When 100% Completion and Rank Inflation collide. There are a number of video games that track the player's completion percentage, and in some of these games it's possible to go beyond 100%. This could be for a number of reasons:
- It's a bug.
- The creators did it to hide secret content.
- The original game went to 100%, but later they added new content and upped the top percentage to match. This can occasionally lead to a situation where the game will trigger rewards for 100% completion even if the player hasn't even come close to fulfilling the intended requirements for it.
- 100% designates that you've done enough in the dev team's eyes, and they don't want to pressure most gamers into completing the insanely-hard challenges that the true top percentage would require. (Arguably self-defeating, since if the game is tracking it, many players will still want to achieve it.)
- The rest of the completion percentage comes in through a New Game Plus mode.
- It's just the game being cheeky about tracking completion.
- Some combination of the above.
May be a consequence of a Fractional Winning Condition, where the game tells you you've obtained 100% of the necessary stuff when there is, in fact, more of it to collect.
Video Game Examples:
- In Arcaea, the maximum score appears to be 10 million, obtained by getting "Pure" on all notes. But if you hit a Pure extra-accurately, or keep a hold or Arc note held down for a tick, you will gain 1 additional point, and if you get a Pure Memory (all Pures) you'll have a score of slightly over 10 million (for example, if you get a PM and you hit 300 notes with these "super" Pures, your final score will be 10,000,300). In practice, it's impossible to have a score of exactly 10 million if there are any hold or Arc notes in the chart.note
- Batman: Arkham Knight has a New Game Plus mode that pushes the game to 200%. The Season of Infamy DLC adds an additional 20% to the campaign, meaning fully completing Arkham Knight with New Game Plus gets you 240%.
- While the game doesn't normally track completion percentage, The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth gets extra cheeky about the concept by awarding your save file with a 1001% for unlocking and collecting everything. This goes even further in Afterbirth+ with 1,000,000%. Getting 1,000,000% in all three save files causes the game to register 3,000,000% completion. Repentance follows suit with the Dead God achievement (plus a special ∞%
◊ for doing it on all 3 save files).
- Blasphemous has a completion tracker that initially topped at 100%, but as additional content and a New Game Plus variant was added, the maximum completion can clock in at 150%.
- Burnout Paradise tops out at 102%
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: It's possible to achieve 1100% completion in multiplayer due to the Prestige System.
- Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin goes up to 1000% map completion — it has 10 sub-maps (including the main castle) each of which contributes 100% completion.
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night can reach 200.6% map completion due to a combination of the existence of the Inverted Castle and some of the cavern areas not being mapped 1:1 between castles due to the way the map works, resulting in extra 6 rooms in the latter. However, it's also possible to exploit glitches to bring this percentage as high as 240%.
- Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped goes to 105%, and Crash Bash reaches 200%. In the former, the extra 5% is for completing two hidden levels, getting the gems within them and being awarded a hidden gem for getting all of the relics to at least gold standard. Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex goes to 106%—because there are 106 collectibles in the game. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time also goes to 106%, which requires all gems on both modes (Normal and N.Verted), all Flashback Tapes and all (Platinum) relics (Flashback Relics, Time Trial Relics and Perfect Relics). Crash Team Racing keeps it simple by its extra 1% just needing gold rewards on all its Relic Races.
- Cuphead: After completing the game, an additional 100% may be achieved by defeating all the bosses in the now-unlocked Expert mode for S rankings and up to 200%.
- A recurring trope in the Donkey Kong Country series. Donkey Kong Country tops out at 101%,note Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest tops out at 102%, and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! tops out at 105% (which is only possible by using the "TUFST" cheat code that removes all checkpoints and almost all DK Barrels). The one Donkey Kong Land game that does this, 3, goes to 103%.note Donkey Kong 64 returns to 101%, only for Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze to go all the way to 200% through completing Mirror Mode in Returnsnote and Hard Mode in Tropical Freezenote ). Likewise, DK: King of Swing goes up to 200% by clearing the game as Diddynote , completing the Time Attack as both Donkey and Diddy, and beating Jungle Jam in single player.
- Doom: The game can tabulate a kill percentage above 100% on any level with an archvile in it, since archviles can resurrect dead monsters, except other archviles. A player routinely has to down the same enemy multiple times before concentrating fire upon the archvile itself, which raises the kill count above the installed enemy count. Also, the game's hardest difficulty (Nightmare) features respawning monsters and killing a monster after it respawns will count twice for the kill percentage, meaning that it is common for the kill percentage to exceed 100% in Nightmare runs.
- Doom II: The Final Boss, the Icon of Sin, will continuously spawn in hordes of enemies, meaning the player will likely have a kill percentage in the thousands. This also happens when that boss is fought again in one of the Master Levels.
- Fez goes to an oddly specific 209.4%
- Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition tracks how much of the "Hop's Iconic Cap" DLC you've experienced, going all the way up to 200%.
