Interface Spoiler / Role-Playing Games

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• In Albion, shops sell weapons none of the party can wield (in the early game), though it is justified and otherwise would be plenty of Fridge Logic. The weapons, themselves, are described with a list of character classes which can wield them, revealing whom you can expect in the party later. And equipment in Summoner actually lists the name of everyone who can use it, including equipment solely for characters you haven't yet recruited.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura displays race icons in the status window when you mouse over an NPC. This can ruin a bit of a surprise if the character's race wasn't intended to be obvious, as in the case of Gar the "World's Smartest Orc", who is revealed to be a human before you even talk to him, despite the fact that figuring out his secret requires decent conversation skills. The Mysterious Apparition is an even worse example, being a projection of the Big Bad: his icon is that of a human, but at that point of the story everyone still considers the main villain to be Arronax, who is an elf, and the truth isn't revealed until the final dungeon.
• Possibly the biggest hook of Advent Dark Force, an updated re-release of Fairy Fencer F, is that you get to play two new gameplay routes with new stories. These are the Vile God Story and Evil Goddess Story and the fact that there even exists an Evil Goddess is intended as a pretty major plot revelation in the Evil Goddess Story as there is nothing in the other two stories that even hints at this. However, the trophies/achievements for these are named "Vile God Story Cleared" and "Evil Goddess Story Cleared" and trophy guides for Advent Dark Force don't generally go to any effort to hide the names of these story modes.
• There is a minor case in Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia. It's easy to tell from the Reyvateils' status screen that exactly three of them will join the party at some point.

• Baldur's Gate:
  • Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn:
    • At the beginning of the game you meet a clone of the Big Bad former love. If you right-click her, she says the same phrase as the original, giving a hint about their origins.
    • A minor case: the only characters with a portrait in dialogue boxes that do not join your party are the Big Bad, The Dragon, and one in the penultimate chapter. Therefore, whenever you talk to a character who shows a portrait, you can be sure that first or later (s)he will be recruitable - and conversely that characters without won't be recruitable, even if they are recurring names from the first game such as Quayle or Xzar. More relevant with Edwin, who initially is only a quest giver, even a bit hostile, and who could otherwise be expected to end the same as Xzar if you already met the latter.
    • After the Enhanced Edition updated the first game with the engine of the second, this trope came to bg1 too. In the original game you could ask to some rare plausible characters to join you, only to be rejected, but now there is no surprise. It is mostly blatant with the new companion Dorn, who will dismiss you until you later reach a specific map and he becomes recruitable.
    • The same thing could happen with the only new companion of Throne of Bhaal. This character is a former enemy of one of your adventures and such appearance at the beginning of the story is a great Plot Twist. It is not initially hinted that you can recruit this character at the end of the dialogue screen, except for the presence of a portrait and for the game sprite model being that of a normal character rather than a dedicated one as it previously was.
    • However, the same expansion pack zig-zags this issue. All your major enemies show a portrait, in part subverting the trope (you might expect to possibly recruit one later, considering that you start with a former enemy asking to join you). On the other side, this in part puts it online again as there are no new recruitable characters beyond the aforementioned one, so whenever you meet someone who has a portrait you can be sure that you will later fight him/her.
  • Baldur's Gate III:
    • The half-elf cleric Shadowheart is initially quite cagey about which of the many gods she worships and will only open up to you after you spend enough time with her... or you can open her status screen and scroll down to the "tags" subheading. Patch 7 just flat-out moves this info to the top of her character sheet.
    • Early on in the game, you meet a sweet old lady selling potions and herbs at the local refugee camp. While she's very knowledgeable, she seems like nothing more than a sweet old potion-brewer. Except for the fact that she's a level 5 NPC with 112 HP, 18 Strength and 16 Constitution at a point in the game where the party is likely at level 2 or 3. To make it even more obvious, if you examine her she is listed as a Fey as opposed to a Human.
    • These oversights are largely fixed in the full release of the game, however during an optional fight with Ethel, there's a point where she will teleport her hostage out of their cage and copy their appearance, forcing you into a game of Spot the Imposter. However, even in her illusionary form, Ethel has more hit points than her hostage does, and if she happens to pull this trick while concentrating on a spell, the interface will reveal which of the two hostages is still concentrating on the spell, thus foiling the ruse.
    • In a lesser example, Astarion, the elven rogue, doesn’t divulge much about himself or his past at first. You can wait until it comes about naturally, or you can try to cross running water with him, at which point he’ll start taking damage. Mouse over the status effect on his portrait, and it’ll say that running water eats away at vampiric flesh. This is only a lesser example because, while the character keeps his vampirism a secret from the party at first, the pallor, red eyes, fangs and neck scars make it easy enough to figure out.
    • This is partly alleviated in the full release, as the developers decided to expand the benefits Astarion gained from the tadpole to include crossing running water.
    • Astarion also claims to be a magistrate when met. The menu clearly displays his character background as Charlatan. Although in that case both are true: Astarion was a magistrate in his life, but that was two centuries ago and he has been forced to live in squalor since, only keeping the aristocratic facade as a lure for victims to give to his vampiric master.
    • In Act III, the player becomes the target of Orin the Red, a bloodthirsty Changeling and Bhaalspawn who takes to stalking you by disguising herself as various NPCs. While her disguises are perfect, she is always displayed as level 12 with a "Legendary Resistance" buff, even when she's impersonating noncombatants or your own lower level party members.
    • The fact that there are traps in an area tends to be given away by the on-screen dice rolls and display of "Failed a Spot Check".
    • The setting has many gods, but only six are actually talked about in various loading screens: Shar, Selûne, Mrykul, Bhaal, Bane, and Jergal. The first two are key figures in Shadowheart's questline from the start of the game to the very end, so they're not really a surprise, but the next three (collectively known as "The Dead Three") are the ones behind the Absolute and the last one turns out to have been Withers.
    • From early in Act 1, there is talk of a mysterious and valuable artifact called the Nightsong. The nature of this artifact as a person, namely Selune's daughter, is not revealed until you meet her...unless you have Shadowheart with you, as most players will, and go to get the Spear of Night as Shar has told her to. The description of said weapon says it can be used to kill Nightsong.
• Subverted in Betrayal at Krondor rather cleverly. The different armor types in the game have "racial mods" (i.e. bonuses) for three races: human, elven, and dwarven. Despite this, you never actually recruit a dwarf in the entire game.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm:
  • A non-menu example. At each of the inns you visit, your room will contain exactly eight beds. No points for guessing how many people end up joining your party. (Granted, this doesn’t spoil the Guest-Star Party Member in Chapter 7, who doesn’t stick around long enough to use any of these inns).
  • The music credits list every song in the game, roughly in the order that you hear them. They reach the ending, where you’re at… and then keep going for quite a while, spoiling much of the extensive post-game content. The last few tracks are missing the contextual subtitles, which Tat least preserves the surprise of how they’re used.
• Bravely Default: You're at the end of chapter 4, you've apparently defeated the Big Bad and you're going into the Very Definitely Final Dungeon to activate the Earth Crystal. But wait... there's still two more empty slots in the Job screen!

• Children of Mana: there are slots in your equipment screen for several weapons that you don't start with, and the gem inventory screen can rather taunt you with its emptiness.
• In Child of Light, there are blank, greyed out squares in the skills menu blocking the ultimate skills for every character, which only open up after you complete Chapter 8. However, at the end of Chapter 7, one of your allies reveals themselves to be The Mole, betrays you to the Big Bad, and leaves the party. While you may think they will have a change of heart and rejoin later so that they can learn those skills, they do not, ultimately subverting the trope. Oddly enough, the interface does not lie. The traitor can learn their ultimate skills, but only on a New Game Plus.
• In Chrono Cross:
  • Before you even leave the first town, you get to talk to a vendor, who offers the game's blacksmithy screen. On the blacksmithy screen you can see a huge box, mostly blank, reserved for characters who can equip the particular weapon, spoiling very early on that this game will have tons upon tons of player characters.
  • Later in the game, when you encounter the Disc-One Final Boss, the fact that your character box is not even half full yet is another tip that this is not nearly the end of the game yet.
  • When you confront the completed Dragon God, the battle menu calls the boss the "TimeDevourer", even though the real Time Devourer is a different entity who isn't fought until a bit later as the Final Boss. However, dialogue after the battle reveals that the Dragon God was consumed by the Time Devourer and acting as its mouthpiece, so the mislabeling might have been intentional.
• Chrono Trigger
  • During a flashback, when Frog is recalling Cyrus's demise at the hands of Magus, Ozzie's dialogue is prefixed with OZZIE's name in all-caps, as you'd expect of an NPC, but Magus's dialogue is prefixed with a very PC-looking 'Magus'. The DS version rectifies the problem.
  • The worst offender is the DS version's "Dojo", which shows Magus in tech screenshots and it shows his two techs. Before you get him. The Item Encyclopaedia also shows weapons, which includes a portion of the list with scythes. Now who do we know that uses that type of weapon?
  • As soon as the player starts getting the Rocks that allow for Triple Techs without Crono when you Can't Drop the Hero, they'll become suspicious that something will happen to him.
  • As Two Best Friends Play points out, the Hero Medal's description is "Ups critical hit rate of Masamune," and Frog is the only one able to use it.
• Subverted in Cosmic Star Heroine. After a certain character betrays the party, in the final dungeon, you acquire their ultimate weapon. You're getting that character back, right? You fight her as a boss immediately afterwards, and the fight ends in her death. The weapon might as well never have existed.

