Captain Obvious Reveal / Video Games

• Assassin's Creed III: The first major reveal of the game is that Haytham Kenway isn't an Assassin and you've actually been playing as a Templar for the first three sequences of the game. What makes this twist obvious a combination of things, such as Haytham and his allies never once saying the word "Assassin" while Altair and Ezio made no effort to hide that part of their lives. "The Order" is namedropped several times, which is never used in reference to the Assassins, who go by "The Brotherhood." And most obviously of all, Haytham's cape literally has Templar iconography on it, including a big cross right at the top.
• Astro Boy: Omega Factor has the reveal that Blue Knight is actually President Rag, having survived his attempted assassination. The attempted assassination that Blue Knight is shown flashing back to in an early conversation with Astro.
• Baldur's Gate: in the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion there is a quest involving a distant island with some strange inhabitants. They often point at your smell, one of them will refer to the village as a pack and they have uncommon ways of speaking (which at first could be seen as a dialect since they have a strange accent) and reasoning (like the way they give importance to the concept of someone "belonging" to a community). The village leader will task the player to slay some beasts that were harassing the village. She underlines a lot that they are different from villagers and that they look like them but they are not them: "wolf-like but not wolves and man-like but not men, I don't know how to call them, they are like us but not like us", they are "they are animals and live as wolves and carrion feeders" while the villagers "lived as humans as we could". A child says that "sometimes the beasties look like us but they change and get mean". Further investigation in the village will give another hint in the fact that apparently the hostilities between the two sides started with their ancestors shipwrecking on the island, implying that they had some ties in the past. Later you discover that the beasts are obviously lycanthropes (precisely wolfweres, wolves capable of turning humans) but their leader will reveal a plot twist: the villagers are too (although true werewolves). While the hints hidden in the village could lead the player to a final hypothesis that the whole island is inhabited by those creatures, it's evident from the first very dialogue with a child saying "you smell different" that the villagers are lycanthropes too.
• Baldur's Gate III:
  • Astarion doesn't mention him being a vampire until it's absolutely necessary. The Undeathly Pallor, fangs, and bite marks on his neck still make it very much not a surprise when he wakes the player character up at night in a failed attempt to drink their blood.
  • One of the necromancer Mystic Carrion's escaped zombies will reveal to you that he suspects Mystic Carrion is actually undead himself, specifically a Mummy, and the surprise is that anybody might have been under the impression he was alive. Their response options include acknowledging that he does seem very fond of bandages, but his game model has just a few bandages that do nothing to conceal his obviously decayed flesh and rotted off nose.
• Batman: Arkham Knight: The identity of the Arkham Knight is this, thanks to its overuse of Foreshadowing. Anyone with some knowledge of Batman lore can have a decent ballpark idea of who it is fairly early into the game; heck, tons of people correctly predicted who the Knight was the very first day he was unveiled, but discarded the idea because it was too obvious. Even if you didn't know anything about Batman, a certain character is seen several times through Batman's flashbacks who had not even been so much as mentioned in any previous game in the series. The last of these flashbacks has said character being Mind Raped by the Joker into having a grudge against Batman, then Joker supposedly shoots him dead. Guess who the Knight is?
• In BlazBlue, fans figured out that Phantom was really Konoe A. Mercury (aka Nine of the Six Heroes) almost four years before it was actually confirmed in the third game. Phantom's attire being incredibly similar to what Nine wore while she was alive, as well as none too subtle hints to her true identity throughout Continuum Shift while in the presence of the other members of the Six Heroes, made it easy for people to connect the dots.
• In the intro to Blight Dream, we learn that Michiru is an Amnesiac Hero who has a disease that gives her Anterograde amnesia, making her lose memory of every new day in her life, so she has to keep a diary to remember everything. Just a few minutes later, we learn that a Serial Killer murdered two people at the Mashiba hospital, and their identity is unknown. Anyone familiar enough with mystery fiction is likely to figure out the connection. Not helping is that the game tries so hard to make it look like her brother Yuu is the killer that it becomes obvious he is a Red Herring, and since Michiru and Yuu are the only main characters, there are no other suspects, making it even more obvious that Michiru is the culprit.
• Bravely Default:
  • For the second half of the game, the player is gradually given hints that Airy either isn't telling all the information, is evil, or both. Once you hit the 3/4 mark, the title screen changes the subtitle to read "Airy Lies", outright spelling out her deception. And yet, for another 20 hours or so of gameplay, the characters still can't piece it together. Even after when Ringabel remembers that she's evil and outright murdered the others in another world. When her true intentions are finally revealed, the cast is shocked, while the player is banging their head against the wall.
  • Alternis and Ringabel being the same person, provided one reads the Book of D. While the narrator's identity is never textually given in the entries, Alternis is very clearly shown in an illustration, make it easy to identify him as the narrator. From there, the various details, most glaring being Ringabel's lack of presence in the Book of D, make putting two and two together easy. There is a wrinkle, however, in that the player is initially led to believe that Ringabel is merely faking his amnesia and covertly posing as an ally of the heroes, especially after Alternis suffers an injury at the hands of Victoria and the scene cuts to a recently absent Ringabel limping back to the party with the exact same wound. The reality is that Ringabel is actually Alternis's Alternate Self (now look at his name again) who was transported from his version of Luxendarc to the current world via the Holy Pillar.
• In BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, Arianna turns out to be a rogue A.I. This shocks the heroes (one of whom is an A.I. herself and really should have seen the signs), but to the player, it's likely been obvious since the first ten minutes of the game when Arianna shows up in a crude robotic body and has no idea how to interact with humans.
• The Caligula Effect 2: Marie Amabuki's original surname was Mizuguchi - meaning that she's the same person as a major character from the previous game. She has the same brown hair and eyes, the same voice actress, and she didn't even bother changing her first name. Anybody who knew of Marie Mizuguchi from the first game would be able to flush her out long before the characters catch on.
• Destroy All Humans!: In the first game, Majestic leader Silhouette, who obscures their identity through a large trench-coat, and voice-filtered gas mask, turns out to be a woman. While Crypto is shocked upon discovery, it doesn't come off as a major shock to anyone who reads the thoughts of a Majestic agent early on, who blatantly states it and then fails to cover it up. In addition, even with the voice filter, Silhouette still sounds rather feminine.
• Devil May Cry 5: The main villain Urizen and the new mysterious ally V are actually the two halves of Dante's brother, Vergil. It's supposed to be a big endgame reveal, but the narrative lays it on so thick that you likely have it figured out 5 missions prior to the big explanation or appearance of the latter. By the opening to Mission #10, we've learned that Urizen and V were split from a half-demon swordsman who has Vergil's voice and signature weapon, which pretty much seals the deal for anyone who's played a Devil May Cry game before.
