Fridge / Other Video Games

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18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker

• The protagonists' names are Asphalt Cowboy, Highway Cat, Streamline, Long Horn, and Nippon Maru while the villain's name is Lizard Tail. At first, it seems odd that folks who do a relatively innocuous job like driving trucks have code names. Except it makes sense as they are truck drivers. Those aren't code names, they're radio call signs/CB handles.

A Dark Room

• Your character can carry and use a whole bunch of different weapons at once with no real limitations, so you can swing a couple of swords, fire a rifle and lob grenades and bolas all in the same fight. Just simplified combat mechanics, right? Nope. You realize at the end of the game that your character is a Wanderer, one of the alien invaders who wrecked the planet. They have more than two arms. That also explains why all the soldiers are trying to kill you on sight, while other folks cower and let you ransack their stuff.

Azure Striker: Gunvolt

• It's easy to wonder how exactly characters like Gunvolt and Himeshiro are described as powerful despite their combat abilities being those of run of the mill Adepts, but it gets even easier to understand when you consider the Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality. Powers like Explosion and Fly are powerful in combat, but their uses outside of it are minimal. Meanwhile, the "Azure Striker" is described as the "Septimal with infinite possibilities", and it can already be used to hack into computer systems and power the body. Himeshiro, meanwhile, can make anything disappear or teleport away and thus safely dispose of nuclear waste, among other things. This isn't even getting into their combat uses, which are just as good. Nova (who has two Glaives holding his power) is still loads more powerful, but canon pretty much implies that was always the case. (He can manipulate matter, in case you were wondering.)

Company of Heroes

• I was playing this one day, running around the map with my engineers to flame units out of buildings with their flamethrowers, then I had an epiphany. All engineers get suppressed 50% faster when upgraded with flamethrowers. Upgrading to flamethrowers puts HUGE, FLAMMABLE, TANKS on the back of the engineer. So I guess I understand why the guy panics faster when being shot at.

Conker's Bad Fur Day

• The first time you die, extra lives are explained by Gregg the Grim Reaper. He says that squirrels are a special case, having "as many lives as they think they can get away with." Conker tries to leave, but Gregg stops him, telling him that he can only have as many chances as squirrel's tails that he collects; the in-game explanation for 1-ups. This seems like a contradiction, until you realize that it's actually Gregg taking advantage of Conker's stupidity, by convincing him that he can only get away with as many deaths as tails he collects.

Dragonvale

• Ever wonder why breeding fire dragons and water dragons result in air dragons? Well when fire makes contact with water, the fire got extinguished and the water boiled. The result is steam, AKA hot air.

Endless Space 2

• The Riftborn are effectively sentient mathematics from an alternate dimension where form and thought are basically the same thing. When a rift opens up and an unknown corrupting influence begins wrecking their home dimension, they come to the Endless dimension to try and find a way to survive. They manage to survive here by placing themselves in robotic bodies, by which they can interact with the matter of the Endless universe. The Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize why they would use robotic surrogate bodies as opposed to some other form of protection. Seeing that they are more or less living mathematical equations, the Riftborn already share a lot in common with computer programs, so it makes a lot of sense that they can 'inhabit' a computer, and thus a robotic body.

God of War III

• At the end of God of War III it is revealed that Athena had manipulating everything and planned to become the new ruler of the gods. In some versions of the myth of the birth of Athena, Zeus devoured her pregnant mother because it had been prophesied that she would have a child that would be more powerful than its father. Since Zeus had killed his father Cronos to become ruler of the gods, just like Cronos had killed his father Uranos, there was always a risk that Zeus would eventually be disposed by one of his own children. However, Athena was born inside him and then emerged from his skull as a goddess of war, the threat was apparently forgotten and she became one of the most important of the Olympian gods. While Kratos is obviously the son that kills Zeus in the end, his manipulation by Athena throughout his entire life were ultimately responsible for the death of Zeus and if he had played along with her just a little bit longer, she would have been the new ruler of Olympus. So it might indeed be Athena who was the child that was prophecized to kill Zeus and not Kratos.

