Are you familiar with the term “Jumping the shark?” It’s used to describe when a piece of media has grown beyond the original tone and become something strange and nonsensical. It originates from an episode of Happy Days, when Fonzie waterskis over a shark.
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Video games are just as susceptible to this, especially after several games spanning decades. What starts as a simple plot line may devolve into completely bizarre circumstances involving aliens, alternate realities, and more. But which games jump the shark the most?
10 The Stanley Parable
Since this isn’t actually a series, I’ve placed this one at the bottom of the list. The Stanley Parable is a unique experience, one that only grows stranger and stranger with each consecutive playthrough.
It’s the repeated playthroughs that make it qualify. Your first run through the game will feel interesting but not too hard to follow. But the next one? And the next one? As you slowly uncover all of the otherwise missed corners, you’ll find just how meta and bizarre this game can be.
9 Persona
The Persona games may not have started with the most ‘normal’ story, but with each new edition, the stakes, lore, and plot line have only gotten bigger and more outlandish.
By Persona 5, we’ve experienced hidden hours in reality, a worldwide subconscious, and plenty of other concepts far too complicated to explain in a single entry.
8 Far Cry
Throughout the history of this action shooter game, only one thing has stayed consistent: You’re a guy in a hostile gang territory trying to survive. In the early games, you were a soldier or special agent against local gangs or military forces.
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Later additions to the series, however, you’re fighting cultists, overthrowing entire dictatorships, surviving in a post-apocalypse, and even taking down prehistoric animals (both with and without lasers).
7 Silent Hill
This historic horror series has always been very heady and metaphorical. Immense care has gone into ensuring every noteworthy item, character, and location has meaning. Well… mostly. As the series went on, this artsy symbolism led to more and more obtuseness.
Early Silent Hill games were about individuals learning to cope with their traumas and emotional burdens in a horror setting. But as the series went on, narrative depth was pushed away for shock value, scares, and hard-to-follow metaphysical interpretation. We can make sense of Silent Hill 1 and 2. The Room and beyond? Not so much.
6 Pokemon
While describing a ten-year-old as leaving home to gather a team of wild animals to fight everyone you meet may not sound like a ‘normal’ game, it’s nothing compared to the plot of later Pokemon titles.
In the first game, you have one main goal: to become a champion. While later games still have that goal, they’re now motivated by storylines of eco terrorism, extinction events, space aliens, and subduing the gods of time and space.
5 Fable
While every Fable game has held its silly tone and good/evil alignment well, there’s no denying that the first game is a walk in the park compared to the dramatic story of the third. In the first game, you’re a boy trying to rescue his kidnapped mother and sister, trying to get revenge for the raiding of his village and the death of his father.
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In the second game, things get more dramatic, as you’re a young street rat who, after some fateful encounters, witnesses the death of your sister at the hands of a lord. This prompts you to go on a quest to gather heroes to activate a wish-granting structure, which they can use to save everyone. Then by the third game, you’re a noble who has to rally an army against an invading eldritch force that has laid waste to the land.
A common joke among Metal Gear Solid fans is how weird the series is. With cyber ninjas, supernatural powers, and bizarre abilities, it’s hard to imagine it came from somewhere so mild.
The original Metal Gear game was a realistic military stealth shooter set in 1995. The weirdest thing about it was that a tank with legs had nuclear missiles. Now there are psychics and clones and other strange forces.
If the game has been weird longer than it was normal, then what IS ‘normal’?
3 Five Nights At Freddy’s
No one anticipated how big of a horror game sensation Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNaF) would become. Originally a small indie game about closing doors, it has since evolved into a multi-game franchise, film adaptations, merch, and more.
In the original game, you’re defending yourself from haunted animatronics in a pizzeria. This has since evolved into a high-tech plot involving a serial killer, secret robotics facilities, and an ongoing battle between a seemingly undead security guard and a child’s ghost (who wrangles other ghosts)
2 Call Of Duty
Few game series have changed as much as Call of Duty. Originally a WW2 shooter game. It took a leap into the modern with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a much beloved change. But that’s not where it jumped the shark.
Later iterations, like Advanced Warfare and Black Ops 4 and beyond, brought the battle into the future, with robot soldiers, hovercrafts, lasers, and literally gunfights in outer space. I’m not sure which game exactly made the franchise become sci-fi, but it’s deep into the genre now.
This doesn’t even talk about their multiplayer system, which has done things like introduce zombies, aliens, farting unicorn, nicki minaj, and Squid Game.
1 Saints Row
When it comes to a dramatic shift in tone and jumping shark, no game does it like Saints Row did. Originally a fairly serious open world adventure game about joining a gang, it toted itself as a somewhat less mature version of Grand Theft Auto.
This makes it all the stranger that the fourth game would start with you, the President of the United States, shooting down aliens with laser guns and dildo launchers. Every game looked at the previous, and upped the goofy factor tenfold.
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