Note: This is a Spoilered Rotten trope, that means that EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE on this list is a spoiler by default and most of them will be unmarked. This is your last warning; only proceed if you really believe you can handle this list.
Times where The Ending Changes Everything in Video Games.
- 9:05
is a very brief Interactive Fiction game by Adam Cadre that opens with what appears to be an exceptionally mundane situation — you're woken by an alarm clock and have to scramble to get to work on time. If you actually show up to work, however (you're given the option to just keep driving), the game ends abruptly with the revelation that you're actually a home invader who murdered the man whose bed you were sleeping in, and whose job you're going to. If you replay the game you can find the body under the bed, and the option to keep driving allows you to make a clean getaway. - Afraid of Monsters: Director's Cut reveals that the protagonist, David Leatherhoff, has been supposedly killing innocents during his trip into the drug-induced nightmare Dark World. Or not, as it is revealed in the true ending that the prior three endings might themselves have been part of the comatose dream David suffers while overdosed on the pills, before he's successfully resuscitated.
- The Beginner's Guide. The game is ostensibly about Davey Wreden, creator of The Stanley Parable, wanting to show off some old short games made by an old friend of his who inspired him to become a games creator. Davey invites the player to play them in chronological order while he narrates his thoughts on them. The later games begin straining against this premise until the last game in the collection reveals that the 'Davey Wreden' who's been narrating is not the Real Life Davey Wreden, and narrator!Davey is an Unreliable Narrator whose motivations are very different from what the premise made them out to be; namely, that he had meddled with the games, broken the old friend's trust, and driven them away. Going back through the earlier chapters of the game with this knowledge in hand changes virtually everything.
- The ending to BioShock Infinite turns the story from a rescue mission to save a young girl from a bunch of amazing flying racists, into a multi-dimensional hopping Mind Screw that ends with the player character being killed off after The Reveal that he is both the protagonist (as the player character), and the Big Bad (as an NPC), and that the girl he was rescuing is his biological daughter. In particular, the phrase "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt", rather than being an ultimatum by his creditors, was actually proof that he sold his daughter to the Luteces in the first place.
- The Yharnam Sunrise ending of Bloodborne reveals that everything you had experienced and everyone/thing you met/killed was All Just a Dream set up by the Great Ones/The Moon Presence as a means of using humans to propagate themselves, and Gehrman chopping your head off is what was able to wrench you out of it. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of every other Yharnamite still being trapped in the nightmare with no conceivable way out, and there is no closure given for what happens to the Hunter upon leaving it.
- Braid's story is allegorical and, while open to interpretation, is seemingly about a man trying to salvage the relationship with the love of his life. The last level features Tim and the Princess running from a knight who is out to steal her from him. At the end of the level you then rewind time - revealing that you were actually seeing the events in reverse, and that the knight was trying to save her from the obsessed Tim. The books in the area after the level and the extremely well-hidden secret ending offer a few more clues about the plot: while still open to interpretation, the game is seemingly an allegory for the development of nuclear weapons. Tim is a scientist, and the Princess is the split atom. Word of God says that it is up to the reader to decide what the story is really about.
- The end of Broken Age Part 1 reveals that the "ship" Shay has been stuck in for his whole life is actually a Mog (not that kind of Mog kupo), namely the Mog that Vella has been trying to kill throughout her story. Also the creatures you rescue in Shay's story are actually the sacrifices of the other.
- For most of Calendula, the narrative is incredibly vague. All that is known is that you are someone traveling in a strange Womb Level with corridors and disturbing visions. The ending reveals that Calendula is the name of the protagonist, who is a baby going through the process of birth.
- Captive (RPG Maker): The premise of the game is the amnesiac protagonist trying to escape the basement she is trapped in while discovering how she got there, who put her there, and what is the meaning of the place. Meanwhile, she discovers various bloody corpses and bloody tools. The endings ultimately reveal that the captor is none other than the protagonist herself, and the Remember end heavily implies that her motive is to help her father, a famous doctor who contacted an unknown illness, by finding a cure, by any means necessary.
- Drawn to Life 2: The Next Chapter is a cute kid's game where you have to help a village fight an evil shadow. The ending has foreshadowing but it isn't obvious until later. The original ending reveals that it's All Just a Dream of a dying little boy in a coma after his family got into a car crash, killing both his parents and damaging the right side of his sister's face. The boy ends up waking up to embrace his sister, but the ending was considered too dark and frightening so it was later censored. In Drawn to Life Compilation the ending uses a much cuter art-style and is about a boy passes out after falling out of a tree. It's still darker than expected but it's not as dark as the original.