God of War (2018)

• In the next-gen sequel to the angry bald apocalypse simulator, Kratos speaks far more than he ever has in the series up to this point, but his dialogue is stilted and almost unnatural. His repeated use of the word BOY to call for his son Atreus quickly became a joke of its own on the internet as a result of how often it is utilized in dialogue. While it may simply appear at first that Kratos is just overly detached from the situation, and emotionally disconnected from his son for some fairly legitimate reasons, the game actually implies that the protagonist may simply not be very fluent at all in the local language. This is alluded briefly when Atreus mentions the fact that Kratos speaks Norse, but can't read it. It is never clarified whether Kratos talks to his son in Greek or Norse, but it can safely be assumed they are speaking Norse seeing as other characters, such as Mimir, will casually invest in the conversation and speak fluently. Seeing as Kratos also insists on calling Mimir "head", it is possible that his insistence on calling Atreus either by his name or just "boy", as well as his generally stilted and unnatural speech, is the result of speaking a language he barely even understands.

Hero and Daughter

• Why is the starting weapon, the Hero's Sword, so "terribly weak, despite its name"? Wouldn't a hero want to carry something stronger, like... any other weapon in the game? Not if he's bored with the lack of challenge he's found in battles, like Ralph is. He had no way of knowing he'd be reduced to Level 1, and still have that sword.

Journey

• The reason for the game's relatively short length? So that you can finish your journey from beginning to end without any breaks, and with the same companion all the way, should you meet one.

Killer Instinct

• While many people were set ablaze with the release model of the Xbox One version (that is, it's F2P... with one character, you have to buy the rest), the thing is in most fighting games, characters get reduced to tiers with the top tiers often being used in competitive play. So in reality, you could be saving money by only buying the characters that are top tier or ones you know that you know how to play (assuming the mechanics carry over exactly from previous KI games).

• The visual design of the characters as well as the overly cheesy animations and framing of all the win poses feels very reminiscent of

Liberal crime Squad

• At first I found it odd that unlike police and military attacks you can slay CIA agent retaliations without getting charged with anything. Then it hit me. Charging you would require admitting that they sent assassins after their own citizens. Thus it ends up self defense like with mercenary or CCS attacks. - Nasrudith
  • Not only would it be bad that they sent assassins after their own citizens, but the CIA in particular are forbidden from operating on U.S. soil (hence why Americans have both the CIA and the FBI, even though their jobs can at times overlap). One can cover up the use of police or the military against your agents as going after criminals or terrorists, but having the government send CIA agents after you is a concrete violation of the law. Additionally, such agents would most likely be operating as Non-offical cover or "NOC" agents, whose operations do not have legal protection if they get caught or compromised, and thus end up on the bad end of Plausible Deniability.

Mirror's Edge

• Mirror's Edge. The first one is simple and pretty obvious; the game features a parkour expert who constantly leaps off buildings to almost certain death. Her name? Faith. Leap of Faith, geddit? The second and more insidious reason was that Electronic Arts, up until that point was known for rehashing sports games every year. They took a leap of faith by marketing a >$10 million new IP as a AAA game. Unfortunately, that didn't work out quite as well as they hoped.

Monkey Island

• A tiny example from when I was replaying the second chapter of Tales of Monkey Island. During the sword fight with Morgan, there’s a dialogue option to try insult sword fighting on her ("Every enemy I’ve met, I’ve annihilated!") which she immediately counters ("With your breath, I’m sure they all suffocated!"). Clever, but I wondered why they used an insult from Curse, when insult sword fighting is more iconic of Secret. It finally hit me: it’s because they were fighting at sea, and Curse established that you have to use rhyming insults when fighting at sea. Well done, Telltale.

Monster Hunter

• Monster Hunter Tri had a bit of one regarding Moga Woods/Deserted Island. Same layout, same resources, different names. Why? Then I read the spoiler on the main page under "Chaotic Good" and it hit me - the Guild was already aware of Ceadeus' presence near Moga Village and had issued the condemnation order in advance, but the bureaucratic maze between Guild headquarters and Moga Village kept the news from reaching the islanders! You were called in to handle the Lagiacrus report, which was also delayed for the same reason. Ah, the joys of bureaucracy...

Myst

• It took me a while to realize that the password that opens up the exit to the Mechanical Age in Myst is actually a representation of everything you had to do to make it there. The C is for the two C's you had to align to get the elevator working, then there's the icon representing the elevator buttons you had to figure out to access the rotation controls, then the third icon is three spikes and a circle, representing the three surrounding islands, two of which have round platforms that show you parts of the password while one has the round platform you put the password into. The last icon is a semicircle which I saw as representing the fact that you have to go back to the entrance where the semicircular gear is.

