Stealth Sequel / Video Games

• Through Canon Welding, the Ace Combat series as a whole is a prequel to the United Galaxy Space Force series (or UGSF for short), seemingly named after the organization from Namco's far earlier Galaxian. Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere takes place in 2040 and is chronologically the first game in the UGSF timeline.
• In Alone in the Dark: Illumination, Ted Carnby is implied to actually be the original Edward Carnby, still alive in the modern era and living under an assumed identity. This suggests that the game is actually a sequel to the 2008 Alone in the Dark game.
• It was assumed that all Animal Crossing games took place in Alternate Continuities, however Animal Crossing: New Leaf broke from that tradition. Events from previous games are noted, Character Development is in place for some NPCs, and the characters seem older (most pronounced with the Tanuki twins and Kapp'n's family).
• Arknights Endfield initially looks to be a second, yet separate story that takes place within the Arknights universe, but not on the same planet. Then one of the operators revealed turns out to be Angelina, with operator records specifying her as a clone of the original.
• Armored Core V was initially thought of as a Continuity Reboot of the Armored Core series (like the 3 and 4 installments before it), but Verdict Day features several surprise appearances of elements of the 4 universe and the Forgotten Day text story strongly imply the series is actually set in the future of the Armored Core 4 universe.
• Art of Fighting 2 turns out to be a Stealth Prequel to Fatal Fury, with the hidden final boss being a younger version of Geese Howard. After being defeated, Geese orders the murder of Terry and Andy's father, thus setting up the events of Fatal Fury: King of Fighters.
• Batsugun ends up being both a prequel and a sequel to two previous games made by Toaplan. Jeego's ending reveals that the entire game is a prequel to Out Zone, as the character in question is the main character of that game while some of Schneider's end stage dialogue reveals that he's the pilot of Sky Shark.
• The main story of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon initially presents itself as a prequel to the Bayonetta series. However, Jeanne's Tale, set shortly afterwards, turns out to be a sequel to Bayonetta 3, with that game's antagonist, Singularity, having gone back in time after his defeat to finish what he'd started.
• BioShock Infinite has story-wise no connection with the earlier BioShock games whatsoever for most of the game, until at the very end it's revealed to be a prequel/sequel/taking place on an alternate timeline when the player character is teleported to Rapture, the setting of the first two games. The Burial at Sea DLC affirms this trope further, alternating between timelines of both the main campaign but also of the first BioShock.
• The Williams Electronics game Blaster is suggested to be a sequel to Robotron: 2084. The arcade game's Attract Mode mentions something about the Robotrons having destroyed humanity. Given this much, it indicates that the player ultimately failed in their mission (or just ran out of quarters, the game got too fast, or the player got tired of playing — it would have to be one of these since games of this era had no ending except for you losing all of your lives). Incidentally, according to Electronic Games magazine, Robotron 2084 was a sequel to Defender and Defender II.
• The Golden Ending to Blaster Master Zero reveals that it was the protagonists of MetaFight, the original Japanese version of Blaster Master, who sent Sophia the 3rd and Eve to Earth. They show up in Blaster Master Zero III, 10 years after their events.
• Bullet Hell Monday: Finale is a weird case on account of the BHM series not really having an explicit plot. Reaching the boss of True Chapter 5 flashes the chapter's title card: "CHAPTER 5 — ADVANCE TO THE BLACK", referring to the previous title in the series, Bullet Hell Monday: Black. In other words, Finale alludes to being an Interquel to Black rather than a sequel.
• Call of Duty:
  • Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare takes place in the far future of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trilogy, but apart from some minor nods (such as the hull designation of the Retribution, the SWC-141 sniper rifle being recommended by Russian delegates in remembrance of Task Force 141's rescue of President Vorshevsky back in Modern Warfare 3), it's not very noticeable and only confirmed by Word of God.
  • Halfway through an otherwise unrelated game set in a different war with a different set of characters, Call of Duty: Black Ops reveals itself to be a direct sequel to earlier title Call of Duty: World at War, complete with a flashback mission once again taking place during World War 2 and featuring two returning characters. Said flashback ends with one of the characters dead and the other swearing revenge, setting the plot of this game in motion as he brainwashes the protagonist Mason to exact revenge on his behalf.
• By means of the Shared Universe centered around Street Fighter, Capcom has a handful of examples.
  • Final Fight is one to the original Street Fighter, as Mike Haggar is mentioned in the intro as being a former Street Fighter and has an in-lore rivalry with Zangief. In fact, the game was originally going to be called Street Fighter '89 until people noticed it was nothing like the first game.
