Imagine this scenario. You’re playing through a game, going from level to level fighting against enemies with all the weapons you have on your character. You reach a certain point in the game, ready to face the next challenge…

Except all of your weapons are gone. All that time you spent searching every corner of the levels you’ve gone through to find them, all the ammo for those weapons. Everything is just gone except for either your fists or what you had when you started the game.

This is known as Bag of Spilling, and it’s a common trope in gaming that is just as irritating as it sounds. One of the most well known rules when it comes to gaming is that items and experience levels are never carried over to sequels, regardless of how much time has passed. In terms of direct sequels, this makes no sense, but the general explanation is that it’s meant to present a fair challenge to the player.

While this is usually accepted, there are some games that provide weak explanations or outright refuse to share anything, leaving you wondering how this character went from being a legitimate badass to a complete rookie in the span of a few months. Were they on vacation and didn’t bother to bring their stuff with them because it wasn’t needed? Were they out of shape because it’s been months or years since the world was saved? Was their stuff stolen through physical or magical means? Regardless of the reason, the results wind up being the same thing.

Metroid is a well known example of a series where you are constantly suffering from Bag of Spilling in each game. It doesn’t matter how many upgrades you get for your Power Suit, or how many missiles or bombs you collect to destroy your enemies faster. The moment you start the next game of the series, everything you had gone out of your way to collect disappears. While they at least try to justify a reason for you losing everything at the start, only a few games in the series actually give you a proper explanation while everything else is just shoehorned in without question

While The Legend of Zelda series could be considered another example, it’s ends up forgoing the trope for a different reason, in that each game is set in a different point of time, usually generations or centuries apart. This means that the Link you play as is a completely separate Link from the past games.

It doesn’t just have to be sequels that do this. This can also happen in the middle of the game you’re playing. The original Doom released back in 1993, as well as its sequel, are the best early example of this thanks to how they’re structured. The full version of the original Doom consists of four episodes, each one about eight levels long (nine when counting secret levels). Throughout those levels you’ll find a large amount of weapons and ammo to help you fight demons. But once you start the next episode, you’re back to only your fists and your pistol. You could chalk it up to demonic forces at play, but you literally just had them a minute ago. How did you wind up losing them all so quickly? The game never gives you a proper answer, and you’re left with nothing but annoyance as a result.

This can also happen in other genres like Role-Playing Games, where certain events may cause something to happen to your character and they lose all the stuff they have on them. This is usually done in the form of death, being thrown into jail, an illness that leaves them out of commission, or just off doing something elsewhere and they lose their stuff as a result. The list goes on, but the results remain the same.

Regardless of what game you play or what genre it’s in, if it gives you the ability to upgrade/level up your character and there’s a sequel, expect it all to be gone. What’s considered a fair challenge by the developers is nothing more than an excuse to just depower a character you had spent so long to strengthen up. Gameplay-wise, it at least makes sense since you would be very overpowered for the next game when you start it. In terms of story, there is none of that.