Wham! Episode/Video Games: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]'', Chapter 18. The previous 3 chapters were a series of [[BLAMNon Sequitur Episode]]s where [[Enemy Mine|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 {{spoiler|Magnus}} and he reveals {{spoiler|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 [[Fluffy Cloud Heaven|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 Legend of Zelda (Franchise)|The Legend of Zelda]]:

** 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. {{spoiler|For example, the very first thing that happens in it is that ''your character is murdered.''}}

* The final act of ''[[Nie RNieR]]'' is a nonstop string of whams. {{spoiler|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!}}

*** In the Genocide/NoMercy route, you will fight him. You may dismiss him as weak due to its ridiculously low level and HP. Said fight is probably [[That One Boss|the hardest one in all the game]], and the things he says during it paints a [[Hidden Depths|very different picture]] from the personality he showed thorough the game.

** 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, {{Spoiler|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 you arrive to the home proper, only to find that the place is identical, yet sightly different to Toriel's house in the Ruins. [[Fridge Horror|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... {{Spoiler|Alphys, the nice shy scientist you just helped to confess to her love interest? She once experimented using [[Arc Words|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 [[And I Must Scream|horrible amalgamations]]; the guilt of this failure [[Driven to Suicide|nearly drove her to off herself]] and even during the game events most of her actions were [[The Atoner|to atone for it]]. The illness that claimed the life of the original fallen child? Turns out it was [[Driven to Suicide|actually self inflicted]], in a [[Thanatos Gambit]] to get the human souls needed to break the barrier for once and all, that [[Go Horribly Wrong|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 [[Ret-Gone|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, [[The Heartless|only without a soul to handle its emotions]]. The original flower was collected from the king's garden, [[Oh Crap|where his son died]]...}}