• Diablo 3 has Act 2 that involves the player character hunting for Belial, the primal evil Lord of Lies. Everything points to the creepy child emperor of the desert nation he/she is in being the obvious culprit. Everything. This kid covers every evil child cliche known to man, short of speaking parseltongue (and that too, since his personal guards are snake people in disguise). Yet the players spend the entire linear story arc going off on increasingly silly red herrings only to be told by the creepy child himself that, surprise, he was Belial the whole time. No way! For that matter, it's so obvious that even the player character had figured it out a while ago.
• Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten: The exact line after the Angel of Avarice introduces herself as Vulcanus, Valvatorez recognizes her as Artina, a human he had a history with. Only near the end of the game does her identity gets confirmed, but until that point, none of the characters were certain if she was Artina, though the flashbacks alone make it incredibly obvious anyway. There's also the identity of the mysterious Archangel Artina is working for, who is revealed just as late to be Flonne. This one has more to do with other factors outside of the game's story, however.
• In Disney's Aladdin in Nasira's Revenge, after the first Oasis level, Aladdin meets a Mystic in a tent. Anyone who is paying attention to the voice-acting will likely realise immediately that she is Nasira in disguise. If that's somehow not enough, there's also a statue of a cobra with red eyes in her tent to help give her true identity away.
• Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 opens with the conclusion of Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku, as the titular Bardock is enveloped in Freeza's death sphere, and definitely is in no way related to the mysterious masked stranger with a similar damaged armor and voice that shows up with Towa, Mira, Turles, and Lord Slug immediately afterward. The game pretends his identity to be a complete mystery and somehow expects the player to be shocked and all-surprised when the Masked Saiyan's identity is revealed.
• Fate Series:
  • Caster of Midrash from Fate/Grand Order is revealed to be the Queen of Sheba which is treated as a big surprise for the protagonists and would be for the players if not for the fact that prior to this reveal, they put on a play about King Solomon where the Queen of Sheba was in silhouette but still had the exact same headwear that Caster of Midrash has in her artwork.
  • Played for Laughs in the spinoff Learning with Manga! FGO, where Lancer starts showing off abilities (like using an icthyosaur in combat) that make her True Name incredibly obvious. When Mash points this out, Lancer responds that in Fate/Grand Order, the reveal of a Servant's True Name has never actually mattered all that much. Indeed, the reveal of her being Mary Anning in the actual game was not much of a surprise.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy II: At the start of the game, Maria is separated from her brother Leon as the party flees from Fynn, and she spends most of the game looking for him. A bit later, it's revealed that a mysterious man known as the Dark Knight has taken a position of power as the Emperor's right hand. Most players won't take long to figure out they're one and the same, specially in the Game Boy Advance remake, where the Dark Knight's character portrait is just Leon's portrait with a darker coloration.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • All Summoners, including Yuna, will die at the end of their journey. The game is not very subtle in hiding its hints. High Summoners, the title given to Summoners who have defeated Sin, are all dead; Yuna's meaningful glances at all places, before leaving them; the tearful farewell from her village or the noticeably awkward silence, after Tidus insensitively saying that they'll do this and that, after Yuna has defeated Sin. The reveal scene itself, about halfway through the game, seems to be more for Tidus than for the player.
    • Auron is an Unsent. Aside from it being It Was His Sled territory, the hints are so unsubtle (Seymour asking why Auron's "still here" and saying that he can smell "the scent of the Farplane" on him) that Tidus knew what Auron wanted to say when he revealed his status as an Unsent to him. The others get this reveal in the final scene, where Yuna performs a Sending and Auron willingly lets himself be sent, after having fought a previous Sending that affected him.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Basch tells the party that he has a twin brother, Noah, that sided with the Archadians. This happens shortly after the party sees Basch being interrogated by Judge Gabranth, who looks similar to Basch. And it's mentioned in conversation that Gabranth is from Landis, Basch's homeland, and he has a brother that has joined the Dalmascans, the kingdom Basch was fighting for. So when Gabranth shows up near the end of the game and reveals he is Noah, the player is probably thinking "no kidding."
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: Bhunivelze, the apparent Big Good, is actually the Big Bad. Anyone remotely following the lore of the trilogy in the first two games could peg this one coming a mile away, since they spell out that Bhunivelze's sons, Lindzei and Pulse, are The Man Behind the Man to the fal'Cie, the villains of the first game. Even if you aren't familiar with the lore, Serah and Hope, the two beings who claim to speak to Bhunvelze directly, are acting oddly and not telling Lightning the whole truth, and Lightning hasn't been feeling quite normal since being appointed Bhunivelze's servant, all of which she herself takes note of.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has several, usually in regards to characters disguising themselves, which is usually followed up by an actual surprising reveal.
    • The Well-Intentioned Extremist leader of the Ala Mhigan Corpse Brigade was Ilberd. His identity was so blatantly obvious that only Alphinaud was surprised to learn it was him. The true reveal was what he was actually planning: To get all of his followers killed so their sacrifice would fuel the summoning of a primal.
    • The Zenos seen post-Stormblood was Elidibus. Which served to mask the fact that the real Zenos had also returned to life, in another body.
    • The Crystal Exarch is G'raha Tia. He's first seen in a trailer watching events from inside the Crystal Tower, a place only people of royal Allagan blood can open and where G'raha was last seen. If the player had completed the Crystal Tower raid quest line, they're given the option of asking him about G'raha the second they meet him in person, which he awkwardly tries to dodge using Exact Words. The real reveal is how he got to the First shard to begin with.
    • The "Ardbert" running around the present day Norvrandt post-5.0 is Elidibus puppeting his corpse. Since Ardbert's soul merged with the Warrior of Light's and Elidibus is the only Ascian left, it was quite easy to put two and two together. He puts so little effort into actually acting like Ardbert that the player's given the option to be offended that he thought anyone would fall for it. In this instance, Elidibus wasn't trying to fool you, he was tricking Norvrandt into fueling his Primal form by convincing the public at large to become The First's new Warriors of Light.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Sirius being a Not Quite Dead Camus in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem is practically the same as the above Conrad situation in Shadows of Valentia. Strangely though, The Reveal never actually happens. Though it's all but stated in his conversation with Nyna in the final chapter, there's no Dramatic Unmasking, as he knows full well revealing his identity would cause more harm than good for everyone.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has the revelation that Odin, Selena and Laslow are actually Owain, Severa and Inigo from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Even if you missed or forget the fact that previous games established The Multiverse as a thing, all three have the exact same appearances, voice actors, personalities and birthdays as their Awakening counterparts, and their Supports frequently reference Awakening, so one has to wonder how much of a surprise it's actually supposed to be.
