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Fanfic Fuel in Video Games.

  • Chrono series:
    • Before the release of Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger had many fanfics centering about Magus' search for Schala because Schala's fate is left ambiguous in the end.
    • As a sequel to Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross has a Wild Mass Guess about the enigmatic masked magician Guile being Magus searching for Schala (the bonus ending of Chrono Trigger DS implies Guile being an amnesiac Magus, albeit one from a timeline different from that of the Magus seen in the main storyline). This led to many (though still not very common) novelizations of Chrono Cross with said Wild Mass Guess.
    • It's worth noting that Guile himself is a Fanfic Magnet regardless being Magus or not, although his fanfics aren't very common.
      • Guile's Japanese name is Alf, which is probably a nod to Janus' cat Alfador. Some fans interpret him as a cat-turned-human.
      • Some fans also prefer having Guile not being Magus by giving him a Backstory which comes from their interpretations. The most common interpretation is Guile being a magician in the past.
      • This is less common, but the interpretations of Guile's comment (doesn't want the power of darkness because he thinks Dark Is Evil) about the Frozen Flame are also prone to be a Fanfic Fuel. This usually comes across as Guile's denial of his identity as Magus in the past, but the Frozen Flame is also said to be able to speak not only about the past but also the future.
      • Another less common Fanfic Fuel is about what Guile is hiding behind his Domino Mask. Why is the Fortune Teller at Termina shocked when he takes it off?
  • In Cuphead, what the contracts the various bosses made with the Devil granted them (which are only implied in-game) and the events leading up to making those deals with the Devil has become a fertile source of fan fics.
  • The MMO Defiance and its TV series tie-in has quite an open area for stories set in the world. Including the history detailing between the events of the Votanis Collective arriving at Earth to the end of the show, as well as covering the past events leading up to the Pale Wars, as well as those involved in it and those involved in it. This also opens up for players who continue to play the game to tell stories with their Arkhunter characters and their adventures in the New Frontier. And with the cancellation of the show, it leaves open room for future stories set in the town of Defiance after Nolan and Doc Yewll's departure with the Omec.
  • Devil May Cry:
    • The Shrouded in Myth nature of Sparda is easy fanfiction fodder, particularly as each mainline game adds more and more to his backstory and list of feats without actually showing the particular sequence of events. This only expands further if one takes into account statements made by Hideki Kamiya (either through games he's directed or via Twitter), particularly the assertation in Bayonetta that Sparda's human bride Eva was an Umbra Witch who entered a contract with him — presumably marking the beginning of their courtship.
    • Speaking of Bayonetta, Dante's "Tony Redgrave" alias is, according to Kamiya, taken from Luka's father Antonio as a sign of respect. Coupled with both series featuring an information broker named Enzo, one gets the feeling Kamiya would do a DMC/Bayonetta crossover if he could — something that fans would very much enjoy considering how popular the idea of Dante and Bayonetta crossing paths (and then some) is in fan circles.
    • Devil May Cry 5 opened up two big barrels of it. First, the end of the game has Vergil undergoing a Heel–Face Turn and becoming more of a traditional rival to Dante. As a result, a lot of fics have cropped up that explore this idea, with Vergil adapting to life with the rest of the DMC crew and trying to establish some sort of relationship with his son, Nero. Secondly, after learning that Eva did not, in fact, abandon him and actually died trying to find him and save him, Vergil muses: "That day, if our positions were switched, would our fates be different? Would I have your life, and you mine?" This has led to quite a bit of fan works exploring that exact premise.
  • Evolve takes place on one planet over a relatively short period of time, while additional information revealed creates a much larger universe with the human-monster war lasting years after what we see in the game. Add in the monster's ability to create new breeds opening up the possibility for fan made creations and their extradimensional nature serving as an easy excuse to drop them into any other fictional universe and you have ripe grounds for fanfiction.
