Often, to preserve balance, characters who are supposedly very strong or weak in the story will still be roughly on par with other characters in gameplay. Sometimes averted by a SNK Boss or Joke Character.
- In BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, no matter how many times you activate Ragna's Blood Kain in gameplay, it doesn't count in the story until a certain cutscene in the True Ending. And no matter how hard you lay the curbstomping on Hazama/Terumi in Arcade Mode, he is still just warming up.
- In Dead or Alive, certain characters are shown using weapons in cutscenes that they can't actually use in battle, such as Hayate's bow and arrow or Eliot's niuweidao. A few like Kasumi and Hayabusa even have said weapons as costume accessories, but still cannot use them outside of cutscenes.
- In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Hinokami Chronicles, CC2 completely discards the notion that all elements within the Breathing Styles are not actually real, as several Ultimates and specific attacks are clearly inflicting elemental damage on the scenery and the opponent, specific examples being Zenitsu's Thunderclap and Flash — Six-Fold gaining an addition thunder strike as a finisher, and Tanjiro's boss battle against Rengoku's spirit being able to greatly extend the lenght of his sword reach with flames.
- Dragon Ball Z games: Multiple:
- Averted rather oddly in Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3 with Yamcha. Likely as a Shout-Out to his death in the manga, and a similar death in the story mode, Yamcha is programmed to die instantly during a fight if a Saibamen opponent manages to use its Suicide Attack on him regardless of his health, while every other fighter will survive it if they have enough health. This is also the only attack in the game which will instantly kill the person it was used on like it did in the anime.
- A recurring factor in any game that has a story mode is that you have to play through most of the fights that happen in the series. The issue is that it's entirely possible that the difficulty won't match what "should" happen: your character should be able to win the fight in their sleep, but it's infuriatingly difficult, only to then continue on like nothing happened; alternately, you win a fight in 13 seconds with a "PERFECT!" rating, only to immediately view a cutscene with your character on the edge of death and the enemy wondering "Is that all?"
- When he appears in fighting games, Future Gohan always has both his arms, despite the fact that his most iconic trait is him losing his left arm against the Androids. It gets even stranger with cases such as Raging Blast 2, where Future Gohan's fighting style is specifically programmed only to use his right arm (such as performing one-handed versions of his signature attacks, the Masenko and Kamehameha). This is believed to be because of censorship issues in Japan relating to characters losing limbs; various Dragon Ball games developed in America don't have this problem.
- A related phenomenon is how DBZ games will try to preserve iconic moments from the original manga and anime even if they don't make sense in the context of the games. For example, Gohan's Father-Son Kamehameha was originally performed one-handed because Cell broke his left arm beforehand. Every time the attack appears in a video game, Gohan still performs it with only his right arm, despite the fact that there's absolutely nothing wrong with his left arm, and he can (and will) use it both before and after performing that one attack.
- In pretty much any game where you fight Freeza as Super Saiyan Goku, he's likely going to be a very tough fight, whether he's the Final Boss, the Climax Boss, or the Disc-One Final Boss. This is despite the actual fight in the series having been a Curb Stomp Cushion at best in Goku's favor. SS2 Gohan versus Cell also does this on occasion, though Legacy of Goku 2 averted this by making that part of the fight a Zero-Effort Boss instead.
- In the story mode of the first Budokai game, certain characters will transform and will start the fight in that state. However, they can still lose their transformations if they lose enough energy and get knocked down. From a gameplay perspective, this is perfectly normal. From a story perspective, it makes no sense and it makes even less sense when, for a example, a character that entered their Super Mode before the fight starts will still be in that form after the fight is over whether or not they lost that form during the battle.
- Dragon Ball Fighter Z:
- The game justifies the Power Creep, Power Seep problems inherent in a competitive fighting game by having the story involve energy waves disrupting the fighters' power. Although Beerus isn't hampered by them in-story despite being a playable character, dialogue implies that he's deliberately holding back; one of his most powerful attacks is a Finger Poke of Doom.
