Is this the worst plot twist ever?

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I dunno, Nu!BSG gives many of the examples here a run for their money

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Reminds me of the plot twist for Heavy Rain. And that was after the heavy editing of further ridiculousness. It's the writer literally making it up at the last minute in a desperate attempt to surprise.

It's not David Cage's fault you lack the emotions to feel his brilliant writing.

Spoiler: Keep Calm and Feel Emotions

Furiously beating a dead horse is fun!

In all seriousness, yeah, that was a really dumb plot twist. Not quite "Your wife is a mechanical arm" or "Dude is possessed by another dude's arm" levels of stupid, but still up there.

Hmm, two dumb plot twists involving people existing in an arm. Can we get a third, please? Someone? Anyone?

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

It's not David Cage's fault you lack the emotions to feel his brilliant writing.

Spoiler: Keep Calm and Feel Emotions

Furiously beating a dead horse is fun!

In all seriousness, yeah, that was a really dumb plot twist. Not quite "Your wife is a mechanical arm" or "Dude is possessed by another dude's arm" levels of stupid, but still up there.

It was many of many of many dumb, nonsensical plot...noise. And hey, it's not a dead horse if it still continues to live, making new terrible stories while getting baffling praise and enough money to push half our population out of life-controlling/debilitating debt. Not even mad, just mostly confused and disappointed. I guess the silver lining is that it's something else that isn't as insidious as a lootbox. Or...is it?

 

[CaitSeith]

That's pretty bad, but I'd say the ending to 2001 Planet of the Apes (which, to Tim Burton's somewhat dubious credit, he lifted right out of Pierre Boulle's novel) would give it a run for its money. I mean, there's poor writing, and then there's simply absurd non-sequitur that directly contradicts the plot.

That had me honest-to-God getting up in the movie theater and yelling "what the fuck was that?"

Someone in the writing team surely made a joke about "Ape Lincoln", and the team leader must have found it too funny to waste it.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Metal Gear had a lot of contrived and pointless plottwists. I mean, ideally the impact of a twist should come from how it recontextualizes the story as a whole but most of the ones in Metal Gear seem to be a result of Kojima writing himself into a corner and then comtriving some way to get out of it. What does Venom Snakes real identity add to the plot? What does Ocelot pretending to be posessed add to the plot? What does the Patriots being the mission support from MGS3 add to the plot? Very little, other than not having to get into Big Boss' actual backstory, saving time and effort of finding some way to meaningfully integrate Liquid into the story of MGS 4 and having to establish an actual background for the Patriots, respectively.

It's not so much a twist as it's a sort of deus ex machina but rather than getting the characters out of a situation they shouldn't be able to get out of they get the writer out of a situation they don't know how to resolve. There should be a word for that.

You know, I like Kojima. But he really, really isn't a good writer.

 

[Asita]

Oh, I absolutely have seen worse twists.

Spoiler: Observe.

Seriously, who taught that man how to dance???

 

[WolfThomas]

For me the worst plot twist ever was in Army of Two: Devil's Cartel

Spoiler

The whole "Salem turning evil" thing was just total bullshit, it made no fucking sense whatsoever and pissed all over a character I had grown to like

Spoiler: It was definitely character derailment but I don't think it was nonsensical...

Salem was pretty much a huge dick in the first game, Rios was the one with the moral compass. I think Devil's Cartel made it canon that the second game's ending was the one where Rios shoots Salem to save Shanghai (but he survives) so their relationship is strained at that point.

You add them having that big blow-out argument before he gets hideously burnt and left for dead, which is got to be insanely painful. The cartel pulls him out, patches him up, gets him addicted to pain-killers, a bit of stockholm syndrome and manipulation. People get brainwashed in the real world in lesser conditions.

I say this as someone who played Salem in both previous games. I could see it happen.

On a completely unrelated note I actually quite liked Alpha and Bravo. They grew on me through the game. Alpha's straight man nature, the jokes about his (non-existent according to Bravo) girlfriend. Bravo's dream to own a boat. I really wish they'd make a sequel. There's not a lot of COOP 3rd person shooters.

 

[Tanis]

Have you SEEN the last X-Files episode?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Spoiler: Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

Sora gets possessed by Xehanort.

Why, in a meta-narrative sense, did this have any reason to happen?

 

[Drathnoxis]

Have you SEEN the last X-Files episode?

No, tell me about it. I stopped watching X-files around season 4 or 5 of the original series when I couldn't take the ridiculousness of the government wide conspiracies anymore.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Spoiler: Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

Sora gets possessed by Xehanort.

