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Hidden Depths / Visual Novels

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Hidden Depths in Visual Novels.

  • Ace Attorney:
    • Detective Gumshoe is incredibly incompetent as an investigator, and his salary is so low the police hire him more out of pity than anything else. However, he's popular with the recruits, looks after the police dog Missile, is a relentless Determinator, fiercely loyal to his friends, able to stand up to a room full of mafia men and survive, and always manages to find that one crucial clue when the heroes need it most. One of his songs is called 'I can do it when it counts, pal!'
    • Miles Edgeworth starts out as a typical evil rival to Phoenix Wright, but after Character Development, he becomes a kindhearted man dedicated to justice and discovering the truth, even sometimes willing to break the law he so thoroughly upholds if it means taking down the bad guys. He also has a huge (though secret) obsession with the Steel Samurai.
    • The Judge is probably the biggest Cloud Cuckoolander in the entire series, and seemingly Took a Level in Dumbass at the end of every game, since he kept getting flanderized into being progressively dumber. That said, the Judge takes the law very seriously, and will always go for a chance to discover the truth, no matter how small. And, as much as the courts are clearly working off of "guilty until proven innocent," the Judge will let a lot go if there's even a slight doubt as to the defendant's guilt. Finally, he has a very profound monologue at the end of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney about the law constantly changing to suit what humans view as "good" at any one time.
    • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies:
      • Juniper Woods seems like a standard Shrinking Violet when first introduced as the defendant in the first case. In the third case, however, it's revealed that she's one of the top students of the Judge course at a prestigious academy for aspiring lawyers, as well as Student Council President. She's still emotionally vulnerable, but better at hiding it while on the job.
      • Juniper's friends, Robin and Hugh. The former is seemingly a Hot-Blooded boy, but is actually a girl with gender identity issues due to being Raised as the Opposite Gender. The latter is seemingly an Insufferable Genius, but he realizes that his parents bribed the school for his grades, and hates himself to the point where he'd willingly accept Juniper and Robin hating him and/or go to prison to protect Juniper.
  • Amnesia: Memories
    • Shin comes across like a Fetishized Abuser, but he's actually a very nice guy and his words are all just based on Brutal Honesty because he would only be like that to those that he thinks can improve themselves. He also quite enjoys studying and learning new things.
    • Ikki may appear to be nothing but a casanova that changes girlfriends every few months, but he turns out to actually be looking for a long-term, meaningful relationship. There's also him admitting how his gaze has broken his ability to have a normal interaction with women (because they fall in love with him) and men (because they hate him for getting all the women). He's also studying to become an accountant.
    • Toma hides beneath his friendly demeanor a resentful side, full of his unadmitted or even unrequited feelings for the heroine. He proves himself capable of injuring her, albeit not intentionally, and imprisoning her in his home under a misguided attempt of keeping her safe from danger. Though the worst of this side of his is only in the Heart and Diamond worlds, with other worlds focusing on his good side and revealing his earnest side of wanting to be a good older brother figure to the heroine and Shin.
  • In Crown Delights Deli, Jules and Mr. Javier are surprised to discover that the serious construction worker, Maverick, likes cracking jokes whenever he visits the bodega.
  • This is the point of Danganronpa's Free Time Events, where the main character can spend time merely hanging out with other characters and learn that all of them, even the most assholish, have better sides to their personality. Usually, beating the game will offer an alternate mode where Everybody Lives, allowing you to progress all FTEs that you didn't have time to in the main game.
    • Byakuya Togami is indeed a haughty prick, but his main drive to succeed is in respect for his half-siblings, whom he competed against. He can't stand people saying his talent was just being an Upper-Class Twit because that would mean they lost to an Upper-Class Twit, while there's no shame in losing to the absolute best.
    • Hifumi Yamada looks like a stereotypical nerd, but his free time events reveal that the reason he loves his magical girl anime so much is because his favorite show saved his life earlier, and he draws doujin because he wants to get other kids into fandom so it can give them inspiration like it gave him.
    • Mondo Oowada is currently a delinquent biker, but he wants to be a carpenter so he can build things rather than destroy them. Also, he once had a Maltese dog as a pet. He also has severe survivor's guilt and inadequacy issues relating to his brother, and respects Chihiro's strength in being willing to confront his flaws.
    • Despite Sakura Oogami's talent as a martial artist, she doesn't consider herself the World's Best Warrior because she has never been able to beat her boyfriend Kenichiro... and she probably never will be, because he has a terminal illness and probably won't even live to see her graduate high school.
    • Aoi Asahina worries that her love of sports is causing her to lose touch with her femininity.
    • Junko has misgivings about her single-minded devotion to her dream and a massive crush on Makoto. Well, Mukuro Ikusaba always wondered if she could do something different with her life besides being someone's soldier, and she has a crush on Makoto. Junko's real hidden depths are that she's a sadomasochistic maniac.