- Inverted with the first print of Gran Turismo 2 discs, in which it was only possible to achieve 98.2% completion. This was fixed in later revisions and the European version,note where it is also possible to achieve 100.91% completion.
- Hollow Knight originally stopped at 100%, then went up to 106% and later 112% with the addition of new goals from the DLC packages. This makes the "100% in 20 hours" and "100% in Steel Soul Mode" achievements much easier to get, as you can choose which 12% to omit; in particular, the Trial of the Fool and White Palace are no longer required.
- Inverted in Just Cause 2, where it's only possible to achieve 99.67% completion due to several missing assets.
- Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls: It's possible to collect over 100% of the reported money in a stage, because that's actually just how much money it takes to get A rank, and there's more money than that in a stage.
- In maimai, the Achievement rating appears to be a percentage of the maximum score for the song, with 100% meaning you got an All Perfect. However, most charts have "Break" notes that award bonus points, 100% Achievement is based out of getting all Perfects and 2500 points on each Break note, and you can get 2550 or 2600 points on a Break if you hit it extra-accurately. In practice, the vast majority of All Perfect performances have something like 101.44% or even as high as 105%, depending on the ratio of Break notes to other notes, and furthermore it's possible to get 100% or more without getting all Perfects if you get a lot of 2550- and 2600-point Breaks.
- Pizza Tower: One can reach 101% completion by not only completing all of the main content, but getting a highly difficult P-Rank in every level in the game to earn that extra one percent, which is collecting all Toppins and Secrets, getting the level's hidden treasure, and completing Lap 2 of the timed escape sequence. All of this while not losing your combo once throughout the level.
- Pokémon Red and Blue can assess your Pokédex completion and congratulate you for finishing it when you finally obtain all 150, a mammoth undertaking. However, if you are able to obtain Mew, either from a Nintendo event or from exploiting a glitch, then you can reach 151.
- In Puyo Puyo Tetris, completing the main story (Acts 1-7) gives 100% completion, while completing the extra stories (Acts 8-10, originally Downloadable Content in the Japanese release but included baked into the international release) gives an extra 30%, for a total of 130%.
- The sequel Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 has a whopping 219% completion that is obtained from getting four stars all of the stages, four stars are unlocked after getting three stars from all the stages in an Act.
- In Psychonauts, beating every round of the punching minigame in Basic Braining awards a PSI Cadet rank, making it possible to have a rank of 101 over the supposed maximum of 100. Doing this in the Steam version nets you the achievement "Math Is Hard". Psychonauts 2 tops this with a maximum rank of 102, although this time it was clearly intentional (an ability is unlocked at rank 102).
- Retro Achievements: Beating a game on hardcore mode gives a 200% complete message.
- In SEUM: Speedrunners From Hell, completing all secret levels will result in a completion of 666%.
- Splatoon 2 has the Hero Mode campaign reach 1000% completion if you beat every stage and boss battle with all nine hero weapons. Though you'd only know that the game considers this to be 1000% if you use the SplatNet2 phone companion app, which tracks a bevy of player statistics. Strangely enough, the app doesn't do this with the Octo Expansion campaign, which does acknowledge 1000% completion (beating every level with every weapon, plus defeating the superboss) in-game by putting a "Complete" written in the game's Conlang on your subway map.
- Spyro the Dragon:
- In Spyro the Dragon (1998), obtaining 100% Completion unlocks the Secret Level Gnasty's Loot. Obtaining all the gems in that level bumps your completion percentage up to 120% and unlocks an extra ending.
- Similarly, completing the Super Bonus Round level in Spyro: Year of the Dragon awards you 117% completion.
- Super Bomberman 5 goes up to 200% by completing "encore mode" which is only unlocked by fully attaining the first 100%.
- Supernova 1987 goes up to 1005 out of 1000 points, but the game doesn't have a rank for it. Specifically, "Turn device on" and "turn on device" both award 5 points for the same effect, but are tracked under different score flags.
- Racing game Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour goes up to 105% completion, which requires winning all races and collecting everything in Adventure mode.
Non-Video Game Examples:
- Carl²: In one episode, Carl has C2 take a test for him, and C2 ends up scoring 105%. This is grounds enough for Carl to be accused of cheating. He ultimately decides to study for retaking the test himself. When HE takes the test, he ends up scoring 72%.
- House of Robots: Robot Revolution: In chapter 31, Mrs. Kunkel congratulates Rondolph R. Reich for getting a score of 103% on his test.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: Played for Laughs In-Universe. After Ensign Sam Rutherford completes the advanced command training simulation in "Envoys", the computer informs him that the casualties are at 105%. He somehow killed more holographic characters than what was generated by the holodeck for that program. We never get an explanation as to how this is possible, although given the comedic tone of the scene, we're probably meant to to infer that Rutherford's Epic Fail overwhelmed the system's logic.
