Evil Cannot Comprehend Good / Video Games

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• AI: The Somnium Files: Not only can the Big Bad comprehend good, but they are also fiercely opposed to doing so when given the opportunity. Saito became a Serial Killer because his brain couldn't produce oxytocin, the hormone that encourages trust, empathy, and social behavior, and substituted it with the adrenaline rush he got while killing. He eventually swaps bodies with Date, who doesn't have the brain defect, on a whim... and is horrified to find out that normal people feel guilty after committing murder. He spends most of the game desperately trying to get his body back so he can indulge in guiltless murder again.
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: In their Battle in the Center of the Mind, Odin rages at Eivor's attempt to walk away, screaming that with them Eivor will gain power and glory, and asking what they could possibly want apart from that. Eivor choses their family, or as they put it "everything else". The final part of the storyline suggests Odin did eventually start to get Eivor's point, some years later.
• Asura's Wrath: While more of a hedonistic Blood Knight than actually evil, Augus, as shown in a flashback, can't seem to understand that Asura fights to protect his family; as far as he's concerned, the only reason to fight is for the sake ofr fighting.
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • In a recorded interview you can find in Batman: Arkham Asylum, Riddler insists that Batman has to be a super-criminal who robs other criminals and bribes the police to not stop him, categorically refusing to believe that anyone could put their life on the line against Gotham's criminal underworld every night for no reward.
  • This trope ends up being the Joker's undoing at the end of Batman: Arkham City: he taunts Batman on how he will just give him the cure to TITAN poisoning despite all the horrible things he has done since that's just what Batman does. When Batman briefly hesitates, Joker is apparently convinced Batman will let him die after all and stabs him in the shoulder to get the cure. Batman drops the bottle and it smashes on the floor. Batman then tells Joker he would still have saved him, causing Joker to laugh at the irony while he dies.
  • In Batman: Arkham Origins, the corrupt cops within the GCPD assume the Joker is Batman's accomplice after Batman decided to Save the Villain. Joker himself is utterly confused on why Batman would save him and this confusion is what ends up triggering his life-long obsession with Batman.
  • In Batman: Arkham Knight, when Batman's Secret Identity is revealed to the world, the Penguin believes Bruce Wayne became Batman solely to get back at him as a result of the "feud" between the Waynes and the Cobblepots (which was mostly one-sided by the latter).
• Batman: The Telltale Series' first major antagonist, the mysterious leader of the Children of Arkham, is revealed to be reporter Vicki Vale. In their final confrontation with Batman, they suffer a Villainous Breakdown if he chooses to reveal his secret identity, as they're unable to make sense of the fact that the heroic Batman is the vilified Bruce Wayne without resorting to Insane Troll Logic to reconcile the gulf.
  Vicki Vale: This must be some kind of... trick. Bruce Wayne he'd— he'd never be the man Batman is. He only looks out for himself. Ah, but of course... now I understand. As Batman, you can prey on the weak, the defenseless. Just like your father did! A true Wayne! There's nothing heroic about you!
• In the point-and-click adventure game Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok, the apocalyptic entity Fenris is so incapable of grasping mortal concepts of compassion that it not only assumes the Baron can't possibly care if it destroys the world (because he's dead and no longer lives there), but it expects you to accept this as evidence that Wittard's ghost must have some selfish ulterior motive.
• BioShock:
  • Should the player character decide to take the good ending, Frank Fontaine rants about how he created Jack, made up his memories and stuffed them into his brain, showed him the world, brought him back to Rapture — "If that's not family, I don't what is!" — shortly before the Little Sisters appear and demonstrate what family really means. With needles.
  • A milder example occurs with Andrew Ryan, who seems to be incapable of understanding selflessness or even believing that it truly exists. "In the end, all that matters to you is you, and all that matters to me is me. It is the nature of things." He says this regardless of whether you've made selfish decisions up to this point or not. Tellingly, Ryan also admits that he cannot 'raise a hand' against his own flesh and blood, further playing into the hypocrisy of his own belief system. Ironically, Fontaine initially gained much of his power base because he did understand good better than Ryan; he gained the goodwill and support of Rapture's workers because unlike Ryan, he knew that being nice to them, even if it was ultimately an act, would earn their loyalty.
  • Dr. Yi Suchong. In BioShock: Rapture, he utterly fails to recognize Brigid Tenenbaum's Heel–Face Turn. In contrast, Ryan and Fontaine are at least able to understand Tenenbaum's change of conscience. The same book also makes him a literal case since he doesn't even know the meaning of the English word "Conscience" (though he probably knows the meaning of its Korean equivalent, 'yangsim') because he didn't bother teaching himself that part of the language.
• Despite his alchemical and tactical genius, Hazama/Yuuki Terumi from BlazBlue either considers the spirit of goodness (and what motivates people into doing good) a means to use people to serve his whims (like Litchi and Tsubaki) or considers it shitty and boring, if he understands it at all. In the Slight Hope story from Extend, however, this bites him square in the ass. He was merrily carrying out his plans in the Wheel of Fortune timeline when Makoto Nanaya fell in from the Continuum Shift timeline, and when she got beat up after parrying a hit on Jin, he dismissed her as merely a "damned squirrel" best left to Relius. Between that incident, honesty to Tager and Kokonoe regarding her intentions, trusting Bang with rescuing Jin, and counseling Tsubaki (and asking her about the unknown-to-Makoto nonexistent Noel Vermillion), she altered the timeline in a way that caused Hazama's plans to implode — even he was forced to admit asking Tsubaki about Noel caused it to self-destruct. Given his assassination attempt on her in Continuum Shift proper, which takes place days later, he has never forgiven her for this insult. And yet, despite all that, it has done nothing to his opinion on goodness, much less make him stop acting like scum. All he really learned is to let his buddy Relius take care of her... so when Relius walked off the board, enough of Terumi's chances of victory went with him that even retaking the Susano'o unit was no guarantee of success; even if Makoto herself was dragged off the board by Es, her actions gave the heroes the opening they needed to end Terumi for good.
• Handsome Jack of Borderlands 2 has an understanding of "good" that is at the very least incredibly skewed and deeply delusional. He honestly believes himself to be the hero of the story, attempting to bring civilization to the Wretched Hive of Pandora (to be fair, Pandora really is one of those), while at the same time gleefully relishing in murder and torture, and laughing about the time he gouged out a man's eyeballs in front of his children. Basically, he believes that since he's the good guy, then all of his actions no matter what they are must therefore be good, and anyone who would object to anything he does must therefore be a bad guy.
• Destiny 2: The Big Bad, Dominus Ghaul wants to convince The Traveler that he is more deserving of The Light than humanity, and his way of proving it is to invade earth, destroy the Last City, and slaughter Guardians en masse. He's completely unable to understand why The Traveler doesn't give him what he wants after that, and even interrogates the Speaker for answers. Possibly a Justified Trope, as Ghaul was raised by the Consul to believe that Might Makes Right. In his mind, proving that he can take the Light does make him worthy. The Traveler disagrees. Violently.
