Innocuously Important Episode / Video Games

• Ace Attorney
  • Case 1-3 seems like a filler episode. It's sandwiched in between the first major case involving a major character, and the original game's Grand Finale. Then there's this one about an actor who got framed for murder, but it's also the first case where Edgeworth, the unsympathetic antagonist up until that point, stalls the trial so that he (and mostly Wright) can figure out the truth behind the case, as opposed to maintaining his perfect record and getting every guilty verdict. Showing he might be the antagonist, but he's not heartless, but more in the line of a Friendly Enemy. It also introduces the Steel Samurai Show Within a Show and the people involved in its production, which would become a persistent presence in the series going forward.
  • Case 2-2 looks at first glance as a way to give Maya some backstory. It also sets up the plot of Case 3-5.
  • Case 3-1 is the standard tutorial of the game. The villain is the Big Bad of the game.
  • Case 4-1 ends without a clear explanation of the motives for the murder and who the victim was. The villain is also the Big Bad and the case sets up Case 4-4.
  • Case 5-1 foreshadows Athena's post traumatic stress disorder. Additionally, the bombing and murder that makes up the trial interrupts Case 5-4 and while Case 5-1's villain is responsible for the murder, it was the Big Bad and the one responsible for the last two cases that set of the bomb.
  • Case 6-1 ends with the reveal that the Kura'in national treasure, the Founder's Orb, has gone missing. What happened to it forms a major part of the Case 6-5.
  • Case 1 of Ace Attorney Investigations features the villain stealing a file from Edgeworth's office. What said case file is for is revealed in the fourth case to have a big bearing on the plot.
  • Investigations 2 has the first three cases. Case 1 features an attempted assassination of the president of a foreign country who is one of the Greater Scope Villains. The murderer in this case also has a connection to the Big Bad that gets revealed later. Case 2 introduces three important characters: another Greater-Scope Villain, the Big Bad and an assassin with connections to both. It also introduces the Central Theme of the game. Case 3 looks like it has little connection to the main plots of the other cases but it forms part of the main antagonist's backstory.
• Fan-favorite Call of Duty: Zombies map "Mob of the Dead" initially seems like cool Breather Episode centering on 4 gangsters escaping a 1960s Alcatraz Prison in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. Badass and impossibly fun, but not really relevant to the overarching Aether Storyline. As it turns out, blood taken from the mobsters enables Primis to not only survive the deletion of their universe, but be sent back in time to inspire their own creation. Later very plot-relevant map "Blood of the Dead" actually revisits Alcatraz, and we get to see how Primis obtained the blood in the first place (with the spirits of the mobsters making an unexpected appearance).
• Dragon Age:
  • Leliana's Song, a DLC pack for Dragon Age: Origins, looks at first to be just a short Origin Story for one of the game's most popular companions. Come DA2 and Inquisition, and Leliana's mentor figure in the DLC becomes the Divine, while Leliana herself gains an increasingly important role in the overarching narrative of the series, potentially succeeding her mentor on the Sunburst Throne.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • Within the game itself, the first act mainly sets up many plot points and characters that become important several years later—in fact, that's all the first act is, which commonly leads less patient players to assume that the game has no overarching plot at all.
    • In the series context, there are a lot of elements that have little to do with the ultimate plot of the story and why Cassandra is interrogating Varric (to find out what Hawke had to do with the beginning of the mage-templar war) and are seemly only included because Varric likes telling crazy stories and wasting Cassandra's time. When Dragon Age: Inquisition came out, these turned out to all be setups in the larger Myth Arc.
    • Both of the DLC stories have absolutely nothing to do with the plot, which is why Varric didn't include them in the main story and only tells them when Cassandra demands to hear those ones too. Legacy involves the main cast exploring a side-dungeon and finding what turns out to be the Big Bad of Inquisition, and Mark of the Assassin sets up Inquisition's Tresspasser DLC by introducing the idea that there are a lot of Qunari agents infiltrating various nations. In Tresspasser, the Inquisitor discovers that they were part of an invasion plot and has to foil it.
• In the first mission in the original Final Fantasy, you have to rescue Cornelia's princess and defeat the evil knight Garland in a laughably easy battle so the King can build a bridge leading you to the town of Pravoka. Talking to the newly-rescued princess while in the throne room results in her thanking you and giving you a lute. At the end of the game, you learn that Garland has enacted a plan to create a time loop to escape his death and becoming the god Chaos. The lute is used to get into The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Final Fantasy XIV has an event from the 2.0 questline for Hildebrand, a series of Denser and Wackier quests: Gilgamesh, the series's resident goofball, had become separated from his beloved companion Enkidu. Eventually, his longing to see his friend again grows to the point where, thanks to being in close proximity to a stash of crystals, he accidentally summons a primal version of Enkidu, showing that beastmen are not the only ones capable of summoning primals. This would be shown in the main story questline of A Realm Reborn and Heavensward to not be a lone anomaly: Ysaile was an elezen, empowered by the Echo, who was capable of summoning a primal version of Shiva. Archbishop Thordan and his knights of the Heaven's Ward use their combined faith with the power of Niddhogg's eye to summon a primal version of King Thordan I. Then at the very end of the Heavensward story, Ilberd uses his death and the despair of the Ala Mhigan resistance fighting against the Garleans to summon Shinryu.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia has weekly Events for recruiting new characters. Characters obtained here usually don't become essential to the main story until several chapters later, and the event always consists of three cutscenes with some number of battles in between. The event for recruiting Aerith breaks this format by having seven cutscenes, all alternating with battles. These scenes reveal that the apparent Broad Strokes regarding the point at which characters enter from their original games is more likely to be amnesia caused by passage through the Torsions, and implies that Cloud and Tifa have simply forgotten what happened after a certain point—such as Aerith's death.