  • In turn, Captain Commando is a futuristic sequel to Final Fight. The game is set in Metro City, Ginzu the Ninja is Guy's future successor in the ways of the Bushin school, and a bust of Mike Haggar can be obtained as a power-up.
• Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker was billed a Mario spinoff based on the Captain Toad levels of Super Mario 3D World. However, The Stinger depicts a modified opening of 3D World, showing Captain Toad was chasing a green star into the Sprixie Kingdom Pipe moments after Mario and co. went in there to chase after Bowser, making Treasure Tracker a prequel. The Nintendo Switch and 3DS ports, among a few other minor changes, swap the scene out for one that ties into the Switch's flagship Mario title, Super Mario Odyssey, instead.
• Car Escape turns out to be one, though being a freeware mobile game by an indie developer, it's an unauthorized one. The plot of the series gets increasingly tangled with Chinese gangsters and stopping their operations, but Chapter 11 has a big reveal that Mike was actually working for the gang as a drug dealer... specifically trafficking blue meth, which is explicitly stated to be "Heisenberg's drug", directly setting the game in the same universe as Breaking Bad.
• Code Vein: Mention is made of "horrors" that ravaged the world following the Great Collapse. It was these creatures that the revenants were created to fight. Near the end of the game, it is revealed that the horrors are in fact Aragami, meaning the game is either a distant prequel or sequel to God Eater. The Aragami still prowl the outskirts of the city ruins and are only kept at bay by the Gaol of the Mist.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert was revealed to be a prequel to the Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series when Kane appears at the end of the Soviet campaign, revealing himself as the mastermind of the war. This is somewhat complicated by the rather odd nature of the series timeline, but at least within Red Alert itself, it works. This was later Jossed by EA after they took over the franchise and stated that the Red Alert series and the Tiberian series took place in two universes... Yet they still made an ambiguous reference to Kane being Stalin's advisor in an obscure piece of promotional material for Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars.
• Control focuses on investigators from the Federal Bureau of Control, which is tasked with investigating paranormal events; one type focused on in particular are AWEs, which are supernatural events that affect the nature of the world and are derived from both ancient myths and modern urban legends. Near the end of the game, you find a report about a previous case the Bureau investigated. The name of said case? The "Bright Falls Incident". Yes, that Bright Falls. Turns out our old friend Alan was at the center of an AWE that caused everything he wrote to become true, and the Bureau was never able to recover his body... Until the AWE DLC, which continues Alan's story, and implies that all of Control is simply his latest work, an attempt to write into existence a hero capable of freeing him from the Dark Presence.
• An Easter Egg in Days Gone reveals that it takes place in the same universe as the Syphon Filter games, which were also made by SIE Bend Studio (back when it was called Eidetic). Specifically, The Virus that caused the Zombie Apocalypse is a strain of the Syphon Filter virus, with this being a world where the games' protagonists failed to stop its release.
• As the game goes on, it becomes clear that Arkane Studios' DEATHLOOP takes place in the same universe as Dishonored, albeit at an undetermined point in the future. There are some early hints to this being the case, such as similar abilities, a shared architectural style, the lack of any real-world locations (coupled with Blackreef bearing some similarities to descriptions of Tyvia, an unseen but often-mentioned nation in Dishonored), and documents revealing that years in Deathloop are recorded and named in the same idiosyncratic style as in Dishonored (i.e. "The Year of the Nets", rather than a numbered year). But as the game progresses, the player can locate a shotgun from Dunwall Imperial Armory, a tape recording of whaler song, and ultimately a pair of oil-powered duelling pistols. Moreover, an early design document of the game makes the connection much more overt.
• A popular fan theory states that Déraciné is actually a prequel to Bloodborne. The setting could easily pass for the Byrgenwerth institute in its prime, and several of the characters share names and characteristics with important characters from Bloodborne. And, of course, unseen entities that move about and influence the world from beyond the veil. Who's to say Oedon isn't a stronger version of the Kind Faerie? While Hidetaka Miyazaki would apologize for the rampant speculation of a Bloodborne sequel incited due to the references inserted by him and other members of FromSoftware in an interview with 4Gamer (partial translations), he did not explicitly weigh in on the canoncity of these Easter eggs, so the theory persists.
• Dinner with Andre by Liza Daly has a twist ending where the PC turns out to be the same character from Liza's previous IF work Bloodline several years later and sees someone she knows from that time.
• Disgaea 5 seems like another Numbered Sequel in the series, save for a few oddities like relations between the Netherworld and Celestia being non-existent, and Christo (initially) having some rather outdated views on how demons are supposed to behave. This is seemingly explained in the epilogue which implies the game is in fact a prequel to the rest of the franchise, and that Christo will eventually become Seraph Lamington from the first game.
