Ass Pull / Anime & Manga

• Another creates an ass pull in its anime, and manga, adaptation. The revelation of Ms. Mikami and Kouichi's Aunt Reiko being the same person. Unlike the implications that this person is the dead one of that year, this had absolutely nothing even hinting at it. It comes out of left field, and is only revealed in the final episode of the anime and on the last page of the penultimate chapter of the manga. Every character already knew that Ms. Reiko Mikami was related to Kouichi, but not one person so much as makes any mention of this. And given the nuances of class 3-3's curse, you would think such a thing would be dropped early on. The original novel handled the revelation much more gracefully.
• The Reveal in Assassination Classroom that Koro-sensei was the real God of Death and the God of Death Class-E fought was his former apprentice. You'd think Koro-sensei would have recognized him, especially since God of Death's mask was more or less his original face anyway.
• The Attack on Titan manga when Eren turns out to be the 'Coordinate', a shifter capable of unconsciously commanding titans for some. An idea foreshadowed by name only once by Reiner and Bertolt only a few chapters beforehand. Happens again, in Chapter 66, where the serum that falls out of Rod Reiss's bag is labeled "armor" so that Eren can tear into it and magically be able to seal Wall Maria later.
• Ayane's High Kick: Ayane's last minute victory over Sakurako. During the final bout, she spends the majority of the match getting hammered. One of the ringside commentators even said the ref should've stopped the fight, since Ayane had to lean against the ropes to remain standing. Yet, the ref allows the match to continue. Whereas Ayane lands a single kick that inflicts what barely amounts to a papercut and, suddenly, the ref jumps in and calls the fight off by declaring Ayane the winner. Which gets lampshaded by Sakurako when she openly objects to the ref's decision.
• In Blassreiter's Final Battle, a fatally wounded Joseph finds himself in a strange pocket dimension with the spirits of Gerd and Hermann, who take over his body to fend off Xargin until he bounces back. May be an unexplained Amalgam ability, as Elea uses this later for the series' Heartwarming Moment.
• Bleach:
  • Fans tend to call this "Plotkai". Provided it's actually true and not a lie he made up to mess with Ichigo, Aizen's claims toward having been manipulating Ichigo's entire life might qualify (though Aizen does point out a bunch of weird things that Ichigo has been through, like Uryu's hollow bait somehow summoning a Menos Grande, as evidence; if Aizen is lying, then all those things are simply plot holes). Other examples include Yammy being the Zeroth Espada, Hitsugaya's bleeding and talking ice clone during his fight with Harribel, Ulquiorra having a second Resurrección (which goes against the basic concept of Resurrección), Ichigo's ultimate defeat of Ulquiorra, Sasakibe knowing how to use Bankai (which was only stated posthumously and long after he was effortlessly beaten by a bare-handed Ichigo), and one Sternritter having an identical twin appear out of nowhere. Two different characters independently received the power-up of being dead, thereby making them immune to an enemy's power. The final Big Bad is killed thanks to an arrow made of silver that allegedly clogs the heart of people he purges, even though several victims were Stripped to the Bone.
  • The Espada ranks were stated by two different arrancar, Shawlong and Ulquiorra, to go from 1-10. However, it's eventually revealed that the Espada ranks actually go from 0-9. Yammy switches from 10 to 0 during his Resurrección. Word of God clarified that Espada ranks are based on the amount of power, not the ability to use it. Yammy was never portrayed as especially competent, so the idea of his raw power not translating to combat effectiveness was foreshadowed well enough. However, the author's choice to reveal his secret "0" rank as a cliffhanger, only for him to be killed basically offscreen not long afterward, is the very definition of a pointless twist.
  • In the Zanpakuto filler arc, Muramasa claims to have killed his master and that he wants to liberate all Zanpakutos from their owners. It transpires that he's using the zanpakuto rebellion to distract the shinigami so he can free his sealed master Kouga Kuchiki. The closest thing to a foreshadow is Byakuya's fake Face–Heel Turn, but that act doesn't foreshadow Kouga's existence, it only foreshadows Byakuya wanting Muramasa defeated.
  • In the final arc, Ichigo's bankai is broken and it's suddenly revealed that bankai can't be repaired. The problem with that suggestion is that five different bankai^note In order: Mayuri's, Renji's, Toshiro's, Ikkaku's, and Komamura's had been badly damaged or outright destroyed at least once before Ichigo's. Four of those bankai were used afterwards, and the the only one who never used his bankai again (Ikkaku) was lambasted for not doing so. Most notably, while the story tries to claim that Renji's bankai is still missing the few pieces Byakuya destroyed, Byakuya visibly turned Renji's entire bankai into splinters.
• Among the male idol community, B-Project Koudou*Ambitious is pretty well known. What starts as a normal, if eccentric, idol anime ends with the B-Project's kindly manager, Yashamaru, revealing to the heroine that her father was one of the people that ruined his life, and that in revenge he's willing to take down the company his daughter now works at, scoop up B-Project, and make it big at another company after controversy forces the former company to shut down. Absolutely none of this was foreshadowed beforehand; the only hints that something is wrong with Yashamaru are the scenes where he makes a secret deal with an off-screen higher up, and Episodes 10 and 11, where he suddenly vanishes and has his songs distributed to another group under a different label. But even then, that leads to more of a kidnapping and blackmail arc rather than industrial sabotage, and the heroine doesn't seem like she's central to the conflict at all.
• The ending to the Bunny Drop manga is infamous for this. It turns out that Rin and Daikichi are not niece and nephew. Daikichi's grandfather isn't Rin's biological father. This isn't foreshadowed at all except for possibly how Rin is a blonde. This in itself related to the swerve of how as a teenager Rin develops feelings for Daikichi, the man who raised her since age six, which has little foreshadowing besides how Rin never considered Daikichi her adopted dad (and even that's pushing it on foreshadowing).