• Fate/Grand Order: The Epic of Remnant arc focuses on Chaldea's efforts to hunt down the remaining Demon God Pillars that escaped the defeat of the Big Bad Goetia. The one singularity that stands out is Shimousa, which lacks any of the Pillars. That's because Shimosa is a stealth prelude to Part 2 Cosmos in the Lostbelt. It introduces several new characters and plot points that are explored later such as Ashiya Douman who becomes a recurring antagonist, the existence of "Satan" and his plans for Proper Human History and Chaldea, the Botanical Abomination Onriedo Castle capable of launching an attack on both, and a "Missing Belt" which is a history that should have been pruned but survived somehow. The Hell Realm Mandala chapter of Part 2 acts as a Stealth Sequel to this chapter as well by explaining what Ashiya Douman was trying to achieve here as well as the true nature of this isolated Shimousa.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses has Dedue's Paralogue (side-mission), War for the Weak. On its own it doesn't seem to add much to the plot, and it doesn't even give you a Hero's Relic like most other Paralogues. But unless you do this mission and fulfill its bonus objective, thus earning the trust of the people of Duscur, Dedue will die offscreen during the Time Skip.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's tutorial dungeon, Tanglewood Forest, is built around the concept of using light and warmth to dispel darkness and the unnaturally-empowered creatures therein. Two-thirds of the game later, a supernatural Total Eclipse of the Plot happens, covering half of Angara with darkness that empowers monsters...
• A lot of seemingly comical or nonsensical things in Hatoful Boyfriend take on greater importance in the Bad Boys Love route. Especially Anghel's entire route: his deranged ramblings, once the fantasy-JRPG metaphors are unraveled, include nearly everybirdy's backstories and motives in shocking detail.
• In the original Kingdom Hearts, the story of the Deep Jungle world has Sora reacting to a slideshow picture of a large castle with an odd familiarity even though he'd never left the islands before, and Tarzan telling Sora, in response to the question of where he can find Riku and Kairi, "Friends here; *&&X%.", which turns out to mean that his friends are in his heart. During the game's climactic level at Hollow Bastion, Tarzan's words turn out to be Foreshadowing, since it's revealed that Kairi REALLY IS inside Sora's heart and she came from Hollow Bastion, which is why the castle seemed so familiar to Sora.
• The replica program introduced in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories didn't affect the plot much and mostly existed to justify having antagonistic Riku again. Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days reveals that the replica program had created an imperfect replica meant as a failsafe for Roxas in the form of Xion. The replica program remained untouched until Kingdom Hearts III, when Replicas are vital to both the heroes' and villains' plans. The villains need them to house more of Xehanort's hearts, while the heroes need them to give Roxas, Xion and Namine bodies again.
• In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Sora pays a visit to Prankster's Paradise where he meets Pinocchio. Xemnas mentions Pinocchio grew a heart and Sora questions why the Nobodies can't grow hearts as well. In The World That Never Was, it turns out Nobodies can grow hearts, which Xemnas knew all along.
• In Mass Effect, there's a side mission that involves going to the Moon and helping shut down a rogue AI. The third game reveals that this was an early form of EDI, the AI on the second Normandy, who was recovered by Cerberus and rebuilt.
• One of NieR: Automata's sidequests, "Amnesia", features an android who has, of course, developed amnesia and wants to find out who killed her comrades. It's revealed at the end of the sidequest that the amnesiac herself was the one who did it. Her true identity is a YoRHa unit E-Type, which stands for Executioner class: a type of YoRHa specifically designed to kill rogue androids. This E-Type couldn't bear the pain of killing her fellow androids over and over again, so she wiped her memories in an attempt to ease the pain, which only resulted in her going insane when she remembered. It's an interesting sidequest on its own, but it doesn't have much bearing on the overall plot...but if you do it, it makes The Reveal at the end of the game sting that much harder when you find out 2B is in actuality one of these E-Type units, and she doesn't exactly enjoy the job either.
• No More Heroes:
  • The first game has a series of minor sidequests where Travis is sent out to assassinate a CEO of a local pizza chain, as well as his later two replacements. Seems like a pretty plain side grind, especially since your targets share the exact same appearance and fighting style as any other disposable mook, very much unlike the assassins of the UAA ranks you're trying to beat, right? Well, this comes back to bite Travis hard in the sequel, whose plot is kickstarted by one Jasper Batt Jr., now the current CEO of Pizza Bat. As it turns out, those targets were his father and his brothers, and now he's exacting his terrible, petty revenge on you for killing his family for cash that you probably spent on entry fees and T-shirts.
