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Wham Shot / Video Games

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Wham Shots in video games.

  • Ace Combat
    • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
      • In the cutscene that plays after the Wardog Squadron along with the Arkbird sink the Scinfaxi, the player is treated to a shot of another Yuktobonian submersible aircraft carrier, the Hrimfaxi.
      • In the second to last mission, Aces, the Wardog squadron has destroyed the control center for the SOLG after flying through a tunnel. The cutscene that plays afterwards shows that the SOLG is now falling through the atmosphere, and will crash into Oured, the capital of Osea.
    • Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
      • In the mission Stage of Apocalypse, the Galm and the Crow teams have successfully shot down a flight of Belkan bombers that were about to drop nuclear weapons on Ustio, when suddenly the screen turns white, the HUD is now a little fuzzy, and off in the distance is a nuclear explosion.
      • And near the end of the same mission, Pixy is contacted by Wizard 1, and after their brief conversation, Cipher gets a missile lock alert coming from Pixy.
      • In the second to last mission, Avalon, after seemingly successfully stopping the launch of V2, Galm team is ambushed by a laser armed bogey that kills PJ. When the player is shown who the enemy is, it turns out to be an aircraft that has Pixy’s paintjob on it.
    • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
      • In the mission, Rescue, the Oseans launch a daring mission to extract former President Vincent Harling from the Lighthouse. He, along with an Air Force colonel, try to escape on a captured V-22, but as the V-22 flies off, its struck by a missile to the cockpit, which kills Harling’s escort, and Harling then turns the V-22 around back to the Lighthouse. The V-22 then gets harassed by a couple of drones, and when Trigger tries to pull them away, a missile flies right past Trigger, which strikes the V-22, and the player is treated to a scene of the V-22 exploding.
      • Any time a solid green box blinks up displaying the words **OFFLINE** to replace a pilot's portrait where it would usually be on the HUD. It means the pilot's plane is destroyed, and said pilot is probably dead. Bonus points when it comes up just after a character's transmission cuts short. The first notable one would be in the mission "Faceless Soldier", when a friendly pilot is accidentally tagged as an enemy and shot down by another friendly.
        Count: All right! I got the last one!
        Full Band: Damn it! Goddamn it! Why does this-
        [OFFLINE]
        Count: What? Full Band?!
      • During the battle for Farbanti, Trigger is on the verge of shooting down the Erusean ace Mihaly, but before Trigger can deliver the final blow, the HUD suddenly starts fuzzing up, and Húxiān calls out an explosion up in the sky. The cutscene that follows shows that Osea and Erusea had launched a simultaneous A-Sat strike, and that now communications have been completely cut off due to debris from the satellites destroying other satellites.
  • ANNO: Mutationem: After retrieving her brother's stolen ROM, Ann manages to repair it and view the entire recording, with the final image showing Ryan entering Dr. Doyle's lab beneath Skopp City, signifying to Ann that Doyle was withholding information from her.
  • Bendy and the Ink Machine:
    • Henry received a letter from his old friend, Joey Drew, saying that he needs to show him something at the animation studio where they used to work together. However, when Henry gets there, there's no sign of Joey. Instead, there is a mysterious machine and a 3D version of Boris, one of the characters from their old animations, strapped to a table, mouth open, Wing Ding Eyes showing a pair of Xs.
    • After activating the Ink Machine, Henry rounds the corner to find it boarded off — before a deformed monster resembling Bendy appears right before his eyes.
    • After Henry escapes from Inked Bendy in Chapter 2, he walks down a hall and finds none other than Boris, alive and well.
    • In Chapter 3, Henry and Boris come across an entire room full of Borises and Butcher Gang members having been killed in a similar manner to the Boris in Chapter 1. A moment later, and there's another: Alice torturing a Butcher Gang member, revealing that she's the one responsible.
    • Near the end of Chapter 4, Henry is riding a cart towards Alice's lair, when the cart is suddenly stopped by two enormous hands that poke out of the darkness...and then the mutated visage of what is unmistakably Boris rises into view.
    • Chapter 4 ends with Henry having to fight a monstrous Boris made by Alice. After killing it, Alice tries to strangle him only to be killed by...another, less corrupted version of Alice with her own Boris.
    • Chapter 5 ends with Henry killing Ink Bendy by playing the last reel and then seemingly being teleported to Joey's apartment, which is depicted in full color and has a semi-realistic art style despite the game visually resembling a black-and-white cartoon up until that point... and then at the end of the final cutscene he's ushered through Joey's back door and somehow ends up back in the studio, restarting Chapter 1.
  • The ending in The Binding of Isaac where Isaac finds his own dead body in the chest. While the other endings were dark before, this one was the point where the true plot really began to reveal itself and was the start of many fan theories until the Rebirth DLC endings put everything into perspective.
    • As there are plenty of items that change Isaac's appearance and almost all of them are played for Black Comedy, his face when picking up the Torn Photograph is particularly miserable and is not Played for Laughs. His father was ripped out of the photo after he and Isaac's mother went through a divorce. And to make that even worse? Isaac not only blames himself for being the reason, but he is Driven to Suicide because of it. Ouch.
  • BioShock Infinite
    • When Booker reunites with Elizabeth in Comstock House, he approaches her and sees that she's actually an old woman, revealing this to be a Bad Future.
    • After Booker kills Comstock, his nose starts bleeding, revealing that he is actually Comstock from another timeline.
    • At the end of the game, when Booker relives the time he sold his daughter and unsuccessfully tried to get her back, as the tear closes, it cuts off her pinky finger, revealing that Anna is Elizabeth.
  • Blair Witch: As if all the various signs of the Witch's presence and power weren't already there, near the end of the game, Ellis, caught in a storm, finds a tape appropriately titled "The Reveal", showing Carver taking Peter into a house. Ellis then looks up from his camera and sees the Rustin Parr House, which wasn't there before, suddenly silhouetted in the rain and lightning.
