Your biggest WTF moment(s) in gaming

Perhaps it have already happened to you and anyone else who has been into gaming to a prolonged extent.

You were exploring a game on your first playthrough, somewhat still learning the ropes, but getting casual with the more basic stuff, then something really sudden and/or unexpected happened that differed so much from the experiences so far and/or the game's general build-up that left you stunned and fazed for at least a couple of seconds. (A subtrope of this is doing second, third explorations after finishing the game once and discovering secrets or non-madatory content that fits the description. Bonus points if this was actually recently newfound, or at least long after you had been thinking you knew the game by heart.)

Mine was a first-timer on Diablo II: Lord of Destruction ^{(it actually happens identically without the patch as well)}. I just found out after quite a long time of guessing how to progress further after the far end of the second world, the desert, but it wasn't the actual thing, instead it was the music in the palace levels - it started off quite "normal", but after a good forty? fifty? seconds into it, suddenly a deep female voice started singing in an Arab-like language. 

^{Note: it starts at 0:46. I haven't looked up this track for ages and "40-50 seconds" was just a wild random guess.}
I was genuinely believing that the game was glitching out or something, because literally none of the other OST had any singing in them (though to be fair, the more hell-ish ones from both the first and the second games, in fact, had desperate, otherwordly yells most presumably created - and distorted - by humans). And the series of the surprises didn't essentially end here either, because seconds after discovering and activating a portal at the bottom of the cellar I was running around on stone platforms supported by metallic pillars in outer FKN space. In a medieval-themed game, that is.

^{It is quite medieval for the setting tho'.}
So? I am interested in your left-me-stunned encounters.

I was making a map for wolfenstein 3d. I had inadvertedly placed a patrolling ss guard, so I couldn't find it. Confused, wearing headphones and, unknowingly with speaker volyme set to max - I walked around trying to find it.

The result was me sending the chair through a drywall and falling forwards  smacking my chin into the table.

This isn't a story that happened to me, but rather a friend. He told me about how one time when he was messing around on the Icon of Sin map and had noclip on and unintentionally ran into the room with Romero's head, without knowing it existed. It caused him to scream out loud. He's always felt uneasy seeing decapitated heads, and the bottom of the pit in Mortal Kombat 1 made him feel particularly uncomfortable. 

Wish I had commentary and face cam on for this, but my first time trying the final boss of Crimzon Clover on the hardest difficulty level was a real WTF moment. :D

Let's see:

Garuda on Final Fantasy 3 on NES. Talking to the people in Salonia still doesn't give much of a hint about this totally unexpected boss fight. One minute you're bringing Prince Allus home, and the next you're getting THUNDERED to death. There's a super-vague warning that one of the villagers mentions about this fight. It wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so stupidly over-powered. He just casts Thunder the entire time, which at that point in the game, two hits will kill your entire party, and the only heal spell you have at that point is Cure2 which is definitely not able to keep up with that kind of damage.

He's also a pain to fight. You gotta switch your party to Dragoons and Jump every turn to avoid getting hit. Only cavaet with that is that you will miss 7/10 times, and Garuda can catch you on the landing with Thunder. Equipment for Dragoons is stupid expensive as well, costing something like 300,000 Gil to fully arm your party. The Pinnacle of frustrating.

So I'm playing STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl (modded). I'm moving from the Rookie Camp in Cordon to the Carpark or Old Mill, I forgot which one. It's a long somewhat straight road, that is occasionally travelled by friendly loners and crossed by mutant dogs or pigs.

I spot something on the road. A line of objects. So I investigate. Turns out there's a huge line of sausage, bread and 9mm pistol ammo from the exit to Rookie Camp all the way to the tunnel towards the Carpark. The game for some reason just decided to spawn a shitload of objects on the road for no good reason. It really spooked me out. Given the anomalies in STALKER, it felt eerily fitting despite being a bug.

I also recently played some FarCry 4 on a mate's Xbox, and we both ended up dying probably 6 times to traffic smashing into us while exiting a safehouse, I got flattened once by a flying car after an elephant stormed through town (while I was exiting a safehouse), and my mate died after a speedboat smashed into his skull when he reloaded a save on a jetski. Civilians driving around the map are more dangerous than the actual enemies in FC4...

The entirety of Plug & Play.

Me Playing Ken's Labyrinth for the first time! i was absolutely weirded out by the whole damn thing! (also i had the volume way up and on the title screen i went through the roof when i heard "WELCOME TO KENS LAB!"

In my first playthrough of Deus Ex, I got upset enough at one of the plot essential NPCs to attack her. So I did, and she died. Cautiously I went on playing, ready to reload the previous save when I found out the game couldn't progress anymore.

