The Reveal / Video Games

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Franchise with its own page

• Final Fantasy

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• In The 3rd Birthday, you are not really playing as Aya Brea throughout the game. Hint: Overdive.
• The flash game "Alice is Dead" does this quite well. In the first game, you see Alice's decomposing skeleton, and it is later revealed that you are the one that killed her (although, you developed some nasty amnesia and forgot most of it.) In the third game, you go after the Queen of Hearts and get killed just as soon as you meet him. He slyly goes into his limo, only to find that there is another passenger: Alice. She was still alive the whole time, and only faked her death to make it easier to kill the Queen.
• Alien: Isolation: Sevastopol was bought by Weyland-Yutani and APOLLO, the AI governing the station, has been secretly operating under orders from them to keep the Xenomorphs alive. That's right, Xenomorphs. As in more than one. As in there's a whole hive of them on the station, and the one that's been stalking Ripley the entire game probably wasn't even the same one. APOLLO's orders were to keep the Xenomorphs alive at all costs, even if it meant killing survivors, and once Ripley manages to eject one into space, the AI flags everyone on Sevastopol as too great a threat to the remaining Xenomorphs and reprograms the android workforce to kill them all.
• Assassin's Creed III:
  • For the first 3 sequences you play as Haytham Kenway, an assassin who is sent to Colonial America on behalf of his order. After spending the first act recruiting allies and assassinating a few ponces, it's revealed that Haytham is actually an Assassin who defected to the Templars, and you've just built the entire Templar Order you'll spend the rest of the game dismantling as his son, Connor.
  • The climax of Sequence 10 drops a big one: It was George Washington who ordered the destruction of Connor's village, not Charles Lee; and Washington now plans to kill the remaining survivors. This permanently severs the bonds between Connor and Washington, as well as between the former and his father (for not having told him about this information earlier, thinking that he was holding it out as an excuse to earn his trust). By the end of the sequence.
• A major one near the end of The Bard's Tale. That nice princess you're supposed to be saving? She's the Big Bad. You can save her anyway.
• Baten Kaitos I: You know how the characters have been Breaking the Fourth Wall to address you, the player, who is supposedly their "guardian spirit" and helps them in battle? It's not just for silliness: it also helps disguise the fact that The Hero is The Mole. (Yeah, the game's more than ten years old, but seriously, it's a big moment.)
• Battle for Wesnoth:
  • Heir to the Throne: Right before the final battle, Delfador reveals that Konrad is not the prince whom he rescued as a baby 19 years ago. The actual Prince Konrad was killed by Asheviere's guard just as Delfador arrived. Delfador slayed all the guards and took the prince's corpse to the elves. By coincidence, Delfador's elvish allies found a random human baby so they all agree to bury the prince and pretend that the baby is Konrad whom Delfador rescued and raised to be a good king.
  • Son of the Black Eye: How Black-Eye Karun died is a mystery at first although orcs assumed that Northern Alliance lured and killed him. Just before the final battle, it's revealed that Karun's rival Shan Taum is the one who killed Karun on his way to the Northern Alliance base.
• BioShock: "Would you kindly..."
  • Shortly after: "It's time to end this little masquerade. There ain't no Atlas, kid. Never was. Fella in my line of work takes on a variety of aliases. Hell, once I was even a chinaman for six months. But you've been a sport, so I guess I owe you a little honesty. The name's Frank Fontaine."
  • Then comes BioShock 2, where you find out that Eleanor brought you back with the help of the new Little Sisters, and has been watching your every move.
  • Minerva's Den — Sigma is Porter.
  • In BioShock Infinite, you find out that Comstock is an alternate version of Booker, and Elizabeth is Booker's daughter, Anna.
• BlazBlue:
  • The first game, Calamity Trigger, is just about figuring out the truth behind a "Groundhog Day" Loop and learning about the characters involved's motives. The reveals are as follow:
  • Ragna and Nu-13 are The Black Beast and they are also the cause of the time-loops; one time-loop's iteration of Jin Kisaragi fell through a rift in time, ended up in the past and became Hakumen; Noel Vermilion and Nu-13 are clones of Saya, Ragna and Jin's missing little sister; Rachel Alucard has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, works for The Powers That Be and has the Tsukuyomi Unit; Taokaka is a clone of Jubei suffering Clone Degeneration; Iron Tager is smack-dab in the middle of the plot but cannot do much as it goes against his programming; Litchi Faye-Ling used to work alongside Tager but defected because something happened with her lover, Lotte Roy Carmine; Arakune was once Lotte Roy Carmine and knows far more about what's actually going on than what his Ax-Crazy mind can comprehend; the son of Bang Shishigami's master is still alive; Carl Clover's puppet, Nirvana, is actually his sister, Ada, and Carl is borderline psychopathic; Hakumen is the Susano'o Unit, Jin from a different timeline, the leader of The Six Heroes and the man who slew The Black Beast; Nu-13 is the Calamity Trigger, and Hazama is the primary moving force behind everything bad that has happened in the BlazBlue-verse and you've just played straight into his hands.
  • Continuum Shift: Ragna's BlazBlue is a fake; the world has designated Jin Kisaragi its own anti-body and considers Ragna its illness; Noel Vermilion is the inheritor of the True BlazBlue; Rachel Alucard's superiors are bad news (luckily she defects from them); Iron Tager's superior is sitting on top of a vast arsenal of nukes, is a hairsbreadth's away from fiering them, just so she can frag Terumi, and he still cannot question her; Litchi Faye-Ling has caught a bad case of The Corruption and is heading towards turning into another Arakune, out of desparation she joins the bad buys... speaking of which; Arakune manages to form a coherent sentence. He screams at Litchi to abandon her attempts of saving him and just save herself instead... Bang Shishigami has a Nox Nyctores capable of solving all problems/putting an end to the world as we know it by causing a The Magic Goes Away scenario, but he doesn't know how to use it; Carl Clover's father was the one who transformed Ada Clover into an automaton... and he has done the same to his wife... For Science! ...Hakumen named his "Tsubaki" technique after his girlfriend who died Taking the Bullet for him when he was still Jin Kisaragi; Lambda-11 harbours Nu-13's soul; Tsubaki Yayoi is wielding a prototype Murakumo; Makoto Nanaya is, or was in a previous timeline, a massive Spanner in the Works for Hazama; Platinum the Trinity is the remains of one of The Six Heroes, as is Valkenhayn R. Hellsing; Mu-12, the Sword of the Godslayer: Kusanagi, is Noel's Superpowered Evil Side; Hazama cheated his way into winning the game again; Relius Clover is the best dad evvuhr and Carl makes him disappoint; Saya is the Greater-Scope Villain of the series and Nu-13 is resurrecting all on her own.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm:
  • We get two big ones back-to-back in Chapter 7. First, we learn that all of the Anonymous tribe members are tiny fragments of a draconic destroyer god called Legion, and that he retains some level of awareness and is trying to piece himself back together. Second, we find out that it’s Catie’s fault the First Internet ended, as her presence triggered a World-Healing Wave that made the atmosphere toxic to the natives. Boxxyfan was the only survivor, and the incident was the basis for his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • At the climax of Chapter 8, Arianna reveals that she’s actually the A.I. avatar of ARPANET, a prototype information-sharing network. She feels threatened and overwhelmed by the chaotic modern Internet, and believes that it’s diverged too far from its original template — herself — which is why she wants to erase everything and remake it in her own image.
  • Finally, in the True Ending… Catie is the amnesiac shell of Virtua, an ancient digital goddess, and Virtua and Legion are both halves of the same primeval cyber-deity. The deity had conflicting feelings about humanity, so it split itself apart to let the two sides fight it out. Legion won the battle and cast Virtua down, only to be defeated by the same humans he sought to destroy.
• Braid slowly foreshadows this, then hits you in the gut with it. The final level has Tim and the Princess, each helping the other as the Princess runs away from a knight. Then, at the end, the Princess reaches her home. Tim is suddenly locked out. All that you can do is rewind... where it turns out that the Princess is running away from Tim, each trying to stop and hinder the other as she escapes into the knight's arms. Unexpected... but logical if you think about it.
• Brothers in Arms: Whoo, boy. Despite the Reveals (That's right, there's two) being in the third game, it not only uncovers events that happened, but completely shatters a major plot point that played a role in the first two games, and at the same time brings to light just how much stress Baker and his squad was going through. The first is that Baker ordered Leggett to tell no one how Allen and Garnett died, and the stress of keeping the secret (which ironically made the rest of the squad hate him because they assumed he hid in the bushes like a coward while Allen and Garnet died) coupled with a critical injury on the battlefield led Leggett to effectively commit suicide by shooting at an enemy tank with a pistol. The second reveal is that Leggett was partly responsible for Allen's and Garnett's deaths, because he started a fight with Allen that attracted a German patrol, which is why Baker wanted Leggett to keep the circumstances of the death's a secret in the first place, for fear that the rest of the squad would kill Leggett.
• Call of Duty Black Ops had: My name is Viktor Reznov, and I will have my revenge!
• Cleaning Redville: After bagging up the dead body of the guy you hit with your truck, you drive your garbage truck back to base, which is the Redville Crematorium.
• Death end re;Quest:
  • Shina is Dead All Along, and Iris's rebellion against Aphesis came after she found out that Shina was murdered.
  • The God of Death is not Arata Mizunashi, but the player of Death end re;Quest. The Ludens have often been talking past Arata and directly to you.
• Death end re;Quest 2:
  • Le Choara is in a "Groundhog Day" Loop created via alternate reality, and is otherwise a long-abandoned ghost town.