  • Bloodborne:
    • The appearance of Rom, the Vacuous Spider. To elaborate, you've been spending much of the game fighting creatures in locations that wouldn't be out of place in a Gothic Horror setting: werewolves, witches, zombies, etc. But then you drop into the Moonside Lake in Byrgenwerth College and find this...thing. From here, the situation gets worse: once you defeat her, you descend into the newly-opened Yahar'gul, and you see dozens of Amygdalas crawling all over the city like maggots on a corpse. This is when you realize what you've been playing is in fact a Cosmic Horror Story.
    • Gehrman getting up from his chair and showing you his Trick Weapon before fighting you, making you realize he's still a hunter, after all.
    • Taking the back door to Iosefka's Clinic and discovering Celestial Emissaries lingering about, including a dead one strapped to an operating table, followed by Iosefka telling you to leave at once and possibly attempting to kill you. It hits doubly hard if you've been sending all the civilians there, as you realize you're partially responsible for what's happened here.
    • Lady Maria lunging at you and giving you a clear shot of her face reveals to you who the Doll was based on. Technically the player can see Maria in the cover art of the DLC, but her face is hidden there.
    • And there are other examples, of course, such as the fate of the player in the various endings, that would probably count also... if we could actually ascertain how significant they actually are, that is.
  • Combines with The Stinger in Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon: After trying to save Zangetsu, the three other heroes are unfortunately forced to kill him. But after the credits, Zangetsu awakens in the afterlife...which is apparently some kind of cyberpunk world far removed from the world he came from.
  • The image of a lifeless Earth in Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius after it's been bombarded into oblivion by the Shivans.
  • At the end of Act 1 of Broken Age, the camera shows Vella lying on the beach after defeating Mog Chothra, only for Shay to stumble out of the monster, revealing that his "spaceship" was Mog Chothra all along.
  • Buckshot Roulette: Opening the item box to find a "Release of Liability" document similar to the one you signed at the start of the game. Except that this one is bloodied and signed "GOD", implying that God Himself has played the shotgun Russian Roulette game with the Dealer and lost.
  • In the post-credits scene in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Zobek finds Gabriel, who has become a vampire and calls himself Dracula, hiding in a church. The two of them have a very brief fight which ends with Gabriel being flung through a stained glass window...and landing in the middle of a street in a modern day city.
  • Towards the end of Code Vein, the world outside of the Gaol of the Mist is revealed. A Dyaus Pita class Aragami is shown hunting down revenants without breaking a sweat, showing that for all the horrors found within the city, they are nothing compared to the horrors outside the mist.
  • About midway through the Soviet campaign of Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Josef Stalin is in a meeting with his top commanders as normal, then everyone else goes silent as a bald, goateed man in a business suit steps in to whisper something in the dictator's ear — it's Kane, the Big Bad of the Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series, looking the same as he does in the "modern" setting, and steering world events to the Brotherhood of Nod's advantage. It's the first real confirmation for C&C fans that Kane is no ordinary adversary.
  • Chrono Trigger
    • Inside the Ocean Palace, your party uses the Ruby Knife in an attempt to destroy the Mammon Machine...and then you see Lavos awakening early.
    • After Crono is disintegrated by Lavos, you need to rearrange your party. It's the same screen that you've been using the entire game, but Crono is gone, and you can put anyone in the top slot. It's a pretty shocking moment of comprehension.
  • At the end of Stage 2-0note  of Cho Ren Sha 68k, the boss you just defeated goes out in an explosion. It's the exact same explosion that you see when you start Stage 1-1note . Coupling with Wham Line, "STAGE 1" then appears as the explosion goes off.
  • Dark Souls III has a wham leitmotif. When fighting the Soul of Cinder, it will switch between various fighting styles, copied from the various Lords composing it. Then it enters phase two, and three very familiar piano notes play, as Gwyn resurfaces from within the Soul.
  • In Ending E of Drakengard, after Caim and Angelus attack the Queen Grotesquerie, we are treated to a shot of a modern cityscape, which is followed by a title card reading Tokyo.
  • After a boss-fight in Dead Rising 3 Nick's friend Diego brings him into a museum that is used to explain the plot of the first 2 games, and points to an exhibit of a zombie that caused an outbreak in 2007. Diego points out one minor detail in the picture, which the game zooms in on. The zombie has a tattoo...in the same place and manner of Nick, the main character.
  • Destiny 2:
    • Two occur at the end of the Main Campaign:
      • The first one is the Traveler awakening, and breaking free from the cage that Dominus Ghaul tried to seal it off in to try to steal its light.
      • The second one comes immediately afterwards, as the Traveler awakening had caused it to send out a wave of light that went outside of the galaxy, and past a fleet of pyramid shaped ships, who then light up, and start flying towards the source of the wave of light.
    • Shadowkeep:
      • In the first mission, the Young Wolf walks down towards a large cavity in the moon where the Hive have built the Scarlet Keep. And in that cavity, the Young Wolf is treated to the sight of one of those very Pyramid Ships that were seen in The Stinger of the main campaign.
      • At the end of the same mission, the power of the Pyramid is demonstrated when it creates, not only a Nightmare of Crota Son of Oryx, but also of Dominus Ghaul, and Fikrul the Fanatic.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: The ending cutscene of Mission 11. Arkham's book is left flipping its pages on the ground, and his body is nowhere to be found when he was previously assumed to be dead after Vergil stabbed him.
  • Devil May Cry 5:
    • A dying Vergil uses the Yamato to expel a humanoid figure from himself. The figure morphs into a nude V... while the camera pans to show Vergil's shadow morphing into Urizen's silhouette.
    • Nero recklessly fights Urizen alone for the second time, which led to him almost getting crushed by the demon king. Just before Nero loses consciousness, another demon flies in the room to save him and face Urizen on his behalf. Urizen is even briefly shocked at this sudden turn of events. That new demon is actually Dante in his Sin Devil Trigger form, with a later mission revealing how he obtained a new power.
    • After V stabs him, Urizen explodes into a pillar of blue light, shattering the fake sky around him and revealing a fully healed Back from the Dead Vergil, Dante's brother and Nero's father, standing where he once was. By this point, Dante will realize that V disappears because just like Urizen, he is also another part of Vergil.
