Wham! Episode/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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  • Asura's Wrath Episode 12. The little girl and the village Asura was protecting is completely destroyed by Olga of the deities and all the inhabitants are dead. Asura goes even more apeshit then usual and completely annilhates Olga's fleet.
  • At the very end of the normal ending of Aquaria, the protagonist, Naija, says a short sentence about how you need to search the game more closely. The sentence ends with two little words that turn the world upside down.

"You've reached an end, but it is not all I have to share. You've become lost along the way, concerned only with the immediate facts. Return to the waters, and follow the trails hidden in my memories...the story of my childhood. Find me...before the world is lost...my son..."

  • Arc the Lad 2's first scene shows the slaughter of Elc's (the game's hero) people. Then the game's makers apparently decided to beat the record of Wham Moments done in a single video game, by repeatedly punching the player.
  • The Final Fantasy series have plenty of whams:
    • Final Fantasy V, Exdeath squashes two worlds together and combines this with the death of Galuf and a rare lack of Forgot About His Powers.
    • Final Fantasy VI: Kefka destroys the world, and the game continues after this.
    • Before It Was His Sled, Aeris/Aerith getting Killed Off for Real in Final Fantasy VII was pretty much WHAM all over. And yet that's not the Whammiest moment in the game. Add in the first scene at North Crater where Cloud loses his sanity, gives Sephiroth the Black Materia which lets him cast Meteor, causes the WEAPONs to be unleashed, and wrapped in the candy coating that is Sephiroth has actually been dead this whole time and the one who you've been chasing around the world was actually Jenova (Who, admittedly, was under the control of Puppet Master Sephiroth).
    • Final Fantasy VIII: the Sorceress Edea, who was the main villain for about the first two fifths of the game, turns out to be the lady who raised everyone in the party at an orphanage.
    • Final Fantasy IX: Half of of the game consists of this. One city's population slaughtered in a surprise assault, another one nuked, summoned Eldritch Abomination crushes one more city... and the situation goes even more downhill from there. Every time you think "This can't be going on any more!" you get the next wham. And then we discover the sinister origins of Zidane.
    • There's also the scene in Final Fantasy X in Zanarkand, where Yunalesca tells the party that Sin is eternal, and that every Final Aeon that defeats Sin will become Sin in it's place. And don't forget the part where you find out that Tidus is simply part of a dream of the fayth, who will wake up if you complete the game. You then move forward realizing that finishing the game will essentially mean the death of Tidus.
    • In Final Fantasy XII when the party reaches Giruvegan and Ashe has a meeting with the Occuria.
    • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Final Fantasy Tactics might challenge IX for the most Wham-tastic game in the series.
      • At the end of Chapter 1, Delita and Ramza's lives get changed in a major way.
      • About three storyline battles later, you learn that Gafgarion is not what he seems.
      • Then, in the last battle of Chapter 2, you learn what the Church is really hiding. Those are just selections. There's Wham candidates after just about every battle.
  • Ape Escape's Trick Castle. Though it seems like the last level, no sooner do you reach Specter and Buzz before they ditch you, leave you to fight an armoured warrior, you get transported back to the present day where the monkeys are already in charge of the city and the professor and Katie have been kidnapped.
  • Dawn of War is has a great many of these.
    • Firstly, the revelation that Azariah Kyras has been a heretic since the original game. Yeah, that's right, the leader of the Blood Ravens who has thus far directed every last one of their engagements has been a servant of Chaos. Only gets more poignant when you realize also that this means that the slaughter of the 1st Kronus Liberators by Davian Thule, an act which haunted him for a great time, was ordered by an enemy of the Emperor.
    • Another one is the revelation of the traitor in Chaos Rising. Here's a hint, it is one of your sergeants. And you've likely built a certain attachment to a few of them, so it can be quite the shock.
    • Another revelation, connected to the first. It turns out that the daemon who led Kyras to evil is in fact the Daemon of the Maledictum. In other words, the very daemon of Khorne that Gabriel himself released during the events of the first game. Wham episode indeed.
    • From Dawn of War II, Davian Thule being killed by a Warrior Beast counts. Of course, then there's him returning as a Dreadnought. And gentlemen, it is glorious.
    • The original wham episode was well...in the original. When it was revealed at the end of the game that Gabriel had inadvertently released the Daemon of the Maledictum in the first place.
    • DoW II: Retribution. You've tracked the Big Bad to Typhon, and you've caught him alone! But he's...pleased? And then the Ordo Malleus fleet arrives..."and so I sign the death warrant of an entire world and consign a billion souls to oblivion."
  • Baten Kaitos did this very well. Various events occur that would easily be explained if there was a spy in the party, you sit through quite a few cutscenes where the party wonders who the spy is...essentially it's so blatantly obvious, you feel it is likely a Red Herring. But there probably weren't any gamers who would have expected that not only was it NOT a Red Herring, but the spy in question was Kalas, the main character.
    • And then there was Origins. Pretty much the entirety of the Heart-to-Heart scene qualifies as solid wham all over. See it here, if you don't mind the enormous spoilers. The magnitude of the wham in question can be summarized by one simple observation: the revelation that the hero's main love interest is actually a spy for (and the daughter of) the Big Bad is most likely the least shocking plot twist.
    • Another one is the scene after the defeat of Baelheit, where Verus reveals himself. It puts about two-thirds of the plot in a completely different light.
  • BioShock. All the events in Rapture Central Control. The dev team have actually stated that they set out to make System Shock 2 again.
    • BioShock 2 has Outer Persephone, in which you as Delta find out that Eleanor is the one who brought you back in the first place, and that she's been watching your choices the whole time. And then Dr. Lamb suffocates her, severing your bond with her.
  • The last level of Braid. Especially when getting the final secret star.
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - "Shock and Awe". Also one helluva Player Punch.
    • Not to mention the end of the game, when the big baddie and friends kill two and maybe three of your partners.
    • Same goes for Modern Warfare 2. Which level is not a Wham Level?
      • "No Russian" would have been a massive wham, if not for the PR-stunt/controversy regarding that particular level.
      • At the End of "Takedown" American radar and satellites pick up massive numbers of hostile contacts at both coasts. And it's not a computer error.
        • Actually, the first two were deliberate Red Herrings sent by the Russians to catch the Americans off guard. They only attacked the East Coast.
      • In "The Gulag" it turns out that the mysterious Prisoner 627 is Captain Price.
      • "Of Their Own Accord" starts in a wet and dimly lit basement that is filled with wounded soldiers and sporadically shaken by explosions on the surface. After leaving the basement and climbing out of a trench with your squad, you're faced with a panorama view of the destroyed Washington Monument before a dark sky, lit by the fires of burning Capitol Hill. Behind burning tanks and uprooted trees is the partly destroyed Department of Commerce, which US soldiers are desperately trying to recapture from Russian forces.
      • "Contingency" ends with Captain Price firing a nuclear missile at Washington.
      • "Loose Ends" ends with probably one of the biggest Whams! since CoD4. Roach and Ghost are shot in the chest by Shepherd, thrown in a ditch, doused in kerosene, and...well, you can figure. And you can watch it because Roach isn't dead yet at that point.
      • Can the last level surpass even the ending of CoD4? At least it comes very close. In "Endgame" you shot down Shepherd's chopper but fall down a very high waterfall just seconds later. Stumbling after Shepherd who escaped from the wreckage, you finally thrust down your knife to end it all, you find yourself on the ground seconds later with a knife in your own chest. As Price and Shepherd try to beat each other to death with their bare hands, you pull the knife from your chest to throw it into Shepherd's eye!
      • Modern Warfare 3...Blood Brothers... Soap is dead. No player could believe it.
  • Chrono Trigger does this by cranking the Holy Shit Quotient Up to Eleven when Crono gets vaporized by Lavos after an attempt to destroy the Mammon Machine fails.
    • When you get to the Ocean Palace, the music and atmosphere heavily imply that you are near the end of the game. You've been to all the other time periods and know the truth about Lavos, and are ready to confront him, right? Too bad, because he incapacitates your entire party with one attack (unless playing a New Game + or if you are severely over-leveled), kills Crono, and delivers a sneak preview of what is yet to come in 1999. If you remembered what Spekkio said much earlier in the game, or the mere fact that in the year 600+ there are no floating continents...you were doomed to fail from the start. And not long after this, your party is captured and the Epoch stolen. It does get better in time, but at that point you have the feeling that everything you've done was for naught.
  • Dragon Fable (from Artix Entertainment): Nythera apparently kills Warlic, thanks to the potions you helped her make. The fact that Warlic exists in the Adventure Quest game doesn't necessarily mean he gets out of this situation, since Nythera then shapeshifts into Warlic. Meaning she might be the Warlic we know in Adventure Quest.
    • Warlic eventually gets better, in no small part due to Nythera biting off a lot more than she can chew and having to resurrect him in order to take out some really nasty monsters that she can't defeat with her magic.