  • The Big Bad is Julietta, the the social services agent that brought Mai to Le Choara, and she is the sister of the first game's Lydia Nolan.
  • New Game Plus drops one after another for both games. The Observers are not mystical beings, but low-class citizens of a futuristic dystopia. Arata's world and everything in it is a virtual construct by the people of the Observers' reality, with Rin, Munakata, and Werner Glock coming from this reality. Lydia giving Arata her reality-warping tools during the climax of the first game is the only thing that kept Arata's world from being flat-out deleted by her superiors. Finally, in The Stinger, Munakata, the biggest goofball among Arata's allies, holds some position of authority over the Observers and coldly executes the Nolan sisters.
• In Dino Crisis, it's revealed in the final act (with more info revealed in one of the three possible endings) that the Third Energy, the top secret project that Doctor Kirk was working on, was the actual reason for the mission all along - the government sent you to get a disc containing information about it and bring it back for their own use. Your teammate Gail remarks that "Doctor Kirk's just a bonus" and that he intentionally kept the rest of the team in the dark about it to protect you. This ends up being the last time you speak to him before he succumbs to his injuries and dies.
• In .hack//G.U. Reminisce, Ovan finally unlocks the brace obscuring his left arm. The fans who had been expecting Corbenik found TriEdge.
• Dragon Age:
  • Near the end of Dragon Age: Origins, you find out a Grey Warden must sacrifice their life to permanently kill the Archdemon. Not long after, you find out the real reason one of your companions was sent with you was to have a child with either you — if you're male — or your other Warden companion to hold the Archdemon's essence; this would also mean no Wardens would have to die.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition ups the ante: 1. lyrium is alive (it's literally titans' blood), and 2. your archrival is Solas, The Dread Wolf.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest III: One of the most epic reveals in the history of videogaming, and the one that cemented the game's place in the zeitgeist (especially in Japan): In the last quarter of the game, the world you travel to is the one with the kingdom of Alefgard on it. The player character is none other than Erdrick / Loto, and you play out the events that precede the rest of the trilogy.
  • In Dragon Quest V the main character isn't The Chosen One prophesied to save the world. His son is. Thus it makes sense why you never ran into the legendary hero on your travels until you're far into the game: He hadn't been born yet.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Happens in Morrowind when you receive a decoded version of the coded orders you had to deliver to Caius Cosades at the start of the main quest. It turns out you were released from prison and made an agent of the Blades because you fit the Nerevarine Prophesy that you've been researching.
  • In Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion, you are aiding Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, in protecting his realm, the Shivering Isles, from the impending Greymarch, an Eternal Recurrence Vicious Cycle brought on by Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order. As it turns out, Sheogorath is Jygglag, or rather his alter-ego and the Person Shaped Can Jygglag was sealed inside of as a curse eons ago. Saving the Shivering Isles means defeating Jygglag and then freeing him of the curse by taking up the mantle of Sheogorath yourself.
• In Fallout 3, you get a Reveal early on: You're not a Vault baby. Which leads to the conclusion that the "no one ever enters, no one ever leaves" creed of Vault 101 is a lie.
• Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse: Choushiro is a ghost, and has been dead for eight years.
• Subverted in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, in which the Black Knight's true identity is spoiled to you by Ranulf rather casually a few chapters before your final showdown with him.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
  • Gilbert is actually Gustav, Annette's long-lost father.
  • The Flame Emperor is Edelgard.
  • The Death Knight is Jeritza, who is also Mercedes's long-lost younger brother Emile.
  • In one of the paralogues, Seteth and Flayn are revealed to not actually be brother and sister, but father and daughter. Their facade as siblings is a measure taken to protect their identities from those who would cause them harm.
  • Late into the Crimson Flower arc, Lady Rhea is revealed to be Saint Seiros, the selfsame warrior who defeated Nemesis during the War of Heroes. She is also the last surviving child of the Progenitor God Sothis, with her two most trusted allies, Seteth and Flayn, being two of the Four Saints from legend, Cichol and Cethleann. The other Saints, Macuil and Indech, are still alive, and all four of them, plus Seiros, are really dragons.
  • In the Verdant Wind arc, Claude's heritage is revealed to be part-Almyran. His mother, an Alliance noble, eloped with the Almyran king, with Claude being their illegitimate lovechild.
  • At the climax of the Silver Snow arc, Byleth's mother is revealed to be an Artificial Human that Rhea created in the hopes of resurrecting her mother, the goddess Sothis. The attempt failed, and as a result, Byleth's mother became physically frail. When she gave birth to Byleth, the child was born without a heartbeat. With her own health failing, the mother requested that her Crest Stone, which contained the Crest of Flames, be transplanted into the child. The operation succeeded, but at the cost of rendering the child unemotional.
• Five Nights at Freddy's series:
  • In the second game, the supposed reopening of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza actually takes place before the first game.
  • In the third game, The Murderer died after the first game, and Springtrap contains his corpse (and, very likely, his soul). It also confirms that the animatronics were indeed haunted by the murdered children's ghosts.
  • In Sister Location, the animatronic Baby has been lying to you, manipulating you into believing that she wants to help you. Her and the other funtime animatronics reveal their true intentions when they amalgamate their robot bodies together into one mangled mess of metal parts, lure you into the scooping room, and disembowel you. The new form, now called Ennard, proceeds to wear your skin like a costume in order to sneak out of the facility undetected.
  • Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator begins by introducing the player as a new Fazbear Entertainment franchisee, tasking you with building up and decorating your own pizzeria and collecting any animatronics you find in the back alley to keep in your establishment, all the while a mysterious voice from a cassette tape player guides you. At the end of the week, the voice from the cassette player — who turns out to be Henry Emily, a regretful former business partner of William Afton — reveals that your restaurant is fake, designed as a part of his plan to simulate a real pizzeria to lure in and trap the animatronics possessed by the souls of William Afton and the victims who died as a result of William's actions. Now that you've gathered them all together in one place, Henry burns the building down with the animatronics, the player character^note implied to be Michael, William Afton's son and likely the player character from previous games, and himself inside, bringing William to justice and finally putting to rest the last of his victims.
• Ghost Trick:
  • Sissel is NOT the main character you play as through 90% of the game. He is in fact, the main character (Yomiel)'s cat, who happened to die only seconds before Yomiel did.
  • The painter man you see in the prison is 1. Kamila's dad, 2. A former detective, 3. completely innocent.
  • Cabanela is revealed to be just a ladder-climbing apathetic perfectionist, until you find reveal that he is in fact the exact opposite of that: A man who used his high-up connections to put massive amounts of resources into the manipulator case, and that he purposefully captured Jowd and brought him to the justice minster just to stall for time. Turns out, he really does care about Jowd after all.
  • Lynne killed Sissel, except that man wasn't really Sissel at all.
  • Ray is Missile in an alternate timeline. This, combined with the fact that he can reach THREE times farther than Sissel in the Ghost World, seals his place as Badass Adorable.
• God of War: Each game has at least one which changes everything we knew earlier.
  • God of War: Kratos has accidentally killed his own wife and daughter, and this entire quest is of redemption for him. He doesn't get it.
  • God of War II: Kratos is actually the son of Zeus, and killing him will destroy Olympus.
  • God of War III: Kratos always had the power of Hope inside him, making most of the game pointless, the Olympian Gods Took a Level in Jerkass due to accidentally getting infected by the evils of the Pandora's Box opened to defeat Ares in I, and Athena (or whatever this blue ghost really is) wanted Kratos to destroy the Olympian Pantheon so that she could be mankind's only goddess.
  • God of War (PS4): The Stranger seen in the beginning is actually Baldur, whose death is meant to herald Ragnarok, and Kratos's son Atreus's real name is Loki.
  • God of War Ragnarök:
    • Predestined fate does not exist, the Norns and the Sisters of Fate from the Greek trilogy were just accurately predicting the characters' actions and interactions to determine what course they will take.
    • Tyr was actually Odin in disguise, planting himself in the heroes' inner circle to subtly influence them away from causing Ragnarok and influence Atreus, and the real Týr was actually his prisoner all along.
• Grandia II has a killer — Granas, the god of good you've supposedly been serving, was actually the loser of the ancient struggle between good and evil and has been dead all along. The supposed 'Seals' that were binding the parts of the sealed dark god Valmar were actually devices created to prepare a human's body for possession by a part of Valmar's damaged body, and the Pope of the Church of Granas has actually been manipulating you into reassembling Valmar's body from the very beginning. EVERY SINGLE THING you've done so far in the game so far has been a lie.
• In Guilty Gear, the titular artefact gets name-dropped a couple of times, but it's only right at the end of the first game that you finally find out exactly what the "Guilty Gear" is. Or rather, who. It's the main character, Sol Badguy. Sol was once a brilliant scientist, and he worked on a project to create the transhuman Gears, the next stage in human evolution. However, the Gears turned out to be a bunch of monstrous, human-hating Jerkasses, and if that wasn't bad enough, Sol was betrayed and transformed into one against his will by his Magnificent Bastard best friend. Forced to watch his creations rampage across the planet and kill millions of innocent people, Sol decided to make up for it all by disguising himself as a human, and making hunting down and destroying the other Gears his life mission.
• Big Daddy in the original Gungrave is depicted as dead throughout the game. Not quite. He was actually used as a guinea pig for Harry's undead soldier program and lives on in the form of a twisted monster — he's really the final boss of the game.
• In Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure, the reveal is saved up for the last level of the game. The Prince actually turns out to be Puku in disguise. He reveals that Parin's entire adventure was all just a part of his plan, to meet the monsters, obtain the drill, and go to the Eggplant Caverns. He tricked the phantoms into fighting her so she would be strong enough to reach Great Fang and release Tokaron on the world.
