< Non Sequitur Scene
Non Sequitur Scene/Video Games
If the game itself isn't a Non Sequitur Scene, you're likely to find at least one or two scenes that don't make much sense after you've played them.
- The hit XBLA and PSN game Castle Crashers pretty much built its empire on BLAMs. One particularly memorable one happens near the endgame: one of the three bosses you have to fight before taking down the Big Bad is a wacky, robot-voiced painter with a toolbox for a head. He descends from the scaffolding in his room to paint on a big canvas on the wall which makes his art come to life and attack you. Among things he draws are a snail with a nose for a face, angry elephants, eyeless unicorns and Carrot Clock.
- If you're familiar with Newgrounds, Castle Crashers' pedigree, you might recognize many of this "art" from particularly bad flash portal entries.
- At another point in the game, your characters are abducted by aliens (in a medieval setting) with absolutely no warning whatsoever. After you escape and destroy the squadron of aliens that follows, a large alien sitting on a toilet pumping a dumbbell suddenly runs over to the console and destroys it for no fathomable reason, forcing a self destruct sequence. This incident is never mentioned again, save for a cameo in the ending.
- The alien is the main character from The Behemoth's previous game, Alien Hominid. And much like there, they're all One Hit Point Wonders. Sort of a Non Sequitur Scene cameo for the alien.
- If you consider something from Phoenix Games really a game, "She's so jealous of me~"
- In Devil May Cry 4, After Dante beats Berial, you're treated to a wonderfully dirty cutscene where Dante demonstrates his new weapon.
- And in DMC 3 Special Edition, The Jester boss fights. Less challenging, more surreal, and less rewarding than the normal Boss Fights, and your opponent explicitly doesn't want you dead.
- The MMORPG EverQuest 2 has a Call Back in the form of the Tower of the Drafling, which seems to be a BLAM to many players. In the middle of a rather overrun contested area, is a beehive. Clicking said beehive shrinks you down, and allows you to explore and fight inside it.
- The NPC that mumbles with the name '?' is likewise never explained.
- In Metal Gear Solid 4, Big Mama goes off on a tangent comparing The Boss to the Virgin Mary, and Big Boss to Jesus, quickly adding pseudo-religious imagery to the mix of MGS4's "WTF?" moments. This angle is never ever mentioned again.
- After you defeat the Fury, he shoots himself up into the ceiling, killing himself. That's not the weird part. After that, his body falls to the ground and explodes. That's not the weird part. The weird part is when the flames of his body inexplicably shoot out two screaming heads made of fire, which chase Snake around yelling "Fury!" before crashing into the scenery and causing it to collapse, cutting Snake off from the room where the battle took place. Even for the Cobras it was weird (and unlike some of the others, there was nothing remotely supernatural about the Fury, making it even more nonsensical).
- The Taito arcade game PuLiRuLa has the player characters given the ability to cause a Non Sequitur Scene as a "Smart Bomb" style special attack to clear the room of enemies. Seriously.
- These include sudden animal rampage (complete with tribal chanting), a purple guy made out of jello guy appearing and attacking everything by doing ballet twirls at them and a mexican wrestler appearing in a giant microwave, catching everything(except end bosses) in a giant ball of yarn, throwing them into the microwave, closing the door, waiting a few seconds for the microwave to ding and releasing them back as animals (which is what the enemies normally turn into when defeated, and which can be collected for extra points before they run offscreen).
- The Kill Sat sequence from Resident Evil: Dead Aim. See here. Essentially, a Chinese agent is sent to stop a terrorist. During her mission, China later decides to negotiate with him. For some reason, this means she is now a target of the Chinese government, specifically their laser satellite. (Why they would kill a loyal agent because they canceled her mission is beyond me.) She avoids the laser and the game's protagonist removes the GPS tracking device from her body. After that the whole "enemy of my own government"/killer satellite thing is never brought up again in the game.
- In Sam and Max Season one: the War Song scene from Abe Lincoln Must Die.
Sam: Well...
Max: Let's not do that again.
- In Kingdom Hearts II, during the second visit to the Land of Dragons, Sora is pursuing a black-coated man who he thinks might be Riku. When he apparently corners him, the man unhoods himself and reveals himself to be Xigbar of Organization XIII. Xigbar says one line then runs away. In the final world, however, when Xigbar appears to Sora, reference is made directly to their original encounter at Hollow Bastion, making it a follow up to that. So then, aside from unhooding himself, what was the point of Xigbar showing up at the Land of Dragons if it's going to be ignored as if it hadn't happened?