• The Bonfire travel menu in Dark Souls II expands to fit only the areas you've uncovered for most of the game. However, once you reach Drangleic Castle, the menu shows how many locations are in the game, blacking out the ones you've not been to. There will still be about a half-dozen blank spots after Drangleic Castle, indicating that it's not the final dungeon as you've been led to believe. It will also show the bonfires in each location in order, showing if you missed one by there being a blank spot between two usable ones.
• A minor one in Deltarune. At one point, Lancer joins your party after having been an Affably Evil villain for most of the game up to that point. If you open the menu, he clearly isn't listed among your party members, spoiling that he will leave very shortly after, before you get any chance to use him in a battle. In fact, you never even get to fight with him in your team.
• Do not examine the achievements of Diablo III too closely if you don't want to know that Adria ends up betraying the heroes, since one achievement is for defeating her as a boss, with a demonic portrait. Or who dies early in the game (Deckard Cain has no conversation achievements outside of the act in which you met him). Or who the Stranger is (it's less obvious, but several of the Stranger's conversations are listed for the archangel Tyrael's conversation achievement).
• The Disgaea series does this as new menu items are added. Especially in the remakes, where new ones that weren't in the original are added — in the PSP version of Disgaea 2, you have to play through the bonus mode to unlock an option.
  • The Disgaea character creation/reincarnation screen also "spoils" the existence of class tiers once you start unlocking them, though the levels needed for each tier to unlock varies with each class, and there are certain classes that don't unlock unless you meet special requirements. Same with Makai Kingdom.
  • In Phantom Brave, however, character creation occurs on a Ring Menu where new choices expand the ring.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, you can tell if a companion will join your group permanently because their character and inventory screens have an approval bar, while those of temporary followers do not. Temporary followers also don't gain any experience. Also, characters from the various origin stories that will show up later in the game have a background to their character portrait, but ones that will leave forever have a plain black background.
  • They try to avert this in the Awakening Expansion Pack. Mhairi will never survive her Joining, but she will acquire experience and gain/lose approval in the brief time she's with you. But it's revealed in another way: if you check the character info screen, you'll notice her contribution to overall party damage always stays at 0% even after she's attacked.
  • In Dragon Age II, every companion has a special skill tree unique to them, except for one, which tips you off that they're a temporary companion. It's Bethany/Carver, who leave after Act 1, either dying in the Deep Roads, becoming a Grey Warden, or joining their respective organization (Carver joins the Templars, Bethany is forced into the Circle of Magi). However, if they do not die, they can be brought back for the two DLC expansions (Mark of the Assassin and Legacy); in this event they do have unique skill trees.
    • Late in Act 1 of the game, you will receive a quest from a minor nobleman asking you to find his wife, whom he believes ran off with her lover. Too bad that immediately upon finishing the conversation you receive the notification that you accepted the quest "The First Sacrifice", which not only implies that there is more to this than a lovers' spat and that you're unlikely to find this woman, but also that this is likely to become a problem again later on. Three years after this quest, the killer also takes the life of the player character's mother, which they spend the rest of the game blaming themself over.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the Player Character is not crowned Inquisitor until a certain point in the story, so before that all NPCs and party members refer to them as "Herald of Andraste" or just "Herald" in dialogue. The game slips up a few times, though, with one of Vivienne's greetings, a banter between her and Cole, and a few minor NPCs calling you by the wrong title too early.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest II: In Wellgarth there is one shop that has a blank spot in the list of wares, and townspeople speaking of the Jailer's Key being sold at a shop. Hmmm...
  • In the Game Boy Color, Super Famicom, and mobile phone versions of Dragon Quest III, defeating Baramos yields 65536 experience points for the party, indicating that he is not the final boss.
  • In the Playstation version of Dragon Quest VII appears to send the players to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon where they fight the lord of darkness Orgodemir, complete with final boss music. Except... it's the end of Disc one.
  • Dragon Quest VIII has a Disc-One Final Dungeon that does very convincing impression of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon...if not for the fact that half of the world map isn't accessible yet.
  • The existence of secret playable classes may start to become obvious in Dragon Quest IX when weapon types no member of your party can equip start appearing.
  • Dragon Quest XI has a few. There being multiple different weapon categories spoils that you don't have everyone yet when you have the seven characters featured in the intro movie and nobody has the ability to use Axes (nor have you found any yet). Another one is within the Bestiary, as sorting it alphabetically before the Disc-One Final Dungeon shows that there are pages and pages of ????? between "Very Devil" and "Vince", an alarmingly small portion of the alphabet for so many enemies (they're "Vicious" enemies). Hidden Trophies in the PS4 version are all story-related. When you go to confront the villain at Yggdrasil, there are still very many hidden trophies, so either the game has a huge Playable Epilogue, or that final battle is a lot less final than you think.
  • Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and The Blight Below: The in-game manual tells you point-blank who will eventually join the party and in what order.

• The Elder Scrolls
  • In Morrowind, if you find an NPC with unusual dialogue options, even if they don't cause anything to happen at that time, odds are they will be involved with a quest at some point in the future. The same is also true if the NPC simply lacks the usual dialogue options (latest rumors, little advice, little secret, etc.) This example can also apply to most of the other games in the series as well.
  • In Skyrim, in the quest journal, there is decorative knotwork surrounding the name of the quest. This varies depending on the type of quest (main quests, guild quests, Daedric quests, etc.) For many quests this isn't a problem, but for some of the Daedric quests, "A Night to Remember" being a perfect example, it may not be obvious at first. Finding this out can be a major twist.^examplelike when Sam Guevenne is revealed to really be Sanguine
• Etrian Odyssey:
  • If you exchange Guild Cards, some of the games' Guild Cards have the background of the highest stratum the player has reached. This can, for example, give away that the sixth stratum of Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth is set in space.
  • Sometimes the reward for a sidequest can reveal that there's more to the quest than meets the eye. You might be asked to look for a missing child or investigate some strange phenomenon, with the reward being a lot of ental (usually around 30,000). Almost always, a quest with such a steep reward means that the seemingly-simple quest is really a Superboss quest in disguise.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: The final floors of most of the dungeons have large swathes of untouched territory that can't be accessed. At the time. Before entering the final dungeon, the guild takes a secret pass through these unexplored areas to gain access.

