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Alternative Character Interpretation / Video Games M To S

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  • Marathon: Considering that the Marathon trilogy has far more Fanon than actual Canon, there's plenty of room for interpretation. Is Durandal a self-centered psychopathic computer saving the colony ship and universe just because he's in it, or The Atoner trying to make up for what he did under Strauss's control (and possibly even before he was known as Durandal)? Though not as obvious, almost all of interpretations about Master Chief above can be applied to the player character, The Security Officer.
  • The Reapers in Mass Effect periodically kill of all sapient life in the galaxy as a game. If they were just Berserkers their behavior doesn't make a whole lot of sense: a smart Berserker would just ruin the environment of any planet capable of supporting advanced life, making sure no future threats ever get a chance to evolve. Waiting for your enemies to develop advanced technology before killing them makes much more sense if you're doing it because you want a challenge.
    • The Reapers are machines of war, it is made clear that their sole reason of existence is to destroy. However, they are machines and thus were built by someone; likely the first group of species to have lived in this galaxy. It is very possible that they are the left-over relics of a race that built an all-too perfect weapon, one that destroyed their enemies and then turned on their masters. Who is to say that the tech of a Reaper, which seems god-like to the people of the galaxy, was not just advanced tech to the creatures that made them? Following this logic, the Reapers do not destroy life because it is a game, or because they are following some 'higher purpose we can not comprehend'; it is because they are machines, and as machines, they are doing as their programming commands; it is just what they do because it is what their most baseline code tells them to do. The Reapers, could in fact, be slaves to themselves incapable of free will, thought, or emotion.
    • The latter interpretation is confirmed in the Leviathan DLC for Mass Effect 3, where it's revealed that that the Catalyst, the controlling intelligence that directs the Reapers is the highly-sophisticated AI, working on faulty programming. The Leviathan created it to prevent wars between the human and synthetic races they ruled over, only for the Catalyst to fail in it's task, decide that the galaxy needed routine cleansing to remove the problem entirely and turn on it's creators, seeing them as another part of the problem.
      • Actually, conversation with the Leviathans at the end of the DLC reveal that the reason they have done nothing to stop the Reapers over the millenia is because, while not beneficial to their species, the Reapers have performed their assigned task TO THE LETTER.
    • As of Mass Effect 2 the Geth, who existed entirely to sink bullets into in the first game, are shown to be a machine race that has no interest in wiping out the quarians and other races. The Reaper-supporting Geth are even considered heretics by the primary Geth culture.
    • Mass Effect 2 invokes this trope with Cerberus. The first game painted them as terrorists—possibly omnicidal terrorists. The sequel suggests that the darker actions of the first Mass Effect were isolated incidents, and that, at worst, the group best fits the mold of Well-Intentioned Extremist, devoted to humanity's interests while not necessarily causing any harm to any other sapient life.
      • Jossed by Mass Effect 3, where its revealed that The Illusive Man intentionally recruited sympathetic individuals (mostly disaffected Ex-Alliance members) to be part of Shepard's crew in order to gain both his/her sympathies and secure their investment in completing the mission, with Kelly Chambers, Ken Donnelly, Gabby Daniels, and Dr. Chakwas all being specifically chosen to provide trustworthy faces.
      • It's also revealed that Cerberus has been Indoctrinating human refugees with Reaper tech to bolster their ranks and has no problem in using them as test subjects on their experiments. It's unclear however whether this augmentation began before or after the main number of their ranks became Indoctrinated.
    • Aria T'Loak: is she the ruthless, amoral Pirate Queen driven exclusively by Pragmatic Villainy, or is she an Anti-Hero of a particularly hardcore bent who is controlling Omega in the only way possible?
    • Tali'Zorah nar Rayya: kind, caring engineer entitled to occassional snappiness from her upbringing in a paranoid society and being biased against by the galaxy, or snippy, hyper-defensive shrew that sees Fantastic Racism in seemingly everything?
    • Quarians/geth in general. Was the Morning War justifiable as a product of panic and ignorance? What about their assault on geth-occupied Rannoch during the Reaper invasion? As for the geth: should they have tried harder to seek alternate ways to avoid annihilation at the hands of the quarians? Are the non-heretic geth responsible for the actions of the heretics? Are they still trustworthy after they allied with the Reapers to save themselves from the quarian invasion?
    • Is the Virmire Survivor a paranoid Ungrateful Bastard, is he or she right to be upset by his or her former commander (and possible lover) joining up with a terrorist organization, or is he or she blowing the issue out of proportion due to a combination of seeing Shepard again and having just experienced a devastating attack on Horizon in which he or she thinks Cerberus might have played a role, thus causing him or her to be more emotional and judgmental than normal?
      • Interestingly enough, Garrus (and in Dummied Out content, Tali), despite being aliens who have even less reason to trust Cerberus, argue that the Virmire Survivor is too focused on Cerberus and ignoring the real threat. Is the Virmire Survivor taking this personally because Cerberus is a human terrorist organization (that claims to be on humanity's, and thus the Virmire Survivor's, side), and misjudging who they should be concerned about? Or do they understand how untrustworthy Cerberus is in ways that Shepard and his/her former crew, who rely on their help, do not?
    • Is Ashley Williams someone whose distrust toward aliens is justified (the Council) or at least understandable (a krogan mercenary, a turian Cowboy Cop and the daughter of The Dragon), is she a good person with prejudices that she gradually learns to overcome, or is she simply a racist jerk? Is her opposition to Cerberus and Terra Firma proof that she isn't completely racist (or at least a Pet the Dog moment), a refusal to go as far as they do or outright hypocrisy?
    • Liara T'soni: The truest friend Shepard has ever had or a Stalker with a Crush who is borderline obsessed with him/her to the point of keeping a piece of Shepard's old N7 armor enshrined in her apartment? Did she do the right thing when she retrieved Shepard's body and gave it to Cerberus or was she being disrespectful to the memory of Commander Shepard for selfish reasons? Was her inability to articulate the true story about Shepard and Cerberus to the Virmire Survivor miscommunication, lack of understanding, or Liara's jealousy trying to eliminate rivals for Shepard's attention? Was her cabin visits in Mass Effect 3 a true concern for Shepard's well being or is she just being very possessive of Shepard? Is her isolation from everyone else for many years a justified excuse of every issue that is being pointed out?
    • Are the Citadel Council stubborn, willingly blind anti-human racists whose incompetence hamstrings Shepard and imperils the galaxy? Or are they, if not quite a Reasonable Authority Figure, open to being convinced about humanity's merits, the threat of the Reapers, and Shepard's plan to stop them if shown enough evidence?