  • Fire Emblem Gaiden (and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia):
    • In the remake, we have a red-haired masked figure who follows Celica and her party around, warning them of various dangers and seeming very concerned for Celica's welfare and seems to know she's actually the heir to Zofia, and Celica mentions more than once that she had a brother who died. It's decidedly a hugely unsurprising reveal when it turns out to be Conrad, Celica's big brother.
    • Alm being Rigelian royalty becomes one in the remake. He has a Birthmark of Destiny just like Celica, multiple characters from Rigel appear to recognize him, he gets a unique weapon that's only usable by those of royal blood, Desaix practically spells it out in his death quote, and once the army reaches Rigel Alm feels a sense of familiarity with the place. Considering that Echoes is a remake of a game nearly two decades old, the developers probably assumed the twist was well and truly It Was His Sled by now.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Seteth and Flayn are actually Saint Cichol and Saint Cethleann. It isn't as obvious in Seteth's case, but Flayn is quite bad at keeping the secret, particularly when she takes exception to the way people talk about Cethleann. Both Seteth and Flayn have Major Crests of Cichol and Cethleann, whereas Ferdinand and Linhardt only have Minor Crests. In addition to the fact that the holidays celibrating the Saints outright take place on the same day as the pairs' birthdays, something the game will remind you of whenever said birthdays roll around.
    • A related but separate reveal is that Seteth is actually Flayn's father, not her brother as he'd previously insisted. Despite Seteth claiming to look young for his age, he still looks like he could be at least a couple decades older than her (ignoring the fact that they're both Really 700 Years Old, which isn't learned until later) which fits a father-daughter pair better than a brother-sister pair. Rhea, who's close to both of them, suspiciously pauses when she says, "I think of your...sister as family" as if she were trying to consciously avoid saying "daughter." This can be lampshaded at the end of Seteth and Flayn's Paralogue, in which after Seteth reveals the truth to Byleth, s/he can tell Seteth that s/he had suspected this all along, resulting in him saying with embarrassment that he thought he'd done a better job of hiding it.
    • Even worse, if you're playing Golden Deer, Hilda will remark that Seteth and Flayn look like they have a pretty big age gap for siblings. She doesn't quite figure it all out, but it shows that other characters think something's a bit off about them.
  • In Fire Emblem Engage, anyone paying attention can pick that protagonist Alear is Veyle's long-lost sibling (also making Lord Sombron their father) long before the official reveal. It's made more obvious by fact that the lost sibling is usually referred to with gender-neutral terms to avoid having to record different lines for the male and female versions of Alear. Not to mention Alear doesn't look much like their alleged birth mother, Queen Lumera.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach bigged up the importance and mystery of a new villain named Vanny, a masked woman in a bunny costume. Coincidentally, a prior game had introduced Vanessa, a woman who had been corrupted and possessed by longtime series villain William Afton and who also appears in Security Breach. They have the same builds, the same motivation, there are no other female characters who could fill the role, and most critically, Vanny's name is just a portmanteau of "Vanessa bunny", something pointed out in the game itself. Once Vanny was unmasked in one of the endings, the only people surprised were those who had dismissed it as a far-too-conspicuous Red Herring. Quite a few unofficial sources (including the wiki) refuse to consider the unmasked women to be unquestionably Vanessa, largely because her being Vanessa just seems too obvious.
• God Eater 3 introduces the wealthy owner of Port Dusty Miller, Ein. Anyone with eyes who played even a few minutes of the first two games would recognize him as an Older and Wiser Soma Schicksal. His voice actors being the same does nothing to hide his identity, either. When the Hounds receive an anonymous message containing proof of Ein's identity, it's meant to be a big reveal to them, but the same can't be said for the players.
• In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, many could easily guess the real identity of Arcanus because his mask covers less than half of his face. In case it's still not obvious, it's recurring villain Alex.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • Players suspected the existence of a sixth Elder Dragon, the "Jungle Dragon", long before his reveal at the end of the first Living World season. This was due to the parallels between the existant Dragons and the Six Human Gods, the six dragon Facets fought in Eye of the North, and the Inquest experiments into Dragon magic including a jungle-themed section.
  • The major reveal of second Living World season was that the Sylvari were in fact dragon minions of Mordremoth. However, players had long suspected this after the reveal of Mordremoth's existence, or even before it. Their species was known to have originated from deep within the Maguuma Jungle, Mordremoth's domain, and their communal dream was always haunted by a shadow of the Elder Dragons. Most telling was that they were immune to the taint of the other Elder Dragons, which players correctly guessed was due to the One Curse Limit.
• Hades: The fact that Zagreus's mother is not Nyx, but Persephone. Just the mere premise of "you play as Hades's son" would make anyone even slightly familiar with Greek mythology go "oh, so Persephone is his mom, right?" Someone more familiar with said mythology would recognize that Zagreus is an existing, albeit obscure god, and while the specifics of his father and nature vary (he's often an aspect of Dionysus), he's almost always a son of Persephone. Not to mention Persephone being conspicuously absent from the underworld would make anyone curious as to what happened to her, and Zagreus having one of his eyes be bright green pretty much seals the deal.
• Heroes of the Storm: This happens with a lot of teasers for new heroes. Since the game is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of every Blizzard franchise, players can usually narrow every teaser down to a few options on the first hint, and figure out who it is exactly long before the reveal.
• Hunt Down the Freeman renders its very name meaningless by the end of the game, as it's revealed that the person Mitchell is looking for, the culprit who killed Mitchel's squad and "fucked up (Mitchell's) face" is actually someone who was disguised as Gordon Freeman, rather than the man himself. The problem? "Gordon" is shown wearing an HEV helmet while attacking Mitchell, which is very uncharacteristic of the real Gordon, so any sharp-eyed Half-Life fan who notices this detail will naturally suspect that something's fishy. Notably, this was such a "give the game away" moment that the trailers and advertisement stills showed an unhelmeted Gordon.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven's main villain is hidden for the first several chapters, with his brainwashed servants just calling him 'The Noble One'. This new villain has a personal beef with the Joestar family (they're the first ones he sends people to attack), villains from Stardust Crusaders like Enya and Vanilla Ice serve him without being brainwashed, and the way his minions refer to him makes it clear that he has a god complex the size of Massachusetts. Yeah, it's Dio. Though to be fair to the protagonists for not figuring this out for a while, the Noble One isn't the Dio they're familiar with (who dies in the prologue), he's a counterpart from a universe where the bad guy won Stardust Crusaders.
• Jump Force: Light being a traitor to the Jump Force team. Considering he's one of the most iconic villains in manga history, it's so glaringly obvious that the work page doesn't even bother to hide it. That being said, his Playing Both Sides antics help hide the twist that there's another traitor on the team.