  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has one when the player contracts the 100% incurable, Body Horror Nightmare Fuel corprus disease.
  • Eversion's World 4 takes this to horrifying levels. The stage starts off innocently enough as World 4-1, but after hitting the first block (which you are required to do), the stage suddenly everts to World 4-5 -- the backgrounds get a lot less colorful, the music becomes much creepier, and blocks now have freaked-out eyeless faces. And as if all that's not unsettling enough, now you have giant demonic hands grabbing at you from water pits.
  • F.E.A.R. managed to have one of these at the end of the first game and Project Origin. In the first game, the final level reveals that the Point Man is the first prototype born from Alma and Project Origin reveals that the entire reason Alma was hunting Becket in the game was because she wanted to use him to get herself pregnant, and now she has what she wants.
    • And if you go into a bit more backstory, the whole of Project Origin was a plot by Genevieve Aristide to turn Becket into a telesthetic beacon. Why? To lead Alma away from the Point Man so Aristide can find him first.
  • Chapter 5 of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. See Player Punch for details.
  • The Free Space space sims are filled with Wham Missions. Especially the first nebula mission and the final mission in Freespace 2.
  • The worst ending of Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is perhaps the most shocking moment in the entire series. It has to be seen to be believed. Warning, Nightmare Fuel taken to HSQ levels. Adell is possessed by Zenon and eats Taro and Hanako. They are crunchy.
  • The introduction of the Dji Cantos in Albion counts. Shortly after that, we find out that the company owning the ship knew that the planet they are trying to destroy had intelligent life on it, and is willing to destroy it regardless. It turns out the ship's on board computer has also been programmed to use any means necessary to keep the truth about the world a secret from the crew, killing everyone if necessary.
  • Tiberian Sun: Firestorm: The fifth Nod mission, when CABAL turns against you. The briefing cutscene is fairly standard C&C backstabbery, but it doesn't hit home until the mission begins...when instead of the old "Establishing battlefield control, standby" message, the computer hits you with "I HAVE YOU NOW! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!".
  • Alice: Madness Returns has Alice's final trip into the burning house to discover who or what caused the fire that killed her family ten years ago: her current therapist, Dr. Bumby, who was attempting to cover up the rape of Alice's sister.
    • Later, the encounter with the Dollmaker, the Wonderland representation of Dr. Bumby. Turns out his memory alteration experiments were to make sure his patients (all of them children) didn't remember being used as prostitutes.
  • Deus Ex had its Wham fairly early on. Less than a third of the way in, you find out that your brother has been working for the terrorists all along. But then it turns out that the terrorists are the good guys and that you've been acting as the pawn of the Ancient Conspiracy, causing you to defect and go on the run.
  • Fallout 3. After trekking the wasteland searching for your father, discovering his role in Project Purity and eventually saving him from a virtual world run by a very creepy old man, you help him get Project Purity back online via a handful of small fetchquests. Then the Enclave show up and try to force your father to give them control over the entire operation. When the dust settles, your father is dead via Heroic Sacrifice and the Enclave have not only taken control over Jefferson Memorial, but have started pouring out into the Wasteland in their attempt to conquer it. Suddenly, the stakes are higher than ever.
    • Oh, and the guy your dad tried to stop by overloading the project, killing himself in the process? Oh he's fine, radioactive-proof jacket and all, and he gets to return the favor later.
  • Fallout: New Vegas Lonesome Road: The courier that refused the Platinum Chip job when he saw your name? He shows up as your equal and opposite, working for the Legion and having gone before you in Dead Money and Old World Blues.
    • Your character has a past that you don't know about: You built up a community called the Divide and then brought it down by bringing a damaged ED-E there, which detonated nuclear warheads in their silos.
    • You never learn your character's motivations, and the dialogue choices imply that your character still remembers most of what happened except for the nuclear warheads being detonated underground, since that happened while you were carrying the Platinum Chip.
    • Ulysses is a walking, talking WHAM moment. He's heavily foreshadowed, the first time you directly talk to him he berate you for destroying the Divide and his last action is to give you a disturbingly spot-on speech about how individual men can shape the destiny of nations right before nuking the NCR.
    • You can opt to nuke the NCR, Legion, both, or neither (in which case the second ED-E makes a Heroic Sacrifice to disable all of the rockets).
  • Fate/stay night has at least three. The first would be in UBW when Saber's Command Spells are stolen and she is forced to maim Shirou while simultaneously taking way Avalon's protection. They go to rescue her before her will and sanity breaks and she becomes Caster's slave, but just before the showdown, Archer turns on Shirou and Tohsaka and sides with Caster, and the two barely escape with their lives. Because Archer shows a scrap of mercy. Then they go to Ilya for help...who is brutally murdered by a third party that makes Caster and Archer look like chumps (falsely, as it turns out) and once again they only live because their opponent didn't feel like killing them. Fortunately the low point of the route, but still. The second is Heavens Feel. Just Heaven's Feel. But relative to...itself, I guess, the moment Sakura snaps and Shinji ends up a headless corpse, at which point she also turns on Shirou/Tohsaka and reveals nigh omnipotent shadow based powers and the ability to spawn infinite monsters that are all as powerful as Tohsaka. And the third...Saber's death/rebirth/shoot the dog moment. Take your pick or lump them together. If it wasn't spoiled for you there is NO way you saw the main heroine turning, and the shoot the dog was barely more predictable.
    • Surely the biggest one in HF is the middle part of day 9. Inside several hours of gameplay, you discover that Sakura (the love interest) is Rin's sister and the true master of Rider, and that she's also been the victim of eleven years of horrific abuse. Then, you find out that, unless you kill her, she's likely to eventually go insane and kill many innocent people, and Rin decides that she will be forced to go through with it, and thus Shirou will have to fight her too.
    • Don't forget the biggest Wham Episode of Unlimited Blade Works, Day 14. Archer all but outright states that his true identity is none other than a future version of Shirou Emiya and his goal is to kill his past self. And then the next day, he does state it outright.
  • In many of BlazBlue's endings, we're treated to a plethora of whams (Noel is transformed into Mu-12! Litchi pulls a Face Heel Turn! Arakune gets captured by Relius Clover!) But the one that probably takes the cake is the True Ending, wherein supposed Big Bad Yuuki Terumi wipes out Takamagahara, the system controlling time and existence in the BlazBlue universe, but reveals that he isn't the only Big Bad. The other one? The Imperator Librarius, the head of the Librarium, revealed to be Saya. You know, Ragna's supposed Dead Little Sister. How's that for a Wham?
  • Ace Attorney: Justice For All, case four. Not only is the true murderer one of the most vile people in the series, with a totally unexpected personality revelation, but he's also your client, which also serves as a Wham Episode to Phoenix himself. The case also brings back Miles Edgeworth, previously thought to be dead.
    • And the fifth case of Trials and Tribulations. The first part of the final trial reveals that Iris was indeed in two places at once. One of them was her channeled dead sister Dahlia.
  • An early example of this: In the bad ending of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Simon dies from his wounds.
  • Dragon Age: Origins has the Battle of Ostagar. Beforehand, it seemed like a fairly normal high fantasy story where the armies of Ferelden were going to triumph over the evil Darkspawn. Then, Loghain betrays the king and plunges Ferelden into hopeless civil war, leaving it helpless against the Darkspawn.
    • The Joining was a Wham too, for a few reasons - The nature of the Joining itself, the temporary player characters (who you've been with long enough to have developed a care for how they fare) develop a bad case of dead, one courtesy of the Joining and the other courtesy of Duncan curb-stomping him.
      • Same thing in Awakening, where one of the companions you start the initial quest with dies in the Joining.
    • The Reveal that a Grey Warden must sacrifice his/her life and soul to permanently end a Blight, and the deal Morrigan offers as a loophole. This is when it becomes painfully clear that a truly happy ending isn't going to happen—victory will have a price.
      • Unless you managed to turn Loghain - though in that case, you'd have gotten an early bit of Wham from Alistair leaving your group, taking his equipment with him.
  • Dragon Age II has a few of these, but really, what else can you say but Anders plants a bomb in the Chantry and murders all the priestesses and probably lots of bystanders to remove the only thing that kept the conflict between the mages and the templars from turning violent. As the status quo is unacceptable, he thinks its better for the mages to die trying to destroy the templars, then to slowly be killed or made tranquil by the templars one by one.
    • To a lesser degree Isabellas quests at the end of Act 2. The Qunari have been in the city for all these years because Isabella stole a sacred relic from them and they know the thief is still somewhere in the city. When they find out that the thief is a companion of the inoffical representative the city has send to negotiate with them, relations turn sour quickly and the Arishok decides the time for a descrete search is over and he has to take control of the city himself.