    • Humanity. Is the rest of the galaxy keeping them from rising to power out of jealousy and paranoia? Or does humanity simply need to learn to make compromises and sacrifices in order to become part of the galactic community, as well as accept that it will take time for them to integrate, much less rise to the top? Furthermore, when the Reapers attack Earth, is the Council callously abandoning them, or are they merely unwilling to commit to a seemingly hopeless battle without adequate preparation? Is the Alliance right to focus the Allied fleet's attention on Earth, where there is still a sizable population in need of evacuation and a resistance in need of backup? Or are they putting too much emphasis on their own homeworld when the other races are suffering just as badly or even worse?
      • Humanity's preoccupation with reclaiming Earth is lampshaded in the third game, when background conversations between two of the Normandy personnel have one take the position that Earth is being abandoned by the Council, while the other points out that the other races would feel exactly the same if it was their homeworld on the line and that the Turians are getting waylaid by the Reapers too. The Asari even state that their reason for not helping is to fall back to Thessia and defend their own borders, yet even the most advanced technology in the galaxy at their disposal still doesn't stop Thessia being the only world to fall entirely to the Reapers.
    • For a somewhat less serious one regarding Mass Effect: Andromeda, due to poor animation causing Sara Ryder to have weird or seemingly inappropriate facial expressions some fans decided this means she is a somewhat naive and Moe autistic woman obsessed with LEGO. Her brother Scott, meanwhile, due to similarly odd animations or screen captures is either kind of a Jerkass at best or a psychopath at worst.
  • Anetta in Mega Man Battle Network 3. She is a member of the cyberterrorists WWW, but she wants to protect nature, and at one point, even indirectly helps Lan save Mamoru's life. Her Navi, PlantMan, on the other hand, seems to goad her on. Lord Wily even seems to act a little differently around her. This has caused a lot of people to think that Anetta is simply a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and PlantMan acts as an evil conscience to her. A few theories have suggested that Wily created PlantMan specifically to control her.
  • Capcom's characterisation of Mega Man X characters varies from game to game, so some fanfics aren't exactly "alternate" as much as they are "trying to pick one." X himself ranges from a whiny doe-eyed wuss who depends on Zero for everything, a noble fighter sometimes hamstrung by his doubts, a naive dope who trusts everyone, or a macho warrior killing every Maverick on sight. Zero is either a womanizing loud-mouth warrior, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, a nice guy who only acts aloof and like a jerk because he's been betrayed so many times, or a cold-hearted killer. Thanks to the first game's remake, is Sigma just a Maverick infected by Wily who wants to dominate the world, or is he just staging a rebellion to test X's abilities in the interest of the good of the Reploids?
    • Here's a new one for X, due to sourcebook info stating that Dr Light created a "suffering circuit" to enable X to examine moral matters more deeply: Is he putting himself through all this because he truly wants to make the world a better place for human and Reploid alike, or did the 30 year testing phase in his capsule enslave him to Dr. Light's ideals?
      • The prequel anime included in the remake does clear a few things up about X, at least for the sake of that particular continuity: he does hesitate in decisive moments, but a flashback where he actually talked with Dr. Light before being sealed away, exchanging the testing phase with Dr. Light saying humanity wasn't mature enough to accept X yet shows he chose to fight of his own free will, with Dr. Light saying he wanted X to guide humans and robots, not ordering him.
    • Axl ranges from a hyperactive little kid, a good-natured rookie, and a creepy Child Soldier who sees everything as a game.
    • Iris, Zero's romantic interest, varies from a saint, a seemingly sweet person who is secretly crazy, and truly sweet yet naive girl who just wants everyone to get along.
    • Vile: A psychopath who wants to kill X to get even for his defeat, or is he a cynical Rebellious Spirit who isn't all that different from the heroes?
    • Repliforce: Villains? Innocents declared villains by a government too quick to judge them? Dangerous morons with incredible firepower that needed to be stopped? Or a balance of all three interpretations? Well-intentioned soldiers who made a foolish mistake and were too proud to admit it when faced with the shock of the world's leaders finding them inefficient at best, and Mavericks at worst?
    • Colonel himself can be subjected to quite a bit of this. In X's story, his decision seems to be made out of nothing but foolish pride. In Zero's, however, he's clearly shocked and outraged that the government would suspect him of being Maverick, and later in the story, honestly seems to believe that war is their only option, sometimes to a delusional extent. Given his backstory... it's certainly possible being faced with the threat of having his life's purpose taken from him caused him to snap.
      • It's stated in the manual that Signas took over the Maverick Hunters after the previous commander retired out of shame over the events of X4, so there's some credence to the belief that the Maverick Hunters are basing their definition of "Maverick" more on whether they follow orders rather than whether they're actively causing harm to humans/Reploids, either willingly or through a virus.
    • For that matter, the entire "Maverick" thing. Canonically it's caused by viruses, but especially in the first and fourth games, there's very little to suggest that it was anything other than what it looked like on the surface: a rebellion. If that's what it was, were they necessarily bad? This is compounded severalfold by the fact that in the Zero series (same universe, just a hundred years or so later), the Irregulars are a genuine robot rebellion (and the good guys) against a tyrannical society which seems to hate all Reploids, and the leader of their enemies is a copy of X.
    • The Liberion Army of Command Mission: Initially they seem to be a bunch of greedy, power-hungry sociopaths who cruelly oppress and subjugate everyone in Giga City - until you find that a few of their members (namely the Cadre) are surprisingly fair and honorable people, and the fact that they're the project of unethical experiments as well as being manipulated by The Man Behind the Man. Even Ferham, the seemingly sadomasochistic Baroness, has a genuinely tender moment with a fellow comrade. Their leader might even have a point that using force really might be the only way for a group of reploids to be heard. Despite all the horrible things they've done in the game, they're a hard lot to figure out, which is even reflected in the game when they're posthumously deferred Maverick status.
    • Despite what many of the Reploids they encounter say, neither X, Zero or even Axl are ever shown to adopt a "shoot first" approach. More often than not, they ask them to surrender peacefully, are refused, and thus are forced to kill the Reploid in self-defense. However... some lines from Zero among others imply the Maverick Hunters prefer their officers to eliminate their target without wasting time. Is this policy because innocent humans and Reploids are in danger at the time and take precedence over violent Mavericks? Because each and every Maverick the Hunters have encountered have refused to surrender anyway? Because of the danger a possibly viral Maverick or one feigning surrender presents? Or is their a racist anti-Reploid agenda behind it?