- The whole fight with Chernobog in the first game seems to be this - it comes out from nowhere and after the end is never mentioned again, not even in the bestiary in Jiminy's Journal. He was originally intended to be the game's final boss, with Sora, Donald and Goofy fighting their way up Bald Mountain to reach him, but console limitations prevented this. The developers (rightly) thought a fight with Chernabog was just too cool and / or terrifying to waste, so they kept him in as a mini-boss anyway.
- Sora and Co. seem to treat Luxord's fight like one huge BLAM, considering that Sora's allies got sent to some kind of hammerspace (or possibly the Yu-Gi-Oh Universe).
- While Kairi suddenly wielding a keyblade seems like one, they were kind enough to write it out in Birth By Sleep.
- The whole Lightcycle Minigame could be considered a Non Sequitur Scene, on your second visit to Space Paranoids, you are forced to ride the Lightcycle , which consists of two short and annoying rounds, then you are teleported back to where you were, and no mention of the Lightcycle is ever made again, save being able to revisit it and play it as a Minigame.
- Yet another KH example: Sora's confrontation with Roxas during the final world of Kingdom Hearts II. Its BLAM status is undone in the "Final Mix" version though, as a scene is added explaining that it was triggered by a previous event, Axel's death, and that Roxas' "reawakening" within Sora is the reason every Organization member Sora confronts in their castle call him Roxas.
- In the US release of Birth By Sleep, a secret boss (Mysterious Figure) is added. He shows up, fights you, then vanishes upon defeat. No-one, not him nor your playable character, says a word this entire time, and the event is never spoken of again. The last time we had a Bonus Boss like that (the first Final Mix), it turned out to be Xemnas, so it's probably setting up for something, but within Birth by Sleep itself... This isn't helped by Word of God saying that the fight is canon.
- On the subject of secret bosses: Kurt Zisa and Phantom from the first game - granted, there was some dialog before the battles, such as the magic carpet or Tinker Bell wanting to go somewhere, but that was about it. Kurt Zisa gave you nothing other than a hard time and bragging rights, and Phantom simply gave you an upgrade to your Stop spell.
- Then there's Sephiroth and the Ice Titan. In Final Mix, defeating these two in the Platinum and Gold Cups (respectively) would reward you with two very nice looking keyblades. Since this was never released in the US, these two have no real point. Again, the only thing you can gain is bragging rights/experience
- The infamously confusing scene in 358/2 Days known as "Snarl of Memories". It's only purpose to the story is to get Riku and Xion in one place so they can talk. Everything else is just... weird.
- In Iji, there is the trippy Sector Z, a sector made up of a few of Daniel Remar's other games. You get there by finding all ten hidden posters, then by making a Tasen blow a hole in a cracked wall. When you find the teleporter pad, you'll also find a logbook that briefly describes how the sector was found. If you play through Sector Z in a normal game file (not single sector play), you turn up in the beginning of Sector 2 when you exit. Dan asks Iji where she went, and she says that she doesn't really know, and only remembers some kind of rave or mosh inside a video game console. When Dan remains silent, Iji tries save face by giving a more technical explanation, but is interrupted by Dan saying, "You know what? I'm going to pretend this conversation never happened." It is never brought up again during the rest of the game, as if it never occurred.
- This would probably count as an Easter Egg.
- At one point in Kagetsu Tohya Shiki randomly gets eaten by a magical talking jaguar for going through Arcuied's underwear. What the hell is going on here? Even Shiki is baffled. And unlike numerous other bizarre things in this Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo - though it's far from the only example - this never comes up again or is explained in the slightest.
- It is a dream after all.
- In Silent Hill 3, the appearance of the Sewer Goddess comes out of friggin' nowhere, is completely out-of-place in the famously grungy 'blood and rust' game, and is then never mentioned again. Ever.
- It's a very, very well hidden joke reference and not something that's encountered in the normal course of the game or part of the actual narrative. You might as well count the UFO endings too, while you're at it.
- A better example would be the elevator game show from Silent Hill 2.
- Very similarly, the phone call in the Otherworld hospital—you know which one—from Silent Hill 3. So Silent Hill is made of Mind Screw, you do get either extra ammo or first aid from it, it references the plot ( (there's a reason the voice keeps changing Heather's age), and gives you an extra disturbing detail to watch out for, but still, it comes completely out of the blue, is weird even for Silent Hill, and you never find out who the hell it was or where that came from.
