Samus Is A Girl / Video Games

• 9 Monkeys of Shaolin have the Red Wukou leader, a ruthless marauder captain in a White Oni Mask who killed your grandfather who raised you and nearly killed you, until you trained with the Shaolin monks who rescued you and embarks on your quest for revenge. After nearly an hour of gameplay, you confront the Red Wukou leader and finds out she is named Hannya, and a woman underneath her mask. Your character actually exclaimed "Wait, you're a woman?" in a cutscene.
• The mysterious scrambled voice in the marine campaign in Aliens vs. Predator 2, turns out to be a woman named Tomiko, though she never actually does any fighting.
• When first met as an enemy all you see of Mudrock in Arknights is a masked suit of powered armor. It isn’t until Mudrock becomes playable and is promoted to Elite 2 that she removes her helmet and opens up the top half of her armor that we see her face that her identity is revealed as a pale Sarkaz girl. In universe, her faceplate is noted to muffle her voice significantly to the point that many of her squadmembers did not realize that Mudrock was a girl, having never made the connection between the random Sarkaz woman in their camp and the hulking frame of powered armor swinging a massive hammer that commanded them.
• King in the first Art of Fighting game nearly pulls this off despite not wearing an actual disguise. By finishing her off with a special move in the last round, the player can blow her shirt open and expose her bra. In the second game and The King of Fighters series, King's true gender is an already known fact.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • The last target in Assassin's Creed is not there when you go to kill him. The person disguised as him is revealed to be a woman after Altaïr defeats her in a swordfight. It's only somewhat given away in that when you hit her, her pained grunts are notably higher pitched than normal.
  • In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, we're treated to James Kidd, the supposed illegitimate son of the captain William Kidd, who reveals to Edward (and the player) her true identity as Mary Read, an assassin/pirate.
• In the ending cutscene of Avenger for the PC Engine, the helicopter's pilot finally removes her helmet.
• Batman: The Telltale Series sees the Children of Arkham's leader turn out to be Vicki Vale.
• Toby Masuyo in Baraduke predates Samus by about a year (although the fact that the game calls her "Kissy" is a bit of a giveaway). Her next appearances in the Mr. Driller series and Namco × Capcom do not play with this trope, opting to have her helmet-less (she's Mr. Driller's mom, after all). Ironically, Namco decided to officially name her "Toby Masuyo" — thus giving her a Gender-Blender Name long after The Reveal in her game of origin.
• Blaster Master Zero III shows Leibniz had been a girl this whole time. This fact ends up being missed by a lot of people because no one else in the game is aware of it, and it's only explicitly confirmed in outside material.
• Bloodborne: Promotional material for the DLC heavily featured a hunter sitting down with their hat obscuring their face. Due to the game's generally androgynous clothing, it's pretty much impossible to tell that this is a woman until you reach her in the DLC itself. She's the penultimate boss, Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower.
• The Adventurer from Bravely Default. The mysterious red-cloaked figure serving as a Save Point, item store, and Optional Boss throughout the franchise shows up in the sequel's finale to save the day, revealing herself to be a woman and a Celestial Being capable of traveling through time and space.
• In the game by Tim Schafer, Brütal Legend, Eddie, the main character, fights many demonic druid enemies in robes, and then faces one of them head on. In the middle of the fight, that "evil druid" flips off her hood to reveal that this is, in fact, a female human. Eddie then remarks, "Oh no, don't tell me I've been slaying hot girls this whole time."
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II: El Sin Nombre ("The Nameless" in Spanish), the invisible and feared leader of the Las Almas cartel, was always referred in conversations with masculine articles and pronouns, both in Spanish and English. Needless to say, the characters were surprised when they learn that her true identity is one Valeria Garza, a woman who is supposed to be the capo's personal sicaria (hitwoman). Even more so when they also learn that she has a history with Colonel Vargas as a former operative of Mexican special forces.
• Syfa/Sypha from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. Just to make sure the audience knows Sypha is a woman, in Castlevania: Judgment she has very large breasts, and her breasts are even a joke in Maria Renard's story. In addition, her ending confirms that she was deliberately posing as a man in Castlevania III.
• Here◊ is the sprite for the playable Old Axe Armor from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Here◊ is an official piece of artwork of the same character. A rare case where this is likely done for gameplay reasons, as one boss has a Charm Person attack that only works on males, and as Old Axe Armor is the only character who fights alone, that fight would've been Unintentionally Unwinnable if they were treated as male.