  • Fallout:
    • Fallout 4 takes place ten years after the events of Fallout 3. The Eastern Brotherhood of Steel have reverted to a xenophobic and traditionalist ideology, Owyn Lyons has passed away and so has his daughter Sarah and been replaced by Arthur Maxson, and we have only a few concrete details into the state of the Capital Wasteland except the fact that the Brotherhood have established de facto rule of the region as feudalistic overlords. This has led to some downright juicy speculation into events just after the ending of 3, the fate or whereabouts of the Lone Wanderer and of other characters, and the current state of affairs in the Capital Wasteland.
    • Considering how, as of Fallout 4, all of the canon games (aside from Tactics... kinda) have been based on only the West and East Coasts of the former United States — Fallout 1 takes place in southern California, 2 takes place in northern California, 3 takes place around Washington D.C. (along with Pittsburgh and Point Lookout National Park), New Vegas takes place around Las Vegas and Zion National Park, and 4 is located around Boston (along with western Massachusetts and Bar Harbor, Maine). Many fans love to come up with theories on what's happened to the rest of the continent. Only a few allusions have been made by the games to what societies exist outside of these two regions (i.e., Ronto, the Erie Stretch, Great Lanta, Crater Banks, and the countless tribes not assimilated by Caesar's Legion or the NCR), so it's mostly been left to fans to decide what other societies have appeared in the intervening centuries.
  • The Force Unleashed: Rahm Kota leads a private army of soldiers from regional militias, mercenary companies, and defected Separatist POWs against both the CIS and the Empire, with the survivors eventually becoming soldiers in the bigger Rebel Alliance. Not a single one of Kota's men is named, but there is a definite impression that some author could write a whole book series about all of the stories that those soldiers doubtlessly have to tell.
  • Many Golden Sun fanfics focus on what Isaac's party was up to during the first two thirds of The Lost Age, before they joined forces with Felix's group.
  • Halo:
    • All of those Spartans that didn't get a story in either games and or the Expanded Universe. Heck, even the ones who are featured in canon are this, since we still only get a tiny glimpse of their adventures.
    • The post-war galaxy is this too, since there are hundreds of different factions vying for power in the vacuum caused by the Covenant's collapse.
  • In Harvest Moon: Animal Parade there's one marriage candidate called the Witch Princess. She sometimes mentions that she doesn't seem to get along with the Harvest King. If you're married to her, you can hear her say, "If you were to be gone from this world... I wouldn't know what to do. It's frightening. So please don't leave my side." Also, when getting her wish for the Purple Bell, she'll say that she wants a potion or something that will pull the truth out of someone. Has she been betrayed before? Lied to? What if the Harvest King is related to all this?
  • Henry Stickmin Series:
    • What was Ellie Rose's past look like before she was locked up by the Wall?
    • The "Toppat Civil Warfare" ending of Mission has an infamous cliffhanger. Despite being one of the most hated routes by the fans, due to similar reasons, some may try to continue it, especially after Word of God says there will be no sequels or DLC after the finale.
    • Aside from that, of course, there are also other endings where fans could continue on, such as in the "Triple Threat" route where during the credits scene, Ellie says that she and Henry are willing to join future missions if Charles calls them, Henry's and Ellie's roles as the new Toppat members in "Toppat Recruits", as well as the Right Hand Lady in "Toppat King" and Henry's new mission to take down other dangerous criminals in "Master Bounty Hunter".
  • KanColle, due to the premise being "turn battleships of the Second World War into girls, and be their Admiral" has a huge cast, is rife with Historical In-Jokes, offers a wide area where stories can take place (most of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, as well as coastal bases and cities just about anywhere) and runs the gamut from very comedic to very serious. This allows fan creations of Admirals in all kinds of variations (male or female, old or young, even "Abyssal" Admirals for the enemy faction might exist) as well as battleships without a canon girl equivalent, and fan stories can be almost anything.
  • Kingdom Hearts has a massive Myth Arc that still contains tons of blank spaces, like the epic Keyblade Wars, and the mysterious period before the fracturing of the Multiverse. It's also a rare official crossover between dozens of Disney and Final Fantasy works, which leaves plenty of room for exploring how the many established characters fit into the original lore of Kingdom Hearts. King Mickey's backstory is particularly juicy: how exactly did he go from a humble steamboat pilot to an apprentice sorcerer to a king, and how did he meet his chief lieutenants Donald and Goofy?