- Dear Mariko makes you think that you're playing Mariko, a young woman whose relationship is falling apart because of a Stalker with a Crush. However, the True End reveals that the character you're playing as is the stalker. You're given several hints throughout the game about who your character really is.
- Dinosaur Forest reveals the adventures of the Space Opera protagonist had been a hallucination from a prison inmate undergoing severe mental health treatments.
- Elemental Gearbolt pits two Elementals against a Well-Intentioned Extremist prince plotting to make the world a better place — through any means necessary. All are destroyed in the end. Close attention to the credits reveals the twist — it was all a set-up. Both parties were used as unwitting proxies by external forces. The prince got the technology from an extra-dimensional Arms Dealer that stood to gain from his plan to awaken an Eldritch Abomination. The Elementals were created by an opposing inter-world traveler to keep the sealed evil in its can.
- The game Ether One has the player in the role of a "restorer" who, through revolutionary technology is projecting into the mind of a patient who is afflicted with dementia in the hopes of putting the patient's fragmented memories back together. Along the way, the player is harassed by the doctor who is heading the project, who seems more interested in retaining funding than actually helping the patient. As the end approaches, the player learns the truth about the patient and the patient's memories: the person whose mind the player thinks that they were exploring has been dead for years. You are her surviving husband, and the actual patient, and the fragmented memories are his own. The "restorer" technology does not exist. The entire premise is the patient's afflicted mind attempting to make some sense of the conventional therapy that he is receiving. The callous attitude of the head doctor is the patient's mental reinterpretation of the patient's actual doctor and, as the therapy continues, the interpretation of the doctor becomes more and more sympathetic as the patient begins to trust her.
- The "spare Pagan" and "secret" endings of Far Cry 4 reveal that, though an eccentric at best and a psychopath at worst, Pagan Min actually didn't have any ill intentions for Ajay and had told the truth from minute one. Ajay's father killed his wife's and Min's daughter (who had gotten pregnant because he sent her to seduce Min) Lakshmana, and Ajay, as her older half-brother, is the true heir to the Kyrat region. Min fully intended to take Ajay to the place his mother wanted her ashes to be put to rest and then give him Kyrat, but him jumping the gun on hearing the sounds of torture (with the exception of the secret ending) made him leave and empower a group of blatant terrorists. And then, whichever Golden Path leader you've supported through the civil war turns out to have done a long-jump over the Moral Event Horizon, either causing a brutal purging of those Golden Path members who had been loyal to the leader who lost or who had supported Min, or enslaving citizens, the adults as slave laborers on drug plantations and the kids to be warped into Child Soldiers, leaving you with the choice of killing them for crossing the line.
- Eternal Darkness manages to incorporate the New Game Plus feature into the story. Upon beating all three routes (each one requiring the player to destroy one of the Ancients by summoning another Ancient,) it's revealed that the entire thing was a plot by Mantorok, the fourth Ancient, who manipulated events across three different timelines before combining them all into a new timeline where all three Ancients are dead.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VII Remake: The climax reveals that the entire game is not simply a "remake" of the original game, but a sort-of sequel set in an Alternate Timeline. At various points throughout the story up until this point, the actions of certain characters had been thwarted by the appearance of what are dubbed "whispers"—Time Police whose objective is to ensure that the plot of Remake plays out as in more or less the same way that it did in the original game. The 'Sephiroth' whom the party encounters and eventually fights during the climax is suggested (but not explicitly clarified) to be the same Sephiroth from after the events of Advent Children, having somehow gained the ability to travel back into the past in an attempt to change the course of history and thereby avert his defeat as seen at the end of the original game. Throughout the story, the protagonists are frequently shown glimpses of their future "destiny" without any context, such as Midgar nearly being destroyed by Meteor. This finally comes to a head in the climax, in which the heroes mistakenly conclude that they must defeat the whispers in order to save the planet and defeat Sephiroth, unaware that doing so could end up averting Sephiroth's fated defeat. They manage to destroy the whispers, thereby "freeing" the timeline and enabling the remainder of the story to go Off the Rails.