• Devil May Cry series:
  • Devil May Cry:
    • As explained by Dante when Trish has no idea why he rescues her from falling debris, despite her betraying him.
      Trish: Dante, why did you save my life?
      Dante: Because you look like my mother.
    • Big Bad Mundus likewise exhibits this, regarding Trish Taking the Bullet for Dante as "odd behavior". He also doesn't understand the significance of making Trish look like Dante's mother Eva beyond luring Dante to him, when a furious Dante questions him about it, Mundus just scoffs "That useless being? If you need a mother, I can create it as many as you want". In the comic adaptation, Mundus is also openly baffled at why Sparda betrayed the Demon World for humanity and even assumes it was out of lust for one human woman.
  • In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Arkham is apparently unable to understand that Sparda sealed off the Demon World to save humanity, and believes he did so to "become a legend." He even rants about this to Lady, in regards to why he sacrificed his wife for power:
    Arkham: What have I done wrong?! Even the heroic Sparda sacrificed a woman so that he could become a legend! I wished to be a god! And I sacrificed one miserable human being for that reason. That is all! Was that really so awful?
  • In Devil May Cry 4, Sanctus repeatedly scoffs at the concept of love, even explicitly dismissing Credo's love for his sister Kyrie as foolish. Unfortunately for him, it's this view that, according to Dante and Nero, renders him unable to truly harness the power of Sparda's sword. Similarly, when Agnus is unable to understand how Dante defeated him, Dante spells it out for him.
    Dante: You surrendered your humanity. It's that simple.
  • In Devil May Cry 5, Urizen can't understand how Dante is beating him in their final confrontation, despite Dante being part human and in Urizen's eyes having given up nothing to pursue power. Dante then points out that simply fighting for the sake of something, in his case to protect others, makes him stronger than Urizen, who has no real motivation for his actions other than gaining more power, could ever be.
    Urizen: How... How are you so powerful?! You never lost anything!
    Dante: It's not about loss... Strength is a choice. Fighting like hell to protect what's important. You threw away everything you ever had. No wonder you have no true power!
    Urizen: Danteeeeee!
• In Dishonored, if Corvo spares Daud, the assassin who murdered his beloved Empress, the Outsider is utterly shocked. This is the only thing that will surprise the Outsider. It doesn't do anything to change his low opinion of humanity as a whole; he merely considers Corvo to be an exception to the rule.
• Disgaea:
  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: Laharl hates love and thinks it's worthless, at first.
  • Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: Rozalin cannot understand why Adel would want to escort her home instead of using her as a pawn in his own plans. She is willing to fight to protect Hanako and Taro but believes she's only doing that because they are her "vassals", and caring for your vassals is what nobles are required to do.
  • Mao in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice has this problem. Despite his obsessive research on superhero tropes, cliches, and plot devices, he just doesn't get stuff like love and courage. He knows they exist, but can't make heads or tails of them.
  • Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten: Valvatorez, a nice guy for a demon, has the balls to accuse God of this. He claims that even God could not have foreseen the demons' use of The Power of Friendship to defeat his creation Fear the Great.
• Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins is quite confused by her feelings of attachment to the Warden, though she eventually does grow to accept them. She also tends to be confused by any action that doesn't involve being completely selfish due to being raised with a Social Darwinist mentality by a Humanoid Abomination.
• Implied in Dungeon Keeper, especially the first game. Before each mission, The Evil Mentor gives you a brief introduction to the land you're about to conquer. He seems both revolted and amazed by the happy, peaceful, non-violent lives the peasants are able to lead. One town, for example, is described as 'a truly bizarre realm' because the inhabitants prefer talking, laughing, and singing over arguing, drawing daggers, and murdering each other in a gurgling rush of blood.
• EarthBound (1994): Giygas cannot grasp the true form of human emotion.
• In Morrowind, Tribunal deity Vivec's Batman Gambit to defeat Dagoth Ur banks on this, inspired by the The Lord of the Rings example. Dagoth Ur believes that the Nerevarine, who possesses each of the Tools of Kagrenac, has brought them to draw power from the Heart of Lorkhan, the source of Dagoth Ur (and the Tribunal's) divine power, to make his/herself immortal as well. Thus, he spends much of the fight toying with the Nevevarine and taunting him/her about his own power. He doesn't realize until it's too late that the Nerevarine actually intends to destroy the enchantments on the Heart, denying its power to anyone. (Power that Dagoth Ur requires to exist.)
• Fallout:
  • Colin Moriarty from Fallout 3, who is at best a cynical Jerkass and a shady businessman, seems to have this issue. If you access his terminal and look into the notes he has on various individuals in town, you'll find out that he seems to be convinced that Billy Creel, the town's resident nice guy and adopted father to Maggie, actually murdered Maggie's parents and took her in as his personal slave, instead of just finding her after a raider attack, like he claims. This is despite the fact that Maggie seems to be Happily Adopted and he doesn't have any actual evidence that Billy did such a thing, suggesting Moriarty is simple unable to believe that Billy would really selflessly take in an orphaned little girl.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • The Big Bad, Caesar's Fatal Flaw is that he is a massive egomaniac, which leads him to arrogantly assume that any resourceful and competent person must obviously agree with his worldview and invites the Courier to work for him. It doesn't matter if the Courier is a goody-two-shoes dedicated to protecting the downtrodden and needy, and so far have focused their efforts on supporting the NCR and messing up the Legion's plans. He will assume you agree with his brutal regime purely because you are a capable badass, and task you with vital missions without making even a token effort to change or even acknowledge your past allegiances. The biggest moment of this comes when you can pretend to have destroyed House's bunker, and Caesar offers to repay you by killing Benny. If you try to release him Caesar will chastise you for not enjoying violence and blackmail you into killing Benny yourself by threatening to crucify him. And after all that effort to manipulate you into doing something you clearly didn't want to? He smugly boasts about how sure he is you loved it.
    • In the epilogue of the Dead Money DLC, if Dean Domino (whose manipulations before the war were pretty much why the Sierra Madre is a hellhole) is still alive, he'll learn of how his former accomplice Vera Keyes was addicted to Med-X and Super Stimpacks (which he used to blackmail her) due to a terminal illness and the story of how Sinclair tried to sacrifice himself to save her. It's stated that he felt strangely sad for a moment but has no idea why. It's at least enough to make Dean finally let go of the Sierra Madre... and set his sights on New Vegas. Also, the reason Dean turned the Sierra Madre into a hellhole in the first place was to ruin Sinclair's life, just because Sinclair was happier than him. Dean interpreted Sinclair's happiness as a form of self-righteousness, feeling like Sinclair was simply rubbing his success in his face.