Why, in a meta-narrative sense, did this have any reason to happen?

Why wouldn't it happen? The Bad Guy eliminates the good guy as a threat and switches the good guy over to his side in one fell swoop. Xehanort would have to be an idiot NOT to.

 

[DarthCoercis]

None of those seem as stupid as the "It was the trees!" thing from The Happening.

 

[Pseudonym]

That sounds like a really dumb twist...

But were we all murdered by machines to protect us from the machines murdering us?

 

[Warhound]

None of those seem as stupid as the "It was the trees!" thing from The Happening.

That can be forgiven because we got the timeless scene of Mark Whalberg negotiating with a house plant.

 

[Ima Lemming]

I can think of four games off the top of my head where the plot twist is either "The big baddy wants to destroy the world to stop the world from being destroyed" or "The big baddy wants to kill everybody to stop everybody from killing each other."

 

[Dalisclock]

That sounds like a really dumb twist...

But were we all murdered by machines to protect us from the machines murdering us?

There is an insane troll logic explanation to this.

The species being reaped aren't being completely annilated, their DNA and presumably all data about their culture is preserved as a reaper, so in a twisted as hell way, those species are preserved(in the form of an eldritch abomination) as long as that particular reaper exists. To the reapers, it's probably the best thing any species could hope for, to be preserved forever.

 

[DarthCoercis]

None of those seem as stupid as the "It was the trees!" thing from The Happening.

That can be forgiven because we got the timeless scene of Mark Whalberg negotiating with a house plant.

Yeah, ok, that was pretty damn funny.

 

[TilMorrow]

-snip-

Spoiler

Actually he does get mentioned/hinted to quite frequently throughout the game and moreso during events with the Q team. I mean literally right at the start of the game someone says out loud where the old man went and who the hell is the kid. Why they never directly talk to him is also explained by the fact that when they were brought in they were told that this guy was deaf, blind and mute and didn't appear otherwise during the initial days of the test. I guess the twist could also be dependent on if you played the previous games and then would know about 5 of the participants cannot possibly be the killer. To use your example, it'd be more along the lines of Sherlock and Watson had been charged with guarding an previously indisposed Moriarty whilst solving a complex and continuing series of murders before finally establishing a link between the cases and the supposed disabled criminal that they had been commenting on throughout the investigation.

Spoiler

Danganronpa 3? Cuz I keep hearing about how the twist sucks.

Spoiler

I will preface this by saying I am a fan of Danganronpa so my opinion is biased as fuck, but personally I think the twist ending to V3 was damn ballsy and pretty good at that. The solution to it did feel pretty mediocre but the overall execution of the case and sudden re-establishment and framing of the game's events and meaning was great. Add in the bit of intrigue at the end and it felt like a genuine improvement of the last two games where the MM didn't participate till the end.

A lot of Final Fantasy plot twists are pretty bad, XIII stands out with it's "actually the Leader of the city turned you into the L'Cie (slaves with a mission or become zombos) and wants you to destroy said city and it's host after they've merged with them so they can be reborn as a god whilst killing everyone in the process but then it's all resolved by doing just what they set out to not do and everything turns into crystals... before suddenly being alright again".

 

[FalloutJack]

You've obviously never watched the movie "Monster A Go-Go". I'll just paste the Wikipedia description here:

Spoiler

The plot concerns an American astronaut, Frank Douglas, who mysteriously disappears from his spacecraft as it parachutes to Earth. The policeman in one scene inspect the landing site of Douglas's capsule and notices a burned patch, only to dismiss it as a prank. The vanished astronaut is apparently replaced by or turned into a large, radioactive, humanoid monster. This is revealed when it comes into the scene and kills off Dr. Logan. A team of scientists and military men also attempts to capture the monster ? and at one point succeed and imprison it in the lab, only to have it escape. Neither the capture nor the escape is ever shown, and both are simply mentioned by the narrator.

At the end of the film, the scientists corner the monster in a sewer under Chicago, but the monster suddenly disappears. The scientists receive a telegram stating that Douglas is in fact alive and well, having been rescued in the North Atlantic, perhaps implying the monster was an alien impersonating Douglas. The narrator provides the film's closing dialogue:

As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no giant, no monster, no thing called "Douglas" to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness! With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some 8,000 miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?

I have. I have to agree. It's one of the reasons I actually consider it as worse or MORE worse than...Manos.