- Final Fantasy XIII-2. It turns out that, actually, You Can't Fight Fate. Everything you did during the game just furthered the villain's plans, in the end he succeeds in his plan to destroy time itself, and there's literally nothing you can do about it. In fact, for 100% Completion, you get a scene from the villain, mocking the player for trying to find a way out of the trap. As he points out, every timeline ends with Etro dying, time itself collapsing in a Time Crash, and his plans coming to fruition — only the fine details change. And since he can see the entirety of the timeline, he knew this the whole time. There are some Sequel Hooks (for planned DLC expansions)...but for the first time in the series' history, The Bad Guy Wins and stays victorious to the end of the game. What makes this even more aggravating is that the characters are told several times before the end of the game that, if they continue, Etro will likely end up dead. They are easy to miss or overlook, but are sprinkled throughout the entire game. The mini-boss before the final boss rush even has Yuel's voice telling them multiple times to stop and turn back. They, and the player, think it's just a trick. It's not.
- A fairly significant one in Final Fantasy Type-0. At the end of the game, one nation gains control of the four crystals. As a result, Tempus Fini (a.k.a the end of the world) is triggered and huge seemingly-unkillable monsters descend from the sky and murder everyone. Our heroes fight their way through the final dungeon and defeat the final boss at the cost of their own lives...But surprise! This was just the latest in the 600,104,972 cycles the world had already been through, each time ending in one nation gaining control of all four crystals and bringing about the end of the world. This is all an experiment being performed by Class 0's mother-figure Arecia Al-Rashia (actually a deity in disguise) and her unseen counterpart. Admittedly, Class 0's final venture is a bit different from the rest and Arecia does in fact break the spiral in the best ending by doing away with the crystals and allowing Class 0 to live normal, warless lives. Regardless of that fact, finding out your journey has been one of over six hundred million failed ventures engineered by a seemingly disinterested deity who could've snapped her fingers and stopped all the death gives that second play-through a far bleaker feeling.
- Five Nights at Freddy's:
- Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is set at a new and improved "modern" version of the titular pizzeria from the first game, which had closed down some time ago, with brand new high-tech animatronics put in place while the original ones are placed in storage and used for parts. The original guard now works the day shift too. However, Phone Guy is still around, despite being seemingly killed years ago at the old location, and several Retraux minigames seen after dying hint at something sinister happening at the new location, similar to the backstory hidden in the first game. It isn't until the completion of Night 5 that it all makes sense - Jeremy's paycheck is dated 1987, and therefore the events of the game happen before those of the first game, and during said game's bloody past.
- Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator: The game plays as a mix of old and new, where during the daytime the player tries to build a pizzeria that entertains kids and isn't too dangerous, and at night plays like a traditional FNAF game where they must thwart off killer animatronics. Then in the final night, Baby's rambling is interrupted by Cassette Man and the truth is revealed: the pizzeria was a trap the whole time to get the killer animatronics in one building to destroy them once and for all. Cassette Man (implied to be the Puppet's father) plans to stay as well, and while he left an escape route for the protagonist, said protagonist (implied to be Michael Afton) stays behind as well.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach's Ruin DLC has at its premise Cassie sneaking into a now ruined and decrepit pizzaplex to try to rescue Gregory, the protagonist of the main game, who's trapped under the pizzaplex, while fending off the animatronics and a mysterious AI called M.X.E.S. Then Cassie gets to where 'Gregory' is, only to find out she's been tricked by a new animatronic called the Mimic, posing as Gregory, and M.X.E.S. was trying to stop her from doing that.
- In Furi, you play as a mysterious, incredibly powerful warrior who has been imprisoned in the farthest reaches of the planet's orbit via a network of "jail worlds" specifically designed to keep you locked up, and you need to hack and slash your way through the various Jailers who rule the jail worlds to earn your freedom. The ending (which takes place after the credits) reveals that there's a very good reason they went through all that trouble to shut you up: you're actually one of many humanoid Super-Soldier scouts sent to the planet by an alien world to see if the planet is worth sucking dry for resources; the Jailers were in your way to protect the world from the devastation you could possibly bring. Depending on how you respond to your superior in the ending, it's possible to either destroy the planet like you were sent to do or turn on your superior and save the world.
- In Ghost Trick, the ending reveals that Sissel was actually a cat who was the pet of Yomiel, thus explaining Sissel's lack of knowledge of certain human things, inability to read, and his complete amnesia. It's also revealed that Ray was Missile from another timeline, and he manipulated Sissel into thinking certain things (namely, that his soul would vanish at daybreak) to trick him into saving Lynne and Kamila.