- One of the major traits of Captain Ginyu's Body Change ability in the original series was that he could not copy the techniques and skills of whoever he was swapped with; doing it to Goku resulted in him being almost crippled because he didn't have the training Goku had put his body through. In-game, a bodyswapped Ginyu has full access to any of the techniques of his opponent and doesn't get any weaker for it. (Of course, this is somewhat modeled by the fact that Ginyu's player may not have mastered those techniques.) Additionally, the person who's been a victim of Body Change can't use Body Change or any of Ginyu's "call in the Ginyu Force"-type moves — this makes sense, as his troops would naturally not follow the orders of an enemy, and Body Change is tied to Ginyu's spirit rather than his body. However, the person who used Body Change can't use those moves either while in a new body. This is likely because it'd result in a post-bodyswap Ginyu being able to use all his best moves and all the opponent's moves, and being severely overpowered as a result (not to mention the question of when his moves share inputs with an opponent's).
- Vegeta's main trait in the series is that he's a guy who prefers to fight solo, hates teamwork, and is usually the first one to try to get into combat. In-game, he's actually generally best as a support character, throwing out assist attacks from the back row.
- Some characters, including Adult Gohan and Blue Gogeta, will seemingly power down for certain moves, due to them having been Super Saiyan when they used them, despite having access to much stronger forms.
- Dissidia Final Fantasy:
- In the cutscene before the final battle, all ten of the heroes line up in front of Chaos to fight him. You then proceed into a three-round, one-on-one battle. Somewhat mitigated in the sequel/prequel, when you enter the battle with four more party members that can take your initial character's place if/when they die, plus one Assist Character, who is chosen at random from the remaining five heroes.
- In the final chapter of Scenario 013 in 012, the boss cutscenes show the Chaos's warriors being challenged and after a battle being defeated by their Cosmos counterparts. Despite this, you can challenge them with any character and you'll still see the cutscenes. In the first game, this was averted; you had to have the character relating to the boss to get both cutscenes, which means you'd have to memorize who's in what chapter and do it multiple times with each character.
- During gameplay, the Emperor's ground Flare is a painfully slow, homing projectile, yet in Chapter 4 of the 12th cycle in Dissidia 012, he fires one at Yuna during a cutscene that flies out much faster than usual. If that's how the Flares worked gameplay-wise, the Emperor would easily be one of the most broken characters in the game.
- In the "Clucking Doom" stage from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (2006), the level's final round has the player and their opponents try to fight each other while jumping across buses fleeing from a giant chicken. In story mode, the cutscene that plays upon beating the level shows Billy, Mandy, Irwin, and Grim on one of the buses regardless of whether or not the player has made it to that part of the level by the time they beat all the opponents.
- Any time the Gundam franchise has been put into a fighting game (such as Battle Assault or the Gundam Vs Series) this has happened, as weapons that shredded enemy mecha in a single hit in the anime will now simply do a healthy amount of damage. Weapons like Wing Zero's twin buster riflenote , the Double X's twin satellite cannonnote or the ∀ Gundam's Moonlight Butterflynote are not only survivable, but can be completely blocked by a mundane shield. The Vs. Series does attempt to retain some semblance of anime-accuracy with its built-in Character Tiers, which makes it so that Mooks like the Zaku II have fewer Hit Points and weaker attacks than protagonist-piloted Gundams, but can respawn more often. However, even low-tier machines can be devastating in the right hands, which is itself true to the franchise's roots (just ask Bernard "Bernie" Wiseman, who, though at the cost of his own life, managed to kill a Gundam with an almost-unarmed Zaku II).
- Injustice: Gods Among Us: everyone in the game that doesn't already have Super-Toughness has their durability improved by Kryptonian nanotech pills, making them as strong as Superman. This should mean that Batman's batarangs and Green Arrow's arrows, for example, should merely bounce off their opponent's body, but they're somehow still able to deal damage. One cutscene even shows the Joker No Selling getting shot by a machine gun, but gun users can still hurt him in-game. And fights that take place before the characters obtain these pills still happen as if they were super strong: in the first chapter, Batman can kick The Joker hard enough to send him flying upwards through several ceilings and walls of a large building (or have the same done to him), and while this does inflict a good amount of damage, the opponent can easily survive this and still be in fighting shape.