• The King of Fighters XV: Krohnen is K9999. They're the only two male playable characters in the franchise with blue hair and yellow clothes, wear the exact same single blue glove, share numerous visually different yet functionally identical moves, act rather assholish to everyone around them, have an affinity for motorcycles, form a team with Ángel and Kula, and the former's backstory has him very insistent on being called "Krohnen" and hints at him being an ex-member of NESTS — which was the occupation of the latter. Most will put two and two together long before Ángel finally drops all pretenses and calls Krohnen "K9999".
• Kingdom Hearts II: That Roxas is Sora's Nobody. It's made clear from the prologue that Roxas has an extremely strong connection with Sora and that he's something called a "Nobody". His name is an anagram of Sora's name with an X added, just like how Xemnas is the Nobody of Xehanort/"Ansem". When you take control of Sora for the first time in the game and meet with Yen Sid, he will explain what a Nobody is. At this point, anyone who paid even the smallest amount of attention to the plot of the first game will put two-and-two together and figure out the reveal less than four hours into the game. That said, since the audience by default gets more clues than Sora due to following Roxas's prologue before playing as Sora, it's easy to treat the matter less as an overly obvious reveal and more as straightforward Dramatic Irony, so Riku telling Sora that Roxas is his Nobody during the endgame still works as an Internal Reveal for a protagonist who spent most of the story Locked Out of the Loop.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
  • Mandalore in is Canderous Ordo from the first game. Who'd have thought, in that they're both Mandalorians from the Clan Ordo, who are both getting on in years, both cyborgs, both travelled with Revan, and that they both share a voice actor. It wasn't supposed to be a big reveal. The game infamously got Christmas Rushed and there was intended to be a scene almost right after we meet Mandalore in which Kreia blackmails him into following the Exile, and refers to him by his given name. The final release of The Sith Lords however never actually refers to him as Canderous until close to the end of the game.
  • That Kreia is the final antagonist of the game. You mean to tell me that the woman who berates you if you so much as think about helping an NPC without expecting anything in return and who uses manipulation and subterfuge as her preferred methods of defeating her enemies betrays you? Preposterous!
• At the end of Disc 3 of The Legend of Dragoon reveals that Rose is the Black Monster Dart has been searching for. But it was already very obvious that the Black Monster was a Dragoon with a darkness theme and near the end of Disc 2, it was established that Rose has been around since the Dragon Campaign over 11,000 years ago (which itself was frequently hinted with the fact she knows far more about the time period than even acknowledged experts).
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, it's very easy to guess that Midna is the eponymous Twilight Princess long before the penultimate dungeon when Link finds out. For starters, the game tries to justify its title early on by having Midna call Zelda "Twilight Princess" in jest, but as this moniker is only used once in a throwaway line, it's easy to overlook it or dismiss it as a Red Herring. On Midna's end, she first decries Zant as a false king after the second dungeon and then shows a personal animosity with him when they meet at Lanayru Spring. She is then recognized by Zelda as a significant figure when she mentions the Mirror of Twilight, shortly afterward is when Midna reveals herself as a native of the Twilight Realm, and shortly after that is when the sages allude to a true ruler of her people that Zant had overthrown. Finally, after collecting all four mirror shards, Mina once again denounces Zant as a false king by exclaiming "no matter how you dress it up, the real one always wins", stopping just short of shouting her own title to the wind. Yet despite all this, she is shocked to discover that the sages knew who she was all along, and Link is just as surprised to hear the truth come out moments later.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds has Link working with the mysterious Hilda, who claims to be his ally in Lorule, Hyrule's alternate dimension counterpart. It's established later on that everyone in Lorule is a mirror opposite of their Hyrulean counterpart to varying degrees, and since Hyrule's Zelda is kind, wise, and a genuine friend to Link, it's not quite hard to guess that Hilda might be manipulating you. Even if one didn't predict the twist based on that, Yuga foreshadows it by outright stating "Her Grace will be most pleased..." after transforming Seres into a painting near the beginning of the game; and considering that there are only two options for who "Her Grace" could possibly be, with one of them being on the villain's hit list...
  • Hyrule Warriors plays twists involving the identities of the mysterious Sheik and Cia's evil benefactor completely straight. The former is unchanged from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (which has long since fallen into It Was His Sled and Late-Arrival Spoiler territory) and the latter is the series' primary villain (the Trope Namer for Hijacked by Ganon).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Most of the problems in the main quest, such as the fierce blizzard that is killing Rito Village's food supply and the sludge polluting Zora Domain's water ways, are caused by "Zelda" who is actually Phantom Ganon in disguise. Of course, since Ganondorf being the main villain was spoiled by the trailers, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he has something to do with the fact that "Zelda" is being seen all over Hyrule causing chaos, especially once you stumble across the memory showing that he had relied upon a “Zelda” imposter in the past.
• Lego Knights' Kingdom: In the first chapter, your first playable knight, Jayko, has to pass a set of trials in order to be knighted by the King. The last trial is a battle against the definitely-not-evil-sounding Lord Vladek who's dressed in definitely-not-evil red and black and tells the player that he won't hurt them and they may need their skills in days to come, while the other knights talk about how he's definitely the King's most loyal and trusted knight. Small wonder that he turns out to be a traitor shortly after Jayko is knighted.
• Mary Skelter:
  • Mary Skelter: Nightmares tries to set up a betrayal involving the Dawn's leaders and the leaders of the Order of the Sun. Three chapters into a nine-chapter game, it's possible to investigate the laboratory of Professor Tohjima (the de facto leader of the Dawn) and stumble across a secret monitor room. While the Professor turns Plausible Deniability into an art form, the other suspects' allegiances and motivations are made obvious, which makes the latter half of the game feel like a giant farce. The kicker? Even when it's finally obvious to the heroes that Tohjima is a traitor, the Professor still somehow manages to dance logical circles around them, and the reveal only comes when another senior member of the Dawn who was a former accomplice and both secretly and not-so-secretly guides the main character in the right direction tells him to knock it off.
  • Mary Skelter 2 doesn't fare much better. The game includes an enhanced remake of the first game, but the fact that the developers heavily suggest playing the sequel first, going so far as to force the player to download free DLC to play out of order, makes it obvious that Mary Skelter 2 leads into the remake narrative-wise.