• Club Penguin: The Director of the Elite Penguin Force was assumed to be male for a long since they were only seen in the shadows and any Tertiary Sexual Characteristics weren't evident. At the end of Operation: Blackout, The Director turns out to be Aunt Arctic.
• The sequel to Crystal Quest reveals your Flying Saucer — depicted in gameplay as a 16-pixel-wide circle — to be piloted by a six-legged Space Cow (who is, of course, a girl).
• Monica from Dark Cloud 2 first appears disguised as a young child when you first meet her, and after she defeats the Monster Clown who was trying to seize Max's MacGuffin, removes her hood and reveals herself to be a woman.
• The detective in Dark Parables has her gender confirmed by unlockable Bonus Material in the collector's edition of the first game. This makes sense, as there is almost no character interaction in this game which could have revealed the detective's gender. Later in the series, other characters refer to her using female pronouns.
• Inverted in Dark Souls, where we have Gwyndolin, the youngest Child of Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. Judging from his appearance and his title as "Goddess of the Darkmoon," you wouldn't think he was actually a guy. When he was young, he exhibited an affinity for moonlight magic, a trait considered feminine. Gwyn raised his son as a daughter, having him wear a beautiful moonlight dress and even forcing him to wear a ring that would magically make him compose himself as a woman. The only indication that Gwyndolin is actually male is in a few item descriptions. The androgynous voice and lack of real dialogue directly from him concerning his gender leaves him perfectly passable as female, and the trope only kicks in if you read the item descriptions or when Yorshka mentions that Gwyndolin was her elder brother if you ranked high enough in Blade of the Darkmoon.
• In Dead Secret, the person behind the Malevolent Masked Man is Josie Herrera as revealed in the Best and Good Ending.
• This is the main twist in the ending of the iOS edition of Dead Space. Vandal reveals her true identity to be Karrie Norton as she lies wounded on the floor near the defeated final boss.
• In Death Stranding, main character Sam names his baby companion Lou, after the son that he lost prior to the beginning of the story. Deadman also refers to the baby as a "little guy" several times, so there's no reason to assume he's not male. Except the post-credits scene reveals Lou was short for Louise.
• The first Destroy All Humans! game reveals at the end that Majestic-12 leader Silhouette is a woman. It's possible to figure this out earlier, though; reading the thoughts of a Majestic agent may reveal that "no one's supposed to know Silhouette's a chick", "his" voice sounds distinctly effeminate behind the voice changer, and of course, if you check the credits, you'll see that Nika Futterman voiced "him". Specifically, she uses a fedora, a gas mask, a trenchcoat, and a voice changer to disguise herself as a man because, as a woman in The '50s, she knew she'd never be taken seriously in her job otherwise. Her experience working with her misogynistic male colleagues has made her extremely misandrist in turn, and one of the things she hopes to do once she takes power as The Woman Behind the Man is create a matriarchy.
  Crypto: You're a chick?
  Silhouette: I'm a patriot. If you had to put up with politicians playing grab-ass all day long, you'd wear a mask, too.
• In Disgaea 2, everybody assumed Overlord Zenon is a male, but turns out Rozalin was the reincarnated Zenon, though the game's "reincarnation" mechanic allows non plot characters to reincarnate into any class, even opposite sex ones. And technically, we don't actually know what Zenon's original gender was. Note that Rozalin is very clearly female, so this is more of a case of The Girl is Samus.
• Dragon Age:
  • Shale from Dragon Age: Origins is a amnesiac golem who has a masculine personality and build. However, if you have Shale in your party during the "A Paragon of Her Kind" quest, it is revealed that Shale was once a dwarven woman named Shayle. Even Shale herself is stunned by this revelation. Her voice is obviously female, she has an obsession with "pretty pretty gemstones," and if you keep them both in the party she flirts with Sten constantly.
  • In the universe backstory, there is a tale of an Orlesian woman named Aveline, who dared to compete in a knight's tournament, hiding her identity behind a helmet even when it was ill-suited to a particular game. She matched a rather arrogant knight favored by the emperor, fighting to a standstill in a duel when a chance blow sent her to the ground and knocked her helmet off. The haughty knight tried to have the match declared invalid because of her womanhood, to which the crowd responded with a hefty amount of jeering. The knight responded by killing her as she lay helpless. The at-the-time emperor's son, who also was bested by the very same woman in the tournament, was taken aback, and he abolished the laws prohibiting women to become knights in Orlais when he ascended to the throne and posthumously knighted her. Aveline Vallen in the second game was named in honor of this knight.
