History UnexpectedCharacter / AzurLane

* The Japanese 6th anniversary announced a collab with ''Shinobi Master VideoGame/SenranKagura: New Link'', which went live on November 2023 and had Asuka, Ikaruga, Homura, Yumi, Fubuki, Murasaki, and Yūyaki as playable units.

* The Japanese 6th anniversary announced a collab with ''Shinobi Master VideoGame/SenranKagura: New Link''.

** Equipment augments are added to old and new collab characters, taking the character standards applied in ''The Alchemist and the Archipelago of Secrets'' collab event.

* The Japanese 5th anniversary announced a collab with ''VideoGame/AtelierRyza2LostLegendsAndTheSecretFairy'', with [[VideoGame/AtelierRyzaEverDarknessAndTheSecretHideout Ryza, Klaudia, Lila]], Serri, and Patty being available as playable units. The real surprise is Kala Ideas, who is ''[[EarlyBirdCameo debuting in this collab]]'' ahead of the upcoming ''Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key''.

* October 2022 revealed that Royal Fortune would be added to the game as the first member of the new Tempesta faction. If you can't remember a World War II ship with that name that's fine, because Royal Fortune was the ship of the pirate Bartholomew Roberts from the Golden Age of Piracy. As could be expected this came to an absolute shock to the community, as nobody expected ships from the Age of Sail to be added to the game.

* The Japanese 5th anniversary announced a collab with ''VideoGame/AtelierRyza2LostLegendsAndTheSecretFairy'', with [[VideoGame/AtelierRyzaEverDarknessAndTheSecretHideout Ryza, Klaudia, Lila]], Serri, and Patty being available as playable units. The real surprise is Kala Ideas, who is ''[[MarthDebutedInSmashBros debuting in this collab]]'' ahead of the upcoming ''Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key''.

* The Japanese 5th anniversary announced a collab with ''VideoGame/AtelierRyza2LostLegendsAndTheSecretFairy'', with [[VideoGame/AtelierRyzaEverDarknessAndTheSecretHideout Ryza, Klaudia, Lila]], Serri, and Patty being available as playable units. The real surprise is Kala Ideas, who is [[MarthDebutedInSmashBros ''debuting'' in this collab]] ahead of the upcoming ''Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key''.

* The Japanese 5th anniversary announced a collab with ''VideoGame/AtelierRyza2LostLegendsAndTheSecretFairy'', with [[VideoGame/AtelierRyzaEverDarknessAndTheSecretHideout Ryza, Klaudia, Lila]], Serri, and Patty being available as playable units. The real surprise is Kala Ideas, who is [[MarthDebutedInSmashBros debuting in this collab]] as a new character from the upcoming ''Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key''.

* The Japanese 5th anniversary announced a collab with ''VideoGame/AtelierRyza2LostLegendsAndTheSecretFairy''. A later announcement at the Tokyo Game Show also confirmed that a new character from the upcoming ''Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key'' would also be added to this collab.
* In October 2022 it was revealed that Royal Fortune would be added to the game. If you can't remember a World War II ship with that name that's fine, because Royal Fortune was the ship of the pirate Bartholomew Roberts from the Golden Age of Piracy. As could be expected this came to an absolute shock to the community, as nobody expected ships from the Age of Sail to be added to the game.

* The Japanese 5th anniversary announced a collab with ''VideoGame/AtelierRyza2LostLegendsAndTheSecretFairy''. A later announcement at the Tokyo Game Show also confirmed that a new character from the upcoming ''Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key'' would also be added to this collab.

* The Japanese third anniversary had a number of surprises. First would be among the 3D model skits characters. Akashi (mascot-ish character), Sirius (popular sexy maid with her ''Crosswave'' model being used), and Dido (also a popular sexy maid) weren't surprising. But the 4th was Pamiat Merkuria, pleasantly surprising many as while most were expecting a more popular ship like Tashkent (drawn by Kincora who did both Sirius and Dido), Pamiat has her share of fans and got some new ones seeing the cheeky cruiser in action.