• Mega Man:
  • In Mega Man 6, the villain behind all of this games' Robot Masters is supposed to be a mysterious "Mr. X." Given how formulaic the series is, anyone who has played any of the previous five games knows Mr. X is very obviously going to be eventually revealed as Dr. Wily in disguise. Particularly since the series already tried a similarly unconvincing final boss fake-out with Dr. Cossack in Mega Man 4, then again with Proto Man in Mega Man 5, not to mention the fact that Mr. X looks exactly like Dr. Wily. By Mega Man 9 or so, the series was pretty clearly just playing it for laughs, with Wily blaming a bunch of recent robot attacks on Light with relatively little evidence—shock of shocks, turns out he was behind them, and the entire ending cutscene of the game is dedicated to how clear it was that Wily was behind them.
  • Mega Man X has no small Hijacked by Ganon tendency with Sigma, which naturally leads to this. Pretty much every game since X3 features some kind of new villain who is making mysterious plans, has turned evil for no explicable reason, or is clearly answering to someone else. It naturally turns out to be Sigma every single time. X7 in particular has cutscenes involving an unidentified figure in shadow...who has glowing blue eyes, big shoulderpads, a bald head, and a cape. That look narrows things down a little.
  • Mega Man X: Mavericks: You'll probably have figured out Dr. Wily is behind everything long before the official confirmation, especially in the final fortress where the game gives up trying to really hide it and starts slavering his logo across the background.
• Even ignoring how widely known the twist is now thanks to Super Smash Bros., the identity of the Masked Man in Mother 3 is pretty obvious. It certainly doesn't make what happens after the mask is taken off any less impactful, though.
• NEO: The World Ends with You involves multiple teams competing in the Reaper's Game, but the Ruinbringers always take first, and it later turns out that they're cheating. This fact becomes relatively obvious when you consider that while the Ruinbringers are extremely powerful, they retain their lead even when other teams complete the objective first or when the Ruinbringers don't participate at all (e.g. Scramble Slam). When Rindo defeats Susukichi at the end of the first week, Game Master Shiba declares the victory null and void. As such, most of the second week has the three other teams realizing that the Reaper's Game is rigged, with Kanon of the Variabeauties offering to ally with the Wicked Twisters, and Motoi of the Purehearts trying to become a Reaper himself. At the end of the week, it turns out that the Ruinbringers are Reapers and Shiba is their leader, conclusively proving that they're cheating.
• Subverted in No More Heroes when it's revealed that Henry is Travis's twin brother. Apparently, he thought such a reveal would be one of these. How does everyone react to this news...?
  Travis: That's the craziest shit I've ever heard! Why would you bring up something like that at the very end of the game?!
  Henry: I would have thought that you and the player would have at least expected a twist of fate of some kind.
• Persona 4:
  • Naoto is a girl. Thanks to the English voice acting this doesn't come as much of a surprise to most (although her voice is slightly deeper before The Reveal), though the Japanese voice acting does a slightly better job of hiding it. Even then, many players were able to tell her gender just by looking at her, and the twist has well and truly reached It Was His Sled levels now.
  • Adachi being the killer for some people. He was the only major character who didn't have a Social Link (until the Golden Updated Re-release—and even then it was an Arcana that doesn't exist in reality), much like Ikutsuki in Persona 3. Another hint was his tendency to "accidentally" give the Investigation Team hints, mostly to cover his own ass. Another give-away that it's a common cliche in murder mysteries that the killer is perceived as a Nice Guy before the reveal while a Jerkass is a Red Herring.
• Persona 5:
  • Goro Akechi being Black Mask, as well as the one who sold out the protagonist during the Niijima's Palace heist. Many fans suspected this plot twist from the beginning, as Akechi isn't present in a lot of promotional material and didn't receive official artwork of his Phantom Thief outfit or his Persona Robin Hood until a few years after the game was released. The game isn't subtle in this regard either, as several of Akechi's DLC outfits gives him costumes that hint at his true moral standing such as Ideo Hazama's uniform and Boss (Dumuzid)'s suit, a book for his Persona doesn't get unlocked when he joins the party unlike with the other party members ^note this is downplayed as it's a case of the book being Dummied Out via programmer incompetence instead of being intended to hint at Akechi's true colors; this mistake is fixed in Royal, and one of his first scenes involves him giving away that he's been to the Metaverse long before he says he did by responding to a remark Morgana made (about a building looking like pancakes), when anyone who hasn't been to the Metaverse can only hear Morgana's speech as cat noises. All of it actually serves to disguise the real twist about Akechi: his treachery was so obvious that the protagonists knew about it the whole time, having caught the "pancakes" slip-up.
  • "Igor" is actually an impostor. His voice is completely different (while Igor's Japanese VA had died prior to the game's creation, The Other Darrin doesn't even bother trying to sound like the original), he has different speech patterns and uses different terminology ("welcome to my Velvet Room" instead of "welcome to the Velvet Room", using different Japanese Pronouns, calling Social Links "Confidants"^note Although Confidants are slightly different from Social Links in that they begin with a deal between Joker and the character in question), he sits in a different way, and his previous Cryptkeeper-esque demeanor is entirely gone. More subtly, he doesn't give you the key to the Velvet Room at the start of the game, a detail that only comes up at the very end, when Lavenza gives you it as a Friendship Trinket for completing the Strength Confidant. While the protagonist is fooled because he doesn't have the real Igor to compare him to, any player familiar with the previous games would sense something rotten from his first appearance.
• Given the structure of the explorable area of Planet Halpha in Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis - segregated environments, power-gating barriers, conveniently placed Ryuker Devices and Trainia - practically everyone and their Rappy could guess that the planet had been terraformed by a third party. But the real twist that caught the entire player base by surprise was not what Halpha happens to be, but why it was made that way.
• Pikmin 4: The demo introduced the concept of "Leaflings", A form of super-intelligent Pikmin that form when a captain is fed into an Onion. Even before the full game came out, just about everyone knew that the red Leafling seen in the demo was Olimar as a Leafling, as red is a color frequently associated with Olimar, the nose of the Leafling being one of Olimar's defining traits, and being accompanied by Olimar's own pup Moss.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: It quickly becomes apparent that Team Galactic's goal is to replace the current universe with their ideal one. However, the player will occasionally meet a strange man who talks about how conflict has ruined the world and how they find this deplorable. Who could have possibly predicted that they are the leader of Team Galactic? To be fair, it's somewhat mitigated by it not being treated as a dramatic plot twist. Platinum mitigates it further by featuring Cyrus giving a Death Glare in the intro before the title screen, and his very first appearance making it clear that he has plans for the Lake Trio.
  • Pokémon Black and White:
    • "What? Are you telling me that the serious, pale-skinned man who uses a red scouter-like machine on his right eye, wears a robe with eyeballs in it and is constantly talking on behalf of Team Plasma is actually a villain and Team Plasma's real leader? And the guy who looks like a younger version of him is actually his son!? HOW WOULD I KNOW?" Though what IS a surprise is just how evil said villain is and how he has treated his son.