    • In the Old World Blues DLC, it's possible to get Evilutionary Biologist Dr. Borous to feel tremendous guilt about how he treated Gabe, his beloved dog who was loyal to the very end, as a test subject that he subjected to countless experiments (including turning him into a Cyberdog and pumping him full of combat drugs). However, if you pick what seems like the obvious "good" dialogue option and tell him why he feels guilty, he'll simply decide he doesn't like feeling this way and suppress it, while if you agree with him that Gabe was just another test subject, then he'll come to the conclusion on his own and actually start treating his test subjects more humanely.
    • Joshua Graham's unique .45 Auto Pistol "A Light Shining in Darkness" has the biblical passage used as the main page quote engraved on it in Greek.
  • The Vault-Tec Workshop DLC of Fallout 4 has Overseer Valery Barstow, a true Mad Scientist at heart and the "ideal" Vault Tech employee who encourages the player to help her conduct Vault-Tec's planned experiments on the people they convince to move into the vault to make them suffer for no real reason. If you go for benign experimental machines, she's very disappointed and upset with the Sole Survivor. If you point out that this means the experiments succeeded, because they made everyone happier and healthier, she cries out "Are you even speaking English?!"
    • If you read the terminal entries left behind by Vault-Tec, it shows that they weren't any different. All the experiments detail the various ways they planned on manipulating and abusing Vault residents...and then mention Ted, a staff member whose ideas were all about being nice to the residents, improving their health and morale. The other Vault-Tec employees repeatedly express their hatred and disgust for Ted.
• Far Cry: New Dawn: When you liberate Pastor Jerome, the Twins outright state that they can't understand people who would work for the benefit of others, rather than themselves.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • The Big Bad of Part I, Beast I, aka Goetia has this bad about the real King Solomon, having viewed him as a cowardly tyrant who refused to change mankind for the better and seeing it as his own goal to correct that by any means necessary. What Goetia doesn't understand is that his own Blue-and-Orange Morality plus Solomon's own bad habit of not getting his point across means Solomon couldn't explain that humans need mortality to grow and become better than the suffering they experience. As such, he's completely blindsided when Roman reveals himself to be the true Solomon and performs a Heroic Sacrifice to weaken Goetia for the Protagonist to defeat, screaming that the man he knew never would have done this with Solomon sadly noting even to the end he didn't understand and admitting his own failure in that regard.
  • The Master With No Name is obsessed with getting powerful Servants, but treats them like tools and callously discards Paul Bunyan because she starts out as a weak, 1 Star Servant. She doesn't understand why the Protagonist and their Servants care about and save Paul Bunyan, because the Protagonist believes in bonding with their Servants and raising them to bring out their full potential.
  • Mephistopheles doesn't understand why the Protagonist takes a detour to help Shiki Ryougi, since Shiki's situation has nothing to do with them. He gets even more confused when the Protagonist simply says they wanted to help her.
  • Beast III-R can't understand why Meltryllis is trying so hard to defend the protagonist and defeat her, chalking it up to her Servant Class and decides to use the Class for herself under the misconception it would make her just as powerful, ignoring the various factors that went into defeat like other people assisting Meltryllis and her motivations. During the Tokugawa Labyrinth event, she finally realizes her folly, gaining strength the same way Melt did in SE.RA.PH. by saving the protagonist at the cost of her life ironically from her other "half", Beast III-L.
  • Backfires on the mastermind of the Shinjuku pseudo-Singularity. He aims to get close to the protagonist so the Devil's bullet of Der Freischuetz will target them, the person he cares most for. When the time comes to betray them, he cares for them too much to use his full strength, which he grudgingly admits to having not expected because he's never bothered caring for someone else before.
  • According to supplementary materials, Christopher Columbus is literally incapable of understanding the concept of "Slavery is wrong". He understands that it's something that people believe in nowadays but not the why behind it.
• Fear Effect: Yim Lau Wong (The King of Hell) turns out to have no concept of human decency. If you make the choice to not have Hana and Glas shoot each other, The King of Hell will fly into a rage and say "Mei Yun, you have come too far to disappoint me!"
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV: The After Years: "Incomprehensible" is practically the catchphrase of the Mysterious Girl, who simply cannot grasp why "inferior species" such as the protagonists would insist on fighting against her even knowing their efforts are futile.
  • In Final Fantasy V, when Galuf's Berserk Button gets pressed and he charges Exdeath in one-on-one battle, the villain comments that "not even all the hatred in the world can destroy me!" Sure enough, Exdeath gets his ass beaten because it wasn't hate, but something else entirely that made Galuf fight on while at zero hit points.
  • Final Fantasy VI's Kefka, upon gaining godhood, believed that living life and creating things is pointless due to the fact that they die anyway and that creation is inevitably destroyed anyways and meaning nothing in the end, as well as being baffled as to why they continue doing these. Terra, as well as the rest of the Returners, cite how, despite living in the crapsack state that their world is in, still celebrated the event of living, as well as love, even citing their experiences. Predictably, Kefka does not take it well, declares their references "sound like pages from a self-help book" in disgust, and then preparing to destroy all reality.
  • Final Fantasy VII's Sephiroth has this problem, especially regarding Cloud. In the Nibelheim flashback, he's completely bewildered at Cloud somehow being able to overpower him and cries that its "Impossible!" just before being thrown into the Mako reactor. Sephiroth never considers that having his hometown set on fire, his mother killed, and his childhood sweetheart sliced up by his former idol just might be fueling Cloud's furious strength. Later after killing Aerith, Sephiroth just rants to Cloud that she'll become part of the planet, but Cloud distraught tells him to shut up which baffles Sephiroth since he can't understand why Cloud is feeling such emotions over one girl. He isn't any better in Remake as Sephiroth genuinely assumes Cloud would willingly join him in destroying the planet, even after gloating about killing his mother and showing visions of Tifa and Barret getting killed by him too.
    • Shinra Electric Power Company from VII also can't comprehend any goodness on any level, Reeve the Token Good Teammate of the Shinra board is taken aback that they aren't even bothering to rebuild Sector 7 after destroying it and killing everyone in it. They also don't see any negative connotations draining the Lifestream from the planet and only consider AVALANCHE's attempts to stop them as mere terrorist actions. In the Remake, President Shinra even tries to frame AVALANCHE as agents of the enemy nation Wutai under the hopeful assumption it would stir up patriotic fervor.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV's Endwalker expansion, the Garlean Empire, ravaged by civil war and a madman turning their soldiers into monsters, cannot understand why the Eorzean Alliance would want to help them. This is because they have been constantly told that the Eorzeans are nothing more than savages that needed to be conquered or eradicated and a load of patriotic fervor heaped on top of that. Thus, when their mortal enemies come to help them with no terms or strings attached, they freak out. It takes a few incidents to get it through their head.
• Grand Theft Auto V: In the final mission, Both Devin Weston and Steve Haines try to browbeat Franklin into killing Michael and Trevor for them, respectively. If Franklin picks option C, he can prove both Steve and Devin wrong by having Michael and Trevor reconcile with each other, before proceeding to destroy their enemies. The three even taunt Devin by giving him a "Reason You Suck" Speech.
  Franklin: Hey, my bad, homie. I picked C. Ain't that a bitch?