• Canaan:
  • The cliffhanger in which Maria is locked up in a train car with a time bomb ticking down. In the next episode, she is saved from the wreckage by Yunyun. It's unclear how any of that happened and how Maria managed to survive her gunshot wound afterward, even though Yunyun had been carrying her around for hours.
  • Alphard surviving her fall of several meters also has some of this. Sure, the woman is strong, but that is just ridiculous.
• Code Geass R2 Turn 21, where it's revealed that Marianne (who for most of the series has been painted as practically a saint) not only fully supports her husband's Instrumentality plan, but she's committed multiple Kick the Dog moments herself, including using her Geass to possess a young girl after her death, and not particularly caring about the Mind Rape her daughter went through. And that's only one of the plot twists thrown into this episode.
• Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School
  • After Komaeda was Put on a Bus, he ended up returning in Episode 8 of Side: Despair knowing everything about Enoshima and Kamukura despite being isolated in an oasis for the past three episodes.
  • Kirigiri's survival. Not only does it completely contradict everything we were told about the NG Code poison, not only is the only evidence of foreshadowing a nondescript pill bottle (when nothing previously suggested the poison even had a cure), but it completely undermines the supposedly happy ending due to Naegi having everything handed to him and Munakata basically losing everything. This is even acknowledged by the staff. The original episode of the English dub accidentally included a blooper where Kirigiri admits outright that her survival makes no sense.
• Deadman Wonderland had a particularly egregious example with Kiyomasa Senji fighting against the Undertakers. At this point in the story, the Undertakers have a device known as Worm Eater, that oxidizes the Nameless Worm within the Branch of Sin. However, he has a plan: create a thin blood blade known as 'Invisible Black' that takes care of the problem. It's never explained how he managed to figure this out, or where he could've learned it from, it just feels like a sloppy set-up for Ganta to learn the same tactic.
• In DEAD Tube Mizuno seemed to have gotten mangled just as horribly as all the other Film Research Club members, even showing beforehand she didn’t think nothing of Machiya, labeling him as trash like all other traitors did, with that it seemed she died with them; come a few chapters later she is revealed to be alive, recovering at the hospital with no visible scars, Machiya decided to spare her to be of use for him later, Mizuno is filled with gratitude and treats Machiya nicely like she did when it is all an act except it is for real this time around.
• Death Note:
  • Near and Mello's appearance. Neither of them were explained well before a six year Time Skip after which they step up as Light's new opponents. Wammy House comes across as this too, as a house filled with orphans who are raised to become L's successors and that they are notified of L's death by a system that informs them of his death if he doesn't press a button every few days.
  • The big revelation in the finale that Near had the real Death Note switched with a fake and that neither Light nor Mikami noticed this, which ultimately is the final step to bring Kira down.
• Descendants of Darkness does this a lot in quite a few of its murder "mysteries." The worst offender is quite possibly the King of Swords arc. Oh no, the evil doctor Muraki has been killed! Who could possibly be the culprit of all the continuing murders then? Why, it's actually Tsubaki, who had actually been taking a never-before-mentioned, fantasy drug that made her develop a split personality. And Muraki isn't actually dead — all along, he actually had the ability to survive deadly poisons from taking poison since an early age, which was also never mentioned before! So in the end, he still was the culprit. Why didn't anyone think of this? It should've been so obvious.
• Digimon
  • Digimon Adventure 02:
    • The first movie (the one that was reshaped to make up the third part of the movie released over at the states). Chocomon/Wendimon has evolved into Cherubimon, a powerful Ultimate-level Digimon that's essentially invincible, and this is during a time when the main cast is still stuck with only their Armor levels not even having access to their natural Adult stages. So, what happens? Out of nowhere, Angemon and Angewomon (who herself, being a Perfect-level, should be inaccessible for a whole other reason) evolve to their Ultimate-levels despite losing the ability to evolve past their Adult stage. However, it gets worse. Do the two holy Ultimate-levels destroy Cherubimon? No. Instead, they use their energies to summon two Digimentals to evolve Terriermon and V-Mon, one of which only exists specifically because it was created by the Four Holy Beasts. It isn't explained why they can do that, either. Sure, it's a Non-Serial Movie, but absolutely none of this was explained very adequately in the movie itself, which hadn't been half-bad until this happened.
    • The Christmas episode's twist — Sora and Yamato suddenly dating — was viewed by some in this light. Unless you're watching the original where you can see slight foreshadowing as early as Adventure.
    • The revelation of MaloVamdemonmon as the final Big Bad, considering he died twice the previous season; he became part of another villain who was subsequently killed, and he was killed a fourth time during an in-canon game.
    • The explanation of why the older Chosen Children can no longer evolve to Perfect or Ultimate. Essentially, they gave up their Crests (which were already destroyed) to create a barrier to protect the Digital World (which neither worked nor was ever shown or brought up again). The writers caught on that this was a pretty silly plot point and changed the reason why they gave up their Crests: they had to awaken the Digital World's gods (the Four Holy Beasts). This too is an ass pull because 1) the Four Holy Beasts were almost immediately resealed and 2) the only things the Four Holy Beasts (actually, just Qinglongmon, we never see the others) actually do is fix the Holy Stones (which would not have broken if their Digimon could go Ultimate at will again) and give the older Digimon the ability to reach Perfect and Ultimate again (which, again, wouldn't have been a problem if they had their Crests).
  • Digimon Adventure tri. has Togemon's Needle Spray attack suddenly being omnidirectional that ended up destroying a helicopter in the crossfire. There is absolutely no reason or logic as to why her attack even became multidirectional in the first place considering that in all other scenes, Togemon can simply aim a specific target just fine such as Alphamon and Imperialdramon. It's as if the reason it suddenly changed into all directions is to simply heighten the drama of public opinions regarding the Digimon.
  • Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna pulls a pretty out-of-nowhere reveal that the thing that powers the bonds between the Chosen Children and their Digimon Partners is the possibilities available to the Chosen Children. As they grow older and their path in life is set, the bond becomes weaker, until eventually it is severed forever. Zero foreshadowing was provided in any other Digimon series.
  • Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time has several in the finale: Ryoma's Digimon partner, who had previously barely talked at all and showed no personality, turns out to be the Big Bad in disguise and brainwashes his tamer. Even "better" is the previous generic evil Big Bad now being a good guy, and a human with a clock Digimon (despite previously having nothing to do with time) wandering through dimensions collecting humans to beat up the new big bad he inadvertently created.
• Regina, Cure Ace and Cure Ace's identity in Doki Doki! PreCure. The anime goes to great lengths to have Mana and Regina bond, and Regina becoming stronger through friendship. Fans even saw the clues that seem to point that something big would happen to Regina, most likely her performing a High-Heel–Face Turn and join the team as another Cure. Come the halfway point... DENIED. Regina's father, King Jikochuu, brainwashes her even more, making her even more evil, Cure Ace shows up and ends up being a nine-year-old girl named Aguri Madoka that hadn't been alluded to at all. Then it turns out that Aguri/Cure Ace, Ai-chan and Regina were originally Princess Marie-Ange all along.
• Doubt:
  • The mangahas the revelation on who the mastermind is. It's Rei, a character that was shown to be dead much earlier on. The only reason to explain how this character is alive, despite the corpse being on full display for more than a page is, they simply faked it and Rei used her hypnotizing abilities to fool everyone. Aside from coming out of nowhere and being badly written, said character's motive comes across as a Nietzsche Wannabe, but ultimately fails. A disappointing revelation, when the story had been going well beforehand and Mitsuki being the villain was done well.
  • Its Spiritual Successor (by the same author), Judge, is even worse. The culprit? Hiroyuki, the main character. Not only is there only a single, extremely subtle, clue towards this, but the vast majority of the manga contradicts it (most blatantly any time we see Hiro's thoughts, which outright bring things up that logically never happened) and the motive is utterly nonsensical.
• At the climax of Doraemon: Nobita in the Robot Kingdom, it is revealed that Dister, the robotic Evil Chancellor who manipulated Queen Jeanne to start the "Robot Reproduction Plan" is actually a human in a suit, and is Dr. Chapek's evil younger brother. This reveal comes out of nowhere (as neither character ever mentions having a sibling, and they don't talk or even think of the other throughout their appearances). This plot point ends up going nowhere, as it pops up after Dister is defeated, and Nobita and the others return to their homeworld shortly afterwards.
• Il Palazzo in the last episode of Excel♡Saga (ignoring the non-canon 26th episode) abandoning his dreams of conquest to fall down a hole with Excel. Given that it is a Gag Series, the lack of buildup works fine.
• In the second season of The Familiar of Zero, we see Professor Jean Colbert die in a fight, and Saito and Louise holding each other while mourning his death — a touching scene for many a fan. Then in the third season, lo and behold, he lives! Turns out one of the witches of the academy cast a fake death spell on him for no apparent valid reason. At least part of the spoiler is less absurd than the rest; the spell in question was cast using water magic by a fairly high-level mage adept in its use. Water magic in this series is associated with healing and grants a degree of control over the body, as demonstrated early in the second season with the Ring of Andvari and Zombie Wales. The execution still leaves something to be desired, though.
• Gilgamesh's appearance and the possibility of his existence in Fate/stay night isn't foreshadowed in the slightest, at least in the anime. Yet he still manages to appear at a very crucial moment to resolve all the conflict in the arc.
• Fushigi Yuugi Eikoden OVA gave us the Ass Pull of having its Villain Protagonist Mayo Sakaki — who up to that point had been engaged in all sorts of dog-kicking, up to and including several unambiguous Would Hurt a Child moments — suddenly revealed to be heroic all along, and that Miaka had willingly given over her unborn child to Mayo for protection. While Mayo does have a Heel Realization of sorts, she does absolutely nothing to atone for her heinous behavior for the first 70% of the story, and instead her newfound heroism is "established" by having the Suzaku warriors suddenly erupt into Character Shilling to a degree that would make Wesley Crusher blush. It's never remotely foreshadowed or explained why Miaka thought a girl who absolutely hated her guts and was attempting to break up her marriage would be the perfect person to entrust with her unborn child.
• Gundam Build Divers gives us Gundam 00 Diver Ace's mysterious Energy Wing at the end of episode 12. While Super Attacks were mentioned to be something players in GBN can obtain, nothing in the eight episodes before this happened stated that Riku obtained this skill at all. To make matters worse, it happens at a point where this trope would intersect with Only the Author Can Save Them Now as the Big Bad's Big Zam had stupidly powerful Plot Armor.
• Think of an asspull as a giant, snowcapped mountain for a second. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann took a sled and rode that mountain from start to finish. Fortunately, the series runs on Rule of Cool and can abuse this however the hell it wants.
• HeartCatch Pretty Cure!'s movie had one with the Miracle Lights. While most of the other Pretty Cure movies had these minor MacGuffin show up either in movie or during the movie's introduction, their appearance here is extremely jarring, especially since, by that time, they had the Heartcatch Mirage item, thus no real need for it. It's also jarring because the series was much more down-to-earth than its predecessors or successors.
• Itsuwaribito: During the battle against Hobaku and his assassins, Neya is suddenly revealed to have pink muscles, which gives her enough power boost to combat Rama's Super-Strength, despite previously established as being one of the weaker members of the group. Conveniently, she taps into this latent ability just as she's on the verge of being defeated by Rama's Super Mode. This is also the first time it is revealed that "pink muscles" exist.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a lot of these, but given that this is a series that basically runs on Rule of Cool, nobody tends to care:
  • Battle Tendency:
    • In Joseph's surprise encounter with a vampiric Straizo, he somehow manages to pull out a fully loaded Tommy gun out of nowhere, as well as a bouquet of hand grenades.
    • Kars somehow manages to get his hands on the Red Stone of Aja and place it in a Stone Mask without anyone seeing him do it, despite his current conditions making that seemingly impossible. The anime adaptation does somewhat alleviate this however, due to the addition of Kars making a seemingly futile leap for the stone, making the idea that he was able to reach it much more explainable.