- Another moment to mention in the Otherworld hospital is the Store room scene. ( (When you enter the room, the room becomes filled with blood and during the progression of it, the door is locked. There is a mirror in the room where it eventually doesn't reflect Heather any longer as more and more blood covers the mirror self. When the room is completely dark, the door is unlocked and if you return, the room is back to normal. Also, if you linger in the room for too long after the room goes completely dark, Heather's health will rapidly drain and she will die.) This part is never seen again in the game ever again and adds absolutely nothing to the gameplay itself.
- It does have a purpose, though: it scares the absolute shit out of anyone who's not expecting it. The "beheaded mannequin" part from the Hilltop Center may as well count, too.
- Very similarly, the phone call in the Otherworld hospital—you know which one—from Silent Hill 3. So Silent Hill is made of Mind Screw, you do get either extra ammo or first aid from it, it references the plot ( (there's a reason the voice keeps changing Heather's age), and gives you an extra disturbing detail to watch out for, but still, it comes completely out of the blue, is weird even for Silent Hill, and you never find out who the hell it was or where that came from.
- A better example would be the elevator game show from Silent Hill 2.
- It's a very, very well hidden joke reference and not something that's encountered in the normal course of the game or part of the actual narrative. You might as well count the UFO endings too, while you're at it.
- In Super Mario RPG you can go behind a curtain in Booster Tower which turns Mario into his 8-bit version. The theme from Super Mario Bros. starts to play and you are able to wander around the room until you turn back to your normal self after a while.
- This BLAM is repeated once per game in the first two Paper Mario games. Super Paper Mario upgrades it into two new powerups—one causes the characters to become giant hulking (and pixelated) 8-bit versions of themselves, while the other causes small 8-bit allies to follow the character. However, the developers wisely threw in a BLAM regardless; in one scene, a koopa grabs the giant powerup and chases the player across the stage until he or she finds a giant powerup as well, and can then fight the koopa on equal footing.
- The "That's My Merlee!" sequence from Super Paper Mario also qualifies. Basically, you're trying to find this woman named Merlee, but the chapter's villain is a shapeshifter who assumes her form. When you finally meet them, the game bursts into a game-show spoof sequence where you try and deduce which one is the real Merlee. It's completely out of nowhere, is never mentioned again, and to top it off, the biggest giveaway as to the real Merlee (a fly buzzing around her) has nothing to do with the sequence at all.
- Not to mention that the abovementioned sequence, as well as the corresponding boss battle, all take place in a women's public restroom. Seriously.
- Super Mario RPG has a second BLAM in Merrymore. You save Princess Peach from Booster, but then a pair of chefs fight you because you destroyed the wedding, nullifying all the work they put into this freaky cake they baked. They attack for a few turns, and then the cake comes to life and attacks the party while the chefs run off. After beating it, Booster comes in and eats the cake whole and the party moves on without ever mentioning the incident ever again. It doesn't help that the cake is also a That One Boss for many.
- Later in Super Mario RPG, there's the Mirror-Mario encountered on the Sunken Ship. It doesn't attack you unless you "talk" to it, which makes it reveal its true form, a Boo. All it does is provide a rather easy obstacle to get past and a stepping stone to get to a hidden treasure box, and not once is it ever explained.
- This BLAM is repeated once per game in the first two Paper Mario games. Super Paper Mario upgrades it into two new powerups—one causes the characters to become giant hulking (and pixelated) 8-bit versions of themselves, while the other causes small 8-bit allies to follow the character. However, the developers wisely threw in a BLAM regardless; in one scene, a koopa grabs the giant powerup and chases the player across the stage until he or she finds a giant powerup as well, and can then fight the koopa on equal footing.
- In Parappa the Rapper 2, Chop Chop Master Onion from the first game has a show that's "Strictly for Adults" in which CCMO teaches "romantic karate". and Parappa and his best friend PJ try using the moves on each other while unbeknownst to the two of them, Parappa's father and girlfriend's father watch. This is never mentioned again. Lyrics include "Caress your lover," "Let's get it on," and (while Parappa is holding PJ) "Lovers, we are." This is one eighth of an E-rated game.
- Gore Ultimate Soldier is a fairly standard space FPS. SUDDENLY, HORDE OF YELLING SKELETONS WITH CHAINSAWS, WHAT DO YOU DO?
- Supposedly, the game is about some virtual reality training simulator that goes wrong. Not that it matters that much if you're playing a game called Gore: Ultimate Soldier.
- MegaMan Star Force 3 had the most random appearance of Hyde/Dark Phantom... ever. He kind of shows up, says Geo ruined his life, is defeated again and falls off the Wave Road (wait, you could fall?). And then... never ever mentioned again.
