This page contains fully unmarked spoilers for The LEGO Ninjago Movie and some spoilers up to Season 7 for Ninjago. You Have Been Warned!
The LEGO Ninjago Movie Videogame is a LEGO Adaptation Game based on The LEGO Ninjago Movie made in 2017 to tie in with the release of the film. While the overall story closely follows the movie's plot, with some expansions here and there, the rest of the game features a plethora of extra characters and content drawn from the original Ninjago show to pad out gameplay.
- Adaptation Expansion: The game takes a movie that ran under two hours and adds enough content to pad out at least five hours of gameplay, with an especially notable example being the battle involving Garmadon and Lady Iron Dragon, which takes a scene barely 20 seconds long and turns it into around 5-10 minutes of gameplay even without the side-content.
- All Your Powers Combined: Not only does Master Chen have the ability to use every Spinjutsu element like in the show, but one Ancient Scroll (this game's version of Red Bricks) gives the same ability to every Spinjutsu user.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: A large portion of the character roster (around 20%) is dedicated to several variants of the ninja heroes, which play exactly the same as the story-unlocked ones. Even the Secret Character is just a Lloyd variant.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The hub areas are full of jumping and platforming that would very easily confuse the partner AI pathfinding, so to get around that, if you get a bit too far ahead from the other characters they will do a ninja-style smoke teleportation to bypass the potential issue.
- Bragging Rights Reward: The Gold Ninja requires getting every gold brick in the game to open his door, and his abilities are readily available in numerous other characters used to get those bricks, so he only really exists for 100% Completion.
- Canon Foreigner: While the game does include characters from the rest of the franchise to fill out the roster, they're only fought in dojos and found as collectables to avoid messing with the original plot, so to provide extra enemies for the actual main story, the game introduces a bunch of villain characters that weren't in the movie or the show, such as Mecha Crab, the jungle-inhabiting Snake Army, and the two generals for the flashback armies.
- Canon Immigrant: Thanks to The LEGO Ninjago Movie being an Adaptation Distillation of the early Ninjago years, none of the later storyline characters were included, like the various villains and other Spinjutsu users. But since LEGO games need at least 50 distinct characters to make up a good roster, this one went ahead and brought in as many characters from the franchise as available (which at the time was the cast introduced up to Season 7 of the show).
- Cutting the Knot: The Dojo "The Secret Factory" is mainly designed around four platforms connected by conveyor belts that periodically have 2 electrified for a while, with the intended method to deal with it being to constantly move around the arena avoiding the electricity... or you can take one of the side elevators and stay on one of the higher platforms that never get electrified, since the mooks will teleport to you and Zane's bow lets you snipe General Cryptor without concern.
- Disney Villain Death: After defeating General Kozu in his arena, you see him fall into lava.
- Enemy Mine: Unlike the movie, where between Garmadon's capture in the jungle and (inevitable) betrayal in the temple he doesn't provide any actual aid, in the game his abilities end up necessary for progression and after being freed from his cage and bonds he genuinely helps the ninjas, even if only for his own ends.
- Forced Tutorial: Tutorial animations pop up frequently throughout the game and each cannot be skipped until they play through once. They'll appear even on story replays, and the levels from "The Uncrossable Jungle" to "The Unclimbable Mountain" have each ninja learn their Spinjitzu element, which all share the same hold-button-and-hover-over-target controls.
- Giant Enemy Crab: The Mecha Crab boss is utterly massive even compared to all the other aquatic Animal Mecha in the Shark Army, comparable to Garmadon's personal mechs in building-like size, to the point it's impervious to head-on attacks, so naturally defeating it requires you to Attack Its Weak Point which causes massive damage.
- Hacking Minigame: There are two types of hacking mini-puzzles that both require a Nindroid to solve (scanner hacking with a Simon Says-style and terminal hacking with timed symbol matching), though the minigames can be bypassed with the "Fast Interact" Ancient Scroll.
- Money Spider: Unlike most LEGO games where you need to unlock an extra or use a Finishing Move to get studs from enemies, this game has all enemies inherently drop studs on death, with the amount dropped based on how high the multiplier is.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Per the franchise, Garmadon and a few other villainous characters have four-armed torsos, and not only are all of them dangerous foes, but the Super-Strength granted by the extra arms is needed to pull on special handles that require it
- Person of Mass Construction: Following on from how in The LEGO Ninjago Movie Lloyd's element of "green" represents life and how it "connects" everything, Lloyd achieving inner balance grants him the powers of a Master Builder from The LEGO Movie Videogame to take collections of three extra-large masses of bricks, break them down, and "connect" them together into something usable.
- Poltergeist: The special ability of ghostly characters is to possess inanimate objects and manipulate them to solve puzzles.
- Rump Roast: Using Fire Spinjutsu on an enemy will set their butt ablaze, causing them to hop around as they try to put the fire out.
- Secret Character: A hooded variant of Lloyd is only attainable by entering a code for him, unlike every other character that is gotten through normal game progression.
- Silly Simian: The "Uncrossable Jungle" level features a recurring monkey that gets up to plenty of goofy situations while Nya constantly coos at it.
- Super-Speed: Two characters (Griffin Turner and Acronix) have the ability to massively boost their movement speed by holding the special move button, which not only can trivialize races but also grants running-based Walk on Water skills, something necessary for some collectables in "The Uncrossable Jungle" which can only be reached by crossing the Grimy Water.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: During the "Dark Ravine" level, you have the caged Garmadon as an "ally", but thanks to said cage he's practically useless for fighting and normal puzzle-solving, and since he can't climb ladders or run up walls the level acts as an Escort Mission to get him around. But that same cage is also so heavy that it's necessary for activating super-weighted pressure pads, so level progress requires that the ninjas help him past obstacles. The ninjas lampshade this contrived necessary ability by noting if they brought something heavy like a sandbag they could simply leave Garmadon behind, something he feels insulted by.
- Tunnel King: Unlike in the show where only Constrictai are able to do so, in this game every member of the Serpentine have the ability to burrow through the earth, albeit limited to specific underground paths.
- Utility Magic: While the Spinjutsu abilities can be used for combat, they're so slow to charge and unwieldy to aim that you'll only really be using them for their primary puzzle-solving purpose.
- Utility Weapon: Each and every weapon-type has a specific extra puzzle-solving use, such as large swords (like Lloyd's) cutting through heavy vines, hammers (like Cole's) pounding stakes, and staffs (like Master Wu's) turning socketable levers.
- Villain Episode: The post-story Epilogue level involves playing as "minifig" versions of two Humongous Mecha named Garma Mecha Man and Green Ninja Mech Dragon as they wreck a miniature version of Ninjago City in classic Kaiju fashion.
- Whole Episode Flashback: As part of the game's Adaptation Expansion, the single scene flashback about Garmadon meeting and falling in love with Lady Iron Dragon / Koko is turned into an entire elaborate level/hub.