    • Joseph's battle against Ultimate Kars ends with one of these. After seemingly being backed into a corner, Joseph manages to pull out a victory using an erupting volcano and his own severed arm. The man himself doesn't even bother to sugarcoat the fact that he just managed to win a fight against the strongest being in the world though sheer luck, though he takes the opportunity to piss Kars off by saying that he planned the whole thing.
  • Stardust Crusaders:
    • Jotaro defeating Enya by having his Stand, Star Platinum, inhale her Stand, Justice, until Enya passes out comes completely out of nowhere, as Star Platinum had never displayed a super breathing ability prior to this.
    • Jotaro in particular seems to rely a lot on New Powers as the Plot Demands. The Star Finger ability was only ever used twice (three times in the anime), with there being no buildup to it the first time around. And given that Star Finger never appears again after Stardust Crusaders, it seems a little too convenient.
    • Kakyoin and Polnareff being able to shrink down their Stands. They do Hand Wave its practicality by explaining that it takes a lot of concentration and willpower, but even if it's not particularly useful for later battles, the fact that it's only used once, it's never brought up again, and it's never explained how the two know about this ability, Stand shrinking seems pretty out of the blue.
    • The reveal that Avdol is Not Quite Dead, with the explanation that Hol Horse's seemingly fatal shot to the head only grazed him comes completely out of nowhere, as he's very clearly shot square in the head when it happens. The anime adaptation does somewhat alleviate this, however, due to Avdol moving in a way that makes him only being grazed by the shot much more likely.
    • In the manga and anime versions of Jotaro's battle against DIO, Jotaro somehow manages to appear inside the sewers as DIO attempts to escape through them, despite having no possible way of knowing he would attempt this. Probably for this reason, the OVA's depiction of the event instead has Jotaro simply setting his foot on top of DIO's hand as he tries to open the sewer hole, making his sudden appearance much more digestible.
    • At the end of the battle against DIO, whose Stand, The World, has the ability is to stop time, it suddenly turns out that Star Platinum has the exact same ability. What little foreshadowing this reveal has is so vague that it's quite possible it wasn't even meant to be foreshadowing.
  • The reveal in Diamond is Unbreakable that Otoishi knows about Star Platinum: The World is never given an explanation, as Jotaro had previously mentioned that he hasn't had to use the ability since the battle against DIO. While Otoishi's Stand, Red Hot Chili Pepper, does have the ability to move through electronics, making it possible that Otoishi heard it by listening in on a conversation, this is never confirmed, making it seem as if a scene is missing where he learns of the ability.
• Played for Laughs in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War when it's revealed during the culture festival that Osaragi and the Cheer Team captain had been dating for the past several weeks, as the two had shared a grand total of one scene beforehand. It prompts a Big "WHAT?!" from both Miko and Ishigami. That said, it later turns out that there is a very logical explanation for why she started dating him.
• Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl has a post-series OVA where Hazumu is dumped by her girlfriend Yasuna and ends up marrying Tomari (despite being high schoolers at that). It's nothing but shipping fanservice as the anime version's ending showed Hazumu and Yasuna as a happy couple and Yasuna's reasons for leaving made little sense.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple:
  • Shigure Kosaka uses actual telekinesis as her ultimate technique, though limited to control her opponents weaponry. The series has never even hinted that supernatural abilities of the sort are possible, and being a long runner where everything is somewhat rooted in reality, it's ridiculous to see it now.
  • Kenichi defeating Sho had heavy indications of this. Kenichi was still very tired and injured from a 3vs2 fight for the first day of the tournament, then Training from hell from the Elder on the second day. Sho was clearly overpowering and outspeeding Kenichi for the entire fight, and only landed a few hits, while Sho somehow failed to deal multiple deathblows. Only Sho using Roar as One, which grants power, but makes the body and mind fall apart allowed Kenichi to land his own finishing move. Keep in mind Sho was fresh at 100%, while Kenichi was really banged up. Sure, he's always been Made of iron, but he does have limits.
• Many fans of Kiznaiver saw Nico's crush on Tenga and Tenga's crush on Chidori as this. There was little to almost no hinting, and what little foreshadowing was there could be interpreted in many ways due to how vague they were. Most of Nico's moments with Tenga could be simply viewed as she being happy with their newly formed friendship and only were seen like that through Shipping Goggles.
• Lupin III:
  • Lupin usually relies on Indy Ploys combined with his skills as a thief, but he's also known for whipping up emergency escapes at the last second. Lampshaded at one point while he and his gang are surrounded.
  Fujiko: I don't suppose you've got a backup Backup Plan.
  Lupin: Sure thing, just turn around while I pull it from the usual place!
  • The Pursuit of Harimao's Treasure: Played for Laughs in the form of a Visual Pun. Georing uses his helicopter blades to shred Lupin's hang glider, so Lupin saves himself by quickly stripping down to his underwear and pulls them down, just as an emergency parachute literally deploys from between his asscheeks!
• Magical Princess Minky Momo infamously did this by revealing a regular bullet is enough to destroy Mimi’s pendant, allowing her to lose her powers before she is ran over and killed by a truck.
• A Manga With Too Many Premises is full of this. After two Childhood Friends meet by chance, they happen upon a man they recognize as their father, and he reveals that they're half-sisters. They then realize that they can read minds by touching each other, kiss... and then swap bodies. None of this has any foreshadowing whatsoever.
• Masamune-kun's Revenge: Yoshino was the one who broke Masamune's heart back when he was a child, not Aki. Not only does this absolve Aki of any guilt without having to go through any meaningful Character Development, it undoes the whole point of the story, because it means Masamune was angry with the wrong person over what was clearly a misunderstanding.