  • Kirby:
    • Kirby's Power Copying ability technically gives him an unlimited array of potential powers. And with Kirby having abilities that range from martial arts and electricity to ringing bells and parasols, it's quite fun to imagine potential powers for the little guy. And what makes it even more fun is the possibility of them becoming actual powers in an official Kirby game.
    • What would happen if other characters found NOVA or another wish-granting machine, and what wishes would they make?
    • What are the Mirror World versions of characters we haven't seen yet?
    • If the Robobot Armor can take the ability of its wearer, what would happen if someone other than Kirby used it?
  • The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: Very little is explained about Malefor's backstory. Any fanfiction that's not Spyro/Cynder shipping is probably this. His "death" in the final game was also vague, leading to many fanfiction and fan comics.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Several fics based on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess focus on what happened to Midna after she returned to Twilight, and if she ever found a way to reunite with Link.
    • For The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, what exactly happened in the seven years that Link was asleep? There's been fan interest in a game where you play as Zelda/Sheik during that time period, and Nintendo had actually planned to make such a spin-off, but it was scrapped before it saw the light of day.
    • Also regarding Ocarina of Time as well as its sequel Majora's Mask, what did the Hero of Time do upon leaving Termina? Hyrule Historia confirms that the Hero's Shade, the ghost who is Twilight Princess Link's ancestor, is the Hero of Time, so many fanfics dealing with this subject tend to feature how he lost his eye and whom he started a family with (the ranch girl Malon being the most common candidate).
    • All the alternate timelines and universes add more of this too. What happened in Termina before and after Link's adventure in Majora's Mask (and what was Majora's own backstory)? The wars in the past that occurred before Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past, Skyward Sword and various other titles, of which the Big Bad is usually one of the last survivors? What happened to so and so character introduced in one game that's never been heard of since? Each of these questions usually starts a lot of Zelda fan fic...
  • Mass Effect fans have the two years in which Shepard is "dead" to explore what happened to their old crew, as we only really find out what happened to Garrus and Liara, and even they don't get much detail. The Refusal Ending also counts, since it never shows you what the new species were, how they discovered Liara's message, how they developed as a society and their ultimate defeat of the Reapers.
  • While the MMO game The Matrix Online might have been disappointingly short-lived, it did manage to open up a very open-ended continuation of the Matrix film series, where factions of human warriors loyal to Zion, the Machines and the Merovingian wage a secret war for control of the Matrix in the wake of the Machines' truce with humanity. Many fanfic writers have taken to using this setting as a starting point for Continuation Fics exploring the future of the Matrix universe.
  • Mega Man:
  • Metal Gear Solid:
    • The fandom is particularly fond of writing fics about Liquid's backstory (usually set during his time in the Middle East) or the day The Boss killed The Sorrow. In fact, these two plots are so popular in MGS fan fiction that almost every male MGS fan writer has taken on the former, and almost every female MGS fan writer has taken on the latter.
    • Early on in Metal Gear Solid 2, Otacon claims that almost every major nation, corporation and political group on Earth ends up developing their own version of Metal Gear in the wake of Ocelot releasing the weapon's plans — which means that there are likely hundreds (if not more) models of Metal Gear that we never actually see in the series proper.
  • Mother 3 leaves most of the details about the Time Skip after EarthBound (Mother 2 in Japan) deliberately clouded in mystery and enigma. As such, there are numerous fan works exploring the catastrophe that completely destroyed the world of EarthBound, the people of Tazmily's journey to the Nowhere Islands after their world's destruction, and Porky Minch's descent into complete evil, not to mention the full story of the long-vanished race of people who built Osohe Castle.
  • Let's see, Neptunia... Multiple dimensions? Check. Fleshed out characters... Check. Almost no history of its world. Check. An absolutely moe, all-female cast? Heavily implied yuri among said cast?! Check-a-doodle-doo.
