Times where someone insists "The Show Must Go On!" regardless of setbacks in Video Games.
- Baldur's Gate 2 featured the start of a character recruitment quest happen at a theater where a recruitable NPC was kidnapped prior to the show. True to the trope, Biff the Understudy steps up to fill the role and delivers a wooden, stuttering, uninspired and all-around dreadful performance.
- Circus Electrique: The titular circus was just reopening after a ten-year absence when the Maddening sweeps across London. While the player can opt to skip performances, the Ringmaster is eager to play this straight — and performing makes your stars happier as well, along with potentially bringing in valuable resources.
- The opera in Final Fantasy VI gets completely derailed when the party and an enemy end up crashing down on it from above. They end up improvising completely non sequitur roles on the spot. Hilarity Ensues when the theater owner decides to Throw It In! and has the orchestra cue up the appropriate music.
- By completely derailing, we mean a treasure hunter and two companions which may include the king, a feral teenager, a ninja, and a samurai, fighting an octopus, using powers believed to have vanished a thousand years ago, in the middle of a tragic love story, concluding with the female lead (played by a general of a rival nation's army) being abducted by the pilot of a zeppelin.
- Final Fantasy IX features a circumstance VERY similar to the FFVI example above in the opening sequence, when the main character's Thieves' Guild disguise themselves as an acting troupe performing the most popular play in the world as a guise to kidnap Princess Garnet. When Zidane, Garnet, and Captain of the Guard Steiner find themselves on stage in the midst of the production, Hilarity Ensues as they take the plot Off the Rails entirely in their bid to escape. And the Queen still loves it!
- And then in the finale, the same play is performed a year later, with the script divergence being the narrator casting off his cloak to reveal he's the thought-missing Zidane, and Queen Dagger leaving her booth to rush out on stage to embrace him.
- True Crime: New York City has a level appropriately named Bullet Opera. Marcus, chasing Teresa down, goes on a rampage against her goons to the sound of a peaceful sounding opera, complete with a singing fat lady. Also, if you shoot her, the music keeps going!
