The majority of Final Fantasy games throw a Wham Episode in just when it feels like a major plot is being resolved.
- Final Fantasy II: Your party has just slain the Emperor and celebrations are underway. But then a soldier rushes in and reveals that the Dark Knight is Leon, Maria's brother, and that he has taken up the mantle of Emperor. Upon confronting Leon at Palamecia Castle, the Emperor rises from Hell in demonic form. Ricard, your current Guest-Star Party Member and the last of the Dragoons, performs a Heroic Sacrifice so the others can escape.
- Final Fantasy V, where Exdeath squashes two worlds together and combines this with the death of Galuf and a rare lack of Forgot About His Powers.
- Final Fantasy VI, where Kefka destroys the world.
- Before It Was His Sled, Aeris/Aerith getting Killed Off for Real in Final Fantasy VII.
- It didn't stop. Add in the first scene at North Crater where Cloud loses his sanity, gives Sephiroth the Black Materia which lets him cast Meteor, causes the WEAPONs to be unleashed, and wrapped in the candy coating that is Sephiroth has actually been dead this whole time and the one who you've been chasing around the world was actually Jenova (Who, admittedly, was under the control of puppetmaster Sephiroth).
- Final Fantasy VIII, when we learn that the Sorceress Edea raised everyone in the party at an orphanage.
- Half of Final Fantasy IX consists of this. In addition to discovering the sinister origins of Zidane, one city's population slaughtered in a surprise assault, another one nuked, summoned Eldritch Abomination crushes one more city...and the situation goes even more downhill from there. Every time you think "This can't be going on any more!" you get the next wham.
- There's also the scene in Final Fantasy X in Zanarkand, where Yunalesca tells the party that Sin is eternal, and that every Final Aeon that defeats Sin will become Sin in its place. Tidus is simply part of a dream of the fayth, who will wake up if you complete the game. You then move forward realizing that finishing the game will essentially mean the "death" of Tidus.
- The events in Home offer another good one. Tidus has a major Freak Out when he learns of the only way to defeat Sin: for Yuna to die—and everyone knew this without telling him. For the rest of the game, he is determined to come up with some other way to beat Sin.
- But before all of those, you get Operation Mi'ihen. It's an attempt to beat Sin using what we would consider conventional weaponry (as opposed to the Final Aeon). It is an out-and-out massacre, including one of Those Two Guys dying. Which one of them dies depends on some choices you made earlier, which seemed pretty irrelevant at the time. Operation Mi'ihen is also the first clue that Yevon isn't as nice as it seems.
- Everything after Leblanc's hideout and before Chapter 3 in Final Fantasy X-2. Also, the Den of Woe. Still freaky, even if you know it's coming. And it makes so much of the game (and Paine's backstory) make much more sense.
- In Final Fantasy XII when the party reaches Giruvegan and Ashe has a meeting with the Occuria.
- Chapter 8 of Final Fantasy XIII starts out as a Breather Episode. It doesn't stay that way.
- Chapter 9, The Primarch is a fal'Cie, one of you must become Ragnarok.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- The Main Scenario quest "All Good Things"; you return triumphant from your battle with Titan, only to find Garlean forces invaded the headquarters of the Scions and killed nearly everyone, forcing you to seek sanctuary at the church near Drybone Camp.
- "Lady of the Vortex": Following your battle with Garuda, the Primal of Wind, she not only proves to be too powerful to be beaten by normal means, but she re-summons Ifrit and Titan so she can steal their powers. Just when it looks like you can't get any more screwed, the Garleans show up and reveal Ultima Weapon, a living superweapon that literally eats the other three Primals and absorbs their powers.
- "The Parting Glass", the penultimate quest of the 2.5 patch, is very much this. At what is supposed to be a celebratory banquet, the Sultana is assassinated and the player and Scions framed for it, the Crystal Braves company that the player had spent the previous few patches helping to build up is revealed to be corrupt and responsible for the assassination, and the other Scions sacrifice themselves to allow the player to escape. The player and few remaining Scions are now wanted criminals in Ul'dah and hunted by the Crystal Braves, and forced to find refuge in the isolationist state of Ishgard. It gets better pretty quickly in Heavensward.