    • A brand new demon (Nero in Devil Trigger form) appearing between Dante and Vergil just as the two are about to kill each other. It's so intense that the following chapter is dedicated entirely to how Nero achieved it.
  • Donkey Kong '94 starts out with the four levels from the original arcade game, leading players to believe that it's just an ordinary port. Then after you beat level four, the arcade ending is subverted, leading to the real game.
  • Don't Escape 3: After opening the door to the cabin and seeing the bloody spacesuit, worn by the killer that got rid of the rest of the crew, the protagonist starts retching and coughs up blood and a suspiciously-familiar crystal. Said crystal has been growing inside of him and manipulated him in his sleep, causing him to murder his fellow crewmembers.
  • Doom Eternal: After arriving at the lair of the Night Sentinels, the Slayer has a flashback to the first time he arrived, being dragged by two guards before the Priests. One of the guards explains that they found the Slayer outside the castle and then hands one of the Priests something he was wearing. It's the original Doomguy helmet, revealing that he and the Slayer are one and the same.
  • Duck Season: After playing the game for a bit, the player sees a boy sitting down, before realizing that the boy is following their movements. Then they look right to see the dog watching them from outside the house.
  • In Enigmatis: Shadow of Karkhala, the detective works alongside Britney, a college student who is one of the only surviving members of a murdered expedition, as they try to piece together what happened and what to do to stop the Big Bad. Eventually, the detective makes her way to the expedition's HQ, where the murders took place, and starts searching. Only there does she find Britney's corpse, buried in the snow. Britney did not survive at all - the person she's been helping has been the Big Bad, who committed the murders and has shapeshifting powers. This is immediately followed by a Wham Line: "Useful as ever, Detective."
  • Fallout:
    • Fallout 2, the player has the GECK, the village is saved. And the second you step foot into Arroyo, you initiate conversation with a dying, badly wounded Hakunin. Your quest isn't over yet; the real fight is still to come.
    • Fallout 3, the player has been hearing Enclave radio broadcasts throughout the game, but no one has seen the Enclave itself for years, the radio broadcasts are obviously pre-recorded loops, and the Enclave was destroyed years ago in Fallout 2 anyway. Then, while helping your father prepare Project Purity to activate, you look out the drainage grate you're in and see a vertibird, the Enclave's signature mode of transport, land on the catwalk outside, and troops in their signature black Powered Armor march out. The Enclave isn't just still active, they're here.
      • In the final questline, when Liberty Prime is sent into battle as the Brotherhood of Steel prepares to assault the Purifier with more Enclave than ever swarming the area. You head outside and prepare yourself for the most epic battle you've faced yet. And you see Prime standing outside the Citadel. After just standing there motionless for a moment or two, Prime will be attacked by an Enclave vertibird. His response is to finally move to face them and unleash his Eye Beams on it, destroying the aircraft. It's the first shot in the Curb-Stomp Battle you are about to witness as Prime begins his march obliterating all in his path.
    • The appearance of the Prydwen in Fallout 4 is accompanied with fanfare and a good Oh, Crap! from your companion, if you have one. Rightly so, considering that this is the strongest the Brotherhood of Steel has been in any Fallout game: the west coast Brotherhood has been declining ever since their first appearance in Fallout, and while the east coast Brotherhood was powerful in Fallout 3, having custody of many suits of power armor, the Pentagon, and a giant death robot, this is a further expansion of their power. It also marks the beginning of the War for the Commonwealth, as the Sole Survivor's attention turns away from hunting down their spouse's killer (having killed him just moments before) and begins to focus on the rising conflict between the Institute, Brotherhood, and Railroad.
  • Fate/Grand Order: As the player gets ready to start the Fate/EXTRA crossover event, just as BB says not to expect things to be easy, the event screen shatters before shifting into a proper "Epic of Remnant" chapter screen, revealing the true name of the crossover event and that it will have major ramifications on the game's plot.
  • At the end of the first FEAR game, the camera pans down from the image of Alma's second birth to show her medical file, which lists her name as "Alma Wade." That one shot changes the context of 90% of the previous game.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • The end of Disk 1 in Final Fantasy VII, Aerith getting stabbed by Sephiroth may be the most famous Wham Shot in the medium.
    • At the end of Final Fantasy VII Remake, one of the last shots is Zack Fair in the aftermath of his ill-fated Last Stand, triumphant and alive.
    • At the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2, the time gates are closing, the paradox is resolved, Hope's Cocoon is ascending, and Noel, Serah, and Mog are safe...and then you see Etro's Gate shining in Serah's eyes.
    • Final Fantasy XV:
      • If you play Episode Ignis before the events of Chapter 13 (preferably right after Chapter 9), the shot of Ardyn warping towards Ignis after the latter dons the Ring of the Lucii counts as this.
      • In Chapter 11, Noctis sees Ardyn inside the train and attacks him in a fit of rage. Shortly thereafter, he fights alongside his friend Prompto to defend the train. Shortly after taking out the Magitek engines, Noctis sees Ardyn holding Prompto at gunpoint on top of the train, and knocks the former off the train. A moment later, you see Prompto falling and Ardyn standing, at which point Noctis, along with the player, realizes that Prompto and Ardyn's appearances had been swapped to trick Noctis into attacking his friend.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • At the very ending of Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, after defeating the night's hardest difficulty, you end up getting a cutscene in which an unfamiliar voice talks to their father about a plan they apparently followed. The voice also mentions that "they" mistook him for his father, and that he should be dead but isn't. He ends by saying that he's been living in shadows, and is coming to find his father. The whole time, the footage has been showing what appears to be a burned-out building. Then, in the very last half-second, a figure steps into frame: it's Springtrap. The next game revealed that it's not actually him speaking, but regardless, it's still a Wham Shot because it reveals that Springtrap survived Fazbear's Fright burning down.