• DoDonPachi Resurrection BLACK LABEL has an Arrange Mode that's a crossover with Ketsui. At first it seems like a plotless crossover made in the name of Rule of Cool, but then it turns out the game is a Stealth Prequel to Ketsui; the ending reveals that the events of the game are actually a simulation "based on an ancient battle" in order to prepare the Ketsui pilots for their assault on EVAC Industry.
• Doom:
  • Doom (2016) was advertised as a Continuity Reboot of the Doom franchise, like with Doom³, but certain lore tidbits imply that it's a canonical sequel to the original series, with the Doom Slayer being the same Doomguy from Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth, and Doom 64. Specifically, 64 ends with Doomguy electing to stay in Hell in order to make sure the Legions of Hell will never be a threat to Earth again, while 2016 notes that the Slayer has been rampaging through Hell for countless eons. Direct sequel Doom Eternal (and the 2020 re-release of 64) confirms that this is indeed the case: Sometime after the ending of 64, Doomguy stumbles onto the Night Sentinels' homeworld of Argent D'Nur and rises through their ranks until he becomes the legendary Doom Slayer.
  • In addition, several objects appear to tie modern Doom in with Doom 3, such as the inert Soul Cube being in both Olivia Pierce's office in 2016 and the Doom Slayer's "office" aboard the Fortress of Doom in Eternal, a drawing of the Doom Slayer looking almost exactly like a tablet portraying the Martian Hero in Doom 3, as well as the Martian Hero being entombed in a sarcophagus in Doom 3, whereas the Doom Slayer wakes up from a (differently designed) sarcophagus in 2016. There is also a wall relief◊ of the Martian Hero using the Soul Cube against a group of demons in the 2016 Argent D'nur level, which is highly similar to the aforementioned tablet. Additionally, Eternal reveals that the Argenta created "Hebeth", a lost settlement of theirs located deep beneath Mars.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest III looks like a Continuity Reboot, but late in the game you find yourself on a very familiar world map, and the ending names you as the famed ancestor of the first two games' heroes.
  • Dragon Quest VI has thematic links to the other "Zenithian Trilogy" games (IV and V), but there are hints that it's actually a prequel.
  • Dragon Quest VIII is implicitly a distant sequel to the Erdrick Trilogy, with Empyrea's backstory involving assisting the seven Sages to seal away the demon Rhapthorne in the past, and her true name being revealed as Ramia — the legendary Everbird that serves as players' aerial transport in the third game — in the ending.
  • Dragon Quest XI is a prequel to III, especially after defeating the True Final Boss. The Luminary (the game's hero) is given the name of Erdrick, and The Stinger is a recreation of III's opening cutscene where the hero gets waken up.
• EXA_PICO: When Ciel nosurge, the first game in the Surge Concerto series, came out, it was believed to be a Creator-Driven Successor to the Ar tonelico games. Then Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star came and confirmed Surge Concerto to be a prequel series.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy is a stealth prequel to the original game, ending where the first one started: a nameless warrior outside Corneria with a crystal in hand. However, due to the Timey-Wimey Ball nature of the series, it's a sequel from the perspective of Garland.
  • Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 are vaguely implied to be a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, taking place centuries, or maybe even millennia, before VII, with the suggestion that Shinra from X-2 is a far off ancestor of President Shinra and Rufus; Shinra mentions using the Farplane as a power source, similar to how in VII, the Mako energy that Shinra Electric Power Company produces is made using the planet's Lifestream. Word of God also confirmed the writer "liked the idea" of them being connected. Final Fantasy VII Remake would then feature a photo of the Shinra company's founders, one of them sporting the exact same mask as the X-2 character, with the game's Ultimania confirming this was an intentional reference to Shinra (and presumably canonizing the link between games in the process).
  • Initially rumored by fans before being more or less confirmed by the Ultimania companion book, Final Fantasy VII Remake is this to the original game. Throughout the plot, several characters experience visions of events that occurred in the original "timeline" of the Compilation, including visions of Aerith's death, Cloud using the Omnislash on Sephiroth, a retelling of the climactic final fight of Crisis Core, and a scene from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, among others. A trio of Whispers (Rubrum, Viridi and Croceo) battled late-game are also revealed in the Ultimania book to be Yazoo, Loz and Kadaj, the "Remnants of Sephiroth" from the same film. (The Japanese version goes one further, with one of Croceo's moves directly referencing Yazoo's primary weapon.) The Big Bad, Sephiroth, is heavily suggested to be a future version from after the events of the original game, who has been going around screwing with the timeline in hopes of undoing his original defeat at the hands of Cloud and company, while the Ultimania book goes one further and suggests that the Sephiroth the party encounters from the highway battle onwards is not the same version as all the previous times Cloud either had a vision or hallucination of him. The Whispers/Arbiters of Fate are also suggested as a form of the Time Police trying to correct the changes, but with their defeat, the entire "Remake" series is now free to go Off the Rails into an entirely new Alternate Timeline.