• Half-Life: Alyx presents itself as a prequel to Half-Life 2 where you play as Alyx in an unknown adventure before the events the second game. Seems pretty standard stuff, saving her dad, inconviencing the Combine, making her way through dangerous territory, etc until the end where you try to capture a "important cargo" the Combine has and it turns out it's the G-Man. In graditute for saving him, he offers Alyx a glimpse into the future into the events of Half-Life 2 Episode 2 and sees the death of Eli, allowing her to change events to save him. She takes the offer only to now end up in his "employ". So essentially the whole game was a time-traveling ploy on his part to get around a loophole the Vortigaunts exploited to keep Gordon out of his "employ" and you were played like a puppet. On the upside the game ends at the end of Episode 2 with you briefly in control of Gordon as Alyx's now alive father recovers, both find Alyx missing and Eli swearing revenge on the G-Man for his actions.
• A really big one in Homeworld 2. You remember Sajuuk, worshipped by half the galaxy as the god of creation and destiny? Remember the prophecy that whoever unites the Trinity of Great Hyperspace Cores unlocks his power and becomes Sajuuk-Khar, Manipulator of He Whose Hands Shape What Is? Turns out Sajuuk is a brutally powerful Progenitor warship which only needs the cores and an Unbound controller to become flight-worthy again. Once active, it unlocks a galaxy-wide network of hyperspace gates, pushing the galaxy into a new golden age of prosperity. Also, it crossed 30 parsecs in a matter of minutes which is a staggering record for hyperdrives.
• Hotel Dusk: Room 215 has one in the final chapter. You learn that Osterzone is actually Dunning Smith, who resolves every mystery that was brought up in the previous chapters (what happened to Bradley, where Mila's father is, how Iris' sister got the money to settle the lawsuit, etc.). Dunning himself doesn't come out and reveal his identity; you figure it out by using a coding machine while sealed inside of an airtight basement chamber that Dunning locked you in.
• In Ib, Garry finds a book that reveals that Mary is actually one of the paintings. Unfortunately for him he is overheard, and later gets trapped in a room with a giant doll coming out of the wall, which wipes his memory so he can't tell Ib if he is unable to escape.
• In I Miss the Sunrise, the high-level offices in the abandoned databanks answer a lot of major plot questions, often taking this form. The Big Bad's motivations and the origins of the Shine are discussed and explained, among other things. A few of the crew members' final interaction scenes can take this form as well, usually answering lingering questions about their character arcs. It's even lampshaded in the case of Tezkhra, where the reveal is so obvious that everyone admits they already knew it.
• The end of inFamous reveals that the game's Big Bad, Kessler, and its protagonist, Cole MacGrath, are actually the same person. Kessler is a disillusioned version of Cole from a possible Bad Future where Cole ran for the hills and humanity was nearly wiped out by the arrival of a mysterious Eldritch Abomination called "The Beast". After his family was killed, he used his powers to travel back in time in a last-ditch effort to prevent The Beast's rise to power... by making his past self's life hell so that he would be ready to fight it when the time came.
• Jak and Daxter
  • Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy: The villain introduced in the opening cutscene is Gol Acheron, the sage the duo is looking for to change Daxter back.
  • Jak II: Renegade: Haven City is Sandover Village in the future. Samos is the Shadow. Kor is the Metal Head leader. The Kid is Jak. Both Samos and Jak are from the future.
  • Jak 3: Damas is Jak's father; Veger separated the two. Jak's birth name is Mar. The Dark Makers were once Precursors but were corrupted by Dark Eco. The Precursors are ottsels.
  • Jak X: Combat Racing: G.T. Blitz is Mizo. Rayn was never poisoned and used the racing team to get in control of Kras City's crime empire.
  • Daxter: Kaeden is a Metal Head. The entire game is a story told by Daxter at the end of Jak II: Renegade.
• Jewelry Master Twinkle, a Puzzle Game with Dating Sim elements, surprisingly has one. On the third date with Kaori, the girl for Hard mode, she reveals that she's actually Nozomi, the girl for Another mode, and has been disguising herself because the real her is not very good with the opposite sex.
• Kingdom Hearts loves this trope, especially in regards to the Big Bad.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Maleficent was actually being manipulated by the heartless of Ansem, a researcher and the ruler of Hollow Bastion. He turned himself into a heartless in order to claim the heart of all worlds, and has been manipulating Riku as well, even possessing him.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: Namine is a witch who controls memories, and she's been messing with Sora's memories ever since he set foot in Castle Oblivion to replace all his memories of Kairi with memories of her. The two of them had never met before.
  • Kingdom Hearts II: Roxas is Sora's nobody. Namine is Kairi's nobody. The villian from the first game was actually the real Ansem's assistant, Xehanort, who took on his identity. DiZ and his assistant, Ansem, are actually the real Ansem and Riku.
  • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: Xion is an imperfect clone of Roxas.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: Takes the cake. Vanitas is the personification of Ventus' darkness. Aqua created Castle Oblivion from the ruins of her home world so she could hide Ventus. Xehanort is actually an old Keyblade Master who's been possessing Terra's body for the past eleven years. Ventus' heart has been living in Sora, which is why Sora can use the Keyblade. Terra passed his keyblade on to Riku, and Aqua accidentally did the same to Kairi. Finally, the reason Kairi ended up in the Destiny Islands when Radiant Garden was destroyed was because Aqua cast a spell on her to lead her towards light.
  • Kingdom Hearts coded: Master Xehanort will return since his Heartless and Nobody were destroyed.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: Master Xehanort's master plan was to create 13 versions of himself (the true Organization XIII, made up of Master Xehanort, Young Xehanort (who is the Mysterious Figure from Birth By Sleep), Ansem SoD, Xemnas, Braig, Isa, and 7 other unknown people), all to create another Keyblade War. He planned to make Sora number 13 by weakening his heart, but that failed. Meanwhile, 7 lights (keyblade wielders, reasoned to be Ventus, Aqua, Terra, Mickey, Riku, Sora, and Kairi) are to appear. When these two sides clash, the x-Blade will be reborn, and the Keyblade War will begin once more.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • You know that Darth Revan everyone's been talking about? The one who disappeared mysteriously and is presumed dead? The one who would have every reason to hate the Jedi AND the Sith for what they did if he were still alive? That's you.
  • The sequel makes a point of having no reveal, even though everything that happens in the game is one surprise after another in a kind of "I've always known" sort of way. The one true revelation is that the whole game was a test. Except anyone who paid attention already knew that. This is just speculation, but it might be in response to the Revan issue, considering how obvious it was to — again — anyone paying attention, like the writers of the sequel would be.
• The Legacy of Kain series:
  • In the original Blood Omen, the reveal was that Kain had been the Balance Guardian all along.
  • Soul Reaver 2:
    • Near the beginning, Raziel has Moebius at his mercy. Moebius saves himself by revealing that he is the other servant of the Elder God. Suddenly the plot becomes much more convoluted.
    • Then there's the ending; after the game spends a lot of time foreshadowing it, Raziel realises that he is the Reaver. And future Raziel killed past Raziel.
  • In Defiance, when it is revealed that not only did Mortanius use the powers of the Heart of Darkness, previously belonging to Janos Audron, to make Kain into a vampire, but the Heart is also inside Kain.
• The Legend of Dragoon has many
  • Rose in particular holds a number of them.
    • She's immortal
    • She's the Black Monster.
    • She killed Dart's parents.
    • And also killed Shana's twin sister.
  • It is implied, though never confirmed, that Haschel is Dart's grandfather.
  • That's No Moon: It's a monster whose soul is reincarnated in human form every 108 years.
  • Shana is the reincarnated soul. And Rose killed Shana's twin under the belief that the twin was the soul.
  • The Big Bad is Dart's father, Zieg. And Rose's ex. From before she became immortal.
  • Melbu Frahma, the Big Bad, transferred his spirit into Zieg's Dragoon Spirit, and has been possessing him ever since he tried to turn into a dragoon while Rose was wiping out the town he lived in at the time.
• The Legend of Zelda
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Sheik is Zelda, and both she and Link have retained two of the fragments of the Triforce, since Ganon's obsession with power only allowed him to keep the other fragment.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The Skull Kid is possessed by the Majora's Mask and is the friend the giants are asking you to save.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Tetra's true identity is Princess Zelda, the King of Red Lions' identity is the King of Hyrule, and the world beneath the Great Sea is Hyrule itself.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Midna is the Twilight Princess, and Zant is Ganondorf's pawn.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Byrne used to be a Lokomo in training.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:
    • Zelda is the reincarnation of the goddess Hylia.
    • Ganon is the incarnation of Demise's absolute hatred for Link and Zelda.
    • Ghirahim is a Sword Spirit, just like Fi.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: Ravio is Link's Alternate Self. Also Princess Hilda intended to destroy Hyrule in order to restore her own kingdom. For longtime fans of the franchise, Yuga remaining in total control of Ganon's body (in fact literally hijacking Ganon to to prevent the later from his usual act) can also count.
• From Life Is Strange;
  • Rachel Amber was Dead All Along.
  • Mr. Jefferson is the Big Bad.
  • The tornado is a result of Max altering time.
• In Love & Pies, Amelia investigates who set her mother's café on fire by interrogating the suspects on Yuka's list, which includes her rival Edwina and the latter's father Sebastian, and also Amelia's close family and friends. Everyone on the list is innocent, because Benny Benson turns out to the culprit behind the fire. Amelia finds the lighter with his initials on it and turns it in, and after he's arrested, he confesses to all his crimes, including the arson he committed as revenge for getting food poisoning from Freya's pies.