    • The spinoff game Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator somehow manages to top even that. At first, the game seems like the sort of 8-bit troll game that Scott Cawthon has become famous for, with simplistic gameplay and cheerful music. Then on level 4, the game begins to glitch badly, with the screen eventually going black... only to fade back in on a realistically rendered shot of Baby, now in a horribly damaged form, apparently deactivated and sitting across from the player at a desk. Ladies and gentlemen, Five Nights At Freddy's 6 has arrived.
    • Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach joins in the fun when, after Gregory and Glamrock Freddy head underground for answers about what's really going on, they find a building with a very familiar sign: Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. And if that didn't clue people in, the shot of Burntrap, who may or may not be 'Springtrap' of all people, emerging from a charging station should.
  • From Next Door:
    • In one good ending, Omura goes to the next door house to investigate, but when he opens the front door he finds only a wall there.
    • In one bad ending, as Namie is trying to escape from the other house, we see multiple pairs of hands grab her to pull her back inside, suggesting there's more than one creature.
  • In Genshin Impact, after the heroes plot their next course of action at the end of Prologue: Act II, the next scene shows the Traveler's sibling, with some Abyss Order mooks behind them. It's then revealed that the sibling is leading the Order.
  • Ghost Trick has many, given its Plot Twist-after-Plot Twist structure, but the two big ones are when Sissel (and the audience) encounter his 'corpse', alive and well and villainous, and then when attempting to save Inspector Cabanela from the same, the screen turns blue and "Sissel" turns to face the camera and informs the player he won't play by the previously established rules. This is followed by a very challenging level where he will kill Cabanela at the slightest attempt at a Ghost Trick he sees.
  • At E3 2016, a trailer of a then unnamed game shows a boy being ordered by his father to hunt. The audience initially expect this to be an ordinary father-and-son game until the father turns out to be Kratos, now living in the period of the Norse Mythology, revealing that the game is God of War (PS4), a new installment in the God of War series.
    • Within the game itself, there's Kratos' return to his home, which has two moments: first, while riding a boat to speed up the journey, Kratos is briefly confronted by a specter of Athena. Second, when he actually gets inside his home, Kratos opens the room he had forbidden Atreus from entering, takes out a bundle he hidden in there, and unravels it... revealing the Blades of Chaos.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, CJ catches a glimpse of Tenpenny, Pulaski, Big Smoke and Ryder walking out of a garage with a green Sabre in it, revealing that the latter two betrayed the Grove Street Families and that all of them were involved with killing CJ's mother.
  • Halo 4: In the third level "Forerunner", Master Chief activates a satellite to contact the Infinity, but he unwittingly ends up freeing the Didact, a living Forerunner.
  • Hometown Story:
    • When you first meet the detective that eventually moves into town, Jacques, the mayor, Carl, happens to have a watch with a quite unusual shape that’s gone missing. The detective fails spectacularly to help, then decides to give up, and pulls a watch out of his coat to check the time. The watch happens to be the missing one, that the detective found on the ground on his way to the village.
    • The town has a sentient scarecrow who constantly talks about how he's stuck in the same spot. If you give him the broom he requests, he jump out of enthusiasm, revealing that the part of him that looks like a thick pole buried in the ground actually works more like a foot. The fact that he's more mobile than he claims to be becomes important later.
  • One of the rooms in Ib has lots of cute red-eyed rabbits that Garry insists are creepy. There's also a book right next to the large portrait of the bunny that talks about hallucinations. When Garry is separated from Ib and Mary, we get to see from his point of view... and see the cute bunnies were creepy dolls with red eyes.
  • In Jade Empire, shortly after the party arrives in the empire's capital, they end up being questioned by some guards, only for Princess Sun Lian to arrive and ask the guard captain if there's a problem. As she says, "Well, is there?" a brief cutscene flashes back to Silk Fox, a mysterious enemy-turned ally the party faced in the previous chapter, revealing that Silk Fox is actually the princess.
  • In Jak 3: Wastelander, the cutscene "The Strange Gets Stranger" has a Precursor statue opening, revealing that the Precursors are ottsels. The characters present react accordingly.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic, after completing three of the four Star Forge planets, you and your companions are captured by Darth Malak. In a confrontation, he reveals that the Jedi Council wiped your mind, leading to a flashback to several seemingly innocuous lines that turn out to be critical foreshadowing. The final shot of this flashback is the Predecessor Villain Darth Revan removing their mask to reveal your face.
  • Killer7
    • The game gets one at the end of the Alter-Ego chapter. The first two chapters have set up Kun Lan and the mystery of the Heaven's Smiles as very important, but then for the next three chapters they kind of take a back-seat as the Smiths deal with stuff like a crazy cult leader, another assassin, and team of super-sentai parodies. The very last shot at the end of the chapter is Kun Lan over a red screen, reaching for the camera, to remind you he's still around, and warn you that the next chapter is all about him and the Smiles again.
    • The very next chapter, Smile, has one at the very beginning, where you enter Harman's room to find Samantha dead and Harman nowhere in sight.
  • Kingdom Hearts
    • Kingdom Hearts II: Just before the Final Boss, a device the real Ansem the Wise was using explodes, and the light from the device purifies Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, from Riku, which causes his real form to be restored. If that's not the wham shot, then the end of the cutscene is when the party select pops up...with Riku as the Guest-Star Party Member, which came as a surprise for first-time players. Especially since other guests joined much earlier in their arcs.
    • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: After the clash with Master Xehanort, Aqua takes Ventus' comatose body back to the Land of Departure, and then uses Eraqus' Keyblade to rearrange the world in order to ensure that nobody but her will ever be able to find him. And as she's leaving the world, the scene zooms out to reveal that the rearranged Land of Departure is a familiar location: Castle Oblivion.
    • In the epilogue of Kingdom Hearts III, the Foretellers emerge in the Keyblade Graveyard to find themselves greeted by a figure in a black hood carrying the No Name Keyblade and waiting next to the mysterious black box. Upon being identified as Luxu, the figure acknowledges that he hasn't gone by that name in a long time and removes their hood... to reveal the face of Xigbar.