- Not COMPLETELY random. It happens during the same sequence of events where you are busy trying to put Luna back together again. Considering how much he seems to be connected to Luna, there might be something more to it...but either it was lost in translation or not established due to bringing back Luna being a more important plot point. But it's still a BLAM considering he seems completely unaffiliated with anyone this time around, and is never brought up again since everyone is glad to have Luna back.
- The Mega Man Battle Network games are FULL of BLAMs, but one in particular truly stands out: in MMBN2, a deadly spider gets loose on an airplane, and Lan has to help trap it. The spider incident has absolutely no bearing on the game's plot, is an utter waste of time, and even worse, features a BLAM within a BLAM in the form of the whiskey event. Seriously, what the fuck were they smoking when they wrote the scenario?!
- Pretty much every pre-tournament match sidequest in Battle Network 4 is one of these. Given that 75% of the game consists of these tournaments it makes most of the game a Random Events Plot.
- One that insists that Status Quo Is God, leading to So Bad It's Good moments such as a child trying to lead his village to starvation by cutting off their water supply being brushed off with a "We'll just pretend this never happened."
- Honestly, you could make a strong case claiming that the entirety of Battle Network 4 was a BLAM. See the main article for an explanation.
- Pretty much every pre-tournament match sidequest in Battle Network 4 is one of these. Given that 75% of the game consists of these tournaments it makes most of the game a Random Events Plot.
- Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver feature an optional event where an entire UNIVERSE is created and presumably destroyed in order to give you a rare Pokémon. Proof here.
- Final Fantasy IV has the dancing-girl, who randomly turns into a
football-playermonk and then proceeds to run around in the inn, like (s)he was trying to get a touchdown, complete with fitting music. She returns to normal afterwards. You can watch the scene multiple times, but the only comment EVER made on it by ANYONE is Cecil's dumbstruck "What the--?!"- And there's the entire cafe in Troia, which features no plot relevance and only exists for a few funny lines, plus an expensive "pass" that will get you into the strip club in the back.
- Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII is packed full of Narmtastic moments, but it truly crosses over into BLAM territory when Lucrecia brings up—out of nowhere and apropos of nothing in the plot—how she was responsible for accidentally killing Vincent's father and proceeds to show Vincent a vision of how she did it. Vincent is not really bothered by hearing this and it's never spoken of again.
- Well it does explain why Lucrecia chose a relationship with Hojo instead of Vincent.
- During the trip to the Fourth Ranked Battle in No More Heroes, Travis falls asleep on a train. This causes him to... dream of playing a Bullet Hell shooter based on his favorite Cute Witch/Giant Mecha show. And no, the following battle has nothing to do with said anime, or shooters. It just... is.
- Desperate Struggle has one too, after the seventh ranked battle. You play as Henry, as he dreams about a very Moe girl with a jetpack thing with arms trying to kill him. Never comes up again.
- Aren't dreams in general often BLAMs?
- It could be explained because of this, see min 5:23
- Not to mention the Humongous Mecha fight with Charlie Macdonald.
- Desperate Struggle has one too, after the seventh ranked battle. You play as Henry, as he dreams about a very Moe girl with a jetpack thing with arms trying to kill him. Never comes up again.
- At one point in EarthBound, while in Moonside, a man refuses to let you past unless you bring him "a guy whose eyebrows meet in the middle and who also has one gold tooth" (his exact words). That guy attaches himself to you at one point (he's invisible). Bring him to the man, and they leave together to get a drink. Even by Mother standards, this is random; one Let's Play has an illustration of Ness and Jeff shrugging it off following the sequence.
- The Nightmares in the Milkman Conspiracy level of Psychonauts. Basically, a hole just opens up in the ground and arms drag Raz into what looks like Fire and Brimstone Hell, a freaky monster attacks, and when you beat it, Raz just appears back where he was, and no mention of it is anywhere to be found. It gives the impression that the developers realized after they'd written the funniest level in the whole game that it didn't have any fighting other than the boss, and just stuck them in there at random to make up for it.
- The monsters are Nightmares that plague certain people's minds. It's foreshadowed in a difficult-to-find secret area in Milla Vodello's mind, but even considering that... pretty random. Nightmares are shown to exist, but why did Raz fight one just then?
- The boss was originally planned for Milla's dream, but they moved it because her being unable to protect Raz from her own nightmares would make Milla look incompetent.