• Mario & Luigi series:
  • Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time: Princess Shroob has an older sister, and she's trapped in the Cobalt Star.
  • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team: Bowser is the true Big Bad, not Antasma. Antasma was just an Unwitting Pawn.
• Mario Party 3: At the end of Story Mode, after the player collects all Star Stamps and defeats the Millenium Star to prove their worth, the latter reveals that he's not the real Millenium Star, and flies away. The player is disappointed upon learning this, but then Tumble shows a bright white star who reveals to be the true Millenium Star, and then proceeds to grant the player their wish.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect:
    • Your initial impression of the Reapers is correct. The Reveal is when you discover that Sovereign is a Reaper.
    • And the second reveal — That all the precursor technology was actually left behind by the Reapers. They did this on purpose to steer galactic civilisation down a path that makes it easier to be harvested.
    • And the final reveal — the Citadel is actually an enormous Mass Relay, used by the Reapers to travel from extragalactic space back to the Milky Way. The Conduit, the weapon Saren has been searching for, is actually a miniature Mass Relay that will allow him to get aboard the Citadel, kill his way to the station's Master Control Unit, and give control to Sovereign.
  • Mass Effect 2, meanwhile, has three major ones. Firstly, the Collectors are actually the Protheans, repurposed and horrifically modified by the Reapers to serve them. Secondly, the abducted humans are being used by the Collectors to build a human Reaper, revealing the reason the Reapers commit galactic xenocide every 50,000 years: it's their version of reproduction. Finally, Harbinger is a Reaper, and the Collector-General is just another Mook.
• Master of the Monster Lair: King Leon was using you to set up a dungeon as his base of operations to take over the world before the Devil Prince can.
• The biggest reveal for the Mega Man X series is that its resident Ensemble Dark Horse hero is built by Dr. Wily for the sole purpose of destroying the world, and his best friend.
• And the Mega Man Zero series also has a big reveal: that The Hero is using a clone body, since the Big Bad stole his original body to create The Dragon. Another loosely guarded reveal that occurred at the climax of Zero 4: Dr. Weil is immortal, meaning that no matter what happens to him, he will keep coming back to menace the world.
• Mega Man ZX, taking a page out of the Classic series, makes the villains in each game obvious right from the start (although, in the case of Advent's Master Albert, was not too obvious at first). No, the real reveal would occur in The Stinger of the latter game, where Master Thomas, previously thought to be an ally to the heroes, orchestrated Albert's defeat so that he can further his own plans.
• The games in the Metal Gear series have tons from beginning to end:
  • Metal Gear: Outer Heaven's master is no other than Fox Hound's commander, Big Boss. Of course, nowadays it was his sled...
  • Metal Gear Solid: Solid Snake and Liquid Snake are twin clones of Big Boss, a terrorist leader that Snake (Solid Snake, that is...) fought in a previous mission. Also, the Cyborg Ninja who was hunting for Snake throughout the game is actually Gray Fox, his old friend thought dead following the events of Metal Gear 2, but was revived through advanced cybernetics. Finally, Revolver Ocelot, the final surviving member of FOXHOUND, is a double agent working for the President...who is another one of Snake's brother-clones.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: The entire mission on the Big Shell has been one elaborate simulation set up by the Patriots to mold Raiden into the perfect soldier and create the perfect system for controlling America's flow of data. Rosemary and Colonel Campbell, Raiden's mission contacts, were just A.I.s created to make the simulation more life-like. Also, the Patriots' leaders have been dead for over a hundred years.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: EVA was a Chinese double agent sent to steal the Philosophers' Legacy from the Russians, but the Boss was loyal to America the whole time — the American government actually betrayed her. Meanwhile, Major Ocelot is actually Snake's CIA contact "ADAM", who has been Playing Both Sides as a Soviet double agent.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: "Big Mama" is a now-elderly EVA, who gave birth to Snake and his brothers when they were first cloned. Meanwhile, Big Boss has been alive and in suspended animation since the events of the first game, and Ocelot (who was never really possessed by Liquid) has been trying to bring down the Patriots to free him from their captivity the whole time. The true Big Bad of the series is actually Major Zero, who created the Patriot A.I.s.
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Desperado is working on creating an army of Child Soldiers by abducting them, placing their brains in virtual reality training sims, and then giving them prosthetic bodies to unleash a legion of "Jack the Rippers" on the world. Also, the true Big Bad of the game is an American senator outfitted with nanomachines who intends to turn America into a country where might makes right and the strong lord over the weak.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain reveals important pieces of information that connect it to the previous installments in the series: Volgin (from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater) came back to life; Eli is Liquid Snake and Tretij Rebenok is Psycho Mantis (both appear in the first Metal Gear Solid), and the former eventually influences the latter in changing the endgame events; Huey Emmerich was in league with Cipher and not only tried to make his toddler son Hal a test pilot for his new Metal Gear, but murdered Hal's mother, Dr. Strangelove, when she protested; and the main character isn't Big Boss but rather a mook medic who was given gene therapy and brainwashing over nine years to make him seem like Big Boss (and who may have also been the "Big Boss" Solid Snake killed in the original Metal Gear, thus accounting for Big Boss's otherwise inexplicable return in Metal Gear 2).
  • Also, additional tapes and other information reveals that Zero had become The Atoner soon after he was poisoned with a parasite by Skull Face, having realized that his organization Cipher was too big for him to control and that he still considered Big Boss a friend. Therefore, to guide Cipher, he commissioned the development of an AI system known as the Patriots. After their original programmer, Dr. Strangelove was killed by her husband Huey, Sigint took over the development of the Patriots and gave them instructions that they eventually misinterpreted, and so the Patriots superseded Cipher and took control of the world, then went insane when Emma's virus partially damaged their minds. Therefore, no Greater-Scope Villain, not even Zero, was truly in control of everything; everyone's sins and manipulations compounded on top of one another until the end result was incapable of realizing their origins or how pointless their enslavement of mankind truly was.
• Metroid:
  • Completionists of the first NES game were the first to find out that Samus Is a Girl.
  • In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, it's revealed that the Leviathans that crash-landed onto Bryyo, Elysia, the Pirate Homeworld and the planets Samus visited in the first two Metroid Prime games (namely Tallon IV in the first and Aether in the second), as well as the Leviathan that tried to impact Norion (but was succesfully prevented), all come from the same source: A planet fully made of Phazon called Phaaze.
  • At the end of Metroid: Other M, it turns out that Madeline Bergman is actually Melissa Bergman, daughter of the real Madeline Bergman, who is not actually her daughter, but an AI who took the form of a human and saw Madeline as a surrogate mother. When Madeline gave up Melissa to some scientists, she goes berserk, destroying most of the station and its occupants. You learn all of this during a seven minute long expositional monologue shared between Samus and Madeline.
• Minecraft: Story Mode:
  • In the first episode, it's revealed that Ivor was an original member of the Order of The Stone but was removed from the records.
  • The third episode reveals that the person you failed to save in The Order of the Stone is still alive but is no longer aware of who they are.
  • Episode 4 reveals that the Wither Storm was following the pendant Gabriel gave Jesse the entire time. It also reveals the Order of the Stone never truly beat the Ender Dragon, they instead used the command block to erase it from Existence, and come back as "Heroes". Ivor however, was unhappy with this, and was paid off to keep quiet, leaving the Order of the Stone.
• They're RAMPANT in Mitsumete Knight. This game thrives for a rich storyline, and a lot of events are built around and triggered by those. The game's TV Tropes Character Sheet is a testament of this, with a lot of info masked due to spoilers.
• Mother 3:
  • The Big Bad only makes an appearance when the party's going for the final Needle... and by then you know full well who he is. Porky Minch. And he's all grown up...
  Porky: Who knows? I may be 100 years old, or even 1000 years old. But I'm still the same kid at heart!
  • An especially staggering Tomato Surprise occurring very late into the game: Everything in the game takes place After the End. The characters in the game deliberately subjected themselves to Laser-Guided Amnesia so they would forget that they're the only human beings left on Earth.
  • And a reveal that should really shock Lucas: the Masked Man is his brother Claus.
• Neverwinter Nights is full of these. When the creepy Helmite cleric pretending to be helping is actually working to spread the plague, the scene at the top of the Host Tower where Aribeth turns to the Dark Side, Haedraline explaining the history of the Old Ones out to destroy the world of mammal-descended sentient species, the incredibly powerful ancient artifact inside the supposedly barely magical tower statue in Shadows of Undrentide, Heurodis' being a medusa at the end of the Interlude, the intended function of the Relic of the Reaper and Mephistopheles' plot in Hordes of the Underdark, etc, etc, etc.
• Neverwinter Nights 2. Original Campaign: You have a silver shard embedded in your chest. The mysterious warlock you thought was the King of Shadows is Ammon Jerro. Mask of the Betrayer: You've become a spirit-eater. The spirit-eater is the tormented soul of Akachi the Betrayer.
• In No One Lives Forever, in the very end of the game, there are four reveals. First: Tom Goodman is alive, and is the traitor. Second: Tom Goodman is in fact the real traitor's dragon, and is simply an impostor who was placed in after real Tom Goodman was killed. The true traitor is Mr. Smith. Third: Bruno Lawrie is alive as well. Fourth: After the end credits, it's shown that the Director of H.A.R.M. is a drunk guy we've seen throughout the game.
