Brick Joke / Video Games

Brick Jokes in Video Games.

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• Near the beginning of the storyline of AdventureQuest Worlds, a skeletal minion by the name of Chuckles is one of the very first victims of the Big Bad, Drakath. The player base, who rather liked the little guy, launched a "Save Chuckles" campaign that ultimately succeeded in bringing back his skull. Two years and eight Chaos Lords later, Chuckles returns in a manner most awesome during the Doomwood saga. At the end of the Shadowfall War, just when things are looking grim for Empress Gravelyn and the heroes, Chuckles, who is revealed to have been Gravelyn's very first creation, knocks Noxus right off the Shadowscythe throne and frees Gravelyn, who promptly takes back control of her undead army from him so that the heroes can kick Noxus' ass. And in the aftermath of Noxus' defeat, Gravelyn gives Chuckles a promotion — by switching his skull with that of Noxus!
• ANNO: Mutationem: While at the Flores household, Sigrid accidentally uses her abilities to wish for getting a gift from Santa Claus. This leads to a rather silly mishap as "Santa" pops in from the roof and gives Sigrid a present, while Holtz pulls out a shotgun and takes the man for a thief before chasing him out. In the epilogue, "Santa" inexplicably shows up back again, much to the bewilderment of Ann and her siblings, and this time, Holtz makes sure he doesn't make a getaway.
• Antichamber: "A Book And Its Cover" has two exits, each blocked by a wall of cubes, as well as a red disintegrator field preventing you from directly taking out the cubes. Each wall has a nearby small alcove with cubes, visibly connected to it as they are from the same color as the wall's. If the player has completely understood the green gun's properties, they will realise they're expected to connect the cubes from the two alcoves, then break it: since one of the walls (the one with red cubes) is visibly smaller than the other, its side of the chain will disappear. However, when doing so, the larger wall with green cubes will be the one that disappears, which seemingly goes against the green gun's rules. At the other side of the green wall, a sign says "If you are missing information, it's easy to be mislead", which at that moment doesn't have an obvious meaning. Much later, once the player has acquired the red gun, it's possible to come back to the puzzle and get rid of the red wall using the red gun's properties. Unexpectedly, when doing so, what seemed to be a small wall of red cubes is actually a huge pile of cubes which will take several seconds to make disappear. The green gun had worked properly the first time, it's just that the game was lying in regards to which wall was smaller.
• In Asura's Wrath, the rock shelf on the moon that was raised up during the Augus fight is pushed back down during the fight with Ryu in Lost Episode 1, only to be brought back up again during the fight with Akuma in Lost Episode 2. Also in Lost Episode 1, Augus' discarded scabbard can be seen.
• In Bayonetta 2, at one point, Bayonetta and Enzo take a small plane to the sacred mountain of Fimbulventr. When they get close enough, Bayonetta bids him farewell and jumps out, at which point it is revealed that Bayonetta was controlling the plane with her magic, causing Enzo to panic because he has no idea how to fly or land the plane. In the epilogue, Bayonetta suddenly realizes she completely forgot about Enzo, then the plane flies into the area, under attack from evil angels and with Enzo desperately trying to keep it under control.
• Case 2 of Ben Jordan has a prospector lend Ben his car, which proceeds to get destroyed. When the case ends, the prospector asks "Has anyone seen my car?". Cue Oh, Crap!.
• Blaster Master Zero 3: Early on, after GARUDA gets shot down and detained, Leibniz complains at someone from the arresting faction about the nonsensical fact his flying MA had a wheel as a control mechanism and blames his crash on that. Much later, RISING GARUDA is shown to have a twin-stick control yoke... and Leibniz makes it count.
• In BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, Kagura's match intro has him flirting with a random girl, then when he notices the opposing character, he tosses the girl into the air and begins the fight. A bit funny, yes? Gets better. If he wins the match, he outstretches his arms and the girl lands in them. If he loses, the girl clumsily lands on him. Now, that is funny.
• Borderlands 2:
  • In the side-quest "Getting to Know Jack", you track down a series of audio logs detailing Handsome Jack's rise to power as CEO of Hyperion Corporation. In one of these, he strangles an underling for bringing up Jack's late wife, and makes a note to his lackey Mr. Blake on the difference between choking and strangling. In the last audio log, the then-president of Hyperion claims to be unafraid of Jack's blackmail attempts, to which Handsome Jack responds "Maybe you could clear something up for me... do you know the difference between choking and strangulation?"
  • Play the DLC Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep and get hit by this brick: the main quest line involves saving a queen; however, most of the characters from the original game get folded into Tina's story before the queen is found. So who can the queen be? In the beginning of the game, when the campaign is just beginning, Handsome Jack mocks the player, belittling their chances - and, over the course of the mockery, talking about how he's going to buy a pony literally made of diamonds; he decides to name it Butt Stallion in honor of the player. Many levels later, having battled through Dragon Keep, you'll finally meet your queen - Butt Stallion, the diamond pony.
• Borderlands 3 has Claptrap explaining the reason for the new ECHO devices; the older Mark-2 devices had a 'tiny problem with spontaneous combustion' and he claims they were rebranded as grenades. This might just sound like another anecdote about comically unsafe corporate assholery, just like all the others you've come to know and Love to Hate in the setting. That is, until you stop by one of Marcus' vending machines later and discover the ECHO Mark 2 for sale... as a grenade.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has a few:
  • In Chapter 7, Anonymous accidentally drops the Google Gem off the side of the flying ship. Much later, in the epilogue, he finally “finds” it again. No, he totally didn’t just buy a new one, shut up.
  • After the Gatekeeper’s house is ransacked by Social Justice Warriors, he sends you on a quest to replace a broken table. In the ending, you run across an SJW who loves smashing tables, “the most privileged kind of furniture.”
  • When you first reach Wikipedia, many citizens have been displaced by foreign visitors. One man’s apartment is overrun by Anons from 4chan. If you return there in the epilogue, all the Anons have left… except one.