And it did progress. Killing the NPC didn't break the game. I did something other than what seemed to be expected of the player, and the game acknowledged it and went on with it. And this WTF moment is a large part of why Deus Ex is still my favorite single-player FPS today. (...Not counting Doom, with custom content.) I have yet to play another game that gave me the same feeling of choice and agency as Deus Ex. Up to that point it had felt more or less on rails, but after that moment I realized that I could choose not to do what the game told me to do, and that my choices would have a meaningful impact on the game world. 

The mindfuck of an intro in Prey (2017) where...

Also, one of the endings of Far Cry 5 where...

when i make a pentakill in league of legends xdxdxdxdxdxd

Playing through the first Bioshock and meeting up with Andrew Ryan.

I accepted a mission on a freighter in No Man's Sky two months ago and as soon as I hit A, it vanished leaving me in empty space where not surprisingly, I died.

I was playing Thief Gold many eons ago. I recall sneaking through some castle and a spider in a prison cell, started freaking out when I tried to throw a mine under the door. The spider started running against the gate as a guard comes along. I'm fending off the guard when the spider clips through the gate and jumps over our heads and I die trying to get the hell out of there.

Discovering weird pirated famicom/NES games back in 2009. Kart Fighter fascinated the hell outta me and sent me down a rabbit hole of discoveries and research about NES game piracy. I got in at the right time, as other enthusiasts were finding places to buy hard copies of these odd games and even getting in touch with some of the Chinese developers to learn more. The whole thing was a series of fascinating WTFs.

Less interesting, but the first few times I encountered glitchy items/trees/etc flying around on their own in Oblivion it really amused and confused me.

@Doomkid  Speaking of NES piracy, have you heard about Waixing? 

I sure have, they produced some very weird, dodgy and interesting ports, such as Final Fantasy 7 to NES. Usually pretty shoddy work compared to Hummer Team and Super Game, other NES pirates, but still a lot of interesting things came from Waixing. They’re the only NES pirates who are still kinda-sorta functioning today (to my knowledge)

Oblivion, I completed a quest where I uncovered some corruption in the imperial guard and got a general fired. Days later, I'm playing the game, looting a dungeon and I run into a hideout of a guy who tries to kill me, yelling personal insults at me. Turns out it was the general who I got fired! He had a journal, and in it he was talking about how I ruined his career and he was plotting his revenge against me. That was way more than I expected out of any game up to that point.

Also, playing Minecraft for the first time.

Most of Daggerfall. I played it last year, and I was shocked with the complexity that the game has, bugs aside. You've got your day and night cycle, but also seasons and holidays, there are banks that you can (and have) to use to store your money, the shops have their own schedules, you can join guilds, break into people's houses, face law or fight against it, etc, in a game from fucking 94. The only reason I never finished it was because the dungeons are a bunch of procedurally generated mazes that use the same prefabs. I also got tired of going through walls.

On 11/30/2018 at 6:10 PM, meapineapple said:

In my first playthrough of Deus Ex, I got upset enough at one of the plot essential NPCs to attack her. So I did, and she died. Cautiously I went on playing, ready to reload the previous save when I found out the game couldn't progress anymore.

 

And it did progress. Killing the NPC didn't break the game. I did something other than what seemed to be expected of the player, and the game acknowledged it and went on with it. And this WTF moment is a large part of why Deus Ex is still my favorite single-player FPS today. (...Not counting Doom, with custom content.) I have yet to play another game that gave me the same feeling of choice and agency as Deus Ex. Up to that point it had felt more or less on rails, but after that moment I realized that I could choose not to do what the game told me to do, and that my choices would have a meaningful impact on the game world. 

I finished playing Deus Ex for the first time a few days ago, and I completely understand this. It feels so... natural. There are no "THIS IS A CHOICE" warnings (with the exception of the very end of the game, I suppose); it has a respect towards the player that is not often seen.

That does it! - I exclaimed upon having seen the following one...

I cannot even begin to describe it - and I won't either. Look it up yourselves, but at your own expense. Just to tell you in advance, this might be one of the grossest, most squicky, merciless and gruesome ways any video game character has ever become done for.

I wasn't playing the actual game, but watched a sort-of introductionary video of it instead - Breath of Fire IV. At some point of the plot in the beginning, it is revealed that the eldest princess of Wyndia, Elina has gone missing. And it isn't even disturbing up until the time - and the condition in which - the heroes actually find her.

The worst part of it? The bastard responsible for the events to turn at her demise becomes a Karma Houdini, because the game devs had run short of time before the release date.