- God of War (PS4) begins with a tattooed stranger showing up at Kratos' house and picking a fight, saying "I know who you are", suggesting that he's aware of Kratos' violent past. This attack makes Kratos decide that he and his son Atreus have to scatter his late wife Faye's ashes right away, instead of waiting as he had originally intended. At the end of the game, Kratos and Atreus end up in Jotunheim and discover that Faye was the last of the Giants, after Odin and the Norse gods decided to exterminate them. Suddenly it becomes clear that the stranger (a.k.a. Baldur) wasn't looking for the "Ghost of Sparta", but for the last Giant, which he assumed was Kratos. Which explains a moment partway through the game where he abruptly "realizes" that the person he was looking for was actually Atreus... otherwise known as Loki.The Stranger: I thought you'd be bigger.
- Grand Theft Auto III has a brief example on the radio. A caller on Chatterbox tells Lazlow he had a nanny as a child who spanked him when he was bad and now he's looking for a nanny because "Freddie's been a very naughty boy". After a brief exchange about the end results of spanking, Lazlow asks the caller how old his son is. It turns out the caller is Freddie and he's looking for a nanny out of some sexual perversion.
- There's another example in the interview with Fernando Martinez, who presents himself as an exotic type whose service, "Fernando's New Beginnings", is meant to bring new passion into failing marriages, but then as the commercial goes on it quickly ends up that not only is "Fernando's New Beginnings" basically a brothel, but he's not even really any variety of Latin - he's from upstate Liberty.
- Half-Life: Alyx might have been an unexpected return to the Half-Life series, but most were expecting it to be a self-contained interquel. Then, during the ending, the G-Man brings Alyx 5 years into the future, to the moment where Eli is killed at the end of Episode 2. He allows her to save her father, changing the cliffhanger that the story has been stuck on for the past 13 years. As a consequence, however, he takes Alyx into his employment, putting her into stasis. During The Stinger, the player takes control of Gordon Freeman, right after the events that just transpired, with Eli now alive and threatening to kill the G-Man to get his daughter back and telling Gordon "We've got work to do." Not only is this the first time the story has progressed in years, it leaves off on a new cliffhanger, all but confirming that Half-Life 3 will finally be released.
- The premise of The Hex is that six video game protagonists have all gathered at the Six Pint Inn, and the Bartender gets a mysterious phone call warning him that one of them is planning to commit a murder. In the true end, you find out that the phone call was likely faked and the bartender himself is the one planning to murder his own creator, Lionel Snill, and the others were in on it to get revenge for Lionel abandoning them. They knew of the player's presence from the start and set up the mystery to keep the player intrigued and manipulate them into helping the bartender cross over to the real world.
- JR's: The final cutscene after Night 6 reveals that the game's events take place five years before Five Nights at Freddy's 2, making it a Stealth Prequel.
- The ending of Killer7 completely upends what little the player actually knows about the already confusing shapeshifting multiple-personality team of assassins. For most of the game, the player is lead to believe that Harman is the core personality of the team, calling all the shots, and that Garcian, the one who leads the others members out in the field, is merely another one of his personalities and a Supporting Protagonist. In reality, it's Garcian who's the core personality, his real identity being Emir Parkreiner, a mentally-unstable Tyke Bomb groomed from childhood to be an assassin. The other personalities are the true members of the killer7, who Emir killed as one of his assignments, culminating in a What Have I Done moment that resulted in him manifesting an extremely unusual and reality-bending case of multiple-personality disorder with his other personalities being his former targets. Harman Smith, meanwhile, is actually some kind of enigmatic deity with multiple avatars, one of which was another one of Emir's victims (thus becoming another one of his personalities) and may be responsible for Garcian's current state in the first place. Yes, it's all just as confusing as it sounds.
- Kingdom Hearts III, the Grand Finale of the "Xehanort Saga" that includes the entirety of the series up to this point, spends the entire game building up to the grand conflict with Xehanort. At the climax of the story, the Guardians of Light clash with the Seekers of Darkness; Xehanort is ultimately defeated, and the forces of light successfully triumph (albeit at a cost). And then comes the epilogue, where it's revealed that Xigbar, one of Xehanort's lieutenants since Kingdom Hearts II, is not only still alive, but has been the true mastermind of the game's events. Not only that, but his true identity is actually Luxu, one of the Foretellers, and everything he's manipulated Xehanort into doing has actually been part of his plan to bring back the other Foretellers...a plan which has now gone off without a hitch. Looks like the heroes have their work cut out for them...