• Fantasy Life:
  • The game makes new areas available via progression of a storyline divided in several chapters. Another mechanic lets you unlock new game features as a reward for certain in-game accomplishments. One set of these makes new items available in shops and works in such a way that the possibility to get extra items in the shops from the second town only becomes visible once it has been unlocked for the First Town. The story initially gives the impression that there are only three places that qualify as towns in the game and that unlocking the option for the third town is the only way to buy some of the crafting materials. Hey, what do you mean "choose this for extra items from travelling merchants and the store in Elderwood." ? What store in Elderwood? That place is just a forest full of monsters with no settlement of any kind. Well, it does have a strange statue and a bridge that can't be crossed...
  • The challenges needed to rank up in some classes will also mention the locations meant to be secret until a certain point of the story by name.
  • The existence of some job ranks is initially hidden, but there are two blank spaces between each set of job+rank combinations in the achievement list.
• In Fate/EXTRA, looking at the playable Caster's information can spoil her true identity as Tamano-no-Mae.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy has this by the nature of its Vancian Magic system. The player can immediately tell that there are eight levels of magic, even when they only have access to the first-level spells at the beginning of the game. The menu also spoils that there are Prestige Classes by the fact that even the dedicated white/black mages cannot learn the highest levels of magic in their non-prestige form.
  • In the GBA remake of Final Fantasy II, most major non-party NPCs have portraits... and the Dark Knight's portrait is obviously a darkened version of Leon's. The PSP remake improves this somewhat: the Dark Knight now wears a helmet, but the rest of his armor and his pose are still identical to Leon's.
  • Final Fantasy IV:
    • Exclusive to the 3D versions, when you unlock the Music box from Jammingway, some of the song titles will reveal characters and texts that you won't meet until later in the game. There's also some additional descriptive text courtesy of Edward. Some of his descriptions outright state where the songs will play. For example, ''Red Wings - Short Version':' while it plays for the fight against the Dark Knight, Edward mentions that it plays in the final dungeon.
    • Not so much an Interface Spoiler as Interface Foreshadowing, but Tellah is seeking out the Meteor spell to take revenge on Golbez. He finally gets it, and supposedly even has access to it in Random Encounters, but a quick check of the menu reveals that he does not and will never have enough MP to actually cast it, thus explaining why, when he eventually does cast it later on, it's at the cost of his own life.
    • Another comes when Baigan joins the party. That brings the party total to six, which is more than there's even room for on the menu screen, so it's no surprise when he turns out to be a monster plotting an ambush. This is even more obvious in later versions of the game: in the Game Boy Advance version, every playable character has their Character Portrait appear onscreen when they speak. The fact that Baigan lacks a portrait is a dead giveaway that he's not playable. In the Nintendo DS remake, Baigan uses a palette-swapped generic soldier model, in contrast to the rather distinct-looking (though still a palette swap, but not as obvious) helmetless sprite he had in prior versions of the game, which gives away that he's not a very important character, and certainly not playable.
    • In The After Years, checking the Hooded Man's equipment shows he uses his left hand to hold his sword, which is a huge hint on who he really is.
  • In Final Fantasy V:
    • Faris is Bifauxnen. You learn it early, but it can be spoilered even earlier when you first change jobs: some of Faris's sprites in the first set of jobs that you get from the first crystal look somewhat feminine, which can tip off an observant player a bit before the actual reveal. Most versions downplay this, as none of the first set of jobs look overtly feminine on Faris, and all of the ones that give her a distinctly feminine appearance come after the reveal. However, in the pre-Pixel Remaster mobile/Steam versions of the game, the redrawn character sprites make Faris look quite blatantly female from the get-go, with some of her job sprites (including some obtained before the reveal) including a noticeable bust.
    • Exdeath's Castle, as climactic as it is, is not the final level. How do we know this? We're still missing all of the level 6 spells and almost half of the Summon Magic. Granted, this game has a tendency toward the Guide Dang It!, so a player without a guide could think they simply missed all of that... but there's no reasoning away the gaping holes in the game's bestiary for the GBA version.
  • Final Fantasy VI:
    • You can go to the (empty) "Espers" menu right from the start of the game. Even though it's about a third of the way through before you properly find out what espers are and how they work.
    • The battle menu has a discrepancy between Terra and every other party member. At first, Terra can only attack and use magic, and there's a gap where her special ability would be. Characters like Locke and Edgar have their special abilities and a gap where magic would be. Anyone who's paying attention won't be at all surprised when other people learn to cast spells, or when Terra turns out to have a secret power. And if you still had any doubts, once Celes is recruited, she has both a special ability and magic on her battle menu, verifying that it's not just Terra's menu being formatted weirdly.
    • None of the permanent playable characters are ever mentioned by name until you are given a chance to choose what that name is. This means if you see a character mentioned by name and you're not given the chance to name them, you know for certain they'll never join your party. It also means that, when the name entry screen comes up for a certain ninja before he joins, or a certain airship-owning gambler even before you meet him, you know that they're going to be part of your crew eventually.
    • In the SNES version, you're eventually thrown into a battle with a yeti with unique sprites named Umaro. Later translations downplay this Five-Second Foreshadowing by just calling him "Yeti" in the battle screen, and you properly name him after the fight.
    • In the scenario where you have to save Terra from The Empire, you get to command Locke and a gang of moogles. All but one of them have fixed equipment that cannot be changed. The moogle whose gear can be swapped out freely will play a role later on.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • The digital re-release has an interface spoiler through its achievements notification. When you get to the absolute final battle against Sephiroth with only Cloud, you get to use Cloud's ultimate Limit Break Omnislash. There's an achievement for this, but it pops up as soon as the cutscene leading to the one-on-one duel starts. This can cause new players to immediately know the game isn't quite done yet. It also pops up if the player loses the battle against Safer Sephiroth.
    • Some of the achievements subvert this. For example, there's one for every character using their Level 4 Limit Break, including Aeris/Aerith's. Unless you're specifically going for it, she won't have enough kills through normal play^{Unlocking Limit Breaks}youhave to use the first Limit in each level (e.g. Healing Wind) eight times to unlock the second one (e.g. Seal Evil), then kill 80 enemies with that specific character after getting their second Limit Break to unlock the next level. By the time Aerith dies, your party members will likely only have their first Level 2 Limit Break, and maybe their second. before she's killed, and you won't be able to get the achievement on that playthrough. This also caused the old "Aerith comes back" rumors to spring back up, with the achievement cited as proof you can get her back.
    • In a subversion, long after Aerith is dead, you can still buy staves, such as the Fairy Tale, or win similar weapons, despite the fact that said character never comes back. By this point, they're only useful for the "Throw" command. Weapon-wise this is also played straight, however, due to the fact that Aerith does not get an ultimate weapon — she won't need one where she's going.
  • The French translation did a Translation Spoiler by mistake: when you first arrive in Nibelheim with Sephiroth, Cloud asks him about his family. During Sephiroth's Mind Rape of Cloud in the Whirlwind Maze, Sephiroth answers "Ma mère s'appelait Jenova" (my mother's name was Jenova). But in the flashback in Kalm, he says "Ma mère était Jenova" (My mother was Jenova). Cue many players scratching their heads when he started to go psycho about the whole Jenova thing.
  • In Final Fantasy VII Remake, Chapter 12 sees the player encountering various members of Avalanche as Cloud ascends the Sector 7 pillar. Early on, you'll find Biggs, who has been critically wounded fighting Shinra troops and passes on after having one last conversation with Cloud. However, checking the Chapter Select screen after completing the mission reveals that Biggs is listed as comatose, not dead, which doesn't seem to make sense considering he was near the bottom of the pillar when it collapsed. This is a spoiler for The Reveal in the ending that Biggs survived and was moved to the Leaf House in Sector 5, where he awakens from his coma during the final cutscene.
  • Final Fantasy IX:
    • It's pretty obvious that Marcus, Blank, and Beatrix aren't permanent party members simply because they have no "Trance" bar.
    • Unlike the other members of your party, Zidane has Trance abilities that have nothing to do with his character class. Whereas everyone else's abilities augment their job-specific skills (Steiner the Knight does more damage; Garnet the Summoner casts stronger spells...), Zidane the Thief inexplicably gains access to a set of appallingly powerful offensive spells that always do maximum damage. Even though Zidane's backstory isn't explored until Disc 3, this is a strong hint that there's more to him than meets the eye.
    • If you play the Chocobo Hot and Cold mini-game as soon as you're able to on disc 1, you can obtain Chocographs that show areas which don't match the geography of the current continent, such as barren lands and icy fields compared to the mostly grassy lands you been traveling through. Looking up the "help" info for one of the graphs reveals that there's other continents you will explore besides the Mist Continent.
    • Garnet being a summoner is spoiled as soon as you get control of her at the start of the game, due to her Summon command already being available and her summons being listed in her ability list. Her summoning abilities aren't brought up in-story until later, when her mother extracts her summoning magic from her.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has a fairly subtle one; four of your starting characters have two ATB slots and get a third when they become l'Cie. Vanille, however, already has three slots before this happens, because she already was a l'Cie before supposedly getting transformed alongside the rest of them. This is also hinted at by her relatively high starting stats compared to the normal humans.

• Grandia II:
  • In the Steam version, one of the achievements spoils the name of the Final Boss. This is especially bad since said boss' name contains the name of another character, who is initially presented as good but turns out to be evil.
  • Two playable characters die: Millenia and Mareg. You gain an item that refunds all of the Special Coins you spent of the latter's moves, but no such thing is done for the former, implying a Disney Death.
• GreedFall: The Nauts claim to use magic to navigate the seas, but just looking at Vasco's stats will tell you they're lying — he doesn't have a mana bar like the other party mages.

• In Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1:
  • The party learn at one point that an arms deal between Avenir and the fake Blanc is about to go down at Avenir Storage No.2. The dungeon that's unlocked a couple of cutscenes later, and which you travel to to try and bust the deal, is named "Avenir Storage No.4". This is a pretty big giveaway that the party have been fed some fake info: the arms deal is actually going on elsewhere while Ganache keeps the party occupied.
  • The Steam achievements for the Re;Birth remakes also spoil the existence of certain playable characters, such as the ability to unlock the CPU candidates in Re;Birth 1.

• Inazuma Eleven:
  • The Area Jump menu in GO 2 has an icon for each area, with the areas you can't visit yet displaying static. There are 6 icons, which would imply that there are 6 areas in all... except this trope is subverted when you gain access to a 7th area, and the original 6 icons move over to make room for 7 more (6 of which initially display static). This is subverted again in the Endgame+, where on two more occasions several icons scoot over to make room for another, eventually ending up with 15 icons that take up every last bit of real estate on the screen.
  • In the first game, looking up one of your starting team members (Minamisawa Atsushi) in the Player Binder lists his recruitment method as "other", while everyone else who joins during the storyline is listed as "story". So it comes as no surprise when this player leaves the team early on, and shows up as an opponent later.

• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Sora obtains Riku's Enemy Card after their fourth and final battle. In the GBA and PS2 versions, the card is just labeled "Riku", but in the HD 1.5 ReMIX version, it's renamed Riku Replica, spoiling his identity just before the following cutscene that also reveals this plot point.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, the final boss is referred to as a "mystery man" on the mission screen while you fight him, as if to conceal his identity, yet when you fight him, the boss's health bar clearly says that his name is Riku.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, when Roxas levels up, the notice has a yellow border, just like guest party members, foreshadowing the fact that Roxas is the Decoy Protagonist.
• Klonoa Heroes: Densetsu no Star Medal: You know a leaving member of your party is gonna come back eventually when you can still buy weapons and gear for them. For instance, you can still buy gear for Guntz after he leaves to chase Janga, and shops will still have gear for Klonoa after he's put in a coma by Janga's poison.
• The "fill-in-the-blanks" party menu also appears in Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. Basically, BioWare is very fond of this.
  • The "Force Sight" ability in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is not learned until you get Visas Marr in the party, unless you use first-person view with Kreia. If you happen to do that in the Polar Academy you will see that Atris is shaded slightly red, revealing that she is gradually falling to the dark side.
  • In Jade Empire, Wild Flower has two portraits, one for each spirit possessing her. When Ya Zhen (the evil spirit) reveals that he may aid you in return for your support, it comes as little surprise.
  • Some of the portraits are obscured with a big ol' "?" (and they're only silhouettes of heads) so it can be hard to tell who you can end up with. Even if you were expecting there to be another party member during the Siege of Dirge since there was an open spot, you might not have expected it to be The Dragon. (You might have, if you were paying enough attention to the dialogue, but that's legitimate Foreshadowing and not this trope.)

• The Legend of Dragoon's pause screen includes a section devoted to Dragoon Spirits (enough to hold 8 of them) and the Addition section has a column devoted to SP gain (the meter built up that allows Dragoon transformations). Furthermore, the status section lists Magic Attack and Magic Hit (accuracy) on each profile, a stat that can only be useful to Dragoons. It's quite clear early on (after Lavitz gains his) that everyone in your party will eventually become a Dragoon.
• The Legend of Heroes - Trails:
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is bad for this.
    • Though absent from the original PSP releases in Japan, the English PC releases featured voice acting for party members, even those who didn't joint until the sequel games. This is rather notable when you face the bracers in Grancel, as two of them are voiced and two of them are not. Guess which two become party members in future games.
    • In Second Chapter, you briefly get a seemingly-innocent 11-year-old girl named Renne to join your party as a non-combatant NPC. However, if you happen to look at her health, you'll notice that it's far higher than your party members, and far, far higher than any allied NPC you have ever encountered. It's a pretty big giveaway that she's actually an Ouroboros Enforcer in disguise.
  • The 3rd features a guide-book that lists off the benefits provided by "support" characters. This includes a comprehensive list of all the party members you get over the course of the game, including spoiler characters like Renne and Richard.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel: From Cold Steel III, players can see a map that covers the entire nation of Erebonia. During the field exercises that take place each month, the students of the branch campus make camp at locations called Ex Camps. When one sees the map of Erebonia, they can also see all the locations marked "Ex Camp" on the map, no matter how early in the game they are. This can spoil the locations of the future field exercises if the player hasn't progressed far enough in the story.
• The game Live A Live uses static sprites for its enemies, which are usually larger than your characters (that is to say, they occupy 2x2 squares at least, while party members occupy 1x2). So when you encounter an enemy that has animation and is the same size as your party members, you know they'll be fighting alongside you at some point (unless that enemy was already playable, like Oersted or Straybow). This happens no less than three times.
• Lufia & The Fortress of Doom has a rare case of a sprite spoiler, although it's rather subtle: Lufia's in-battle and menu sprite shows her wielding a polearm, though it's not her actual weapon of choice in gameplay. Female, blue-haired and using a polearm—think back to the beginning of the game. Who else meets that criteria?
• Lunar: The Silver Star:
  • In the Sega CD version, most important characters have a short introductory cutscene followed by a text one-liner. The only character whose intro is voiced instead of displaying text is Ghaleon, who is revealed later in the game to be the Big Bad.
  • Related to the above, if one uses Alex's Ocarina in the PlayStation remake to view the Sound Test, one of the track names spoils Ghaleon being the Magic Emperor.
• Lunar: Dragon Song:
  • The game lets you find a chest (in a room that is mandatory to clear, no less) with Gideon3's card inside. This happens even before you fight Gideon2 at the end of the game. Quite the giveaway...
  • You'll find claws for Gabi on sale long before you even meet her. And equipment for Rufus is available in only one town (though by then you've already met him, and he offered to join your party more than once), but unless you backtrack immediately after he joins he gets killed by Gideon before you ever get the chance to shop for his equipment.
• LunarLux: There are several hints in the UI indicating that there's a second party member, who turns out to be Nickle, the Murk Slayer.
  • In the save/load screen, each file has two bullet points, with the first one having Bella's name.
  • The status bar on the bottom of the screen looks like it's divided symmetrically, yet Bella's status only takes up half of it.
  • The Elixir item description states it heals 35 SP to all party members.
  • The Sour Candy item and the Meter Boost support skill both refer to the Anti Meter, but Bella only has a Lux Meter. This is because Nickle uses the Anti Meter to activate his Phase Form.

• Magi-Nation zig-zags this:
  • Checking the rings in the ringsmith will show what sorts of creatures there are in the area.
  • The player will routinely get animite for core creatures - suggesting that they will be able to summon them.
• Mass Effect:
  • In both this game and its sequel, the squad selection screen has silhouettes of unrecruited party members.
  • A minor one: when Shepard, Anderson and Nihlus view the transmission from Eden Prime, the subtitles identify the name of one of the soldiers under fire as Ashley, a good 10-15 minutes before she's properly introduced, while giving the other soldier a generic rank.
  • The moment you gain control of Shepard in the first game, you can go to the Squad screen with three points to give to your character. When you check out the Charm and Intimidate skills, it cheerfully informs you that you'll be allowed more points for them once you become a Spectre. This despite the fact that you're still a whole cutscene away from even knowing you're up for it.
  • During the opening moments of the first mission, you're given the option of removing Shepard and Alenko's helmets, but not Jenkins. Jenkins dies the moment they enter combat.
  • During the Noveria mission, the player comes across some bugs which, when aimed at, are identified as "Rachni". Naturally your party cannot see this, and will wonder what those bugs were until The Reveal.
  • The target of Garrus's personal mission claims he's someone else. The subtitles don't agree.
  • Right at the beginning, on the ship, there's a greyed out option to open the galaxy map. If you try, it tells you that only the captain can do that, which is a pretty strong indicator that you will soon be in charge of the ship.
• Mass Effect 2:
  • The silhouettes are replaced with datacards with information about your future party members, since the point of the main quests is to recruit them. However, others that Cerberus wouldn't have been aware of (or would they?) like Legion also have a datacard on your squad menu.
  • In the prologue, the identity of your rescuers is initially unknown and Jacob makes a big point of telling you that it's Cerberus. Except that each of the five or so computers that you can interact with prior to that point are all named 'Cerberus Laptop'.
  • Legion is addressed by the name in the subtitles upon your first meeting, then reverts to "geth" the next time you speak.
    • The existence of a geth squadmate is also partially spoiled by one of the upgrades you can pickup in the levels unlocked after Horizon being "Geth Shield Strength". However, they try to disguise it by having its description refer to "squad members who use Geth shield technology",
  • When you go into the Collector ship and find out the truth about them, the dialogue wheel, as usual, pops up before The Reveal has actually been said, and one of the dialogue options reads "The Collectors are Protheans!"
  • If you go and customize your armor after the first mission (post-resurrection), you're allowed to pick what clothes you wear on the Normandy, which at this point is totally illogical given that the ship was destroyed in the tutorial level. Thus, the appearance of the second Normandy is somewhat less surprising.
  • One of the DLC packs available on the Cerberus Network explicitly notes that it is an alternate costume for Garrus.
• Mass Effect 3:
  • If you import your character from Mass Effect 2, the game gives you a quick review of all the decisions you've made thus far. Most of them are expected, but one of them is the choice of whether or not you saved Maelon's data, which is treated as a fairly minor decision when you make it. This makes it clear that the data is going to have an impact later on regarding the genophage cure.
  • Scanning all of the systems for Search-and-Rescue assets as soon as possible makes searching for similar assets later in the game a breeze. Each system has a percentage marker (up to 100%) located next to it that dials down after some main missions. Thus, it's easy to see at a glance what systems need to be visited (even for side missions that may have popped up), taking a lot of the guesswork out of the supposedly-sprawling galaxy.
• Miitopia: By the time you reach the castle of The Dark Lord you may notice that the journal sections for Monsters, Grub, Armor and Weapons are halfway full at most, spoiling that there's still plenty of stuff happening after it.