*** Making this even wilder was the mechanical implementation of all this. In addition to the [=SY-1s=] replacing torpedoes entirely, ''Azur Lane'' acknowledged the huge increase in range this should logically give the sisters... and thus made them the first ships '''who can alternate between being deployed in the vanguard or the main fleet'''. It costs a token fee on their retrofit screen to switch which role either girl will fill, but it was really just a push of a button to do it. In implementation, in the vanguard they played rather like normal destroyers, albeit with absolute top-tier stats and with the missiles working a bit like "super torpedoes", moving very quickly at a given target and tracking it to a degree (and doing astronomical base damage, with An Shan now also substantially buffing the "Missile"/Torpedo stat in addition to her other buffs, resulting in very respectable overall damage). In the main fleet? They act like ''battleships'', firing their missile barrages similarly to a battleship salvo, and doing comparable damage to most battleships of their new rarity. This meant that all of a sudden, the Empery gained not one but ''three'' backline options and could now field a full fleet. This was met with incredible excitement (and slight trepidation at how powerful the sisters were), because in addition to opening who could get into the game, it signaled that Manjuu and Yongshi were ready to start getting ''really'' experimental with the game's mechanics.

* Now, to be fair, the very first of these happened in 2018; for the first Japanese anniversary of the game, around the time the English server was just finding its feet, the game's first big crossover was [[https://youtu.be/PJQI7FxjGBc?t=3000 announced]] at the anniversary stage event. The collab partner in question? '''''[[{{VideoGame/Utawarerumono}} Utawarerumono]]''''', Aquaplus's classic strategy/visual novel hybrid. Specifically, it would cross over with the then-recent sequel, ''[[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Videogame/UtawarerumonoMaskOfDeception Mask of Deception]]'', and feature the central cast of that game as playable characters. This had not been hinted at in any way prior to the announcement, and even on stage only Mafia Kajita and Producer M-san know what's coming. (And just to be clear: ''Utawa'' has absolutely ''nothing'' to do with naval combat in its strategic layer. It focuses almost exclusively on Heian-era-esque land combat. The main link it has to Azur Lane at all is having a lot of pretty girls on the cast.) Everyone was left stunned at the announcement (and the event itself was enjoyable), and it began to establish ''Azur Lane''[='s=] reputation for going for "oddball" crossovers and general surprises. Sadly, licensing issues and general timing kept the collab from making it to the English service of the game, becoming that version's only true content gap.

*** The other element of note was Hai Tien... and specifically, how she met her end. Tien was wrecked in '''1904''' due to entering a heavy fog bank and mis-navigating the area around the mouth of the Yangtze River, striking a pinnacle rock in Hangzhou Bay. This resulted in her constructive total loss ten years before the outbreak of World War ''One''. Both Avrora and Mikasa had, in some fashion, survived and actually "saw" World War II in some capacity; Hai Tien is the first ship in the game to have never seen either World War at all. This felt to many like the blowing open of the doors for what could get into the game; even Hai Chi made it to the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War which blended into [=WW2=], but now there was precedence for a ship that had never seen action in a global conflict to join the cast. This invited all kinds of wild possibilities, including the entire [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beiyang_Fleet Beiyang Fleet]] now being valid options for inclusion as Empery vessels, as well as any post-Beiyang vessel that didn't quite make it to World War II. It also seemed to open the door ''wide'' open for the WWI-era fleets of Britain, Germany and others who didn't quite see [=WW2=] to join the cast, which would particularly help give Sardegna and the Ironblood some much needed roster depth. It was, overall, a huge step for the game and indicated that ''Azur Lane'' was ready to think big ahead of the coming fifth overall anniversary of the game.

** But ''then'' it turned out that the theme of this Lunar New Year was contrasts. The oldest ships yet were added to the game... and some of the youngest, An Shan and Chang Chun, got retrofits. That is, they got their '''[[Main/TheSeventies 1970s]] [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar Cold War-era]] retrofits, complete with ''Silkworm anti-ship missiles'''''. These retrofits even outright changed their ship class, as they became literal, actual ''Guided Missile Destroyers'' (or "DDG"s), complete with replacing their Torpedo slots with straight-up Missile equipment slots, and indeed losing torpedoes entirely. Chang Chun had included a comedy line about asking for her missiles since her introduction, but the idea that the An Shans would ''actually'' get DDG retrofits had long been the realm of obscure memes, with the ships seemingly forgotten by the game save for popping up every Lunar New Year. Now, the game ''had'' foreshadowed this by briefly including them in the "Tower of Transcendence" event that introduced Ulrich von Hutten and the second wave of Plan Z Ironbloods, but only the absolute wildest conspiracy theorists even entertained the idea that this was presaging the introduction of [=DDGs=], let alone so quickly after [=ToT=]. But nope; in a number of ways, they had a starring role in the event, the items required to retrofit them being one of the major rewards of the event overall, and the ultimate reward for participation in the event's raid being a set of SY-1 missiles to equip one of the girls with. All of this was an absolute thunderbolt to the fanbase, and debuting right alongside Hai Tien, made it seemingly clear that ''anything'' was now on the table.