• Master of Martial Hearts: In the fifth and final episode of the OVA, Aya finds out that every one of her friends was a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who had manipulated her right from the beginning. They mentally broke all the losers of the tournament, making them into "perfect women" to be sold into sexual slavery. Aya's "friends" did this because her parents did the same thing to their parents, and they want to kill her to get back at her mother. Then Aya's mother shows up and kills them off, revealing to her that this is a Cycle of Revenge going back to their grandparents. Murder ensues, with Aya limping away from the blown up building. Then her so-called best friend's mother gets a visit from someone that she is very scared to see... There was next to zero Foreshadowing, like Aya finding out that her boyfriend is in charge of the tournament, and her fifth clairvoyant opponent warning her that her friends are not friends and that this is all just a game.
• Despite their importance later on, Newtypes are this in Mobile Suit Gundam. They aren't mentioned, or even hinted at, until more than halfway through the series.
• Gundam SEED: A Roaring Rampage of Revenge deathmatch between Cain and Abel childhood friends Kira and Athrun ended when Athrun, his Gundam out of power, grappled Kira's and used his Self-Destruct Mechanism in a last-ditch attempt to kill him. How did he survive? A blast door sealed off the cockpit, meaning Kira was badly hurt but not dead, and he was discovered by Lowe Guele who got him medical attention. And yet when Kira's friends examine the ruined Strike Gundam, the cockpit is a melted ruin thanks to the heat of the blast. So how did he survive?
• Shipping-wise, there's the rushed ending of After War Gundam X, that forced the writing staff to do an ass pull (Pair the Spares). And they did it in a somewhat believable manner, never mind it being somewhat contrived.
• In the latter half of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, Leina is supposedly killed by a falling Mobile Suit. She inexplicably returns near the end of the series, having been rescued by Sayla Mass from the original Gundam series. How this is possible actually explained, with Sayla's cameo being Fanservice more than anything.
• Another comes with the Axis Shock from Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack. It comes out of nowhere at the very end and miraculously stops a giant meteor from crashing into the Earth.
  • One of the biggest examples is Char's character development. He goes from an Anti-Villain in the original series, and an Anti-Hero in Z and ZZ, to a full blown Card-Carrying Villain in the film. This is given no genuine explanation. Char just decides to troll Amuro by doing this and even Amuro calls him out on it In-Universe, almost as if the writers understood how most viewers wouldn't understand the sudden change in his character.
• An example from the Gundam franchise comes at the end of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, where Nina, Kou's love interest, suddenly pulls a Face–Heel Turn and decides to help Gato in his Colony Drop mission, revealing she used to date him sometime in the past. Not only all of it had zero foreshadowing, previous events outright contradict it, specially when Gato steals the GP-02 with Nina standing right there, not recognizing him]], and at no moment afterwards there's any indication that she had any familiarity with him until the twist. A possible explanation for this out-of-universe is that the OVA suffered a director switch midway through, and the new one really wanted to pull that twist, no matter how negatively foreshadowed it was.
• My Hero Academia has a number, often regarding the villains.
  • How some feel about the Midoriya vs. Shinso match during the U.A. Sports Festival Arc. The only reason Midoriya was able to break out of Shinso's brainwashing Quirk is due to Midoriya's Quirk suddenly activating on its own, which allowed Midoriya to hurt himself and thus break free of Shinso's control. There's no explanation given for why this happens during the arc proper, with All Might even lampshading that fact ("Don't get too hung up about it!"). While the reason behind this strange event, the fact that One For All has the vestiges of past users embedded into it, does get explained later in the series, that only happens 160 chapters after the battle had already occurred.
  • While All For One hijacking Shigaraki is a controversial plot twist on its own, the idea that Shigaraki was always intended to be his vessel falls into this, as many of his actions (ex. talking to himself about Shigaraki needing to succeed on his own, dismissing Best Jeanist's Quirk as too complex for Shigaraki, and having Shigaraki tame Gigantomachia) make no sense if he was just planning to take control the whole time.
  • During the big final battle against the League of Villains, Shigaraki's Quirks are kept nullified by the teamwork of Monoma, Aizawa, and Manual. Shigaraki then sprouts Combat Tentacles made out of millions of hands and mouths. He insists his ability to do so isn't a Quirk, but "evolution" as his body "finds its ideal form". Absolutely nothing remotely like that has ever happened before in the series nor does his explanation make any sort of sense in-universe or out. To make matters worse, he continues to pull out even more non-Quirk powers, such as making himself immune to Tamaki's venom.
  • Also during the final battle, Todoroki's battle with Dabi reaches an apparent conclusion with Todoroki defeating Dabi with his most powerful move. However, almost immediately after, Dabi powers up, having managed to copy Todoroki's techniques (which had taken months for him to master) with "intuition" and "observation". Considering Todoroki and Dabi's quirks work differently, with Todoroki's special technique requiring he use his ice and fire sides in unison, it shouldn't even be possible for Dabi to copy Todoroki but he somehow does anyways. The fact he somehow still has enough stamina to outlast Todoroki and everyone else involved and be declared the winner just makes it worse. He then develops a brand new power, namely his mother's ice Quirk, which is explicitly different from a Quirk awakening (which he already underwent) and the only foreshadowing or explanation is Geten saying such a thing is "hysterical strength" a few pages prior. Once the fight winds down and the dust settles, Dabi has burned himself so badly that he has no skin left at all and is basically a walking corpse, but it turns out Dabi's sheer hatred of his family is still keeping him alive even then. No prior development suggested he could do anything like this, especially since his awakened state was directly stated to be fatal.
• Naruto fans have a nickname for this: Plot no Jutsu.
  • The Great Snake Escape. Following Sasuke's fight with Deidara, Deidara uses a gigantic self-destruction technique. Sasuke survives the resulting city-sized explosion by summoning and mind-controlling a massive snake to shield him, when he is explicitly described as being nearly out of chakra just a few panels before. Any one of those techniques would require a vast amount of chakra, never mind both. Sasuke manages to do all this in the time it takes for the explosion to reach him. After it has already started. Just a few feet from him.