  • With the release of the Intergrade DLC for FFVIIR, Crisis Core lead character Zack's storyline has become this, functioning as an Alternate Timeline to the events of that game (and possibly VII itself, depending on where the creators take it). As a result of the player party's machinations at the end of Remake, Zack (who normally would have died outside Midgar and urged Cloud to be his "living legacy") not only survives his Last Stand against a large contingent of Shinra forces, but completes his mission to bring Cloud back to Midgar, with the DLC showing him stop at Aerith's church to reunite with her... only to discover that she's missing and that no one seems to know who she is.
  • Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin was initially described as a Dark Fantasy take on the first game, but late in the game it's revealed that the Amnesiac Heroes, who initially thought themselves to be the Warriors of Light, were actually the titular Strangers, tasked with destroying excess darkness in other worlds, only to be trapped in a cycle where the world is reset by their superiors — the Lufenians mentioned in the backstory of FFI and Dissidia — due to their failure to complete their task. Following this revelation, Jack's love for Princess Sarah and contempt for the Lufenians motivate him to willingly be corrupted by the darkness, leading to him becoming the avatar of Chaos, and by extension the original game's Garland, while Ash, Jed, Neon, and Sophia die and reincarnate as the Four Fiends as seen in the original Final Fantasy. On the upside, Jack's actions result in the cycle finally being broken, leaving Garland and the Four Fiends free to facilitate the rise of the true Warriors of Light so the world would be protected. Word of God and additional story content through DLC updates blunt this somewhat, with the events of Stranger of Paradise taking place in a version of Corneria and its surrounding areas, but not necessarily the world of FFI. Resident Dimensional Traveler Gilgamesh also mentions that Jack might not be the same Garland he met during the cycle of conflict at the center of Dissidia. The implication is that it's ultimately up to the player if they count the game as a prequel or a story taking place in a parallel universe.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The Jugdral games are implied to be a distant prequel to the Archanea games, taking place many years earlier on a different continent. Loptous, the games' Big Bad, is implied to be a member of the Earth Dragon tribe like the Archanea games' villain Medeus, and the deity Naga is the same in both games. Likewise, while Fire Emblem: Awakening is directly stated to be a distant sequel to the Archanea games, the existence of Priam, who claims to be a descendant of Ike, also implicitly puts it as a sequel to the Tellius games as well, though how distant is uncertain — since Awakening introduces the concept of Alternate Universes to the series through Outrealm Gates, and Time Travel is implied in DLC and the following game to be more akin to dimension hopping, Priam is just as likely, if not more so, to originate from an alternate universe.
  • Downplayed by Fire Emblem Fates; three apparent Captain Ersatz characters named Odin, Laslow, and Selena are revealed in support dialogue and DLC to actually be Owain, Inigo, and Severa from Fire Emblem: Awakening, and they travelled from Ylisse to Nohr after defeating Grima to participate in the game's plot.
  • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia's post-game content proves to be a distant prequel to Awakening, as the Bonus Dungeon explains Big Bad Grima's origins and has his younger self show up as the Superboss.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 2 doesn't look like this since it's a Numbered Sequel to the first game. Until Nights 5 and 6 reveal that it's actually a prequel. You can also notice by the lower pay, the fact that the Phone Guy is still alive, and the fact that animatronics used to walk around in the day in the first game, while they currently do in the second.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 4 has cutscenes in between nights that hint towards this trope, but the true reveal that 4 is a stealth prequel for the entire franchise doesn't come until the cutscene of Night 5, where an event plays out that is heavily implied to be either the infamous "Bite of '87" or an even earlier event.
  • Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator is marketed as what the title suggests, a pizzeria simulator. Then after the first five minutes, the extremely homicidal animatronics show up.
• Frog Fractions was an absurdist game that started off as a parody Edutainment Game, then went Off the Rails into head-spinning Gameplay Roulette. When the devs raised money for a sequel, they promised that said sequel would be published under a completely different name, by a different company, on an unspecified date — nothing to connect it to the first game except the general theme of an off-the-rails plot and changing gameplay styles. They even made finding the sequel into the objective of an Alternate Reality Game. Sure enough, the sequel was eventually published and discovered by fans: it was disguised as Glittermitten Grove, seemingly a fairy-themed town-building sim for children. Except the credits revealed this sequel was actually Frog Fractions 3. The devs confirmed that the real Frog Fractions 2 was the ARG to find the sequel — technically making Glittermitten Grove a stealth sequel to a stealth sequel.
