History Main / ConspicuouslySelectivePerception

* Variant on ignoring sounds not made by the protagonist: in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', villain Shriek has a suit whose abilities include nullifying sound in the surrounding area. When Batman turns on the machines in a factory in order to mask his own movements, Shriek uses his suit to block out the sounds, followed by another adjustment so that he can still hear Batman moving around.

* A typical example is in ''VideoGame/JaggedAlliance2''. If the guards don't see you or hear you (because you're sneaking around, it's dark, and you've got better night vision equipment...) they have no idea that anything is wrong. If a guard ''does'' see you, then provided you kill him silently, and without any of his colleagues seeing, before he can radio it in, his colleagues still have no idea that anything is wrong. And if those same colleagues' patrol then takes them right up to the still-warm corpse of their good buddy, complete with multiple bullet wounds or a throwing knife embedded in his throat... well, they still have no idea anything is wrong.

** [[http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sleeping_shotgun_guy_in_MAP02_%28Doom_II%29 This page]] on the Doom Wiki details a bug that causes one enemy early in the first game to spot the player through a wall, and then another one in the second to ''ignore'' the player even when they walk right in front of them; this bug is not ArtificialStupidity but the line-of-sight equivalent of an InsurmountableWaistHighFence, a property of the level itself that makes it ''physically impossible'' for them to see the player. There's a similar bug that causes four enemies much later in the second game who are standing at the other side of a locked door to ignore you until you pass through that door - and [[GoodBadBugs much like almost every other glitch in the engine]], this has been deliberately recreated in custom maps to make situations such as "statue"-like enemies coming to life to attack the player after grabbing an item near them.

** [[http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sleeping_shotgun_guy_in_MAP02_%28Doom_II%29 This page]] on the Doom Wiki details a bug that causes one enemy early in the first game to spot the player through a wall, and then another one in the second to ''ignore'' the player even when they walk right in front of them. There's a similar bug that causes four enemies much later in the second game who are standing at the other side of a locked door to ignore you until you pass through that door - and [[GoodBadBugs much like almost every other glitch in the engine]], this has been deliberately recreated in custom maps to make situations such as "statue"-like enemies coming to life to attack the player after grabbing an item near them.

** [[http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sleeping_shotgun_guy_in_MAP02_%28Doom_II%29 This page]] on [[TheWikiRule the Doom Wiki]] details a bug that causes one enemy early in the first game to spot the player through a wall, and then another one in the second to ''ignore'' the player even when they walk right in front of them. There's a similar bug that causes four enemies much later in the second game who are standing at the other side of a locked door to ignore you until you pass through that door - and [[GoodBadBugs much like almost every other glitch in the engine]], this has been deliberately recreated in custom maps to make situations such as "statue"-like enemies coming to life to attack the player after grabbing an item near them.

** Illustrated in this ''Webcomic/AwkwardZombie'' comic, guards are apparently [[http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=022513 deaf to noises made by barrels]]

* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' and ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' suffer the same problem as shopkeepers in their Creator/{{Bethesda}} ''Elder Scrolls'' sister series (due to running on the same engine), but it's amplified because both games introduce a button that allows the player to physically pick up and move an object in the world without adding it to their inventory, and the fencing system (and corresponding recognition of stolen objects) is removed. The Silver Rush in New Vegas is especially prone to this problem, as it's loaded down with hundreds of pounds of high tech energy weapons and ammunition worth an obscene amount of caps, and has an extended hallway to the bathrooms where one can go. The player can freely move all of the objects in the store into the bathroom and steal them out of sight, and nobody cares as long as the Courier doesn't just shove a plasma rifle into his bag in front of them.

* Chapter 15 of ''VideoGame/GhostTrick'' is a StealthBasedMission in which you have to avoid using your ghost powers in front of a major antagonist [[spoiler:who also has access to powers of the dead, and ones much stronger than yours at that]]. Despite this, he has an odd tendency to ignore things that should be suspicious just because he didn't see them directly. [[spoiler:This is actually {{foreshadowing}} -- the protagonist was his OnlyFriend for several years, and this antagonist really doesn't ''want'' to call him out if he can ignore him instead.]]