  • Sasuke has many ass pulls attached to him, ranging from random allies suddenly gaining healing powers, to random hawk summons. The author lampshades this practice when it comes to Sasuke's new moves. Even know-it-all Obito is left wondering when he had time to acquire the summoning contract.
  • The Gaara vs. Lee fight; Gaara manages to get away from Lee's Initial Lotus by creating a stupidly perfect sand replica of himself, pulling a Replacement Jutsu with it, and burying himself in the ground A.) while rather high in midair, B.) while he's getting the crap beat out of him, C.) in the time it takes the person hitting him to wince for a second.
  • So, the author wants to show the Five Kages fight the real Madara Uchiha (resurrected via Edo Tensei), but has a small problem: he has to get them together at the same spot to face the enemy. The Kazekage and the Tsuchikage are already on the battlefield, but the Hokage and the Raikage are at military headquarters, while the Mizukage is on another battlefield far away. No worries, the Raikage's secretary suddenly has a teleportation jutsu handy, which the Raikage and Hokage use, while the Mizukage's group suddenly has Minato's three bodyguards, whom Minato had conveniently taught his teleportation jutsu. Neither of these was ever mentioned before.
  • Itachi Uchiha suddenly uses Izanami. Izanami is only useful against Izanagi users and Kabuto or those like him, whom the user happens to be fighting at that moment. The fact that Izanami was (in-universe) created solely for a very specialized purpose (countering the extremely rare Izanagi) yet turns out to also be the perfect counter to a completely different threat seals the deal.
  • The revelation that Itachi Uchiha, the man who had murdered his entire clan, joined the evil organization Akatsuki, and Mind Raped his little brother twice (using his massacre of their family), turns out to be a loving brother under orders from his village the entire time. And all his cruel treatment with Sasuke was part of some kind of delusional plan in order to die from his hand and make him the hero of the village.
  • In the same vein, the revelation that Yashamaru's claim that he and Gaara's mother hated Gaara werelies Yashamaru made under orders from the Kazekage, as part of some utterly nonsensical test of Gaara's mental stability.
  • Sakura suddenly unlocking the Strength of a Hundred Seal, which she had allegedly learned right after she started training under Tsunade and had spent the last three years charging. Except Sakura had lamented how "weak and useless" she was several times, even just the previous arc, without ever even hinting that she was saving up her power for something.
  • Madara Uchiha's abilities usually fall under this. Pulling out very large meteors out of deep space, summoning Susanoo without currently possessing Sharingan, extracting 9 Bijuu in mere minutes, despite the fact that it was previously necessary for 9 members of the Akatsuki to take 3 days to extract at just one, using Kamui as the Ten-Tailed beast's host despite the original wielder being incapable of doing such a thing. He is also able to terminate the contract with Edo Tensei, despite the fact that even the original creator of this jutsu does not know how to do this. Even activating Izanagi to undo his death occurs a minimum of several hours, if not days, after he'd already died, and the list goes on...
  • The climax of the Fourth Ninja War arc. While the previous major villains were established in prior story arcs, the reveal that Kaguya Otsutsuki was the true Big Bad the entire time with her creation Black Zetsu as her The Dragon, serving as the driving force behind almost every negative event in the entire series (including manipulating every single Uchiha who was ever evil) came completely out of nowhere and retconned a ton of backstory material that had been established for a good couple of YEARS at that point. The former was only first mentioned 30 chapters or so before their debut and the latter had previously been established to be a creation of Madara Uchiha with no indication that they were anything more than that.
  • In fact, everything about Kaguya is a concentrated storm of these for some people. Her very first mention and backstory retcons chakra from being the inherent life force in all living things to a type of energy stolen from a magic tree by Kaguya, which was passed down to all living people afterward, despite this making the established mechanics of chakra not work. In fact, some people think that her entire fight against Naruto and Sasuke should fit into this trope, given how unexplained and random things are. A notable example is the apparent appearance of Rin's spirit during the fight, who proceeds to seemingly assist Obito and Kakashi in pulling a save against Kaguya's ash-killing bones, and allow Obito (who's already dead) to transfer his soul and chakra to Kakashi which fully manifests a Susanoo in its stabilized perfect form in the first try. Kaguya's relationship to Black Zetsu also retcons him from being a creation of Madara Uchiha (which we're shown onscreen) to being an entity that has been working under her orders for the past few hundred or thousand years, which includes tricking the Uchihas into turning evil and everything else that's ever gone wrong in the Naruto universe.
• Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! spoofs this concept later on, especially in Nyarko-San W. Genre Savvy Mahiro begins trying to spot the Chekhov's Gun in advance, operating on the logic that "Everything we've been through so far has had a really stupid resolution" and therefore trying to guess what would be the most nonsensical ending. His batting average is pretty low... because while his logic is dead-on, the Gun is always something so minor he never even considered it, which makes the conclusion even dumber than he could have imagined.
  • In one episode the characters go to the Great Celano Library because Nyarko has an overdue book. While they're there, a pair of terrorists attack, trying to find one specific book. Naturally, Mahiro assumes it's Nyarko's overdue book, but it actually turns out to be a random book he found in the library and absent-mindedly shoved into his jacket pocket when stuff started happening. When this is revealed, Mahiro lets out a Big "NO!" and Nyarko says it's unfair for him to always blame her.
• The ending of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, which might as well have been Studio Gainax self-parodying their usual ending tendencies, most certainly qualifies. While the angel sisters are walking back to their home after the already mind-screwing final battle with the Big Bad, Stocking casually asks if her katanas could cut an angel, Panty says she thinks so, then out of nowhere Stocking starts chopping up Panty into 666 pieces and while everyone is gasping in surprise (just like the viewers), she just says "Sorry, I am actually a demon", Corset reappears out of Brief's privates, Garterbelt's head explodes ("Oh My God!"), Corset lectures Brief on the trail of Panty's pieces he'll have to pick up to get her back and reopen the Hell's mouth, Garterbelt's head unexplodes ("God My Oh!"), and Corset and Stocking walk away, while the other characters are still visibly shocked, even the Daemon Sisters!. Cue the "To Be Continued in Next Season" sign.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • During the Mossdeep Gym battle, Ash has Pikachu reflect his own Thunder attack back on himself and Swellow to give the latter Improvised Armor, letting them power through Tate and Liza's attacks and win the battle. Nothing like this had ever been hinted at prior to this moment. While Swellow had been shown prior to be abnormally resistant to Electric attacks despite its Flying type, nothing ever implied they could power it up, much less to this degree.