  • Overwatch has two backstories: one of a massive Robot War that spawned the titular organization, and another of the exploits and controversies of said organization in the years following the war's conclusion. With much of the details being fairly hazy, both with the plot and with the characters' individual backstories, fans have planted a record number of Epileptic Trees despite the game being relatively young.
  • Pokémon:
    • Pokémon has generated massive numbers of fanfics over the years, thanks to the sheer cultural presence in the childhoods of an entire generation. The games (especially the early ones) often had sparse characterization and backstories for many characters (including the protagonists), making Alternative Character Interpretations easy for many writers. And we're not even getting into the related media...
    • The various "Eeveelutions" are ''fan art'' potential, being far and away artists' most popular subjects. Similar body structures coupled with various elemental themes (and vulpine cuteness) mean they're easy to draw and provide great breadth for creativity.
    • Similar to the Eeveelutions potential is the "Regional Forms" introduced in Generation VII. The idea of wildly different regional variants of earlier Pokémon threw open the floodgates to reimaginations of familiar favorites.
    • With Gen VI and VI explicitly introducing the concept of Alternate Timelines (and The Multiverse by proxy) to the series, this opened up a variety of potential plotlines to explore. For example:
    • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet ends with AI Sada or Turo (depending on the version) deciding to permanently travel to the past/future in order to shut down the Time Machine for good (long story). What kinds of adventures did they go on while they were there? What kinds of other Paradox Pokémon did they find?
  • Because Chell in Portal has almost no backstory, there is a lot of room for imagination. Wheatley and GLaDOS/Caroline's pasts are also very vague, and Chell's future is unknown, as all we ever saw was a cornfield. Since Portal also ties into Half-Life, there is also potential for crossover stories involved a race between the Combine and Human Resistance to get to whatever Aperture Science tech is on board the Borealis.
  • Puyo Puyo:
    • Characters besides Klug getting possessed by the demon is a fairly popular subject for fan art. Possessed Sig is a obvious example since it's implied his miscolored left arm and eye are connected to part of the demon, but there are plenty others out there, such as Possessed Witch or Possessed Tee.
    • Some people enjoy coming up with Mini and Mega forms for characters not present in Puyo Puyo 7, such as Lidelle, Accord or Witch.
    • How and why Yu and Rei died? There are hints this was a tragic affair, but it's never further elaborated in the games proper.
  • Pyre: In a certain ending where Oralech survives and is left on the same side as Volfred, they will rebuild their relationship, but the details of their conversation is left a mystery, leaving any space for romantic or platonic interpretation to their previous relationship. The epilogue specifically mentions that they were "seldom seen traveling separate" afterwards.
  • There's a three-year gap in the Resident Evil timeline, between the end of Code: Veronica and the "Umbrella's End" stage in The Umbrella Chronicles, that has never been explored to any serious extent. We've been told here and there that the cast was running around the world fighting viruses, arresting evil scientists, and having adventures, but aside from Leon's adventure in South America in The Darkside Chronicles, it's never really been discussed.
  • Silent Hill, being a premiere Mind Screw series told exclusively from the view of the player character (with the possible exception of Shattered Memories), contains a wealth of information for fans to explore, especially concerning the nature of the eponymous Genius Loci and the cult that worships it.
  • As Sanzaru Games refused to continue the franchise, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time had quite a lot of Fix Fics that either justified Penelope's poorly written Face–Heel Turn or undid the Downer Ending, with Bentley and Murray finding Sly in Ancient Egypt and bringing him home, or even having Sly turn up in modern day Egypt instead.
  • Soul Series: Soulcalibur V got barely over a year in development. The length of its Story Mode was drastically shortened due to time constraints, with numerous plot elements mentioned in official bios prior to the game's release being ignored or glossed over left and right and only a Japanese-only artbook attempting to fill in the blanks of exactly what happened in the seventeen-year interim between SCIV and this game. (Heck, there weren't even character-specific Arcade endings to help shed light on things.) For a while, fanfic writers were scrambling to answer the various questions that SCV couldn't bother to... only for Soulcalibur VI to come along and wipe the slate clean. Even then, that VI frames the events of its predecessor as a definite Bad Future (despite V ending with both soul swords disappearing into Astral Chaos) and features the original timeline's Cassandra tipping off her current-day incarnation to this development is rife with possibility.