• This is the key to success in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Each of the initial five scenarios are prepared with AM assuming his captives would fall victim to their baser desires, but to complete them each character has to overcome their flaws and make sacrifices, which utterly baffles the mad AI, who can not see humans as anything but utter bastards. In the endgame, you have to defeat three computers representing AM's Ego, Superego, and Id. Using the Compassion totem on the Id causes him to give up in despair, unable to comprehend the fact that one of AM's victims can express sympathy and pity for him in spite of everything he has done, while using the Forgiveness totem on the Ego causes him to shut down since he cannot understand how a petty creature like a human could possibly forgive their tormentor for a century of torture.
• Infamous:
  • In Infamous 2, Nix always advocates the Evil Karma decisions for Cole, and whenever someone else suggests a goal that involves helping people and getting them to fight by Cole's side willingly, Nix not only scoffs at it but acts like they're crazy for even thinking of it. From what she tells us of her childhood, she probably hasn't met too many nice people in her life.
  • Brooke Augustine of inFAMOUS: Second Son is literally incapable of imagining a world where Conduits and humans coexist peacefully. Peace itself seems to be an alien concept to her; there's only fear, more fear, and fear on top of fear to keep people in line. The Conduits she keeps imprisoned are miserable and experimented upon remorselessly. The humans are kept in line through coercion, and she herself is the source of most of the propaganda painting Conduits as nothing more than Living Weapons. When the government is considering shutting down the D.U.P. because it's done too good a job of containing everyone, she goes out of her way to engineer an escape just to keep herself in power...so she can keep Conduits "safe."
• Injustice: Gods Among Us: After the Joker drove them to villainy, Regime Superman and his allies take a hard stance on crime and establish a planet-wide dictatorship, but are opposed by Batman. The Regime has a jaded view on traditional superheroics and even break the no-kill rule to brutally suppress any dissent, but they also don't realize it warped them into the very monsters they once opposed. Realizing how evil Superman has become, Flash defects to Batman's side after witnessing the Tyrant of Steel kill Shazam in cold blood.
  • When others point out that he is scaring people, Superman justifies himself by saying that criminals should be scared, not realizing they meant people in general. Sevral times, he even wonders if he's jumped the abyss, only to view his new behavior as Batman's fault. He even rants about the public's "ungratefulness" towards his rule when he killed Luthor on live TV, ignorant of the collateral damage his Regime has caused.
  • As with Superman, Regime Wonder Woman holds a dim view of traditional superheroics, honestly believes she's doing the right thing, and brushes off the idea that she could be in the wrong. Her Prime counterpart chides her for her cynicism, but Regime Wonder Woman refuses to listen. Prime Wonder Woman even states how her Regime counterpart doesn't realize how her manipulative nature has corrupted Regime Superman.
• Injustice 2:
  • During his story mode ending, Superman questions how Green Lantern can be standing against him as Coast City remains trapped in Brainiac's collection, believes Flash and Green Lantern abandoned the Regime due to a lack of willpower, and ignores Supergirl's repeated appeals to his kinder side. Clark's rage has clouded his mind, and his extremism caused Barry and Hal to lose faith in him. Also, being too jaded about losing his wife Lois and traditional superheroics in general thanks to the Joker's nefarious scheme to drive him to villainy in the previous game is what stops him from moving on.
  • When confronted by Blue Beetle and Firestorm in story mode, Robin thinks his estranged father's standards have "dropped so low" to let these "noobs" join in just to impress Batman.
  • In one of his intros with the Flash, Scarecrow gives the Scarlet Speedster Baddie Flattery about making people fear him and getting to rule the world in the last game, to which Flash replies that he still has a long way to go and fully redeem himself. Scarecrow is baffled on why he wouldn't want to be feared and gives a Your Approval Fills Me with Shame retort.
    Scarecrow: People fear the Flash now.
    The Flash: Yeah, I'll have to fix that.
    Scarecrow: Why on Earth would you want to?
  • In one of his intros with Sub-Zero, Black Manta sees Subby's Heel–Face Turn as a downgrade.
    Black Manta: So you're an assassin-turned-hero?
    Sub-Zero: I now defend the defenseless.
    Black Manta: What a waste of material...
  • As is with him in most DCU media, the Joker thinks the other characters are no better than him and likes to proclaim the futility of their motives in his Straw Nihilist mindset, but they consider it nonsense. Some of the characters even call him out on his insanity when he claims they're pretty much the same as he is.
  • Some battle intros between the Regime remnants (Superman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Robin, Black Adam) have them briefly wonder if their Knight Templar policies on crime pushed them too far, but then, they'll ignore any doubts they had.
• Sagacious Zu manages to trick Death's Hand into burying himself in Jade Empire because Death's Hand wasn't prepared for the possibility that his foe would sacrifice himself to complete his goal.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising:
  • During Chapter 23, when Pit calls Hades out on eating and thus destroying souls, thus preventing them from moving on or being reincarnated, Hades flat-out tells Pit that he sees no difference between removing souls from existence and reincarnation. Though, considering his personality, he could just be saying that to mess with Pit's head.
  • Viridi is another example, though she isn't necessarily evil, as it's more like cynicism cannot comprehend optimism. She just doesn't understand what Pit and Palutena see in humanity and frequently questions why they would fight so hard to protect a species she considers inferior. At the end, when Hades is defeated, she gets into one last debate about humanity, but when she realizes she isn't changing their minds, she leaves off in an annoyed huff.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Vanitas repeatedly mocks Ventus' firm belief in The Power of Friendship. It does not end well for him.
  • In the first game, "Ansem"/Xehanort believes that darkness is the heart's true essence and thus, Kingdom Hearts, as the most powerful heart, must have the power of supreme darkness. Thus, when he tries to harness the power of Kingdom Hearts, he instead gets blasted by its light.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, both Marluxia and Larxene are utterly perplexed, and even slightly annoyed, that Sora consciously chooses to protect Naminé from them even after discovering that his memories of her and their supposed friendship were all lies. Larxene even flat-out calls Sora a delusional idiot.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]:
    • Xigbar proves just how much he doesn't get it by trying to induce a Heroic BSoD in Sora by telling him that since his friends are his power, Sora has no real power of his own. This only manages to affirm Sora's belief in The Power of Friendship, since that means he's part of something much bigger. Xigbar is utterly baffled by Sora's reaction and pulls a Villain: Exit, Stage Left.
    • Ansem, in his final attempt to corrupt Riku, fails to do so because he cannot comprehend Riku’s true motivation, something his Arch-Enemy calls him out on. Ansem, as Xehanort, was once a Keyblade wielder, but then dove into the darkness and coveted its power at the cost of everything else in his life. As such, he’s unable to understand why Riku, even after plunging into the depths of darkness and realizing how his power comes from it as well, still wants to fight to defend the light and prove his worth as a Keyblade wielder. Unlike Ansem, Riku never lost sight of what matters to him most: his friends, what Ansem himself threw away so long ago.