    4chan Anon: I told you, Wikipedia is ours!
    Owner: Should I call an exterminator?
  • In the Chapter 6 fake-out credits, the cast list includes a random bear the developers saw. Much later, in the “special thanks” section of the real credits, that same bear is listed again.
• In Broken Sword, most players leave the faucet on in the basement in Ireland. When George recounts his experiences to Nico, he mentions having to help bail out the basement because "Some idiot left the faucet on."
• C14 Dating: One scene has Melissa mention that her father is disappointed that she hasn't unearthed a dinosaur yet. In the solo ending, which is the result of properly focusing on raising stats, Melissa's father's words of encouragement for her presentation involves telling her to show off the dinosaurs. For the record, the dig site in which the game is set is from a time at which dinosaurs were already extinct.
• Celeste: Prior to starting Chapter 2, you receive a postcard stating that collecting strawberries will only impress your friends. Once you collect all 175 strawberries, you receive an achievement called "Impress Your Friends".
• In Commander Keen V: The Armageddon Machine, there is a secret level late in the game called the Korath III Base. It can be completed via an elaborate series of platform puzzles; however, near the start of the level there is also a hidden fuse. If the player breaks this fuse, the level immediately ends, and Keen says "I wonder what that fuse was for...". Later, at the end of the game, after defeating the final boss, some text appears describing the aftermath of the game. If the player broke the fuse, then instead of describing how the Shikadi escaped back to their own galaxy, the text reads: "Due to a freak fuse malfunction, they cannot take off and are arrested by the Korath III police for double-parking."
• At the very beginning of Control, Jesse makes a metaphor involving a prison movie she forgot the name of where a guy hides a secret passage behind a poster. Many hours of gameplay later, after beating the main story and starting the postgame content, she finally remembers that it was called The Shawshank Redemption.
• In the intro for Cuphead, it's stated that Cuphead and Mugman found The Devil's casino "on the Wrong Side of the Tracks". At the end of the game, you need to fight the Phantom Express to get to the casino, meaning that it's literally on the wrong side of the tracks.
• The promotional pre-release videos for Cyberpunk 2077 contain one: in the September 2020 "Postcards from Night City" video, surveillance footage shows two gangbangers take a woman hostage. In the October 2020 "2077 in Style" video, the same woman is shown, again in surveillance footage, killing those two gangbangers with the Mantis Blades cyberweapon, much to the amusement of a TV show host.
  TV Show Host: Look at the moves on this girl! Slicin'em up like sashimi!
• Danganronpa:
  • In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, after the first trial, Makoto, probably as a tribute to his former friend in Hope's Peak, repeats Sayaka's psychic joke.
  • In Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls, during chapter 2, Komaru states that she could see ghosts when she was young. Later in chapter 5, an actual ghost appears, and only Komaru can see it while Toko can't.
  • A particularly erogenous one that affects the whole series. In the climax of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair when the true nature of the killing game is revealed, Fuyuhiko angrily shouts "You'd better not say we're fictional characters!" In the final chapter of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, it's revealed the game is a Meta Sequel taking place in a world where Danganronpa is a fictional property.
• Day of the Tentacle: As a part of a puzzle, Hoagie needs to give a tentacle diagram to Betsy Ross in the past to turn the American flag into a tentacle-shaped one so Laverne can use the American flag as a disguise in the Bad Future. When Bernard asserts everything is back to normal after Purple Tentacle is defeated, the credits begin to play as a tentacle flag billows in the wind.
• Devil May Cry:
  • When Trish brings up Dante's backstory during the prologue of Devil May Cry (specifically the fact that he lost a mother and a brother to evil), Dante mentions that he's doing the Demon Slaying job so that he would eventually hit the jackpot. Mid-way through the story, Dante expresses his desire to kill Mundus, the demon that killed his mother and brother. His line just before landing the finishing shot against Mundus? "Jackpot!"
  • In the first mission of DmC: Devil May Cry, a white wig lands on Dante's head and he shrugs it off in annoyance. It made Dante look almost identical to the original incarnation of the character, but it turns out that Dante's hair temporarily becomes white when he unlocks his Devil Trigger; it's an indication of overwhelming power. By the end of the game, not only has Dante developed into a more heroic character, his control over his supernatural abilities has turned his hair completely and permanently white. The original Dante's iconic look is, in effect, a badge of honour that this Dante had to earn, and that he was originally not mature enough to appreciate any semblance of it back then.
• Earthworm Jim:
  • In the first level, you launch a cow into the air. At a couple of points during play, you see that cow fly by in the background. At the very end of the game, the cow lands on Princess What's-Her-Name. The joke continues into the animated series, in which every episode ended with a cow dropping out of the sky and landing on a random person for no reason.
  • The second game features the joke as an Idle Animation; Jim throws a brick into the air, and it hits him in the head whenever he next begins to idle.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: One of the City Guards' random lines is "No lollygagging." During the quest "No One Escapes From Cidhna Mine", you meet an imprisoned orc named Borkul the Beast. He's in jail for "Murder, Banditry, Assault, Theft, and Lollygagging."
• Epic Battle Fantasy 5: An NPC named Randalf in Hope Harbor mentions having a skill called Giga Doomsday. A skill of the same name is used by the Final Boss.
• In Escape from Butcher Bay, Riddick goes into Pigsville (the guards' living quarters) through an entry point in the shower room. Later in the game, you can overhear two guards complaining that the showers are closed because of this.
• A bit of a meta example for the Bethesda-made Fallout games. In Fallout 3 (released in 2008), the achievement for killing all 5 Super Mutant Behemoths is called "The Bigger They Are...". In Fallout 4 (released in 2015), the name of the achievement for killing 5 Behemoths (or any other types of giant creatures for that matter) is "...The Harder They Fall."