  • Also in the backstory, the ancient Tevinter Imperium worshipped seven Old Gods in the form of dragons. All seven were assumed to be male, but in the Jaws of Hakkon DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, the player finds a temple devoted to the Old God Razikale, the Dragon of Mystery. Inscriptions found in the temple refer to Razikale with female pronouns.
• DragonFable has Vilmor. She was assumed to been a male not only by the PC, but also by a majority of the players, despite obvious hints early on into her storyline. Was even referred to as male in a Newsletter.
• Junon from Dragon Force pulls this one on everyone in her world until her helmet gets knocked off during an encounter. She's the one in the badass black armor.◊ She's also #139.◊
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest III: Surprisingly for the legend it's based on, non-playable characters remarks will confirm even after the disguise comes down that the monster Orochi was actually female.
  • At the end of Dragon Quest Monsters, the masked monster master at the Starry Night tournament is revealed to be Milayou, the protagonist's younger sister.
• The Power Armor in the Fallout series has always been gender neutral, but hearing a female voice from the Power Armor speakers in Fallout 3 caused players spit-takes.
  • Before then, most power-suited Enclave soldiers in Fallout 2 were actually female. Even some that you spoke to.^note Humorously, Sergeant Dornan is referred to by the interface as a "she", though that's more of a bug than this. Sergeant Dornan is very definitely male.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has two female Nightkin super mutants, Lily and Tabitha, who have the same guttural voice as the other mutants. In addition, female characters wearing full helmeted NCR Ranger/Riot Gear Armor or Reinforced Combat Armor are nearly indistinguishable from males.
  • The Mechanist in the DLC expansion Automatron for Fallout 4, whose helmet contains a voice modulator to sound male. She's actually a young and socially awkward Wrench Wench named Isabel Cruz.
    • It's not possible to tell if the power armored guards seen on board the Prydwen or encountered on patrols throughout the Commonwealth are male or female until they speak to you. Like in Fallout 3, it can be a bit of a surprise sometimes to hear a female voice coming out of the helmet's speakers.
  • In contrast to the exclusively male Powered Armor Enclave Soldiers in Fallout 3, the New Vegas mod For the Enclave seems to have more female soldiers in armor than male. Most of them also repeatedly claim that General Jamison will lead them to glory, almost as often as NCR Troopers will complain about how patrolling the Mojave almost makes them wish for a nuclear winter.
• In Faria, the player character is only called by a player-given name and represented by an androgynous Super-Deformed sprite, and the gender is not revealed until the king explains that he can't give her the Standard Hero Reward for having saved the princess (the fake one, that is). However, it turns out he's really a handsome prince under a curse.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Faris of Final Fantasy V. Although she seems to pass for male strictly because she says so, as she's pretty enough for Bartz and Galuf (dueling Bobs) to swoon over her sleeping form, still thinking she's a he. This, of course, leads to Gilgamesh's classic line in the GBA Remake: "And now we will fight like men. And ladies. And ladies who dress like men."
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2 plays with this in reverse. One of the recurring enemy characters is the Night Dancer, a Bangaa that looks, acts and is referred to as being a girl, but the fight against her has a Law in place forbidding harming the opposite sex, setting up a potential hazard for the player who does not understand the difference between gender and sex. Lampshaded by an NPC who is confused on what gender the Night Dancer is and another NPC refers to the character as an old man.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers has Giott, the central protagonist of the expansion's Healer role questline. Giott is a dwarf who appears male from outward appearances, judging by the large bushy white beard, combined with a propensity for drinking, insults, and solving problems with a warhammer and has quite the mouth. In the final quest, a Dramatic Unmask reveals Giott to be a dwarven woman: dwarf beards are actually artificial and part of their face-concealing helms, without which they are visually indistinguishable from the lalafells of Hydaelyn. The game's quest journal even goes out of its way to avoid using pronouns when it comes to talking about Giott, referring to her either by her name or simply as "the dwarf", without any gendered pronouns.
• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, there's a masked swordsman with a rather high voice who shows up early in the game, claiming to be the legendary Hero-King Marth. While Marth is somewhat androgynous, he has always definitely been male... but it turns out this "Marth" is a woman. Specifically, she is actually Lucina, Chrom's time-traveling daughter.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a mysterious masked individual calling themselves the Flame Emperor is conspiring to bring down the Church of Seiros. Naturally, she eventually turns out to be a woman, and in fact her mask is hiding none other than Edelgard von Hresvelg, who depending on your Big First Choice may be either one of the main protagonists, or the Big Bad.
• Forza Motorsport 7 reveals that M. Rossi, the series' top AI driver, is female and her first name is Maria.
• In Fossil Fighters Frontier, it's revealed that T-rex, the Mascot Mook of the franchise, is female... or at least, the iconic version of her is. The classic red-and-black Fire-type T-rex seen in previous installments of the franchise is the female version, called T-rex Sue. The game introduces a male version named T-rex Stan, who is Air-type instead.
• This happens to Apollonia Vaar of Granblue Fantasy, under her occupation as the fully-armored Black Knight. While it's quite blatant from her voice and the in-game journal makes no attempt to hide her gender, the characters are a bit taken back when they see her without the armor. With the exception of Eugen, who knew her identity, because she is his daughter.
• The main character of Ghost of a Tale is male, so the trope does not apply to him. It does, however, apply to the legendary hero Duinlan who you learn from her own lingering ghost was a "she" in life, even though the stories of her battles have long forgotten that detail.
• Lampshaded in Grandia where one of the protagonists is initially introduced while she is off-screen as simply the best adventurer in the adventurers' society. Cue Justin imagining him as a large burly man with many scars before meeting her and realizing she is in fact female.
• Julian from Growlanser. Her portrait is a giveaway when you first meet her as an Imperial Knight (you can see she has cleavage if you closely examine the portrait where she holds her sword). It was stated that Imperial Knights does not allow females to join, thus she hid her gender (though her two fellow companions Oscar and Lyell already found out and choose to ignore it).
• The video game series Guilty Gear is notorious for pulling off a reverse of SIAG (Bridget needs no introduction), but what many people don't know is that Word of God has stated that Justice, the final boss of the first game, the Commander Gear, a large, powerful robot-type person with a noticeable crotch spike, is really a female and was a dear friend of Sol Badguy's. In fact, Xrd -REVELATOR- openly reveals her to be, as implied throughout the previous games, his old lover from back when they were human.
  • In regards to the infamous crotch spike, it's possible that the protrusion on her armor is Justice's equivalent of an ovipositor; after all, she is the queen bee/queen ant of the Gears. The fact that Dizzy, Justice's daughter, gives birth to her son Sin by laying an egg (as recounted in the Guilty Gear 10th Memorial Book) seems to support this assumption.
  • Kum Haehyun from Xrd does this deliberately. The real, average sized girl is inside the human-sized mecha that looks like a buff old man.
• The Stellaron Hunter Sam from Honkai: Star Rail is presented as someone inside a suit of Power Armor, who speaks in a male voice and is assumed to be a man. The Penacony Trailblaze Missions eventually reveal that underneath the armor, "he" is actually Firefly, the young woman whom the Trailblazer had become acquainted with as they entered the Dreamscape.
• In Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora, we are served a double dose of this trope. Private Inspector Jones is respected and well-established in the police force, and depending on your dialog choices, you can go quite a long way before someone call her by full name, "Emma Jones." Her figure being little more than a blocky badass fedora over a blocky trenchcoat doesn't exactly help in identifying her gender, especially if you have met her girlfriend before the reveal. Special mention for weasely dialog writing as her girlfriend calls her "Em," which can look like she's simply hesitating when speaking. The second serving of this trope is delivered shortly after, when talking with your sidekick, the cat Frankie. While you had previously the chance to learn that Frankie is the only cat to have made it into the police force ever, you probably did not suspect that "Frankie" was short for "Francine."
• Subverted in Hydorah. Throughout the game, the player character is conspicuously helmeted, but is revealed in official artwork to be male.
• In Jay's Journey, Shade. Not only did everyone think Shade (aka Tanya) was male, Atolla believed Shade was Tanya's brother Tezla, and a series of flashbacks implied the same conclusion until the last one.