- And don't forget the "The World Shall Taste My Eggs" memory reel, though this might be some sort of a Mind Screw. And lampshaded by Raz's own "What the hell was that?!" comment.
- The eggs slideshow becomes more comprehensible later on when you learn the Big Bad's plan of which the reel is a metaphorical representation. Apparently the Big Bad has such great psychic powers that he can incomprehensibly obfuscate his thoughts to prevent other psychics--such as you--from learning things they shouldn't.
- Just for the record, Tim Schafer—the creator's—commentary didn't clear any of this up, even though it sort of got an explanation in the game. He decided that it was about cashews, skeletons and projectile vomiting. Granted, he was only joking around, but the aforementioned commentary prompted his co-commentator to provide the following:
- The monsters are Nightmares that plague certain people's minds. It's foreshadowed in a difficult-to-find secret area in Milla Vodello's mind, but even considering that... pretty random. Nightmares are shown to exist, but why did Raz fight one just then?
Scott Campbell: No wonder people were confused! I'm confused!
- Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne features the Kabukicho Prison, which is divided into two halves: one is claustrophobic and isolated with eerie lighting, the other is full of people being tortured, whom you can hear in the other world. And the part where you accidentally interrupt a prisoner during his escape attempt, causing him to break the spoon he was using to tunnel. He blames you for it, and tasks you to find a new spoon. Upon finding one and handing it over, he realizes that it's a legendary spoon and tunnels through the floor instantly. All of this from a game that's known for being much Darker and Edgier than other RPGs.
- It's not quite a BLAM as the hole the prisoner digs serves a purpose by letting you get at a part of the building you couldn't.
- The warp points from Star Fox 64, which are eerie, tie-dye stages-within-a-stage with bizarre music in the background. Your normally very chatty team is completely silent throughout and after each warp point, with literally the only indication that they exist and what you just played wasn't some bizarre, spin-induced hallucination being a few lines in Sector Y concerning opening a 'gate'. The first thing out of anyone's mouth before entering one is guaranteed to be some variant of "What the...?"
- Don't forget the "Out of This Dimension" stage from the original Star Fox on the SNES, which took Fox and company to some bizarre plane of existence with colored floating heads in the background, paper airplanes attacking you, and a giant slot machine for a boss. You defeated it by shooting the handlebar to make the reels spin, shooting the buttons to lock pictures in place, and eventually lining up triple sevens, at which point it would shoot meaningless coins at you and then explode. The end credits would then play without any real closure to the plot, leaving players wondering just what they had played through, and what happened to Andross or Corneria. Also unnerving is the intro text to the stage, which reads "Come in, Arwings!! Fox, where are you?!! We need you to protect Corneria!!"
- BLAM-mania finds itself at home in the Guilty Gear series, though considering the bizarre cast of characters, not much sense COULD be garnered from anything even if we tried. Either way, this one counts the most due to its confusability and its status as never being mentioned again: One of Sol Badguy's story routes in Accent Core Plus has him being forced to fight his past self (Order-Sol) by I-no. After the fight, I-no kills Order-Sol, but in one route, Sol remains in existence somehow. The whole thing is never mentioned against Sol ends up in another fight with Ky Kiske (they fight a lot in the series). This is in contrast to the other ending, where his past self's death naturally negates his existence.
- Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is chock full of random scenes. The go-kart driving panda that appears during the opening credits, the narrator donning a chicken mask and berating you for making yet another string of bad choices, the chase scene where John, Jane and Thresher go goofing about in Los Angeles...
- Alien Soldier has a scene where you save a blue teddy bear from kissing aliens. The teddy bear then takes control of a power boat and rides you to your destination, however, he gets grabbed and thrown off by a huge lobster halfway.
- Not just Alien Soldier, but in Gunstar Heroes there's... Then in Guardian Heroes... Well, and in Bangai-O, there's... In Sin&Punishment there's... You know what? Screw it. Treasure is a BLAM company. That's just all there is to it. They don't let a game leave their hands without at least one.
- It's impressive for a game that's already as out there as Banjo-Kazooie to have a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, but there you go: for the final phase of the final battle, after Banjo and Kazooie have exhausted all their options—even the Jinjos have taken their shot—and Gruntilda is still standing...out of the center of the arena sprouts a gigantic Jinjo statue, which intones in the Voice of the Legion "I AM THE MIGHTY JINJONATOR, ACTIVATE ME..." Doing so has the Jinjos combine their power into what is, assumedly, the Jinjo version of the Terminator, which proceeds to wallop Gruntilda but good, sending her falling to her doom. This is never foreshadowed, explained, or brought up again throughout nearly the entire series, except for one Jinjo in Nuts & Bolts talking about how he wants to train to be as powerful as the Jinjonator. One measly Jinjo—that's it. Twelve years later and lots of development for the Jinjos, and we still don't know what the heck was up with that and probably never will.