  Then in 2020, the devs ported the original game to Steam as Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition. The one addition was DLC where you could replay the game wearing a nice hat. However, Frog Fractions with a Hat quickly diverges from the original game and turns into a completely new story set some months after the first game's ending. And unlike the ARG or Glittermitten Grove, Frog Fractions with a Hat is a more direct continuation of the first game, continuing the original characters' stories.
• Girls' Frontline at first appears to be a wholly independent game by Chinese studio Mica Team, but Flavor Text in Chapter 9 and a booklet bundled with The Art of Girls' Frontline artbook indicate that it is actually a prequel to Codename: Bakery Girl, Mica Team's very first game that takes place almost 30 years later.
• Half-Life: Alyx initially seems like an Interquel for the Half-Life series, showing Alyx going on a relatively unimportant adventure between the events of the first and second game. It's actually an odd sort of sequel that finally resolves the infamous Cliffhanger ending of the second game (while replacing it with an entirely different cliffhanger); Alyx is manipulated by the G-Man into using his Time Master abilities to alter the timeline so Eli survives at the price of becoming his new asset. We then cut to the ending of Episode Two, only this time the Advisor that would've killed Eli drops dead and G-Man snatches Alyx away, leaving Gordon, Eli, and D0G in the wind.
• id Software:
  • The hero of Wolfenstein 3-D, BJ Blazkowicz, is revealed to be the grandfather of Commander Keen in the hint book for the former. There's also a persistent theory that the protagonist of Doom is also a descendant of BJ; the mobile RPGs go with this, where the final boss of Wolfenstein RPG is the Cyberdemon minus cybernetic parts (complete with those parts being destroyed when you defeat it) and the protagonist of Doom RPG is given the name "Stan Blazkowicz". A later timeline by Bethesda after the release of Doom (2016) confirms that the classic Doomguy is, in fact, a descendant of Commander Keen — though how truthful this is is up for debate, since this timeline seems to forget to account for several things, including, most ironically, the passage of time, and tries to suggest the Classic Doomguy (who now officially did his thing in 2022), the Doom³ Doomguy (whose really bad day was more than a hundred years later in 2145), and the combat engineer from Resurrection of Evil (who was clearly shown to be a different Marine) are all somehow the same person.
  • And then Doom Eternal strongly implies the Doom Slayer is the original Doomguy, including by referencing the famously memey Doom comic book of all things. Time shenanigans and alternate universes are almost certainly at play, especially when the DLC reveals the Dark Lord looks an awful lot like the Slayer. More in the Doom entry above.
• Ikaruga is generally thought of as Treasure's Creator-Driven Successor to Radiant Silvergun, but several aspects of Ikaruga suggests a more solid connection. The Post-Final Boss features the Stone-Like from Silvergun putting in an appearance, thus indicating that Ikaruga is an iteration (specifically, the last one) of the "Groundhog Day" Loop from Silvergun where things have, after countless repetitions, finally gone through a drastic change. This is shown in the Central Themes of enlightenment and ascendance for Ikaruga, which ultimately lead the protagonists to victory, contrasting sharply with Radiant Silvergun and its extremely depressing story and reinforcing the fact that the Downer Ending of the latter has been averted.
• Kagero: Deception II appears at first to be completely unrelated to the first game, outside of the primary gameplay conceit of killing your enemies with death traps. However, if you commit to killing absolutely anyone and everyone that you can, you're given an ending which finally provides a connection: Millennia finds herself in the service of a giant devil who turns her skin blue like the Timenoids; the implication is that she has become Astarte, making Kagero a prequel.
• Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe's "Magolor Epilogue" mode turns out to be a Stealth Prequel to Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, as the credits show that Magolor ended up in the Dream Kingdom after his decisive battle against the Master Crown.
• Kuukiyomi 3: Consider It More and More!! -Father to Son-: This game seems to be a completely different story in the same universe, until the 100th situation reveals that this game takes place before Kuukiyomi: Consider It. The player controls the son of the player character (who has become a mother) so unknown train passengers, who happen to be a father and a daughter, can sit down together. Their son and daughter are heavily implied to be younger versions of the player protagonist and his girlfriend C-Ko (or C.C. in the global version), respectively, from the first two games.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Oracle games are meant to be stealth prequels to Link's Awakening: The ending of a linked game shows Link sailing on a boat that looks a lot like the one at the beginning of LA. It wasn't officially confirmed until years after, in the Hyrule Historia guidebook. Later revisions to the timeline, however, would reverse this and place the Oracle games after Link's Awakening.
