Top 20 Greatest Video Game Plot Twists

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 20 Greatest Video Game Plot Twists. For this list, we’re going over the iconic moments where the rug was pulled out from under players’ feet, changing everything they thought they knew about the game in question! As expected, major spoilers on the horizon! Think we skimmed over a twist deserving of respect? Let us know in the comments!

#20: The Stranger’s Identity

“The Walking Dead” (2012)

We all create our own monsters, even if we don’t mean to. After his surrogate daughter is kidnapped, Lee traverses a city filled with walkers to get Clementine back before he succumbs to his bite. Along the way, he discovers the one responsible for stealing Clem away is…just some dude? Turns out The Stranger is another survivor, one who lost everyone due to Lee’s group unknowingly taking all their food a few episodes back. In a twisted way, the player had a hand in pushing this person to the extent they were willing to snatch Clementine out of a warped sense of paternal instinct.

#19: The Final Boss

“Pokémon Gold & Silver” (1999)

The Pokemon formula has remained relatively unchanged for a while now, especially when it comes to the classic games. Eight gym leaders, four elites, one champion – done and done. Or are you? Turns out there’s a final challenge waiting for those who want to be considered a master – you. Or rather, the you from a generation ago. Armed with some insanely powerful Pokemon, players are tasked with taking on the character they played in Red and Blue to see who really is the best like no one ever was.

#18: The Monster is Real

“Disco Elysium” (2019)

Between the booze, drugs, depression, bouts of insanity and pressure to solve a murder before an entire city erupts into chaos, you can forgive Detective Harry Du Bois for thinking he’d finally snapped when, after arresting the real murderer, he comes across a monster lurking among the grass. Except, it’s real. Turns out that side-mission involving cryptozoologists hunting for a new species…yeah, they were onto something. If your luck holds out, players can even interact with the Insulindian Phasmid, who in turn reveals the truth of the world. Not bad for a down and out cop who has frequent arguments with his own ancient reptilian brain.

#17: Cute Anime Game Becomes Psychological Horror

“Doki Doki Literature Club!” (2017)

And this is why we’ll never look at potential waifus the same way again. Appearing on the surface as just another dating simulator, gamers everywhere soon discovered that picking a love interest was the least they should be worried about. Eventually revealing itself to be a fourth wall breaking, trauma-inducing horror that played with conventions of the genre, there’s some legit scares to be found here – especially when it comes to Monika. While it heavily relies on shock value and anonymity, there’s no denying how effective this tonal shift was when it first crept into the gaming zeitgeist.

#16: Radagon is Marika

“Elden Ring” (2022)

The mythos and history FromSoftware’s latest venture is just about as rich as a game could hope to achieve, and woven into it was a twist that left every Tarnished slack jawed. Come the end of the journey, players were all aware of who Queen Marika was, as well as her loyal husband Radagon – both of whom eventually came into conflict over the fate of the Elden Ring. Sounded like your typical dark fantasy marriage. That is…until we discovered, either through a puzzle or the actual boss battle – that both Marika and Radagon were the same person, or at least shared the same body. As you can imagine, many questions have since been raised. After all, they had kids together!

#15: Killing Colossi = Bad

“Shadow of the Colossus” (2005)

While there is no debating the spectacle that each of the sixteen Colossi bring to the table as boss battles, turns out that Wander (and by extension the player’s) willingness to end them in order to supposedly bring back his deceased love interest might have been misplaced. As it happens, not only was each Colossus a peaceful being in their own right, but by slaying all of them, the evil entity known as Dormin was freed from its imprisonment. Wander may have had the purest of intentions, but his willingness to trust in a phantasmic voice to bring back his beloved eventually costs him everything dear. It’s a bitter lesson learned.

#14: Haytham is a Templar

“Assassin’s Creed III” (2012)

Up until this point, fans had been hidden-blading their way throughout history as the likes of master assassin Altair and Italian stallion Ezio. Oh, and Desmond too. At no point did it ever occur to us that what we were seeing play out was anything other than another noble assassin undoing the evils of the Templars, one kill at a time. And then Haytham happened. After traveling to America, we see him take down numerous targets, setting himself up as the lead we’ll undoubtedly be playing throughout our adventures in the New World…at least until he reveals himself to be a Templar, and by doing so, makes the player complicit in his actions to overthrow the Brotherhood of Assassins. No wonder we have trust issues!