- Sierra is already fond of lateral thinking puzzles, puns, and visual gags, so off-the-wall moments don't usually qualify, except this one. In the later half of King's Quest VI, Alexander, becoming more and more desperate to Save the Princess, journeys to the underworld, an understandably solemn place. To get the guard to give you his skeleton key, you must play an upbeat tune on a conveniently-placed bone xylophone, causing all four guards to jiggle and dance, also causing three more skeletons to can-can onto and off of the screen. Then it's right back to the dreary music, you pick up the key, and go on your way.
- In Jak 3, there's a scene where Daxter gets sucked into a computer and has to play a Pac-Man style game to find a MacGuffin. It evidently wasn't supposed to be that much of a stretch, since the character who put him into the computer was one with the computer himself, but Daxter's whole body getting sucked through the screen?
- In Gears of War 2, The Squad go to an Abandoned Government Facility to get the Locust Stronghold, where they find genetically engineered hybrid-monsters, and that the lead scientists have went to the path that the Squad must go through. The Creatures, people, and threat are never mentioned again.
- This was supposed to be explained in 3, but was cut for some reason. Word of God is that Myrrah, the human queen of the Locust, was the daughter of one of the scientists at that facility and was experimented upon. She fled to the Hollow and rallied the Locust behind her. So yes, the primary motive of one of the series' main villains had to be explained in a forum post.
- Devil Survivor has an event called the "Miyashita Koan", where a weird clown-like demon named Ghost Q challenges you to look for treasure hidden in one of the three machines he has scattered throughout the stage. Once you complete the battle (either by finding the treasure, Ghost Q giving up on you and leaving, or outright killing Ghost Q), this battle is never mentioned again.
- Mother 3: "Lucas opened the present. You heard a mambo rhythm. Ah."
- "Lucas opened the present. An indescribable smell lingers in the air. Ah."
- There's a lot of these moments, really. They're nice when they happen, though.
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask features this. If you go into the restroom in the hotel in Clock Town, you find... A hand. A hand reaching out of a toilet. Named ???. Who gives you a piece of heart to give him some paper. He/she/it returns in Oracle of Ages if you give him a piece of stationary, he gives you a uh... Stink bag. But it didn't stop there, oh no, you can use the stink bag to clear up a Tokay Chef's sinuses. Ew. Just ew.
- The first was necessary for the Bombers' Notebook, and the second was part of a trading sequence. They weren't just random tasks to do for the lulz.
- ??? returns in Skyward Sword as part of a Gratitude Crystal Sidequest, and his predicament is the same, but this time you have to give him Cawlin's love letter to Karane. To use as toilet paper.
- Or you can just give the letter to Karane, in which you never meet ???. Cawlin gets rejected in favor of Pipit, by the way.
- On a side note, this is the first and only time we get to see what he looks like out of the toilet. He's just a disembodied hand, which makes you wonder what he's doing in the bathroom in the first place.
- Or you can just give the letter to Karane, in which you never meet ???. Cawlin gets rejected in favor of Pipit, by the way.
- The Giger-esque alien's lair at the end of the arcade version of Astyanax.
- In Trauma Center: Under the Knife, the gameplay generally involves performing operations. But in one level, you have to defuse a bomb, using the exact same equipment and methodology as the operations. This is from an organization that primarily works via an evil living virus; a bomb doesn't seem like them.
- Phantasmagoria 2 has gangsters dancing past a bondage club before you enter. In a (supposedly) serious horror game. There's also Batman visiting the psychiatrist, but that's an Easter Egg anyways (the fact that it's so poorly integrated could easily make it a BLAM, though).
- Halo: Reach: In the mission, Nightfall, we get two, fifty-foot tall, great, gorilla-looking beasts. They attack the Covenant, and when they're through, for absolutely no reason, they go after you. The so-called "indigenous species" are never ever referenced before or after.
- The creatures were supposed to show up in more than just one level, but were ultimately cut from the game except for this one part.
- Darksiders: In an After the End setting, there are masses of zombies (which, incidentally, did not cause a Zombie Apocalypse). In at least three locations, there is one male zombie who looks exactly the same as all the others - except he wears black pants, a black top hat, carries a cane, and speaks with a British accent. Each time you meet, Wicked K pops out of nowhere, says something along the lines of "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, War! Sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you now." and attacks you. He's an optional Miniboss, is never seen or mentioned in the game besides those few fights, and doesn't even refer to past fights (though he does seem to get less Affably Evil each defeat). When defeated, he jumps into his suddenly super-sized hat, and disappears.
