5 Beloved Games That Have Secret Terrifying Backstories

Yes, in this cutesy sports game, you can slip behind the facade and gaze at the spears some pitiful natives used to (try) to defend themselves against a superior force, as well as the giant pit of skeletons those natives almost certainly became. Fans have also pointed out that the cruder ruins on the island look out of place, like they were destroyed by a newer culture whose buildings aged better. Nintendo felt the need to add all of this to a game for children and arthritic grandparents, when the plot of the previous game was "I'm the guy in red, you're the guy in blue, and we're playing ping pong."

But there's nothing you can do about any this. There's no minigame wherein you lead the avenging ghosts of long-dead natives on their path of righteous vengeance. You can only ignore the island's disturbing history, throw on a bathing suit, and go waterskiing -- you know, like tourists in Hawaii.

Even though Tawna is rescued, she's inexplicably absent from the second and third games in the series. But that's because she's not the adventurous type or something, right? Their relationship is probably fine, as evidenced by her picture in Crash's house in the third game.

Wrong. Tawna left Crash not long after being rescued, because she found him too immature. A little creepy that you're still prominently displaying her photo, buddy! But it gets even worse when you find out that she left him for this guy:

That's Pinstripe, one of the bad guys who kidnapped Tawna and tried to have Crash killed in the first place. How do we know all this? Because of the official Crash Bandicoot manga, of course. H-have you not been reading it? Oh man, how embarrassing for you ...

Tawna was removed because the publisher pressured the developer for a less sexualized female character in their fuzzy jogging game for children. Rather than go through the hassle of redesigning her, they simply got rid of her, because it turns out that there wasn't much to her personality beyond giant bandicoot boobs.

And yet through his hasty backstory added to justify a rating change, Tawna wound up with more agency than most damsels in distress in any medium. She was eventually replaced with Coco Bandicoot, Crash's smarter sister, who was carefully designed to not awaken strange and conflicted feelings in 12-year-olds.

Not so fast. Skip forward more than a decade to the HD re-release of both games (again, not to be confused with actual sequels, as these are remasters of sequels to sequels), and the game whose second conclusion was already more than its intended conclusion got yet another conclusion. Are you following all of this? No? Good. That's probably the right response.

The third official ending to the remaster of the sequel's sequel wasn't even a game, because words have long since ceased to have meanings. It was a short novel, and it was so insane that when translations leaked online, they were written off as weak attempts at trolling. Western fans still aren't entirely sure which details are real, and which were misinformation spread by jealous Dragon Quest fans, but there is one plot point that everyone agrees was both true and even-for-Final-Fantasy absurd.

You see, Tidus is more than a hero -- he's also an elite Blitzball player (think magical water polo). So when he winds up stranded on an island and a mysterious Blitzball rolls toward him, he does the only natural thing and runs up to kick it. It is in fact a bomb, which immediately explodes and kills him. Never mind the 20,000 nuclear laser dragon explosions that Tidus survived in the video game; one Wile E. Coyote cartoon bomb later, and he's dead. For real this time. But don't worry, because he's magically resurrected again later.

Aren't you glad you read all of this?