• Ōkami has one per Story Arc:
  • It was Susano, Nagi's descendant, who freed Orochi from his seal. He didn't do it for malicious reasons: He simply believed that the legend telling the story of Orochi, Shiranui, and Nagi was just a myth. Much to his horror, the legend was true, so he was the one who placed a big boulder blocking the entrance to Kamiki Village for the sake of protecting the town. Lastly, Susano is aware that Amaterasu is a god.
  • Rao, the priestess who helped the citizens of Sei-an City, was Dead All Along, and the Rao Amaterasu and Issun were interacting with was her murderer in disguise, namely Ninetails. Upon receiving the Fox Rods from a seemingly-clueless Amaterasu, she proceeds to kill Queen Himiko, but this in turn leads to another reveal: Himiko knew about the deception, and let Ninetails kill her so her spirit would gain access to the powers of the crystal ball she was using and accurately locate Oni Island, allowing Amaterasu and Issun to enter and storm it to eventually defeat Ninetails.
  • Two in the last arc (Kamui):
    • Issun fled from his hometown after he felt he would never earn the role of Celestial Envoy, despite his best efforts, so he travelled around Nippon as a Wandering Artist. Ironically, this was a wise move, as this led him to meet and befriend Amaterasu and earn the dreamed role on his own.
    • All of the enemies and villains fought in the game came from the same source: the Ark of Yamato, which was built by the Lunarian tribe and served as a rescue boat for troubled souls until a demon tribe ambushed it and killed all Lunarians except one. The lone survivor of that onslaught is Waka, who is shown to be Good All Along, and wishes Amaterasu to defeat the mastermind of the raid, still living in the Ark: Yami, the Lord of Darkness.
• OneShot: You can't save both Niko and the world. You're forced to choose between either placing the lightbulb/sun in the tower to save the world, but preventing Niko from ever being able to return home or smashing the lightbulb/sun, abandoning the world and all of its inhabitants but allowing Niko to return safely to their home.
  • The New Game Plus Solstice chapter has two major reveals. There is a way to save both Niko and the world after all and late into the run, you find out that The World Machine has been tamed through the time you and Niko have spent in the world.
• The Orion Conspiracy has a number of reveals. The first one is that Gates is an undercover agent who has been trying to dig up dirt on the space station and gave Devlin the note about his son's death being murder. The second one is that there are xenomorphs (aliens) running loose, killing off crew members and impersonating them. The third one is that Captain Shannon murdered both Danny and Kaufmann. Why? He killed Danny as revenge for his wife's death, and he killed Kaufmann to frame Devlin. He was also going to kill Devlin. The fourth one is that Mogami-Hudson discovered the xenomorphs in statis in the asteroid and released some of them, hoping to get their technology in return. The fifth one is that Doctor Chu, Waterman, and Lowe are dead and that you were interacting with xenomorphs disguised as them.
• In Outcast, you are tasked with travelling to Adelpha, an earthlike world in a parallel universe, to escort three scientists who are going to determine how to close a rift between the two universes which is sucking the Earth into oblivion. When you arrive there, you discover that the two scientists who were sent minutes before you are nowhere to be found, the equipment that was sent ahead of the team is equally missing, and your arrival was apparently foretold in a prophecy made by a prophet named Kazar. The Talan — the native people of that world, who all speak English for some reason — insist on calling you "Ulukai", and believe you were sent by the "Yods" (their gods) to overthrow their despotic ruler, Fae Rhan. They agree to help you on your mission if you help them, as was foretold by Kazar.
  • Soon after recovering the first of the computer chips you need to fix the probe that caused this whole mess, you get a distress call from the third scientist, Marion Wolfe, who had arrived shortly after you. After rescuing her, she tells you why everything went so terribly wrong with the mission: as it turns out, time passes MUCH more slowly in this universe. Soon after you were sent through the portal, mission control realized that, and they immediately sent Marion after you without waiting for the standard ten minutes; that's why she arrived days after you, instead of years.
  • That single reveal opens the door for a barrage of others: your mission equipment is scattered all over the world, because it arrived ages ago, and it's seen by the natives as holy relics from the Yods, so you'll have to buy it back from them or find it in the world. The prophet Kazar is actually William Kauffman, the first scientist, who arrived here years ago and, understanding what had happened and that he was hopelessly stranded here for the next few years at least, proceeded to become a spiritual leader of sorts to the Talan, preparing them for the rest of the team's arrival; it was him who taught them how to speak English. Fae Rhan is Anthony Xue, the second scientist, who decided to make the most of his predicament, becoming the tyrant ruler of this world and leaving Earth to its fate. That's why Kauffman created the prophecy of the Ulukai: he knew you were coming, and wanted the Talan to help you when you arrived. He's nowhere to be found because he was killed by Xue.
  • Now, your mission as the Ulukai becomes that much more meaningful, since the tyrant you are supposed to overthrow is not a native, but a member of your own team.
• The Overlord games.
  • There are enough hints throughout the story for the player to look back and realize it was all leading up to this without actually preparing the player for the actual reveal.
  • In the first game, the player spends the entire story killing off the heroes who killed his predecessor and claiming his new kingdom. Just as he kills the second-to-last hero, it is revealed that the previous Overlord has been using you all along to eliminate his enemies. On top of that, he's been turning all the former heroes into corrupt shadows of themselves and you are in fact one of them, who was left behind.
  • In the second game, the player battles the Glorious Empire to take a new kingdom after your father's land was destroyed by a magical explosion. Just as you move in to kill the Emperor, the useless elf that has been a minor annoyance the entire game is revealed to not only be the cause of the explosion, but also the Emperor himself who has been using you to gather the energy he needed for his final magic transfusion.
• Persona:
  • The first Persona has this revelation pretty early on: Kandori's machine is not only manipulating your reality, but another one as well, and one of your party members is the other world counterpart of your sick classmate, which explains her apparent amnesia and sudden recovery. Then, later on, there's another one: Kandori's machine created the new reality from the dreams of your sick classmate, and her other world counterpart is actually a shadow of her.
  • Persona 3:
    • The protagonist's mission handed out by Ikutsuki, a seemingly kind and punny chairman to kill the 12 Arcana Shadows and stop the Dark Hour is merely a trap set by him so they can all rejoin as Death. He then tries to murder the entire SEES and fails.
    • At the very end of Episode Aegis/The Answer in Persona 3: FES, Metis reveals to the party that she and Aigis are one and the same. Metis was the "human" side of Aigis, cast out due to Aigis' wishes to be a mere machine again. If Aegis remains that way, she won't have to mourn/grieve over the loss of the protagonist, nor will she have to bear the penalties of being human. But after seeing what became of the protagonist and learning of the true nature of Shadows and Persona, she wishes for Metis to return to her. Aigis absorbs Metis and decides to stay with the SEES team, as a complete being.
  • Persona 4:
    • The game plays a rather cruel one when the protagonist's young cousin Nanako (who the player has had plenty of time to get attached to) is kidnapped by the apparent Big Bad, Nametame. After proceeding through a Disc-One Final Dungeon to rescue her, you find out that you were too late, as being in the Midnight Channel too long ultimately kills her when she's brought to the hospital. The player then gets the opportunity to exact revenge on the kidnapper by throwing him into the Midnight Channel to suffer the same fate, but doing so nets the player the worst ending and ensures that she stays dead. Turns out that Nametame is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who thought he was saving his victims, and he was just being played like a fiddle by the real murderer.
    • The serial murderer is actually Tohru Adachi, the bumbling partner to your detective uncle, but in truth, a sociopath. Why did he do it? Apathy, depression and Small Town Boredom. The killer's identity, is a person both you and the cast least expect. What makes it this trope though is that throughout the game, the killer has been Beneath Suspicion due to not only looking like a bumbling fool, but also being a close friend of the protagonists family. However, when it comes time to determine who the killer is, the game makes the player choose from a list of the entire cast, which makes the player come to the dawning realization that, looking only at the evidence, the only person who could logically commit the killer's crimes and get away with it, is the bumbling detective Adachi.
    • Golden expands on the second note further. Adachi is now a Social Link. In the original, he was one of the few people on the list who wasn't a Social Link. What's more, his Arcana is the Jester, a stand-in for the Fool (represented by the main characters). Players coming from the original game won't be fooled, but new players might find it even harder to accept that this is the killer.
    • Additionally, the events of the game were put into motion by the goddess Izanami, who took the form of a male gas station attendant to give you, Namatame and Adachi the powers of Persona to test humanity and see if it is worthy of salvation or extinction. This is a very subtle and clever way of Foreshadowing as the Gas Station Attendant does not have a portrait just like a random NPC when interacted normally.
  • Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth seems like a light and bubbly character interaction game, but it still has one: Rei is actually the ghost of a girl called "Niko," whose mother did not care for her at all when she was affected by a terminal illness and simply let her live her last days in the hospital, while Zen is actually Chronos, a powerful reaper-like entity who had fetched Niko's ghost 12 years ago and was touched by how much pain she was in. He knew that she wanted to go to Yasogami High, so he created a fake Yasogami, sealed his deity form in a clock tower which does not exist in the real one, wiped out all of his and Rei's memories, then assigned several powerful Shadow guardians including Rei's Shadow Self to prevent anyone including himself from recovering their memories without external help, with the Persona users being said help.
  • Persona 5:
    • Goro Akechi, one of your allies through the later half of the game, is actually Masayoshi Shido's bastard son. Despite he seems to be The Heavy for the bad guys at this point, he's not even loyal to them at all and is just serving them for his own agenda. And he has the Wild Card ability like you, even though he couldn't use it effectively unlike you, since he lacks The Power of Friendship to fully utilize it.