• In Fate/hollow ataraxia, one scene begins with the protagonists at home, eating fresh pears. Shirou asks if they should offer some to their roommate, Rider, but Sakura replies that if she wants any she can walk down the hallway and get them herself. Their conversation turns to something else, occasionally noting the status of the pears (Saber is concerned about how many are left, a recently-homesick Rin is eating more than she said she would, etc), and about half an hour of talking later, Rider unexpectedly interrupts to offer her own opinion. She leaves, after which Saber realizes that she took the pears with her.
• Five Nights at Freddy's 3: During the first night's phone call, Phone Dude says they'll have the protagonist wear "a furry suit" and scare people if they don't find anything impressive before the attraction opens. In the fourth night's call, Phone Guy mentions that the quickly-procured temporary replacements for the springlock suits might not be entirely appropriate or relevant, suggesting that the only costumes the management could find on short notice were fursuits.
• In Freedom Wars, Carlos gets two: when you first meet him, he rags on you for having apparently pilfered his glasses. Later, when rumor spreads through the Panopticon of a mole for a rival PT, he makes an offhanded remark about being a spy. Both times, he was brushed off by other Sinners for being a Jerkass as usual, only for Carlos to finally get his glasses back when he reveals that he's actually a spy from On High.
• Another Lucas Arts game from the classic point and click era, Full Throttle has a puzzle involving clearing a minefield with an army of mechanical toy bunnies marching to their doom to the sound of Flight of the Valkyries. Once you've finished the game, if you wait until the end credits have wrapped up, you will be greeted by another army of the same bunnies, marching into the sunset to the same music.
• Golden Sun has one heck of a Brick Joke. Near the beginning of the first game, after Isaac and Garet retrieve the Mars Star just before Mount Aleph erupts, the Wise One asks Isaac to hold it out so that he can cast some sort of psynergy on it. What he had actually done was infuse Isaac and Garet with a little bit of the power of the Mars Star; thus, at the end of the second game, when they ignite the beacon atop the Mars Lighthouse, not all of its power goes into the creation of the Golden Sun, and Alex isn't able to steal that power for himself. The Wise One thinks of everything.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has a few.
  • The game begins with Karis telling Tyrell that Mars Adepts can't fly. Roughly two-thirds of the way through the game, you get a party member whose signature ability is Mars-based Not Quite Flight. Karis's reaction isn't shown.
  • Amiti, upon joining the party, is told to Please Put Some Clothes On. He wonders aloud if his current attire is distracting, but is told that they're going to the mountains and it will be cold there, which sounds like a flimsy excuse at the time. Then you end up in snowy mountain village Te Rya, and sure enough, Amiti complains about the cold. And even later on, when you rescue Eoleo, he takes one look at Amiti and remarks that it's the first time he's seen an Ayuthayan "wearing real clothes".
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto III has an example on Chatterbox. A man calls in to talk about eating wildlife. At one point, he specifies eating pigeons saying "Sometimes, they come with little notes attached." Later, a woman calls into the station to promote her group which has been organized to ban phones from Liberty City. When Lazlow points out the irony of her using a phone to promote her anti-phone group, she mentions that they tried using carrier pigeons, but they keep disappearing.
  • In Grand Theft Auto Online, one of the promotion missions for the nightclub has Lazlow send the player to pick up Poppy Mitchell and bring her to the club. However, they have to determine her location from her Snapmatic (think Instagram) posts since he's blocked on her Bleeter (think Twitter). When you finally pick her up:
    Poppy: I need a night out. I'm so sick of deleting all these assholes on Bleeter. If I wanted a picture of your junk, I would have asked for it.
• GreedFall: Upon their arrival to Teer Fradee, Constantin is confronted by a trio of mute plague doctors whom he comically mistakes for the welcoming committee and engages in some awkward banter as they try to get him to drink what Lady Morange later explains to be a preventive treatment against local diseases. The punchline is delivered much later on during "The Experiments of Dr. Asili" side quest, and it isn't funny at all: it turns out that the doctors were actually sent by Dr. Asili to deliberately infect Constantin and De Sardet with the Malichor. De Sardet, being an on ol menawi, turns out to be immune, but Constantin...
• In Grim Fandango, Hector LeMans during Act 1 makes a guess that Manny will develop tulips should he get sprouted. Forward to near the end of Act 4, after Hector shoots Manny, his body slowly sprouts a blue tulip.
• Early in Half-Life 2, mention is made of a cat that was used in a teleport test; all we're told is that Barney still has nightmares about it. One in-game week later, Barney will stop in the middle of the rebellion to ask you "did you hear a cat just now? That damn thing haunts me!"
• In Halo 3: ODST Buck tells Romeo to shut up as a standing order after being irritated by his constant quipping in the opening cutscene. Romeo then invokes this trope in the second mission:
  Buck: What the heck was that? You ever seen one before?
  (Romeo remains silent)
  Buck: Hey, Romeo! You got your ears on?
  (Romeo shrugs)
  Buck: Oh, I get it. Permission to speak, smart ass.
• In Heart of the Woods, Madison and Tara visit Eysenfeld in search of paranormal phenomena. Morgan, the person who invited them there, offer to show them something special, and Tara narrows it down to "a crashed UFO, the fountain of youth, or Elvis," hoping that it will be the latter. In the good ending, Abigail offers to show them something else, and Madison hopes that it will be Elvis this time, although Abigail doesn't know who Elvis is.
• One can potentially occur in the final game in the Henry Stickmin Series, "Completing the Mission". In the Executive/Ghost route, one of the options at the first choice is to make a Save State, which...ends badly. However, it causes a new option to appear at the end of the Thief/Ghost route: Load State...which sends you all the way back to that first choice.
• Hi-Fi RUSH:
  • The game puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that Korsica is the only one of Vandelay Technologies' directors who keeps a password in her head to access SPECTRA rather than use an access key, making her a challenge for The Resistance as she's the only director they can't simply brute force their way through. At the end of the game, when it's finally time to use the password to shut down SPECTRA, it's revealed that the password is literally just "PASSWORD".