    • Black and White also try to pretend that N being the "official" leader of Team Plasma is a surprise until Nimbasa City. Even for players who skipped past the animation depicting his coronation that plays before the title screen every time the game is booted up, it wasn't hard to piece together that the weird kid who claims to be able to speak fluent Pokémon and asks your Mons if you treat them well is linked to that weird organization that claims to fight against Pokémon abuse.
  • Pokémon X and Y:
    • The goal of Team Flare is to destroy the world and make a more beautiful one in its place. So naturally the leader of said operation couldn't possibly be that weird friend of the region's professor you met a few hours earlier, who is a Fiery Redhead (like every member of Team Flare), wears a black suit with red highlights, and ends every conversation by saying things like "I would end the world in an instant so that beauty never fades." Nope, that's just silly. What, he's talking about the ancient Weapon of Mass Destruction in a positive light? Saying that his ancestor had the right idea in cleansing the world of filth? And the grunts of the villain team are causally hanging out in his café? When the reveal happens, most players are instead shocked that it's meant to be a reveal at all.
    • In the same game, they make a similarly half-hearted attempt to hide the fact that Diantha is the Kalos League Champion. To the point that the anime doesn't even bother and introduces her as such in her first appearance there.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon:
    • The very instant the Aether Foundation was revealed in trailers, everyone suspected that they would be the story's Big Bad. The game proper averts this, opening with Lillie on the run from a bunch of malicious-looking Aether employees, thus making the revelation more of an Internal Reveal already known by some of the characters.
    • The fact that Lusamine is evil is blatantly obvious after the first Ultra Beast leaves during your first meeting with her because she sports a Slasher Smile and starts muttering like a madwoman. Though much like in Black And White, the surprise is just HOW bad she is.
    • The Reveal that Lillie, Gladion, and Lusamine are family is hardly surprising given that they all look so similar, especially Lillie and Lusamine.
    • Many people predicted Cosmog would evolve into Lunala simply by noticing how similar its design is. Same goes with Cosmoem and Solgaleo. This meant the only real surprise was that Cosmog has a middle-stage (Cosmoem) prior to the divergent evolution.
    • The minute the Ultra Beasts were revealed for Pokémon Sun and Moon, people predicted they'd be Pokémon you'd be able to catch later in the game, even though the developers were trying to make them out as being distinct from Pokémon, and deliberately not showing any images of them in battle. By the time the datamining and official company statements revealed they were Pokémon (from an alternate dimension) you could catch, the percentage of fans who believed they were only NPCs was practically nil.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The fact that Penny is your Mysterious Employer Cassopeia and also the Team Star Boss. Penny being Cassopeia is pretty obvious since you get contacted by the latter right after helping out the former, both are mentioned to be good with hacking, Penny only shows up during Cassopeia-related tasks, and she was very prominent in the trailers so it doesn't make sense that she'd have a minor role in the games. As for Cassopeia being the Star Boss, this is fairly clear from Penny's I Have This Friend-style speech about the boss' mistakes at one point, as well as the fact that when Star underlings talk about how they were recruited into the team, it sounds almost identical to how Cassopeia recruited you.
• In Raiden V, the fact that Valbarossa is a woman is played up as a surprise to the heroes, however her feminine voice, which is not masked in any way, makes her gender clear well before she officially reveals the fact. This is mostly an issue in the Director's Cut version if voices are enabled (which is the default) since the original version did not have any voice acting until an update introduced it.
• Rakuen:
  • The reveal that the boy lost his hair to chemotherapy can come across like this given how the hat just happens to cover most of where his hair would be, but you still can't see any hair sticking out implying he's bald, and since no one mentions why he's in the hospital and he seems healthy enough otherwise it's easy to guess he's The Littlest Cancer Patient. Plus you can look at the boy's prescriptions on the table as early as the beginning of the game, and a quick Google search on the medicines can spoil his condition before you even leave his room.
  • On a similar note is the one regarding Yami not being a real person given how initially only the boy is ever allowed to interact with them and they have a Meaningful Name that's a bit too on the nose for both their personality and appearance.
• Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando is a rare example of doing this intentionally. A large man with a butt chin, pink mustache, and donning a bright green leotard with a Q on the front is selling cheap devices to fund his evil scheme under the name Steve McQwark. He then laughs maniacally after the last customer leaves as he says "Steve McQwark...indeed!" and ripping off the pink mustache, revealing him to be Captain Qwark, a large man with a butt chin known for wearing a bright green leotard with a Q on the front. What tops it off is that the camera crash-zooms on his face as if the director genuinely believes the audience will be shocked by this.
• Re;member: Huyuaki lived in the mansion prior and has a connection to the family that lived in it. At first it's not too obvious, since Miu seems to be the only one with amnesia, but when Huyuaki reveals he also has amnesia and then starts repeatedly getting the strange feeling that he's experienced things in the mansion that he supposedly never experienced, it becomes obvious because it's the most likely explanation.
• Resident Evil Village: That Ethan has been infected with The Mold since the previous game. The man has recovered from utterly ridiculous amounts of horrific, mutilating injuries that don't fall under Gameplay and Story Segregation; he was able to communicate with Jack Baker in Eveline's mold-connected hivemind; and his daughter Rosemary is obviously not fully human, given she's still alive after being cut into four pieces. Him being a Mold creature is the only thing that actually makes the story work by this point. Though, while it's still treated as a dramatic revelation, Eveline does at least ask what Ethan attributed his miraculous recoveries to. The only surprising part is the reveal that Ethan actually died in the last game's prologue, and has been carrying on as a mold-infested revenant ever since.
• RosenkreuzStilette: In the original game, a certain character being the real villain is a genuinely surprising twist. But in the sequel Freudenstachel, given that the games are heavily influenced by Mega Man, it's rather easy to predict that that same character is once again the true villain while the Pope is just a Disc-One Final Boss, as this is a common twist used in the Mega Man series. And even without that knowledge, there are other blatant hints: one of the bosses is a homunculus version of Liebea, which was also a boss in the original game alongside homunculi of the other RKS members created by the villain, and the Game Over message says "Let there be light for a new Goddess", the exact same message used in the original game's true final stages and Grollschwert mode which blatantly refer to them, making the character's involvement even more obvious.
• Rune Factory 3: When Micah reveals his secret to Daria, she reveals her own secret — she's an elf. Micah treats this as a stunning revelation, and the player is supposed to as well. This is Daria. Though it could be argued that the shock was that Daria was specifically an elf, not just non-human. Falls flat especially in the case of the legitimate surprise of Raven's reveal.
• Rune Factory Tides Of Destiny does this to the three biggest revelations in the game's plotline.