  • Tri Force Heroes is a Denser and Wackier Gaiden Game with seemingly no relationship to the rest of the franchise, but Word of God states that it's a direct sequel to A Link Between Worlds, with Green Link being the same one from ALBW, but in disguise.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is implied (though not outright stated) to be a prequel of Breath of the Wild. However, it is actually an Alternate Timeline created by a time travelling mini-Guardian and even has several other characters who time traveled from after the events of Breath of the Wild.
• The sci-fi FPS series Marathon takes place in the far future of the horror-adventure-FPS Pathways into Darkness; the Jjaro and W'rkncacnter play a key role in both, and some even theorize that the protagonist of Marathon is literally Pathways's hero rebuilt as a cyborg. There's also a theory that, given the Theme Naming and various other similarities, Bungie's subsequent series Halo is also part of the same universe^note For example, both franchises star a cyborg wearing MJOLNIR Powered Armor, and Halo borrows quite a bit of its concepts regarding artificial intelligences from its predecessor. And that's not even getting into how alternate realities and timelines play a key role in the story of Marathon: Infinity, though the direct references have largely ceased since 343 Industries took over the franchise.
• Masquerade by Kathleen Fischer has a number of endings, one of them causing the game to become a prequel to her other work, The Cove.
• Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters includes as a playable character a new robot named Duo, who Mega Man and company act as if they already know despite having never met him before in any of the prior games. In his ending, it's revealed that he's a character from the then-unreleased Mega Man 8, and the game takes place sometime after it.
• Mewgenics:
  • One Cursed Item described in the sixth pre-release blog post is the Child's Skull, which replaces your cat's attack with a very low damage, short range projectile that can be used twice a turn called a tear. Now why does that sound familiar..?
  • Other references to Mew being set after the events of The Binding of Isaac include the Pooter enemy making a return here and a Tank passive ability called Thunder Thighs, who shares a name and similar effect to a passive item from Isaac, along with gravestones bearing Isaac's face on them.
• Might and Magic X is set in Ubisoft's rebooted Might and Magic 'verse called Ashan, and is consequently forbidden from having explicit science fantasy elements. It also drops some heavy hints that Ashan is just one world amongst the many in the old setting, including featuring a character from the mid-90s novels... who in those novels confirmed that the distant place he came from was an interstellar polity he served as an undercover operative for.
• Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, co-produced by the creators of the Wonder Boy in Monster Land series, is a continuation of said series in all but name (due to Sega retaining the trademark on the Wonder Boy name), as evident by numerous Continuity Nods and reused music pieces.
• Mortal Kombat 9 starts off as a Soft Reboot with the Raiden at the end of Armageddon losing to Shao Khan who's set to take over the realms. Raiden sends a message back to his past self which undoes that timeline and sets up for a new continuity. After X continues the story in this new timeline, 11 comes along and brings back past versions of the cast due to the machinations of the Big Bad, Kronika. As the story proceeds, it's revealed that Kronika was actually behind the events of the original timeline from the original game all the way to Armageddon... and several unseen timelines before that, making this an outright continuation to the original series.
• Mother 3 plays with this, initially appearing to just be a thematic sequel to EarthBound (1994). It isn't until the final act that both the player and the characters learn that it takes place in the far future of the previous game.
• Narcolepsy by Adam Cadre isn't advertised as a sequel to Cadre's previous work I-0, but it isn't long before you run across a place mentioned in the prior game. Also, I-0's protagonist Tracy Valencia makes a somewhat in-joky cameo.
• NieR is an unusual example: It is hinted to be a sequel to Ending E of Drakengard, which in turn already had an official sequel based on Ending A. Thus, NieR is an alternate timeline to Drakengard 2. Until the Drakengard 3 promotional booklet explained that both timelines merged long after the end of 2, meaning Ending E wasn't an alternate universe, but simply the future.
• Pharaoh Rebirth by Krobon is a stealth sequel to Return of Egypt by the same developer, then known as "Driven Phantom Soft''. It turns out that the Big Bad from the old game orchestrated the events of the newer one to gain his revenge on the hero who defeated him, and one of the helper characters is actually the son of that legendary hero.
• Phase Paradox is a sequel to the 1995 space shooter Philosoma. While Philosoma had a slight element of horror, Phase Paradox is a straight survival horror game.
• Planetfall has a few references to Infocom's previous sci-fi work Starcross that imply that it is set within the same universe several centuries later. And a grue appears, implying it is in the Zork universe as well.
• Project × Zone is this to Namco × Capcom, especially (and pragmatically) in areas that never got Namco × Capcom. It's no secret in-game, though, just outside of it.