• Subverted in Neverwinter Nights 2: Shandra dies a plot related death a while before the end of the game, but functions in all ways like a normal party member, including an approval rating and even what seems to be a romance option... which can never be completed.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2:
  • In the first area you visit outside of your Doomed Hometown — the road to some seemingly-unimportant swamp ruins — the minimap reads "The Mere of Dead Men". Now, the player character knows the apt name of the creepy swamp their home village is built on, but the player isn't supposed to know that yet. Also, one of the initially greyed-out prestige classes is Neverwinter Nine, potentially spoiling the offer Lord Nasher makes to you much later in the game.
  • Since the developers didn't bother to change the names of NPCs on-the-fly and weren't willing to outright lie to the player, you can tell that someone's going to try and deceive you about their identity if the overhead label that appears when you mouse over them says something vague, like "Man", instead of their actual name. Mask of the Betrayer demonstrates a plot-scripted character name change (Kaelyn the Dove can append a similar animal moniker to the end of your name), so we can put this down to Obsidian not caring enough.
  • The identity of the main enemy of act one, the Githyanki, is revealed to the player by the interface almost immediately, but it takes most of the act for the characters to learn.
• One of the access points in NieR: Automata is labeled "Near the Tower" in the fast travel menu, even before the Tower actually appears.

• Octopath Traveler:
  • As you go around the world you can unlock the eight character's jobs as sub-jobs for the others in special shrines, but once you unlock all of them, you will see there is a big gap between them in the job menu. This spoils there are 4 additional jobs, each guarded by a powerful Optional Boss.
  • In the Steam release, the achievments for completing chapters have visible descriptions of the events that happen, completely out in the open for everyone to see.
  • A minor but useful one: enemy weaknesses always follow the same order (Swords → Polearms → Daggers → Axes → Bows → Staffs → Fire → Ice → Lightning → Wind → Light → Dark). This makes it easier to guess at any remaining weaknesses you haven't uncovered yet. For example, if an enemy has a displayed weakness to Daggers and still has an empty box to the left of that, you know it has to be either Swords or Polearms.
  • A quite large one occurs with a certain sidequest available in Bolderfall after finishing Therion's first chapter. The fact that it's titled "Daughter of the Dark God" blatantly gives away that Lyblac isn't an ordinary woman and is up to something involving Galdera.
• Odin Sphere: The skill tree in Leifthrasir reveals what locations your Player Character will be going to at least one chapter ahead of time.

• Paper Mario:
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
    • The fact that enemies you don't use Tattle on have their entries given to you for the log (by searching in Professor Frankly's trash) if you can't fight them again supplies some spoilers. In particular, there's the fact that while Marilyn and Beldam are fought again, Vivian is not.
    • Each time you get a Crystal Star, the game will tell you about its special powers in battle and what they do. So when you get the Ruby Star in Chapter 4 only to move on without learning about its abilities, you know something's up. Another big hint is the fact that if you happened to have been using the W badge at the time Mario suddenly changes to his default clothes out of the blue after the fight.
    • Whenever Goombella uses Tattle on an enemy, their place of origin, so to speak, is mentioned in their entry. Because certain enemies can be encountered before then (Most notably in the Glitz Pit and the Pit of 100 Trials), this can lead to you finding out about a particular place before you actually get there.
    • A minor glitch produces a minor spoiler: if you get the secret party member Ms. Mowz at first opportunity, have a different party member active, and use a healing item outside of battle, it will allow you to use the item on Bobbery, even if you haven't met him yet.
  • Super Paper Mario
    • The pause menu has a "Chapters" tab that shows descriptions of the chapters you've visited so far in the game. When Dimentio "ends your game" and sends you to the Underwhere, you unlock the description for Chapter 7-1, even though you aren't supposed to know that the Underwhere is Chapter 7-1 yet!
    • You can obtain Tippi's card rather early in the game, potentially during the second chapter, by completing only the first 10 floors of the Pit of 100 Trials. The card contains a glaring spoiler in its description that is clearly written with the intention of the player doing the Pit late into the game, outlining the fact that "Her name was Timpani before Merlon turned her into a Pixl." possibly long before either the fact Tippi was human or that her name was Timpani - which is especially egregious as Timpani's name will have already been seen and continue to appear in the mysterious intermissions between chapters - are revealed.
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King:
    • The Toad Alert accessory is a bell that rings when you're near a Toad on the overworld. It also rings a lot while fighting the Paper Macho Gooper Blooper and Mega Pokey, spoiling that you're going to free Toads trapped inside them after you defeat them.
    • The Sidestepper is an enemy you can fight in the second streamer area. If you check its description in the Monster Compendium, it says that it's "as sharp as Scissors"; notice the capitalization. Being the last streamer boss in the game, and how it fits the theme of the others, you can easily predict its surprise appearance ahead of time.
    • You can get a statue of the Paper Macho Buzzy Beetle in the Ice Vellumental Mountain, halfway through the fourth streamer. This is an optional miniboss that you might not have fought yet. However, if you read its description, it says "The personal pet of Scissors, stripped of its paper armor and Kamek's magic." You're not supposed to know about Scissors nor Kamek getting captured at this point in the game, and these happen at the end of the fifth streamer area.
• Parasite Eve takes place over several days with each new day acting as a chapter for the game. You fight the Big Bad at the end of day five, but then the game transitions to day six, hinting that Eve's defeat isn't the true end of the game. You're also given the opportunity to collect and sort items you had Wayne hold onto as well as getting several healing items for free without being told why. Moments later, you're fighting the True Final Boss.
• In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, several revelations can be spoiled like this:
  • Camellia wears a mysterious necklace she dismisses as an ornament, but mousing over it in the inventory shows that it makes her Character Alignment undetectable. She's also a divine spellcaster, and she's able to use the scrolls of "Protection from Good" and "Protection from Law" that your evil enemies drop, which require you to be of the opposing alignment. Guess what? Trying to level up as a paladin or other class that requires a good and/or lawful alignment will also tell you why you can't. Of course, not that it isn't clear from her blatantly shady and bloodthirsty attitude.
  • Nenio is subtler and requires paying closer attention. Close inspection of her stats will show that she doesn't get a bonus skill rank or feat, despite being human, and that she has two increased abilities and a decreased ability, as opposed to a human who would have one increased ability. She's actually a Kitsune.
  • Wendaug can be identified as a demon worshipper early by looking through all her special abilities, which lists her deity as the demon goddess Lamashtu. This is also revealed if the player levels her up in a divine class such as cleric or inquisitor.
• Path of Exile:
  • The skill tree is a gigantic web of attributes and bonuses◊, with each of the 6 character classes beginning in the area of the web best suited to their core stat. An astute player will notice that there's a 7th slot in the middle of the tree, and will be tipped off to the existence of a secret 7th class.
  • Early on in a new league, the game announces to all players whenever someone reaches a milestone for the first time, such as killing endgame bosses. In Harvest league, this told everyone that the league's new NPC ended up turning against the player.
• In Pillars of Eternity, potential party members are clearly marked on the map by name, the only thing on the map to be so highlighted, even if they're not yet ready to join you. Particularly noteworthy in the case of Grieving Mother, who, shrouded in her Perception Filter, looks and acts like a generic village NPC and would otherwise be easily mistaken for a minor quest giver until the player starts a conversation.
• In Planescape: Torment, the first time the player meets a future member of the party, an entry about him/her appears in the journal, in the "Party members" section. It is a kind of spoiler, because some of them join the player's party late after the first meeting.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Red and Blue reveals the eighth Gym Leader's identity if you check the statues at the Gym's entrance. Hilariously, the Gym guide didn't know and he's stationed right next to them.
  • Another one from Pokémon Red and Blue, though minor. When capturing a Pokémon, the ball will shake up to 3 times before stopping to indicate a successful capture as a means of building suspense. Except how many times a ball will shake is actually a rough indicator of your chances of capturing the Pokémon outright. For example, when going up against a legendary and your chances of capture are say less than 10%, once you see the ball connect, it's a capture, as every other time it'll simply "miss." This basically ruins any sort of suspense this was supposed to create.
  • FireRed and LeafGreen have a "Braille Code Check" heading in the credits displayed upon beating the Elite Four. Unlike Ruby and Sapphire, Braille doesn't appear anywhere in these games until after the Elite Four, so the credits spoil its inclusion in a post-game quest. (As does the braille guide packaged with the game.)
  • In Pokémon Gold and Silver, the fact that you get to explore Kanto after beating the Johto League was meant to be a surprise. The remakes make no secret of the fact that they contain two regions instead of just one.
  • Pokémon Black and White introduces the seemingly random (though rather strange) N, who challenges you to a Pokémon battle... and gets an animated sprite, an honour reserved for significant characters only. He also shares similar views to Team Plasma, wholeheartedly believing in their Pokémon liberation goals, and constantly guilt-trips the player character into not battling. Sure enough, that's the Big Bad... until Ghetsis is introduced.
  • Can be invoked through the miracle of Wonder Trade in Pokémon X and Y, Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, and Pokémon Sun and Moon. It's possible (but very unlikely) to Wonder Trade one of your Com Mons and receive a Pokémon that you normally cannot obtain until the post-game. Bonus points for if you happen to get one of the Ultra Beasts in Sun and Moon, or a Solgaleo/Lunala and you wonder why it's named "Nebby."
  • In Pokémon Sword and Shield, the eight gyms' emblems being available for your profile by default gives away the relatively minor spoiler that Team Yell and the Dark Gym are one and the same organisation.
  • In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Togekiss's "number defeated" task has exactly one entry, as opposed to most non-legendary 'mons who get multiple entries with increasingly-larger numbers. So if you happen to obtain a Togekiss before fighting Volo, it gives away the fact that you'll be fighting one important trainer who uses a Togekiss.