- The end of Patch 4.4 of Stormblood quickly turns the entire story on its head: It's revealed that Solus zos Galvus, the beloved late first Emperor of the Garlean Empire, is actually alive and well... and an Ascian. Always has and always will be. The Empire's desire to eradicate the Primals and unite the world under its leadership? A big fat lie — all done to sow chaos so the Ascians' one true God, Zodiark, can be revived. This suddenly turns virtually every event and quite a few characters' involvements on its head.
- EVERY LAST BIT of Shadowbringers/5.0 winds up being this to the entire story to this point! The Ascians were the original form of humanity from the unfragmented world, and THEY created the first and most powerful of all primals...ZODIARK AND HYDAELYN. Created to save the world from an apocalyptic calamity by rewriting the laws of the universe, humanity sacrificed half of itself to create Zodiark (whom promptly branded the sitting thirteen leaders of Ascian civilization, who we know as the Overlords), then half of what remained to have the God of Darkness restore all the damage done. However, another half of the remnants (essentially one eighth of what the original population had been) felt that too much was being given to the dark god and created Hydaelyn, His counterpart of Light. Their battle ended with Hydaelyn's victory, as she struck a final blow so incredible it blasted thirteen dimensional shards from the universe to create lesser parallel dimensions, all in 'orbit' around the now-incomplete Source. Solus zos Galvus is revealed to be one of the three 'whole' Overlords who escaped the fragmentation and is known as Emet-Selch, who not only created Garlemald but ancient Allag as well. G'raha Tia is also here as the Crystal Exarch, but from a Bad Future wherein the collapse and Rejoining of the First results in the Eighth Umbral Calamity, a global release of Black Rose across the entire Source that kills nearly everyone, including you and every Scion. The Ironworks of this future toil to augment the Syrcus Tower to be able to travel through space and time, and the Exarch goes back in time to the First to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, defeating Sin Eaters across the planet to drive back a malaise of light that was PLANNED by the Ascians all along to cause another Rejoining. Over the course of the adventure, you discover that you are a fragmented Ascian yourself, the Warrior of Darkness Ardbert is likewise, both being splintered from Emet-Selch's best friend in the Ascian capital of Amaurot. This all ends with you FINALLY fighting the founder of Garlemald and Allag to the death deep within the illusory recreation of the city, in order to save the kidnapped Exarch and prevent knowledge of the augmented Tower - that not even the Tower's creator understands completely - from being used to cause more Rejoinings. It also bears mentioning that Emet-Selch, true name HADES, is by and far the strongest Ascian ever fought, revealing that the Overlords were taken a lil too for granted against the Warrior of Light. And as the cherry on top of this cake of twists and turns, The Stinger shows that Zenos yae Galvus, the Garlean prince who the Warrior saw die after the final battle of Stormblood, managed to cheat death by using his artificial Echo to hijack another body until he drove the Ascian Elidibus from his body, took his body back, killed his father, the current Emperor, and now vows to take the power of Hydaelyn and Zodiark for himself just so he can get another crack at the Warrior!
- On a more lighthearted note is the trial Kugane Ohashi from the Hildebrand questline in Stormblood, which starts with the players fighting Yojimbo, the mercenary swordsman and a boss previously encountered in a post-game dungeon. Then "Battle on the Big Bridge" kicks in as Yojimbo reveals himself to be none other than Gilgamesh!
- Endwalker would finally explain how Hildibrand can survive anything thrown at him and why Godbert is a borderline Physical God. The two of them have the blood of the Mandervillians, a race of parasitic aliens whose symbiotic fusion grants the host incredible strength and durability. Godbrand was the first person who had a Mandervillian bond within his body and he would eventually wed a wife and bear a child, creating the first line of the Manderville family.
- Final Fantasy XV has the Leviathan trial, which ends very badly for all involved: Ardyn shanks Luna, and Ignis gets blinded.
- Final Fantasy Tactics might challenge IX for the most Wham-tastic game in the series.
- At the end of Chapter 1, Delita and Ramza's lives get changed in a major way.
- About three storyline battles later, you learn that Gafgarion is not what he seems.
- Then, in the last battle of Chapter 2, you learn what the Church is really hiding. Those are just selections. There's Wham candidates after every battle.