- The main plot of Knights of the Old Republic involves traveling the galaxy in order to find information on the Star Forge, an automated shipyard that could create limitless amounts of ships, droids and other war materials that Darth Revan used in his war against the Republic. At least until he was usurped and killed by his apprentice Darth Malak. Pretty straight forward story...until you remember that this is a Star Wars game, and that a Plot Twist was practically inevitable. Darth Revan isn't dead, he was taken prisoner by the Jedi Council after Malak's betrayal, who proceeded to tamper with Revan's memory and create a new identity for him: The Player Character. This was done with the hope that Revan could subconsciously lead the Republic to the Star Forge. Replay the game again and you'll realize just how much foreshadowing there really was in regards to The Reveal.
- Metal Gear:
- The ending of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: After having defeated the Big Bad Colonel Volgin, killed his traitorous mentor, averted World War 3, recovered the secret microchip, and retreating to a remote hut with the triple agent love interest, Snake wakes up the next morning to only find a tape record explaining that said love interest was a quadruple agent who was supposed to murder him and would have done so, but being unable to refuse the last wish of his mentor he killed who wasn't really a traitor but was chosen as the Fall Girl to give her life to cover up an even greater government conspiracy. And she also stole the microchip while he was asleep. Not that the last part would make a difference, since another quadruple agent had switched the real chip for a fake one. What's even more surprising? The Boss, who was the aforementioned mentor, never actually defected to the Soviet Union. Her supposed Face–Heel Turn was actually a Fake Defection, and she would have used that in order to kill Volgin and stop the construction of the Shagohod. But then, Volgin decided to nuke a building to test out the capabilities of a small-yield nuclear missile she brought along to convince Volgin to let her in. At that point, the original covert operation that Snake took part in was unveiled to the Kremlin, making America and the Soviet Union ready to nuke each other out of orbit unless someone could go in and kill both Volgin and The Boss. In short? She died to save face for both countries (especially her own), and to be known in history as a traitor, and she was completely fine with that. "Loyalty to the end" indeed.
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker has two endings in-sequence. The first ending reveals that The Boss wasn't REALLY loyal to America, but to the Philosophers; extra in-game content explains that her ultimate plan was to slowly gain power and influence from her deeds on the battlefield, manipulating wars to slow the development of weapons technology and recruiting hordes of elite followers through sheer charisma, until she had enough power to force the world into a united peace. note . Big Boss realizes that his goals differed from his teacher, she was using him as a tool that she personally reviled, and finally gets the closure he needs to walk his own path - as a morally-bankrupt mercenary leader. And then it gets worse: Paz, that 16-year old schoolgirl who drove 20% of the entire plot, is revealed to be Cipher's quadruple agent whose reveal and destructively-psychotic agendanote make Big Boss snap. Which sparks MSF to evolve into Outer Heaven, the extremist zealots who wish for endless warfare so they will always have a place in the world. Except Big Boss misinterpreted everything. The Boss never hated him. She just didn't like how he had mistaken her motives, to unite the world in the hopes of establishing a lasting peace and ensuring long-term cooperation between nations and people.
- Defied in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: the reveal is that Venom Snake (the player character) is not Naked Snake (the original Big Boss); the player has been controlling a body double the whole time! However, this means that Venom Snake is the final boss of the first Metal Gear and NOT Naked Snake, finally answering the long standing question as to how Big Boss survived the events of the first game to appear again in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. As for Big Boss, he claims that they are two halves of the same legend.
- The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories ends with J.J. being revived by medics, and waking up in a college auditorium. This reveals numerous aspects of the story - that J.J. is transgender, and the entire game was a dream. It also reveals that much of what happened in the game is symbolism, while some of it (such as the text messages from the past) is J.J.'s memories of the real world.
- Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge also ends in a massive confusing Gainax Ending. The game is a pirate story set in the Caribbean. When it seems that protagonist Guybrush Threepwood has found the treasure Big Whoop, which allegedly can help him escape to another world from zombie pirate LeChuck, he falls down a massive rift. After switching on an electric light in a modern-looking tunnel system, he is confronted by LeChuck, who seemingly was inside the now smashed treasure chest. LeChuck reveals that they are brothers and tries to send him to a dimension of infinite pain with a special voodoo doll, but it just sends him in the next room instead. Guybrush explores the tunnels and finds the skeletons of his dead parents and a ticket with an "E" on it in the remains of the treasure chest. When Guybrush manages to defeat LeChuck, he pulls his face (now claimed to be a mask) off and recognizes him as Chuckie, his long-lost brother. Chuckie explains that he was sent by their mother to look for Guybrush, and they find themselves as children at an amusement park with their angry parents. The park closely resembles an area earlier in the game, and there is a big sign saying "Big Whoop". When the reunited family walks off, Chuckie looks at the camera with a demonic gaze, and the credits roll. In The Stinger, Guybrush's love interest Elaine Marley looks down at the chasm, wondering if LeChuck put some spell on Guybrush. What was real, what was not?
- NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD: Getting the Omega Ending reveals that P-Chan is just Ame's Imaginary Friend, which recontextualizes most of the interactions between you and her.
- The first playthrough of NieR ends with a colossal twist: the Shades, the main enemies that you have been fighting the entire time, were not in fact mindless cruel monsters, but sentient beings, and what's more, they are the original, true humans of the world. Everyone you thought had been human this whole time was actually a bio-magical clone, to be merged together with the original corresponding Shade later on after a specific protocol (Grimoire Weiss and Grimoire Noir merging together). Although it might not be entirely clear by the end, the game has a New Game Plus that adds many additional scenes, which basically confirm that you were a mass murderer who slaughtered countless innocent people (even children) who were just trying to defend themselves, and your actions basically doomed the entire human race to extinction.
- The sequel NieR: Automata also features this in a huge twist in a conversation right before the final battle: the reveal that 2B was actually 2E, an Executioner-class android tasked with observing and murdering 9S if he ever learned too much, and that she has murdered him many, many times prior to the game beginning, but at the same time was horribly conflicted over it due to having grown close to him over the 3 year period they were assigned together as partners. An even bigger twist is the fact that 9S knew this all along yet still willingly chose to stay with his murderer through thick and thin. This one conversation completely changes everything about how the player perceives the 2B/9S relationship, and re-contextualizes every single scene and line of dialogue they have together throughout the entire game.
- Ending B may count as well, depending on whether or not you consider it a proper ending (the next three endings are effectively the final half of the game, after all). 9S discovers that humans were extinct long before the aliens showed up, meaning that the androids' millennia-long war against the machine lifeforms has been utterly pointless. The endgame of route C/D also has some pretty game-changing twists, such as the revelation that YoRHa black boxes are made from machine lifeform cores, making the protagonists and their enemies no different, and the revelation that both sides of the conflict have been conspiring to perpetuate a Forever War, to the point that YoRHa, which was supposed to be the secret weapon against the machine lifeforms, was created with countermeasures to destroy them should they ever gain too much of a foothold. Try playing through the whole game again knowing that all the main characters' actions, and even their very existence is all utterly pointless. No wonder 9S became an utterly distraught Straw Nihilist by the end of the game.
- The player learns in OMORI, relatively early on, that Headspace is a Mental World created as Sunny's coping mechanism for the death of his beloved sister Mari, who apparently killed herself. But The Reveal at the end of the main route- that Sunny killed her by accident during a heated argument and made it look like a suicide in fear that everyone would hate him if they knew the truth- alters the entire meaning of the game. Every conflict that happens in Headspace is Omori trying to prevent Sunny from remembering the Awful Truth. Instead of the story of a boy trying to cope with his sister's suicide, it is actually the story of guilt, of a boy struggling to keep a dark secret, combatting his self-loathing, and eventually learning to forgive himself for his tragic mistake.
- The plot of Puzzle Party concerns the in-universe developer, Amid, and the relationship he used to have with Cassandra before she died in a bus accident- his grief and memories are explored thoroughly both through his exposition and in developer logs. Meanwhile, a red ghost girl shows up periodically to chase down the player and Amid. These two seemingly unrelated events are connected in the ending, but not in the way one might think- Cassandra isn't a digital ghost haunting the game because she never actually died. Amid has been lying to you from the start to disguise the fact that she dumped him for being a Crazy Jealous Guy, and the ghost is Amid's unhappiness at the outcome of their relationship.