  • Right before the boss fight with Rekka, Chai tells Peppermint that she's paying him double for this, only for Peppermint to respond that she's not paying Chai at all. At the end of the game, Roxanne, Peppermint's mother, hires Chai to be the ambassador of Vandelay Technologies, but as Chai notes in his thoughts during the post-game, she's also not paying him for the job.
• The House of the Dead: OVERKILL: Washington calls G "Agent Gwendolyn" at the beginning of the "Carny" chapter; G doesn't protest until two chapters later after being kicked awake.
• Kero Blaster:
  • In Normal mode, Comomo is motivated to help out by the possibility that if the problem of the negativus legatia is solved, it'll put an end to overtime work. Given that Zangyou mode's name translates to "overtime work", guess how that pans out.
  • The C&F employees order drinks in a cutscene in Zangyou mode. The drinks don't come until the ending...just as everyone is leaving the room.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • 358/2 Days has a sad version with Roxas and the winner stick. He keeps forgetting to give the stick to Axel as a present, and later decides to wait until he gets a second one so Axel and Xion can both have one. When he leaves the Organization, the last thing he does is give the winner stick to Axel.
  • In the final cutscene of A Fragmentary Passage (which also acts as the opening cutscene of Kingdom Hearts III), Goofy claims that Yen Sid always says "May your heart be your guiding key" after sending someone off on a mission, which none of the other characters ever notice. When the characters return to the Mysterious Tower at the end of Kingdom Hearts III's prologue, they discover that Yen Sid really does say it, just under his breath.
• Knight Eternal: The amazonian priestess is still upset about Malady calling her a palette swap in Finding Light, which took place 10 years before the events of the game.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails:
  • Trails in the Sky: Olivier tries to offer a lovely secretary a talk over tea during the Martial Arts tournament. It's only during the royal dinner that Hilda explains what a gentleman requesting tea really meant.
  • Trails from Zero: A bit of post-sidequest NPC dialogue in Sky - SC has a character thinking up names for kittens and musing that Kuro could be a suitable name, as well as a reference to the kitten being black. In the game, Lechter finds a black cat and calls it Kuro.
  • Trails of Cold Steel: Crow finally pays back Rean the 50 Mira he borrowed at the start of the term, right at the end of the term having 'forgotten' to return it several times previously. Rean gives it straight back and claims interest. In Cold Steel IV, he hands it back again and claims its time to finally work off that interest, though this time it's gone from a joke to a sad callback.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you can catch the Fisherman's hat and let it sink into the pool. During the end credits, he will still not be wearing the hat.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, when meeting the Happy Mask Salesman at the beginning of the game, Tatl hides behind Link. The reason is that she and her brother Tael were with the Skull Kid when he stole Majora's Mask from him. At the end of the game, when the Salesman reveals himself, Tael hides behind Link.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:
    • Early in the game, the bridge across the river is blocked by a group of women chatting about how they dislike housework. One of them comments on how she's bad at cleaning her house and wishes there was someone to do it for her. A while later — after you find your Loftwing, race in the Wing Ceremony, fly with Zelda, wake up after she falls into the tornado, find Fi and get the Goddess Sword, you're finally able to go across the bridge, and if you go in her house, you'll find that it's completely covered in dust and spiderwebs. Much later in the game, you finally get an item that is able to blow the dust out, so you do actually clean the house for her.
    • After she pays you for cleaning the house, if you come back later at night, you'll hear her son yelling at her for wasting the money he earned at his job for her to buy food. He comes outside and talks to you, wondering aloud what kind of jerk would help his mother with her money-wasting endeavors. Not sarcastically; he really doesn't know it was you. Link, apparently, does not tell him.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, when you first meet Tulin in Rito Village, you can greet him with "good morning" or "good evening". Greeting him wrong (as in saying good morning when it's night out and vice versa) has him saying that's a weird way to greet someone. Talking to him again after clearing Vah Medoh has him greet Link as "the weird greeter guy."
• In LEGO City Undercover, after you finish the Special Assignment "Smash 'N' Grab", one of Forrest Blackwell's sentinels is assigned to get after Chase on a tricycle. At the end of the cutscene after the final Assignment, he's just about to reach Chase... but the iris out beats him to it.
• In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, the second tutorial boss is the Junior Shrooboid, who is green. Later in the game, the Elder Shrooboid, who is red, shows up as the last boss before the final boss rush. Unless you realize the series's Running Gag with green being younger than red, you're not going to realize that the Elder Shrooboid will exist, and you'll slowly start forgetting about this throughout the game, as most of the game is in between these two bosses.
• Mass Effect:
  • Traynor's toothbrush in the third game. It's introduced as an astonishing waste of money that costs 6000 credits and uses tiny, extremely precise mass effect fields to break up plaque. During Priority: Citadel II, as you're fighting through the C-Sec building, you can find a datapad indicating that they're being used to smuggle mass effect fields used in manufacturing illicit Talon pistols. Then, in the Citadel DLC, you find that Traynor was thrown off the ship with barely enough time to grab her toothbrush, and in order to get onto the Normandy before it's stolen, you need to open an access hatch that's designed to be opened from the other side, requiring an extremely precise mass effect field... cue Traynor holding up her toothbrush and activating it, lightsaber-style, with a "this is it, my life cannot get any weirder" expression on her face.
    Shepard: If you told me this morning a toothbrush was going to save the Normandy, I would have been very skeptical.
  • Citadel involves a chain of brick jokes. While talking to the squad between missions, James Vega will complain about the lack of food in the apartment. As Shepard is marching off to prepare to storm the Citadel Archives, s/he bumps into a volus holding a pizza box. Upon Shepard's inquiry, James informs him/her that he got the munchies. During the mission proper, Glyph will inform James that the volus is calling to demand payment, prompting James to complain about the pepperoni being burnt.