Nicktoons Unite

• Along with a whole lot of other Invader Zim fans, it irked me that in Nicktoons: Globs of Doom, Zim joins with the heroes by lying while Dib is stuck with the Legion of Doom, even after he rambles about the fact that he's not a villain (No one bothers to listen to him). Then I remembered that Zim saw himself as the only one worthy of conquering that little blue planet and that Dib is a Butt-Monkey (both of these facts are not pointed out in-game; you'd have to be a Zim fan to know those) and now, that part of the plot seems much more clever.

Nintendo Wars

• The CO Koal in Advance Wars: Dual Strike is very young looking, but seems more mature than the other various Kid COs in the game (Andy, Colin, Jake, and Lash), excepting Sonja, who also acts mature. Even Max, the Dumb Muscle of the Orange Star COs, picks up on it, calling Koal a "small man". Then you remember that Kindle and Von Bolt drained the energy from Omega Land to keep themselves from aging. It seems very likely that this is why Koal looks like a child.

No More Heroes

• In No More Heroes this starts the moment you SEE the title of the game. At first, I was wondering: "Hey, why did they call this game No More Heroes?" And then, I watched the prerelease gameplay trailer, and you know what? The game was actually going to be named "Heroes". But, the trademark was already registered on the TV series 'Heroes'. So, which name this game was given? That's right, No More Heroes. Brilliant!
  • You could probably put some more symbolism into it, considering how the game works to take apart the concept of a video game hero.
• At first I wasn't big on Henry...and then I saw the credits. Henry's voice actor is Quinton Flynn. Quinton "Raiden" Flynn. Either it's a beautiful coincidence or Suda 51 knew exactly what he was doing, because giving the most divisive character in the game the voice actor of the most divisive character in gaming history is perfect. Completing the game also made me less way of the announced sequel - at the end, Travis asks how they'll settle the game, and Henry drops it on his shoulders, much to his dismay. How do you wrap things up with thirty seconds to go? Another game, of course! Beautiful, even if it did turn Sylvia's last line into a lie - and what the hell, she's a con artist anyway. - Man Called True
  • Suda51 and Hideo Kojima are supposedly pretty good friends and call each other Hide-chan and Go-chan. So the setup for that casting decision was there, at least.
  • Well, immediately after she says it, we're shown a great big To Be Continued sign in the style of the first Back to the Future... - Luc
  • Speaking of the sequel, the Environmental Symbolism starts to kick in. There's a rough system at work here: Lonely at the Top bosses ( Death Metal, Speed Buster, Alice, Jasper) are fought in either abandoned urban areas or among their own riches, particularly unsympathetic to Ax-Crazy foes ( Destroyman, Bad Girl, Millian Gunman) in abandoned warehouses, and sympathetic foes ( Dr Peace, Jeane, Captain Vladimir) in wide open areas. Not every boss works this way but it's a trend.
• Why did they get rid of the sandbox Santa Destroy in the second game? Was it because it was considered a weak point of the original? Or was it because since Bishop is dead, there's no one to bring your bike to you which would make things difficult? (Naw, it's the first one, but the second is logical.)

Okami

• Ōkami has the final boss Yami, who doesn't seem to look remotely evil, and his forms seem to just be an addition to his power, until one realizes his forms are the evils humanity has performed, Destruction, Burning, Gambling, Energy being used for evil purposes, and the hand of which does this evil, some people either interpret Yami's True form, a fish, as being an ironic evil, or things start out innocently enough, but then everything goes bad. So Yami's not so much a sign that Science Is Bad, but those who would use it for evil purposes. —Etheru
  • The line about the fish-thing (seal fetus?) inside Yami can be taken further: the fish represents a person (or possibly nature in general) being surrounded by the negative aspects of humanity and thus being twisted into something evil. It's basically innocence being corrupted by the evils of humanity. Why else would it be a small thing almost always surrounded by Yami's different forms? And Amaterasu having to attack the fish-thing to lower Yami's HP represents destroying the corruption.
  • Alternatively, Yami can be seen as what happens when science goes too far. Without going into very detailed biology, at some point in the human embryo's development, the fetus looks roughly like a fish. So Yami could very well have been created with good intentions, however eventually it became corrupted.

Phantasy Star Online

• The beta trailer for Phantasy Star Online brags: "The world of Phantasy Star Online lasts for an eternity!" Such boastful claims are not atypical of games pre-release, but this is one of the few instances where such a claim holds true. Even though the last official servers for the game have but shut down in 2009, several private servers for the game are still up and running to this day.