- River City Girls leads the player to believe that Misako and Kyoko are dating Kunio and Riki, and run off to rescue them after they were kidnapped. Along the way Mami and Hasebe constantly belittle them. The normal ending reveals that Kunio and Riki are actually dating those girls, while Misako and Kyoko are crazy stalkers that the boys are actively avoiding. The plot twist seems like an Ass Pull until you actually pay attention to the conversations the two pairs of girls have with each other, mainly, Misako and Kyoko constantly claiming they "Don't deserve" the boys while Mami and Hasebe imply being on much friendlier terms with them and straight-up calling the protagonists insane, as they are never able to disprove either of those claims. The Golden Ending (added in a later patch) however changes Riki and Kunio's reaction to them to instead just asking them out and ends on a much happier note for the girls.
- The central conceit of Second Sight is that each level alternates between the present and the past, showing you how your protagonist got to where he is. It's only near the end of the game that you discover the game has actually been alternating between a possible future and the present; the levels that were ostensibly the "present" before were actually precognitive flash-forwards, and the "past" has always been the present.
- Silent Hill:
- The worst ending of Silent Hill reveals that the entire game is a dying dream of Harry's, who died in the car crash at the beginning of the introduction.
- At the end of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories it's revealed that the player has been controlling a fantasy version of protagonist Harry Mason, created by his daughter Cheryl to cope with his sudden death years before. This would seem to imply that the entire game is taking place in her head, but several throw-away events scattered throughout could be taken to imply that Cheryl's fantasy is somehow interacting with the real world. Ultimately the player is left unsure as to how much, if any, of the game's previous events really took place, or whether any of the people Harry meets on his journey actually existed.
- Silent Hill: Downpour:
- The endings reveal whether or not Murphy killed his mentor, and the worst ending revealed that he killed his son as well. This dramatically changes the entire game, during which you believe that the child molester Murphy hunted down was responsible.
- One of the bad endings shows Anne Cunningham, a police officer who's been chasing you throughout, waking up in prison the same way Murphy did at the start of the game. Murphy is, effectively, in Sewell's position.
- The ending for the Taiwanese and Global servers of SINoALICE reveals that the game's events had been a daydream of Reality!Alice, who fell asleep at school. This forces an entire re-evaluation of both Library itself and the Characters, with the new-found knowledge that they were nothing more than constructs of Alice's mind.
- Spec Ops: The Line's ending reveals that the apparent Big Bad was Dead All Along, and much of what the player sees in regards of the mission to save Dubai was hallucinated/distorted by the Knight Templar protagonist wanting to be seen as a great hero. In fact, the Big Bad's audio transmissions and the "Final Boss" were both the manifestation of the protagonist's guilt over the Freak Out at the middle of the game, along with everything else that happened before and after it.
- After finishing Spy Fiction (2003) as both player characters you learn that fellow agent Nicklaus is actually Dietrich, a high ranking member of the evil organization Enigma, and the main antagonist. You also learn that thanks to Latex Perfection the Nicklaus that you saw get murdered was actually another guy.
- Exaggerated in The Stanley Parable as multiple endings may or may not change everything you know about what the game is. You could be playing an ordinary game with a simple storyline, a fight for control between the Player and the Narrator, a story about the daydreams of an ordinary man being taken too far, a meta game criticizing the illusion of choice, or something even more sinister that you must escape from...
- The Starship Damrey: the player discovers that they are controlling an alien who was imprisoned aboard the titular ship, rather than one of the crew as most players would assume.
- In the online game Strip 'Em All, the fifth puzzle/comic strip initially appears to be about a fat blond girl and her dark-haired False Friend who secretly loathes her and callously goads her into overdosing on her medication for no conceivable reason other than her sheer disgust of the blonde girl. Then the final set of panels reveals that this "friend" existed only in the mind of the blonde girl, which adds a whole new dimension to their interactions.
- It's not the main plot of Tales of Berseria that does this, but the bonus dungeon. Inside, it's revealed that the malevolence humans produce just by existing and having negative emotions is poisonous to Seraphim, who wanted to destroy the human world because of this. Some Seraphim objected, and made a bet that if they could prove coexistence was possible, the worlds would be open to each other instead. The Seraphim accepted the bet, but heavily loaded the dice, by cursing humans and Seraphim (known to the humans as Malakhim) such that malevolence would warp them into Daemons and Dragons respectively, thus driving the two races apart; should Malevolence ever cloud the entire world, the original Seraphim will go through with the plan to destroy the human world. The ramifications are extensive; the original Seraphim become Greater-Scope Villain, the game's Final Boss is revealed to be Necessarily Evil, and with that cycle broken Maotelus has much bigger responsibilities placed on him. That last one carries over to distant sequel Tales of Zestiria, as it means if Maotelus hasn't been completely purified and freed at the end of the game (and it's not clear if he was), then the game's good ending leaves the world in an unstoppable death spiral.