  • The Ground type's immunity to Electric attacks was always a major obstacle that Ash and Pikachu had to overcome through trickery or coverage moves. Then, Pikachu takes out a Rhydon with a Thundershock aimed directly at its horn, even though no Ground type ever showed such an Achilles' Heel before. As a result, the knockout comes out of nowhere and in direct opposition to what had been shown prior.
• The Promised Neverland: In the last chapters, Leuvis pulls Deus ex Machina by revealing that he was Not Quite Dead, went through Heel–Face Turn, and turned out to have had a second core, suddenly appearing alive and well to save Mujika and Sonju and reveal the conspiracy to the demon public. Although the first one has a minimal foreshadowing in the form of Never Found the Body (a shot near the end of the arc where he was supposedly killed shows his hat and a bloodstain where his corpse should have been), the others have no such foreshadowing and contradict the earlier explanation not too long ago that having a second core like Queen Legravalima is a very uncommon phenomenon.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion's ending is infamous for a Diabolus ex Machina of this nature that split the fanbase. Homura spends most of the movie behaving in accordance with her original series personality, but at the very end, after Madoka and her friends fought hard to save her, she decides to betray them, rip Madoka apart, separating her into human Madoka and the Law of Cycles Madoka, and keeping the former under her thumb and the latter repressed under her control. Then she traps everyone in a Lotus-Eater Machine, and makes series Big Bad Kyubey into her slave. Many felt that her flawed but heartwarming relationship with Madoka was twisted to make her an obsessive Yandere psychopath, which is the exact opposite of how the anime and other official works portrayed her- as a cold but ultimately caring girl who would go through hell for the one she loves. Many felt it was out of character at best and ruined the chance for a perfectly happy ending. Not helping is the vague Foreshadowing that fails to provide a logical setup for the twist, and the fact that the explanation that was given broke previously-established canon rules.
• Ral & Grad: The very final battle ends with Ral exploiting a quality of Shadows that was never mentioned before, contradicts almost all of what we were previously told, requires several Wall of Text word balloons to explain, and apparently exists solely to facilitate a Bittersweet Ending.
• Though Rebuild of Evangelion did a good job distracting the viewers from noticing/caring about it, the big scene at the end of Rebuild 2.22, where Shinji defeats Zeruel NOT by going berserk, as what happened in the original TV series, but rather, through a new process that hasn't yet been identified, demonstrates several new abilities in the EVAs never before hinted at.
• In the manga version of School Days, Kotonoha and Sekai abruptly go Ax-Crazy in the last chapter with virtually no foreshadowing at all, due to adapting one of the game's few bad endings as opposed to the majority of happy endings. The anime does a much better job of building up Kotonoha and Sekai's gradually decreasing mental stability, making it much more of a genuine Twist Ending.
• Slayers:
  • At the end of the first arc of the first season, when facing off against Shaburanigdu, the demon who is the source of all Black Magic, and as a result is immune to Black Magic and tough enough to shrug off damage from any other form of magic, Lina suddenly reveals that she knows of a Dark Lord above the Dark Lord who had never been mentioned before, casts a spell greater than the Dragon Slave that was supposed to be the pinnacle of Black Magic, and blows him away. This then goes on to be a plot point for the rest of the entire series, as many arcs center around Lina trying to find a way to solve her problems without doing that again, because of how risky it is.
  • The last two episodes of the first season has this in the form of the Blessed Blade, a weapon that is neither seen or heard of until the exact moment that it is needed and whose power rivals that of the Sword of Light and is the only thing capable of hurting the Clone Rezo.
  • Both of these were taken directly from the novels that were the original source material, and their not being mentioned until shortly before coming into play applied there too.
• Many find the end of the Soul Eater anime to be this. The Kishin Asura was wounded by Maka because, while unconscious, she attacked Asura with her newly-awakened weapon powers until Asura caught on and forced her back into consciousness. To top it off, one minute later, she uses one punch and kills the Kishin in one hit.
• The ending to the third Tenchi Muyo! OVA series and the reveal that Tenchi's mother, who was practically a saint in all of those flashbacks, turned out to be nothing more than a practical joker and the real saint was his father's girlfriend, Rea. What makes this even more jarring are those who watched Tenchi Universe years ago and ran with how his mother there was. In fact, many viewers still prefer Achika (the Universe version) over Kiyone (the OVA version).
• Transformers: Cybertron. Every time someone's about to die (or Megatron gets pissed) there's that cyber key/force chip shaped pulse of light and... shit happens. It's questionable that the Big Bad dies to an Amplifier Artifact pulled out of nowhere.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- lives for this. Basically, every plot point after Acid Tokyo qualifies. They even sneak a couple into the epilogue.
  • Because of this, its sister series ×××HOLiC, which is fine when left on its own, periodically suffers from it. One particularly notable instance is when events of Tsubasa reveal Watanuki, who was previously stated to be an orphan (which was pointed out explicitly by a skilled fortune teller), turns out to not only be the son of versions of Sakura and Syaoran that actually are still alive (said fortune teller almost too conveniently later comes back to retract her statement), but is also an alternate version of Syaoran, and technically wasn't even supposed to exist. He also apparently visited the wish shop once before to get himself mind wiped and can't remember a lot of things about himself, but didn't even notice that something was wrong with his memories until he was asked a particular question and he realized he couldn't answer. And none of this is even adequately explained in his own series.