    • The humans themselves, particularly the government. Not helped by the fact that humans rarely get their own views, or even appearance, shown in game (the only human we see, Dr. Cain, even disappears after X4). Are most of them really well-meaning, seeing the Reploids as equals, and valuing the hard work they do, or do most refuse to see the distinction between them and the Mechanaloids,(which are literal machines) seeing both as tools and are only happy as long as the Reploids do what they want, as Sigma believed? As for the trust issues, are they simply being Properly Paranoid about them, given their capabilities, or are they fanatical bigots, taking their paranoia too far, seeing nothing wrong with treating innocent Reploids citizens, who, just as the humans, would like nothing more than for the wars to stop, with hostility and suspicion, much like Weil, who felt the entire race "got off too easy" because of crimes that Sigma and other Mavericks committed?
      • Similarly, fanon popularly puts up a dividing line between "infected" Mavericks and just regular Reploids who are criminals. What becomes of the latter falls into this as well - are they shot on sight in a display of Fantastic Racism?
    • Destructoid's Tony Ponce takes a look into Dr. Wily's character. Is he actually the Only Sane Man on the outlook of human-robot relations, seeing Ridiculously Human Robots as a danger to society, and eventually Becoming the Mask as a Mad Scientist bent on taking over the world?
    • Dr.Weil, even from the start, had pretty warped ideas of right and wrong, blaming the entire Reploid race for the crimes of the Mavericks. It's entirely possible all the suffering and destruction around him at the time (the Maverick Wars, the fall of Doppler Town, the Sky Lagoon Disaster, Repliforce's rebellion, a colony drop, the emergence of yet another strain of the Maverick Virus, and a large-scale rebellion by the new generation reploids, all in his lifetime) left him severely unhinged.
    • Dr. Light is ostensibly the Big Good of the entire Mega Man franchise, but, as an anon on 4chan points out,◊ his relentless idealism spawned wars, mayhem, carnage, hatred, and destruction on such a scale as to make a decent case for him being the greatest villain in all of video games.
  • Aoko Aozaki from Melty Blood. Doing it for the lulz or carefully manipulating events to Screw Destiny?
  • Metal Gear:
    • Frank Jaeger's Expansion Pack Past storyline and Face–Heel Revolving Door personality (not to mention, his character being one of the few to make appearances across every single major Retool and Broad Strokes application in the storyline) naturally lends itself to this. His main moral appears to be his loyalty to Big Boss, but he also offered Snake advice to help him stop Big Boss, and his reasons for doing this are unclear - clearly his loyalty to Big Boss isn't totally perfect, but whether it's affection for Snake, guilt over his past actions or a disagreement with Big Boss's ideals is never explained. It's also not clear what is going on in Metal Gear, where he is taken prisoner by Big Boss, yet still later defects to follow him into Zanzibar - especially with the revelation in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that the Big Boss of Outer Heaven was a double. Did Fox realise the double wasn't the real him, and, if so, when?
    • Liquid Snake's stated motivation is hatred of his brother for killing Big Boss, and a desire to save the Genome Soldiers, who he considers his family. However, his actual means of carrying out the plan seems to involve allowing his brother to murder each last one of his coworkers, some of whom (Ocelot and Psycho Mantis) he had exceptionally close, if not healthy, relationships with, as well as slaughtering any number of his "brothers" in the Genome forces. Not only that, but he spends most of the game offering Snake helpful information, up to and including getting angry on Snake's behalf when villains treat him unreasonably, and giving him friendly philosophical advice based on his own personal experience. It's not difficult to surmise that Liquid, who overidentifies with the genes that he shares with his brother, might actually be feeling some confused feelings of filial love for him, but transferred his all-consuming hatred of Big Boss onto his brother on account of the hatred having nowhere else to go. His sacrifice of his brothers and sisters to his brother's gun may have been an attempt to psych himself into sincerely hating Snake, or even as a really confused attempt at suicide, by having Snake mow down those who share his genes and ideals as a proxy for himself. Similarly, Snake considers Liquid a nemesis but never appears to hate him, and in Metal Gear Solid 2 he has a huge grin on his face when he realises his brother is still 'alive'.
    • Does Big Boss actually apologize to Snake and hug him at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, or is the entire sequence Snake's hallucination before he kills himself? Or even Snake's personal heaven, where his daddy always loved him and everything turns out okay? People remark the ending of MGS4 feels out of place, is that why? Actually, is Snake in MGS4 even Solid Snake at all, or Raiden in the same Mind Screw that he ended Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in? The fact that static is used to represent damage and the game over screen reads "Mission Failed" (which is used throughout the series to indicate failing a VR mission; failing actual gameplay gets "Game Over"), as well as the more outlandish plot elements, characterisation decisions and Raiden as an NPC supports this interpretation.
    • Notice that all of the characters that help bring back Big Boss die, Heroic Sacrifice or Snake covering his tracks to make his illusion more believable? Or the fact that the conspiracy theory explanation from Big Boss doesn't bring exactly anything that the player hasn't heard before (he repeats everything that Eva said about Big Boss and the A.I.s) the only thing that may deflate this theory is the fact that Major Zero is there and killed, but the end seems like a Gainax Ending.
    • Similarly, is Rose in Metal Gear Solid 2 a well-intentioned person doing an immoral job that she comes to regret, a canny spy pretending to be a well-intentioned person doing an immoral job that she comes to regret as part of a Batman Gambit to convince Raiden to complete the mission, or a combination of an insane computer and Raiden's own personal delusions? Even in MGS4 she's still sporting the dyed hair and the contact lenses she denounced as fake in MGS2, and she's only seen in person by Raiden and the Colonel off-camera (and the Colonel was an AI in MGS2).
    • Senator Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is ripe for differing interpretations given what an erratic character he is; even Raiden is so baffled by his various monologues that he just declares him "batshit insane" in order to make sense of it all. At first Armstrong appears to be motivated by greed, a lust for power, or both, but then after the Metal Gear Excelsus fight, he tells Raiden "the truth": He seeks to turn America into a vaguely anarchic society where people are free to pursue whatever they wish with the strength of their own convictions. When he describes a country where "the law bends to suit the individual," does he mean an uprooted and extensively retooled political system where the policymakers genuinely have everyone's best interests in mind, or does he mean a state of full-blown lawlessness where nothing is illegal and only the strongest will survive? In either case, is this really his goal? Or is he merely using that as an excuse to mask his aforementioned pursuit of money and/or power?
  • Morden: Well-Intentioned Extremist who tries to prevent events like his son's death, or just another lunatic? Are the protagonists actually bad guys, who protect a corrupt government by slaughtering a larger rebellion army?
  • Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk and its sequel, Milk Outside A Bag Of Milk Outside A Bag Of Milk: Based on the ambiguity-rife storytelling of the duology, this is inevitable.
    • The "milk" the girl buys in Milk 1 and drinks at the start of Milk 2. It's obviously something that can take her life. Was she deathly allergic to milk? Or was that a metaphor for Propofol (a.k.a "milk of amnesia"), used to sedate the girl when she was having a meltdown?