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

• "Why is Raiden the Metal Gear representative in PSASBR", you may ask? Well... Snake's kind of busy.
• PaRappa (as well as everyone else from his universe) is depicted as being cardboard-thick rather than paper-thick, because he needed to be thicker in order to stand a chance against the others. I mean, think about it: If he were still paper, then he'd literally be ripped to shreds within seconds, so he had to be cardboard instead. It's also because, as paper, he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone at all, but as cardboard, he's able to deal some damage.

Portal

• At the end of Portal, GLaDOS sings: "I'm not even angry..." Of course she isn't - you destroyed her "anger" core, so she's incapable of being angry.
  • Why did they name it "Aperture Laboratories"? An "aperture" is a hole through with light travels, such as an aperture lens in a camera. And the Aperture Science motto is "There's a hole in the sky through which things can fly". Not to mention that a portal is basically an aperture. Brilliant!
    • "A hole in the sky through which things can fly"? Where have I heard that before...oh. Oh. OH!!! The end of the game! "Flying through a hole in the sky" is exactly what happens to Chell and GLaDOS! Valve, you're brilliant!
    • An Aperture is to light what a Valve is to water.
    • Or rather...an aperture is to light what a Valve is to Steam!
    • GLaDOS actually helped save the world from utter hopelesseness. The Combine's only weakness against the humans was that while they could teleport to and from dimensions, they couldn't travel within one dimension. Now imagine if GLaDOS had never taken control of Aperture Laboratories, cut off all outside contact, and allowed the Combine to view research for the single most perfect interdimensional teleportation device ever...
• In Portal 2, a recording from Cave Johnson informs you of one of his financial follies in buying millions of dollars in moon dust. He goes on to say that it seemed crazy at the time, but the liquid goo it makes is a good bonding surface for portals. It seems like an odd tidbit, until the final stage where you shoot a portal to the moon and it connects!
  • Oh, and Cave Johnson's complaints about Lunar Poison? Severe pneumoconiosis caused by inhalation of moon dust. Yes, this can really happen, and you can even hear him coughing because of it near the end. No prizes for guessing what Chell will probably die of.
    • Of course, Cave does mention in the 1950s test chambers that the Enrichment Spheres were lined with asbestos, and that asbestos poisoning doesn't kick in until 30 years later. And then in the 1980s test chambers...
• Computer Aided Enrichment Center = CAEC. The CAEC is a lie. The cake is a lie.
  • If CAEC = cake, then "You will be baked, and then there will be cake." takes on a different meaning - it's not a darkly humorous miswording, but a clear explanation - after you are baked (thrown into the incinerator), all that will remain is the CAEC.
• Fan work, but whatever. "Wheatley's Song" has the phrase "My mind is the infinite space from here to the moon." At first glance, this seems to solidify Wheatley's "intelligence." Perhaps the song is sung after the game's end, when he's actually a great distance from Earth's moon? - Baronofbarons
• Consider the Space Core's Dummied Out line "Too much space. Wanna go to Earth. Getting bored of space." It seems like the Space Core might not be a Space core at all, but rather an Aspiration Core! Space was something that the locked-in GLaDOS would never see, so that was what the core fixated on. Once it reaches that goal, it reaches out for a new one— the earth, which, sadly, neither it nor Wheatley are likely to see again.