  • Kirby:
    • Kirby's Return to Dream Land: After defeating HR-D3 in the True Arena, the next boss image shows the shadowed face of a boss not yet fought: Galacta Knight, marking the first true surprise boss in the franchise.
    • Kirby: Triple Deluxe: After defeating Sectonia DX as King Dedede, the latter strikes a victory pose. As he's doing so, the Dimension Mirror shows up and spits out Dedede's Mirror World counterpart. After his defeat, Dark Meta Knight shows up to fight after a ten year absence.
    • Kirby: Planet Robobot:
      • After doing enough damage to the Access Ark, its exterior plating shatters, revealing the face of Galactic Nova, another AI with wish-granting and reality-warping powers. Doubly shocking as, up until now, explicit connections to previous games' plots had been constrained to Cryptic Background References and extra modes (which were stated by Word of God to be Alternate Continuities), rather than being front and center as a major plot point in the main game's story.
      • In this game's EX mode, Meta Knightmare Returns, after the defeat of Haltmann 2.0, Star Dream awakens and tests Meta Knight with the clone of another sword master. While everyone expected Galacta Knight to show up again at this point, someone completely different shows up: Dark Matter Blade. As there hasn't been a main series boss fight with this incarnation of Dark Matter since its debut and references to the "Dark Matter Trilogy" being rare to begin with, the entire fandom was surprised, to the point where when Galacta Knight did show up two fights later, it was seen as something of a letdown, especially by older fans.
    • Kirby Star Allies:
      • The game has a truly spectacular double whammy during the battle with the final boss, Void Termina. After defeating the first couple forms, Kirby and his friends are pulled inside Void Termina's body once again to fight its true form. What is its true form, you may ask? It's an amorphous, hovering pink sphere with three dots forming a face...specifically, a face identical to Kirby. This is only compounded as the battle goes on and Void Termina takes another familiar face: that of Dark Matter.
      • The 4.0 update manages to one-up even that. At the end of Void Termina's boss fight in Soul Melter EX, when the core appears, three things stand out: 1. The core now has a white and red color scheme with rainbow veins, 2. The core is now known simply as Void and 3. the pattern for the Boss Subtitles card is the Boss Butch version of the Hyper Zone. All of these (and a few others seen during the battles) heavily imply that Zero, Dark Matter's boss, is related to this thing in some fashion and this is on top of all the other allusions to Kirby himself, both old and new.
  • Midna's tear cracking the Mirror of Twilight at the end of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It may have been briefly foreshadowed during the game, but not long before she does it, she says "As long as that mirror's around, we could meet again."
  • Life Is Strange has two.
    • At the end of Episode 3, Max travels back in time to the day Chloe's father William died in a car accident, and prevents him from taking the car. The episode ends with Max visiting the Price house, and William calls to Chloe...who answers the door in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down.
    • At the end of Episode 4, Max and Chloe go to the junkyard in search of Nathan, whom they have identified as the culprit responsible for killing Rachel, as well as drugging and abducting Kate and other girls. Someone attacks them from behind, injecting Max with chemicals and shooting Chloe dead. The last shot of the chapter shows the culprit's identity- Mark Jefferson, Max's photography teacher and the Big Bad of the game.
  • Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: At the end of Chapter 8, Kiryu's survival is revealed to the world by Tatara Hisoka. When Kiryu tries to contact Hanawa to let him know about this, the game cuts to a Dead-Hand Shot of Hanawa in the Daidoji safehouse.
  • Little Nightmares:
    • During one of Six's hunger pains, she crawls into a room where a Nome, seeing that she's hungry, offers her a sausage. Six slowly approaches the Nome...and proceeds to eat it instead.
    • At the very end of the game, Six exits the Maw walking very, very slowly past a number of Guests who are eating. The only thing that's saved her up to this point is her being faster and more nimble than them, but as she approaches each one, her new powers begin to suck their essence from them, killing them as she passes.
    • At the end of "The Hideaway" DLC chapter, the Runaway Kid enters a room where several Nomes are huddled up around a burning stove. The Nomes' shadows look just like those of human children.
    • At the end of "The Residence," the kid, transformed into a Nome, finds his way to the little room with a sausage in the center of it, right outside the Guest level, revealing that he is the Nome that Six messily devours on her way through the Maw.
  • Mega Man
  • In the Japanese version of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, due to censorship, every cyborg in the game bleeds white blood, with one exception: Samuel Rodrigues, who is shown bleeding red blood, revealing that the character in question barely has any cybernetic enhancements. In the international release, every character has red blood, so Parrot Exposition is used to reveal this.
  • Metroid:
    • Metroid let players assume that Samus Aran was a badass, armor-clad male bounty hunter. Then they tried to beat the game quickly enough to see him take his helmet, and they found out that Samus Is a Girl.
    • During the final minutes of Metroid Fusion, Samus has to return to her ship after defeating SA-X and starting the self-destruct sequence. When she does, however, the music suddendly stops... and the ship is nowhere. At its place, a giant empty Metroid shell. And seconds after an Omega Metroid appears!
    • In Metroid: Samus Returns
      • When Samus reaches her ship with the baby Metroid, she starts up the engines, while the Metroid approaches it...right before Ridley appears and snatches the baby away.
      • Getting 100% items in each area rewards the player with an image, and together they tell the story of the Chozo on planet SR388 and the creation of the Metroids. The 10th and final panel shows an SR388 Chozo greeting a dark-armored Chozo who has just arrived on the planet... but if you achieved full 100% Completion, the image suddenly gets a Red Filter of Doom, the music screeches to a halt, and the interface itself glitches out, reforming into a secret 11th panel, showing the SR388 Chozo shot dead by the new arrival, who orders his troops to attack the rest. The significance of this scene wouldn't be revealed until Metroid Dread: we just met Raven Beak.
  • Minecraft: Story Mode: In the first episode, Jesse finds a book documenting the legend of the Order and reads an extract from it. As s/he reads, we get a flashback that seems to be the same as the opening cinematic...except that this time the Round Table Shot continues past Soren and lands on Ivor, revealing that he was once part of the Order.