    • One of the worst is the quest All That Remains, in which you discover that Leandra's unnamed suitor is actually a serial killer, and has made her his next victim because she looks like his dead wife, whom he's trying to recreate through stitching women together through necromancy. Leandra provides the face. The game's especially brutal about giving you hope that she's still alive, right until the climax of the quest in the killer's lair. This quest also leads to another Wham! Episode late in the game, when First Enchanter Orsino uses the killer's research--which he'd been secretly helping--to become a Harvester monster to fight off Meredith's templars. And if that isn't enough, there's also the infamous scene of Anders blowing up the Kirkwall Chantry, which really hits hard if your Hawke is in a romance with him.
  • Everything after Leblanc's hideout and before Chapter 3 in Final Fantasy X-2.
    • Also, the Den of Woe. Still freaky, even if you know it's coming. And it makes so much of the game (and Paine's backstory) make much more sense.
  • The Breath of Fire series is usually good for a Wham! Episode about anyhwere from halfway to the endpoint of each game.
    • In the original, there's learning that your sister Sara is still alive.
    • Breath of Fire II: Towards the end, near the Church of St. Eva, you learn that Ganer is still alive.
    • Breath of Fire III: Garr revealing his true identity and intentions at Angel Tower.
    • Breath of Fire IV: Again, toward the end, when you learn that Elina is still alive...if you could call it that.
  • Epic Mickey has about halfway through the game the discovery of the original bottle of paint and thinner that fell into Wasteland during Mickey's original mischief. Oswald learns that Mickey was the one who unleashed the Blot, angrily jumps on the lid of the bottle and unleashes the complete Phantom Blot. Everything else, including the huge blot that dragged Mickey into Wasteland were only drippings escaping from the loose bottle. The freed Blot then pulls a Hostage for Macguffin by threatening to kill Gus and Oswald if he doesn't get Mickey's heart, to which Mickey complies, setting the stage for the rest of the game.
  • In Arc Rise Fantasia, things kind of go downhill when Adelle gets kidnapped and taken to the Olquina Skywalk. You storm into the shrine to rescue her, but when you reach her, a number of things rapidly become clear. First of all, Adelle is a Diva, has chosen to follow Real's Law (in direct opposition to the one L'arc "chose"), and she is completely batshit for L'arc. Secondly, The Empire you're following has just attacked Olquina without formally declaring war, using your mission as an opening. Thirdly, Serge has been lying about his origins the whole time, and is on the Olquinians' side, and Leslie isn't exactly on your side either. Finally (and this one is a shocker to everyone present, including your enemies), L'arc's friend, Prince Alf, is a second Child of Eesa, and quickly defects to Real's side to fight the Empire he is a prince of. In short, half your party is now against you, and your two oldest friends want you dead.
  • Ace Combat Zero has a mission like this about halfway through. Belka becomes desperate enough that they want to end the war by dropping nuclear weapons on their own cities to stave off the advancing allied forces. Your squadron shoots down the bombers carrying the nukes, suddenly the music stops, the sky lights up, the radio dies, the HUD becomes distorted and your Wing Man starts trying to shoot you down.
    • Even before that mission. Mission 9-10 are both awesome missions taking down superweapons and an ace squadron as well as participating in a massive dogfight. Immediately after that, mission 11 is dark. The only light is provided by a city that's BURNING TO THE GROUND. The music is oppressive and the radio chatter just screams to say how desperate Belka is. Plus one transmission at the end has the army being ordered to ignore the civilians...yeesh.
  • Telltale Games manages a few more in their recent Back to The Future series. In Episode 3, Hill Valley has been turned into a 1984-esque dystopia run by none other than Doc Brown himself from an alternate timeline. Then, as if just to one-up that one, In Episode 4, Alternate Doc Brown has a Face Heel Turn when he realizes that restoring the timeline to "normal" will leave his wife Edna, who he still cares for despite how she tried to brainwash and torture him in the future, alone and miserable, and sets out to prevent his younger self from becoming a scientist entirely, preventing both the invention of time travel and the police state in Hill Valley while still allowing Edna to be happy. Just . . . damn.
  • Each game in the Assassin's Creed series ends on a deliberate cliffhanger that radically changes the plot.
    • Assassin's Creed I ends with Desmond discovering that he has "inherited" Altaïr's Eagle Vision through the Animus and using it to see cryptic messages painted all over the walls of the Abstergo laboratory... in blood.
    • Assassin's Creed II ends with Ezio entering the vault beneath the Vatican in hopes of discovering the secret purpose of the Apple of Eden, only to see a hologram of a representative of an ancient and advanced civilization speak to Desmond through him and inform him that it is his purpose to help in preventing The End of the World as We Know It. This astonishes both Ezio (who of course has no idea that a long-distant descendant of his will be viewing his life via Genetic Memory as a VR simulation) and Desmond, who is said descendant.
    • Assassin's Creed Brotherhood ends with Desmond discovering Ezio's Apple. However, instead of having its secrets revealed, another representative of the First Civilization appears to him, tells him he is not ready, and forces him to stab and kill Lucy with his hidden blade.
    • Assassin's Creed: Revelations gives us the surprising conclusion to Altaïr and Ezio's stories (not to mention Subject 16's) and confirms that their purpose in life was to pass on the message of the First Civilization. However, the real whammy comes in the DLC, "The Lost Archive", which reveals that Lucy, whom Desmond was forced to kill in Brotherhood, was in fact a Templar agent.
  • Dead Rising somehow manages to have three in rapid succession, late in the game near the end of 72 Hour Mode. First, the military isn't coming to rescue anyone in the mall, but are instead deployed to clean up any evidence of an outbreak. Then, Frank's rescue helicopter is taken out. Then, Frank learns that he's been infected.
    • The sequel has one near the end. Raymond Sullivan is revealed to be an employee for Phenotrans and planned the firebombing to destroy the evidence.
      • Off the Record has the same thing except Stacey Forsythe is the agent for Phenotrans.
  • Avalon Code begins with a very schizophrenic tone—you're told straight up that the world is going to be destroyed for its wickedness, but you mostly encounter its most beautiful elements (which you're in charge of magically preserving.) Occasional hints of why the world is doomed are left in the background. Then, after the most light-hearted and most plot-irrelevant chapter, everything goes straight to hell as the No-Gear Level begins. A trusted ally betrays you for reasons that make perfect sense in hindsight, and the character he betrays you to turns out to have been manipulating you from the start. Another character gets killed off (and this varies depending on who you're dating.) You're jailed for the destruction, and every character you didn't complete a personal sidequest for comes to your cell to tell you how much they hate you. When you're busted out, the character who rescues you lists off all the weapons you've used throughout the game, and asks you if you're able to wield any of them without magical assistance, while you just shake your head in acknowledgment of your own uselessness . . . and then he teaches you unarmed combat, and the game firmly establishes its tone.
  • Call of Duty Black Ops has two levels of plot twists:
    • "Rebirth" reveals Mason killing Steiner while yelling he is Viktor Reznov and what else is that Reznov himself isn't present.
    • The level after that "Revelations" has many revelations. Hudson and Weaver are the interrogators, Reznov has been dead all along during the escape from Vorkuta, Dragovich's plan of brainwashing Mason into killing John F. Kennedy, but Reznov sabotaged him into killing Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner instead.
      • Finally, a live-action sequence after the last level reveals that Mason most likely succeeded in assassinating JFK.
  • Devil May Cry: The end of chapter 19 not only reveals Nelo Angelo is Vergil but also reveals Trish is working for Mundus. Dante is not really happy about it in the next chapter.
  • Fahrenheit (2005 video game) has three chapters that have revelations:
    • "Agatha" reveals prior to being possessed to murder John Winston in a diner, Lucas has met the Oracle, who is responsible for the murder. This is what gives him the power to see what the other can see.
    • "The Pact" has it when Lucas is back from the dead as an undead being and forms an alliance with Carla, one of the two cops who are after him.
    • "Where is Jade?" reveals Lucas didn't survive from the roller coaster fall. His body has been found and resuscitated; in order words, he is dead. The one who resuscitated him isn't Agatha, but it's an AI impersonating her after her death in her apartment.
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent slowly becomes this, as it's revealed through Daniel's later diary entries and flashbacks that he helped Alexander kidnap, torture, and murder innocent civilians in order to ward off the Shadow and in effect save his own life. And then flipped on its head when it's also revealed that Alexander was only using Daniel to obtain both the orb he found in Algeria and mass amounts of vitae to open a portal back to his home world, and that he was planning on leaving Daniel to die once he had what he needed.

G-L

  • Grandia II is packed to the gills with them. The evil god-fragment possessing the main character's brother? Moves to possess the main character instead. The evil god separated into fragments and sealed away? Never died and the "seals" are actually devices to infect people with the fragments. The god of light who defeated the god of darkness before retiring to rest? LOST the war in the heavens. The kindly Pope who directs your party on your quest to save the world? Actually the Big Bad who wants to resurrect and then become the god of darkness. Well done, everyone!