• Wandering Son
  • The ending to the anime came off as this to many people, especially manga readers. It ends with Nitori accepting puberty and with many implications that both Takatsuki and Nitori will grow out of their gender dysphoria. This is in sharp contrast with the manga, where the same scenes are shown in a more negative light and the dysphoria just gets worse after her voice starts cracking.
  • The manga ending too with Takatsuki deciding not to transition and to continue living as a girl. While it is Truth in Television for some people, fans felt that the way Shimura wrote it, essentially randomly, went against everything we had been shown prior. There is some mild foreshadowing but it's more in the vain that Takatsuki was confused period. She had thought stuff like "Why do I want to be a boy?" but never seemed to lean heavily on being female identified.
• In The World God Only Knows, Elsie, the deuteragonist, is revealed to be an Amnesiac God and the ultimate weapon of Old Hell with almost no foreshadowing or explanation. She proceeds to Deus ex Machina the entire plot involving Hell out of existence and use her Reality Warper powers to rewrite the universe so that she really is Keima's biological sister.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! and its subsequent series combine this with The Magic Poker Equation. The protagonists frequently get just the right combination of cards with the right effects to get them out of their predicament and win the duel, especially when it's the card they just drew when their turn rolls around. It gets increasingly egregious if said situational card proceeds to never be used by the same character in subsequent duels.
  • The Duelist Kingdom arc falls into this trope more often than usual, largely owing to the game's rules not being properly defined yet and cards having undefined or inconsistent effects.
  • The duel with Dartz, where Dartz has managed to summon a monster with infinite attack power. Yugi's counter? An infinite feedback loop of two monsters powering each other up ad infinitum until they have infinite attack power, too. Then combining them with a third monster in order to exceed infinity.^note The monster actually just has an effect that prevents destruction in battle and this is said in the Japanese version — the dub version goes for something more theatrical and nonsensical. However, it was already stated that if Divine Serpent is destroyed, Dartz automatically loses the duel, an effect the Legendary Knights didn't have, so they could have just gone for it being a double KO that automatically defeated Dartz.
  • The first time Yugi plays Capsule Monsters with Mokuba in the manga. How does Yugi know that the random monster he puts off to the side can use that one move that will finish off all of Mokuba's monsters in one turn? How are we supposed to know that it even has that move to begin with?
  • The appearance of Gilford the Lightning certainly reads as this. A major recurring plot throughout the series is that Joey does not have access to strong or rare cards, and Red-Eyes Black Dragon was his best card by a long shot prior to winning various antes in Battle City. Yet in his duel with Marik, he draws Gilford, which is not only not an ante card won from any of the people he fought, but seems to significantly eclipse any of those ante cards in strength, with a huge statline and a powerful effect (at a time in the series when strong effects on Tribute Monsters were still very rare). Coincidentally, it also has the perfect effect to set up the required next situation (tributing all his other monsters and destroying Marik's otherwise indestructible monster). The only possible guess as to where it came from is Marik beefing up Joey's deck with various rare and banned cards prior to him dueling Yugi while brainwashed, and its effect is reminiscent of Raigeki, which was one of those cards, but not only is this never brought up, it raises the question as to whether Gilford is even legal in the universe of the anime and manga.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • Jaden Yuki's Elemental HERO deck revolves around combining the monsters of said archetype via the Polymerization card. As you can imagine, this results in Jaden pulling a never before mentioned Fusion Monster out of his ass every time he’s in a pinch. The trend continues with the Neo-Spacians and Elemental HERO Neos; to the point he even gets to fuse the latter with other people's monsters. That's without mentioning the loads and loads of situational Spell and Trap Cards, which are normally so specific for a certain situation that including them in one's deck would normally be foolish. One of the most notable is Chazz Princeton's card Ojama Ride, which discards Ojama monsters to Special Summon Machine-type Union monsters. Ojama and Union monsters have nothing in common, so this card would probably be useless to anyone except Chazz, whose deck happens to use both types of monsters. The real-life TCG later incorporated a similar strategy, making it the Ojamas' primary gimmick. Of course, it's not a good strategy...
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
  • Word of God actually admitted that the fact that there turned out to be a sixth Mark of the Dragon was one of these; while it was stated to have been planned from the beginning of the series, the writers felt that dropping any hints at all would've ruined it.
  • The really infamous one in 5D's, meanwhile, is Z-one turning out to be a random scientist who used Magic Plastic Surgery and a device which altered his mind to 'become' Yusei, instead of actually being a Future Me Scares Me situation. There had been a lot of Foreshadowing towards Z-one being Yusei from the future (a lot of flashbacks involving Z-one clearly hint at it), but in the middle of the Final Battle, we get the notorious reveal instead.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has the "Shining Evolution" ability from ZEXAL II. Yuma was about to draw "Rank-Up-Magic Limited Barian's Force" and Vector had a Trap Card set that would have finished Yuma off once he drew it. So how did they got out of this? Using the Shining Evolution ability to change the card into its "true form" so it's no longer a Barian card and Vector's trap wouldn't work.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V:
  • A Discussed Trope with Pendulum Summoning. After the first match he used the ability, everyone is in awe over Yuya's seemingly amazing new Summoning skill. However, when his second match ends with him being unable to use it and is flattened by Zuzu, everyone becomes convinced that he's nothing but a cheater. However, Declan becomes determined to figure out how it works so he can mass-produce it.
  • Smile World is a really mediocre card, giving every monster a 100 ATK boost for each monster on the field. To make Smile World have a proper impact on the outcome of the Duel, several convoluted combinations of card effects are used.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS has Skills for duelists in Speed Duels. Playmaker's Skill is most illustrative of the trope, allowing him to, while his LP is 1000 or less, randomly gain access to a card in the Data Storm. What can be found in the Data Storm? Anything goes, especially if it can allow Playmaker to stage a comeback.
• YuYu Hakusho: Yusuke, the main character, spends the first 90 episodes being completely human and then all of a sudden he has demon DNA that has awakened from nowhere to fight the Invincible Villain.

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