- Apparently, Wicked K was added at the last minute as a developer in-joke.
- The SNES adaptation of Aladdin has two strong contenders for this trope. The first stage, in which Aladdin is sucked into the Genie's lamp, seems the more obvious example due its bright and trippy nature in contrast to the rest of the game, but it's somewhat justified in that a) this covers the "Friend Like Me" sequence from the movie, and b) you have to do it before Genie will let you out of the cave. The other example is the Egypt stage, where Abu accidentally falls off the magic carpet during their trip back to Agrabah, and Aladdin must find him inside an Egyptian pyramid. It's definitely not as outlandish as the former example, but it more obviously has no bearing to the rest of the plot and is clearly there to just pad the game's length.
- The Genesis version has a similliar stage involving a lot of platforming with springs and bumpers, with a mountain of random items in the background. The exit is Genie's open mouth, with his tongue forming the stairs.
- One bonus area in VVVVVV includes a flickering elephant so big its body spans four screens. It causes the player character to adopt a sad expression while standing near it, but otherwise has no significance whatsoever.
- It could be argued that the events generated by the "Wacky Wasteland" perk in Fallout: New Vegas are these. An arguement that is very well founded, may I add.
- It's probably best to treat the entirety of the "Mothership Zeta" content in Fallout3 as one as well.
- The game for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has one in Roxie's stage where in a Japanese steakhouse random people ON FIRE come out of nowhere and run around until you kill them, or they accidentally run onto the damaging grills. This never really happens any other time in the game.
- World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has several quests that pop out of nowhere simply because your character decides s/he doesn't like a particular critter inhabiting the area (hyenas, buzzards, eels, etc...). Once completed, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. And it is never mentioned again.
- The instruction manual to Totally Rad features a few. In the midst of a lengthy explanation of the game's Excuse Plot, the manual inserts random pictures of an old airplane and the boss of Jaleco Entertainment's USA branch. Another one next to the controls is a picture of some lady—no explanation as to who she is except the writer forgot he put her in there. It's easy to tell that Jaleco USA was having way too much fun with the game itself.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky has the Ludicolo Dance in Spinda's Bar. Whenever you get a big win at the raffle, a Ludicolo busts through a wall a la the Kool-Aid Man (complete with an "Oh yeaaaaah!") along with a few Bellossom and perform a dance in the middle of the bar. When it's finished, they all disappear in a flash of light, the wall is fixed up like magic, and it can happen everytime you get a big win.
- Mass Effect 2 has Mordin Solus' Scientist Salarian song, a clever homage to Gilbert and Sullivan. It's never spoken of again afterward.
- No longer a BLAM as of the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC, which includes a dossier on Mordin outlining his established career in community theatre. No, really!
- Bookworm Adventures Volume 2 has the "Dance Battle" level near the end of the game. Lex battles while dancing to the funky music. With robots. It somewhat justifies its existence by not being too easy to beat, since it's a Survival Battle,[1] but that doesn't change the fact that it comes completely out of nowhere and is absolutely hilarious. It does, of course, advance the game progress by giving you a companion, but there was no reason for the level to take that form. "Beyond their wildest imaginings", as the level intro puts it, is very much an understatement.
- Stubbs the Zombie has a level where you and your horde of zombie minions fight your way through a police station, culminating with you taking on Police Chief Masters ("Chief Masters", by the way, is one of several nods in the game to the fact that it runs on the Halo: Combat Evolved engine). When you finally corner Masters, he... challenges you to a dance-off that plays out like the classic memory toy 'Simon'. None of the other boss fights are particularly unusual, you just fight them with the usual controls, like every other enemy. It's just Masters who makes it into a minigame, and it's never mentioned again (although to be fair, the main character is an unspeaking zombie, so the game doesn't really have much by way of plot).
- Conker's Bad Fur Day had The Great Mighty Poo. Starters, you enter a mountain of poo. Then you clobber and toss 6 pieces of live corn into a puddle of poo. Just when you think its over, The Great Mighty Poo poops out of the lake and...starts singing opera about dreams of throwing itself at you. You beat it by throwing giant rolls of toilet paper into its mouth. When it's over, you pull a handle and flush him down. Conker and The Dung Beetles never mentioned him ever again.