Psychonauts

• One thing that pleased me about the "Black Velvetopia" section of Psychonauts was how all the different elements, each one bizarre on its own, added together — the paint, the cards, the luchadors, the toreador, the high school paraphernalia — to tell Edgar's story, piece by cryptic piece. Except there was one thing bugging me, even after completing the chapter: what's with the talking dogs? They didn't seem to have anything to do with anything. Then days later, once I'd finished dealing with Loboto, Pokeylope et al at the top of the tower, I was treated to a cutscene that showed Edgar finishing his masterpiece... Dogs Playing Poker. Of course.
  • Something that struck me when playing Psychonauts was the lack of Censors in the minds of the Lungfish and Boyd, something that we were told existed in every mind (the censors, not the others). It took me a little while to realize that this was not only intentional, but a very clever decision as the first had had their mind crushed under the dominion of Oleander and thus would have had all their censors repressed and/or destroyed and the second, thanks to his overly suspicious mind, always incorporated different aspects of the world into his conspiracy. In effect, there is no difference between "good" and "bad", so there are no censors, presumably destroyed when he finally cracked.
  • It's also noteworthy that many psychologists believe people with schizophrenia lack the ability to 'censor' their own mind and have trouble controlling their thoughts. Boyd's lack of censors is this idea made literal.
• Lake Oblongata... Hey, wait a second!
  • For non-psychics: The medulla oblongata is a part of the brain.
• Spoilers about in this one, so beware: I used to wonder why did Coach Oleander go nuts, when he was one of the most trusted Psychonauts in the U.S.? They put him in charge of children, for crying out loud, and the government usually doesn't put children in the charge of someone they suspect might go crazy around all that psytanium. One argument is that it was prolonged exposure, but I never bought that argument, after all, the camp is obviously frequented by other psychonauts. Sasha and Milla are probably there on a fraily regular basis as well. Then I realized, Sasha and Milla both learned to keep their minds under strict and careful control. Milla because of her nightmares brought on by her orphanage burning down and all of the kids dying, and Sasha because of the incident with reading his father's mind when he was young. Oleander, on the other hand, apparently never gained that sort of control, and in fact obviously had a chip on his shoulder for being rejected from every branch of the army for being too short. He may have repressed that chip fairly well, being both locked up and buried under cobwebs, but it was still there. So the psytanium never affected Sasha or Milla because they're mental defenses were too strong, but Coach had cracks that the psytanium would eventually work around to drive him mad. Tim Schafer, you... are... a genius!

Punch Out

• When I heard about the supposed Downer Ending in Punch-Out!! Wii's "Mac's Last Stand", I didn't quite get it at first. Three defeats, and Mac simply retires. Then I saw the cutscene leading up to it, and then the ending scene. Then it clicked into my head. It was Mac's conscious decision. He's already become the world champion, and defended his title. He's already made his dream a reality. But he can't hold on to that title forever. Further along the line, there may be scandals, and perhaps a losing streak that will force him to retire anyway, going out with a whimper. So, he takes a third option - go out with a bang. And he makes his decision damn clear to Doc, who reluctantly goes along with it.
  Doc Louis: Alright, kid. Let's go out on top. It's time to take your place in history.
  • And he does. Damn straight.
  • It's also a Homage to Little Mac's inspiration, the titular character of Tomorrow's Joe, who goes out in a similar way.
• Glass Joe receives a protective headgear from the WVBA as soon as he reaches the 100 losses milestone. If you do manage to lose 100 times to the cpu, they will actually reward you the same headgear, helping you withstand against even Mr. Sandman's punches!

Resident Evil

• In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Alexia Ashford's boss themes are all complemented by soprano vocals, which, understandably had no lyrics in the original Dreamcast release, as all the music was produced with sampled MIDIs. However, in the Darkside Chronicles, which remixes the song, replacing MIDI samples with a real soprano, the song still has no lyrics. This is actually a reference to Alexia herself: the vocals are seemingly human, beautiful, and refined, but on further inspection are inhuman, speaking but not really saying anything - Alexia's human shell covering the monster within.
  • I came to a realization that the franchise is not just a horror game series, it's progressed similarly to horror movies that have turned into action flicks, think about it, the first game was like a B-Movie, it had a sequel that introduced darker elements and a coherent story, later had more emphasis on action, as well as remaking the first game to introduce more continuity to be consistent with the sequels, it's like how Evil Dead progressed, in a way.
• The original Resident Evil. Forest of the BRAVO team has been pecked to death by crows. If you're playing as Jill he has a grenade launcher lying next to his corpse. This makes perfect sense (and not just because the crows in this game are vicious, overpowered bastards): have you ever tried to hit a crow with a grenade launcher? Assuming Forest even bothered to try shooting them, he would have just missed time and time again. Of course, if you're playing as Chris he has a clip of handgun ammo next to him instead, but let's just ignore that little incongruity...
  • On reflection, it's actually just as interesting from Chris's perspective as it was from Jill's. Forest has a clip full of handgun ammo - but no handgun. He was trying to attack these fast, agile enemies with his fists or his weak knife. Even if he managed to hit each crow repeatedly, it wouldn't have done him any good...
• It always bugged me how inefficient the First Aid spray is. Even the smallest cut or graze requires just as much as a huge gaping wound. Then I remembered how Umbrella originally started life as a legitimate Pharmaceutical company and it hit me - the First Aid spray is the greatest instance of commercialism in the Resident Evil universe and responsible for nearly everything bad that has ever happened. Umbrella had the secret to producing an aerosol capable of regenerating almost any injury, but deliberately designed it so it was both horribly inefficient and horribly expensive; explaining why there are so few cans outside of government and Umbrella facilities - they're the only ones that can buy such an expensive but revolutionary product in bulk. This made them obscenely rich and capable of affording their seemingly endless supply of research facilities and equipment. After Umbrella went bankrupt, the formula to the First Aid spray was bought out by a rival company who kept the inefficiencies but lowered the price enough to give the product mass-market appeal. By Resident Evil 4, the still limited supplies required the Merchant to put on a cap of one spray per customer. By Resident Evil 5 however, the First Aid Spray is cheap and mass-produced on the scale that allows Chris to buy as much of the stuff as he could possibly need.