    • The mother. Was she a demonic Abusive Parent who injects her with a "poison claw" trying to kill her and threatens to kick her out of her house if she doesn't buy milk for her, or she merely halfway gave-up on her daughter because of her unstable nature, but she still cares for her enough to keep her alive when she nearly kills herself by drinking a substance all but lethal towards her by injecting an ephipen that she saw as a poison claw? Note that the girl's view of reality is so warped that she actively sees other people as monsters, and she had a strained relationship with her mom.
    • The father's suicide. It's not explained in-detail, but from what little collectible information, viewers had agreed on her father had fed up that he had such a "retarded" daughter then decided to kill her by inducing a milk allergy, before he committed suicide. Then there's other theories such as "the mom killed him", "the girl pushed him off the balcony and had a hysterical seizure", "the girl chopped him into pieces"...it goes on and on.
    • If you investigate the schoolbag in Milk 2, the girl will explain that she used to go to school. However, the school also had a bed and a cafeteria, and she was the "only person attending as the others skipped". The most obvious interpretation could be a boarding school, but the way she described it, fans speculated that it was a mental asylum that she mistook as a school, or she went to school before (based on the "Everything is Fine" ending) but she was moved to a mental asylum later when her mental health went worse.
    • If you check the girl's laptop, she will refer to her internet friends as "bots" and refuses to acknowledge them as people. One popular interpretation is she was denying a real person can do such a cruel thing to her because she stopped using her computer when someone she knew on the web betrayed her trust by spreading information about her and her mental illness on the web.
    • The endings of Milk 2 are another set of subjects up to debate:
      • "You wont get it.": the girl goes to buy milk with a hyperactive, annoying boy named Treska, in a parallel to the first game, coloration included. Many had taken it as Tereska being a metaphor for how the girl perceives her real self as — an annoying, hyperactive brat. The girl however, is now the voice that follows him, a parallel of the formless player of the first game.
      • "Everything is fine": The girl goes to her first day of school with her attire unkempt, telling herself "this is fine" while she looks freakier and freakier, the dialogue repeating in an exact loop. It's been taken as the girl being bullied at school and taking the bully's word by heart, or the girl experiencing a Death of Personality to fit into society.
  • Minecraft:
    • The Enderdragon will stop at nothing to kill you, and from getting the Dragon egg, a reward you get for killing her. While usually thought of as evil, the Enderdragon could just be doing her job as a mom, protecting the egg.
    • The villagers are usually thought of as nice, innocent people, but some players think they're Jerkass conmen who are trying to swindle you out of your emeralds. Some of them will charge ridiculous prices, like 7 emeralds for an iron sword, and some will charge you more than other villagers for the same amount of stuff.
    • When the creepers explode, is this voluntary or not? Are they sad, or is that just their natural expression? And why are they afraid of cats — is it just an irrational fear, is it because cats can kill phantoms, or is it because when they hiss, the creepers think the cats will explode (since creepers hiss before exploding)?
    • Are the Ghasts trying to kill you with their fire, or do they just not realise that fire kills humans?
  • Minecraft: Story Mode: The Reveal that the Order killing the Ender Dragon was a fraud puts Ivor in this light: did he want to humiliate Gabriel and be the hero himself as revenge for being dropped from the legends, to prove to the world the Order was a fraud, or to give Gabriel and/or himself a chance to kill a REAL monster and become genuine heroes?
  • Mirror's Edge:
    • The Runners refuse to be part of the unbearably oppressive and emotionless society of The City created by the oppressive surveillance state that began some decades ago, which gets them in constant trouble with the police. But in the game, you only get the runner's word for it, as you never meet or even see any civilians and the only confirmed occasion of police brutally breaking up a riot was over eighteen years ago, when the characters were still young children. While there are no reasons to think that the government is not authoritarian and the corporate executives corrupt, you can't completely shake the feeling that the Runners might get a slightly distorted view of society from their hideouts high on the roofs of skyscrapers.
    • An Alternative Character Interpretation is even done within the game by Celeste, who tells Faith that survival is meaningless if you don't also live a little bit. It is later revealed that she didn't mean that Faith should losen up a bit and have some fun at times. In fact, she secretly accepted a job offer by the government to work as a state employed assassin, which is about the only job her skill and abilities qualify her for. She'd much rather try her luck at rejoining society and have at least some kind of life, instead of hiding on the roofs until she gets shot by the police or falls 80 meters to her death.

    N 
  • Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA-:
    • Is Sanshi's obsessive devotion to Tamonten a shining bastion of virtuous Undying Loyalty, a hilarious Running Gag, kinky masochistic submission, or way overblown and unhealthy and indicative of his needing to get a life?
    • Is Ashuku a positive representation of trans women or is her playing Girly Girl tropes dead straight in an attempt to land in with women reinforcing sexist stereotypes?
    • Is the dōmori a necessary presence in NamuAmi canon, or are they a tired, unoriginal Follow the Leader in the tradition of the admiral, saniwa and librarian that adds nothing to the setting and plot? The fact both the 2016 and anime canons do well without them seems to support the latter.
    • Even the mechanics can be subject to this. Is the Nobody Can Die mechanic a much-needed Anti-Frustration Feature, or does it take away the challenge and make the game just another strategy card game?
  • June of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors openly invites this given her role. Is she a bit more of the sweet, positive, and slightly kooky girl we meet initially or is she much more of the cold, calculating Zero personality she presumes when kidnapping mostly good people from their homes to save herself and get revenge? It hurts more when Word of God is taken into consideration, where it's stated that she has been traumatized from the experience of the first Nonary Games, but doesn't state how close her fake personality is to the real one.
    • Virtue's Last Reward gives us both answers: in the timeline the games follow, June becomes colder and more calculating the longer she lives and the stronger her ability to see into other timelines becomes. By the time the second game comes around, she's nothing like the girl Junpei knew. And, perhaps even worse, because of the way time travel works in this universe, a person can't change their own timeline, they can only create alternate timelines. There may well be a world out there where the real June is the sweet, optimistic girl he fell in love with... but it's not one we've seen yet.
    • Word of God confirms that June was being honest when she told Kyle that she wanted to be with Junpei... but she didn't end up doing that, so why? Was she nobly sacrificing any chance at a normal life so she could work to save the world? Did her plans, evil or not, take priority over that love? Was she ashamed of what she'd become? Was she not ashamed, and preferred being Zero over Akane? Or has she actually been working to create a happy timeline- where her murderers are neutralized and Radical-6 is never released- so she can be with him?
    • Future!Sigma: Was he a essentially good, if socially awkward, scientist who devoted his life to changing history and averting the apocalypse, or a cold, calculating murderer who enslaved sapient beings (Luna and K) in a crazed attempt to atone for his mistakes?