  • Kingdom Hearts:
  • The end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 qualifies it as a Wham Episode. If not Eli Vance's death, the unambiguous confirmation that Gordon Freeman is not the only human on Earth familiar with the G-man.
    • "Dooctor Freeeman..." The G-man not only rescued Alyx from Black Mesa but he is seen implanting information into her mind apparently without her realising. The very deliberate use of the phrase "Unforeseen Consequences" also gives some strange meta implications as to the g-man's involvement into the very chapter names of the games you are playing. Oh, yeah, and did I mention that the g-man seems to have a way of influencing Alyx's mind without her realising.
  • Halo has a couple of these. The Flood introduction from Halo 1 definitely fits, and even comes with a Genre Shift. The conversation with the Gravemind probably counts from Halo 2. The entire last half of the level "The Covenant" from Halo 3 is another good one. This level (well, most of it) and the one after it arguably epitomize Scenery Porn and Scenery Gorn, respectively, more so than anything else in the entire game.
    • Then there's Halo: Reach. Oh boy. Probably epitomized during the fifth mission, pretty much the exact midpoint of the game anyway, when you get to watch the planet Reach's surface be burned in large chunks while the level is still going on and long before it actually ends.
    • The level "Exodus": you enter a large city and the first thing you notice is the many dead civilian bodies scattered about. Worse, if you look around, you find a small teddy bear backpack. And even more worse: this level is populated by Brutes.
  • Jade Empire. When Master Li KILLS you after you've defeated the Big Bad, as you were an expendable part of Sun Li's Xanatos Gambit. And the way he does this is particularly nasty, as he exploits the flaws that he deliberately built into your fighting style. You can see the obvious clues during additional playthroughs where a lot of the things he does and says have additional subtext and weight.
    • Before that, the dooming of the Doomed Hometown is pretty extreme, even if you saw it coming. (BioWare often blows up the first zone; they don't often make you go back through and look for survivors...)
  • In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Chapter 18. The previous 3 chapters were a series of Non Sequitur Episodes where your two enemies join forces with you to fight off an alien invasion. Then you start Chapter 18... and itnstead of the standard opening, you get Pit stranded in blackness wondering where he is. You then start a somewhat strange sequence where you control a little girl, and then a dog, running towards a town under attack. But the Tear Jerker music and bleak atmosphere should clue you in that something is very wrong. You see centurions patrolling the streets, and Pit is relieved that they at least have the situation under control. But the Wham really hits once you meet up with Magnus and he reveals THREE YEARS have passed since the last chapter, and during that time everything has gone to hell. The centurions are actually the invaders which means, yes, the forces of Skyworld have turned evil, and the benevolent goddess of light Palutena, your upbeat, joking Mission Control throughout the whole game, has become disillusioned and gone the Kill All Humans route. At the end of the chapter, you're shown what Skyworld looks like now: a bleak, crumbing ruin of what it once was. Given that the game pretty much defined Denser and Wackier up until now, this change in tone comes as a huge shock.
  • The ending to Killzone 2. Fan favorite Garza is dead, the ISA invasion has fallen apart, the Visari is dead (no more epic speeches), your favorite characters from the first game are dead and the Helghans are very pissed off at the death of their leader.
  • Knights of the Old Republic has a Wham Level after you're found the second-last Star Map when you're captured by Saul Karath, find out that the Jedi academy on Dantooine has been destroyed in your absence, Bastila is captured by Darth Malak, and The Reveal that the main character is an amnesiac Revan.
    • Averted in the sequel after the final battle when Kreia chastises the player for expecting a huge twist even though there isn't one. Unless you count 'Kreia is evil' but she makes that pretty obvious throughout the story.
  • The Legacy of Kain series has quite a few of these. Among them are Kain's realization at the end of Blood Omen that he is the Balance Guardian and must kill himself if he wants to save the world, Raziel's discovery in Soul Reaver that he and all his brothers were Sarafan before Kain turned them all into vampires, and Raziel sacrificing himself to create the Balance Reaver for Kain at the end of Defiance.
    • Also, not forgetting the entire ending of Soul Reaver 2. Who saw that coming?
      • Especially the part where it is shown that while Kain may have raised human Raziel as a vampire, Raziel himself as a wraith was his human self's actual murderer, as well as all his 'brothers'.
    • For that matter in Defiance, how about the fact that the heart of Janos Audron that Raziel was searching for to revive the ancient vampire (Who incidentally he himself killed as a human) was actually -inside- Kain the whole time keeping him alive? The fact that Kain doesn't need that heart to survive was pretty whammy too.
  • Live a Live, at the climax of Oersted's chapter.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Ocarina of Time has two. The first one comes after collecting the three Spiritual Stones, and gaining access to the Sacred Realm. Ganondorf follows you in and seizes the Triforce Of Power. You are then trapped in the sacred realm for seven years, and when you wake up as an adult, Hyrule is a Crapsack World. The second one happens after collecting the final Sage Medallion. Shiek reveals to you that she's Zelda, and is captured by Ganondorf immediately after. Further amplified by Word of God when Nintendo offically released the series timeline, creating much debate among the fanbase that there were not two, but THREE paths branching from Ocarina of Time, the third coming from if Link actually fails the quest. Now every game over that you see in said game makes you cringe on every game over screen you see.
    • Twilight Princess has an extra dose of shock just when you think the series is getting predictable. It's more of a surprise in how it came about rather than its presence, because everyone knows Zelda games have more than three dungeons! Not 60 seconds after you collect the final Fused Shadow, Zant appears, curbstomps Link and Lanayru, takes the Fused Shadows, curses Link to so that he's permanently stuck as a wolf, AND gravely injures Midna. On top of that, taking Midna to Princess Zelda to heal her results in Zelda giving up her body (and apparently her life) in a Heroic Sacrifice without Midna's consent. Oh Crap. So what do you do now? You set out to find the series' favorite Deus Ex Machina, The Master Sword, in order to lift your curse!
    • The Wind Waker: Wait, my boat is the King of Hyrule? Tetra is Princess Zelda? And the ocean is Hyrule after it's been flooded? And the King decided to flood Hyrule again, just to keep Ganon in check? And did Link just stab Ganon in the forehead with the Master Sword?!
    • Link's Awakening: Between the fifth and sixth dungeons, it turns out that the whole game is a dream, and by finishing your quest, you'll effectively destroy the island and everyone on it.
    • A Link to the Past: Zelda is kidnapped (after you already saved her once) and transported into the Dark World right before your eyes. Agahnim is actually Ganon. The King of Hyrule and several other dead/lost characters are brought back after Link successfully gets hold of the Triforce.
    • Skyward Sword: A few come to mind.
      • Link finally catches up to Zelda, and instead of simply saving her/seeing her get captured, he's reprimanded by Impa for being too late and not being strong enough to watch over Zelda, as well as having to watch his childhood friend disappear, yet again. Ouch.
      • When Link catches up to Zelda once again, this time after proving he has enough strength to help Zelda, you'd expect a happy reunion, but what does he get? A stab in the back when Zelda confesses she manipulated Link with his feelings for her, as well as the awfulness of having to watch Zelda seal herself in a crystal for goodness knows how long. The look on Link's face says it all.
  • Hellgate:London attempts to end on one—YMMV, as some players played the character in question less attention than Deckard Cain—but whether you got the full shocking effect or not, it was an excellent end scene.
  • The King of Fighters XIII is considered to be THE Wham! Episode by many fans.
  • Klonoa: Door to Phantomile has an excellent, Tear Jerker one. It turns out that Klonoa doesn't belong in Phantomile at all. All of his memories of living there had been fabricated by his "best friend" Huepow, and as the Dream Traveler he was simply destined to save the world--presumably, by giving him false memories, he would fight harder to protect Phantomile. After his success, Klonoa is then forced from Phantomile back to his own world thanks to a ritual that purges everything that doesn't belong, and that isn't limited to the bad guys.
  • Ghost Trick's final chapter drops a lot of bombs. The guy you thought was you? He already "died" ten years ago and you were just the cat that followed him around until the first shot from the manipulated Lynne killed you. The lamp that explained your powers to you? The Too Dumb to Live dog that travelled back ten years just so he can protect Lynne and Kamila.
    • Chapter 15 is pretty wham. 14 ends with you questioning what you knew about your own identity. 15 starts with you arriving at the superintendent's office and seeing yourself giving the villain monologue to Cabanela.
    • The chapter where you finally discover the identity of "the man in red" and that you're not him.
  • Heavy Rain, ye gods. You finally discover the identity of the killer... one of the PCs, Scott and then proceed to have a QTE where you're forced to burn evidence for them.
  • Gears of War 3 has the chapter appropriately titled "Brothers To The End." Dom sacrifices himself to save Marcus and his comrades against an unstoppable horde of Locust and Lambent.