• Radiant Historia has a "Story" section on the menu in case you lose track of where you should be headed that shows a diagram of events. Given the game's mechanics and plot, this is pretty much required. However, any event where you can do something more will have a line trailing off where another event connects later. Following up on the mysterious loose ends is a good way to figure out when you need to go to solve plot-related problems. Whoever decided to name certain skills has some explaining to do. Was it really necessary to name half the Dead All Along guy's skills things relating to ghosts and/or death?
• Recettear: Each recruitable character in the game uses a specific type of weapon. All weapon types are listed in the item fusion menu from the beginning. This includes the oddball "Claw" and "Parts" weapon types, hinting that Griff, the brooding demon and Arma, the robot girl can eventually be recruited (which doesn't happen until very late in the game).
• Rise of the Third Power: During the prologue, Prince Gage briefly joins Arielle to return to the castle. Unlike Phillip, he's shown in the menu as a playable character, despite being aligned with the Obviously Evil Arkadyan Empire. He ends up joining the party in order to oppose Emperor Noraskov.
• Rogue Galaxy has a few examples of this. The "SP" folder on the inventory screen blatantly spoils two key item collection quests, and Jaster's Tech Tree unlocks the dual tech "Fated Passion", whose description (and animation) detail a romantic subplot that comes almost completely out of left field.
• In Rune Factory 4, the Fan Art exposition is presented by Ventuswill in her human form, which you can normally only see once you have completed pretty much everything else in the game.
  • The item description for poison powder mentions that Leon might like it, despite it being available as a monster drop or random chest item before Leon’s first appearance.

• Sands of Destruction features a Quip mechanic, where sometimes lines that characters say in cutscenes become equippable. They can gain these lines before they join your party, however, highlighting your incoming members.
• In Shadow Hearts: Covenant, you can quickly see how many characters will join your party at the end by looking at the vertical spaces left in the main menu. That's assuming you didn't read the manual, of course.
  • The game also tries to trick you into thinking Nicolai is a main character. He's listed alongside the rest in the booklet, he's in your party at the very beginning, and is even the first character you control outside of combat. But checking his bio not only reveals that he is not what he claims to be, but is a bad guy as well!
• Shin Megami Tensei
  • Rule of thumb for this franchise: If the game presents what appears to be the final dungeon or the final boss, experiment with some fusions. If you come up with any results more than about ten or so levels above where you are currently, you're not at the finish line yet.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, the Cathedral of Shadows has 12 slots demons for use in fusion when you can only have 8 in your party at a time (the size expands by 2 twice before midgame).
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse with a keen eye may notice that when they first defeat some of the Divine Powers leadership (Krishna, Maitreya, and Inanna in particular), they're not made available for Fusion yet, as is typical of more modern SMT games; it wouldn't make sense for you to be able to fuse boss demons if they're still running around. This is a tip-off that they're not truly defeated. Also, Krishna simply vanishes the first time you defeat him, instead of shattering like the other bosses.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei V, the Amatsu, an entire race of Demons that has been readily available for fusion in previous games, are left completely missing from the fusion list. Most of the Amatsu were actually wiped out at Armageddon, with Aogami (Susano-O) and Tsukuyomi being the sole survivors.
  • Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker claims that Yamato Hotsuin does not exist in the Triangulum Arc, and that the Anguished One cannot be found. The Fate Level menu shows two empty spots for them.
  • Persona 3 and Persona 3 Reload:
    • The game does get around the "list expansion" business - there are no individual slots, just blank space. (Then again, in that game, your Persona headcount is set by your level, not the plot.)
    • The game pulls a fakeout at one point where the stairs to the next area of Tartarus don't appear until a certain plot event, so it looks like you hit the top of the tower. Thing is, if you've been keeping up with Elizabeth's requests to defeat the various Hand enemies, you'll see a quest available to get Gold Medals from the Hands in a block you haven't been to yet...
    • There are a ton of these around Arcana Hanged Man. Despite all of your party members talking about how it's the final battle, it's pretty hard to miss that the Fool social link goes up to level 6 of 10 immediately before it. The Social Link only maxes out after you make the choice that sets you on the path to the good ending.
    • The Party believe that their mission will be over when they have beaten all of the Shadow monsters. There are twelve Shadows, and one or two appear every full moon. Sooner or later the player will notice that the in-game calendar carries on for months after the last scheduled Shadow fight.
  • Comes back in Persona 4:
    • After defeating the Disc-One Final Boss and reaching what appears to be an ending, you're still at Level 9 for the Fool social link, giving away that it's a Bad Ending and there's still more plot to go. The Link doesn't reach level 10 until you've found the path to the real ending. The same goes for the Star Social Link, since it only reaches Rank 10 after you speak to Teddie again after identifying the real killer, and he only gains his ultimate Persona just before rejoining the party.
    • After that, the Judgement Social Link is unlocked and maxes out after apprehending the killer and defeating the "final" boss - but it's noticeable that there seems to be no more dungeon crawling after defeating said boss and, thus, no way to actually put to use the Ultimate Persona unlocked from the Link. This may have been intentional, at it's pretty much the only hint that there's still one more dungeon to go through for the true ending.
    • The true killer might stand out in the original version as the only major character to not have a Social Link. In the Golden remake, this was changed and he's given a Social Link, but at that point, the killer's identity was largely a Late-Arrival Spoiler anyway. Still, if you did manage to go in unspoiled, you'd definitely raise an eyebrow upon seeing his Arcana is the Jester — another 0, like your Fool. Or that his Link will only raise during plot events once it's past a certain level. His Social Link only maxes out after you reach the path to the true ending.
  • Persona 5:
    • A relatively minor example: in the sixth Palace, you can look at your party's stats before you enter into any battles, giving away the identity and appearance of your new party member's Persona before the dramatic reveal in battle a few minutes later. Said party member is the only one besides Morgana who awakened a Persona prior to their debut battle, although this tidbit is disclosed a few days prior to starting the sixth Palace.
    • It's easy to narrow down who The Mole in the party is because his Social Link doesn't give you any bonuses past Rank 6 when everyone else gives them up to Rank 10, and the bonuses he does get are all generic ones that are common to all party members like Baton Pass and Harison Recovery. Other subtle touches include him not appearing in the opening animation, and once he joins your party, he is referred to in the UI only by his family name, as opposed to every other member of the team. All but the last one of those is removed in Royal, but as above, more like a Late Arrival Spoiler in that case.
    • The new party member in Royal, Kasumi, awakens to her Persona in early October, when your party is likely to be in the mid-40s level-wise. If you look at her stats during her awakening battle, you'll notice she doesn't learn her next skill until Level 75, giving away that she doesn't properly join until much, much later, starting at 75.
    • You can learn Makoto's name through the in-game Text Log before it's properly revealed in-game hours later. Considering that other characters who are initially known by descriptions will retain this in the Text Log until their name is said, it's strange that Makoto is an exception.
  • Persona 5 Strikers
    • Sophia's "Persona," Pithos, does not have an arcana, and all of its ability names have question marks next to them. This indicates that it's not a real Persona, and in the endgame, she awakens her true Persona, Pandora.
    • The first person you meet in Sendai is a woman who casually approaches you for some banter with a drawn portrait, but you do not see her personally again after another event in the same arc. The next time she pops up she's talking you across the phone and it turns out that she has a cut-in, further implying that this is actually an important character...that seemingly does nothing even after apprehending the supposed culprit. This woman is actually the true culprit of the in-game Metaverse incident.
    • Immediately after you complete the Osaka Jail, you unlock the last Bond skill for purchase. This skill, a useful ability with a steep Bond point cost, indicates that the game isn't over just yet.
  • Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
    • It's perfectly possible to get a StreetPass entry of a save file from during the period of the game when Rei has been removed from the party, spoiling that Zen eventually becomes a stand-alone party-member.
    • If you're diligent in filling maps 100% and getting the related completion chests, you can unlock a weapon for Zen before the Fouth Dungeon's boss, the Clock Hand the description of which name drops the final boss "The Clockwork God", as well as hinting to Zen's true nature as being one half of the God Chronos.
    • Rei learns far fewer skills than Zen does, and learns her final skill at level 36 as opposed to Zen learning his final skill at level 63. That's a good clue that she ends up leaving the party.
  • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
    • In the tutorial battles, you may notice that Makoto and Haru are higher level than most of the others. The two of them get kidnapped by Kamoshidaman, the Arc Villain of the first labyrinth, and only join your party after he is defeated.
    • Around the time you get to the end of the fourth labyrinth, you get Ticket Request #33, but the requests for each labyrinth's Optional Boss are numbered 40 or higher, so that's at least seven missing ticket requests. As you can probably tell, the fourth labyrinth is not actually the last dungeon.
• Star Ocean:
  • In Star Ocean: The Last Hope, in the weapon compendium, while the actual weapons are not revealed until you get them, it is staggered by playable characters. As soon as you get Lymle, you'll see that Faize's total amount of weapons is significantly smaller than Edge and Reimi's, revealing how he'll leave the party eventually.
  • In the remake of Star Ocean: The Second Story, each playable character's name is rendered in ALL CAPS, so it's easy to determine who will (Or has the potential to) join the team.
  • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time's Encyclopedia Exposita has the party members listed at the top of the Peoples section. Harmless enough with most characters joining as soon as you meet them, yet problematic for Albel and Mirage, the former starting out as a vicious enemy soldier and the latter spending over 3/4ths of the game on the sidelines due to not originally being in the party at all. If you're the kind of person who looks through the Encyclopedia thoroughly, you can find some spoilerific details on Maria a couple of dozen hours before you even meet her.
• Suikoden:
  • There's a somewhat subtle one in that Sanchez, who you go to to change your team, is not listed on the Tablet of Stars, which reveals which of the 108 Stars of Destiny you've recruited. It's because he's not on your side; he's The Mole.
  • Also, you know if any character you talk to is important to the story: Their face appears in the text box if they're important.
  • Another one is if you pick up on a plot point about the Soul Eater rune: every time someone important to Tir dies, another spell of the Soul Eater is unlocked. Considering you start off with one level, you can imply there will be three important plotline deaths. One of them can be subverted if you meet the conditions for the Golden Ending.
• Suikoden V avoids this by taking a while before it gives you the Tablet of Stars. In doing so, it hides that one of your allies, Sialeeds, is set to betray you. However, there is another interface-based hint that Sialeeds isn't actually a Star of Destiny liked you'd expect her to be from her role in the early story. Specifically, her rune slots. She's a mage who's stuck a permanently-attached Wind Rune on her right hand, unable to upgrade to the more powerful Cyclone Rune (something that's decidedly less common in Suikoden V than it was in earlier games of the series), and more tellingly she never unlocks a left hand slot (let alone a head slot) no matter how hard you Level Grind her, which ever since multiple rune slots were introduced in Suikoden II has been practically unheard of for mage characters.