* ''VideoGame/GhostRecon: Future Soldier'' features a mission in which an enemy gunship is hovering overhead and the player and his team are expected to sneak past it without alerting it. While it will near-instantly go on alert if it spots the player, you can tell your teammates to shoot an enemy ''right underneath'' it and it will not care. Also, during sections in which enemies are not yet aware of the player's presence, the AI-controlled Ghosts are totally invisible to them. This can be handwaved by the active camouflage you get from the second mission onwards, but even when they're running at full tilt without camo active they are still totally undetectable. Notably, this also applies to temporary escorts - one can, after rescuing [[spoiler:the Russian President]], have him walk right ''into'' a patrolling guard without that guard noticing.

* The game ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI'' is practically based around this trope. Anti-hero Altair goes everywhere wearing his distinctive white robe with red ribbons and various weapons prominently displayed. In spite of this, he can fool people into thinking he is a harmless monk merely by adopting their typical posture. Even if guards are alerted to him, as long as he manages to break line of sight and hide for a bit they will completely forget what he looks like. If he walks his horse very slowly past guards they will never realise he is an assassin, yet if he takes his mount into a trot or gallop, they will immediately realise he is a bad guy. On the flip side, the streets are filled with idiots who for some reason are eager to shove Altair about (and only him, never [=NPCs=]) and absurdly persistent beggar women who for some reason ''run'' after Altair even if he goes around pretending he is a monk.

*** Although this does not explain how after tearing down a couple of posters and bribing one guy the entire city will suddenly forget the killing spree you just went on.
*** Since it's still the Animus, the general consensus is that the "couple of posters" could represent many posters, and one guy could represent many. After all, if Desmond got too bored...

** This was dealt with in the third game, ''VideoGame/ThiefDeadlyShadows''. Guards would react to a ''huge'' number of things compared to the original two. A door left open, an item missing ( stolen ) from somewhere, a light you put out earlier.. if they come by such things on their patrols, they get suspicious. One such discovery they may shrug off unless it's important, two they'll have a quick look. If they're already suspicious, they'll then go searching, and if they get clues beyond that, they'll raise a riot. This also applies to not meeting guards on their patrol routes. More than this, [=NPCs=] will run and find someone to help them if they catch you, often resulting in several guards gathering and going after you, alerting other guards along the way. All this also applies to most sounds, environmental or otherwise - including sometimes ones that you Don't make - and even if they do eventually give up looking for you, their suspicion level won't ever reset back to blissful ignorance.
*** Most of these reactions were also present in the original two games, more so in ''Thief 2'' than in ''Thief 1'': guards would notice certain doors left open (but not all), certain important items missing, doused torches and gas lamps and rope arrows or lit flares left lying around. Unarmed [=NPCs=] would run to fetch guards, and swordsmen who couldn't reach the player would run to get archers. They would also never get back to their lowest alert after they'd been raised to the highest.
* Guards in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' and its subsequent games had a notorious amount of Conspicuously Selective Perception. Seeing footsteps in the snow in an area populated by several dozen guards immediately warns the officer in question of an unwanted entity in the vicinity[[note]]presumably because Snake's shoes left different imprints than the standard issue ones, and if you leave footprints wearing the enemy uniform, they'll ignore the footprints it leaves)[[/note]]. However, if a guard finds another one passed out, lying face down on the floor, he'll simply kick them to wake them up and continue on. In fact, if a guard finds another one dead from a bullet wound to the head, he'll alert the other guards, but soon enough he'll forget about it and chalk it up to coincidence. A guard can hear you shoot a gun, but if you hide quick enough, he'll turn the corner, see no one is there, decide his mind was playing tricks on him, and resume his patrol. If you're quick enough and stay out of his (rigidly defined) field of vision, you can punch the daylights out of a guard, flip him over your shoulder, or even ''shoot him with a silenced pistol'' without making him do more than glance around nervously for a second. Naturally, in the game, there are HandWave reasons for these. Parody fanwork webcomic ''Webcomic/TheLastDaysOfFoxhound'' [[http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php?id=385 spoofed]] [[http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php?id=386 this]] [[http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php?id=387 mercilessly]].