• Ribbit is an unofficial Stealth Sequel to Manos: The Hands of Fate, with Manos serving as the game's twist villain.
• Sakuna Of Rice And Ruin may be part of the Fairy Bloom series from the same developer, Edelweiss, as Lady Kamuhitsuki is secretly revealed (by a mere little item description) to be the protagonist, Freesia from Fairy Bloom Freesia all grown up and ascended to godhood. Adding to this implication is the fact that the minigame that gives the item, "Sakuna the Efflorescent," involves protecting a giant plant from waves of invaders (and the premise of Fairy Bloom involved a fairy protecting a flower from invaders). In addition to this, Myrthe explicitly mentions meeting King Listine "and a beautiful fairy" during her travels in a dinner cutscene.
• The original Shadow Hearts wasn't advertised as a sequel to Koudelka, and indeed some people still claim that they don't have any real story links, despite the recurring theme of the Emigre Document, the villain impersonating a character from Koudelka, the real version of that character turning up later, Koudelka herself playing a significant role, Koudelka's son being a party member, and the last chapter of Shadow Hearts taking place in the monastery Koudelka was set in.
• Shadow of the Colossus is a prequel to ICO, but you'd never realize until the very end. And even then you might not realize unless you were a big fan of ICO.
• Shin Megami Tensei has a couple of examples:
  • The Persona series is implied to take place after Shin Megami Tensei if..., due to the appearance of if...'s female protagonist in the first two (well, technically three) Persona games.
  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army has a very convoluted example: Raidou Kuzunoha the 40th, the true Big Bad of the game, goes back in time to the 1930s in order to stop the events of Shin Megami Tensei I and Shin Megami Tensei II from happening. Since his plan requires the death of thousands, Raidou XIV steps in and stops his plan, saving the Capital from destruction but dooming the Earth's entire population in the future. However, while his plan failed, Shin Megami Tensei if..., the Devil Summoner series and the Persona series shows that his plan succeeded, regardless of his involvement or not.
• Silent Hill 3 appears unconnected to earlier games at first, with a new protagonist named Heather and a different location. Heather spends the first half of the game trying to get home, and when she does she finds the corpse of her father... Harry Mason, the protagonist of Silent Hill. And then it turns out Heather is partially Alessa from the first game. It's complicated.
• Snatcher, being the second game directed by Hideo Kojima following the original Metal Gear, features several references to his previous work. Most notably Gillian Seed's robotic sidekick, who was modeled by his creator after the "Metal Gear menace from the late 20th century." Other references include Junker chief Benson Cunningham being a former FOXHOUND strategist and the head of the Snatcher project being none other than Dr. Pettrovich Madnar, the creator of the original Metal Gear. However, numerous inconsistencies introduced in later Metal Gear sequels have made it difficult to fit Snatcher into the Metal Gear continuity anymore.
• The good ending of Sonic Mania hints that the Phantom Ruby, the power source everyone's after, is connected to Infinite, the major Big Bad of Sonic Forces and that Classic Sonic, having been pulled into a mysterious purple void at the end of the final boss fight, is being sent to the future. Then the DLC upgrade Mania Plus added Encore Mode which is a Stealth Sequel to Forces, set after Classic Sonic's return to his era/world.
• Soulcalibur VI initially seems to be a straightforward remake of Soulcalibur, following its and Soul Edge's events faithfully (with the few new elements and early (re)appearances of other series veterans having little-to-no effect on the main plot). Then comes the secret chapter of Zasalamel's Soul Chronicle, where he receives a vision of the future from an anonymous person (highly implied to be the Zasalamel from the original timeline) which makes him reconsider his pursuit of death much earlier. However, Cassandra's last Soul Chronicle chapter is the most blatant evidence proving the game's status as a sequel, as she actually meets her alternate self who was corrupted by her time in Astral Chaos (as stated in the fifth game's artbook) and is warned to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, confirming once and for all that SCVI is set in a timeline parallel to the previous six games.
• The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe at first presents itself as an Updated Re-release of the game, but following the Narrator's disappointment of the marginal new content (I.E. a jumping circle), he first creates a Memory Zone as a monument to the game's 2013 launch and subsequent reviews, then tries to develop a sequel to the game in order to move the franchise forward, but upon seeing that his ideas lack structure, he realizes he could instead make a Same Plot Sequel. From this point forward, the game's Title Screen changes to say The Stanley Parable 2, with the Reassurance Bucket and the miniture Stanley figurines becoming significant additions to the gameplay.