RPG Maker

• In the translation of RPG Maker 2000, instead of the sample adventures it came with, the translator made his own sample adventure, with him starring as the main character. His graphic is the Male Thief. He basically stole RPG Maker 2000 by illegally distributing it. Might be an unintentional case here.

Scott Pilgrim

• In the Scott Pilgrim game, one of Todd Ingram's attacks is to stand at one side of the screen, use his vegan powers (Don't ask) to turn his arm into a mass of vegetation, and slam you with it as giant vegetables rain down upon the battle field. If you examine his arm during this attack, you can see some weird animal-like bits between all the flora. This isn't just some strange little detail. "You are what you eat", they say. The attack reveals his betrayal to veganism and why the vegan police come for him right after the attack.
• In the Scott VS Nega-Scott Boss Battle, Scott successfully defeats Nega-Scott. Since Nega-Scott represents Scott's mistakes and losing to Nega-Scott is a metaphor for learning from those mistakes, that means that Scott never learned his lesson. His ending of the game has him not ending up with Ramona, and he has three girls at once, proving that he never learned his lesson.
• When fighting Gigadeon Graves in his subspace, his One-Winged Angel form has the bodies of the 6 other evil-exes merged into one giant pile underneath his torso. All of them have angry faces, except for Roxanne, who looks as if she's in a state of pleasure, which is strange considering she's a lesbian. Things make sense though when you remember that Gideon has an extremely large ego, and that these aren't really the other evil-exes. His ego is so huge that he believes that in his presence even those who would have no reason to be attracted to him would fall all over themselves just to be with him, (but not the guys because he doesn't swing that way.)
  • It could also be a reference to how they were when defeated.. Lucas looks scared, like he was before he eventually died skateboarding. Patel looks shocked, aswell, when he died he was shocked that Scott could defeat him. The twins and Todd just look angry, and Roxy looks, well... yes.

Scribblenauts

• I just realized why the MacGuffin from Scribblenauts is called "Starite". Star + Write (what you do all the time in this game).
  • I at one point wonder why Maxwell's Evil Twin, nicknamed Lexwam by TV Tropes and maybe another website, always steals from other people, but then I came to a conclusion, he was created by Maxwell, but Lexwam doesn't have a Notebook, therefore, he steals stuff because, well, he can't create anything, so he takes whatever's been created so that he can feel the pleasure of having something his Good Twin does!
  • The sequel's title. You know how the main draw is adjectives that enhance objects? Why else would it be called Super Scribblenauts?
• The "Rickroll" item is a man that dances around a bit before disappearing in a puff of smoke. I wasn't really sure why, but then it hit me: they might be referencing the fact that it's generally seen as an "old" meme, it's not as effective as it once was as most internet users expects it by now, and that many people would just like to see it go away.

Shadow of the Colossus

• One of the first things I noticed while playing Shadow of the Colossus was how clumsy the Wander's animation is—he runs like he's going to fall over, and his sword swings are ungainly and poorly balanced. I beat the first few Colossi before i realized—he was basically a child. He didn't understand what he was doing to the colossi. The actual story of the game became a lot more potent after that.
  • Wander is described as being a young man, and certainly looks and acts like someone at least in his late teens. These details point to the fact that he was a fairly average guy. While an excellent horseman and archer, his sword skills are nearly nonexistent. His stamina also helps to point toward his nomadic nature, hence his name.
• Here's a subtle one, that I didn't notice until I started a second play-through (to do the challenge stages). Every time Wander defeats a colossus and gets inundated with the dark... um, whatever it is, he wakes up in the Temple. What I've noticed is that each time he does this, he changes a little. His skin gets more pale, his hair darkens, and he starts to get rather gaunt. By the end of the game, he literally looks like death warmed over — given what happens, that's probably pretty close to literal.
• This is one that a friend actually helped me stumble upon. I was playing the game when he remarked "This game is lonely. Like, there are no towns or anything." It hit me then; the gamespace is supposed to be a representation of Wander's loneliness. It also amused me to think about how I/Wander did not have notice this loneliness because of the goals before us but an outside observer could see it clear as day. Incidently, in my mind the gamespace is a better representation of Hell than the fire and brimestone representation as we have yet to find a torture quite as effective as complete isolation.
  • Couple this thought with the ending of being turned into a child, what if the game is about conquering his personal hell and being given a new start. Maybe the woman isn't a lost love but his victim. This is his atonement, restoring her to life and finally proving worthy of a second chance.