• Minecraft: Story Mode:
  • During episode one, you choose a name for a Secret Handshake, with the message "No one will remember that." In episode four, when Axel and the rest of the group split up, Axel calls for the handshake again "for the road". Guess someone did remember after all.
  • In Episode 1, you can create a Lever at the first Crafting Table. If you have it by Episode 4, it's used to open the secret door behind the fireplace in Ivor's lair.
• Mirror's Edge has a rather sad one. An office worker in the PK building has had something of a Heel Realization and decided that the project to massacre the Runners, plus other things like the harsh working conditions and "interrogating co-workers" isn't worth it and he's quitting. He sends an email with a long rant about his reasons; said email is open on his computer when you enter the facility. When you enter the depths of the facility later on, you find a corridor full of interrogation rooms. Inside one is an office worker, beaten and bloody.
• The Monkey Island series is full of these. Throwaway lines like "I can hold my breath for 10 minutes" can come back into play much later. We say "can" because sometimes a punchline is delivered after the player has been allowed to roam around freely.
  • In the first act of The Curse of Monkey Island, Elaine is about to punch Guybrush when she finds out the engagement ring he gave her is cursed, when the curse kicks in and she turns into a gold statue. Near the end of the game, Elaine is freed of the curse and finishes punching Guybrush.
  • Also in Curse, Guybrush sneaks aboard the Sea Monkey, but gets caught immediately. First mate Mr. Fossey says he can either walk the plank or be tarred and feathered. However, they only have enough tar to repair the ship if it gets wrecked, so Guybrush has to walk the plank. Guybrush cuts off the plank, forcing them to tar and feather him. After Guybrush wins the ship from them, he and his crew sail to Blood Island, where they crash. Haggis laments that the ship's stores of tar are depleted, making it impossible to repair the ship.
• Mother:
  • EarthBound (1994) has too many to count. For instance, early on in the game, you meet Orange Kid, who asks you to invest $50.00 in his inventions. All you get if you do it is a worthless music box that breaks after you use it. But after you defeat Giygas, Orange Kid calls and says that someone invested millions in him, and makes fun of you if you didn't.
  • At the start of the first chapter of Mother 3, the doorknob on the front door of Flint's house comes off when Thomas tries to open it. He pockets it, only to later remark that he lost it if you talk to him. From then on, random NPCs throughout the story will mention having seen it if you talk to them, though it doesn't actually show up until the very last dungeon in the game, where it ends up falling off a cliff when you try to pick it up. You finally manage to reclaim it in the game's ending, when it inexplicably turns up in the darkness you're left wandering prior to the credits roll.
• Nibblers: Upon reaching Viny Climb, Coral comments about her disgust that turtles breathe through their rears. Once the group reaches Acid Bog several worlds later, she comments on the acidic stench and wonders if it's the turtles again.
• Nobody Saves the World: You start off the first dungeon by being dropped through a trap door and enter the last dungeon by being dropped through a trap door into the opening in the barrier.
• No More Heroes:
  • No More Heroes features a notable Bait-and-Switch Boss against the #5 assassin, Letz Shake, who's kill-stolen by Henry, and the player then isn't even allowed to fight Henry afterwards. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle then features another notable Bait-and-Switch Boss when Travis is scheduled to take part in a battle royale against multiple assassins. When it comes time for Travis to join the fight, every other assassin is immediately killed by a roboticized Letz Shake, who even has Henry frozen in carbonite.
  • Really, Henry's very presence in the first game is a giant Brick Joke of its own, as despite killing the fifth-ranked assassin and immediately challenging Travis to a duel, it's interrupted by Silvia, with Henry disappearing without giving Travis a chance to fight him. It's only in the True Ending when Henry returns and is actually fought.
  • In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Sylvia tempts Travis into rejoining the ranked fights with the promise of sex, telling him she's an expert in yoga positions. Travis's first thought was "...like, downward dog?" Late in the game, the two finally resolve their UST, and after the earth shaking, sign-destroying sex, Travis charges out of his apartment and screams for all to hear, DOWNWARD FUCKING DOG!!!
• OMORI:
  • The Warm-Up Boss Ye Old Sprout is referenced about a few hours later during Sweetheart's Quest For Hearts... as a sudden memorial to him.
  • In an early conversation after Basil's disappearance, Kel says he misses Basil because he always reminded him to wash his hands. After using the bathroom in the Last Resort, the text box notes Kel did not wash his hands.
  • One of the first things you do in Faraway Town is purchase a cookbook for Hero. Kel tells Sunny he'll pay him back. When inside Kel's room, the player can take money from his closet, and you can clear Kel's debt by pocketing the money.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: During the first Bowser segment, a Hammer Brother idly chats about how he saw Bowser mooning over a photo of Princess Peach. In the next segment, Bowser locates Princess Peach in a village and starts making romantic talk to her, only to find out that it's a life-sized poster of her.
  Bowser: "Great. Just great. Now I look like the huge, mighty king of GUYS WHO TALK TO POSTERS!"
• Persona:
  • Early on in Persona 3 FES, the protagonist is asked to inspect a broken component in the operations room. There's nothing the player can actually fix, and it's instead a setup for the player to access the video recordings that were added in FES. Near the end, after the final recording is accessed, Aigis mentions that she found and fixed the problem.
  • Persona 4:
    • Early on in Marie's Social Link in Golden, she asks you what "steak" is short for, allowing the player to answer in one of three ways, including "steak-out" and "steaaaaaaaak". Several Social Link ranks later, she brings it up once again, probably after you long since forgot what you told her, making the occasion funnier, especially since the scene is fully voiced.
    • When the crew first enters the TV world, Yosuke nearly wets his pants in the Ominous Bedroom. When the Investigation Team returns to the room to find Adachi, Teddie comments that he "smells something funny" coming from that room.