• The Director's Cut version of Strike Suit Zero eventually reveals that the changes in the mission sequences and plot structure were due to the Mission Control character, Control, being in a "Groundhog Day" Loop and remembering enough from the original game's events to try to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Suda51:
  • Several of Suda 51's games contain small connections to previous ones, but Flower, Sun and Rain is a special case — the final scene contains an Art Shift to The Silver Case, with the character speaking to you seeming to be one from that game instead.
  • Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is, obviously, a continuation of No More Heroes. At the same time, however, other Grasshopper Manufacture games are folded into this game's narrative:
    • Badman is a character from a Killer7 side-story novel. The tie to killer7 is made all the stronger with the post-launch intro cutscene featuring a fully voiced appearance by Dan Smith.
    • The Travis Strikes Back visual novel segments are a continuation of The 25th Ward, featuring Kamui Uehara as a recurring character.
    • The Death Drive game Serious Moonlight is a continuation of Shadows of the Damned, with the actual title of Damned: Dark Knight, centered around Johnson as he is reborn as the hero "Eight Hearts".
• Super Robot Wars 30 seems like a standard, standalone entry in the franchise, even with the sweeping changes to narrative structure and some insight on what actually happened to the True Final Boss of the Super Robot Wars Z trilogy. Beat the game, though, and it's revealed that the tritagonist faction responsible for giving the Dreikreuz the Dreisstrager and the impetus to raise up the protagonist reached into The Multiverse a long time ago and fetched some robots from what remained of the world(s) containing the Z trilogy. And they're coming back.
• Tales of Symphonia turns out to be set in the same world as Tales of Phantasia. Just back when it was two worlds instead of one.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge presents itself as another game adaptation loosely based on the '87 cartoon, much like the Konami games were... That is, until the heroes reach the Technodrome, which is in ruins. This heavily hints that the game is actually set after the end of the series itself, in which the Technodrome was in disrepair after the Turtles left it stranded in Dimension X, and Krang's robot body was previously destroyed when it was used to defeat Lord Dregg, with the game's plot subsequently centered on reassembling it.
• Thief (2014) was ostensibly billed as a Continuity Reboot of the 1998 original game and its two sequels, but even a cursory examination at its plot and storyline suggests the game is a Distant Sequel to the prior titles. Aside from the fact that a prominent Legacy Character (the "Sneak Thief", who is Famed In-Story as a legendary thief who was caught and subsequently escaped from Moira Asylum) is implied to be the Garrett from the original trilogy, the plot makes numerous references to factions and events from the past, including Hammerites, Pagans, Karras and Baron Brestling (along with Arc Welding that suggests that the Primal is responsible in part for the Glyph Magic present in the original games). Additionally, this iteration of Garrett visits several locations that are heavily hinted to have existed in the past, including the famed Clocktower, the Keeper Library (from Deadly Shadows) situated underneath the House of Blossoms, and the aforementioned Asylum, seemingly named after a supporting character from Deadly Shadows (Lady Edwina Moira) and having ghosts that reference certain events in a level from the latter title.
• Ufouria 2 is in theory a sequel to Ufouria, but in practice it works more like a partial remake. However, The Stinger you get after completing it shows Hebe being turned into his original 1991 sprite and finding himself right at the beginning of the original game, so it's actually a stealth prequel.
• Volume was marketed as a standalone title, but the in-game flavor-text quickly establishes it as a sequel to creator Mike Bithell's earlier game, Thomas Was Alone. It even includes lyrics from a song about the protagonists of the first game.
• World Destruction League Thunder Tanks (and by extension WDL War Jetz) are strongly implied to be set some times after the events of Battletanx, what with the presence of several of Battletanx's original tank designs like the Flip-E and Goliath, mentions of the apocalypse, and Griffin being mentioned by the announcer if the players use the M1 Abrams.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 seems like a typical Thematic Sequel at first, until a cutscene at the start of the final chapter shows a scene that will be very familiar to anyone who played the first game: a space-station orbiting what looks like a modern-day Earth and name-drops someone very significant from Xenoblade: Professor Klaus, the scientist who would go on to become a god and the first game's Big Bad, thus implying Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a distant prequel. The truth is more complicated: 2 actually takes place parallel to the first game, with the latter an Alternate Universe to the original Earth where 2 takes place. Professor Klaus' experiment split him in two — one half became the first game's villainous Zanza in the new universe, while the other became the second game's benevolent Architect stuck on the ruined Earth that would become Alrest. Both titles are happening simultaneously in parallel; Rex's party in 2 are on a short timer to save their world from Malos, as The Architect knows that his time is running short because Shulk's party is about to kill Zanza and he'll die as well. Luckily, they manage it, and The Architect uses his last act before dying to create a new Elysium for the people of Alrest after having been inspired by their idealism that his attempt to restore life as atonement wasn't doomed to failure.

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