• In Katana ZERO, the masked solider called Headhunter who was encountered with The Dragon at one point, battles Zero in the underground bunker, and Zero tossing one knife caused the mask to break, showing Headhunter was a girl.
• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, it turns out Dark Lord Gaol is one. It's been speculated that this was a deliberate nod to the Trope Namer herself.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, the Predecessor Villain Darth Revan wears baggy robes and a mask, and is always referred to with gender-neutral writing. They turn out to be you, so if you are a woman, then so is she.
• In League of Legends, a lot of players were initially surprised to find out Rek'Sai's gender on her reveal. Turns out being a rampaging monster imbued with interdimensional corruption isn't just for dudes anymore.
• In The Legend of Dragoon, the "Black Monster" who murders Moon Children and any innocents in their way every 108 years is referred to either with masculine or neutral pronouns. Later in the game, this "Monster" is revealed to be a female party member who you first met not even ten minutes into the game (and becomes your fourth recruited party member). This is further amplified in the Phantom Ship where the Monster is referred to with masculine pronouns a lot by Dart (the protagonist) and the ghosts onboard, while the Black Monster herself tags along the entire time.
• The Legend of Heroes - Trails:
  • In Trails from Zero, the assassin Yin from the Heiyue Corp. turns out to be female, her identity being Rixia Mao. Though the Updated Re-release would instantly give away the reveal.
  • Arianrhod, though in this case is subverted since she was addressed as female prior to appearing.
  • The Grandmaster of Ouroboros is revealed to be a woman. The reveal was hinted during Trails of Cold Steel II when McBurn drops a comment saying he'll think the plan goes the way "she wants". With said character making her appearance in Cold Steel IV.
• Zelda's disguise as the male Sheik in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, who was designed with a male character model to keep the disguise more convincing; the Water Sage Ruto actually referred to Sheik as male in the game. For some time, there was a very popular fan theory which stated that Sheik is male, and that Zelda not only changes appearance but also physical sex when she transforms. Word of God has since stated that this is not so; Zelda can't change her entire body like that, just a few surface details. There is also another example in the Spirit Temple, when the Iron Knuckle miniboss is revealed to be the very female Nabooru.
  • This is subverted with Sheik's later appearances in Super Smash Bros. and Hyrule Warriors, where her design is very obviously female.
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has a gender-inverted option in the story of the eight heroines. Legend has it there were eight heroines of ancient Gerudo (an Always Female race save for their one king, Ganondorf). Seven of them were well known Gerudo who each exemplified a special power: skill, spirit, endurance, knowledge, flight, motion and gentleness. The eighth is not well known at all, and a side quest involves delving deeper. As it turns out, this eighth heroine was actually a man, who, due to Gerudo law, was not permitted into their town. This is said to cause great shame to the Gerudo. The archeologist delving deeper was greatly impressed.
• The NES game Mach Rider had an arcade port where the eponymous character is seemingly revealed to be female after playing through enough levels. It might not be the case, as it could simply be Fanservice to the player, but if it were really the case it would mean that she predates Samus herself as Nintendo's first heroine.
• The doctor in Mad Rat Dead is referred to with masculine pronouns by Mad Rat, but can possibly have a feminine name as a result of you inputting your name at the very beginning.
• Word of God states that this was to have been the big reveal at the end of the fifth game in the old ZX Spectrum Magic Knight series (Finders Keepers, Spellbound, Knight Tyme, Stormbringer and...). Possibly Older Than the NES, possibly not (the first two games both came out in 1985, and the first game definitely refers to Magic Knight as 'he', so it may not have been planned at that point).
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 2, "The Convict" is known only as "Jack," a psychotic mass-murderer with extremely intense biotic powers. Throughout the recruitment mission, Jack is referenced as a terrifying individual, but never referred to with male or female pronouns. Shepard is surprised, upon releasing Jack, to discover that Jack is a woman. This reveal was spoiled both in the advertising and the demo for the game.
  • In the Mass Effect 2 DLC Lair of the Shadow Broker, a variant is used where Shepard needs to solve what appears to be a classic 5-square logic problem, identifying an agent known as "The Observer" among five suspects of five species with five occupations, given only fragmentary information. The catch is that it's none of them; the sharp player will notice that all five suspects are referred to by male pronouns, but the Observer is "she" and "her."