#13: Kessler is Future Cole

“Infamous” (2009)

The orchestrator of everything painful in Cole’s life – from granting him electrokinesis all the way to murdering his wife – Kessler quickly established himself as the ultimate big bad, with zero mercy, a cult-like following and his own array of deadly abilities as a Conduit. You’d think Cole bringing him down would be cause for celebration…only for Kessler to then reveal that he IS Cole, albeit one from an alternative future, who came back in time in order to harden and prepare his past self by removing any emotional attachment, all so he could be ready for the eventual arrival of a Conduit monster known as the Beast. Talk about a conflict of interests…

#12: Aerith's Death

“Final Fantasy VII” (1997)

The one moment that caused retro gamers everywhere to lose their minds. As the soul of the group, Aerith was as kind as she was charming, not to mention an incredible support in battle. Sure would be a shame if a certain One Winged Angel came out of nowhere, stabbed her, and essentially removed her from the party altogether. It’s the cruelest of fates dealt out to the purest of characters. It left such an impact that fans have spent endless hours looking for a way to prevent Aerith’s demise, with no luck whatsoever.

#11: The Government Goes Back on Their Word

“Red Dead Redemption” (2010)

A brutal reminder that crime doesn’t pay: In the role of cowboy John Marston, you’re tasked by the government to track down and execute your old outlaw crew in exchange for immunity. When all is said and done you return to your family and everything seems peachy for what seems like your last couple of missions, setting up your new life as a rancher. But you are denied your promised happily-ever-after with your family when the law shows up at your farm. This leads to a gun battle where you are given no way out, and are forced to watch John’s bloody execution by firing squad. This leads to you taking up the role of his son Jack years on in one final mission to claim vengeance. Like father, like son…

#10: Wesker Works for Umbrella

“Resident Evil” (1996)

Sure, this blonde tool has cemented himself over the years as one of the franchise’s biggest baddies, but there was a time players considered him a friend and mentor: the original game establishes him as your commanding officer at STARS, before dropping the bombshell that he has been working for the Umbrella Corporation from the beginning. In Jill’s story, Wesker has also been blackmailing teammate Barry into working as his henchman. Not only is he the double agent you were warned about, but he has been using his agents as guinea pigs for Umbrella’s twisted experiments. He is seemingly killed just prior to the player’s final boss battle, but if we’ve learned anything, it’s that the best bad guys don’t stay dead for long.

#9: Colonel Konrad Was in Your Head

“Spec Ops: The Line” (2012)

Playing through Walker’s recon mission to war-torn Dubai, you maintain radio contact with your predecessor Colonel Konrad, whose distress call acts as your call to action. This former commander is in contact with you throughout the game, frequently questioning the morality in Walker’s decisions and actions. It is clear that violence has poisoned the disgraced colonel’s mind, and that you are in danger of following him down the same dark road. But when Walker finds Konrad’s corpse at the top of the tower, having shot himself, the horror of the truth dawns on you: the guilt he had been feeding the player was coming from Walker’s head the entire time. It is then the player’s decision to live with his actions or die like Konrad.

#8: James Killed His Wife

“Silent Hill 2” (2001)

Through the gloomy streets of Silent Hill, you search for your long-presumed dead wife Mary. The hope your wife may still be alive is your driving motivation as you encounter tortured souls, lost companions and pyramid headed monsters on your journey, all the while haunted by a headstrong doppelganger of your wife dubbed Maria. But happy endings don’t suit horror well; the retrieval of a videotape is the turning point in the story, and not only do you discover Mary really is dead, but that you were the one who killed her. Whether it was an act of mercy for his dying spouse or a desperate attempt in getting your life back is left ambiguous, but the tormenting truth is certainty enough.