- In Kanon, Akiko Minase gets run over by a car. In Eternal Fighter Zero, she can pick up cars and slam them onto her opponents.
- In Marvel Super Heroes, end boss Thanos will have a brief exchange with the player character before fighting them. If you fight Thanos as Blackheart, Blackheart will talk about wanting to use the Infinity Gauntlet to take the throne of Hell from his father Mephisto... who just so happens to be standing RIGHT THERE in the stage's background.
- Marvel vs. Capcom:
- For gameplay purposes, there is a RIDICULOUS amount of Power Creep, Power Seep. Human martial artists (albeit ones with Charles Atlas Superpowers), police officers, and even lawyers can withstand attacks from superpowered characters who can level buildings with a single punch or slice through any known substance in their source material.
- Marvel vs. Capcom 3:
- Magneto will taunt Wolverine (whose skeleton is metal-plated) and Arthur (a literal Knight in Shining Armor) during the match intro, pointing out how foolish it is for them to face someone with Magnetism Manipulation powers. Despite this, he does not have any special advantages over them during gameplay, or any of the other characters who happen to be made of metal like Iron Man and Zero.
- Phoenix Wright's strongest Limit Break has him accuse his opponent of a crime, then present evidence proving their guilt. Putting aside that Wright is a defense attorney (who, in his games, hunts down the guilty party mainly because it happens to be the best way to get the defendant off the hook), this also works against characters who would presumably fall outside the jurisdiction of any court, such as Eldritch Abominations and Physical Gods, and characters like Haggar and himself who are unlikely to have committed any serious, prosecutable crimes.
- Melty Blood also has notable balancing effects on the characters due to their remarkable powers in the original visual novel. Shiki Tohno has the power to kill anything with a pocket knife — including a building — but in the game, it's just a regular super move, albeit a damaging one. And he's weak compared to Arcueid, who in addition to having all the benefits of being a vampire without being undead, has a probability manipulation power called Marble Phantasm. At least half the main cast are petrified of her, but again in the game it's just a kinda-good super move. Both characters are balanced against each other. And also against Hisui. Who is a maid.
- Mortal Kombat:
- In general, the fact that Fatalities can be done in a fight between people who are supposed to be allies in the stories can come off as htis. As of Mortal Kombat X, this even extends to the character's own kids.
- Taken to extremes in Mortal Kombat 3, where one of Smoke's fatalities is him blowing up the entire planet. Not only does this count as a victory for Smoke, but the game moves onto the next match like nothing happened.
- In Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Scorpion and Sub-Zero are unlockable as player characters in the Story Mode. Unfortunately, neither of them actually has a storyline and the game just acts as if you're playing as default protagonists Liu Kang and Kung Lao, even when you're fighting Boss Battles against Sub-Zero and Scorpion. The DLC characters in Mortal Kombat 9 play a similar role. While they all have Arcade Ladder endings, none of them contribute to the canonical story (Skarlet cameos in crowds a few times, Kenshi is called to fight at the end of one of the chapters but never directly seen, Rain is given a background cameo in The Cathedral stage, Guest Fighters Kratos and Freddy Krueger add nothing at all to the plot).
- In Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, after a game of Let's You and Him Fight Superman and Raiden finally put aside their differences, realize there's a greater enemy to face, and turn, together, to fight Dark Khan in unison. You then proceed to fight him alone, your ally having mysteriously vanished without a word of explanation.
- Some games resolve the problem of fatalities versus story by disabling them in story mode, but other extremely gruesome attacks such as the X-Ray moves and Krushing Blows are still allowed. Some fights are meant to be friendly sparring matches or a minor quarrel between allies, but you can still have Jax break Johnny Cage's spine in retaliation to him hitting on Sonya, or Johnny Cage brutally shatter his daughter Cassie's skull during a practice battle.