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda invokes this. The salarian ark Parcherro is captured by or rather, sold out to, the kett. Captain Hayjer theorizes correctly that their pathfinder, the female Zevin Raeka, would be in serious danger if caught, so he engineers a Faking the Dead plot. He uses the body of a male salarian who died when the kett took the ship and puts his body in Raeka's pod. The plan operates on the belief that, since the kett have no experience with salarians, they would be fooled by this trick, but any rescuers from the Milky Way would know the difference between male and female salarians, and easily see through the trick.
• Metal Gear
  • Metal Gear Solid does this with Meryl, who "disguises" herself as a male soldier, though it's really only because all the uniforms look more or less exactly alike.
  • The Cyborg Ninja in Metal Gear Solid 2 is not Gray Fox as in the first game, but instead Olga Gurlukovich.
  • Dr. Clark was initially identified by Naomi in Metal Gear Solid as a man in the game but in the novelization, she refers them as a woman. The latter is later used as the canonical gender for Dr. Clark and proven true by Big Boss who reveals that Dr. Clark is actually Para-Medic. The database for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots as well as recordings by Huey Emmerich in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain explain that Clark has become so reclusive that almost nothing about them is unknown, not even their gender or age, which is why Huey refers to them as a man in his tapes.
• The Trope Namer is from Metroid, which ends with the plot twist that protagonist Samus was a girl the whole time, revealing herself to be dressed in increasingly skimpy outfits underneath the armor depending on how fast you finish the game. As the troper namer, all instances from the Metroid series get their own folder on the main page.
• During Mighty No. 9's Kickstarter campaign, when discussing Mighty No. 8, the developers revealed that they initially planned to have Two Girls to a Team regarding the Mighty Numbers themselves, so director Koji Imaeda requested No. 8 to be a girl. The resulting preliminary sketch the lead character designer Kimo Kimo created for No. 8 was of a man, since he felt it matched the character's theme (radar and optical camouflage) better. The project leader, Keiji Inafune, liked the design, so it appeared that Mighty No. 3 was subjected to The Smurfette Principle... until a later update long after the Kickstarer campaign revealed that Kimo Kimo made Mighty No. 2 a girl as well, since he found No. 2's theme (water and ice) a better fit for the gender. Of course, the finalized version of No. 2's character design was one of the first things presented in the Kickstarter campaign, and since it was essentially a baby in an old-fashioned diving suit, it was impossible to determine her gender from appearances alone.
• In Mirror's Edge, Faith spends part of the game chasing after an assassin and fellow runner, whom Faith assumes to be male. Much later, when Faith gets into combat with the assassin, it is revealed that it is none other than her treacherous best friend, Celeste.
• The otherwise featureless detective in the PC Hidden Object Game series Mystery Case Files is revealed to be this. Her very feminine voice is heard on the telephone at the end of the second game of the Ravenhearst arc. However, later in the series a new dev team made it more ambiguous, giving the player the choice of whether to have a male or female character. Later still, when Eipix Entertainment took over the series, the Master Detective went back to female.
• Hooktail, the boss of the first level in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, is assumed to be male by all characters (and described with male pronouns in Goombella's Tattle), until the final chapter, when you meet Gloomtail in the Palace of Shadow. When your partner asks what Hooktail is doing here when you've already beaten him (as Gloomtail is essentially a palette swap of Hooktail), Gloomtail becomes furious upon learning what you did to his precious baby sister. Tattling on Gloomtail elicits a hilariously shocked reaction to this revelation from Goombella.
• Naoto Shirogane in Persona 4. With the twist that the party finds out when they show up to rescue her, rather than her rescuing them. Unfortunately this was completely spoilered by the dub — in the Japanese version her being voiced by a woman was hardly unusual (a lot of young men and boys are voiced by women in anime and games), but in English her gender is completely unmistakable, ruining the surprise.
• Pilgrim (RPG Maker): The zombie Suu is referred to by Akemi as a guy when first seeing her outstretched hand, and her Bifauxnen looks certainly do nothing to dispel that. But the true end reveals that she is the Alpha Bitch who bullied Akemi, now stuck in a dead body.
• In the main series Pokémon games, the assignment of genders for Pokémon have been a part of the series' gameplay mechanics starting with Generation II's Gold and Silver. Since then, members of certain species can be either gender, designated to be only one gender, or genderless. Transferring a Pokémon that could be either gender from Gen I to Gen II would finally reveal whether it's male or female. Players can experience these reveals again, because the Gen I games have been released on the 3DS Virtual Console. Later on, they can transfer Pokémon with unknown genders from those games to Sun and Moon.