  • Modern Warfare 2
    • The missions "Of Their Own Accord" and "Whiskey Hotel" have a one-two punch. The former starts out in a darkened bunker being pounded by enemy fire, with — for once — none of the standard green text telling the player where the mission takes place. Then the player exits the bunker and sees the US Capitol in flames, and the text helpfully informs you that you're in Washington, DC in the midst of a Russian invasion. Then the latter manages to top that, when you reach the rendezvous point Whiskey Hotel and realize that it isn't really a hotel: it's the White House, which is being swarmed by Russian troops. note 
    • "Second Sun" abruptly switches to the POV of a nameless astronaut aboard the International Space Station right after Captain Price hijacks a Russian nuclear submarine and launches a warhead in the previous level. Everything seems pretty tranquil up in space...until you notice the warhead heading towards you. You can only watch helplessly as it detonates in the atmosphere, and the lights on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States start to blink out.
  • In Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, normally when you complete a quest, including ones that increase your Hunter Rank, you spawn at the entrance to the gathering hall or town that you took the quest in. However, after completing the Urgent Quest to rank up to G3 (a Lao-Shan Lung), that doesn't happen. Instead, you're face to face with the Pub Manager while tense music plays, while she informs you of a new monster that has started terrorizing the surrounding regions (the Ahtal-ka).
  • Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak has a chilling, non-cutscene example in the penultimate Urgent Quest before Gaismagorm. The quest is, strangely, to hunt a Lunagaron, a monster that'd already been the target of a previous Urgent Quest. Then you get to the Citadel and find that not only is the area being swarmed by Qurio, but every other living creature on the map except your target is dead, showing the Qurio have become an even bigger threat without Malzeno to keep them in check.
  • Chapter 1 of Mother 3 ends with the defeat of the Mecha-Drago. Then, as Flint wonders what happened to his son, the camera pans slightly, so the parallax shows Claus's body on the ground. Now you know, but Flint still doesn't.
  • Nobody Saves the World: When Nobody encounters the Secret Corp Scientist, on the edge of succumbing to the fungus sickness, after she gives him the code and fully succumbs, her eyes turn completely black just like Nobody's, showing that the Calamity has something to do with their current state.
  • One Night At Flumpty's 3: You've done it. You've managed to survive all the way to 6 AM on Hard Boiled Mode. The clock is literally changing from 5 to 6...and then it suddenly rewinds back to 12. Flumpty's not done with you yet.
    • And then you look at CAM 6 and see the realistically bloodied and mangled versions of Flumpty's friends, an admittedly intense miniature Jump Scare.
  • Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows: After getting the pickaxe in the Hay Bunburrows the player can easily check that all five Bunburrows are actually sides of the same map, meaning bunnies can be paired with bunnies from other regions.
  • In the second generation of Phantasy Star III, you have to take a spaceship to one of the two moons orbiting your world (whichever moon you travel to depends on your hero in this generation). When you take off in the spaceship, you find out that you're not living on a planet, but that the game takes place on a Generation Ship.
  • Pokémon
    • In Pokémon Red and Blue, the moment when Red finally comes into view of the mysterious Viridian City Gym Leader, who has been absent the entire game...and it is none other than Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket, whom you have been clashing with over the course of the game. (Subverted if you bother to read the Gym statues beforehand, which clearly identify the leader as Giovanni.)
    • When finally reaching the top of Mt. Silver in Pokémon Gold and Silver you see someone standing there. By challenging him to a battle, you find out that it's Red, the protagonist of the previous games.
    • In Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire:
      • The intro shot of the battle with Wally at the end of Victory Road lingers on his new pendant...with a Key Stone in it. Yep, Wally can now use Mega Evolution too!
      • In the Delta Episode of the same game, the player rides Mega Rayquaza into space and crashes head-on into a meteor, which is cool enough, but the sight of a familiar-looking triangle among the fragments of the meteor shocks the player enough that it takes a few seconds to register that, yes, you are battling Deoxys in fucking space.
    • In Pokémon Sun and Moon (and their rereleases):
      • Lillie and the player play the Sun and Moon Flutes in order to summon the Legendary. What happens instead is that Nebby evolves into the the Legendary.
      • The player smashes their way through the Elite Four and climbs the final set of stairs to face the Champion. You get into view of the platform, and sitting in the Champion's chair...is nobody. This time, you are the inaugural Champion.
    • From Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, many players were shocked when they went up Mount Lanakila after beating the Climax Boss, only to run into Necrozma, said Climax Boss, looking awfully drained.
      • In the same games, when Sophocles brings you to the Festival Plaza because of an emergency, you see it changed into a futuristic black castle with screens displaying a familiar 'R'. Team Rocket is back!
    • In Pokémon Legends: Arceus:
      • Seeing Beni, the seemingly unassuming potato mochi chef standing in the cave before you face Commander Kamado, which is then followed by the reveal that he's both a ninja and possibly Wally's ancestor.
      • After Volo reveals himself to be Evil All Along and challenges you to a battle, he summons Giratina to kill you. This isn't the Wham Shot (as Volo already explained prior that he was colluding with Giratina the whole time). No, the Wham Shot comes after you defeat Giratina in battle—you've fought hard and at least half your team has likely already fainted, but you did it and you watch with satisfaction as Giratina stumbles back in a daze. Then, its eyes flash and it stands right back up again. Enter Origin Forme Giratina. And to top it all off? Its health bar is fully refilled. Yours isn't.
    • In Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs, when you go into the past (keep in mind that we're talking about hundreds of years before), the bosses of the various missions are oracles called Steelhead, but they are not relevant to the main story whatsoever. In the present, when Ben and Summer reach Oblivia Ruins to save Leanne and Nema, at one point they see someone approaching them. Guess who? A Steelhead.
  • Shin Megami Tensei and its spinoffs and subseries:
    • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse:
      • You defeat the Divine Powers at Tsukiji Konganji, and when you go to sleep, the cutscene of the current moon phase still shows up.
