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Daydream Surprise / Video Games

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Due to the nature of this trope, expect spoilers.

Daydream Surprises in Video Games.


  • Capcom Fighting Evolution: Played for Laughs in Zangief's ending; following a montage of him living the high life, cut to reveal that it was all in his head... as he's surrounded in the middle of a snowy tundra by polar bears. His expression says it all.
  • The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay uses this as its tutorial level. After a brief dialogue scene between Riddick and Johns, the ship lands at Butcher Bay. There is a sandstorm going on, and Johns' dialogue is notably stunted and he doesn't respond like a normal human would. He also goes down ridiculously easily when he turns his back on Riddick. This catches the attention of security, so Riddick escapes down a hatch and spends the rest of the level teaching the controls to the player. Just when it appears he's home free, we hear Johns say: "Wake up, Riddick." Then we get to see the actual arrival at the prison.
    • The sequel, Assault on Dark Athena opens with Daydream Surprise, taking advantage of of Riddick's Furyan heritage to let him dream about killing enemies he hasn't even encountered yet. It ends in a hallway with the lights going out one by one, while Riddick narrates: "Embrace the darkness." Then he wakes up from cryo-sleep.
  • Destiny 2: The Phobos Warden armor set includes lore in which Commander Zavala is visited by various missing and/or presumed dead characters, who either let him lean on them a little or who’ve come up with a miracle solution to the threat facing the Last City in their absence. The last one in the sequence reveals they were all just daydreams.
  • Eternal Darkness opens up with Alex being attacked by a horde of zombies. The player can fight them off, but they'll eventually become too numerous and kill her. That's when she wakes up.
  • The first Freddi Fish game has this in the form of an infamous Dummied Out cutscene. (Which can be produced in-game by adding the value "EddieEatsLuther=1" in the game's ini file.) At one point in the game, Freddi and her friend Luther meet an irritated eel named Eddie, who threatens to eat the two fish if they don't go away. If the value is set in the ini file, clicking Luther will result in Freddi suddenly tossing Luther to Eddie, who gleefully gobbles the poor fish up (and in a way that's fairly graphic for a kid's game no less) and swims off as Freddi smirks at the camera. After this happens, the scene immediately cuts back to before (with Freddi and the still alive-and-well Luther in front of Eddie) and this exchange occurs:
    Luther: Whatcha thinking about, Freddi?
    Freddi: Oh, nothing, Luther...
  • The first Need for Speed: Underground game opens with you competing in (and winning) a street race in a fully pimped-out car. You're then pulled out of your fantasy by the game's Exposition Fairy Samantha, who invites you to buy your first actual car.
  • Pokémon:
    • The Pokéwalker has this trope used by the player's Pokemon in the Pokéwalker when it's bored.
  • The opening cutscene of My Pokémon Ranch had Hayley explaining the whole goal while she is daydreaming; it shows the Pokemon playing in the ranch and vice versa. That is when Hayley snaps out of her daydream, and comments that she "was daydreaming again."
  • Second Sight. It starts with the protagonist strapped to a gurney in a hospital, and over time does flashbacks to time he spent overseas with an elite military unit. Turns out the the game's "Real" time frame is the flash backs; the opening sequence and any other part of the game based in the States is precognition. Revealed somewhat since every time you have a "flashback", and then find yourself back in the "present", something has changed. (Such as the mandatory love interest still being alive.)


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