• Portal plays with this, in that the main character is female, but there's no indication of this until you happen to get a good look at yourself through a portal. While you can clearly see yourself in the very first portal you step through, it's hard to tell that it's you right away. Averted in Portal 2, in which Wheatley refers to you as female from the very start. However, Portal 2 has an in-universe example where Wheatley passively assumes that whoever beat GLaDOS was a guy, and is taken aback when he finds out that it was you.
• Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
  • One puzzle is a riddle about a king who has been attacked, and you must find the culprit from one of five people in the room using their testimony. The prince will say he heard a woman's voice, but he arrived before the princess and villager, the only two characters that are visibly female. This means that the culprit was the knight, who is actually a woman under the armor.
  • The no-nonsense, intelligent, and to-the-point Jean Greyerl is actually a girl, masquerading as a boy to avoid accusations of being a witch.
• Psychonauts: The Hulking Lungfish is a massive, mutated, aquatic creature that kidnaps children. After Razputin frees the being from their brainwashing, it will telepathically speak to him in an incredibly deep voice.
  Hulking Lungfish: You have earned the right to call me by my true name, the one given to me by my people.
  Raz: And what name is that, O noble lake creature?
  Hulking Lungfish: Liiiiiiiiiindaaaaaaaaaa.
  [descends into the lake]
  Raz: Wow. What a magical lady!
• Played with in Queen at Arms. The player is perfectly aware almost from the beginning that Marcus Cordale is secretly a woman, hiding her identity. But everyone else in the game, except for her brother Nick, believes her to be a man. Depending on which story path is followed, The Reveal is presented to various other characters in very different ways. For the player, and Marcus herself, the twist is not her true gender but the reason why she has to hide it.
• A couple of examples from the Quest for Glory series:
  • The brigand leader in Quest for Glory I. The townsfolk describe the brigand leader as always a wearing a hood or a helmet, and some of them describe his voice as unusually high-pitched, but it isn't until you splash him with the Dispel Potion that he is revealed to be the baron's daughter who went missing ten years ago, now grown up.
  • When the Simbani capture one of the Leopardmen in Quest for Glory III, they describe their prisoner with masculine pronouns until you use a Dispel Potion to dispel the prisoner's leopard form, revealing that the prisoner is a woman.
• Ghost from Raze 3 sounds like a boy at first; later, after saving the main protagonist from the Alien Leader, she's revealed to be a girl after taking the mask off.
• Several documents in Resident Evil 5 reference Alex Wesker, which fans deduced from the unisex name and total lack of gender-specific pronouns that the new character was most likely going to be a woman. The Japanese version did use masculine pronouns to refer to Alex, making it seem like this was just an accidental quirk in the English translation and Alex Wesker was really a dude. As of Revelations 2, it turns out the fans were right all along; Alex Wesker is female!
• In the Flash, in-browser game RPG Shooter: Starwish, Mare is a character who is shown and (repeatedly) told of being a much better pilot and shooter than the protagonist of the game as while as having "a very deep, modulated voice". Late in the game Mare takes off her robot-like suit to reveal that she is one of the three remaining survivors of Lucerna.
• Around half-way through Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, the thief you have been pursuing is unmasked to reveal that she is female, to Ratchet's surprise. This also marks the point at which she stops being an enemy, but more because they were betrayed by the real villain.
• In Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure, Charlie/Claude is the inspector's son and basically a thorn in Phantom R's side... but as it turns out, that person is the inspector's daughter named Charlotte.
• Black Widow from Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II, is a somewhat effeminate wrestler who is taller than most of the other wrestlers in the game and whose spider-themed costume covers his whole body. If you beat the game with him, Widow reveals herself to be a tall and muscled female wrestler.
• This is the twist in Akira's ending in Rival Schools: United By Fate. The introduction of the story mode introduces her as the younger brother of gang leader Daigo Kazama and refers to her as male. The masquerade is carried on throughout the story, and even in her "bad" ending — only when you achieve the "good" ending is Akira's true identity is revealed.