*** In ''VideoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake'', the soldiers pretty much ALWAYS find cardboard boxes you're hiding in suspicious, and they check if someone's inside ''by shooting them'', which renders the trick pretty useless. Also, they sometimes walk right on them, which hurts you, but somehow they still don't notice there's someone inside.
** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'', much of the early game takes place in various warzones. It is possible to disguise yourself as a rebel fighter during these sequences. However, if a [=PMC=] soldier notices Snake, they will immediately go full alert and ignore the other dozen or so rebels attacking them to hunt you down.

** Which is essentially how you go about avoiding the antlions in the game. All it takes is two planks and the gravity gun and voilá: a safe route to wherever you want to go in the antlion-infested desert.
* 47, the titular character in the ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'' games, has a rather striking appearance: he is tall, muscular, bald, very pale, has ice-blue eyes and a rather obvious barcode on the back of his head. Yet he is able to fool just about anyone, for a while at least, by taking the clothes from one of his victims and using it as a disguise. For example, he is able to pass himself off as a Chinese Triad member simply by wearing a certain costume, without having to do anything to disguise his very un-Chinese physical features. Additionally, guards will not notice the bloodstains and bulletholes where their colleagues used to stand. Despite this, if guards hear him running in a corridor adjacent to them, they will somehow know that he is an assassin and go into full alert mode. Likewise, if they see him running while in costume they will somehow know that he shouldn't be there.
** The problem of often not being the same race is Hand Waved by the way of the fact that 47 is a multiracial clone, made up of a Colombian, a Chinese, and two Europeans. The fact that, say, a full Chinese looks different from a quarter Chinese is Hand Waved again, by saying that at a distance, 47 looks enough like the race he's supposed to be that nobody will really pay attention unless you get close, in which case your suspicion meter starts to rise.
** Not exactly an example of this trope, but worth noting: in one of the missions of ''[[VideoGame/Hitman2SilentAssassin Silent Assassin]]'', 47 faces ninjas who are apparently psychic: they can see him even if he is wearing white clothes and standing on snow 50 feet away ''in the middle of a blizzard'', at night. If you disguise yourself as a ninja, they'll of course notice you, run up to you and begin checking your ID... which they can do even if you run away as soon as they notice you. (They just walk up to where you've been standing and wave their hands in the air a bit before announcing you're an intruder.)

* In the game ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'' you can wander right past enemies while in stealth mode, and they won't notice you despite the large shadow you cast on the ground. Hell, they usually miss ''the player,'' even though the stealth effect is easily visible without being right on top of someone using it. Furthermore, a laser pointer on a gun will give off an obvious beam several feet long originating from the gun before it fades out and becomes the dot on whatever its pointing at, even if you're cloaked. While these things are like flares in multiplayer, enemies in single player won't ever notice. Strangely, they ''do'' notice if you have a flashlight attached to your firearm instead while you're cloaked.
** Then there's helicopters, who just ''know'' your exact location, even if the player run away while being in stealth mode.
* Early in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'', Link must sneak around the Forbidden Fortress without his sword, as being spotted means capture. If, however, he hides in a barrel, he can't be detected unless the barrel is seen moving. This is true ''even if the barrel blocks the Moblin's patrol path''; he stops, seems to sniff (sometimes, thanks to lack of collision detection, sticking his nose in the barrel), sometimes looks around, but then goes on his way. Justified by Moblins explicitly being really, really stupid.
** The sequel, ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'', has a few places where Link has to sneak around. The main dungeon, in particular, is full of "Phantoms", invincible (until the end) guards that chase Link as soon as he enters their line of sight or runs on one type of floor - but have no reaction beyond brief puzzlement to being ''hit in the back by a grappling hook'' that snags whatever they're holding. Justified by Phantoms being single-minded magical guardians.
* ''VideoGame/SlyCooper'' might be one of the worst cases of this. For the most part it's decent, with thugs going to inspect anything slightly suspicious. However, they completely ignore any impact to the stage.
** Probably the worst case of this is in ''VideoGame/Sly2BandOfThieves'', when you are in Canada. Nobody seems to notice you bouncing the laser saw's beam all across the canyon.
** In ''VideoGame/Sly3HonorAmongThieves'', the guards in the first level don't seem to think anything is amiss about a guard who is a different species than any of them, plus is speaking with what Bentley describes as "the worst Italian accent I've ever heard!" and is unaware of one guard's nickname and reputation amongst the local mafia. To their credit however, they will demand that Sly recite a random password when spotting him, and his cover will be blown should he botch it up.