  • L.A. Noire with the final Vice case "Manifest Destiny": Roy Earle, Cole's crooked Vice partner, has caught him cheating his wife for Elsa, and reported it to the corrupt officials, getting Cole suspended and demoted to Arson as a result.
    • The newspapers would count, too.
  • Grand Theft Auto
    • Vice City: Lance Vance's betrayal.
    • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a big damn WHAM in the mission The Green Sabre. Not only are your best friends Ryder and Big Smoke revealed as working with the enemies (Tenpenny, C.R.A.S.H. and the Ballas) and responsible for the death of your mother in that fateful driveby, but your brother Sweet is shot and arrested, Grove Street goes to shit, you lose all the territory you'd captured up to this point, and you're taken out in the middle of nowhere by Tenpenny and Pulaski to kill a witness who has discovered their corrupt activities.
    • Grand Theft Auto IV has one near the end when either you choose to side with Roman or Kate, the one you choose to side with gets killed in the wedding scenario.
    • The Ballad of Gay Tony has the second to the last mission. In it, Rocco has ordered Luis to kill Tony. This results in him leaving Luis after saving his life.
  • Discovering the ruins of Sandover Village in Jak II Renegade.
    • Damas asking Jak to find his son in Jak 3 and realising it's Jak himself.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend: The Bad Boys Love Route is essentially this.
    • Let's just put it this way: The game's primary concept is a dating sim where everyone but your character is a bird. The various routes include, amongst other things, a snobbish aristocrat, a narcoleptic teacher, a bookworm, and a dove with a severe craving for pudding. This route completely shatters any sense of silliness the others had. For example, the very first thing that happens in it is that your character is murdered.


M-R

  • Persona 3 performs a hat trick: in October, there's Shinjiro's death and the revelations surrounding him and Ken. In November, not only do the characters realize they've failed to put an end to Tartarus and the Dark Hour, they find that Ikutsuki was just using them to bring about the end of the world; he nearly sacrifices them all and does murder Mitsuru's father. And in December, they learn that their buddy Ryoji is the avatar of Death, their efforts have caused the end of the world and there's no way to stop it, and their only options are to wait and watch it happen, or kill Ryoji in order to forget it's coming and live a few more months in ignorance.
  • Persona 4 pulls off quite a few:
    • The first is when Nanako gets kidnapped in November.
    • The second is on December 3, where she apparently dies, and you have to talk down your team, especially an increasingly revenge driven Yosuke, to spare Namatame, the man whom they think killed her. Or, you can kill him, but that won't lead to the third revelation...
    • Of all the people in the game, the killer is Adachi! But there's one more...
    • If you manage to lock yourself into the True ending, you discover that everything in the game was set up by the GAS STATION ATTENDANT from the very beginning, who is none other than the deity Izanami, the true Big Bad and final boss of the game.
  • Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark has a pretty nasty one at the finale of the second chapter.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2 when you discover the primary enemy is not behind the Luskans and Githyanki who have been chasing you the entire adventure. And when you discover the secret of the Spirit-eater curse in Mask of the Betrayer.
  • Mother 3. Chapter 1. The first level of the game is a Wham! Episode that sets the game's surprisingly dark tone.
    • And the end of Chapter 8, though there are more which are not as shocking. As for the prequels, even though not that dark and sad, bosses in the endgames tend to be whammy.
  • The whole Mass Effect series is more like a series of Wham episodes in rapid succession.
    • Mass Effect: Virmire. Not only does the mission there reveal the true nature of the Big Bad, and not only is it entirely possible that Shepard will be forced to kill Wrex before the mission is over, but Shepard must also leave either Kaidan or Ashley behind to die in a massive Player Punch. And let's not forget the whole conceit of the game's plot: All sentient life is being subtly controlled and groomed for regular once-every-50,000-years extinction by a race of genocidal god-machines.
  • Mass Effect 2: STARTS with a wham when The Normandy is destroyed and Shepard DIES in the first five minutes of the game, then pulls a classic Unexplained Recovery. It then goes on to throw another wham in halfway through with the revelation that The Collectors are actually the supposedly extinct Protheans before the various possible endings, in one of which the entire team INCLUDING THE MAIN CHARACTER can all die and the game still ends with a "mission successful". Also? The Collector General is controlled by a Reaper and the Collectors are abducting human colonies so they can melt billions of them down into genetic paste, which they will use to build a new Reaper... this one modeled after humanity.
      • Mordin's loyalty mission, full stop. At first, Mordin is shown to be a morally gray but genuinely affable person and has moments and one-liners where he comes off as the game's designated comic relief. When you approach a tarp containing a dead female krogan who willingly gave her life in experiments to cure the genophage in said mission, the wham moment hits and the normally talkative Mordin has a Heroic BSOD. He moves on and is back to his old self after the mission's conclusion, though.
      • Not to mention Joker's mini-level just after the Reaper IFF is installed: Collectors invade the Normandy and abduct your entire crew. Joker also has a disease that makes his bones brittle, so you can only move at a painful walk, in addition to having no weapons and being forced to watch helplessly as the crew gets dragged away. He pretty much said it best...

"Shitshitshitshit...."

  • In Mortal Kombat: Deception you find out that Noob Saibot is actually the original Sub-Zero from MK1.
  • The death of Wheely Engberg in Myst Online certainly qualifies: trapped underground for a few days, kept alive by a beast who the players weren't sure was helping her or just keeping her alive, then brutally slaughtered moments before rescue. Yeeeah.
  • No More Heroes has the conclusion of the rank 6 battle: When Travis Touchdown can't bring himself to finish off Holly Summers, she commits suicide via a grenade in her mouth. Afterwards, he respectfully gives her a proper burial. This is the first sign that Travis might not be such a unsympathetic jerk after all.
  • Planescape: Torment contains quite a few of these lovely little moments, usually when some plot-critical detail gets broken to you. The encounter with Ravel Puzzlewell is probably the best of the considerable lot.
    • Doubly applies here because after this point, the game setting, pace and style changes so completely that, on returning the Sigil, it doesn't seem the same.
  • Portal contains a Wham Level, which replaces the pristine test chambers with the dusty, decaying backstage, and the AI that was previously at least somewhat helpful is now just plain out to get you.
  • The Metal Gear Solid series' fame is based to a very high degree on it's numerous Wham Levels.
    • In the first game, Sniper Wolf has not just one but two, and she appears in only three scenes. In the first one, she shots Meryl in the middle of a conversation and keeps shoting at her arms and legs to draw Snake out from cover, while at the same time Meryl tells him to leave her and run. Which you have to do. A few hours later, you get back on her by fatally shoting her with your own new sniper rifle. Her death scene lasts almost 8 minutes and despite what she did to Meryl is still a contender for the biggest Tear Jerker of the series.
    • Later there is the fight with the Metal Gear, which isn't so remarkable for being the games boss fight, but for the death of the Cyborg Ninja in the preceding cutscene. He was revealed to be Snakes only true friend, whom he thought he killed, but had been brainwashed and turned into a cyborg. In his last attempt to resists his controllers, he saves Snakes life, but in turn is crushed under Metal Gear's foot. And he also revealed that his adopted sister is actually the daughter of two farmers he murdered.
    • The reveals that Master Miller was dead the whole time and that Naomi is still the traitor.
    • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has its own fair share, particularly when Vamp comes out of nowhere and fatally stabs Emma in the back. As in the first game, death isn't instantly but comes only about a quarter hour later.
    • Later, the death of Olga, which is much shorter, but no less tragic than that of Sniper Wolf. Yes, she was an enemy as well.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The first Wham comes at the end of the James Bond style prolog level when it is revealed that Snakes best friend and teacher The Boss defects to a rogue russian colonel, stole two atomic bombs, then proceeds to beat Snake close to death in a Curb Stomp Battle and throws him from a bridge into a river far below. And then the russian colonel fires one of the nukes.
    • After beating The Boss in the games final boss fight, she is (again) still alive and forces Snake to finish her. The cutscene stops for just a moment when Snake puts the gun at her head, but every button but 'fire' is disabled.
    • After finishing his mission and escaping with his Bond Girl EVA, Snakes wakes up the next morning to find that she had drugged him and stole the MacGuffin everything had been about, but she left him with a tape explaining her actions. To make things even worse, she also tells him that the Boss was only a Fake Defector and loyal to America all the time. But since unexpectedly american nukes were fired at russian bases, they needed a scapegoat and convince everyone that she was an actual traitor. Having her executed by her pupil and best friend was regarded as the only way to make sure of that.