      • So everyone's celebrating now that the Divine Powers, Merkabah, and Lucifer are gone, surely only good things can happen from here on out right? Dagda informs you that "the show's about to start," and when he disappears from your view, the people who were celebrating moments ago are all collapsed on the floor.
    • In Persona 2: Eternal Punishment's opening sequence, Takahisa Kandori (Big Bad of the first game in the franchise) appears on-screen briefly. Given that he's been dead for three years at this point, this is immensely disturbing.
    • In Persona 3, after defeating The Hanged Man, the party returns to the dorm to celebrate the fact that the Dark Hour is gone for good. But when the usual Dark Hour intro animation plays the following night, you know you're in for a Wham Episode...
    • Persona 4:
      • During the battle with the Killer, he receives the same critical hit cut-in the party normally has, revealing he has a Persona.
      • After you rescue the third victim from the television, the fog comes in and you're confident that you succeeded. At that point, you see a cinematic showing someone else's dead body, although it's later revealed that it was just a copycat crime.
    • Persona 5:
      • After the Framing Device, Sae Nijima leaves the interrogation room and meets with one of the player character's allies, Goro Akechi. After she dismisses him and leaves, Akechi's dialogue box portrait pops up...and it's a Traitor Shot where he's showing a sinister Psychotic Smirk while demeaning Sae, revealing his true colors as The Mole that sold out the heroes.
      • Later on, the protagonist initially appears to fail to summon his Ultimate Persona. Then we get a shot of something lowering itself from the heavens. The wham comes when we see the whole thing, and realise that the combined support of an entire metropolis is enough to create a Persona that's bigger than a skyscraper.
    • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
      • After the party defeats Doe, Hikari runs up to him and gives him a hug. Soon afterward, he transforms into Hikari's father.
      • When the party finally unlocks the final lock on the door to the cinema, they step outside and see the Cinema District sprawling out ahead of them, followed by Nagi, who's floating in the air, letting off an Evil Laugh.
  • Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy: The Azran ruins prevent weapons from being used and Bronev is cornered. But why is he smiling? Because Emmy just placed a crystal shiv at Luke's throat!
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time has Alister Azimuth rescuing Ratchet and Clank from Dr. Nefarious' exploding space station, only to then attack them and kill Ratchet, and after Clank undoes the death, he becomes the Final Boss.
  • Return Of The Obra Dinn:
    • The tutorial establishes that you can use your magic pocket watch to see and hear the moment someone died. Near the end of said tutorial, you do this for the captain's wife, who died from getting struck in the head by the ship's rigging... that was ripped off by a kraken attacking the ship.
    • The chapter "Soldiers of the Sea" starts with you finding a corpse at the side of the ship, in a narrow passageway. When you view the death, at first you see the person getting accidentally shot through the passageway wall. When you look through some slots in the wall, it becomes clear why someone fired a gun: the rest of the crew is currently fighting a horrific crab-like monster.
  • The Room (Mobile Game) has a two-hit combo in Chapter 4 of the second game; at last, you unlock the cabinet and find a photo of A.S. where he isn't scratched out...and all that's left is a skeleton. And once you turn around, you see that he's sitting at the table behind you.
  • In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Bentley is quietly tailing the Black Knight when the latter decides their armor is too hot and they need some fresh air. The Black Knight takes off their armor and reveals themself to be Penelope, Bentley's girlfriend who had previously gone missing and was presumed kidnapped. Bentley does not take this well.
    Bentley: It's not possible! Penelope...But why would she...?! [hears Penelope's Motive Rant] Aah! I think I'm going to be sick.
  • The climax to the first half of Solatorobo: Red the Hunter involves Red transforming into a human out of seemingly nowhere, after both this game and Tail Concerto have firmly established the setting to be a world populated by anthropomorphic cats and dogs.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
  • So, you completed Soulcalibur IV as Yun-seong and have claimed Soul Edge for your own. He gets questioned about it by Seong Mi-na, which he responds to with platitudes about saving his homeland and loved ones. Cut to reveal that he's so coked up on Soul Edge's influence that he has his hand on Mi-na's throat and has been strangling her throughout the conversation. And then she goes limp in his arms. He does not take it well. Of course, everything eventually ends fine and dandy with the fact that she was playing dead all along, but still.
  • Spec Ops: The Line: The shot of Lugo hanging from a noose surrounded by the lynch mob in Chapter 13 and the real Konrad's dead body in Chapter 15.
  • Marvel's Spider-Man 2: Right after Miles manages to stop Peter from killing Kraven, the older Spider-Man starts speaking towards Miles very harshly. As he speaks, the camera moves into a very familiar position, and then a Life Meter appears, accompanied by a single word: Peter.
  • Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion: After fighting what appears to be the Final Boss, Agent 8 finally makes their way to the surface and gets picked up by Off the Hook in their helicopter. However, just when it seems like all is said and done, Agent 8 glances behind them, and notices the platform they had just been standing on rising out of the ocean...
  • In the fan game Story of the Blanks, based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the viewer (and Applebloom) gets quite the Wham Shot when they look into the fireplace and discover the charred remains of a pony skeleton. This is one of the first clues (but definitely the most jarring) that Sunny Town is not at all the bright, friendly town that it seems.
  • The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge is a silly and whimsical adventure, although Old Man Bill's diaries hint at darker things existing just beyond the house. After fixing a telescope, you find out that said darkness is nearer than expected: Urizen's army is approaching the house.
  • Super Smash Bros.:
    • The Smash logo is a Wham Shot in general whenever it shows up in a trailer, especially when the trailer starts and plays out like a game's normal trailer until the Smash logo shows up mid-way through.
    • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: In the game's adventure mode "World of Light", the Big Bad Galeem has been defeated by the fighters and is writhing after taking hefty damage from the battle. Then out of nowhere a literal crack in the sky forms and from the new hole of darkness peers an ominously lit eye belonging to Dharkon, Galeem's mortal enemy who promptly snatches all the fighters and spirits Galeem had left as the latter bails, finally sucking in the fighters into his twisted Dark Realm.