- To the Moon and its sequel, Finding Paradise, both use this - a revelation near the end recontextualizes much of what went before.
- In To the Moon, you learn about Johnny's suppressed childhood memories - including his dead twin brother (explaining his mother calling him by the wrong name earlier), and meeting his future wife...explaining her odd behavior when he meets her again as a teenager, and the way she reacted when she found out his reasons for asking her out in the first place. (She remembered their original meeting, and he didn't.) It also explained WHY he had that inexplicable desire to go to the moon in the first place...
- In Finding Paradise, the main revelation is that Colin's best friend, Faye, never existed - she was literally an imaginary friend, but so vivid that she appeared as a true person in his memory. Going back to all the scenes she appeared in with this knowledge gives you that classic feeling from The Sixth Sense - the sudden realization that nobody EXCEPT Colin ever actually interact with or respond to her. She didn't disappear from his later memories because she died in some tragic accident, as was speculated earlier - she just faded away when Colin met his future wife, and stopped being so lonely. Doesn't make her final goodbye any less of a Tear Jerker, though...
- Ugly has two endings, and both of them manage to be this trope. In the normal ending, you discover that the playable character is not the son of a narcisisstic abusive nobleman, as you were led to believe by the memory flashbacks; he is the abusive nobleman, driven insane after having been drugged and accidentally starting a fire that ended up severely disfiguring him. The entire game was his Mental World. In the true ending, he ends up hanging himself, and he might have been dead the whole time.
- In The Witch's House you play as Viola, a girl who must find her way out of the house of Ellen, a witch who kidnaps children and is able to trade bodies with people. The True Ending reveals that you were playing as the witch all along. As it turns out, Ellen traded her dying body with her unsuspecting friend Viola's (supposedly "just for a day") and left said friend in the house to die in terrible agony. Viola managed to use the witch's own magic against her, but you personally helped Ellen get past all the traps, and Ellen successfully assumes Viola's identity while the real Viola is shot by her own father.
- The Wolf Among Us: Naturally, as a Murder Mystery. The final conversation with Nerissa in Episode 5 does this tenfold, with her revealing she gave false testimony to catch the Crooked Man, before giving the biggest Wham Line of the series, implying very heavily that either she was posing as Faith at the start of Episode 1, or that she is actually Faith, and has been impersonating Nerissa throughout the season, and the first victim was actually the real Nerissa.
- The World Ends with You ends with Neku realizing that by competing in the Reaper's Game for the chance to return to life, as well as saving his friends and preventing an Assimilation Plot from consuming Shibuya, he's actually helped Joshua, his former partner and the Composer, win a bet with Kitaniji, thereby allowing Joshua to destroy Shibuya, although Joshua seems to reconsider after his final duel with Neku. Similarly, when you find the last of Hanekoma's Secret Reports (discussing the game's events, including the influence of a figure known as the Fallen Angel), you find a secret that paints all the others in a new light- Hanekoma is the Fallen Angel, and his actions drive much of the game's plot.
- Xenoblade Chronicles:
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Once you find out that Alvis is actually the true God of the universe, it's interesting to look back and consider just where Meyneth and Zanza stand in the game's cosmology, since technically they aren't really gods, but rather just siphoning off some of Alvis's power.
- And then Xenoblade Chronicles 2 reveals itself to be a Stealth Sequel, but re-contextualizes the ending of the first game again. Zanza could never be anything but evil, as he's only half of a complete being; the benevolent half of Professor Klaus was left behind in the original universe his experiment took place in (XC2's). Revelations about just what role Monado-holders play in the cosmology also provide more consistent rules to some of the first game's more unexpected events.
- In its Spiritual Successor Xenoblade Chronicles X, the ending reveals that the Lifehold Core's quantum computer, that was supposed to house the consciousnesses of everyone in New LA, has been destroyed since the moment the White Whale made planetfall on Mira. This renders everything you've been told about the nature of mimeosome operation invalid, and opens up a far bigger mystery of just how in the world any humans in NLA can still be alive in the first place.
- The Stinger for the Prequel DLC Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed re-contextualizes the entire Klaus saga, by not only refusing the two split worlds back into one, but also showing a familiar blue light falling towards the newly reunited world, heavily implying this series and the Xenosaga series are set in the same universe.