    O 
  • Octopath Traveler:
    • Many of the cast being identified as comedic sociopaths due to their path actions, which let you do some pretty despicable things, from breaking up families, to literally stealing candy from children, to assaulting pregnant women with giant feral bears.
    • Simeon's affection for Primrose could be read as genuine regardless of his depravity, or a long-running act that he keeps to his death as a way to keep Primrose's life a tragedy.
    • Primrose unambiguously kills Rufus and Albus in the name of vengeance, but her battling Simeon can be interpreted in a few ways. Simeon makes several valid points during his Break Them by Talking speech, telling Primrose that not only would her father be not at all happy at his daughter going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against his murderers, but that she was never trying to avenge her father in the first place and was merely trying to fill the void that her father's death left her with. Did Primrose ignore Simeon's words and fight him for revenge? Or did she alter her resolve and fight him for the sake of a happier future for herself and others who had suffered from the Obsidians' villainy?
    • Werner's words at the Gates of Finis about Lyblac can be interpreted in various ways. It could either be viewed as Werner being disgusted by Lyblac's cruelty even with all the blood on his hands. Alternatively, Werner isn't actually repulsed by Lyblac on a moral or ethical level, and it's more "this woman's crazy and I'm going to pay the price if I keep in her company." It can be taken further as Werner could be seen as a tad regretful when he says "perhaps I was mad to serve her so long and bring down a kingdom." Or perhaps it's simply Evil Versus Oblivion since if Lyblac's plan succeeds, there won't be anybody remaining for Werner to rule, which is a main element of his character.
    • When it turns out that the man who killed Ogen's wife ended up having a wife and son of his own, what does it say about the person in question? Is he a Retired Monster who happens to have loved ones, or did he genuinely turn over a new leaf?
    • Inquiring/Scrutinizing Vanessa Hysel in the Undertow Cove after completing Alfyn's story reveals that she decided to leave the criminal life behind her and now sells genuine, high-quality medicine. However, it also says that she still charges high prices for her medicine, and combined with her Never My Fault line if spoken to, makes it ambiguous if she made a genuine Heel–Face Turn or just wants to stay within the boundaries of the law.
  • Overwatch:
    • Mercy's canon voicelines depict her as a hopeful and compassionate hero. But because being The Medic is so often fraught with constant mistreatment by incompetent teammates, fanart tends to depict Mercy as an extremely bitter babysitter of her useless team.
    • Mei, because her voicelines hugely clash with her playstyle. Her canon personality is that of an Adorkable cuddly scientist, but her abilitiesnote  are all oriented towards countering attacks and impeding movement, causing her to be viewed by fandom as the Satan of the Overwatch universe.

    P 
  • Pac-Man is actually destroying the world he lives in. The pellets protect the fabric of his reality and the ghosts are desperately trying to stop him. Upon reaching level 256, Pac-Man has eaten enough pellets that the game crashes and the world is destroyed.
    • So that may explain why in Pixels, Pac-Man is the only game where the player character is the enemy while the protagonists of the film play the antagonists of the game. Pac-Man definitely causes a lot of destruction in the city.
  • Paperboy: The default and lightest possible interpretation of the Paperboy is that he delivers newspapers to subscribers and vandalizes non-subscribers for fun or out of spite. A darker interpretation is that it was never about the papers at all and the whole thing is one big protection racket, which his superiors, and the police (who will only charge the Paperboy after he leaves the paper), are a part of. In some of the games, non-subscribers will convert to subscribers if they fall victim to enough vandalism.
  • Persona 2's Tatsuya: Did he intentionally commit the sin of refusing to forget everything to save Maya and stop Nyarlathotep because he was just greedy or too unwilling to make a sacrifice, thereby deserving the Eternal Punishment? Or did he just commit the "Innocent Sin" in the title and not really deserve any Eternal Punishment?
    • Philemon: Jerkass god playing a Book of Job-like game with the protagonists' lives; or a caring guardian deity trapped in a Manichean struggle against his equally powerful evil counterpart, giving humans the power to protect themselves, and willing to make the hard decision of sacrificing the happiness of a few to save the whole?
  • The Heroic Mime protagonists of Persona 3 and Persona 4. Are they brave and charismatic heroes? Or power-hungry Manipulative Bastards? Or are they Empty Shells simply looking for acceptance? Or, are they manipulating others, knowing doing so is the only way to gain the power needed to save the world? Frighteningly, the Empty Shell theory gets some credibility in Persona 4.
  • Persona 3's Fuuka: Simple paragon of meek passivity and sweetness, or Woobie whose obsession with pleasing others and self-deprecation is a result of constant emotional abuse?
  • Almost any party member in Persona 4.
    • Kanji: A closet homosexual who refuses to admit his sexual orientation to himself or just a teenager who is struggling with feeling at ease around guys, rather than girls, because they simply do not make fun of his "feminine" hobbies?
    • Yosuke: An arrogant and homophobic guy that tries too hard to look cool or a poor guy that never had friends, so he doesn't how to act and everyone keeps bullying? Also, it's implied he sees the MC as perfect, but what are his feelings? Is he secretly jealous? Is Yosuke so pitiful he idolizes him because it's his only friend? Or does he loves the MC but would never admit it?
    • Rise: A girl that isn't ashamed to show how much she loves the MC and knows she doesn't need to be an idol to have friends or a hypocrite, that keeps flirting with him and becomes a singer again as soon as she can?
    • There is also Saki's lingering Shadow who said she despised Yosuke all along. Did Saki really hate Yosuke? Since Shadows are exaggerations of someone's true self, was this an exaggeration of Saki's frustration of her situation (working for Junes when the department store is taking business from her family's liquor shop)? Or was her feelings present in a mild sense and exaggerated by her shadow, like Chie's resentment of Yukiko? Another interpretation was that this was all an illusion by Yosuke's Shadow, representing what Yosuke feared she thought of him.
    • Adachi's Establishing Character Moment was him vomiting after seeing Mayumi's corpse. Was it all an act since Adachi was the one to kill her? Or was it out of genuine shock and horror of seeing her body after he thought he committed the perfect crime and got away with it?
    • What was the reason that the police dismissed Naoto from the investigation? Was it because she was a female and a teenager and they resented the implication that they needed help? Or was it due to Naoto's occasionally abrasive personality that didn't win her many favours? Or was it perhaps the police had caught a suspect and weren't willing to admit they were wrong?
  • Persona 5:
    • It happens In-Universe, where the public opinion's divide on whether the Phantom Thieves are unsung heroes dealing with scum beyond the reach of the law or terrorists trying to enforce their own views on society through brainwashing drives a major part of the plot. And more humorously, the protagonist's homeroom teacher is convinced the classic fairy tale The Tale Of The Bamboo Cutter was about a greedy bitch who conned her suitors for expensive gifts before dumping them and running away.