- Mortal Kombat 11:
- In one cutscene, Scorpion No Sells a sustained blast from Sektor's flamethrower seconds before the fight begins and he suddenly forgets how to be immune to fire.
- Mortal Kombat 11's story mode revolves around time travel, and it's established that if anything happens to a past version of someone, it will apply to their present-day self, such as past Johnny Cage getting grazed by a bullet and his present self suddenly sporting the scar. Despite this, Johnny can suffer injuries far worse than a grazing shot from a bullet, and his future self will remain unharmed. It's also stated numerous times that Cassie and Jacqui are in particular danger because if their parents' younger selves are killed, the girls will cease to exist due to the resulting Time Paradox undoing their births. Yet none of that applies to the versus mode or arcade ladders where Jacqui can perform fatalities on past Jax with impunity.
- Geras has Complete Immortality and Time Master powers: one cutscene shows Kung Lao decapitating him, only for him to immediately rewind himself back in time, reattaching his severed head and bringing him back to perfect health. In the end, defeating Geras requires wrapping him in chains and dropping him into the bottomless Sea of Blood. Of course, in any fight outside of story mode, characters can put Geras down for good with a simple Fatality, which he apparently forgot how to rewind himself from.
- In one story mode fight, Jax and Jacqui encounter Cetrion, an Elder God. The only way they can stand a chance against her is by using Kronika's crown. Outside of story mode, these two fighters (and anyone else for that matter) are evenly matched with the Physical Goddess.
- The Terminator appears as a guest fighter. A number of fatalities would not, in Terminator canon, be enough to kill the famously resilient Terminator, but nonetheless are enough to finish the match.
- Mortal Kombat 1:
- Stryker's kameo throw incorporates blinding his opponent with his flashlight. This still works on Kenshi, who is blind.
- In the Soul Series, one can unlock the Soul Edge as a weapon for any character. It may have a negative effect like random stats or depleting your HP, but it does not drive you crazy unless your character actually uses it in a cutscene. In some endgame cutscenes, it's possible to watch your character use their Soul Edge that you unlocked to destroy the Soul Edge dropped by the final enemy; or throw their Soul Edge away, pick up the other, and get corrupted.
- Street Fighter: Multiple:
- The special moves "Hadouken" (Surging Fist), "Shoryuken" (Rising Dragon Punch), and "Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku" (Hurricane Kick) are moves with the potential to severely injure opponents (Ryu's Shoryuken left Sagat heavily scarred, for example, although that particular incident was exceptional). These moves are toned-down versions of the original "murderous techniques" (which Gouki/Akuma uses and Gouken knows) that can actually kill an opponent (the "Gou Hadoken", "Gou Shoryuken", and the "Tatsumaki Zanku Kyaku"). Since it would obviously be unfair to make any move lethal, all of this is heavily toned down in the games itself. The canonical power of the moves limits their frequency in anime versions, promoting the Hadouken (for example) from "something Ryu routinely throws out fifty times in two minutes" to "final, fight-ending strike of destiny".
- Lampshaded by the "Shin (True) Shoryuken". It's a massive, destructive super, a good indication of the kind of damage the technique does when the gloves come off.
- The infamous scarring Shoryuken deserves special mention, as it not only struck one of the least vulnerable parts of the human body (especially for a massive bruiser like Sagat), judging by the length of the scar, it didn't even connect solidly. Sagat would be in considerable pain but shouldn't have been defeated at that moment. In Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, where Ryu's fight with Sagat is seen in the opening, Sagat isn't defeated by the Shoryuken; he charges at Ryu in a rage, prompting Ryu to charge up a Hadoken to finish him.
- It's worth noting that while they're fairly weak from Street Fighter II onwards, in the first game, the special moves were very powerful, with a successful hit knocking a third of an opponent's health off. Each hit was also rated from one to three stars, and this acted as a damage multiplier; it was entirely possible to one-shot someone with ridiculous luck.
- Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu attack only seems to kill opponents in the story. This indirectly led to one of the most surreal moments in the series. In the special ending for Street Fighter III 2nd Impact, Gill (who'd just been SGS-ed by Akuma) does his Resurrection. In other words, an attack that doesn't actually kill, but did in that particular instance, was foiled by a power that doesn't actually allow one to return from the dead, but did in that particular instance.
- Dhalsim and Oro are very powerful according to the storyline. However, that power doesn't translate into gameplay unless a person really knows how to control them. Nobody got it worse than Oni; at least the original Akuma used to be a terror, and even the watered-down playable version had a truckload of combos and a withering pressure game. Oni, supposedly Akuma's ultimate form, has only a few effective combos, does piffling damage, and takes about 50% more damage than anyone else. In his debut. After he got buffed, he became decidedly more effective at doing what he was meant to do (applying suffocating, unrelenting offensive pressure and turning hit confirms into lengthy, showy, and highly damaging combos), but his poor health and stun, generally lackluster defensive options and poor standing in fireball wars, and heavy reliance on meter kept him relegated to mid tier.
- Ingrid is described as a literal goddess, who can transfer people between universes, and the true master of M.Bison's Psycho Power. In the game, she's an unremarkable character who throws sparkles a lot, and her moves that use magical power are much less effective and powerful than Bison's.
- Super Smash Bros.:
- Character reveal trailers tend to portray newcomers dealing with ease against multiple fighters, whereas in-game balancing means that no single character is able to take on a whole crowd of opponents single-handed. The most noticeable example of this is Sephiroth who, while in his series of origin is a borderline Physical God who is infamously hard to take down, in his reveal trailer easily disposes of Galeem, the Big Bad who is an Eldritch Abomination that in the adventure mode's story erased the entire universe and captured the other fighters. In gameplay, Sephiroth doesn't have an easier time taking down Galeem than anyone else.
- Palutena is a literal goddess, and in her reveal trailer exhibits the use of many powers from her home series as part of her moveset. In her debut as a playable fighter in the Wii U and 3DS games, though, she's considered one of the least competitively viable fighters. Subverted in Ultimate, where she has been greatly buffed and is universally regarded as a viable top- or high-tier character, thus bringing her more in line with her canonical power level.
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl: In the cutscene in The Subspace Emissary where Ganondorf takes control of them and turns them against the heroes, the R.O.B. Sentries are seen firing Eye Beams similar to those used by the R.O.B. Blasters. This is the only time when they're shown to be able to do so, and they never use this attack when fought as enemies.
- Tekken: In Tekken 6's Scenario Campaign mode, you can use any character you want for the gameplay portion. The cutscenes, however, prominently feature both Lars and Alisa, the latter replaced later by Raven.
- WWE games with career modes fall victim to this. Your status as a face or heel is solely dependent on the choices you make during storyline cutscenes, meaning your actual behavior in the ring is entirely irrelevant. For example, you may play your matches dirty, doing things such as using weapons, removing turnbuckle pads, delivering low bows, and taking advantage of the Easily-Distracted Referee, but as long as you make the corresponding decisions during cutscenes, the game will act as if you're a straight-up face. Some games will penalize you by taking away momentum (the stuff that lets you perform special moves) for using tactics that don't match your alignment. However, you can still do them at any time, and the storyline will never acknowledge it. Though losing momentum, especially considering the sheer amount that you lose, is a pretty powerful deterrent to breaking type. Unless it's a complete mismatch, you need those finishers.
- WWE career modes every now and then like to have you beat an opponent, and then have them get back up and pin your wrestler in the following cutscene, or some such thing. It should be a normal part of kayfabe, except that you're then stuck with a real loss that goes on your wrestler's statistics record, even though you put in the effort of winning the friggin' match. In the later games, particularly the Smackdown vs. Raw series, the losing cutscene has a requisite that's actually easier than winning a match of that type (cover for a 2-count, set a ladder anywhere pretty close to the belt and climb, etc.). Afterward, the game will say that you lost, but you get the normal reward for a win and the loss isn't counted in your stats; at worst, it's a no-contest. Weird league, weird trope, weird gaming moments.
