Weirdness Magnet / Video Games

• Like a Dragon:
  • Kazuma Kiryu, protagonist of the Yakuza series. Diaper-clad regression-fetishist gangsters are one of the least weird things he gets exposed to during the course of the games.
  • His successor, Ichiban Kasuga, somehow has it even worse than Kiryu in this respect. It'd be easier to name a substory (or, hell, any situation in the main story itself) that doesn't involve weird and surreal things like fighting a giant Roomba vacuum cleaner or a chimp operating a digger.
• Lampshaded by Adell in Disgaea 2, quoted on the quote page.
• Vayne from Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis. He has "attracted" a ghost and an alien invader to be members of his workshop. And then there are the quirks of the rest of his friends (a boy-crazy catgirl, a superhero-turned-Evil Overlord, to name a few). In the end, though, they will always remain his friends (yes, even The Rival), regardless of what happens to him in the game.
• Fallout: New Vegas brings us the Wild Wasteland trait, which replaces several random encounters with much weirder versions. For example, a group of mercenaries being replaced with crashed aliens, being attacked by a gang of rolling-pin-wielding grannies, and a shaman summing up a spiritual journey by shouting "Take drugs! Kill a bear!".
• Final Fantasy XIV has the Warrior of Light get into world saving plots on a regular basis along with the more wackier adventures like those with Hildibrand Manderville.
• Madison from Heavy Rain. Including the DLC, she is attacked by two serial killers and a rapist before she even meets the Origami Killer.
• The Player Character from RuneScape, oh so much. Checking on a friend's friend who's been acting strangely? You end up in a plot involving the Goddess of Destruction trying to take out the small kingdom of Al-Kharid. Try to help a boy through his rites of manhood? That thing you helped him find was actually a member of an ancient, nigh-extinct race of Voluntary Shapeshifters, and finding him is the first step down a long rabbit hole. Helping a retired sculptor create one last statue? End up releasing two Arch-Enemy members of the same race of Voluntary Shapeshifters. Investigate a thief in the castle basement? That questline ends with you fighting the avatar of the god of war. Help a cook bake a cake for the Duke's birthday? A chain of events causes you to release the Culinaromancer, an evil sorcerer who uses food magic.
• The ClueFinders. 4 supposedly ordinary kids who can't even go out in their backyards without finding an underground civilization of plant-people who want to take over because humans polluted their water supply.
• Much like her spiritual predecessor, Lara Croft in Tomb Raider is an Adventurer Archaeologist who somehow manages to land right in the middle of conspiracies by obscure secret societies, megalomaniacal arms dealers, ancient Atlantean dictators, mafia bosses obsessed with ancient Chinese magic, mad scientists, and demons and fallen angels.
• The Sith Inquisitor from Star Wars: The Old Republic is heavily immersed in the more mystical elements of the Force and has a bizarre affinity for running into Force-Ghosts on a regular basis. Lampshaded by the ghost of their ancestor, who explains that this is actually a rare gift, allowing them to draw out restless spirits and draw forth their emotions. He even describes their mere presence as being akin to an overwhelming pull.
  • On Voss, at one point the Inquisitor explains to another Imperial their plan to enter a region steeped in the Dark Side that causes most who venture inside to go mad, simply to find the Gormak they'd met whilst Dreamwalking, in the hopes it will help them find a way to cure their Heroic RRoD from having too many Force Ghosts currently bound within them. Rather tellingly the Imperial's response is to be more worried by the utterly blasé manner in which the Inquisitor treats the entire situation as if it were routine.
• In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2nd OG, it is revealed that the weirdness magnet is an actual object. The core of Shuu's Granzon was designed by the Guests to cause probability alterations, attracting all kinds of invaders from other worlds. It's pointed out that this explains why Earth has been attacked by lots of aliens in a relatively short time period.
• The Hero from Sierra's Quest for Glory series. While a certain amount is to be expected considering he's an adventurer and hero, so is likely to be intentionally walking into the weirdness, some of the bizarre situations he finds himself in go way beyond what would be reasonably expected.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: Poor old Conker has a bit of a Bad Fur Day. All he wanted to do in the first place was go home, yet anything that might go wrong goes HORRIBLY wrong, and the game consists of him being thrown into bizarre non-sequitur after bizarre non-sequitur.
• In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Varric will at one point outright say that everything that happens to the Inquisitor is weird. He later notes this as the reason he believes the Inquisitor is the Herald of Andraste. Either s/he is the Maker's chosen, or s/he has the absolute worst luck. Most likely both.
• It's explained in Kingdom Hearts that The Heartless are drawn to those who possess a Keyblade and attack them on sight. The Heartless fear the Keyblade as one of the only things that can destroy them and seek to remove the threat at every turn.
• In God of War (PS4), what starts out as a simple task of bringing Faye's ashes to the highest peak leads Kratos and Atreus to battling against the Norse pantheon. Even Mimir had a hard time believing that Baldur happened to find them and start a fight.
  Mimir: Why don't you tell me how all this began with Baldur?
  Atreus: He just knocked on our door!
  Mimir: Baldur of Asgard just knocked on your door?
  Atreus: Yeah, he just showed up and started a fight.
• PAYDAY 2: Vlad's jobs started out as petty revenge plots, before broadening into out-and-out bizarre. He's had the crew recover safes, a herd of goats^* They were being used as drug mules to smuggle cocaine. Don't Ask., Christmas presents, and most disturbingly, live nuclear warheads.
• In Tales of Vesperia, in a skit, both Karol and Raven accuse Yuri for being this. He counters that at least he always comes out fine, no matter how dire the situation is.
• Kirby: Planet Popstar may seems like this cute and cuddly place, but it always seems to be on the receiving end of truly crazy things. Examples include, but are not limited to an embodiment of nightmares, literal Dark Matter, multiple times, a clown that became a god, an alien with a crown that gives him nigh-unlimited power, a tyrannical queen who wants to become a giant plant, a Death Star-like AI, a being that’s essentially their equivalent to Satan, a genetic experiment that went horribly wrong, the list goes on.
• Dragalia Lost: Poor Euden just can’t seem to catch a break, can he? It seems as though there’s something weird happening at the Halidom just about every week, and even when he’s not there, Euden and his friends are almost bound to run into some sort of trouble. There is actually an explanation: The Halidom has many different people who live in it, which is why it has an unusual aura of mana around it, and it’s implied that this aura lures people to it. As for Euden himself, He’s part of their God’s heart, more specifically, the part that gives to others. In other words, he’s essentially their world’s equivalent to Jesus. That’s why it only makes sense that he would be the one to always be there whenever there’s a problem.

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