  • Super Mario Bros.: If Princess Peach isn't Bowser Jr.'s mother, then who is?
  • As Super Smash Bros. doesn't really do plot (barring The Subspace Emissary and World of Light) it also lacks any sort of real lore. As such, quite a few fans have made their own expansions to the Smash Bros. world, especially in regards to the Original Generation.
  • Tales Series:
    • Tales of Symphonia has a two-year gap between the first and second games in the series for fanfic writers to speculate on. Most of the party members also have at least a few gaps to fill in... not to mention the oft-mentioned but barely seen Kharlan War era, four thousand years ago, which has spawned its own subgenre within the fandom.
    • Similarly, there's plenty in the post-timeskip epilogue to Tales of the Abyss, except that it's more like Essay Fuel since people are just trying to explain what the hell actually happened.
  • Touhou Project:
    • The lack of backstory for many of the characters or the events of the PC-98 games are prime fanfic (and fan comic and fan video) fuel.
    • Yukari's ability to manipulate boundaries is pretty much made for this. What, exactly, constitutes a "boundary"? Pretty much whatever the hell she feels like, allowing stories about going to the moon, de-aging people, hitting people with trains, bringing people from outside to Gensokyo...
  • Undertale has three burgeoning types of fanfic, coming less than a month after release:
    • The Fallen Human's backstory. Both Chara AND Frisk's. The backstory we have is anywhere between vague to nonexistent, so it's fertile ground for fan expansion.
    • What happens after the True Pacifist ending. While what we see is incredibly upbeat and happy, that doesn't stop people from exploring just how both human and monster society deals with such a sudden change in dynamic.
    • Fix Fics regarding the ultimate fate of Flowey/Asriel. Even the best ending seems to give him the shaft, and more than a few people can't help but feel obligated to try and help give even him a happy ending.
    • Along with those, what is the fate of the monsters when they reach the human world, and how did they get to where they are? There are some things that happen that couldn't have happened within a short time after the game ended (Toriel teaching at a school being the most obvious).
    • Who are the six human souls, and what is their backstory? Very little is actually given about them in terms of information.
    • What if the skeletons switched roles is a popular story. Specifically, what if you killed Sans first? Would Papyrus become a badass and be the one to give you a hard time?
      • While we're at it, how did Sans get his abilities in the first place? And when (and how) did he become aware of the reset situation?
    • Who the hell IS Dr. Gaster, and what happened to him to cause him (and those who knew him real well) to not exist anymore?
  • The Unreal series, especially the Tournament games. In the SP games we're given several glimpses of what life on Na Pali used to be before/after the Skaarj invasion, the crash of the ISV-Kran, the landing of the Mercenaries and before the crash of the UMS Vortex Rikers, including Prisoner 849's vague backstory. We're also left wondering what happened after Prisoner 849 blows the UMS Bodega Bay, with either both the Bodega Bay crew and the Prisoner itself. And that's only the first game and its Expansion Pack. In the Tournament and Championship games we get vague backstories for every character, location, weapon and vehicle, barring some exceptions. Needless to say, it's part of the reason of why the Unreal series has a really strong Game Mod communitynote . With so many ground to cover, odds are that someone already did a campaign for a question you may have.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is absolutely rife with this, since the game revolves around characters who are Ambiguously Related to characters from the first two games. This leads to all sorts of fan theories trying to guess who is related to who, and what would happen if the characters from 3 met their ancestors from the other games. What kinds of adventures would they go on together?
  • How did various yokai in Yo-kai Watch become yokai?
  • Yume Nikki has little to no context and background information for many areas and characters, including Madotsuki herself, leaves the game's canon very open to fan interpretation and expansion.

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