* Don't even get me started on ''Strife'': when you're walking around in the town, the guards won't be at all concerned by the fact that you're carrying a whole arsenal of weapons which were obviously stolen. However, if you dare to fire any of those weapons (without necessarily hitting anybody), you'll immediately set off the alarm and have the guards going atfer you. ...Unless you use a knife or shoot a poison bolt from a crossbow (both those attacks are silent). These attacks are completely stealthy, and even if the guards see you doing them, they won't care. Even if you kill their mate right in front of them.
* In the original ''VideoGame/DeusEx'', you could shoot tranquilizer darts at your enemies. If you hit one in a group of others, they would all run around on high alert, until the one you hit falls down unconscious, at which point his friends will resume standing around, ''next to his unconscious body'', and talk about how it must have been nothing.
** Not to mention that if you run around, guards will hear your footsteps and start frantically searching for you, but if you cause other people to run around, even if no guard sees/hears you (since the only way to get people to run around is to attack someone in their vicinity), the guards won't care. Apparently they can tell the sound of your footstep from everyone else's.

* In all of the ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' games, the cops are after YOU. You could be frantically trying to evade an entire motorcade of gun-toting maniacs shooting assault rifles downtown, they won't get chased. However, if you fire back, the fuzz will be over you like stink on cheese. In the same vein, NPC streetracers can crash into police cruiser at mach 2 then [[KickTheDog skid into a cartload of cancer puppies]], nope, no reaction. Race on, dude! But for you, the slightest of bumps while passing them by? [[HotPursuit That's a wanted star, buddy]].

*** In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' Pay 'n' Sprays no longer work if the cops see you go in (making them mostly useless). You can still "sleep them off," though. They'll also forget all about you if you get out of their search area and stay out of sight for a while.
** On the other hand, you can cut your hair, grow a beard, change all your clothes and swap your motorcycle to a fire truck and sure enough all the enemy gang members will still instantly know it's you and shoot on sight.

* Due to how the ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' engine works, monsters can be alerted by the sound of the player firing a weapon. The Chainsaw, on the other hand, makes a continuous sputtering noise for as long as it's the active weapon, but enemies won't be alerted until you actually spin the chain. The Fists work in the same way, even though there's no sound effect when punching. Generally, if there's a wall or door between you and an enemy they won't hear you using your weapons, but even then it's not perfect - one map could deliberately be set up so every enemy in the level is alerted as soon as the player fires their weapons, and then the next could have an enemy in plain sight ignore the player due to an arbitrary sound cut-off in how the hallway between them is set up.
** ''VideoGame/Wolfenstein3D'' was the same, likely in part due to the developers stripping the game of stealth-based gameplay like in the original ''VideoGame/CastleWolfenstein'' to speed up the pace - just stab the air with your knife and any guards within the room will immediately know there's an intruder. Just alert one of them, though, and none of the others will care that their buddy is firing their gun for what appears to be no reason. And, for that matter, after killing said guard and his oblivious buddies, you can then open a door to the next room and discover none of the guards in there cared about the gunfire, either, even if it included yours.