    • At one point, Yosuke makes fun of Chie's fear of lightning, leading to her saying that if anyone should get struck by lightning, it should be him. After Marie is rescued from the Hollow Forest in Golden, Yosuke makes a failed attempt at peeping on the girls in a hot spring, resulting in Marie actually striking him with lightning.
    • Near the beginning of the game, Nanako asks if weather forecasters control the weather. In the epilogue added in Golden, Marie becomes a weather forecaster who actually controls the weather.
  • Early on in Persona 4: Arena, Yosuke comments that he asked Teddie to leave the exit to the TV World open just in case one of them were to accidentally fall into it, with Chie pointing out that nobody could be that clumsy. Turns out, this is exactly how Kanji ended up in the world.
  • Early on in Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, the player gets to come up with a silly name for the combined team of Persona users. During the ascension of the Clock Tower, the team find their morale straining, leading to the player invoking the name of their team, cheering up everyone and restoring their energy.
  • Persona 5:
    • When the Phantom Thieves reach the location of Madarame's treasure, Ryuji comments that it's probably something like a self-portrait of Madarame. When the Thieves steal the treasure soon after, they open the bag it's in to discover it's... a poorly drawn self-portrait of Madarame, though it's quickly revealed that it's not the real treasure.
    • If the player talks to Ryuji in the school library early in the game, Ryuji will comment how he's angry the school council doesn't allow manga in library. During Futaba's Confidant, Makoto comments that they recently added manga to the library due to high demand.
    • During Kaneshiro's Palace, Ryuji complains about Morgana not having the ability to transform into a helicopter instead of a van. At the end of Royal, Morgana manages to transform into one to help the Phantom Thieves escape Maruki's Palace.
    • Throughout the game, Morgana has the ability to transform into a Citroën H van, which is used by the Phantom Thieves to travel through the Metaverse. At the end of the game, the Thieves decide to drive Joker home using a Citroën H van they happened to find, and in the vanilla game's version of the ending, Morgana is the one in charge of fixing the thing up.
• Pokémon:
  • The Winstrate family in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire can be fought around the same time as the third gym. After you beat them all—the dad, mom, girl, and grandma, who all have names starting with V—they all brag about their fifth family member, a boy, who is supposedly far stronger than any of them, though they don't tell you his name. Much later, on the final route before the Pokemon League, you meet a male trainer named Vito who says he trained with his whole family. After you become the first trainer to ever beat him, he loses his over-confidence and doesn't even want to challenge the League anymore.
  • In Heahea City's ferry terminal in Pokémon Sun and Moon, you can find a kid who does online link battles under the name Electriwin. In Malie City, an entire island later, another kid laments always losing to someone by that name.
• Portal 2:
  • Very early in, the Announcer discusses what to do in the event of an animal king ruling over humanity, and an accompanying video screen shows it acted out with a massive leopard-print turret wearing a crown. Then in the finale with the turret opera, you can see the animal-king turret singing in the background, every bit as massive, and even wearing the crown.
  • While exploring the depths of Aperture Labs, Wheatley shares a "ghost story" about robots that scream for seemingly no reason. Near the end of the game, GLaDOS's planned revenge on Wheatley for what he's done to the Aperture Science labs includes locking him in "the chamber where all the robots scream at you" for ten years.
  • One of the things mentioned by the Announcer is the fact that "All Aperture Science Personality Constructs will remain functional in apocalyptic, low-power environments of as few as 1.1 volts." This becomes important when GLaDOS is transferred to a potato battery, which is determined to generate only 1.1 volts of electricity.
  • You can also briefly spot an unusually wide turret in an elevator early on, then see it a short while later in a hidden room next to a pair of singing turrets. Turns out it's the lead singer for the aforementioned turret opera.
  • You hear a recording of Cave Johnson talking to his test subjects about the moon, the moon rocks he bought, crushed into dust and used in his experiments, how the moon rock dust he breathed in gave him cancer, and the special portal-able properties of the moon rock dust slurry he used to paint the walls of his test chambers. Much later, at the very end of the game, during the climactic boss fight against Wheatley, the facility is shaking itself to pieces. A hole opens up in the roof. Through the hole, somehow, despite being hundreds of feet underground, Chell can see... the Moon. Which is, of course, covered in the one and only substance the Portal Gun can attach portals to. There is one remaining spot of portal-able floor, directly underneath Wheatley. Hilarity ensues.
  • Every bit of dialogue in the Perpetual Testing Initiative references something from the game proper. It even has a black comedy version of its own, where early on you are asked by a sickly boy to continue testing to help him find a cure, then (much) later Cave Prime chimes in to tell you that they had kept tabs on that universe just to find out what happened to the kid. The fact that the kid died didn't even faze Cave.
• Puyo Puyo series:
  • During Arle's course in SUN, she encounters Zoh Daimaoh as one of the opponents. Due to the excessive heat, he becomes so mad that he burns a hole into the ground. Come Schezo's course and Zoh pops out of the hole, only to create another hole out of rage due to Schezo mistaking him for a demon.
  • A more meta example appears in the English version of Puyo Puyo Tetris. During one cutscene in Chapter 3, Amitie and Ess talk in a "lady-like" fashion in order to get materials for the Tetra's repairs. Amitie notes that the next time they talk like that, they should roll their Rs more. Amitie's alt voice in the game is the same "lady-like" voice, but now with her rolling her Rs for certain words.
• Though not employing a literal brick, this example explores the consequences of what one might expect a brick to do when thrown into the air. The first Quest for Glory foreshadows the Antwerp as a fearsome monster, but when encountered by the player, this creature appears to be a harmless, perpetually bouncing blob with a head. If the character tries to attack the creature, it will bounce away into the sky... only to appear later, after the player has moved to another screen, to instantly crush the character to death.
• Randal's Monday: Three quarters through the game, Sleazy promises to get Randal a tank by tomorrow, even though he didn't ask for it. At the end of the game (where it's Tuesday, finally), there is a tank in front of Randal's house.