• You can tell how many characters you'll get in Tales of Innocence and Tales of Hearts because the menu has six slots for them.
• Tales of Berseria:
  • Looking at the costume options for "Malak Number Two", or even just playing as him and reading the tutorial for his controls, will reveal he'll eventually be called "Laphicet".
  • The Artes list and tutorials for Velvet describe her Break Soul as putting her in "therion form" long before therions are mentioned in the plot.
• In Tales of the Abyss:
  • The records screen shows the names of all your party members, including a guest, right from the beginning. Especially noteworthy for giving away that Asch will be fighting on your side later on in the game, who early on is portrayed as an antagonist. But if you check Asch's status screen while he's with you, you'll notice his pool of Titles is much smaller than the rest of the party, which hints that he won't be staying for long.
  • In Baticul, one of the citizens mentions that Princess Natalia is a master of the bow. The store in Baticul sells bows. None of your other party members can equip bows. Granted, since Natalia is shown in the opening, this could count as Foreshadowing.
• In Tales of Zestiria, the game gives you battle tips after winning fights early in the story. It's possible to receive a tip on using Princess Alisha, which mentions her by name before she even gives Sorey her name in a cutscene.
• In Tales of Symphonia:
  • When you reach the Tower of Salvation, Remiel tells you the reason Colette was brought there was to die and become the new body for Martel. Colette then proceeds to complete the transformation into a lifeless being. This would be an emotional scene if not for the fact that right after Colette completes the transformation and is supposedly dead you get a message that says "Colette Learned Judgement!"
  • Another example is when you finish said Disc-One Final Dungeon and aren't told to insert the actual second disc yet.
• TechnoMage: Return of Eternity: Throughout the game, Melvin discovers the Crystals of Eternity, which have a specialised part of the inventory to be held in. Once he collects the fourth one, due to that many being seen in the visions they grant him, he assumes he has the whole set. The specialised inventory space shows an empty slot, spoiling the fact that there's a fifth crystal.
• Shows up in Trials of Mana: The game leads you to believe that opening the gate to the Sanctuary of Mana and acquiring the Sword of Mana will be the game's big finish. It's somewhat undermined by the fact that unless you've spent an inordinate amount of time Level Grinding, you're nowhere near the level needed for your second class change, and at that point in the game, have no obvious way of getting the MacGuffins needed for it anyways. (They can be obtained early, but it is unlikely to the point of Guide Dang It!; they're plentiful later.)

• Ultima VII's Dialogue Tree, as noted in this Let's Play:
  It's important to note here that Klog is lying. Characters normally don't tell you they know nothing about a topic; you usually just don't get the topic to ask them about. Since Klog does have these topics, it means he does know something, but it will be quite some time before we can coax the truth out of him.
• Undertale:
  • Played with during the friendship event with Undyne; when she asks you what you want to drink, each option has a little text for its description; the one for tea says that it is the "blatantly correct choice."
  • The soundtrack has a track named "Song that might play when you fight Sans" that plays with expectations. It's never played in the game and is in fact not even in the game files. Additionally, you normally don't fight Sans. And when you do, it's to the tune of Megalovania.

• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, sometimes the game's loading screen tooltips (which change with each chapter) actually hint at events in that chapter. For example, the one in the endgame that tells you what fearsome and lethal creatures werewolves are - one of the game's last bosses is a werewolf, and it's an unkillable Puzzle Boss. It's also not exactly a great idea to play as a Malkavian on the first playthrough, partly because the jokes are funnier once you understand the subtext, but mostly because a Malkavian Player Character will pre-empt big plot reveals and reference them in dialogue. For instance, when playing as a Malkavian and meeting Jeanette for the first time, the Malkavian will flat-out tell her that s/he knows that her and her sister are actually just different sides to an individual with multiple personality disorder, though in a roundabout way that uses a metaphor about Roman gods.
• Mostly due to its Citizen Menu, Vampyr (2018) does this in a number of ways:
  • It's pretty easy to figure out there's something up with Dorothy Crane when she's introduced as a nurse in the Pembroke Hospital but listed in the citizen menu as the pillar of Whitechapel, making her a major figure in a completely separate district.
  • Depending on if and when you study the Swanborough Cordial, you might learn about Mason Swanborough's existence and role in the scheme almost a full chapter before being able to speak to him at all.
  • Harriet Jones having no hints and being completely absent from the citizen menu despite seeming fairly unremarkable makes it pretty clear that something's going to happen to her.

• The in-game map in Wild ARMs 3 lets you view the (empty) sections for Telepath Towers and Millennium Puzzles long before you'll come across — or even learn about — either of these types of locations.
• The Witcher includes a tab for every act in the game in the quest log, so you'll know just how long the story will last and that you're not going to be killing the Big Bad whenever you face him, or who you think is him.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt:
  • Reading up on the Bestiary will often reveal what kind of monster you'll be facing in a side quest, even when it's supposed to be a mystery. Also, creatures that you fight will have their weaknesses displayed for you, so you'll know that you won't be killing any Godlings, but will eventually face the Crones.
  • In Hearts of Stone, just seeing the new Gwent cards for Gaunter O'Dimm will be your first clue that he's not just some powerful mage as you're initially led to believe, but something more insidious.
  • Another Gwent related one. The Mysterious Elf, whose identity remains a secret for much of the game has Gwent card of his own. When playing against opponents who use this card it is simply labeled "Mysterious Elf". However, it's possible to get a copy of your own before learning the Elf's identity in story, and the 'new card' notification practically blurts out his real name: Avallac'h.
• The World Ends with You's save stats show your current partner. Towards the beginning of the game this will spoil that you get more than one party member. This is actually a fix to the even worse Interface Spoiler in the original Japanese version, where your save stats showed the week number instead of your partner's name, explicitly revealing that the game doesn't end at the end of the first week. If you save your game immediately after defeating the boss of Week 2, your save will show "Beat Day 1". This spoils Beat doing a Heel–Face Turn and becoming Neku's partner, a twist so unexpected that the Big Bad never saw it coming.
  • If you're a big spender, you can unlock the ability descriptions for some of Beat's personal equipment—which directly refer to him specifically using it—several days before he becomes your partner. Granted, you can get personal equipment belonging to almost every character in the game, both heroes and villains.
• NEO: The World Ends with You:
  • The Noisepedia sorts enemy Players by their faction and has the faction leader listed at the end. The fact that Kanon isn't listed after the two types of Variabeauties enemies spoils that you won't be fighting them.
  • Subverted with the Social Network, in which characters are laid out in a large diagram with lines connecting related characters, so you can tell who's related to whom. The Ruinbringers start out just below Rindo, but are moved to next to the Shinjuku Reapers, with their initial position likely to avoid spoiling that Shiba, the Game Master of the Shinjuku Reapers, also leads the Ruinbringers.
  • Near the end of the game, you can unlock a Social Network ability that shows the level at which pins with evolutions can evolve, and also which character needs to equip certain pins for them to mutate (as opposed to whether it can evolve just appearing as "???"). This shows that some pins need to be equipped to Minamimoto to mutate, all of which can only be obtained well after he leaves the party, spoiling that he eventually comes back (in Another Day).
  • Veterans of the first game know a pin deck has 6 pins. So when looking around the menu and observing there are 6 inputs for pins and how each party member can only equip one type with no overlap between them (at least without Social Network upgrades), it's not much of a logical leap to deduce the Wicked Twisters will end up with 6 people.

• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
    • Checking the achievement list in will more or less make clear Fiora rejoins you at some point. To be fair, it's the most telegraphed spoiler in the game and bigger reveals are much better covered, but there you go. There's also one empty space in the affinity chart artwork for the party.
    • The fact that the quests you get in some places, such as Alcamoth or Mechonis are ALL "timed", meaning you can't do them after a certain point, will also spoil for you that some large scale event is likely to occur in (or to) these places, and that the quests present will become lost forever.
    • There's also the fact there are no Heart-to-Hearts anywhere on Mechonis...
    • And then there's the fact that the Bionis' Interior and Prison Island have a collectibles list, but seemingly no collectibles to find. The former's map also clearly expands far, far beyond what can be explored upon your arrival.
    • An early point in the game features a notable Aversion that practically qualifies as an Interface Red Herring. During the attack on your Doomed Hometown, Dunban temporarily joins your party. If you go to his equipment screen, you'll notice his current gear can't be removed. Naturally the player would suspect he'd either be Killed Off for Real (heck, he pretty much has all the qualities of a Sacrificial Lion) or at least would never join your party again. In fact... he does rejoin you later as a fully customisable, playable character. It's his sister, the protagonist's Childhood Friend / Love Interest, who's killed in the attack, and she did have fully customisable equipment at the time.
    • Played straight with Dickson, Mumkhar, and Alvis, who are temporarily controllable but have fixed equipment, lack a Skill trait, and only have two very basic Arts. It's pretty clear they'll never be permanent party members.
    • The Strange class of collectables are "named" by certain party members. The Rumble Box collectable, which was named by Riki, can be found before you first meet him.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X
    • There's an area in NLA called the Mimeosome Maintenance Center.
    • The first time you have a Heart-to-Heart with each of your different party members, you'll receive an achievement for it. Not so much for characters that are Downloadable Content for Japan and The Master Sniper though... Heart-to-Hearts are also recorded on the map when they're found out and/or completed, and there's also an achievement for maxing out a party member's affinity, unless they're once again for said DLC characters in Japan and for Lao.
    • During character creation, you can pick from a rather wild variety of skin, hair and eye colors, as well as some extremely non-human eyes. Moreover, nobody feels moved to comment about it if you do. This is because you're customizing your mimeosome, rather than a biological human body. Nobody comments because they all know you're a tricked-out robot, even if you don't at first. For that matter, in character creation none of the eye designs look all that natural.
    • Chapter 3 introduces you to the Prone race with the implication that they were behind the destruction of Earth, and the base you encounter them in also has Puge and Pugilith support. Chapter 4 then formally introduces the Ganglion coalition as a whole, which the Prone are just one race in. However, the enemy index entries on the Prone, Puges and Pugiliths (accessible as soon as you engage any of them in combat) mention the Ganglion before you even hear of them in-story. On another note, the entry for the Prone lists them with "Cavern Clan" in parentheses, indicating that not only are the Prone divided into two races/clans, there are a few mission-exclusive fights with Tree Clan Prone, the aforementioned second Prone clan that becomes one of your allies. On a further note, there's an Achievement called Cavern Clan Immigration, implying the seemingly Always Chaotic Evil clan of Prone will become allies too.
    • The "[Race] Immigration" achievements usually don't spoil much seeing as the race names won't mean much until you meet them, with two exceptions: the one listed above is one, but you get "Definian Immigration" for completing a quest that involves the Heel–Face Turn of one of their race, and it isn't until the post game that only a couple more join in.
    • It might seem a little odd that the Enforcer healing skill is called "Repair". It removes debuffs as well as heals, so maybe it's just named a little thematically for the high-tech setting of Xenoblade Chronicles X? Well, yes, but there's a bit more to it than that. This even ties in to Irina mentioning getting repaired during an early affinity mission and she herself having the art.
    • Ever wonder why the empty bottom left section of NLA has a survey percentage number like the rest of the districts?
    • Irina and Gwin of Team Irina can join you on missions, despite technically being part of another BLADE team, with Irina even leading it as Team Irina. They have another member, Marcus, who curiously never actually becomes playable. There's a fairly good reason for that, and it involves a lot of Ganglion missiles.
    • One of the categories in the Enemy Index is Chimeroids, and a category of Criticals Up and Slayer augments exist for this enemy type, all of which can be seen long before you encounter them.
    • After you defeat Luxaar for good and go through the cutscene, you earn a story achievement. But because the progress says 4/5, you know there's still more...
    • Subverted before proceeding to Chapter 11. Both of Gwin's Affinity Missions need to be completed to begin, but nothing happens to Gwin at all.
    • During Serial Thriller, Eleanora provides two leads on a serial killer at large. One is located in Sylvalum, the other in Oblivia. Taking one good look at the FrontierNav grid, the Affinity Chart, or simply remembering the names of every NPC will indicate which one is the correct lead.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
    • You gain access to the Blade Library, which keeps track of all the unique Blades you've summoned/obtained. It also shows the silhouettes of every single Blade you haven't obtained yet. Some of them will look rather familiar and they also appear at the top of list alongside those of Rex, Nia, and Tora's, which makes it evident that both Morag and Zeke become party members eventually.
    • The fact that Mòrag will join the party is practically given away if the party decides to do a sidequest in Mor Ardain the second it becomes available. The sidequest in question leads to a murder investigation, but you are blocked from proceeding until you get the help of someone familiar with Mor Ardain. At that point, there's really only one candidate for this: Mòrag.
    • Similarly, while the game tries to avert this by giving a Guest-Star Party Member a full skill tree, exp gain, customizable moves, and favored consumables, the fact that they can't bond with any Blades besides their starting one, and that said starting Blade's affinity level never increases, should raise some eyebrows.
    • Some items will list the names of locations you haven't actually been to yet in their "Obtained at" description.
    • Done with Floren in the Mercenary Missions menu. Assigning Floren to a job that requires a Blade of a specific gender reveals that Floren's a guy, but the boy himself never tells the party this until the end of his sidequest, in which they all react with complete surprise.
    • During chapter 1, Nia, Jin, and Malos all join Rex's party. The fact that Nia is the only one of the three whose party artwork is in the same style as Rex's should make it clear which of the three will end up being a permanent party member.
    • The Indoline Praetorium doesn't have any Heart-to-Hearts, there are no quests after the initial ones, and there aren't any Merc Missions to increase its stores' inventories, a clue that something major will happen to the place later on.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Zig-zagged. Similar to the previous game's Blade Library the game features a Hero Roster that showcases the game's recruitable Heroes. It's played straight in that once again you can see the silhouettes of Heroes that you haven't recruited, one in particular is clearly a silhouette of a Consul/Moebius, the game's main enemy faction, while another is clearly one of the robot assassins you occasionally fight in sidequests, neither of which you'd ever expect to assist the heroes, let alone join the party. Additionally, it manages to spoil a certain plot point, as two of the silhouettes are Smoldering Cammuravi and Glorysong Miyabi, the former of whom dies during the story and the latter of whom has been dead since the start, indicating that neither of them are going to stay dead if they end up joining the party. However, it also averts it in that it DOESN'T show the silhouettes of the final two Heroes, which hides that Melia and Nia from the first and second games respectively return as post-game Heroes.
• X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse has three characters (in the console versions, at least) marked with a question mark at all times in the selection, making clear some unlockables are there. And the identity of one is spoiled by the Review Computer, where one of the collectible items listed is "Iron Man armor".

• In Yggdra Union, you can pick up various equippable items that can only be used by Russell and Elena as early as chapter 2. They don't even show signs of wanting to join forces with you until chapter 4.

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