  • Organization XIII has a bit of a problem with this: their entire plan with Xion in 358/2 Days got hopelessly derailed because they didn't anticipate the effect having true friends would have on her. Both Roxas and Axel wind up betraying the Organization out of loyalty to their friends, and the higher-ups seem utterly baffled as to why they would do this. Xaldin also is shown to believe that love is a weakness (in a Disney game), which causes his pet project with the Beast to fail horribly in Kingdom Hearts II.
• Played for laughs in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords with HK-47. The player has the option of installing something that turns out to be a pacifistic program, which they will uninstall after the ensuing hilarity of an Ax-Crazy droid saying he couldn't harm another living thing. After expressing disgust at the thought that he nearly surrendered to peace and pacifism, HK-47 comments "It was close, but for a moment I thought I understood why some meatbags would prefer friendship over a high-powered blaster carbine." Apparently he can't grasp why anybody would not want to kill someone. In another conversation, he explains "love" in terms of a difficult sniper shot.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: When subtitled, Malefor is clearly caught off guard when Cynder is freed from his mind control by The Power of Love. In the entire battle, this is about the only thing that actually seems to truly surprise him.
• Quite a few villains in the The Legend of Zelda series suffer from this trope.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: As the only humans he faced prior to Link were cowardly and either hid or turned to Hylia for protection when faced with him, Ghirahim is driven to a Villainous Breakdown over the fact that Link keeps ignoring his threats and challenging him. It's more along the lines of Evil Cannot Comprehend Courage, but the basic idea is the same. Demise, on the other hand, is pleasantly surprised to discover such courageous behavior, though for seemingly different reasons.
  • Ganon(dorf) has a similar reaction in Hyrule Warriors, openly failing to understand why the heroes won't just give up and let darkness win when things seem hopeless, fighting and ultimately securing an "impossible" victory. Weirdly, this is actually an appearance where he's much more of a Pragmatic Villain than usual, sometimes verging on Affably Evil — he's willing to support his underlings and listen to them when they have good ideas, and shows grudging but genuine respect for the heroes at times for their courage, skill, and cleverness.
  • Hyrule Warriors also has Cia, who doesn't understand why Lana is trying to stop her from trying to kill Zelda so she could be with Link. As Lana is Cia's good side made manifest, she believes she is doing what they both want deep down as they're the same person. Even as she lays dying, Cia musters the strength to ask Lana how can she live knowing that in every era, Link will always end up with Zelda and she'll always be left behind. Lana merely replies that you don't always get the person you want and she can live with that.
    Cia: Lana... I thought this was what you wanted.
  • Zant in Twilight Princess cannot understand why he was rejected by the Twili people in favor of Midna and truly believed he was doing the right thing for all Twili by invading Hyrule and plunging it into darkness. Midna all but spells out the trope for him.
    Midna: Traitors, ha! You want to know why none would call you king? It was your eyes, Zant. All saw it, a lust for power burning in your pupils. Did you think we'd forget how our ancestors lost their king to such greed?
• Lunar series:
  • In Lunar: Silver Star Story, the villain's sinister plot begins when he witnesses an act of divine altruism and perceives it as abandonment. Magic Emperor Ghaleon could not understand why the Goddess Althena chose to relinquish her powers when it meant the world would lose her oversight and plotted to fill the void she left...with himself.
  • In Lunar 2, the villain uses the heroes' feelings of friendship and love in a Batman Gambit against the heroine, bringing her under his control. But he never imagined that those same emotions would empower her to overcome him.
• Manafinder: Octavius is baffled that Lambda would fight to maintain the Settlement's barrier and protect the non-combatants within despite being strong enough to survive in the wild, since Octavius believes that those who are too weak to survive without a barrier don't deserve to live.
• Mass Effect 2:
  • Shepard usually wins for two reasons: first, the Reapers underestimate just how tough they and the rest of the team is, but second and more importantly because they can't comprehend the fact that Shepard is willing to throw themself into almost certain death for the sake of others.
  • If playing Shepard as a paragon, the Illusive Man makes a similar mistake by not having any backup plan to seize the Collector base when Shepard decides to blow it other than relying on Miranda (and possibly the rest of the Cerberus personnel on the Normandy) to get it for him. Of course, he hadn't even known their base was a space station until Shepard landed on the damn thing.
  • The Reapers also fail to predict that the Protheans might choose to sabotage their next attack rather than fighting to the last man to survive the current one, and their efforts to keep an alliance from happening in Mass Effect 3 by pressing on the borders of all the major species run into trouble when the various races ultimately prove willing to support the overall plan rather than protect their own borders at the expense of everyone else. Then comes the Miracle at Palaven, when they don't predict commandoes willingly accepting their own deaths rather than risking indoctrination while placing nuclear weapons inside their carapaces. Really, the most common cause of Reaper defeat and inconvenience is that they assume everyone else is as devoted to self-preservation as they are and thus get dragged down by a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Mega Man Zero: Dr. Weil's many Breaking Speeches failed because Zero is a Punch-Clock Hero.
• Metroid Dread: To Raven Beak, power is everything, and thus he cannot understand anything beyond that parameter. He believes that because Samus has his DNA from a genetic infusion, that makes him her father and therefore he owns her. He expects Samus to join him because of the potential power they would have over the galaxy, never once thinking that Samus would disobey thanks to her moral upbringing. This failure to understand Samus ends up being his downfall.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat X:
    • Triborg, Shinnok and Quan Chi don't understand why Jax, Scorpion (if the player chooses the Hanzo Hasashi skin) and Sub-Zero chose to embrace their humanity after being restored to life by Raiden. Shinnok calls them ungrateful despite being obviously told that he and Quan Chi turned them into their minions.
    • Unlike many of his fellow revenants, it's shown that Kung Lao hates being one and wants to get out of the Netherrealm for good, but could not. But Kung Jin didn't give up hope, comes to his older cousin's aid, and redeems him in both of their arcade endings, enabling Kung Lao's Heroic Willpower to overcome the taint that bound him to the Netherrealm and escape to rejoin the side of light, something which neither Quan Chi nor Shinnok didn't expect. While it's very hard for revenants to embrace positive emotions as they were corrupted to the point of extreme hatred in MKX, it also shows that Heroic Willpower and familial bonds are things that neither Shinnok nor Quan Chi won't understand.
  • Mortal Kombat 11: Frost blames her ex-mentor Sub-Zero for "betraying" her and sees him as an "obstacle" in her path to success, but the entire cast sees the opposite. She also thinks her mentor was "oppressing" her, but she doesn't realize that Subby actively tried to redeem her. For example:
    • In Chapter 4 of story mode, she claims her mentor "corrupted and weakened" the Lin Kuei by allying with the Shirai Ryu. Both Sub-Zero and Scorpion beg to differ, stating that both her and Sektor are the ones who corrupted the Lin Kuei in the first place through the Cyber Initiative and the destruction of the Shirai Ryu. Also, the Shirai Ryu grandmaster even states to Frost that her sifu is actively working to restore the Lin Kuei's honor despite her obviously baseless claims.