• At the beginning of The Reconstruction, Qualstio complains about the fanfare that plays when characters join the guild. Much later on, another character comments on it after joining, to the confusion of everyone else.
• Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space:
  • The second episode, "Moai Better Blues", has the duo trying to prevent Easter Island from being destroyed by a volcano. They do this by getting the Bermuda Triangle to stop in front of the volcano and let lava flow into it. At the end of the final episode "What's New, Beelzebub?", the Soda Poppers are stranded on an island in the middle of a lava flow swearing revenge, saying they will return. Immediately, the Bermuda Triangle reappears and douses them with lava.
  • In the fourth episode, "Chariots of the Dogs", Sam and Max travel through time and visit their office in the near future. Sam finds the control for the Boxing Betty doll and picks it up. When he does that, his future self calls from the street below and offers to trade the control for an egg. After the exchange, present Sam says "Thanks. Be you later." In the fifth episode, "What's New, Beelzebub?", Sam calls up to their office, attracts the attention of his past self, and makes the exchange.
  • In "Night of the Raving Dead", Sam finds an ink ribbon in Jurgen's castle in Germany. The item is never used. In the following episode, "Chariots of the Dogs", Sam has to remove an ink ribbon while on a time-travelling spaceship. After he does so, he drops it into a time portal. The crew member watching him says that's a bad idea, but the ink ribbon only went back to a German castle the previous month.
• The Sexy Brutale: After murdering Sixpence, Two Diamonds complains about the absence of Seven Clubs. Much later you can find out what Seven Clubs is actually doing - he's playing piano for Tequila, and perfectly happy he's not anywhere near the chapel.
• In Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf, on Level 13, you shoot a sheep into outer space with a cannon. After Level 14, Marvin the Martian arrives to complain that a flying sheep broke his water tank.
• In Shin Super Robot Wars, Boss is about the only one whose machine wasn't somehow handed down by the family, but Kouji observes that the Boss Borot is mainly just in the way. Boss takes umbrage at this, but with his lackeys in tow, he plans to one day build the Boss Borot into one hell of a machine. Later on, Mucha shows up piloting the Borot, claiming that he's taken it without telling Boss, entitled by all the hard work he put in. He's not too worried about reprisals from Boss, who is unlikely to be able to follow all the way to space, and has even installed a Map Weapon! It also turns out that the Boss Borot's map weapon, though powerful, is totally impossible to aim.
• At the start of Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair, Nobara's father drives her and Raiko from the city to the Miyamoto mountain resort in the mountains. He nearly runs into a truck that is driving recklessly in the opposite direction and wishes that the driver will get into an accident. At the climax of the game, which is a couple hours later in-universe, the police are delayed from reaching the resort because a truck that was heading from the city to the mountains got into an accident due to driving too fast.
• The Simpsons Hit & Run: Level 2 sees the Popsickle Stick Skyscraper being lit on fire because of the 50-foot Magnifying Glass, with firetrucks gathered around to try to put it out. Level 5, set in the same location three days later, reveals that it has burnt to the ground, the fire department apparently being unsuccessful in putting it out.
• Master Ov gave us an unintentional Brick Joke in Slither.io: At 2:30 in this video, a small Minecraft snake misses an opportunity to take out a huge snake, enraging Master Ov. At 10:55, raging about another small snake's failure to take out another huge snake, Master Ov spots Minecraft in the perfect position to help Master Ov take that huge skin out. Minecraft comes through.
• Sonic Generations:
  • The game has Silver throwing cars at you for him being a moron because of him thinking you're an impostor. At the end, the cars he threw at you land on him when he's defeated.
  • Also, at the very start of the game, Sonic's birthday chili dog gets sucked up by the time rift that kicks off the plot. The very first thing that happens in the ending? Sonic catches the falling chili dog and joyfully notes that it's still warm because he hasn't been gone for long in the real world.
• Spider-Man:
  • In Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, when Spider-Man talks with Luke Cage about ending the gang violence in Harlem, he mentions that, growing up in the relatively peaceful Queens, he probably wouldn't have any idea what it was like on the streets. Later, when arranging a meeting between the rival gang leaders, this exchange occurs.
  Spider-Man: Now, be there, or be square.
  Gang leader: "Be square"?! Are you from Queens or something?
  • Spider-Man 2 has over a hundred Hint Markers (some not even Hints, but random trivia or possible adlibbing from Bruce Campbell), one of them says that, after every last one is collected, every marker will say "something different". Once you do... they all literally say "Something Different".
• In one scene of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a commercial in the bar will say about a possible new report that zerglings are fatally allergic to lemon juice. Come StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, the swarm's genetic database Abathur can make an off-handed comment about "Solving Zergling lemon juice allergy".
• Stardew Valley:
  • During one of Alex's early heart events, he confides to you that his father was abusive and his mother died, then tries to lighten the mood by taunting his dog Dusty with a steak. If you pursue him to his 10-heart event, he asks you on a date to the Saloon... and orders steak. Cue Dusty charging through the window.
  • If you satisfy the Trash Bear's demands, it takes a My Neighbor Totoro-esque flight around town, magically cleaning up litter and debris... and dropping a steak into Dusty's pen.
• Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: In the first episode, "Homestar Ruiner", the episode begins with Strong Bad getting an email asking why he hasn't "beat the snot" out of Homestar yet. Strong Bad thinks it's a good idea, but he gets sidetracked by his plan to beat Homestar in the big Tri-Annual Race to the End of the Race. In the endgame, after Homestar is knocked out of a window along with a number of other uninvited guests in Strong Bad's house, he yells "Ow, my snot!"
• During the first few hours of play of Subnautica, the PDA claims that planet 4546B is the property of the MegaCorp the player works for, and that he owes them money for every bit of the resources mined and used, with the tab standing at three million credits. Come the end game, in the Stinger after the credit roll, the player has escaped the planet and made it back to Earth, and is told that the s/he would only be granted permission to land after the debt is settled, which now stands at one trillion credits.