    • Ultimate's final DLC character trailer also has one: the Smash logo's fire is dying out, reducing everyone to motionless trophies. With his last ounce of strength, Mario staggers towards a flame in the distance, and throws it forward, revealing a little keychain of a certain cartoon mouse...
  • Time Crisis:
    • The end of Stage 1 of Time Crisis 4 shows the dog tag of the defeated Marcus Black, who is revealed to be a U.S. military officer...and so are the rest of the terrorists that Rush, Giorgio, and Evan have been fighting. Needless to say, Rush is pissed off.
    • In the fifth game, after defeating Keith Martin, he opens up the briefcase and reveals who the real traitor responsible for the events of the game is. Luke and Marc lean in to look at the data, looking shocked. Then Keith looks up and fires off two bullets at Luke and Marc. In Bullet Time, the bullets are shown whizzing past them, squarely striking the two knives flying towards Luke and Marc and sending them skittering harmlessly to the ground. The camera then pans to Robert, revealing him to be the Big Bad.
  • The Turing Test: The game drops increasingly obvious hints, and later outright exposition, that the main character Ava is being unknowingly influenced by the Artificial Intelligence Mission Control TOM, and indeed the player's control of Ava is progressively taken away during a key sequence. Upon Ava entering the Faraday cage, the player's point of view unexpectedly switches away from Ava to a nearby camera — revealing that the player character was never Ava at all, but rather TOM, who has been mind-controlling Ava through an implant. The player's loss of control was Ava acting against TOM's influence, not under it.
  • Twisted Wonderland:
    • The first takes place in Chapter 3 after meeting with Malleus post-battle with Overblot!Azul—Yuu discovers that the mirror is glowing, and as they have a look, someone seems to be knocking on it from the inside, followed by a very familiar voice:
      Mickey Mouse: ...one, ...there? By the way, who are you?
    • The second is the last scene of Chapter 3, as Kalim opens his eyes to reveal his Mind-Control Eyes, followed by a shot of Jamil snickering to himself.
    • In the middle of Chapter 5, we see the full appearance of Mickey himself.
    • Pomefiore ends with Yuu finding Grim at the colosseum, digging the floor to find the black stone left from Vil's overblot. Absolutely manic at the taste and complete with having Glowing Eyes of Doom. And it ends with Grim attacking Yuu in his belief that they are here to steal the stone from him before shifting towards the preview of Ignihyde.
      Grim: tHIs StOnE...iS mInEEeEeE!!!
  • A minor case in Unpacking, but as the 2015 level begins, you're still in the same apartment from 2013, and all the protagonist's things are still there. But this time, there are new boxes of an entirely different color. For once, she's not unpacking into a new home... someone ELSE is unpacking into hers!
  • Until Dawn has the psycho removing his mask. Whose face is revealed? Josh, who was previously seen sliced in half by a sawblade.
  • Valkyria Chronicles 4: Every time the medic is called to extract a downed unit, you get an unskippable cutscene of Karen running onto the battlefield. In one mission, this cutscene is abruptly cut short when she apparently gets shot. It just grazed her leg, but the war-criminal sniper has to be neutralized before she can come back for the wounded again.
  • Warframe:
    • In "the Second Dream," when you activate the console, one of the strange pods opens and a child falls out. Your warframe collapses, the screen goes black...and when you regain control, you are the child.
      ** ** At Tennocon 2023, the Operator activates a construct belonging to Albrecth Entrati... and then a song by Nine Inch Nails starts playing, before the scene cuts to the inside of a subway car, where a man wearing armor that looks suspiciously like Excalibur is cutting his way through hordes of technocyte-infested television screens. It's New Years Eve, 1999.
  • The Witness:
    • Arguably the game's final puzzle happens just before the end of the Golden Ending — a puzzle that turns on a light in a darkened room. The room is revealed to be impressively photorealistic — because it's actually represented by an FMV you control by walking backward and forward. Lying on the couch is a motionless figure with a sheet over it, hooked up to an IV and lying near a computer monitor. To find out who the figure is, simply walk to the end of the path...
    • Before that, there's the first big Reveal on top of the Mountain, with a puzzle panel that doesn't do anything and a river that looks exactly like it below...
  • World of Warcraft:
    • As the Alliance and Horde forces march into battle in the Jade Forest, Lorewalker Cho completes his restoration project. He then reacts in horror as the finished third image shows a Sha rising, signifying that the Alliance and Horde's war will empower the Sha, which feed on negative emotions.
    • In the Alliance version of the ending for Mists of Pandaria, after Garrosh's defeat, Varian walks up to the Horde leaders and demands to speak with their Warchief. The crowd parts and reveals Vol'jin, rather than Thrall.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1 gives two for the price of one at the end of Prison Island. The silver-faced Mechon takes an attack meant for Metal Face, and the chest-piece falls off to reveal a Homs pilot - Fiora.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X: In Chapter 5, Cross pushes Tatsu out of the way of a massive energy blast and is sent flying. After they land, they try to clutch their left arm in pain but realise that it's been blown clean off. Instead of what they expected to see, they find a sparking, mechanical stump.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
    • One in the beginning of the first trailer no less. Our first glimpse of gameplay we see is Rex running through some valley with a mountain. Then said mountain starts to move. And shows its head. That's no mountain, that's a Titan.
    • After Rex picks up the third Aegis blade, he is shown a vision of a glowing light circling around the planet. Players who completed the original Xenoblade Chronicles 1 will immediately pick up the implications. This game is a Stealth Sequel to the first Xenoblade, set in the same universe.
    • Upon falling to the bottom of the Cloud Sea, the protagonists discover the Land of Morytha, a post apocalyptic modern city. After that is many shots showing that the semi-medieval fantasy setting of the game is much more sci-fi than previously thought.
    • One that accompanies a Wham Line when the party meets the Architect, the reveal that his body is split in half. Players of the first game will know exactly what his other half became.

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