    • The protagonist/Joker's parents. We know nothing about them except that they passed off Joker on a friend of a friend after he was put on probation. Did they dump their son on someone else because they saw Joker as a burden? Or do they really care about him and thought it was for the best? Players never saw if they even bothered contacting their son during his stay in Tokyo but there is a possibility that they did contact Joker off-screen
    • While Madarame is an utterly terrible person, did he see Yusuke as nothing more than as another artist to exploit? Did he actually care for Yusuke to a certain extent? Yusuke, despite hating Madarame for what he did, can't help but occasionally look back fondly on old times with his mentor/father figure and see both good along with the bad. However, it's also noted that a lot of the good times Yusuke (and other characters) recalls happened when Yusuke was a child. Did Madarame started as a decent person before he got worse when Yusuke got older?
    • Seeing how the Conspiracy's victims are not entirely innocent, it raises the question of how involved Futaba's mother was. Was she really a victim or was she complicit in Shido's plans? Keep in mind, the only things heard about her are from Futaba and Sojiro, both who are on good terms with her. It's possible that Akechi saw her as a mastermind responsible for the abuse of cognition or that, like Sae, Futaba's mother was unwittingly doing the Conspiracy's work without being aware of their existence.
    • Who was at fault for Morgana running away and leaving the Phantom Thieves? Some blame Morgana as he tends to insult and blame Ryuji for everr minor mistake and can come off as wangsty. Others blame Ryuji because he would keep egging Morgana on even if Morgana did not provoke him.
    • During the buffet at Wilton Hotel, Joker muses that he didn't consider continuing as a Phantom Thief after dealing with Kamoshida, but after seeing Shido, the man who framed him at the hotel convinced him to continue. Was Joker initially reluctant because he wasn't sure it was morally right to change people's hearts? Was it because he was afraid of getting into more trouble? Or after being betrayed by the woman who he saved, left him cynical about helping others? And when he did ultimately decide to continue, was it for the sake of changing the world, helping other people, or eventually getting revenge on the one who wronged him?
    • Why did the woman who betrayed Joker before the start of the game have a change of heart at the end and testified against Shido? Was it out of guilt over what she did? Did she do it because she believes it would convict Shido? It's possible she did not testify earlier because she was afraid and/or she is doing it now because there is less risk. The fact that it takes the Phantom Thieves weeks to find her indicates that she is trying quite hard not to be found and the question is why.
  • There are some alternate interpretations of the character Fall-From-Grace in Planescape: Torment, is she an honest defector who found a new philosophy to escape her Chaotic Evil nature? A Baatezu spy? Is her chaste priestess demeanor a real attempt to rise above her former life as a succubus (which she calls "childish and immature") or simply a sign that she's a really good temptress? The game's not telling, and the main information comes from a distinctly unreliable source. Her character sheet alignment really says something different...
  • Eothas of Pillars of Eternity qualifies even in-game, thanks to lack of information on his motives during The Saint's War. Outwardly, he seemed to go kind of insane, developing an A God Am I mentality alongside Light Is Not Good in a campaign of brutal conquest. However, there are some characters - including those who know far more about the situation than most - who suspect he was actually the Only Sane Man among the pantheon, who took drastic measures to save the world because no one else could or would. Unfortunately, he never really explained himself, leaving the entire thing an Ambiguous Situation.
  • Portal: GLaDOS can be interpreted in countless different ways. One large factor in this is that everything she says may or may not be a lie (such as the cake).
    • "And when you're dead I will be still alive." Threat of a future murder attempt on Chell, boast of immortality, or lamentation of immortality?
    • Did the test go horribly wrong, resulting in GLaDOS's death, or did it go horribly right, and showed the portal gun at its finest? Both? Neither?
    • Is she trying to protect herself, or is she a sarcastic liar who secretly wants death?
    • Does she hate Chell, or is she just an ass (that does not quite hate Chell)? Does she show possessive affection towards Chell in her own insane way?
      • The ending of the second game and the lyrics of "Want You Gone" have added serious fuel to this fire. Another question this spawns is, assuming that GLaDOS really does care about Chell, whether it goes all the way back to the first game or is something that developed during Portal 2.
    • In the first game (seemingly debunked in the sequel): Is she not an AI at all, and simply a sophisticated but buggy user interface, full of pre-recorded statements?
    • In the sequel, is the facility really in disrepair, and is GLaDOS really mad at Chell, or is it all an act with more pre-planned tests?
    • Caroline with regard to the cut dialogue: Goofy and victimized assistant of Cave Johnson? Or complicit psychopath who only considered the horrific implications of her work when it came barreling down on her? (If you're skeptical of the latter possibility, remember: Her brain is the basis for GLaDOS.)
    • Cave Johnson — An honestly well-meaning guy who is simply down on his luck and clueless to how to appropriately use his products in the real world, or a deranged man bent on testing his products as much as possible to sate his curiosity? Nevertheless, one thing everybody can agree on is his obvious lack of sanity.
    • Wheatley, in regards to how much of his Face–Heel Turn was GLaDOS's programming corrupting him, and how much was him being Drunk with Power. His apology seems to point to the latter; if it was merely programming, why is he so sorry? Either way, most people forgive him.

    R 
  • Is Ratchet from Ratchet & Clank a great hero, saving the galaxy whenever the time needs him or is he secretly an Omnicidal Maniac just using the hero excuse so he can kill innocent beings that get in his way with really big guns?
    • Easily the former. There are a huge number of venues to legally murder wave upon wave of creature for profit and earn a very good living doing so all around him — that he never partakes in these competitions until he has to (as evidenced by him always being the new unknown challenger) as opposed to doing it professionally shows he's doing it cause he has to, and the player is doing it cause they're an Omnicidal Maniac just using the hero excuse so they can kill innocent beings with really big guns.
  • Rave Heart:
    • The Archlight scientists are surprisingly quick to surrender to the authorities when they're discovered. While Chad did convince them that they could achieve their goals through legal and safer means, given Doctor Francesca's non-chalant attitude, it's implied they surrendered less out of remorse and more out of pragmatism, since they know they are unlikely to win a war against Ishtar's government and that folding is the best way to lighten their sentences.
    • Eryn claims that imprisoning Chad is necessary for Count Estuuban's conspiracy, but Lady Marselva disagrees and believes it hurts their cause. Later, Eryn has Marselva's daughters kidnapped and taken for experimentation against her wishes, causing Marselva to believe that he's doing this specifically to undermine her. It's implied that Eryn's real reason for his knee-jerk reaction to Chad is because he wants hostages to use against Marselva when the conspirators inevitably turn on each other.
  • Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II:
    • Red Dead Redemption has a few, mainly centering around Edgar Ross: outright evil sadist, an overzealous, single-minded Knight Templar too caught up in his own ideals to see his hypocrisy, a decent guy just following orders or just another pawn in the big game of politics and manipulation the characters find themselves stuck in?
    • Dutch Van Der Linde is fully Ambiguously Evil, with even characters In-Universe having different interpretations as to his true nature. He starts the prequel as a charming, Robin Hood-esque leader who just wants to live without the encroaching civilzation but he becomes more erratic and violent as the story goes on. By I twelve years later, he's much more obviously insane but a bit calmer. This raises the question if he ever was the Robin Hood figure before going insane or was he always a manipulative, brutal psychopath he showed himself to be by the end of both games? And then, did he genuinely care for his "charges," or were they just pawns to him?
      • Dutch's reason for abandoning and leaving them for dead at different points to John and Arthur is left unexplained. It's possible that Dutch never loved them or loved them very conditionally, having no use for them once they started doubting him. Another possibility is that the traitor Micah was manipulating Dutch's poor mental state so well that they convinced Dutch that John and Arthur were actually traitors and thus, the biggest threats to the gang.
      • Dutch shooting Micah in the epilogue raises a lot of questions. Was he deeply regretful of Arthur's death and killed Micah in revenge, was it because he finally believed Micah was the traitor, or was it that he did not want to see his remaining son John die as well?
    • Arguably, the point of Jack Marston. His fate is entirely in the hands of the player, and he becomes either an outlaw hellbent on avenging his father, or starts helping people, taking after his father.
    • Does Mary from II genuinely love Arthur or is she just using his affection for her to get what she wants? Or is she just a widow with a drunk dad stuck in a bad situation in a time in which women were still considered property making her have to call on Arthur, the only man she can trust? Is it a bit of all of that?
    • It's uncertain why Bill and Javier continued to stay with Dutch even as the rest of the gang left. Was it out of foolish Undying Loyalty or was it because they were afraid of being left without purpose if they did abandon the man who saved them at their lowest?
    • Molly O'Shea is either seen as an Alpha Bitch who hates not being the centre of attention and refuses to help and get along with the rest of the gang or a depressed, anxious woman who is clearly in over her head and feels justifiably ignored and despised from her lover and others.
    • With the reveal that Micah was The Mole, it raises questions about their motivations and actions over the course of the game. While Milton says that Micah became the mole after Guarma, there are still plenty of hints prior that there was a traitor in the gang feeding information to the Pinkertons, such as the Blackwater and Saint Denis heists going wrong the way they did. Did Micah intend to sell the gang out from the very beginning or only did so when things were going downhill for the gang after Saint Denis? Or another interpretation is that there was no traitor in the gang and Milton said that to plant a seed of doubt and destroy the gang from within, and the gang simply had a string of bad luck and the Pinkertons doing their research.
    • There are differences between John's stories in I and the events seen in II, raising the question if he is an Unreliable Narrator. In I, he constantly downplays the "better" aspects of the gang, claiming he had no friends, that Bill and Javier were worse than they really are and downplaying his participation in larger-scale crimes. This raises the question if John was actively trying to alter the truth or if he was actually in denial, trying to convince himself that he doesn't really miss that lifestyle by focusing only on the negative parts or to make it easier for himself to hunt down and kill his former friends (as evident by John's initial reluctance to shoot first and giving Bill, Javier and Dutch a chance to go with him quietly). One interpretation is that John is dismissing Dutch's last iteration of the gang that consisted of Dutch, Micah, Bill and Javier and those like Arthur, Sadie and Charles who did right by John and left that life are not considered part of that gang anymore. It would explain John's particular disdain for Dutch, Bill and Javier and why he implicitly doesn't bring up other former members like Arthur.
    • When John told Ross that he'd kill Ross before killing Dutch if he had the option, was he saying that out of anger because of Ross kidnapping his family? Was it because he feels Ross is worse than Dutch? Or does John still hold some sentiment for the man who raised him and never wanted to kill Dutch? John's inability to shoot Dutch before Dutch's suicide seems to suggest the latter.
  • A lot of Wesker's actions in Resident Evil 5 could be interpreted as him having an obsessive Villainous Crush on Chris Redfield. Him using a brainwashed Jill against Chris instead of just killing the former, barely acknowledging Sheva's existence, his backstabbing of Excella Gionne and his refusal to kill Chris even when he has a gun to Chris's head. It even explains his lack of shirt during the final boss fight.
  • Gehn of Riven. Some feel that his tragic backstory — losing his father and civilization at the age of 8, running away from home at fourteen, his beloved wife dying of childbirth while they were still in their teens - doesn't justify his A God Am I tendencies, but makes him somewhat more sympathetic.
  • Rune Factory 3 has Shara. Sweet, innocent girl who cares only about your general well-being? Or manipulative bitch who has her family guilt trip you into marrying her? The fact she gets kinda nasty at times after you marry her doesn't help her case.

    S 
  • In 7 Days a Skeptic, the events of the game show er, John trying to warn everybody about the supernatural phenomena, but in 6 Days a Sacrifice, it shows John, aka Malcolm killing several Welders, Yahtzee implies in the commentary that everything was all Malcolm's story, and he killed everybody he hasn't confirmed, though.
    • And the most interesting part is, there is a bit of evidence supporting the possession, in the game, Malcolm constantly sees the ghost of Serena, for no other reason than to screw with your head, and also the fact the first death in the flashback in the last game is "The Welder" being impaled, and every death shown afterward. This, again, could be reinterpreted, as the first death in 7 is the captain, who is found impaled on the same device you later use to kill the Welder, though the pose of the body is wrong.
  • Saya no Uta: Yousuke is a calm, quiet family man who enjoys his calm, quiet life, until Saya causes him to hallucinate the same way Fuminori does and he immediately becomes a violent psychopath whose first instinct is to kill the "monsters", his wife and daughter, and rape the only girl he can find, Saya. This happens in a matter of minutes. Considering how long it took Fuminori to sink that low, it begs the question of just how sane was Yousuke, really? Did he really go insane, or was he always two steps away from being a lunatic and Saya just happened to bring it to a boil by messing with his brain?
  • Due to its ambiguous nature, Shadow of the Colossus is open to interpretation:
  • Silent Hill 2:
    • Maria: Although in the main scenario she seems to be the product of James' delusion created to seduce him, remind him of his guilt, or even to punish him, she is shown in different way —more human, independent and having her own will— in the "Born from a Wish" scenario. It suggests that Maria is rather a tragic character, not an evil creature. Also, her outcome depends on player activity during the game.
