Attention Whore / Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • 90% of the Riddler's actions and dialogue can basically be summed up as "Batman, pay attention to meeeeeeeeeee!" His subplots in each of the games are basically him taking Batman's attention away from the various asylum riots / gang wars / apocalyptic attacks on Gotham that Batman is faced with to show off how cleverly he's hidden his various Riddler trophies. The other 10%, incidentally, is the Riddler yelling at Batman for finding his trophies and solving his various riddles/death traps and therefore proving that Batman's cleverer than he is.
  • The Joker is also shown to be this, especially in Arkham Knight where it's revealed that underneath his Insanity Immunity, he does have one true fear: being forgotten.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum: It's worth mentioning you defeat Titan Joker by waiting for the helicopters and cameras to show up, which distracts him enough to turn his back on you.
• Portal: After the official tests end and you escape the scheduled incineration, GLaDOS quickly degenerates and switches between childish threats and pleading, all the way to begging for a relationship that doesn't really exist. It's implied that she's been doing this over and over while the subjects get closer and closer to actually getting to her.
• Mothiva from Bug Fables. Unlike the other explorers who are in it for justice, money, or just the thrill of exploring, Mothiva is in it entirely to add to the fame she already has as a pop idol. She even repeatedly gets in the way of Team Snakemouth's quest so that she'll be the one to get credit for fulfilling the Ant Queen's missions instead of them.
• In Ensemble Stars!, Wataru's Large Ham antics can make him come across as this, but he's actually more of The Gadfly who lives by borderline Blue-and-Orange Morality. Keito also accuses Eichi of being an attention whore in Quarrel Fes due to his plot to potentially break apart Akatsuki; while Eichi does turn out to have (mostly) charitable intentions this time, he is capable of going to very great lengths to keep audiences paying attention to him, and tends to be pretty displeased when Keito in particular ignores him too much.
• Narcian in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.
  • Deconstructed with Serra in The Blazing Blade, who only acts out and demands acknowledgement... due to her loneliness and abandonment issues. Under the cheerful, loud, bitchy exterior, there's a deeply damaged and scared Broken Bird.
  • Keaton of Fire Emblem Fates is an extremely prideful Wolfskin, and one of the lines he can say after killing an enemy in battle is "Where's my praise?!" If he gets a good level up (5 or more of his stats increasing by 1), he'll say, "Not that I'm fishing for praise, but..." He doesn't like to be outshone, as it seems, as if an adjacent ally kills an enemy instead of him, he'll sometimes mutter "Glory hound..."
• The King of All Cosmos qualifies. Also, the in-game profiles for a few of the Royal Cousins label them this; mainly Ace, Dipp, Ichigo and Peso. And considering the profiles are provided by the King himself...
• Welcome to the League of DRAVEN!
• Shadow Rise in Persona 4 is a stripper who wants everyone to look at her and is willing to "bare it all" to ensure it. She represents hidden desires within the real Rise Kujikawa, who once was an Idol Singer and stopped doing so since she feared no one would see her as anything but that.
  • Mitsuo is shown to be this and is probably a bigger one than Rise. He kills Mr. Mooroka simply to get attention, and the times he shows up in town before then all his remarks are long-winded rants about what he thinks about this and that.
• Captain Spark of Super Monday Night Combat. He perpetually narrates his own actions to draw attention to himself:
  Spark: "I've destroyed their turret with my powers of- is anyone even paying attention?" [sigh] "I'm not going to narrate myself if no one can be bothered to even listen..."
• Flambeaux from City of Heroes - she even turns villain for the attention. It doesn't work.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, the Guardian of Andraste's ashes accuses Leliana of this if she's in the party as part of his test of the group.
• Garou: Mark of the Wolves has Bonne Jenet, who took up piracy out of boredom. Every facet of her existence seems designed to get her noticed. Try running with her. She waves the entire time.
• Count Zap from Mega Man Battle Network. He wears clothes adorned with flashing lights so people can't help but see him, even in the dark.
• Asagi of the Disgaea series is a sympathetic example. She was supposed to be the star of her own game, Makai Wars, a follow-up to Makai Kingdom. When it fell into Development Hell, she was so distraught that she started showing up in other characters' games in an attempt to seize main character status for herself. By the fourth game, her desire is so great that it turns her into a Reality Warper, and after joining the party one of her quotes is admitting that the despair has made her somewhat Bi-Polar.
• Rufus from Street Fighter IV.
• Porky Minch from Mother 3. The guy wants to obliterate everyone on the planet because he feels they don't like him enough (and get some chuckles out of it in the process), so he invites everyone to New Pork City in order to get everyone to celebrate and worship him. During your fight with him, he even thanks you for entertaining him all this time.
• The Spellican in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] is shown to be this, especially when Riku ignores him at one point to crack a joke with Beat and Rhyme.
• Lots of powered heroes are this in Heroes Rise, taking up heroics for the glory and media attention. The player character can be this too, depending on what choices you make.
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number has the Miami Mutilator a.k.a. Manny Pardo, who wants the same media attention that Jacket got in the previous game by killing a bunch of people and then investigating his own crimes and eventually "catching" himself. Unfortunately for him, he gets upstaged by the Fans and their own brutal murders, and ultimately nobody really cares about him in the grand scheme of things.
• The Boss in Saints Row IV signs him/herself on a pole-dancing contest solely for the spotlight.
• In Spider-Man (PS4), Screwball is a livestreamer that lives in her own little world that revolves around gaining more followers/views for her channel, blind to the rest of reality. She continues to antagonize Spider-Man and endanger lives through Serial Escalation to boost her own clout. Spidey outright calls her a Narcissistic social media addict who doesn't so much want attention as need attention.
• Valkyrie Drive -Bhikkhuni-'s Mana Inagawa has this trope as her defining characteristic. Nearly all of her actions are fueled by her need to be acknowledged as special by everyone else.
• COUNTER:SIDE has a rare sympathetic example with Sky Layfield, a little girl whose "powers" include a Perception Filter that makes her unnoticeable by most people and, even after somehow getting their attention, being quickly forgotten about after their attention shifts away from her. She can't turn either of these off at will, so she's understandably starved for any sort of attention at all and often acts out to try and get somebody to notice her.

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