    • How do you end a series famous for its Wham Levels and Crowning Moments of Awesome? Metal Gear Solid 4 manges just fine. The end of Shadow Moses is 20 minutes of uninterrupted Wham! First Naomi reveals that she is terminally ill and then commits suicide by shutting of the gadget that kept her alive all the years. Then you fight your way out of an exploding underground base with a Humongous Mecha, only to find yourself in a 1 on 1 fight with another one. Then Raiden frees himself from under a pile of debris by cutting off his own arm with his sword to save Snake from being crushed by a giant submarine that is about to beach itself, by standing in front of him and holding the ship with just his back and his legs, only to be crushed himself.
    • Then you get to the final showdown in which the Big Bad Ocelot has taken control of all the worlds military except for a single world war 2 battleshipp manned by recruits, and only minutes away from taking over the entire world. While Snakes crawls through a corridor filled with radiation to get at the main computer of Ocelots ship and take it out before it's too late, the game switches to split screen to show his friends on the battleship getting swarmed by enemies.
  • Prototype's Web Of Intrigue videos go from interesting background to holy-shit-mindfuckery in a single sentence: "Tell me about PARIAH."
    • The reveal that Alex Mercer not only released Blacklight, but also really did die. You're just the virus animating his corpse and using his memories.
  • Phantasy Star II: There are several, some of which have become pretty common in RPGs since, but one stands out. Midway through the game, you completely fail to stop the Big Bad and a Colony Drop utterly destroys the setting's primary homeworld, killing 90% of humanity.
  • In Okami, there's a series of "Wham" moments after the Water Dragon dies. First you learn that the dragon was actually the King of the Dragonians. Then Otohime has a vision of Rao being attacked by a monster. You run off to save her, discovering a tunnel leading to the queen's palace from Rao's temple. When you reach the throne room, you discover that Himiko has been murdered, then that the Rao you've known all along is actually the Demon Lord Ninetails, who killed the original and replaced her, and you played straight into his hands by retrieving and giving him the Fox Rods. Finally, after a boss fight with him, he declares that The Battle Didn't Count, and escapes to Oni Island, which is now inaccessible because the Water Dragon, who could break the barrier around the island, and Himiko, who could determine where Oni Island is, are both dead. Well, crap.
  • Mega Man X4 is the Wham! Episode of the series. Most of it anyway. Mavericks that have more to do with a political standpoint instead of The Virus, making the aforementioned Mavericks in this game even more tragic, Iris' death where it was the first time Zero ever felt grief, and X wondering if he can keep doing the same thing over and over (although the last one was subverted). The whole thing even started off with a WHAM: A Nightmare Sequence where Dr. Wily appears for the first time in the X series, and to his "masterpiece" Zero, no less!
  • Pokémon Platinum pulls this off during one of the final battles against Cyrus. "Gotta stop the bad guy from taking over/destroying the universe...Eh, wait? Did he just awaken an inter-dimensional god (IE: Giratina)?! And is now going into an alternate-universe where the laws of physics are completely screwed-up? Damn..."
    • Not to mention the three lakes arc. "Oh, that organization with the silly dress code is up to no good? No worries, just point me in the direction of their secret base and I'll go take care of them after this next gym--wait, what was that tremor just now? Sweet mother of mercy, did they just blow up Lake Valor?" At that point, the game proceeds to repeatedly sock you in the gut as you try and fail to protect the Lake Trio. Then you learn why Cyrus went after them in the first place. Compared to these guys, Team Rocket was a bunch of Rule Abiding Rebels.
    • Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver pull this off as well. Remember Silver? Your rival? Guess what... he's Giovanni's son.
      • And how do you figure that out? You travel back in time and fight him, after which he may or may not have committed suicide.
    • And in Pokémon Red and Blue, when everything was new. A lot of people went Heroic BSOD when they discovered that Giovanni was the last Gym Leader.
    • Also back in the first generation, though this is now standard knowledge amongst even the most casual of fans, the fact that there is a final boss beyond the Elite Four, and that it's your Rival, likely caused some jaws to drop.
    • Remember how the Elite Four and championship run usually goes in these games? Well it doesn't go so smoothly in Pokémon Black and White. You see, after defeating the Elite Four, you then go to take on the champion, Alder... who has already lost to the now champion N. Then a gigantic goddamn castle rises out of the ground. Then his version's legendary shows up to take you on. Just then, yours awakens, forcing you to catch it. After this, you battle and defeat N. Story over? Not quite. Then Ghestis shows up and tells N that he'd been a tool his entire life for just the purpose of fulfilling the requirements of the legend and basically throws him out. Then Ghestis battles you, after which he disappears and N flies away with his dragon.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers Of Time/Darkness/Sky has a rather (in)famous one. The game starts off with you mysteriously becoming a Pokémon and deciding to help your new friends rescue other Pokémon and arrest small-time crocks. And then you find out that the God Of Time is going insane, you're from the future, one of the criminals you're trying to arrest is your former partner back when you were human... Oh, and an unspeakable evil wants to KILL you so that he can plunge the world into eternal darkness.
  • In Opoona for most of the game Landroll seems to be a pretty nice place, besides little signs of corruption and bureaucracy. Once you reach four-star rank your finally able to go to Sanctuary where your parents are recovering, and meet with the planet's leader. At which point he suddenly blasts you both with an energy ball and turns you into Stepford Smilers, requiring your missing sister to come to the rescue. Not to mention finding out, at the same time, that the entire upper government is literally under The Corruption, and people are being Released to Elsewhere to empower a sentient Artifact of Doom.
  • The Neverhood's "Battle of Robot Bil" cutscene probably counts as this. The game is a What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs? Widget Series full of bizarre humour, so it's quite hard to be emotionally prepared for Klaymen's two allies abruptly getting killed off by the Big Bad.
  • The ending of the cargo ship level in Mirror's Edge reveals that the runners have been sold out to the cops by other runners who decided to rather submit to corrupt government than to die fighting a battle they cannot win. In an unusual subversion of La Résistance, Les Collaborateurs may actually be right.
  • The final act of NieR is a nonstop string of whams. Nier, his friends and every human left are actually Replicants! The Shades are the real humans! The Twins were Evil All Along! The Shadowlord is the real Nier!
  • Manhunt 2: "Origins" reveals Leo is a serial killer split personality implanted to Danny.
    • The levels where you play as Leo really counts: having killed Michael, Danny's best friend, destroying his records, and killing Danny's wife.
  • The ending of Might and Magic V made very clear that the Sheltem/Corak story that the first five games of the series had centred around was over by having Corak initiate a self-destruct in battle, killing both. Before the outro, it still looked as if one or both could survive, as had happened in their previous skirmishes. After...well, the next game shifted genre, world and had only the loosests connection to the previous story.
  • Musou Orochi 2. So let's say that the game begins with the description that Da Ji came back with a 9-headed gigantic dragon that killed everybody from WO originals, all characters from DW2-7XL, all characters from SW1-3XL. With just Ma Chao, Sima Zhao and Takenaka Hanbei being sent to the past by Kaguya to prevent the onslaught. At that point, the "Excuse Plot of uniting DW and SW together in one game" evolves into a much more serious story.
  • The Reconstruction has multiple ones, usually dispelling any pretenses that the game is going to be a happy-go-lucky adventure story.
    • The first (and therefore, most prominent) is "To Ascend", the final quest of chapter 3. Up until that point, the story reads like a fairly typical Heroic Fantasy adventure story, with a few hints of a greater, overarching plot and only a few very serious moments. You'll probably think that it'll maintain the fairly carefree, happy-go-lucky vibe the heroes have going on. Well, at least, until Metzino gets thrown off the Faithall Tower, you fight your first boss fight with a human character (who dies bloodily), and the entire mess ends in a giant Downer Ending revealing that the characters were Unwitting Pawns the whole chapter and their efforts were meaningless. It's also immediately followed by interlude 3, which is filled to the brim with Tear Jerker.
    • The second is interlude 4, the resolution of Dehl's backstory that delivers on tons of foreshadowing dropped throughout the game. It starts off innocuously enough, with peaceful humans arriving on Dehl's island, and Dehl then going off to find his father. In the process, he discovers his father's secret 'laboratory', which is swathed in blood and has bloody Sikohlon corpses chained to the walls. Dehl's father rambles about how he killed everyone to try and isolate a cure for the Blue Plague, and Dehl is just barely able to come out alive through the manifestation of his pseudo-magic powers -- which causes his father to be graphically impaled by a sword and die. Then Dehl makes it to the mainland and accidentally infects Skint with the Blue Plague, who then causes an outbreak when he is stabbed In the Back, since the Plague is spread by bloodshed.
    • Finally, there is chapter 6, wherein the entire plot goes Off the Rails as the Watchers are murdered, ten years pass in the blink of an eye for the characters, and the world ends. It happens very late in the story, though.
  • How about Resident Evil 5? The end of chapter 4-1 reveals Wesker is alive and acting as the Big Bad of the game. Oh, and chapter 5-3 reveals that the black cloak figure is a Brainwashed and Crazy Jill.