#7: You Were the Villain

“Braid” (2008)

What begins as an archetypal rescue-the-girl platformer subverts into something much more complex and meaningful. As guilt-stricken Tim, you embark on a journey to rescue the princess from harm, using a limited ability to stop, bend and even reverse the flow of time to aid you in your quest. It is only once you help her escape an “evil knight” that you are forced to enable the rewind mechanic, and realize that your beloved is actually running away from you, the true villain, into the arms of her hero in shining armor. A devastating blow alone, the game’s meaning is deepened further in the epilogue, which hints towards Tim’s identity as a scientist on the Manhattan Project, and a father of the atomic bomb.

#6: GLaDOS is Caroline

“Portal” (2007)

Given how she’s always throwing us into one lethal experiment after another, players didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for the sassy killing machine. That is, until we learned about Caroline. Turns out that before she was robotic, GLaDOS was the meek assistant to Cave Johnson, who over time found herself uploaded into a mechanical form free of empathy, one that only existed to continue on Aperture’s experimentation. The saddest part being that throughout the events of Portal 2, we can see parts of Caroline sneaking out. And then she gets reinstalled…where GLaDOS swiftly deletes her old personality without hesitation. Wheatley turning evil we could see coming, the cake being a lie we could get over, but this? This was just painful.

#5: Odin is Tyr

“God of War Ragnarok” (2022)

We had heard stories in regard to the All-Father’s cruelty and manipulation, but none of us were prepared for his most elaborate and wicked of deceptions. Disguising himself as Tyr in order to spy on and influence Kratos and Atreus, the Lord of the Norse Gods truly was playing 4D chess with everyone’s lives, all to pursue his own ends. Alas, even when he’s exposed, it comes at a cost, as he slays Brok on the spot. It’s Odin at his most vicious and selfish, the reveal of which was one even the God of War was unable to stomach.

#4: You’re Not Solid Snake in This One

“Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty” (2001)

Oh Kojima, you rascal. You always know how to throw your fans for a loop. High off the first entry in Solid Snake’s saga, hardcore Metal gear fans were eager to see his return as he took on the terrorist group known as the Sons of Liberty. And they did…sort of. While Snake is playable in the opening level, the true hero of the franchise’s second mainline installment is pretty boy Raiden. While he would go on to become beloved, back in the day, this was fairly inconceivable to fans, and a pretty bold move at that. Naturally, Kojima would go on to repeat this twist later on in The Phantom Pain. Oh, you thought you were Big Boss? Guess again!

#3: Shepherd’s Betrayal

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” (2009)

As Task Force 141 Sergeant Roach, you face many foreign dangers across the world, failing to see the domestic one right under your nose. Towards the campaign’s conclusion, as you hand a DSM to your faithful superior, Shepherd remarks on one less loose end before gunning down you and Ghost. Incapacitated, all you can do is put down the controls, watch your leader and squad set your corpses ablaze, and ponder on the backstabbing brutality of it all. The sequence is hauntingly accompanied by the radio cries from Price warning you not to trust Shepherd. Going forward, the player takes control of Captain Soap on a mission of retribution against the treacherous general. And thus the trust of a million gun-toting gamers was shaken.

#2: You Were Darth Revan All Along

“Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” (2003)

In a twist that would even make Darth Vader green with envy, you begin this Star Wars RPG as a mere republic rookie and end it as one of the most feared Sith Lords of all time. Throughout your journey against Darth Malak’s vicious Sith armada, you hear legends of his master Darth Revan. Only to discover that you had once been the tyrannical conqueror, before amnesia forced you to the Jedi who reprogrammed your mind. Fallen heroes as villains is not exactly new to the Star Wars universe, nor are dubious Jedi councils, but even so fans didn’t expect this from what was thought to be a simple tie-in game. Where Revan goes from that point is a choice left to you. Choose wisely.

#1: “Would You Kindly?”

“BioShock” (2007)

This steampunk adventure takes you through the seabed city of Rapture as you try to free it of Andrew Ryan’s hold with the help of mystery man Atlas. Deep into the story comes the infamous kicker as you reach Ryan’s office; not only do you discover that he is your illegitimate father, but that Atlas has been hypnotizing you into completing the game’s tasks up to this point through mind control, brought on by the trigger phrase that has prefaced each objective. In a shocking demonstration of the programming, Ryan has you beat him to death with a golf club, leaving you to turn your sights onto your former puppet master.