• In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, a conversation between Chrom and the Kid Icarus: Uprising cast has the latter group note that Chrom's fighting style is far too similar to Ike's for him to be a worthwhile addition to the game's roster, with Viridi and Palutena teasing him for his appearance being limited to Robin's Final Smash. Four years later, Chrom would end up as a full-fledged fighter, albeit as an "echo fighter" of Roy rather than Ike. Though he does receive Ike's Aether recovery move, something that Palutena mocked him for not having in the fourth game.
• Combined with inverted Chekhov's News in Tachyon: The Fringe. The combat portion of the Justified Tutorial consists of you fighting off a group of target drones that went haywire while you were evaluating a novice flight instructor. A news item later in the game reveals that the instructor went on to save the lives of her students when the same thing happened again.
• Tales of Graces: If you use Malik's Eternal Serenade to finish off the final boss of the main arc, he will claim that that will be the last time he will use that attack. Use it again in the future arc, and Sophie will call him out on it.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • At the beginning of the short "Meet the Medic", Medic finds his dove Archimedes digging around inside Heavy while he is operating on him. At the end of the short, after Medic operates on Scout and gives him his new heart, we find out the dove got stuck inside him. This itself was the punchline of another brick joke, where the week when the Medic update started, Scouts would randomly have doves fly out of them if they got gibbed with no explanation.
    Scout: Oh man, you would not believe... how much this hurts!
    [a bird's cooing sound emits from the Scout's chest]
    Medic: ...Archimedes?
  • In what can be considered a ludicrously long-planned brick joke, there were raid boss strings added during the first Halloween update, followed not long after by strings that gave items RPG-like stat bonuses, and references to Robots during the Mannconomy Update. Initially, these were added in the updates because people could figure out what a future update would be by simply reading the strings, which were named in reference to what they were (like weapon names or stats). Most people forgot about these until, years later, these were implemented in the Mann Vs Machine Update (which featured robots, upgradable weapons, and full-on Raid Bosses).
  • In December 2009, the game got the WAR! Update, and the update page told the story about Poopy Joe, the monkey that was going to be sent into space, but the rocket crashed and he died, and the weapons company Mann Co. denies having anything to do with it, but in June 2012, the Pyromania update was released, and before that there was an ARG telling more about the true story, how the rocket was sabotaged, with the fuel replaced with explosives, and the update debuted the Doomsday map, where the two teams have to compete on who delivers the fuel briefcase to the rocket first, and the match always ends with the rocket crashing.
• The first mission of Thief II: The Metal Age is freeing a servant from her master so she can get married to a friend of Garret's. In the third mission, where you are sneaking into a police station, you can find the manor lord filing a missing person report for the servant you snuck out.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: In the first hours of play, the party finds a mansion with a maze in the front garden, and a servant trapped inside. Half playthrough later, after the time-skip, there is a soldier now.
• In A Witch's Tale, Babayaga hits Liddell on the head early on. At the end of the first playthrough, it turns out that this caused her to dream the whole adventure.
• World of Warcraft has several:
  • After you give the quest to Johnny Awesome, you find his Celestial Steed dead.
  • Kingslayer Orkus. You give him the quest, and an NPC wonders if he'll drown. Sure enough, you will find him drowning in shallow water.
  • In Thousand Needles, you rescue pridelings from someone who had captured them. They follow you around for a little while because you rescued them, but then they leave. At the end of the story arc, you confront the Jerkass who captured the pridelings. Once he's lowered to enough health, the pridelings reappear, swarm him, carry him over a cliff, and then drop him.
  • In Upper Blackrock Spire players fought a core hound called The Beast. Six years later another dungeon set in the same mountain had players fight a core hound called Beauty, confirmed to be the Beast's mate.
  • In Warlords of Draenor, soon after passing through the Dark Portal, you encounter Kargath Bladefist, who traps you and your party in an arena and tasks you with killing one hundred of his minions, much like Kargath himself killed 100 gladiators in a bid for his freedom. But you only kill 99 of them before Khadgar leads your party out into the next area. (Khadgar's response: "Then I guess we owe you one.") Ten levels later, in Highmaul, you enter another arena, and Kargath Bladefist is back (and he is angry that you cheated him out of a fight). Then when you defeat him, his last words are "And that's...one hundred."
• Zero Escape series:
  • Virtue's Last Reward has many, most of them subtle in-jokes.
    • The most obvious one being Phi's "man" speech at the start of the game. Not only does she repeat it right at the end of the game in the "another time" branch to "Kyle", but she also uses the punchline, "I am no man", at another time in the middle of the game in response to Dio's words.
    • Phi jokes to Sigma in one of the timelines about him seeing her in a swimsuit, just before they're all killed by a bomb. In another timeline, Sigma recalls information from this timeline, and brings up Phi's "promise" of swimsuit "action". This is also a brick joke to one of the hidden files, which is labled "swimsuit" and mentions how "Sigma, or the author, seems to be unusually obsessed with swimsuits".
  • Zero Time Dilemma:
    • During the reactor puzzle, Junpei worries that Akane will slip on the icy floor. She chides him for being patronizing...and several conversations later, guess what happens?
    • ZTD sports a "reverse" brick joke that spans all the way back (forward?) to VLR, which doubles as a Tear Jerker: In the timeline that leads to VLR, Junpei proposes to Akane, who accepts, but he accidentally puts the ring on the wrong hand. After laughing about the blunder, the two agree that Akane will keep wearing the ring that way "until all of this is over", then Junpei will take the ring back and redo the proposal properly. Shortly after this, Akane wipes Junpei's memory of the events of the game, because he needs to not remember reuniting with her here in order for VLR to play out the way it does. People who played VLR will surely recognize the ring as the same one worn by Old Lady Akane in that game. She's still wearing it on the wrong hand all those years later.

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