S-Z

  • What happens after you defeat Rouge or lose to him in SaGa Frontier and when you return to Magic Kingdom, the entire region is in ruins and you learn that you were just an experiment needed to master all magic so you can defeat the Lord of Hell. It Gets worse though in the ending as you were only needed to stall for time so Hell can be sealed in stasis once more, a Double Wham! Episode, although it states in the supplemental material that Rouge was saved at the last minute though.
  • Seriously? No mention at all of Silent Hill 2? The fact that James had killed Mary all along and the letter was just a hallucination? Dang.
  • The ending of the second Sly Cooper game has Clockwerk killed for good, Bentley crippled, Murray leaving the team, and Sly in apparent custody (although he quickly escapes).
  • StarCraft: Infested Kerrigan.
    • And the Zerg invasion on Aiur. And Tassadar's sacrifice. And the UED's arrival. And Raynor rescuing Mengsk from them. And the alliance with Kerrigan. And Kerrigan's betrayal. Not to speak of "Dark Origins".
    • After all the 'Romance that cannot be' between Raynor and Kerrigan, Raynor (after Kerrigan kills his closest friend Fenix) telling Kerrigan with deadly seriousness that he is going to kill her. Unfortunately they seemed to have Retconned this in StarCraft II.
  • StarCraft II has many:
    • The secret mission "Piercing the Shroud" in which we see that Megnsk is creating protoss/zergs hybrids, although it's implied thta he had external help.
    • The third Zeratul mission, where we find that Tassadar is still alive.
      • And that the Overmind was good all along.
    • Also, the fourth Zeratul Mission, "In Utter Darkness", in which we find that there's indeed a Bigger Bad, and that Kerrigan is necessary for stopping him.
    • The ending would count, if we weren't told about it halfway through the game.
  • Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2 when the Earth Federation and Neo DC surround the Inspectors, the Shadow Mirrors defect from the Neo DC and join the Inspectors attacking both the Earth Federation, and Neo DC kicking off the rest of the game. Only the arrival of the Einst, the death of the leader of the Neo DC, and the firing of the Tronium Cannon allows your forces to escape. The biggest wham is when Testuya announces to Captain Daitetsu that everyone escaped when he notices that Daitestu has died due to his injuries, leading them until his death.
  • Syphon Filter. The test subjects Gabe injected with anti-Syphon Filter serum all died.
  • System Shock 2 has the three most shocking words ever spoken in a video game: "I am SHODAN". It's pretty much the verbal equivalent of being kicked in the testicles. Repeatedly. With a spiked shoe. The Polito form is dead, insect!
    • You know, for the people who somehow never noticed the box art.
  • True Crime: New York City at the end Terry is revealed to be alive and the mole.
  • The Tales (series). Every single game, dead center of the plot. Frequently doubles as a Your Princess Is in Another Castle.
  • After clearing Day 7 of The World Ends With You, Neku starts the game all over again, from Day 1, and Shiki is his new entry fee. Worsening matters is his new partner, Joshua.
    • Is that all? What, you thought the game was going to be only one week and all those other characters we had been shown would have just been forgotten? A much bigger wham is Day 4's ending, where, with no lead-up at all, Rhyme dies, Beat's forced to leave to survive, and Neku and Shiki are, once again, alone.
    • Joshua's assumed death at the end of Week 2. To make it worse, he was finally starting to develop his powers. Then the Third Week begins and Neku's third entry fee turns out to be every other Player.
    • The end of the game, where you find out the villain is actually very sympathetic, succeed in pulling an epic Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, discover that a certain character is neither dead nor anything like you thought he was, and that Neku has only convinced him that Shibuya needs to be erased.
    • The 21st Secret Report, obtainable on the post-game scenario. Another Week. To explain: the Secret Reports are a series of internal documents, obtainables under certain conditions, that tell the story of some angel from a different existential plane that was sent to investigate the Shibuya game, retrieve the Composer, and set everything right. Turns out that this individual entered in cahoots with the Composer, which makes him now a fallen angel, helped another character to learn a Forbidden Technique, and has to live in a dimension where another version of him who exists, so he has to live hidden since Never the Selves Shall Meet (as they may report and arrest him). Oh, and the identity of this individual? Sanae Hanekoma, the creator of Gatito and one of the most helpful characters in the game
  • The climax of Chapter 3 of World of Goo, "Product Launcher." 'Product Z will change the world,' they said. Ohhhh, yeah.
  • Tenchu 2. Tatsumaru's amnesia induced Face Heel Turn.
  • TIE Fighter: The minesweeping mission where your entire wing turns against you. Including the Star Destroyer. Most of the rest of the game is taken up by dealing with the treacherous Imperials. It is the only mission in the entire series where the only primary objective is to survive.
  • Super Paper Mario has Chapter 6 where you actually fail at recovering the MacGuffin before the Void destroys Sammer's Kingdom.
    • And if that's not bad enough, right after you finish that chapter, one of the members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad pops in and kills your entire party with a snap of his fingers in a brutal subversion of No Sneak Attacks. You all get better, but still, damn.
  • The moment in Wild ARMs 1 when Rudy sacrifices his left arm to escape from Zeikfried...and the subsequent revelation that he's actually an Artificial Human made of the same material as the Metal Demons Zeikfried led.
  • The Witcher ends each chapter with a Wham, but the end of chapter four, when hostilities between sects reach flashpoint indicates just how significantly everything will change. It accelerates from there through the crumbling, blazing city.
  • Sam and Max Freelance Police season one had the last-but-one episode reveal the Big Bad of the season, the magician Hugh Bliss. This being a Sam and Max game, we can expect mindscrews, but still.
    • Second season also does it well, revealing that an antagonist so vile they serve as upper management to Satan himself is someone who's been around since Season 1 Episode 1. Or rather, a group of three: The Soda Poppers.
    • Every episode ending in season 3. The skeleton, Sam discovering Max brainless. Suddenly a certain futurevision at Mama Boscos lab makes sense.
  • Ultima VII: Part 2: You finally catch up to Batlin, in order to stop him from performing the ritual to summon the Guardian. You fail, he fails, and your companions become avatars of unbalanced Chaos, bringing about near-Armageddon for the world.
  • The end of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and beginning of Monkey Island 3. You learn that you are a child and that LeChuck is actually your brother Chucky, with whom you got into a weird "ride" in an amusement park. Everything was either fantasy or magic. But Chucky's eyes glow up strangely once... At the beginning of part three you're adult again and somewhere on the sea in a bumper car. Obviously you were tricked by LeChuck's magic.
  • Episode 4 of Tales of Monkey Island, featuring Morgan Le Flay's death, the revelation that the Voodoo Lady has apparently been behind everything in the entire series ever, the Marquis De Singe's death, LeChuck revealing he never had a Heel Face Turn after all by killing Guybrush...and on top of that, Demon LeChuck is once again voiced by Earl Boen, who had been replaced with two other actors!
    • Especially well played considering they managed to name the episode The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood and STILL keep it a shocker. Considering this series' history, you might expect the "execution" to either be cleverly staged, immediately undone with voodoo, or an Incredibly Lame Pun. Nope. As of the end of the episode, Guybrush is dead.
  • While we're on Type-Moon Visual Novels, Tsukihime. Hisui's route, True End. Kohaku did it. She did EVERYTHING.
  • The Trick Twist in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories definitely qualifies. Not only do you get the Wham Moment of having been Cheryl in the psychiatrist's office, but that's coupled with the fact that you then realize that everything you encountered on the way there was something she actually experienced! Climax Studios earned its name with that one.
  • Throughout the game, Tin Star manages to set a formula. Every day, Tin Star goes around town resolving crimes committed by Black Bart and his gang, and ends each day with a Showdown At High Noon against someone. Saturday eventually comes and—wait, hang on...a Showdown At High Noon already? And it's a Hopeless Boss Fight? And what's this? 'Black Bart is made sheriff in place of you?! Now you're being run out of town! No choice but to survive out in the desert, with Everything Trying to Kill You. The day concludes with you sleeping somewhere out there alone, rather than in your nice, cozy house in town.
  • Super Robot Wars W has Chapter 27, "And then, to the endless tomorrow", which follows the events of the GaoGaiGar finale (Itself quite whammy) with the deaths of Orgun, Rapier and Kazuya's dad at the hands of the until-then unknown Big Bad. Who, by the way, is related to The Hero. Oh, and because of all that, the heroes failed to stop the Bloody Valentine Incident. Cue Time Skip where the entire gang splits.
  • STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl has the meeting with Doctor in the Agroprom Underground, where the player learns that they are Strelok.