    • In one of her intros with Nightwolf, Frost considers his powers "useless" when he rebuffs her offer to destroy the Lin Kuei. In another intro, when she claims Subby "oppressed" her, Nightwolf retorts that her mentor disciplining her is not oppression.
    • With Kitana, Frost assumes the Edenian princess is a Royal Brat who does Sub-Zero's "bidding," but Kitana begs to differ.
    • Raiden states that she's too ignorant to realize Sub-Zero tried to redeem her. In story mode, he even comments that envy and ambition have corrupted her mind.
• After you speak to the Knower of Names In Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, a pit fiend offers your character a Deal with the Devil where he demands the True Name of one of your followers in exchange for a powerful artefact. If you back out of the deal by telling him that you didn't ask the Knower for the True Names of your followers, he'll respond with a confused "You had the chance to wield absolute power over another being, and you didn't take it? I will never understand you mortals."
• Nintendo Wars: In Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Waylon expresses this kind of sentiment at the end of Waylon Flies Again. He simply cannot understand why anyone would bother being good, try to save lives, or try to improve the world when everything is destroyed.
  Waylon: I just don't get it! I just don't get people like you! The world's gone, brother! Ain't nothing out there worth fighting for! And yet here you are with your friends and your... hope! I don't get it! You oughta worry about YOU! Just like me!
  Will: We'll need our hope when we rebuild this world. That's what you'll never understand.
• Persona
  • The Greater-Scope Villain of Persona 4, Izanami, expresses disbelief that "the will of so few could surpass the will of so many" in regards to the protagonist's Social Links. She also can't understand why humans wouldn't want to live in ignorance.
  • Some of the Targets in Persona 5 have trouble comprehending why the Phantom Thieves do what they do, a handful of them even trying to convince the Thieves that they're on the same side. Naturally, the Thieves promptly shut them down.
    • A major example in Royal can be seen as a downplayed example, since Maruki is more "dangerously deluded" than "evil", but he finds it difficult to understand why the Thieves would rather live in the real world than his actualized world, namely why Sumire would rather keep living as Sumire rather than her sister Kasumi, even if it means living with the guilt of her being responsible for her sister's death, unable to comprehend that it's because of Kasumi that Sumire would want to live as Sumire.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Cyrus's conviction that the nature of human spirit is what is wrong with the universe leaves him dumbfounded that you would stop him from destroying reality to remake it into a World of Silence In Their Own Image. In Platinum, he's convinced that confronting Giratina will result in the destruction of the Distortion World keeping spacetime in balance and declares the player to be the "inheritor of [his] legacy", not realizing their goal is to simply befriend it.
  • Pokémon Black and White:
    • This was ultimately Ghetsis' downfall. His own dialog shows he personally believed everyone saw Pokémon as tools, just as he did. Because of this, he allows his son N to encounter Pokémon that had a truly caring relationship with their trainers, causing N to question Team Plasma's cause and befriend the player character, whom Ghetsis continuously underestimates because he doesn't believe they can behave selflessly and/or care about their Pokémon. As a result, the player acquires the other legendary dragon, defeats N, and for a nice bonus personally curbstomps Ghetsis with The Power of Friendship. Cue screaming breakdown.
    • Ghetsis loses it again in the sequels, where he insists to himself aloud, on-screen, that Pokémon (and "that inhuman freak" N) aren't sentient and so can't hate him, only serve him... right in front of two trainers, at least half a dozen Pokémon, two legendary dragons, and one "inhuman freak", none of whom agree with him. He doesn't care for Colress's research verifying The Power of Friendship, despite having personally hired Colress to study how best to make Pokémon powerful and lead Team Plasma in his stead.
    • In Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Ghetsis believes that Giovanni, whom he describes as "a man of pure evil" (much like himself), would be easier for him to use and manipulate than N.
• In Radiant Historia, the Big Bad Heiss, Stocke's uncle, cannot comprehend in the true ending why Stocke is willing to be the Sacrifice unlike himself. Stocke explains that, ironically enough, it's because of the Big Bad. Heiss raised him with earnest love as his nephew and introduced him to people he would treasure as his friends. Unlike Heiss, Stocke had people he cared about enough to give up his own life to protect. In a twist, Stocke's words reach Heiss and Heiss offers himself as the Sacrifice to save Stocke.
• In Red Dead Redemption II, Angelo Bronte is accustomed to using his vast personal fortune to get his way. When Dutch's gang captures him, he attempts to bribe them into turning against Dutch and releasing him, and is shocked when none of them take the bait. It never occurs to Bronte that Dutch's men care more about loyalty than money.
• Resident Evil:
  • Wesker Mole in Charge in RE1 blissfully assumes Barry (whom he blackmailed to follow his orders by threatening to kill his family) will just stand by as he kills their teammate Jill, to Wesker's surprise Barry chooses to save Jill and shoot him. Later in RE5 Wesker is genuinely surprised the Brainwashed and Crazy Jill is able to fight back against the mind control at Chris's pleading, or as he calls it in Mad Scientist speak "resisting at such an advanced state", the idea that Jill still has humanity inside her which been brought out by her beloved partner's words is lost on him.
  • In RE3make Smug Snake Nikolai throughout the game fails to understand Jill or her morality and is baffled at why she doesn't take any of his villainous advice. He chides Jill for her compassion for others as "being soft" and says she should care more about self-preservation. In the ending Nikolai is nonplussed at Jill's grief at him destroying the vaccine and when at her mercy he offers to pay Jill anything she wants in exchange for being let on the escape helicopter, he's infuriated that she just walks away unable to understand that she doesn't give a shit about wealth like he does.
  • While less villainous than other examples, Ada exhibits this in the RE2make when Leon learns the truth and turns against her. When Leon asks if he was just a pawn to her, Ada claims she's just doing her job in an "I don't need to justify myself to you" tone at which Leon bites back so is he. Ada assumed Leon would trust her blindly, so long as she appealed to his heroism and kissed him for good measure, she didn't imagine he would doubt her FBI cover story. She's even more taken aback at Leon trying to save her from falling into a Bottomless Pit despite her betrayal.
  • Spelled out clearly in Resident Evil: Revelations 2 when former activist turned Mad Scientist Neil in the midst of Hulking Out after getting injected with Uroboros, tries justifying himself to Claire before transforming.
    Neil: I did what I thought was right.
    Claire: It wasn't.
  • In RE6 one of the notes you can find written by the Big Bad Simmons details his opinion of his charge Sherry whom he raised after Raccoon City. While he considers her very useful and fascinated by her unique physiology, Simmons states personally he finds Sherry's "overly-kind and ultimately naïve, charitable nature" utterly repulsive. Despite creating all kinds of mutant freaks, killing thousands of women to make a clone of the woman he lusts over, and committing all kinds of atrocities, one compassionate person is the one thing that sickens Simmons.