    • Igor, who have been helping you since the very beginning of the story, is a fake. He's actually Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, the real Big Bad of the game, and your entire mission for reforming people (as well as Akechi's mission to cause chaos) is rigged by him so he could delete anyone who won and trap society in eternal ignorance.
    • In the re-release version of the game, The Royal, the new character Kasumi Yoshizawa, is not the real Kasumi Yoshizawa, but rather she is Sumire Yoshizawa. The real Kasumi died in a car accident in an effort to stop her twin sister from becoming roadkill. Alongside her massive inferiority complex, Kasumi's death really takes a toll on Sumire's mental health that her therapist used his abilities to manipulate her cognition into making her think that she's Kasumi, all to stop her for committing suicide once more when conventional methods failed to get right through her. And another new character Takuto Maruki, is the therapist behind Sumire's circumstances. And he serves as the villain behind the third semester where the world becomes a Lotus Eating Machine. Like the Thieves, he has a Persona as well, and he's the owner of the mysterious Palace that Joker, Morgana, and Sumire accidentally stumbled around October.
    • You're betrayed by someone who you thought you could trust. No, it's not the traitor who sold you out in the prologue, that one was obvious even in-universe. The more surprising betrayal comes from Igor, the player's series-spanning Spirit Advisor, or rather an imposter who replaced him. There are several inconsistencies from the real Igor, most prominently that he sounds deeper and more commanding, but most veterans are likely to chalk it up to the voice actor being replaced in real life (when the real Igor returns, he speaks with much softer voice, or stock clips in the JPN language option due to the original VA having passed away).
  • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth:
    • The primary OC, a girl called "Hikari," appears to refuse direct communication and makes a Thousand-Yard Stare in a corner when idle, much unlike the (initially) cheerful Rei from the prequel. It was later revealed that she literally had to live a Trauma Conga Line of torture in the most realistically conceivable way; Being falsely accused of poisoning a pet rabbit by her teacher who didn't care for it and got humiliated by the entire class for that, having all of her secondary school friends turn on her only because she tried to be a voice of reason, then having her Education Relatives outright reject her from being a movie director, all of them which fueled her self hatred to the point that she withdrew herself in her room to become "normal." Her Living Emotional Crutch father then came in and tried to comfort her only to use the same Trauma Button phrase that everyone else said before they flip out. Needless to say her severe C-PTSD kicked in and her soul ended up in the theater, and that soul is the Hikari you encounter in the game.
    • Then there's Doe. He's actually a cognitive copy of Hikari's father mixed in with her negativity, and he actually overwritten the pure negativity in Hikari's theater with her memories in hopes of the Persona users being dragged in to save her. He succeeded and assists the party to escape by turning into its last key once he is defeated in an Eldritch Abomination form.
    • And finally, Nagi, who seems to absolutely do nothing and is suspiciously kind and soft, which is the standard recipe for a Chekhov's Gunman Big Bad. And it turns out...she indeed is, and she is actually Enlil, a manifestation and core of the Theater District, a tree-like complex in a distant area of the collective unconscious who brings forth salvation to those who had been torn down and destroyed by other people by heaping them with more negativity and depression, effectively just keeping the real copies of those people in catatonic depression and withdrawal from the world.
• Planescape: Torment, built as it is upon a well-crafted Laser-Guided Amnesia plot, is made of these, and doesn't stop until the very end — expect reveals about enemies, allies, old flames, rivals... even the main character. In fact, every attainable companion in the game has one of these, if you talk to them and dig deep enough.
• Pokémon Colosseum has a surprisingly effective Reveal: not only is Nascour not the Big Bad, as everything in the game beforehand had seemed to state, but his boss was Evice. Who's Evice? The incompetent mayor of Phenac City, who did nothing helpful through the entire game. This was very surprising, considering how Pokemon games usually made no secret of the villain and the only foreshadowing of it was Nascour casually leaving the mayor's house earlier in the game. This is done less effectively in the sequel, where it's pretty obvious Mr. Verich is the bad guy the minute you meet him.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky: The villainous Grovyle has finally been captured and the heroic Dusknoir is taking him away...and then he snatches you away too, because it turns out that he's the real villain and the "villain" you just helped capture was your amnesiac hero's old partner. Also you're from the future.
• In the second half of Portal 2, after listening to several recordings of late Aperture Science CEO Cave Johnson talking to a cheerful secretary by the name of Caroline, it's revealed that GLaDOS was built as an attempt by the terminally ill Johnson to cheat death by uploading his mind into an immortal AI network...and while Johnson seems to have died before the project was ready, he left instructions that Caroline should be uploaded, against her will if necessary, in his place.
• In Professor Layton and the Curious Village:
  • Near the end... Luke: "What do you MEAN 'the villagers are all robots'?!"
  • There're major reveals at the endings of the second and third games, too. In the second it's that Folsense isn't real, and the Elysian Box doesn't actually kill people. In the third, it's quite a bit more startling. You're not really in the future, and the so-called Older!Luke is, in truth, the Big Bad. And Celeste was really Claire all along. Too bad she dies anyway about two minutes after you find out. More accurately, she died ten years earlier, just as everyone thought — it just so happened that just before she died she was thrown into the future where she got to help save the day before being forcefully pulled back to the time of the accident.
• The main character of [PROTOTYPE], Alex Mercer, is trying to find out how he became the mutant with badass powers that he is. When he finally does, it turns out that he's not really Alex Mercer at all. He is the Blacklight virus that infected the corpse of the real Mercer and copied his body when he was shot after releasing the Virus on the city. The protagonist only thought itself to be Mercer because it retained some of his memories as it does with all the people it infects and consumes.
• The flash game QWOP seems so simple. Run the dash. But about halfway through you find out you're actually running the hurdle jump. And at the end you find out that it was the long jump the whole time.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • In the original game, Captain Qwark is revealed to be working for Drek in an attempt to make enough money to fuel his "comeback as a hero". Which would, in turn, get him more money as per heroic deeds and sponsorships. Another reveal, which is doesn't come until the end of the game, is that Chairman Drek is NOT looking for a home for his people. He turns out to be the one who polluted Orxon from the beginning, and the building of a new planet was actually a great real estate scheme as he was being paid for "every square inch" of his new planet.
  • Going Commando piles on even more: the masked thief is really a she, is a Lombax like Ratchet, isn't really the Big Bad but a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and the true villain is Captain Qwark, who has taken the place of the Megacorp CEO the entire game and was manipulating Ratchet the whole time.
• Rayman Origins has the aptly named level "The Reveal", where The Magician is... well, revealed to be the Big Bad.
• At the End of Red's Story in SaGa Frontier Red's Mentor from when he was aboard the Cygnus is the one who gave him the superpowers he used throughout the story.
• Sentinel: Descendants In Time: At the end of the game, it's revealed that Beni is actually Ramirez, and Carrie is his daughter.
• In Silent Hill 2, it's revealed that not only did the protagonist, James Sunderland, was the one responsible for his wife's death instead of her disease, she also died only a week prior to the game instead of 3 years before.
• In Shadow of the Colossus, you'll have to wait until the 16th statue crumbles to find that yes, Dormin will resurrect your girlfriend/sister/who-knows-who-she-is. They just want to make you into an unstoppable force of darkness in return. Although, you were warned, by Dormin Themselves, no less, that the consequences would be dire, and that you're signing a waiver.
• Each Sly Cooper game has one:
  • The original had Clockwerk reveal the reason he killed Sly's parents, steal the Thievius Racoonus and leave Sly alive was to show the the world that without the book, the Cooper family would be nothing.
  • The second game had a big one in that the Klaww gang members you had fought were all part of one big plan that was orchestrated by the leader of the gang, Arpeggio. What was the plan? To bring Clockwerk back to life, have Arpeggio become Clockwerk and become immortal. Also, Neyla was working for Arpeggio the whole time. But, once again, she backstabs him at the last second and becomes Clock-la.
  • And in the third game, the Big Bad Dr. M reveals that he was a part of Sly's father's gang. Apparently, Sly's father was a bit of a douche to Dr. M.
  • In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, one big reveal is that Penelope is working for Le Paradox, and that she stole the blueprints to Bentley's time machine, all because she resented Sly himself (despite the fact that he saved her life in the third game). Bentley did NOT take the reveal very well.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog series started implementing these once the games included more detailed stories.
  • Sonic Adventure: Chaos was a guardian entity over the Master Emerald shrine during the days of the ancient Echidna civilization who was driven to genocidal rage when the Chao it protected were killed during said civilization's attempt to take the Master Emerald for themselves. To protect the world from Chaos's rage, Tikal, a young Echidna girl, sealed herself and Chaos in the Master Emerald. After Chaos was released, Tikal offered aid to the heroes in the form of the hint orbs you see throughout the game.
  • Sonic Adventure 2: Professor Gerald Robotnik programmed the Space Colony ARK so that, if the Eclipse Cannon was powered by all seven Chaos Emeralds, the colony would set itself on a collision course with Earth as an act of revenge for the death of his granddaughter Maria. Furthermore, Shadow realizes that Maria's dying wish was not to carry out revenge against humanity, but to protect humanity.
  • Sonic Heroes: The "Dr. Eggman" that had been encountered throughout the game is not the real Eggman, but actually a souped-up Metal Sonic.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog: Shadow was created using Black Arms blood provided by Black Doom, which was provided in exchange for the promise of the Chaos Emeralds so the Black Comet could warp past the Earth's atmosphere to its surface and drain the planet of its life force. When Professor Gerald realized what Black Doom intended, he had the Eclipse Cannon developed — not as a weapon of mass destruction, as was originally thought, but as a countermeasure against the Black Arms.