  • Chapter 9 of Zettai Hero Project turns the story's main selling point on its head. The generic, nameless, "weakest protagonist ever" is actually an Iron Woobie and one hell of a Determinator who deserved to inherit the mantle of Unlosing Ranger from the start. That Hopeless Boss Fight that you have to retry at the end of every chapter? No different from that time he saved his sister from a cannibal by letting himself get beaten up repeatedly. All those people, including his two main supporters, calling him weak? They're probably constantly reminding him of his home, where his family has been falling apart for the past eight years because they thought he was too weak during that incident. And he still fights against impossible odds for all of these people. Appropriately, this revelation is immediately followed by a Shonen Upgrade that replaces the protagonist's pathetic-looking portrait, and marks the first time you're able to win the formerly-Hopeless Boss Fight.
  • Early in Suikoden V, the night after he becomes engaged to Princess Lymsleia, Gizel Godwin sends Nether Gate to assassinate King Ferid and Queen Arshtat. The Prince, Lyon, Georg, and Sialeeds escape, and Gizel claims that Georg killed Ferid and Arshtat and kidnapped the Prince.
    • Then comes the reveal that Georg really did kill Queen Arshtat, to stop her from using the Sun Rune to burn Falena.
    • Lady Sialeeds's Face Heel Turn, complete with Dolph stabbing Lyon in the back, critically injuring her and hospitalizing her a large portion of the game.
  • Tron 2.0 The Progress Bar. After finding a compiler for the legacy code, Ma3a is uploading it into her system. That's when Jet gets a call from "Guest" and hits the I/O node to take the call. In rapid succession, Jet figures out that "Guest" is his father, Alan. Alan's desperately trying to tell Jet not to compile the code (too late). Thorne then crashes the place and goes One-Winged Angel in an attempt to kill Ma3a. Jet fends off Thorne until the upload is complete. Unfortunately, the code is bugged, causing Ma3a to go insane and kill Byte. The best Jet can do is activate the light-cycle and haul tail, but the chase ends when F-Con's seeker program kidnaps her, meaning that no only does he have to get the bugged code out of her, but he's now going to have to fight F-Con directly if he wants to get home.
  • Strange Journey: In the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, Gore, having been reborn as an Ubergestalt, reunites with the Red Sprite, where the most alignment-important scene in the game takes place. If you are devoutly Law or Chaos, or answer Gore's questions in a non-Neutral manner, Gore deems you irredeemable and fights you to the death. Following his death, the Command Room is shown to be in shambles, and Arthur suffers a terminal error in his personality matrix that forces him to self-terminate. And then, whichever sidekick you're aligned with invades the Red Sprite and brainwashes everyone into worshippers of God or beastly-minded savages; this would be even worse news...but given your now-permanent alignment at this point, this is what you wanted...right?
  • Trauma Center: Under the Knife and its remake Second Opinion. Up until the end of Chapter 2, everything seems like something out of typical emergency room scenarios: removing shards of glass from skin, fixing up aneurysms, lasering tumors, etc. Even the operation where you yank glass out of someone's heart sounds like something you'd see in a serious medical drama. So you're operating on an Emo Teen for the second time, you take care of some lacerations easy peasy, and...suddenly a laceration pops up by itself and the music changes. Congratulations, you just discovered your first strain of GUILT, which you'll be mainly dealing with for the remainder of the game.
  • Xenoblade: ...Where do we start?
    • The beginning of the game, when Fiora is brutally murdered.
    • Discovering the Faced Mechon are Homs cyborgs, and one of the them is Fiora, who is still alive.
    • Meeting Egil for the first time.
    • Dickson shooting Shulk, revealing himself to be evil all along.
    • The High Entia being transformed into Telethia for Zanza's army.
    • And the ending, where Alvis reveals that he is a computer that, along with Zanza and Meyneth, destroyed our universe and created the Xenoblade one in its place.
  • World of Warcraft has this in the wrathgate questline. It's extremely jarring and sends many players who don't know about it from the internet into shock for a few minutes before continuing.
    • Two words: Emmy Malin.
    • And Ta'Zinni in the Horde's equivalent quest.
    • Cataclysm is expected to give quite a bit of wham episodes in the story/quest arcs. Previous NPCs in Vanilla that gave you quests may die in the next or become involved in a deeper storyline.
    • In the recent pre-Cataclysm events, Horde gets a much larger wham. You know all those tigers on the Echo Isles you've been killing for quests? They're TROLL DRUIDS.
      • Possibly, some of them. To say that it was true of all of them would be a stretch.
    • Post-Cataclysm - the fate of Honoring the Dead. For anyone that had leveled up in the Barrens, it was possibly the most depressing quest that Blizzard has put in the game, due to the Heroic Sacrifices that those you're giving the rites to had performed.
    • In Stonetalon Mountains Post-Cataclysm, the neutral druid school (with both Night Elves and Tauren) is bombed by a Horde commander until absolutely nothing but a crater is left. While for the Horde you see it coming, Alliance has no idea that the bomb they've been chasing throughout the zone is going to be used on schoolchildren.

Omusa's Spirit says: No, stay with the others. Escort them north, away from the fighting. I will stay here with the wyverns and cover your escape. Go!

  • Undertale is filled to the brim to this.
    • Flowey's fame of being a Walking Spoiler comes from the number of Whams he invokes, the very first of those being his berating speech at the end of the Ruins, that not only changes if you reset the game and took different actions (a thing players tend to do even this early due to the punches thegame plays on them), he also mentions the actions from your anterior gameplay. Flowey remembers.
    • Depending of the route, meeting Sans in the palace hall in New Home will inflict you two very distinct Wham!s.
    • On that matter, the whole of New Home. You enter the palace, only to find that the place is identical, yet sightly different to Toriel's house in the Ruins, in poignant ways that point on whoever living there misses her deeply. Keep going past this, thorough the different hallways, and different monsters will tell you the sad story of the royal family, which involve them adopting a human kid who after some time died from a horrible illness, which was followed by the death of their biological child after he used the soul of his deceased sibling to go thorough the barrier and bring his body back to the humans, a folly that only caused his death. Then the actual dimension of the tragedy dawns on you.
    • The True Lab, that you can only access in the Pacifist route, is probably the biggest wham episode in the game, not counting the final battles. Oh boy... Alphys, the nice shy scientist you just helped to confess to her love interest? She once experimented using Determination, a substance she distilled from human souls, that she theorized it was the main reason of human resilience and that could be used as an enhancer of monsters' power, only to discover that monsters actually can't handle it when her patients/subjects melted and joined with other melting monsters into horrible amalgamations; the guilt of this failure nearly drove her to off herself and even during the game events most of her actions were to atone for it. The illness that claimed the life of the original fallen child? Turns out it was actually self inflicted, in a Thanatos Gambit to get the human souls needed to break the barrier for once and all, that went horribly wrong, Oh, and the tapes where this revelation is done, along with the dialogue while fighting the Amalgamates, also contain the first hint that the character you named at the beginning of the game and the character you are actually playing are not the same person. You had the luck of getting the ominous signs about the forgotten scientist W.D. Gaster? You may get the report that chronicles the possible accident that erased him out of existence. But the biggest wham is the discovery of what, or, more exactly, who Flowey is, and how he came to be: he was an ordinary flower Alphys injected with Determination as an experiment to see its effects over non-human beings. Said flower was collected from the place a monster died, and it was still full of monster dust, so both substances interacted in such a way that not only gave the flower life, but the memories of the deceased monster, only without a soul to handle its emotions. The original flower was collected from the king's garden, where his son died...
    • How about the final fights of each route?
      • Neutral Route: Confront Asgore, and the first thing he'll do is destroy the Mercy button. After your character weakened Asgore and while is having mercy on him, Flowey appears and finishes him. Turns out this demonic flower has been following you the entire time. He then takes the six human souls and transforms into the Eldrich Abomination known by fans as Omega Flowey, hell bent on killing you.
      • Pacifist/Good Route: Better summed for its Wham! Lines "Let's just say... a tiny flower helped me" and "It's me, your best friend ASRIEL DREEMURR". Oh boy! If this confirmation of what the True Lab implied was the origin of Flowey isn't shocking enough, let's say that Asriel comes back into existence by taking not only the Human Souls but also the souls of all your friends and of every monster soul in the Underworld. He is the Final Boss of the game, and he is also under the delusion that your character was his deceased best friend, the Fallen Child, a.k.a. the character you named at the beginning of the game.
      • No Mercy/Bad Route: After the fight with Sans, you arrive with Asgore, who was with Flowey. The flower realized that he wasn't going to be excepted from your cruelty and tried to warn Asgore. You kill the king easily, and then the flower in an extremely brutal and unsettling manner. Then the original Fallen Child appears, thanking you for showing them the real emotion of cruelty, and giving you what's probably the worst But Thou Must! on videogames' history, as the "choice" is destroying the world. Which happens whether you agree to it or not. Reopening the game after this results in a black screen that last for several minutes, until the Fallen Child reappears and offers you to remake the world, for the cheap price of your SOUL. Should you agree to this, the game resets back to normal, but every replay is permanently marred.
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