  • Aiden and Sonja are from Fenith Island, but end up transported to what they take to be an alternate universe version of Fenith Island. They recall many dragons flying through the sky, but that's not the case here, though Odette mentions that this was the case 200 years ago. Many players already realized that the protagonists had been sent to a future version of their home. The actual revelation doesn't occur until close to the plot's climax.
  • The three sisters Odette, Lily, and Violet are the Dragon Priestesses of Fire, Earth, and Water, respectively. There is no Dragon Priestess of Wind, as her lineage died out 200 years ago. This lack of the fourth priestess isn't treated as important to mention until she's needed and, yes, Sonja turns out to be the Dragon Priestess of Wind — and her lineage died out 200 years ago because she and Aiden were transported forward in time.
  • When Aiden and Sonja get transported in the beginning, Sonja's body is missing and her consciousness has attached itself to Aiden. Finding out what happened to Sonja's body is part of the plot, and they are confronted by a Masked Man. No prizes are won for guessing just whose face is hidden under that mask: Sonja's. And this doesn't get revealed until the very definite Final Boss battle.
• Shantae: As soon as footage was shown for the fifth game, Shantae and the Seven Sirens, was shown off, almost every fan called that the supposed half-genie zombie, Fillin the Blank, was Rottytops. It doesn't help that WayForward didn't bother to try hiding it. Very few zombie girls even appear in the series prior to that point (let alone with green hair), Fillin isn't on the main art cover with the other half-genies, her stitches and ears are conspicuously hidden, and Shantae herself already deduced it when Harmony informed her of Fillin using a different alias (Ima Goodgirl).
• The Man Behind the Man in Sonic Rush Adventure is Dr. Eggman, who is completely absent from the story until The Reveal. However, given that apparent-Big Bad Captain Whisker is a robot who sports a mustache and overall looks identical to that of Eggman, roughly no one was shocked when the twist was revealed.
• Spider-Man (PS4): Dr. Otto Octavius becomes Dr. Octopus and is behind the Sinister Six. Anyone who knows anything about Spider-Lore knows that Dr. Octopus is one of Spider-Man's most famous foes and that he created the Sinister Six in the first place. He's also doing work on prosthetic limbs (which eventually turn into his signature tentacles), has a notable grudge against Norman Osborne, and you can see projects that are obviously for the other five Sinister Six members in his lab. Though the game does manage to generate pathos from the fact that while the audience is expecting Otto to become a villain, Peter Parker isn't, and demonstrating his close relationship with Otto sets up just how devastated he's going to be when Otto finally does his Face–Heel Turn.
• In Splatoon 3, it's revealed early on that a new enemy has stolen the Great Zapfish, with the characters perplexed as to who it could be...but given the name of the campaign and the Ambiguously Evil vibes of the character from the previous game, few players were surprised by Mr. Grizz turning out to be the main villain. Perhaps in anticipation of this, The Reveal happens relatively early into the story.
• The identity of the villain of Stinkoman 20X6 turns out to be Z Sabre, the 20X6 version of Coach Z. This would be surprising, had the twist not been spoiled many years before the final level by the Games Menu, which has an Easter egg which switches your ship with his. Not to mention his very Coach Z-esque head silhouette.
• The Suicide of Rachel Foster:
  • Many players guessed right off the bat that Rachel was actually murdered, especially those already familiar with these narrative-driven style games. The main plotline involves investigating the supposed mystery around Rachel's death, although if you take the official ruling that she killed herself at face value there's not much mystery at all: a lonely, bullied teenager with an extremely strict and religious father got into a sexual relationship with her married tutor, and when the affair was revealed she couldn't cope with the fallout.
  • By extension, some players have mentioned that the killer's identity was also obvious to them; there aren't that many cast members and out of all of them Claire has one of the strongest motives to kill Rachel (especially considering Leonard is depicted as treating Rachel as a Lost Lenore, making him an unlikely suspect). Even in the opening scene Claire's tone when discussing Rachel is contemptuous (such as saying she believed Rachel "did the right thing" by allegedly killing herself).
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario 3D World attempts a Victory Fakeout at the end of World 7...which might have been a little more convincing had there not been eight worlds in Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Super Mario Bros. 3, all 5 New Super Mario Bros. games and several others. It seems that the Grandfather Clause is obliging the Mario series to use Your Princess Is in Another Castle! in every game by now.
  • Paper Mario: Color Splash:
    • Virtually nobody was surprised by Bowser being the Big Bad. In fact, most people figured it out the moment the game was shown off. Not only is there Bowser tape in Port Prisma but during Ruddy Road, the first actual level, a Shy Guy is shown placing Bowser tape down right in front of your eyes. And yet no one suspects a thing. The reveal of the Koopalings being the main bosses only rubbed salt into that wound. Like the above example, it feels like the Grandfather Clause is obliging the series to use Bowser as the Big Bad in every game now.
    • However, it ends up subverted when it's all but outright stated that the black paint Bowser covered himself in was actually possessing him and that all the trouble started just because Bowser accidentally mixed all the Prisma Fountain paint colors together because he wanted a rainbow patterned shell. However, even this isn't totally without foreshadowing as when you get to the final level, you see that he drained Peach's color when she tried to escape. And when, in the literally dozens of times that Bowser kidnapped her before, has he ever actually harmed her?
  • Played for Laughs by Super Mario RPG. When Mallow introduces himself as a frog, the narration is clearly confused and points out that he doesn't look like a frog at all; he's a cloud with arms and feet, prince of the Nimbus Kingdom. When Frogfucius reveals that Mallow is not, in fact, a frog, everyone in Tadpole Pond is shocked...but Mario doesn't react at all.
• Tales Series:
  • From Tales of Graces, we have Richard being possessed. If his sudden headache and subsequent bloody rampage against soldiers at Wallbridge isn't enough to clue the player in, there's also his desire to take revenge on his uncle, whom he also kills in front of the party. Richard's continued aggressive behavior, including starting a war is not enough to make the party actually figure this out themselves. While the player has figured it out ages ago, one must still sit through a good 20 hours of gameplay before the idea of Richard being possessed by the Big Bad is even considered an option.
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • The game has an odd situation in that an actual reveal leads directly into an example. After Ozette is destroyed, the party meets a child claiming to be the sole survivor, whose name is Mithos. Over several skits, it becomes apparent that Mithos is more than he seems, and he shares many traits with the ancient hero Mithos. Then a genuine reveal occurs, as a storyteller informs you that the hero Mithos's last name was Yggdrasill, the name of the Big Bad. However, several more scenes occur before the final reveal, which should be obvious from the previous two by the transitive property: the Mithos in their group is also Yggdrasill. The game tries to throw you off the trail by having the characters say that Mithos is a common boy's name in Tethe'alla.