  • Sonic Unleashed: Chip is actually Light Gaia, the counterpart to Dark Gaia.
• Space Channel 5: The Morolians were being used by Blank all along.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl: You begin the game recently rescued by another stalker from a lightning strike that destroyed the death truck that you were in, then transported to a bunker. You are called The Marked One by a black market trader known as Sidorovich. You then have a PDA that gives you the focused objective to "find and kill Strelok". At first, this objective is obscure and there is no mention of a particular Stalker who goes by the name yet. However, slowly you uncover the secrets of that particular Stalker while at the same time assisting the various factions of their troubles. But the revelation comes when you go to Strelok's secret hideout a second time (you must have gone there the first time and collected his important PDA, which will lead you to a specially important but minor NPC later in the game). As you climb up the ladder, you trigger an explosive tripmine and get knocked unconscious. Once you wake up from the blast, an old acquaintance known as Doctor appears and tells you that you are Strelok all along and warns you that the Wish Granter is nothing but a lie. He then tells you to find Fang's grave, another associate of Strelok's, and grab his PDA which contains a decoder that will allow you to unlock the real path to the NPP.
• System Shock 2: You spend roughly the first half of the game being assisted by Dr. Polito, who is your only companion, her only real flaw being she at times is a bit cold and short with you, what with the stress of all comrades dying and all. You finally enter her offices to find her slumped dead in her chair, having been Driven to Suicide long before ago... then the same voice you've been hearing mocks you for a minute, before announcing... "I am SHODAN!"
• Tales Series:
  • In Tales of Symphonia: The world religion is a lie. Kratos is an immortal being working for the Big Bad...and he's Lloyd's father. Sylvarant is actually only half of the world; the other half is Tethe'alla, which is locked in an alternate dimension, and competes with Sylvarant for mana. Said Big Bad is a hero from an ancient war who is using the false religion to resurrect his sister. Colette's angel transformation is a slow process of dehumanizing her so she can become a vessel for said sister. Zelos is working for Mithos and also possibly the Renegades, a rogue faction that opposes both you and Mithos's group. Regal murdered his lover, who was also Presea's sister. And Exspheres are people. Whew!
  • In Tales of the Abyss: The entire world is suspended on pillars over the Qliphoth, a lake of poisonous mud. There is one city floating in the Qliphoth, which is where Tear is from. Van was the one who kidnapped Luke, and then replicated him — meaning that Luke is a clone, and Asch the Bloody, one of Van's subordinates, is the original Luke. Van was Evil All Along. Ion and Sync are both replicas of the previous Fon Master. Replicas are created through fomicry, a forbidden art which Jade Curtiss, then Jade Balfour, invented when he was nine, and which he later tried to perfect with the help of his friend Saphir, who is now working for the enemy as Dist the Rose. He abused fomicry to try and resurrect his professor, and ended up creating an ultra-powered and ultra-crazy replica that serves as an Optional Boss. There is a Closed Score — a segment of the world prophecy that only high-level church officials know about — that predicted the downfall of Akzeriuth and did nothing to stop it. Van apparently dies two-thirds of the way through the story, but it's revealed later that he's still alive. Natalia is not a real Princess, and her father is the enemy God-General, Largo the Black Lion. Guy is not a real servant — he's a Malkuth nobleman who joined the Fabre household with the intent to kill Luke and the rest of Duke Fabre's family, and he was originally working with Van. This is because Luke's father killed his whole family. Guy survived this event because a group of maids and his own older sister threw themselves at him as they were struck down, meaning his gynophobia stems from the trauma of spending several days buried under a pile of female corpses. Also, near the end they reveal that Luke has to die to save the world. He seemingly survives his sacrifice, but the game takes that back when it's revealed he is dying, only slowly, and so is Asch for entirely different reasons.
  • Tales of Vesperia tones that down a little, but there are still a good few to go around. Estelle can work magic without a blastia, because she's the Child of the Full Moon. Blastia — and Estelle — are causing an imbalance of aer, which will eventually cause some kind of cataclysm. The cataclysm is later revealed to be the Adephagos, a rather poorly explained giant death octopus thing that comes out of the sky. Also, Raven and Schwann are the same person, meaning Raven has been working for Alexei all along. Oh, right, and Alexei's evil. Raven's also technically dead, and his heart was replaced with a Hermes blastia. If you do a little digging you'll discover that Hermes was Judith's father, which is why Judith feels obligated to go around destroying blastia (and because Hermes blastia use an above average amount of aer). Oh yeah, and the owner of the Nordopolica Coliseum is an Entelexeia, and some Entelexeia can take human shape.
  • In Tales of Graces: Sophie is a robot from a different planet (seriously) who was sent to kill the Big Bad Lambda, who is busy posssessing the main character's childhood friend, Richard. Richard was poisoned by his uncle and was dying by the time Lambda possessed him. Pascal is a member of an ancient and supposedly lost race called the Amarcians, who are actually just a group of engineers from Sophie's planet. Malik is originally a revolutionary from Fendel.
  • Tales of Xillia maintains the tradition. Teepo is not a conscious being. It's a booster, which is a type of technology that, among other things, empathizes with its user — so everything Teepo says is just a reaction from Elize's subconscious. Wingul also has a booster, and overusing it could kill him. Rowen was a war hero and a personal friend of King Nachtigal. The Lance of Kresnik is not a weapon — it's a key. It opens the schism, which reveals a second world, Elympios, that was sealed off from Rieze Maxia by Maxwell in order to preserve the spirits. People in Elympios have all but destroyed the spirits because they are dependent on spyrix technology, which kills spirits. Milla has a sister. Kind of. She's also not the real Maxwell, and she's also not dead, although you think she is for a while. Alvin is not from Rieze Maxia — he's from Elympios, and as such he doesn't have a mana lobe and can't cast spirit artes. Jude is also at least half Elympian, as that's where his father is from. Also Alvin is working for so many people it's impossible to keep track, but he betrays you to each of them multiple times and he's doing it all for his dying mother, who actually dies eventually because the woman taking care of her was slowly poisoning her to death. Also, Karla, that one woman everybody seems to want to hang out with in the sidequests, is Gaius's sister.
  • In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, it is revealed in the end that the hero is actually the summon spirit Ratatosk that wanted to destroy the world as well as the clone of the scientist that was killed by Ratatosk and his personality was fabricated to protect Ratatosk's identity.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • "Oh my god, you're a SPY!"
  • The "Blood in the Water" comic tie-in shows that the Sniper is actually not Austrailian. He's actually one of the last surviving people of New Zealand, which has become Atlantis.
  • The same comic also reveals that the Administrator is an Immortality Seeker just like the Big Bad is, which is the reason why they're both hunting for Austrailium. However, the former only wishes to live long enough to settle an ambiguous debt.
• Tomb Raider III has one when you enter the final area, Antarctica. The scientist who first tasked Lara with finding the artifacts was in fact using her the entire time so he could use the artifacts to attain godhood.
• Trails Series has quite a lot of these so the reveals will be about the most significant events that happen in the games. Most of these happen to fall under Late-Arrival Spoiler territory due to the series being a long, continuous runner but it will still be tagged in spoiler marks:
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky First Chapter: Joshua remembers his past that he is actually a part of the Ouroboros Society and that the professor is actually the Big Bad.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter: Kevin turns out to be the newest Fifth Dominion Seat of the church and kills Weissman.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky The Third: The Lord of Phantasma turns out to be a representation of Kevin's self-loathing.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero: The doctor who slacks off to go fishing instead is actually one of the survivors of the old cult who do not worship the goddess Aidios and attempts to make KeA the new goddess.
  • Trails to Azure: The prologue of the previous game where Lloyd and the SSS were storming the final dungeon? It turns out to be a different timeline where the SSS all die and they're only alive in the new timeline because KeA wished for it since she's the new Sept-Terrion that is even more powerful than the goddess' Sept-Terrion. Also, Ian actually is the one who kills Lloyd's older brother Guy because he nearly found out about the conspiracy too early. Finally, Mariabell, Elie's best friend, is the one funding all of this since her family is part of the conspiracy to recreate the Mirage Sept-Terrion after it killed itself to prevent it being abused by humans.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I: The second year who had to go back to being a first year due to him slacking off on his grades? The reliable older brother to Class VII whose room is just across Rean's? He's the leader of the terrorists Class VII has been trying to stop throughout the empire. He's also an experienced mech pilot who soundly trounces Rean's mech since this is Rean's first time piloting his Super Robot.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II: Rean finds out that the chancellor Crow tried assassinating in the previous game turns out to be alive, making Crow's efforts in vain since Crow dies due to giving Rean an opening to save the crown prince Cedric. Rean also finds out that Osborne is his father. Finally, Rufus reveals that he's actually a Mole in Charge sent by Osborne to dismantle the Noble Alliance.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III has so many reveals that happen in succeeding order. It turns out that the reason Rean has some kind of power on his chest and why he has that massive scar is because Osborne transplanted his heart to Rean's to save his life after their home was burned to the ground, killing Rean's mother and nearly killing Rean. Meawhile, the reason why the emperor doesn't stop Osborne from annexing countries left and right, is because the emperor admits that there exists a curse in the empire that influences people to do something really terrible and disregard any reason to pull it off which is why the Hamel Incident from the Sky series happens. Ash, who turns out to be another survivor of the Hamel Incident alongside Joshua and Loewe, just also happens to be influenced by the curse of Erebonia and ends up repeating history by shooting the emperor, who had nothing to do with the Hamel Incident, with a gun made by a company from the republic who has been at odds with the empire. Then there's George who turns out to be part of the gnomes and was responsible for burying a dummy body of Crow, who turns out to be alive due to unknown reasons, and ends up shooting Angelica because she knew too much. Rufus meanwhile reveals to Jusis that they're not actually brothers as he's the son of Jusis' long banished uncle and Duke Albarea's wife who cheated on him. Finally, it turns out that Alberich is actually Alisa's long thought to be dead father and is actually the leader of the gnomes who are trying to start the Great Twilight, which spreads the curse of Erebonia to the entire continent.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV: The reason why McBurn tells Rean that "all of him" is mixed during Cold Steel II is because his human form from Zemuria fused with another being from outside Zemuria, creating a whole new being. It also turns out that the curse of Erebonia actually is a being called "Ishmelga", Osborne's Divine Knight revealed at the climax of Cold Steel III and has been around the empire ever since the Divine Knights were created. Ishmelga also stalked the emperor Dreichels after the Civil War to make a contract with him and finally does get the desired contract, two hundred years later with his Reincarnation, Giliath Osborne. Finally, the Grandmaster of Ouroboros finally appears and reveals that phase two of the Orpheus Final Plan, the Phantasmal Blaze Plan is now complete and Ouroboros will now begin its third phase, the Eternal Regression Plan (despite the fact that Ouroboros never managed to obtain the Earth, Fire, and Mirage Sept-Terrion while still in possession of the Space Sept-Terrion). She also states that the world only has about three years left to live.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon: The ending of Mission 10 reveals that the Ironclads are Procyon ships being used to attack civilian ships to divert the bulk of the Royal Navy to the frontier, leaving the Royal Parliament, where the peace treaty is being signed undefended, allowing the Procyon diplomatic fleet to easily destroy the Royal Parliament and assassinate the Queen.