The Great Mighty Poo [in a nice operatic baritone]: I am the Great Mighty Poo,
And I'm going to throw my shit at you.
A huge supply of tish comes from my chocolate starfish.
How about some scat, you little twat?
- Vanquish, by Platinum Games, is generally a fairly serious game, but at one point, you sneak behind some crates and observe a dance off by a whole platoon of robot soldiers, accompanied by a giant white boombox. As soon as one sees you, they act normally and the boombox converts into a walking barrier with guns. It never happens again, nor is it ever mentioned.
- While most of the bosses int he Xbox Ninja Gaiden games can come out of nowhere and have no bearing on the plot, the most notable are the Buddha and Statue of Liberty bosses added in Sigma 2. The Buddha is especially jarring since Ryu saves Sonia from her fall like in the original, then the statue returns, Ryu puts it down again, then Ryu goes and unties Sonia with no mention of the GIANT BUDDHA STATUE that Ryu just broke with his sword.
- The game Blood Wings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge is all around weird, but if you let Marcie (Soleil Moon Frye) die, she'll appear in a cinematic as a cloaked figure just like everyone else you let die, but then she says "I am the key to your future" and then laughs maniacally for no reason.
- Embric of Wulfhammers Castle has the Ancient Scotch sidequest. It starts with randomly drinking a bottle of scotch in the "trophy room", devolves into a Cosmic Horror Story with overtones of Demonic Possession, then ends abruptly without actually resolving or explaining anything. While nearly everything else you can do in the game comes up again at some point in the story, this whole episode is only spoken of again in the Developer's Room.
- Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp features a series of odd levels as you guide Dirk the Daring through time to rescue Princess Daphne. But none however, are quite as strange, (and that's saying something), than the 5th level when Dirk is not only sent back to the year 1804, but is for some strange reason, shrunk down to the size of a mouse in Ludwig Van Beethoven's study, as the famous composer plays on a piano. During the level Dirk must avoid the composer's hungry cat and from there, it gets weird. Yes, weirder than that. Suddenly Beethoven, his piano, the cat and Dirk are sent flying into the air. The level gets even more chaotic as the cat suddenly starts breathing fire. And as one final cherry on top of this sundae of weirdness, Beethoven suddenly opens his coat and his outlandish clothes underneath make him look like Elton John. As soon as all this ends, Dirk suddenly finds his time machine, he's transported away and the level ends. None of this insanity is ever mentioned again.
- In Chibi-Robo!, using radar in the living room will eventually lead you to a dig spot in the carpet. Digging into it will reveal a tiny fat blue man with a spark plug for a head in a purple speedo, who will rave at you to "give him sound", which you do by jabbing him with your shovel-spoon repeatedly, causing him to dance as he rapidly grows to several times his size before thanking you and disappearing. You can repeat this any time you enter the living room, it is the only situation in which he appears and doesn't receive any reference or allusion anywhere else, and only Chibi and Telly seem to have any idea he exists.
- In the 2000 Spider-Man video game for Nintendo 64 and Playstation, during the level where Spider-Man is being chased across rooftops and cranes by a police chopper, inside one of the cranes, one that has an image of a jack-o-lantern with the word "BOMB" written in graffiti next to it, is the lair of one of Spider-Man's archenemies, The Green Goblin. Spidey even muses to himself, "Gee, I wonder who those pumpkin bombs belong to?" While a treat for fans, this is nonetheless pointless and strange as The Green Goblin doesn't appear anywhere in the game. Nothing else regarding the Goblin, or even his lair, is ever mentioned again throughout the rest of the game.
- Far stranger and more of note is the game's "What If?" mode. Words cannot describe it.
- In Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4, the Carnival stage has a haunted house with rails on the ground nearby. Grinding the rails causes you to go (apparently through a solid wall) into a small area with creepy noises and faces everywhere, unavoidably sliding down the tongue of what looks like a giant red demonic mask. This is not mentioned anywhere else in the game.
- Kingdom of Loathing is pretty bizarre and intentionally inconsistent in general, but a certain Easter Egg stands out. The Sorceress's Tower is filled with overpowered enemies and difficult puzzles, one of which involves putting different kinds of keys in a door. If you happen to have a balloon monkey, you can somehow cram it in the lock (it's a Balloon-Mon Key) to meet "Unexplained Jamaican Man," who gives you a balloon ("Hey, mon. How about a balloon, mon?") and, true to his name, is never mentioned again or explained, by himself or anyone else.
- ↑ meaning you aren't allowed to recharge the health meter between the enemies
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