    • James, as all the information regarding him is provided either by him or products of his delusions. How much did he really love his wife? To what extent did her illness affect him? Did he kill her because of mercy? Anger? Frustration? Desire? Even his fate is left to interpretation, as Word of God states that it is up to the player which of the four Multiple Endings is the "real" ending.
    • Did the real Mary emotionally abuse James until he put her out of her misery, or does he just tell himself that to ease his guilt? Laura would claim the latter, but she seems to be a manifestation of childish spite herself, and if she really believed that, would she willingly leave Silent Hill with James?
  • Silent Hill 3 offers an in-game alternate character explanation from Vincent: "They look like monsters to you?" He very quickly backs off from this, claiming that he was kidding, but given the Mind Screw nature of the game in general, you have to wonder...
  • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories may be this in regards to the first game of the series, interpreting everyone in different ways. Is Harry really a Papa Wolf, or is that how Cheryl wants to see him as, was he nothing more than a lecherous ass? Cheryl gets this too, interpreting her as slightly not right in the head after her dad dies. In fact, one theory is that the entire first game was imagined up by Cheryl. This being Silent Hill, we'll never be sure...
  • Sinistar. Villain or tragic character? When he arrives he tells the player to Beware, and to "Run! Run! Run!," before finally being overtaken by evil, letting out an angry and sorrowful shout before giving chase to the player.
  • The title character of Slender. Is he really a demonic creature seeking new victims or is he a lonely monster wanting someone to hang out with?
    • Multiple movies and games do have Slender to be the former, but other games aren't clear about what he would or could do to the player.
  • People find Purge from Space Channel 5 Part 2 to be a villain, but in reality he was just trying to make people happy. He probably went insane though...
  • Roger Wilco of Space Quest. Bumbling, lazy idiot who only manages to succeed through sheer blind luck, or underestimated (though unmotivated) hero who manages to get ahead by using his cunning and resources to save the day? Big Bad Sharpei of Space Quest VI feels it's a bit of both, that Roger is a bumbling idiot but he couldn't have survived the way he has without some degree of genuine capacity.
  • Spelunky, a discussion on the Fridge section brought this idea: The Shopkeeper has a lot of health and items. The only way for most players to get similar levels of power is via Kali's temples, which always seem to have fresh blood on them. So the Shopkeeper is probably conducting Human Sacrifice. However, the alternative alternative character interpretation is that with Kali's temples willing to take any sacrifices regardless of morality, he might have been culling the bad guys before you came along. And that because of opportunistic little jerks like the player running around, he's had to adopt the "Shotgun at the first inkling of trouble" policy lest these "heroic" adventurers try to steal from or murder him.
  • StarCraft also has a few:
    • Arcturus Mengsk: power-obsessed sociopath with a God complex or trying to unite the Terrans of the Koprulu sector in order to ensure their survival?
      • Or both?
      • "I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederacy, or the protoss, or anyone! I will rule this sector or see burnt to ashes around me!"
    • The Confederacy: Corrupt and despotic or just politically (and tactically) inept?
    • The UED: imperialistic aggressors or defenders of all mankind? This one's pretty clear-cut: They're canonically the former via A Nazi by Any Other Name, but it's quite literally All There in the Manual and you probably wouldn't know if you never read it.
    • The Protoss: shining beacon of hope for the galaxy or arrogant, self-righteous bastards that give a shit about other races? This is actually an in-universe issue, as in the first game quite a few of the Protoss leaders were clearly the latter, while Tassadar was one of the few who was unarguably the former.
    • The Dark Templar: tragic heroes or manipulative bastards?
    • James Raynor: shining hero or moronic drunkard messing around with things that are a few numbers too big for him? Or an Average Joe trying to do the best he can in a conflict that's way over his head?
    • The Protoss mini-campaign in Wings of Liberty gave a huge one to the Overmind. Apparently it infested Kerrigan so that the Zerg could gain independence and stand a chance against the Dark Voice and its hybrid armies.
    • Nova. She may be one of Mengsk loyal assassins, or just someone who was brainwashed into serving the Dominion. With the ghost programing which includes Mindwipe as part of its training, she may not know who exactly she's working for.
      • The Nova 'Covert Ops' mini-campaign seems to simultaneously clear up the matter and also add fuel to its fire; thanks to periodic memory wipes, Nova isn't even entirely sure what she's been up to herself. She seems to be loyal to the Dominion.... but only the Dominion itself, and not any particular set of ideals; she serves the idealistic Valerian Mengsk just as faithfully as she once served his evil father.
    • Tychus Findley: Amoral bastard only looking out for himself or conflicted friend willing to commit Suicide by Cop?
  • Star Trek Online:
    • Admiral T'nae: Some interpret her as a Blood Knight given her open Fantastic Racism against the Romulans. See here.
    • Theoretically the main reason for the Federation-Klingon War is that the Federation is heavily infiltrated by the Undine. However, in the KDF storyline the Undine aren't even mentioned until you get to the "Cloaked Intentions" episode (where the Fedside fiasco on P'Jem gets a throwaway mention while you're decoding some Tal Shiar files). Couple that with the war having actually started when the Klingons decided to return to their conquistador days and started attacking Federation colonies, and one starts to wonder if the Undine infiltration isn't really just a convenient Pretext for War.
    • Is D'Tan a genuine reformer who is doing what he feels is best for his people and honestly wants friendship with both of the remaining Alpha/Beta Quadrant superpowers (the official interpretation), a traitor to the Romulan way of life, or a particularly shrewd manipulator who is Playing Both Sides to improve the Romulans' situation?
    • Roughly the same debate plays out regarding the Romulan Republic as a whole. Some hate them and call them "space hippies" for wanting to coexist peacefully with their neighbors rather than being the scheming villains we saw in the Star Trek: The Next Generation-era shows. (The Republic military plays more towards the honor-bound soldiers portrayal of Star Trek: The Original Series, and Cryptic used Diane Duane's Rihannsu worldbuilding extensively.) Others point out that among other things, hippies don't arm ships with thalaron generators. And then there's the guys that are just openly Rooting for the Empire and want to join the Tal Shiar.
  • Superliminal:
    • You escaped the programmed dreams somehow, you fucked things up along the way, accidentally, the AI looking over the dream ran wild because it wasn't programmed to deal with all that, Dr. Pierce had to fix it all but had no idea how, and you somehow managed to find a way to wake up on your own. All that rant by Pierce on how they planned it all to help and blah blah? Bullshit to cover up and avoid you telling the world about how badly they fucked your therapy up. Because if you do believe his rant, then his rant is the truth. And thus, your treatment was not a failure at all.
    • Or another alternative on that last bit: The Dr. Pierce in that last part of your dream was just your mind trying to wake you up by making you feel something other than helpless and confused - what the screw-up doctor should have done from the start.

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