• The Turing Test: TOM is mind-controlling Ava. The reveal supposedly comes at the end of Chapter 4, although there was a lot of Foreshadowing if you bothered to read Mikhail's journal. Sure enough, you start losing control over Ava's actions as she enters a section where she is told she is being controlled and is TOM's slave. However, the real plot twist is that when TOM's control of Ava is broken, your vision glitches out, turning to an overhead camera view — revealing that the player has never actually been playing as Ava at all. They've been TOM all along.
• In Uncle Albert's Mysterious Island, there are several mentions of a mysterious object Uncle Albert brought back from the island. The end of the game reveals that it's Tom's egg, which Albert thought was a dinosaur egg.
• In Undertale:
  • It’s revealed near the end of the Pacifist and Genocide routes that the protagonist is not the “Fallen Child” you named at the beginning of the game. The protagonist’s real name is Frisk, and the “fallen child” the opening screens referred to was actually the first youth that fell from Mount Ebott into the monster kingdom, long ago — the one who was adopted by King Asgore, fell ill and died, and whose evil spirit has been trying to take control of the protagonist over the course of the game.
  • Very early in the game, Flowey the Flower explains many of the game's mechanics to you, many of which are similar to other RPG. If you kill other enemies in battle, you gain EXP. Get enough EXP and your LV increases. But in this game, LV doesn't stand for Level, but LOVE. It isn't until the game is almost finished that you find out from Sans what Flowey neglected to tell you: EXP actually stands for "Execution Points" and is a measurement unit for how much you've hurt other people. And LOVE is also an acronym, standing for Level of Violence, and is basically a measurement unit of how sadistic and/or sociopathic you are. Suddenly, you're forced to confront the consequences of every meaningful decision you've made throughout the entire game.
• Vagrant Story: Lea Monde is the Gran Grimoire. And Sydney had the key to inheriting its powers all along — the tattoo on his back.
• A pair of pretty big ones happen near the end of Vay. Two of the five Sages, the ones that created the Orbs that power the Vay armor are still alive. One of them is Princess Elin (f.k.a. Elynthia, the Sage of Light), the one who was captured during the raid on Lorath at the very beginning of the game, and the other is Sadoul (f.k.a. Ardor, the Sage of Fire), the scheming Danek prince-turned-murderer-turned-Big Bad.
• Warframe has one with practically every quest, and a few others.
  • The Cephalon fragments reveal that your Artificial Intelligence Ordis used to be a human named Ordan Karis. He served the Orokin as a soldier until he went insane and attempted Suicide by Cop at a ceremony to reward him for his actions. He failed and was converted into a cephalon.
  • In Natah, we learn that the Lotus was originally a sentient called Natah and that she was sent to destroy the Tenno. she instead decided to adopt them as her children. Oh, and the rest of the sentients are waking up.
  • Sands of Inaros reveals that Baro Ki'Teer in the last of the Sand People of Mars.
  • But the Second Dream trumps all of these:
    • Stalker has allied with the Sentient Hunhow. Oh, and Hunhow is Lotus' dad.
    • The source of the Tenno's power is buried in the moon, which Lotus hid in the void.
    • Said source of power? It's a human child, and they are the real Tenno.
    • Additionally, the Warframes are autonomous to some degree.
  • The War Within reveals that the Orokin achieved immortality via Body Surfing. The Grineer Queens are Orokin twins, and the elder one has decided to use the player's Tenno as their new body.
• It turns out in The Witch's House, the Legless Girl is really Viola in Ellen's body and vice versa. Ellen used Viola to switch out of her body in order to be loved as Viola and escape the pain she endured. To make it worse, Viola was trying to get her body back, but in the end, was killed by her own father.
• Couple of them in the Wing Commander games, revolving around revelations of The Mole.
• Xenogears:
  • Elly was a member of the raiding party responsible for stealing Weltall from Kislev, indirectly resulting in the destruction of Fei's home village, Lahan.
  • Grahf arranged for the raiding party to engage in battle directly over Lahan, so as to involve Fei in the conflict and begin unlocking his latent abilities.
  • Bart is actually an exiled member of Aveh royalty.
  • Citan and Sigurd are both former citizens of Solaris, the shady technocratic civilisation in the sky controlling Aveh from the shadows.
  • Chu-Chu isn't a stuffed toy, it's ALIVE!
  • Rico, a demihuman, is the sole heir to Kislev royalty.
  • The Ethos, the not-quite-Catholic religion responsible for excavating ancient weapons of war, is actually a front for Solaris' operations and their entire theology is a lie.
  • Solaris has, in fact, been running the entire surface world as a puppet show by means of kidnap, genetic conditioning and political machinations for the past several centuries. The other civilisation in the sky, Shevat, is the only force that is both aware of this and actively combating it.
  • Those Reaper enemies you've been fighting? Genetically altered people bred by Solaris as a means of merging man with machine and creating superior weapons of war.
  • Bishop Stone was directly responsible for the death of Billy Lee Black's mother.
  • Maria's father, Sergei, had his consciousness transplanted into one of Solaris' mechs.
  • Elly's mother isn't her real mother — she was born from an illicit affair her father had with a surface-dweller, meaning she's not a pure Solarian.
  • The food produced in the Soylent system is actually the reconstituted remains of human beings — that's right, Soylent Green is PEOPLE!
  • Citan was an agent of Emperor Cain, the figurehead leader of Solaris, planted to watch over Fei and lead him to Solaris.
  • Humans are not from this planet; the goal of the disembodied Gazel Ministry who rule Solaris is to inhabit the bodies of those with a high Animus factor and journey back to the stars.
  • Fei is Id — specifically, Fei has dissociative identity disorder, and the Fei we've been playing as until now is a mental construct that's only been around since he was brought to Lahan three years ago.
  • Miang is the Executioner.
  • Grahf is Lacan, an artist and warrior who suspiciously resembles Fei from the conflict 500 years ago.
  • Ramsus was created by Krelian to destroy Emperor Cain, freeing the Gazel Ministry to activate the Gaetia Key and reawaken Deus.
  • The humans on the planet of Xenogears were actually born from Deus, an interplanetary bio-weapon that crash landed there 10,000 years ago, and are actually intended as spare parts for the man-made God.
  • Miang is Deus' avatar; the "Miang-factor" exists within all women on the planet, allowing Miang to effectively possess any woman she chooses when her current host dies.
  • Miang at one point occupied the body of Fei's mother and performed horrific experiments on him when she became aware of his special status. This is what caused the personality of Id to form.
  • Fei/Id inadvertantly killed his mother when Grahf arrived at their family's house.
  • Fei and Elly are both reincarnations of passengers on the Eldridge, the ship which originaly bore Deus to the planet, who came into contact with the Wave Existence, the higher-dimensional entity which powers Deus. They've also reincarnated several times over the course of the intervening centuries. And one of these reincarnations was Lacan, who upon losing his current incarnation of Elly, swore vengeance upon the world and became Grahf.
  • Grahf has body-hopped his way across five centuries, and the body he currently resides in is that of Fei's father, Kahn. He seeks to merge with Fei, the current incarnation of the Contact, in order to bring about the apocalypse.
  • In his moments of control, Kahn has appeared to aid Fei over the course of the game in the guise of the mysterious figure Wiseman.
  • *deep breath* And finally, Krelian's true intentions in reviving Deus were to return humanity to the higher plane of existence from which all things originate, where they would be one with the Wave Existence and all individuality would dissipate.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X:
  • At the end of Chapter 5: All of the humans wandering around Mira are actually androids called Mimeosomes. Their real bodies are stored on the Lifehold and remote-control the Mimeosomes from there. That big, mysterious countdown on BLADE Tower? That's the reserve power level for the Lifehold, and it's a countdown to death for every remaining human.
  • Towards the end, there's a nasty reveal that the Lifehold was destroyed when the White Whale crashed. Humanity, at least in this sector of the universe, is dead. And somehow the humans' consciousness has integrated with the mimeosomes.

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