  • Eveline the Big Bad of RE7 during her Villainous Breakdown is distraught that Ethan and Mia don't want her, whining that all she wants is a family and she can't fathom why everyone hates her so much. She doesn't acknowledge how sadistically torturing people, infecting their minds and bodies as a Walking Wasteland all while cackling like a witch, might not endear her to others.
  • In Village, Heisenberg tries to convince Ethan to join forces with him against Big Bad Mother Miranda, but is unable to make the one argument that would have convinved Ethan (killing the Big Bad to get them out of Rose's life forever) because he's unable to think in terms of "for Rose's sake".
• RosenkreuzStilette: After being defeated Iris Sepperin doesn't realize that it was because of their inability to believe in or love others that led to defeat, while Spiritia actually won with the love and support that her friends gave her.
• A brief scene in the original Shadow Hearts shows that the Four Masks — the literal personal demons living in the main character, Yuri Hyuga's soul, are utterly bamboozled at his friend/love-interest, Alice Eliot, offering her own soul to spare his. They gladly accept the deal, but at least one of the four is genuinely curious at the nature of this thing called "love".
• In Shadowverse, Eris can't understand why the people she's drawn into the dream world aren't willing to accept it even when they know that everything they're experiencing isn't real, perhaps most jarringly when she responds to Erika's demand to know where her princess is by summoning up another three copies of her.
• Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: This trope bites two villains in the ass.
  • The first is Risky Boots, although in her case this is played with. While she does test the Dynamo on Shantae, corrupting her, she fails to consider Sky, Bolo and Rottytops being able to bring her back. Risky lampshades it during Pirate's Queen Curse.
    Risky: Bah! I should have dealt with those FRIENDS of yours first!
  • Nega-Shantae plays it straight during Friends to the End. She tries to make Sly, Bolo, and Rottytops give up and lose hope by making them think she killed Shantae. It only drives them to defeat her more.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Navarre from Shin Megami Tensei IV isn't necessarily "evil" so much as "classist douchebag", but when he and some of his friends try to lure Flynn, a Casualry, into a trap, one of his subordinates sees Luxurors Jonathan and Isabeau come to Flynn's aid, and can't comprehend why a Luxuror would come to the aid of a Casualry. Jonathan points out that the role of a Samurai is to help out others, regardless of their social standing.
  • While Krishna from Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse is whole-heartedly justified to rebel against YHVH, the ways he goes about it makes him no better than Merkabah or Lucifer since he's basically giving people one of two choices: join him and the rest of the Divine Powers or be left to rot in the wake of his new world.
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: A misogynist and bigoted villain, General Tsao views things like loyalty and friendship as beneath him, and believes that having obedient servants are better than having loved ones and friends. Sly Cooper and his friends prove him spectacularly wrong.
• Soulcalibur V: Final Boss Elysium, the soul of Soul Calibur cannot understand why anti-hero turned true hero Patroklos refuses to kill his sister Pyrrha even though she's become a Malfested. After she is slain in the final battle, her last words are "I don't understand."
• Star Control: Evil in general doesn't seem to have any real problems with understanding good. The Neo-Dnyarri gets bitten in the ass by self-serving pointlessly cruel evil not being able to get honourable evil, though: it sends you against the most powerful race in the region to get killed. That would be fine... except that race happens to have been enslaved by the Dnyarri and with the sort of sense of honor that would let you just leave the area unmolested (once) for warning them about the Dnyarri returning.
• Street Fighter:
  • M.Bison, having discarded all goodness from his soul, naturally can't fathom any heroism or goodness from the World Warriors. This is best demonstrated during the final fight with Ryu in A Shadow Falls , when Bison demands to know about Mu no Ken, the power Ryu used to defeat Necali.
    M.Bison: You had the power to actually defeat that beast! Now show it to me!
    Ryu: This power is not to defeat. This is the power to push forward!
    M.Bison: Humph! Power is just power.
  • Vega, The Fighting Narcissist, considers beauty the only thing of value in life, and everything short of that is ugly and weak. Many of the heroes (especially Chun-Li) point out to Vega in their win quotes against him that his callousness and sadism makes his soul just as hideous on the inside as fair as he is on the outside.
  • Juri Han can't comprehend anything beyond fighting, hurting people and the pleasure she gets from both those things. She only gets disgusted at All-Loving Hero Elena offering to be her friend, saying she only wants "playthings". In A Shadow Falls, Juri gets super annoyed at Rashid (another benevolent hero) refusing to fight her saying if he won't then he can just die, showing how much violence dictates her life. Also, at the sight of Cammy being forced to knock out her Brainwashed and Crazy sister Decapre, she just cruelly laughs "at the show".
  • Akuma, while a Noble Demon at his best, still fails to understand why his brother Gouken and Ryu choose the non-murderous variant of the Ansatsuken. He is also baffled at why Ryu rejects The Dark Side i.e Satsui no Hado, as he can't imagine a martial arts life based on benevolence rather than strength. In SFV after beating Ryu, Akuma just gets confused and angry over Ryu smiling while laying on the ground and disregards the wisdom Ryu tries to impart, since it doesn't gel with his power-guided philosophy.
  • Both Dark Messiah Gill and The Dragon Urien from The Illuminati can't comprehend the wholesome qualities of others in relation to themselves, only deeming them as weak and pointless. Urien is so forthright in his non-understanding of goodness, he claims to Anakaris that respect from subjects is useless for a ruler. In A Shadow Falls, when Rashid prevents him from killing Charlie —who rightly points out he's already beaten him— Urien disregards Rashid's words, only infuriated that a "commoner" like Rashid dares touch him. Gill isn't too better as for all his seraphic mannerisms, he still looks down his nose at genuine goodness. In SFV, he considers Akira's desires for justice and to protect loved ones as nothing more than "trite passions" and writes off Ibuki's desire to find friends and love as "mere trivialities".
• Super Paper Mario: Dimentio simply thought that, after the heroes used up the Pure Hearts to defeat Count Bleck, they would be gone for good, thus meaning the only threat to him after backstabbing a weakened Count Bleck and gaining the Chaos Heart would be forever gone. As such, he ends up legitimately surprised when the Pure Hearts return (thanks to the love between Bleck, Tippi/Timpani, and his followers) and remove his invulnerability.
• A very common theme found in the antagonists of Super Robot Wars V, aside Love Makes You Evil. Subverted with Leonard Testarossa. After witnessing Embryo and what he was planning to do, he realizes what he's been doing and hates everything he's done. Unfortunately for him, Redemption Equals Death.
• Sword of Paladin: Anguis admits he cannot understand the mindset of people who have goals in life other than "kill or be killed." Unlike most examples, Anguis wants to understand good, but struggles to do so because he was forced to grow up in a loveless environment. He becomes obsessed with Nade because he knows the latter is his antithesis and is his only hope of understanding greater goals.