Silent Hill

• I liked Silent Hill 2 from the start, but I did feel mildly squicked by what I saw as an undercurrent of misogyny running through it; the monsters generally taking the form of mutated women (or disembodied bits of them), the Pyramid head rape scenes, a lot of Maria's scenes... Then somewhere towards the end, everything clicked into place. There was indeed a streak of misogyny and issues-with-women running through the game, but the issues were the protagonist's, not the designers'. James was forced to kill creatures resembling young women over and over again because Silent Hill was playing on his darkest memories and fears; Maria behaved like a cliched male fantasy because, essentially, she was one.
  • At first, I disliked Travis in Origins because I thought he had absolutely no reason to be in Silent Hill in the first place. Then I realized that he was "picked" by Alessa because he too had been nearly killed by his mother.
  • Really, the Silent Hill series takes this trope to dizzying heights. Do you know why it has a reputation for high Replay Value, and why spoilers are (generally) so closely guarded? You will after completing a story and playing it over again. It's a challenge not to recognize some subtle piece of Foreshadowing or grotesque symbolism you didn't catch before.
• The first Silent Hill: the corpse hooked up to IVs in the school bathroom where you get the shotgun, the corpse hanging off the wall in the corridor to the boat cabin, and the similar corpses practically everywhere throughout the game are the same person. It's Burnt Alessa, watching over you as you progress through the world she has created, and the fact that the bathroom corpse has a clue written next to it and a weapon suggests that she is trying to help you, almost certainly to liberate herself from enslavement as the crippled incubator for Dahlia's God
  • Except that it's not a clue written next to the corpse, it's a completely useless reference to a horror book.
• In Silent Hill 3, shortly after the shopping mall switches over to the "otherworld", Heather comes across a ladies washroom. When Heather goes to leave the room, the door to one of the stalls opens and the player finds the inside of the stall covered in blood. This seems in line with most of the game's other meaningless scares, such as the bleeding mannequin in the office building or the infamous "mirror room". But the game's overall theme was teenage fears. One particular teenage fear being, shall we say, underrepresented in most media.

The Simpsons

• It took me a while to realize why The Simpsons Hit & Run has that name. Then, while sitting around doing something completely unrelated, I realized the reason. It's a Grand Theft Auto clone, so they named it after a different vehicular crime.

Skies Of Arcadia

• I've always liked Skies of Arcadia, and I've found Galcian specifically a pretty cool villain since my first playthrough, but something I noticed years after first playing the game really underscored his villainy. Skies is pretty subtle about ingame religion, but if you look it's clear that most of the Arcadian cultures worship the Moons. So what does Galcian do? He bends the Moons to his will with an ancient superweapon. He subjugates what the people see as gods. Galcian is now definitely one of my favourite villains.
  • Also, the music in the Dark Rift and the Vortex doesn't appear on the soundtrack. The Dark Rift looks strange, people are afraid to enter it, and there are no (save Vyse and crew) survivors. The Vortex is buried where pressure should kill anyone who dares go near. So maybe whoever heard the music was not meant to live?

Suikoden III

• Getting all of the Stars of Destiny results not in the typical alternate ending but only in a scenario in which you get to see events from the antagonists' point of view. This isn't just to be annoying: the last four Stars are the antagonists themselves, who never actually join the main characters.

Tekken

• Right, Jun Kazama returns in the Tekken series and she is considerably darker and more murderous. Okay, since she's Unknown if she's evil now that makes sense. Wait, she's fist bumping Nina? Well Nina is her son's bodyguard and it's suggested the two have feelings for each other. And Jun's posing like her? Why? Because when she was going to be in Tekken 3 the production build of Jun was based on Nina.

URU

• I had been playing URU for a long time with different characters before I got to the online version. One Relto page later, I stopped, looked at what the page had added, and had to leave the computer for a few moments when I found out that Relto was a copy of Myst. Some of the things Yeesha had written made a lot more sense after that.
  • It was the mountain page, right?