    • There's also the matter of Genis and Raine being half-elves. Fairly early in the game, a half-elven character compares himself to the two of them, but quickly and awkwardly retracts this comparison when Genis nervously declares them to be elves, and he realizes they've been traveling incognito. Combined with moments like Raine telling Genis "we're not like them" about a group of half-elven villains, the player may well have forgotten that their race was supposed to be a secret by the time the shocking-to-the-characters reveal arrives several plot twists later.
    • Kratos is Lloyd's father. The age doesn't seem to make things work out, Kratos is stated to be 28 and Lloyd is 17 years old, so he would have had to become a father at a very young age, but the twist is still obvious. Early on, the party visits Lloyd's home and Kratos is seen standing at the grave nearby, which Lloyd reveals to be his mother's. They share similar facial expressions (as well as a distaste for tomatoes) and Kratos is a little too uncharacteristically emotional when the party meets Kvar, who gloatingly reveals how he was at fault for Lloyd's mother's death. And when the party splits up into one fighting Kvar, Kratos refuses any combination that does not involve him on that team. The reveal itself? Takes place close to the last third of the game. The age thing is also made clearer when it's revealed that Kratos is actually about four millennia old. And leaving most of these plot-related reasons aside, there is fairly interesting clue to be found in actual gameplay: one of the possible settings for your A.I. allies in battle is to let them fight, move and use their skills at their own discretion. To be specific, each party member actually has their own tendencies pre-programmed into their individual A.I.s. In Kratos' case, analyzing his actions in battle reveals that he will almost always prioritize healing and protecting Lloyd over everyone else, even the all-important Collete whom he's supposed to be guarding with his life!
  • Tales of Xillia 2:
    • Elle is Ludger's daughter from the future. Within the first hour of the two meeting in the beginning of the game, multiple hints are dropped over and over and not leaving much of a potential surprise for the player. The revelation being given to Ludger and Elle themselves? The last third of the game.
    • Elle actually being from a fractured dimension. Nothing in the world of Xillia states that time travel is actually possible, but even ignoring that, the fact that Elle's father's clock merges with Ludger's is a big hint. Especially because the game states early on that the same thing cannot exist twice in the prime dimension, making it obvious that the clock (and Elle) come from a fractured dimension.
• Tekken 8: Everyone was already certain, between her mannerisms and her moveset, that Reina was one of Heihachi Mishima's illegitimate children. The Stinger still presents this revelation as new and shocking.
• Thimbleweed Park turns out to be all in a video game itself. This would be quite surprising...if the two agents didn't blatantly break the fourth wall saying the dead body is "pixellating" and could ask the pigeon brothers "Should I save my game?" (and be told "This game is hard-coded not to be unwinnable") within the first fifteen minutes.
• In Triangle Strategy, the Grand Norzelian Mines contain a naturally-occuring salt vein, not iron like everyone else thought. Salt is a huge deal in the time and setting, Dragan is clearly shocked when he discovers the salt crystals (complete with swearing his miners to secrecy and hiding the discovery from Serenoa and co.), and Gustadolph is very conveniently able to cut off trade with Hyzante (who control the Source, the primary salt-harvesting area in Norzelia) after he takes over the mines. Most players were much less surprised than Serenoa's party was when the "reveal" finally happens ~3/4 of the way in.
• Twisted Wonderland:
  • Kalim's out-of-character behavior during arc 4 is the result of Jamil's Mind Control. The investigation leading up to this reveal would have been more effective has Jamil not been shown using this technique on the protagonist right at the start of the arc.
  • "Muscle Crimson" is Lilia under a Screen Name. Hikaru Midorikawa's voice reading the text messages out loud gives this away from the outset.
  • Lilia is Silver's foster father. This is played in book 7 like a surprising reveal, but before this story arc is released Silver has called Lilia father multiple times, and Lilia has talked about taking care of him in the past.
  • The Knight of the Dawn is Silver's biological father. Even before this revelation is made, the former is given the same body shape, the same animation cycles and the same voice actor as the latter.
• Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense has two twists at the end of two characters' quests: one being that the Garbage Man is Y the Alien from Vigilante 8, and one where Bob O. is actually a monkey named Bobo. Unlike the first twist (which one may not understand if they haven't played the first game), the twist involving Bobo is blatant, given that his character never speaks, loves bananas, is heavily incorporated with NASA experiments, and sounds like a shrieking monkey when he uses his special attack.
• We Happy Few first revealed itself with the idea that Wellington Wells had turned itself into a drug-fueled Happiness Is Mandatory dystopia due to "The Very Bad Thing", which was somehow tied to the city's children being taken away after England was conquered by the Nazis during World War 2. Fans immediately began speculating what "The Very Bad Thing" was, mostly revolving around some kind of horrific counter-strike against the Nazis. Then the game came out and revealed "The Very Bad Thing" was actually the fact Wellington Wells let their children be taken in the first place. With the addendum that Wellington Wells found out after their children were taken that letting their kids be taken to preserve their own skins was a Senseless Sacrifice; the German army was so depleted that the tank units that blockaded them were entirely paper-mache models.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Metal Face is actually Mumkhar. Considering that they share the same voice and have similar weapons, it's fairly easy to connect the dots the moment the former first appears. Similarly, Dickson being Evil All Along is another obvious reveal, considering most of his cutscenes showed him acting rather suspiciously to the point of him being an Obvious Judas.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X: Phog and Frye being brothers. The game tries to present this as a twist, but the fact that one Affinity Quest requires both of them, they're Mutually Exclusive Party Members until said quest is done, and that they constantly mention each other in their battle quotes means it's hardly a twist at all.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
    • Amalthus was Evil All Along, if that could even be considered a twist. It's made fairly obvious early on when Rex momentarily sees an apparition of his former Blade, Malos, when talking to Amalthus, already giving the player a reason to distrust him by implying that Malos is influencing Amalthus. The real twist, however, is that it's the other way around; Malos' personality was influenced by Amalthus' despair and hatred at the state of the world.
    • Morytha being Earth All Along isn't surprising at all, considering that it looks like a city from modern day, albeit After the End. Again though, that isn't the real twist. The real twist is that said Earth in question is the homeworld of Professor Klaus/Zanza from the first game, revealing that the two universes are connected and it wasn't destroyed, as implied by Alvis in the original Xenoblade.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Consuls N and M being past versions of Noah and Mio. Even if someone was unfamiliar with the Xeno series of games, where this idea has been around since Xenogears, the fact they both look like Noah and Mio (except for N and M having longer hair), share the same voice actors, and they are introduced around the time that the game reveals that people who die are brought back to fight again, makes it pretty obvious they are past incarnations of the two leads. The real mystery turns out to be how they exist at the same time as the current Noah and Mio, and just what this means.

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