** Most folks expected another maid, which we got. A number of folks wondered if a post-1949 ROC ship might get slipped in again under its old name, and yup, hi USS Bristol. And a few wondered if we might get another pre-'49, WW2-era ship. And yeah... we did, after a fashion, in getting [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cruiser_Hai_Chi Hai Chi]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cruiser_Hai_Tien Hai Tien]]. Which is to say... ''vessels built for, and commissioned by, the Imperial Chinese Navy '''in the [=19th=] century'''''. Both ships were even older than Avrora or Mikasa, having been laid down a bit earlier than her and launched ''much'' sooner, being fully completed and commissioned before Avrora touched water. Unlike the previous vessels, they ''actually served'' in the [=19th=] century. That Manjuu and Yongshi would dip that far into history for new vessels without prior discussion was totally unexpected.

*** The other element of note was Hai Tien... and specifically, how she met her end. Tien was wrecked in '''1904''' due to entering a heavy fog bank and mis-navigating the area around the mouth of the Yangtze River, striking a pinnacle rock in Hangzhou Bay. This resulted in her constructive total loss ten years before the outbreak of World War ''One''. Both Avrora and Mikasa had, in some fashion, survived and actually "saw" World War II in some capacity; Hai Tien is the first ship in the game to have never seen either World War at all. This felt to many like the blowing open of the doors for what could get into the game; even Hai Chi made it to the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War which blended into [=WW2=], but now there was precedence for a ship that had never seen action in a global conflict to join the cast. This invited all kinds of wild possibilities, including the entire [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beiyang_Fleet Beiyang Fleet]] now being valid options for inclusion as Empery vessels, as well as any post-Beiyang vessel that didn't quite make it to World War II. It also seemed to open the door ''wide'' open for the WWI-era fleets of Britain, Germany and others who didn't quite see WW2 to join the cast, which would particularly help give Sardegna and the Ironblood some much needed roster depth. It was, overall, a huge step for the game and indicated that ''Azur Lane'' was ready to think big ahead of the coming fifth overall anniversary of the game.

*** What made it even better is that the game does try to faithfully simulate how different their armament is compared to most other ships in the game: in real life, the ships had a fairly common gun scheme for the period, having a pair of comparatively large guns (Elswick Ordnance 203mm breech-loaders, in this case) and then a plethora of smaller guns in the 120 to 43mm range, not totally unlike the sailing ships of the line of previous centuries. ''Azur Lane'' simulates this by giving the ships a "main gun" in the heavy cruiser range... with an efficiency of ''30%'', to simulate how anemic this batttery is compared to other ships using these weapons, but then their "secondary" armament is destroyer-scale guns with an additional gun mount (meaning they fire twice for every activation), making this their real primary armament. They also lack anti-air weaponry entirely, mounting torpedoes in their third slot instead. While somewhat questionable in practicality, there's no question it's a ''fun'' interpretation of a [=19th=]-century protected cruiser in AL's gameplay, and many people appreciated what they represented and how they tried to change up gameplay in their own way.

* Now, to be fair, the very first of these happened in 2018; for the first Japanese anniversary of the game, around the time the English server was just finding its feet, the game's first big crossover was [[https://youtu.be/PJQI7FxjGBc?t=3000 announced]] at the anniversary stage event. The collab partner in question? '''''[[{{VideoGame/Utawarerumono}} Utawarerumono]]''''', Aquaplus's classic strategy/visual novel hybrid. Specifically, it would cross over with the then-recent sequel, ''[[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Videogame/UtawarerumonoMaskOfDeception Mask of Deception]]'', and feature the central cast of that game as playable characters. This had not been hinted at in any way prior to the announcement, and even on stage only Mafia Kajita and Producer M-san know what's coming. Everyone was left stunned at the announcement (and the event itself was enjoyable), and it began to establish ''Azur Lane''[='s=] reputation for going for "oddball" crossovers and general surprises. Sadly, licensing issues and general timing kept the collab from making it to the English service of the game, becoming that version's only true content gap.

** Last is U-1206, a sub associated with toilet troubles.