawyer. When Miss Pauling asks the BLU Spy how that happened:
    Spy: It's a long story, but chapter one: his roommate is a magician. Should I continue?
    Pauling: You know what? Never mind.
  • Soldier's past seems to carry several of these, including a nazi-killing spree he had well after WWII was over, becoming a priest in Guam, and becoming a park ranger with enough authority to evict his roommate to keep his castle. Madness takes you to odd places, it would seem.
    
    Cold Day in Hell suggests that the Soldier has been naked and covered in honey on at least two separate occasions, with a joke Clue from Ed. suggesting that one of those occasions lasted 37 issues, and the other was during a double date with Scout. The Naked and the Dead reveals more comics detailing Soldier's naked adventures: one issue of Naked Soldier and Clothed Scout Adventures, 145 issues of All-Nude Tales of Valor, and one million issues of Full Frontal Bravery.
  • When Soldier tells Zhanna to dispatch people "with extreme prejudice", he mentions that at some point in the past he made the same mistake Zhanna did: thinking that it involved being racist at the targets. This has, perhaps thankfully, never been explained.
  • Finally, we have issue of the Pyro's gender, which Valve is keen to tease about. Their official stance: it's one of those questions "that get asked so often that they become, in a sense, unanswerable."
  • Heavy has one as well, although it's mentioned in Poker Night at the Inventory rather than his origin game:
    Heavy: We had to either box or learn to herd goats. [Beat] ...I am not good with goats.
  • In "The Naked and the Dead", Medic reveals that he's repeatedly regrown Demoman's eye, and every time it's grown bat wings and tried to kill them. Variations have included giant, vampire, brain-in-a-jar, and one time when it went back in time and tried to become their parents.
• Flavor text for Mikleo's default hairstyle in Tales of Zestiria mentions Sorey isn't allowed to touch Mikleo's hair, not after the incident.
• Them's Fightin' Herds: In an intro between Pom and Oleander, the latter's Tome of Eldritch Lore asks if he can keep Pom. She proceeds to answer "No! You ate the last one!"
• Tomb Raider Chronicles has Pierre and Larson stalking Lara from a distance and Larson attempts to shoot her, only for Pierre to smack his arm at the last minute to throw off his aim because they still need her alive. When Larson protests, Pierre says Larson was kicked in the head by a horse, thus his brain isn't working correctly. Larson asks Pierre how he even knew about that event, but it's never elaborated on.
• Touhou Project:
  • The print work Perfect Memento in Strict Sense tells of a rampage by vampires when they first entered Gensokyo. The only detail about this rampage we are given is that they were defeated. The author doesn't even tell us if the vampires in question are the resident Scarlet sisters or some other unknown persons. Strange Creators of Outer World later confirmed that Remilia was the culprit behind the vampire incident.
  • Several incidents in All There in the Manual don't give any detail except for the most basic.
    • The formation of the Underground society only explains that the Ministry of Right and Wrong lacked budget to maintain that Hell, but never elaborate other than few throwaway lines of connection between Yamaxanadu with the Komeiji family.
    • Why The Four Deva disbanded and the Oni left the Youkai Mountain is even more mysterious, except for the Oni's boredom at the lack of challenge from humans.
    • The most glaring lack of detail is the very creation of the setting of Gensokyo itself. The youkai sages made a pact with a dragon and the Great Hakurei Border was established. That's really all we know for certain.
• This is probably how Phoenix Wright convicts his opponents (even if they're good guys or himself) in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 when using his Level 3 Hyper Combo. We don't know what they did, but he can find them guilty for it. Not even counting the Eldritch Abominations that should be above the law, he can even convict Doctor Doom, who has diplomatic immunity. And evidence of their guilt can be a vase, a watch, and a photograph. Yes, somehow he can use these to prove the real author of a crime was the wolf goddess of the sun.
• At the end of Um Jammer Lammy, Lammy discovers her bandmates have gone through similar misadventures while trying to make it to the concert. Katy is dressed up in jungle camo, and Ma-san is wearing a fez and riding a camel.
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves:
  • Sully tells Nate that they should follow a hose that leads to a campsite, to which Nate remarks, "You always follow the hose. Remember back in Montreal?" Sully answers, "You'll never let that go, will you?" with no explanation as to what happened in Montreal.
  • Sully has a few of these.
    Sully: I'm sweating like a hooker in church.
    Nate: ...You brought a hooker to church?
    Sully: Why not?
  • Many of Nate's past exploits with Sully and a few other characters are briefly mentioned as Noodle Incidents through banter during the levels. In addition to the one above, memorable ones include getting lost in Peru and winding up in jail within a year of Nate meeting Sully, and winding up behind the Taj Mahal naked while taking a shortcut with Dante. For those who didn't play Drake's Fortune, the references relating to bailing out of Sully's plane and worrying about the parachutes also turn into this.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Your Friend in the Black Market Mercurio mentions that he can never go back to New York because "some shit went down" — the only time he was in a situation he couldn't handle — and declines to elaborate.
• We Happy Few: A rare case of this trope played seriously in a dark direction. Whatever the citizens of Wellington Wells did to drive off the Germans is only ever described as the "Very Bad Thing". What we do know is, it worked, and the Wellies hated having to do it so damn much they drugged themselves into oblivious bliss, and basically rebuilt their entire society around ignoring the fact that it happened, because they were greatly worried their society would simply collapse from sheer guilt otherwise. In essence, the entire city is deliberately invoking this trope by using Joy to keep the Noodle Incident a Noodle Incident. It's made even worse when you find out exactly what the Very Bad Thing was; it wasn't a dreadful act of desperate resistance, but cowardly capitulation to the demands of a German Empire that was barely in any state to enforce its demands.^{the full story}The Germans approached Wellington Wells with seemingly an entire Panzer division, threatening to raze the entire town to the ground if they did not turn over their children to be Germany's latest generation of Child Soldiers. Believing that any amount of resistance would be crushed, the town gave up their children... and only discovered later that the "Panzers" menacing them were nothing but cardboard and plywood replicas. And then to further twist the dagger, all the Wellington Wells children died anyways when a bomb destroyed the train they were on. It's no wonder that it was feared the sheer despair felt by the city threatened to cause it to collapse.
• In World of Warcraft, two NPCs walking around Stormwind (a human and a dwarf) will have randomly generated conversations about noodle incidents while they were at war. They can go something like this:
  Aedis Brom: Less than a hundred of us, and over a thousand orcs. Only a handful of us managed to walk away from that one.
  Christoph Faral: 'Course I remember that night. Two inches to the left and you'd be drinking with that elf, Morris. That was my best shirt, too.
  Aedis Brom: You are constantly surprising me with what a person can live through.

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