  • Akira is also playable without her helmet, as a secret character which you unlock after beating the game with the good ending (notably, in the usual slide show during the credits, she is seen helmetless with her Gedo schoolmates, but if the player didn't get the good ending, they'll probably be left clueless, as in "who's that girl? where's Akira?"). Which is interestingly inverted in Project Justice: she starts off helmetless (due to It Was His Sled), and her helmeted costume (labeled "Powered Akira") is the unlockable one.
• Invoked in Saints Row: The Third and IV: in the prologue mission, you play as the Boss with an outfit that covers them head-to-toe, with something to conceal their real voice (a voice changer in the former, a busted communicator in the latter), and no clear gender indication (even though you are in costume as a cartoon Johnny Gat in The Third), and only after this mission do you customize your character, gender included.
• In Shenmue, Master Chen refers to Lishao Tao as one of Hong Kong's elder martial art masters. When Ryo does finally meet the character in Shenmue II, "he" turns out to be a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties.
• Silent Debuggers: While the person with red armor who acted antagonistic towards Leon and the player was referred with male pronouns, they were revealed to be a woman named Sarah Bentury after she escapes from the station alongside the main duo.
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves gives us the Black Baron, an ace fighter pilot whose face is entirely covered by his huge mustache. Only after you beat him do you learn that he's actually Gadgeteer Genius Penelope, who created the disguise to get around the dogfighting league's age restrictions. Happens again in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, where the Black Knight is revealed to be Penelope again, this time signifying her Face–Heel Turn.
• In South Park: The Stick of Truth, the player can only play as a boy, but in The Fractured but Whole, which is explicitly a direct sequel starring the same character, the player can choose their gender. This is done via Mr. Mackey giving you The Talk and asking for your gender. If the player identifies as anything other than a cis male, he's utterly baffled and calls up your parents to confirm that you were in-fact not a boy the whole time while lampshading this as explicit retconning. This is explained as your parents wanting to keep your identity a secret from the government and Wendy reveals that she knew that you were not a boy since the first game, but kept it secret out of respect for what she believes to be your desire to be mysterious. The boys simply remain oblivious, occasionally commenting that they come off as feminine for some reason.
• Though not explicitly stated in-game, the player character from the Protoss segment of StarCraft: Brood War was revealed to be Selendis, a female Protoss executor.
  • StarCraft: Ghost used this trope for the (now infamous) trailer, where Nova is given Feet-First Introduction:
  [A dropship is carrying a squad of Terran marines and a ghost, who's sitting alone in the shadow, away from the soldiers]
  Vistor: Hey, tough guy, what's with the loner crap? Why don't you come back here and sit with the real men?
  [The camera shifts to the ghost's legs, which uncross and the ghost leans forward, only to reveal blond bangs and a female face from the shadows. She simply smirks and without uttering a single word leans back into the shadow]
  Marine: (snickering) Real smooth, Vistor.
  Vistor: Shut up...
• Similar to the StarCraft example, in Supreme Commander, the player character from the Aeon Illuminate campaign is female, which is only mentioned off-handedly half-way through it.
• Sword of Paladin: The legendary Hero King, Charlemagne, is actually Cecilia Charlemagne, the woman in charge of administering Paladin trials.
• In the first Tatsumaru mission in Tenchu 2, he is attacked by someone in a Noh costume. He slashes at it, revealing it is Lady Kagami. Just like in the West, actors are often all male so a female character being portrayed by a female is truly surprising.
• Alexis of Valkyria Chronicles II. Her voice kinda gives her away, quite a few players were still confused by the fact the game's encyclopedia classifies her as male, and that she has a male character model in game.
• Jayle from Valkyrie Profile. A noblewoman Jeanne d'Archétype who disguises herself as a man in order to join Gerabellum's order of knights. Only her commanding officer knows of her disguise but says nothing about it, as he's fallen for her.
• In the Warcraft 3 mission "The Forests of Ashenvale", the Orcs are surprised not only that they are being attacked by Night Elves but that the Elves are women.
• Captain Syrup from the first Wario Land is a villainous example; the game's instruction manual even refers to her with masculine terms to avoid ruining the surprise.
• Watch_Dogs: protagonist Aiden Pearce's contact with the DedSec hacker collective is a hacker using the username "BadBoy17", using a deep voice filter. Partway through act 1 they reach out to Aiden needing a face to face where it is revealed that they are in fact a woman named Clara Lille, who then becomes Aiden's main ally throughout acts 2 and 3.

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