** They can't. The entire country is in the midst of a complete breakdown. It's not that they always know it's you, they will shoot anyone who comes close.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', the room in the Shinra building where Cloud, Barret, and Tifa must hide behind golden statues while guards patrol on the other side of them. The guards sure seem diligent with their work, too bad they apparently have about 10 degrees of sight. For bonus points, getting caught summons a slap-on-the-wrist battle with the guards, and then for some reason after the battle a new set of guards comes to take over where the previous ones died and the whole thing can be repeated indefinitely.
** If Cloud and team are caught too many times, eventually they apparently run out of guards, and you can just walk to the opposite stairwell.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/SplinterCell'', the guards are very alert, and from the third one on, it takes ambient noise into account. Nearly everything you do sets off their alarm if they walk into it. From knocked out guards, to shooting out the lights. Even if you take a more subtle approach and turn the lights off, they'll wonder why it happened. After an alarm has been set off, the guards will never go back down to their original state and will be a little bit more alert than usual.

* Many [=MMORPGs=], including ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' and ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', have this as an effect of the level system- an enemy of an appropriate level for you to fight will notice you and begin trying to kill you at a moderate distance (Specifically, around the time when you enter long-distance attack range.) On the other hand, enemies much higher level than you will spot you coming a mile away, and enemies much lower level than you will pretend they don't see you even if you're standing at arm's length from them.
** Some fans argue that lower levelled creatures are simply staying out of your way unless you go out of your way to invade their personal space. Which works fine, for the Defias Brotherhood. Maybe not so much for the starving wolves.
*** In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', specifically, this is easily justified by word of your heroic or villainous endeavors getting around. By the time you're 'famous' enough for the people you're attacking to not reward you with anything, they know to leave you alone because you can wipe the floor with them in just barely more time than it would take to avoid them completely.
** Mobs can smell weakness.
** In the early days some instance mobs were "intelligent" and when aggroed got help instead of attacking the player. This made the instances too hard and it was later patched out.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'', mobs hunt by specific methods: sight, sound, magic use, and low HP are the big ones. Mobs that are significantly lower level than you will still aggro you if you stop to heal in their aggro radius, though. In addition, many mobs have their aggro range altered by the day/night cycle or weather effects. Goblins in particular are damn near blind during the day, meaning you can run right past them most of the time and they won't even blink. At night, on the other hand...

* In ''VideoGame/{{Mercenaries}}'', players can hijack a faction's vehicle and disguise themselves as a member of that faction. In the first game, this was essentially foolproof, no matter what vehicle you were in, as long as you didn't engage in any hostilities, enemy soldiers would not realize that you are an imposter, unless an officer was present, at which point your disguise would be ruined. This led to scenarios where a distinctive-looking mercenary could be driving along in a stolen open-top jeep, but still raise no suspicion from the North Korean troops, but driving in a tank with no means of anyone seeing you from the outside would raise an alert if you came across one officer.
** The sequel changes this, where disguises are based on a timer; stay in a faction's view for too long, and they'd realize that you're not one of them. This makes for essentially the same problem; if you are careful, you can drive through a base with nobody realizing who you are in (on a dirtbike, even), despite the fact that ingame chatter shows that ''everybody knows who you are''.
* Crops up in, of all things, ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', where the elven merchants who visit you every spring will get extremely offended if you try to sell them goods they deem unethical, like wooden items or animal products. This can result in them packing and leaving in a huff, or even ''declaring war'', if you try to sell them wooden trinkets that you ''just bought from them five seconds ago.'' They will also be very impressed if you go without cutting down trees for a long period of time, even if there are no trees for miles around.