• Happens during the Very Definitely Final Dungeon in Tales of Symphonia, where the Big Bad Lord Yggdrasil kidnaps the party except for Lloyd and attempts to Mind Rape them by torturing them with their personal demons (all of which Yggdrasil can also relate to, as he's suffering from the same kind as them.) Lloyd manages to find them and help them confront and overcome each of them (involving forgiveness, courage, and acceptance), leaving Yggdrasil dumbfounded each time.
• In Transformers: Devastation, Megatron doesn't understand why Optimus and the Autobots would fight so hard for a planet that's not even theirs, especially one inhabited by lowly organics. At the end, after being defeated in their final battle, Megatron reveals he's rigged the Ferrotaxis so that the only way to stop the Insecticons from cyberforming Earth is to destroy it, firmly believing Optimus wouldn't sacrifice years of Cybertronian culture just to save a lowly backwater planet. Predictably, Optimus proves him wrong and destroys the Ferrotaxis, much to Megatron's shock.
• Flowey in the Neutral ending of Undertale: After defeating his One-Winged Angel form and freeing the SOULs he had enslaved, you are given the choice to execute him or spare him. If you choose to spare him, he forces you to re-confirm your choice several times, all the while pointing out that he is the ultimate cause of everything bad that had happened to you, and threatens to kill you and everyone you love. Continue selecting MERCY, and he'll finally scream that he doesn't understand why you're doing this, before running away in tears. Mercy, apparently, is a foreign concept to this character. It's ultimately revealed that, as The Soulless, Flowey had become outright physically incapable of empathy or any kind of feeling for others, and eventually chose to rationalize a "kill or be killed" philosophy.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: If the player character's Humanity falls low enough, they try to Blackmail the newly-turned Lily over an incident where she lost control of her Horror Hunger and killed a man, then immediately tell the story to her boyfriend "E". They are then completely flummoxed when E shows Lily compassion and tells the PC where to shove their false moralizing.
• Warcraft:
  • Completely inverted with Sargeras, the creator and leader of the Burning Legion. Originally belonging to a race of god-like beings called the Titans, he and his kind traveled throughout the cosmos to bring order to worlds; they were so powerful they defeated the Old Gods, the Eldritch Abominations of Azeroth, and created the dragons to become the world's stewards. While defeating and imprisoning the demons of the Twisting Nether, their evil caused Sargeras to question the Titans' quest for order. He was driven into depression after witnessing the chaos wrought by the demons, especially after defeating the vampiric Nathrezim, whose manipulative bastardy on various worlds affected him deeply. Eventually, he went completely off the rails with the belief that the Titans' quest for order was essentially wrong, given that he saw the Universe as intrinsically chaotic and evil. The last the Titans saw him, Sargeras had freed the demons he had personally previously imprisoned, made them a part of his army, and sent his Burning Legion to bring war upon the Universe, putting into action the corruption of the Draenei and Orcs, the birth of the Lich King, and the multiple near-destruction of Azeroth itself. An example of Good Cannot Comprehend Evil taken to epic proportions.
  • Then again, the Legion itself seems time and time again to be unable to comprehend mortal beings. They never seem to consider the possibility of mortals putting aside their hatreds for each other to fight the Legion, nor did they predict that the Lich King would turn against them instead of submitting to his new position as a tool of the Legion (essentially, a lesser being defying them).
  • Played with by the Nathrezim, who are cunning enough to wage warfare at a distance, stoking up conflict between factions to distract them from the real threat, and manipulate useful pawns to enact their will with plausible deniability. This does not stop them from making slip-ups of this variety on occasion. One happens when their leader, Mal'Ganis, assumes Evil Prince-in-training Arthas won't exact revenge on him for leading the destruction of Arthas' homeland of Lordaeron and forcing him into a Sadistic Choice at the town of Stratholme, since Arthas' soul was just consumed by his new weapon, Frostmourne. But having no soul does not prevent Arthas from enacting his revenge upon his opponent. At all.
  • A particularly famous example occurs when Grom Hellscream stands against Mannoroth, the demon whose blood he drank on two separate occasions, setting the stage for his clan — and separately, his race — to become thralls of Mannoroth's demon masters. After swatting aside Grom's brother-in-arms Thrall, Mannoroth boasts about the part he played in Grom's corruption and mockingly declares they are the same. (Mannoroth was a tyrannical ruler of his race who willing joined the Legion and served as a frontline commander during the War of the Ancients.) In a dramatic moment equal parts Big "NO!" and Shut Up, Hannibal!, Grom buries his axe deep into Mannoroth's chest at the cost of his own life, a clear statement that they are not.
• Warframe: The Orokin, constantly and repeatedly. They created the warframes (by infesting human hosts with the Technocyte Plague, which gave them incredible strength but left them in horrific pain) to fight the Sentients, but couldn't control them. They tried all sorts of physical and psychological torture, but nothing worked. Eventually, with no other options, they used the children who had been aboard the Zariman 10-0. The Orokin assumed that the children would use their strange Void powers to break the warframes, but instead they simply empathized with the warframes and shared their pain, allowing them to work together as the Tenno. The Orokin were baffled but set them against the Sentients anyway. After they won, the Orokin were completely blindsided by the Tenno turning on them as revenge for the many many terrible things the Orokin had done.
• The Xeno metaseries created by Monolith Soft is full of such examples.
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Zanza expresses disappointment that Shulk and company reject his offer of friendship. Shulk responds that Zanza doesn't understand what friendship truly is because what he thinks is actually absolute loyalty so that he can use people as a food source.
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, 500 years before the events of the main game, during its prequel, Torna: The Golden Country, Malos believes that humans subconsciously want to die, and has thus made it his mission to destroy the world. When finally confronted near the end of the DLC, he expresses shock at you coming to fight him, saying that he thought the heroes “would have jumped ship with the rest of the rats.” By the time of the main game, he still wants to destroy the world, but it’s for a more personal reason, and he himself has formed bonds with other people.
    • The other main villain of Xenoblade 2, Praetor Amalthus, the leader of the Indoline Praetorium who is also Malos's Driver, is an inversion of this trope. Whereas Malos starts off unable to understand why anyone would form bonds and show courage and later grows to understand these things, Amalthus was a good person who lost faith in humanity. By the time of the main game, he is unable to understand why anyone would see Blades as anything more than tools to be used to accomplish one’s goals, even saying at one point, “Blades cannot live alongside people. They are mere tools!”
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, one of the Hero Quests involves returning a soldier to Colony 0, which turns out to be a secret black ops unit under direct Moebius control that works behind the scenes of the Forever War to keep it running. Its Consul, Moebius F introduces the party to the rest of the unit, in a bid to show good faith to the Ouroboros (as he had agreed to stop sending assassins after them if they brought the soldier back to him). He exalts the Colony's role in the war, which offends the party, especially Sena (who had been bonding with the soldier while she was under their care). F evidently doesn't realise that the Ouroboros are patently against the war's perpetuation on a fundamental level, as he is surprised by this reaction. He insists that he cares about Colony 0's soldiers, singing their praises on how they sacrifice themselves for Moebius in the same breath.

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