Vagrant Story

• The game is notoriously ambiguous about its back story. There are two possibilities described in game either Ashley watched his family die and drove him into suicide missions, or Ashley killed a family during a black ops, and caused a breakdown and denial. Sydney hints that it is the former at times. However, they aren't mutually exclusive. They could both be true. In my interpretation, he could have had a family and witnessed them being killed, which drove him into the VKP Riskbreakers, and became very good at it. Later, he carries out an operation that causes him to think back to his own past. He becomes what he hates, and can't handle it.
• Also noteworthy is Sydney's tattoo the blood sin, the Iocian cross inverted. Most think that a cross inverted is evil. It is not. St. Peter's cross is inverted, as he did not wish to die as nobly as Jesus. Likewise, Sydney and later Ashley take on this cross to keep it and The Dark from falling into the wrong hands.

Valkyria Chronicles

• Quite a few people see Prince Maximilian's speech before the final battle in Valkyria Chronicles to be a rather weak attempt at making the player feel sympathy for him, especially in the light of the fact that he pretty much abandoned Selvaria to her fate and ordered her to sacrifice her own life for his ambitions. However, reflecting back upon it, it can be argued that the authors were being more subtle about it: at that point in the game, we as players know that both Maximilian and Selvaria have had it pretty rough, with Selvaria being considered nothing more than a thinking, talking weapon because of her Valkyrur blood, and Maximilian getting orphaned because of jealous cospirators. And Maximilian, being a brilliant Magnificent Bastard, couldn't possibly have missed the fact that Selvaria served him out of love, and obviously knew of what Selvaria might have been through at the institution she was imprisoned in. But even with this, other people's pain means nothing to him, while his must be avenged at all costs - even if it means relinquishing his own humanity by becoming an artificial Valkyria. So, in the end, it can be said that both Maximilian and Selvaria have had their own share of hardship... but Maximilian, when faced with the suffering of another person, failed to have empathy about it; unlike Selvaria who at least understood what Alicia was going through and felt kinship towards her. Kinda puts Maximilian's speech in a new, and hardly flattering, light, doesn't it?
• I first wondered, why does Barious have such ominous music? Yes, the Darcsens blew the whole place up or not, but the song is out of place, especially when you consider that the song only plays twice more in the entire game. But then consider what times that song plays again: the second time Selvaria appears, wreaking destruction on your army, and when Alicia is revealed as a Valkyrur, wreaking just as much destruction on the Imps. Also consider that the Darcsen Calamity is actually a Valkyria Calamity, presumably caused by a Final Flame not unlike the one caused by Selvaria at Ghirlandaio. The song has less to do with Barious than that wherever Valkyrur or their tech appear, mass destruction follows them.
• Norse legend has it that a Valkyrie's name signifies what personality she represents. One of them, roughly translated to Randgrid, can be described as a "shield breaker". Makes the hiding of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Randgriz way more appropriate.
• Also, Valkyries were often symbolized by a spear. That both Selvaria and Alicia had spears, and that the aforementioned WMD was also a spear is obvious. Also, ravens often signify their presence. And Darcsen hair looks something like a raven. Works even better when you consider that ravens are a bad omen, but don't actually do anything. Same with the Darcsens, what with their false accusations with blowing up the Valkyrur in the Calamity.

Wario Land

• Now, I've always been a fan of Wario Land, but my understanding of the series recently changed when I realized that the whole series is Nintendo's Self-Parody of Super Mario Bros., in the form of a Fractured Fairy Tale. The kind, heroic and friendly Mario is replaced with a greedy, selfish, brute whose appearance is an exaggeration of all of Mario's features (big nose, curly mustashe, ect.) The enemies are more evil, and while Mario journeys across the Mushroom Kingdom to resuce Princess Peach and save the world, Wario only does heroic deeds when he sees an oppurtunity to get rich doing so. Wario does things such as set himself on fire and break through stone with his head to progress, which is quite different than Mario's athleticism and jumping on top of enemies. Brilliant!

The Witness

• The Witness: The meaning behind the symbols used to represent some puzzle mechanics. The "Tetris" blocks are directly interpretable as a figure, as is the "star" symbol (in treehouses), which is the superposition of two squares (and thus means "double"). The "annulation" symbol can be interpreted as an antibody, which makes quite a bit of sense: antibodies are produced to neutralize harmful bacteria and viruses, or in this case an unsatisfied puzzle symbol.

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