  • To a lesser extent, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes picks up from one boss fight in the first game: the #2 rank, Bad Girl, who's introduced as an assassin with no backstory or motive, just pure insanity and violence. Travis Strikes Again picks up by introducing Badman, Bad Girl's long-lost father who discovered her death and hunts down Travis for revenge, while also attempting a quest to bring her back to life.
• Paradise Killer is a weird game to begin with, and chock-full of cool-but-irrelevant exposition, so it's easy to dismiss the Flash Forward conversations that play when you pick up a certain type of collectible. Most of those conversations are just Contemplate Our Navels filler, centering around two completely anonymous characters...and then one of them casually asks why the other killed Paradise. That is the crime the entire game centers around investigating, and what's worse is that The Heroine never realizes people on Island 25 were also involved. It's quite the Sequel Hook.
• In Pokémon Black and White, Team Plasma's attempt to steal the fossilized dragon from Nacerene Museum becomes this when you learn that they're searching for an ancient legendary dragon, and what they needed was something else in the museum, namely, the unidentified pretty stone being used as a placeholder.
• Likewise, the encounter with Team Flare on Route 10 and Geosenge Town in Pokémon X and Y turns out to be this. Initially, they don't reveal much reason for being there other than to study the strange stones in the area. In Geosenge, you see a Team Flare grunt run off towards a dead end in town and never come back. Later you find out not only is Team Flare's secret headquarters located in Geosenge Town, but it's also the location of the Ultimate Weapon. Team Flare seeks to reactivate it using the energy from the stones on Route 10, which turn out to be the graves of Pokémon killed in war.
• In Rayman Origins, after beating a level, you give your Lums to the Magician, who gives you Electoons and Lum Medals. This doesn't seem too special until The Reveal, where you find The Magician behind the machinery of Moody Clouds, using the Lums to power it.
• In Red Dead Redemption 2, the mission where you have to collect the debt from Thomas Downes is this, as it not only results in the expulsion of the local loan giver from your gang but also Thomas Downes inadvertently gives Arthur TB by coughing on his face, which ends up killing him in Chapter 6.
• In the Resident Evil series:
  • Resident Evil 4 retroactively makes Resident Evil: Dead Aim important to the series' ongoing canon. High-roller businessmen were aboard the Spencer Rain in order to bid on Umbrella's bioweapon experiments, but Morpheus Duvall murdered them all, taking Umbrella's capital with it and forcing them into bankruptcy.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has Jack ambush Ethan, sock him in the face, and stomp on his head so he can capture him. The scene doesn't come off as important beyond putting Ethan in immediate danger, but then Resident Evil Village revisits the scene and reveals Jack actually clinically killed Ethan here, and he's been nothing but a sentient bio-weapon held together by mold and willpower ever since.
• In Runescape, the quests Making History and Meeting History are a two-part series delving into the game's lore, and involving an enchanted key which can help you find buried chests through a game of hot-and-cold and Time Travel. And then Within the Light rolls around, and you get a surprise about that key. Meeting History also has cameos by the Stone of Jas and Guthix long before their official introductions.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Amy's story in Sonic Adventure kicks off when she runs into a little bird that is being pursued by a robot, having seemingly escaped from Eggman's Egg Carrier. Later on we find out the reason it was being chased — it was carrying a Chaos Emerald with it, tying into the main plot. Even later on, we also learn that Gamma and Beta's organic batteries were the bird's siblings.
  • Sonic Adventure 2: At one point, Sonic is imprisoned in a cell at a military base with many advanced mathematical formulas inscribed on its walls. Towards the end, we learn that this was the cell where Gerald Robotnik was once held prisoner when forced to work for GUN, and where he plotted his revenge.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has a quest to track Yennefer in White Orchard, one of the earliest levels of the game. The one who gives the answer is Gaunter O'Dimm, a vagrant. Hearts of Stone reveals that the man in question is no ordinary man, in fact he is one of the most powerful individuals to ever appear in the Witcher franchise, analogous to the Devil himself, and the Big Bad of the DLC.
• The World Ends with You has a chapter where you have to bring the Gatito fashion brand to the top of the trending charts and pitch the pin to the citizens of Shibuya. Other than the one Gatito pin you have only having the effect of slowing down Neku's movement, this chapter seems to be a benign tutorial on how to manipulate the trends chart. Two weeks later, Neku finds out that the pin is a brainwashing device set up by Megumi Kitaniji, who's trying to pull off an Assimilation Plot.
• Yakuza features a sub-story focusing on Yayoi Dojima, the widow of Sohei Dojima, the Tojo Clan chairman whose murder Kiryu Kazuma took the fall for. After dealing with her men and being questioned about Nishikiyama being the true culprit, Kiryu asks for her to give him a little more time to settle things. This has no bearing on the overall plot until Yakuza 2, in which she has become the acting chairwoman for the Tojo clan.

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