* Crazy? The guards in ''VideoGame/{{Tenchu}}'' must be ''Psychic''! Splashing in a puddle inside a cave - where no guard can possibly get to, but can hear, causes them to immediately shout "NINJA!" and go into !? mode, no matter how many times you splash through the water. Presumably fountains would be bad for their blood pressure.
** In ''Tenchu 3'', the player can hear the player character's footsteps at all times, even when they're inaudible to guards your character is close enough to touch. This would't strain plausibility too much if the game was first person, but the player's perspective is a good eight to ten feet behind the player character.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}'', you can run up a building, beat up monsters with your bare hands and fly by firing blood out of your wrists and the soldiers don't care unless you bump into them or attack them. But if you have any transform power active, even the one that just gives you big muscles, they'll spot you a mile away.
** Even worse, running up a wall attracts no attention, but hand-over-hand climbing the same wall will get you caught in no time. That's right -- scaling a wall in a manner that might be humanly feasible is a dead giveaway, but scaling it in a way that's physically impossible without superpowers isn't even worth a second glance.

* ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'': Guards react to you running, jumping, falling and firing. They don't react to you knocking out their buddies one meter away if they can't see it. This is because despite all the yelling non lethal take downs are 'silent' to the enemy and the game world is frozen when they are performed. The box trick from the original game still works (''unless'' you are invisible!) and they don't notice missing allies.
** Even weirder, if you find a hackable terminal in an area with non-hostile but alert [=NPCs=]/cameras (Detroit Police Department is a perfect example), you can ASSEMBLE A CAGE OF BOXES AROUND THE TERMINAL OR AROUND A WATCHING CAMERA YOU WANT TO HACK and if you're not visible through it, they won't be the least suspicious when you disassemble it and move to another terminal while the old one sits there hacked.

** This was common to almost all older real-time strategy games. Eventually it became more common for units to react to being shot at, either by closing in and retaliating or, if they can't see or can't hit the enemy, [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere running]]. This came at different times for different series: ''VideoGame/{{Starcraft}}'' prominently used this aversion (since it was unusual at the time), whereas ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'', many years later, continues to not.

** Raiders are largely as oblivious in ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' but with the added hilarity of [[ItsProbablyNothing blaming the wind]] [[BoomHeadshot even if you just popped their friend's head off]] right at the side of them.
* A particularly blatant example comes from Nexus Prince Shaffar and his guards in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. He has a room full of groups of five or so guards who you kill one group at a time as you work your way up to him. The kicker is that he ''greets'' you when you enter the room. He clearly knows you're there and has shouted it out in front of everyone, but his guards apparently still don't and stand there waiting to be slaughtered one group at a time.

* ''[[VideoGame/LauraBow Laura Bow: The Daggar of Amon Ra]]'' has a minor but interesting case. In the armory room there is a large tapestry in the far left of the screen. To collect evidence, Laura can use this tapestry to hide behind it to surprise or remain undetected while other [=NPCs=] are dropping important clues [[GuideDangIt at particular time intervals]]. You can use it from listening to a conversation to leaping out and scaring the hell out of another suspicious party, nobody will suspect anything (although one conversation with Wolf and Olympia lampshades this). However, in Act 5 when Laura is chased by the killer [[spoiler:a character, I might add, you could NOT use this trick against prior]], hiding behind the tapestry regardless of how well it worked before (or the fact you blocked off all possible ways or indication the killer could've seen her hide there during the chase) will cause the killer to instantly know she's there and smack her with their spiked club of doom through the tapestry.

* ''VideoGame/GhostRecon: Future Soldier'' features a mission in which an enemy gunship is hovering overhead and the player and his team are expected to sneak past it without alerting it. While it will near-instantly go on alert if it spots the player, you can tell your teammates to shoot an enemy ''right underneath'' it and it will not care.
** Compounding on this, during sections in which enemies are not yet aware of the player's presence, the AI-controlled Ghosts are totally invisible to them. This can be handwaved by the active camouflage you get from the second mission onwards, but even when they're running at full tilt without camo active they are still totally undetectable. Notably, this also applies to temporary escorts - one can, after rescuing [[spoiler:the Russian President]], have him walk right ''into'' a patrolling guard without that guard noticing.