    • Kiyotaka Ishimaru's extreme rigidity is because he believes that talent is meaningless if you don't work for what you have, and his determination to succeed comes from his desire to restore his family's good name after his ultra-talented grandfather got cocky and ruined his own reputation. He also desperately desires friends, but his hyperfocus on his studies means he's got no idea how to go about making any.
    • Kyoko Kirigiri's depths are unique in that they're explored as part of the main story; she has a rocky relationship with her father, the headmaster, because he left her life when she was young (actually because her granddad forced him to leave so he could make her a detective according to family tradition, but Kirigiri has only ever heard her grandfather's side of the story), and the reason she's in school is because she wanted to formally cut ties with him so people wouldn't pity her for not having a father, and she's visibly shaken when she learns that her father really did love her, but died before she found out.
    • Nagito Komaeda is extremely lonely and desperately wants friends, but if his erratic attitude doesn't drive them away, they bear the brunt of his Unluckily Lucky nature (for example, his childhood dog died saving him from being hit by a car, and a meteor killed his parents along with the people hijacking their plane).
    • Teruteru Hanamura worked in his mother's restaurant prior to entering Hope's Peak, and he wants off the island to check on her health.
    • Gundham's Large Ham chuuni attitude hides that he's a kindhearted boy who genuinely loves his animals.
    • Most of Akane's goofy quirks are actually the result of her Dark and Troubled Past; she's used to molestation, people died or left her life so frequently she never bothered to remember names, and she's a Big Eater because she suffered food uncertainty.
    • The reason Nekomaru is a coach instead of an athlete is that he suffers from a heart condition that prevents him from actually participating in sports himself and will probably kill him young; he coaches in memory of a friend with a similar condition who died before he could see his team succeed. On a lighter note, he's probably so obsessed with defacation because constipation is often a side effect of heart medication.
    • Miu's crass, tactless antics and penchant for boasting about her good looks are an attempt to cover up that she is, in reality, a lonely Shrinking Violet with an Inferiority Superiority Complex and severe abandonment issues. Despite her efforts to portray herself as the sluttiest girl in the school, she wants actual love more than just sex, insisting on going on a date first and even baking some treats for Shuichi (Shuichi himself notes that the baked goods are of very professional quality). Keebo's posthumous assessment of Miu's personality is that she hid a childlike innocence beneath her crass persona, and Haruka Ishida, her Japanese voice actress, describes Miu as a fundamentally adorable girl who has very extreme sides. Miu also showcases a tenderness when being Monotaro's "mom".
  • Daughter for Dessert:
    • The naive Lainie eventually hatched a shrewd plan in order to get the protagonist the startup capital he needed for his business.
    • Subverted with Amanda. Her stories are popular in the erotica circuit, but according to Heidi, the objective quality of the stories isn’t that good.
  • Everyone in Doki Doki Literature Club! has more depth than their initial tropes suggest. Natsuki and Yuri are inspired by the Tsundere and Shrinking Violet tropes, respectively, but they at the very least play them with a lot of nuance. However, the really surprising things come with the other two girls in the Literature Club:
    • Sayori: A clumsy, cheerful ray of sunshine? Well sure, but she's been depressed all her life, and keeps it hidden and focuses on making everyone happy because she can't stand anyone worrying about her. That's also why she's so messy and a late sleeper...
    • Monika: A Nice Girl and Only Sane Woman who's doing well in life and always looks out for her friends? Sure, that's how she would be... if she hadn't been driven into desperation and extreme acts by the revelation that's behind this game taking a Genre Shift into horror.
  • A couple of examples in Double Homework:
    • Henry is skilled at Gather: The Magicking, though in general, he is the dumbest of the dumb.
    • Morgan, the hard-edged former gang leader who has a soft spot for fantasy, is actually a decent writer.
  • Tsugumi of Ever17 is quite obviously not all she appears. First she seems like a total jerkass but since she's rather attractive and around the same age as the hero, we assume tsundere. But then she's mean to everyone, except when she isn't so then maybe she has a Sugar-and-Ice Personality. Finally, Humanizing Tears, Broken Bird, Who Wants to Live Forever?, Properly Paranoid, Defrosting Ice Queen and a good many other tropes to finally show who Tsugumi really is.
  • All the FOIL members in Fleuret Blanc present themselves as pretty simple, shallow stereotypes at first. However, they all reveal themselves to have complex pasts and outlooks if you take the time to talk to them.
    • Odon is a calm, laid-back monk who doesn't seem to care about anything. He wasn't always like that; he became a delinquent as a young man after his family's fortune was swindled, and based his current persona on his wife, who helped him through that rough time. Then she died, sending him into a relapse. He is still deeply uncertain about his life direction, and his calm persona is mostly a front that he desperately clings to. You can find hints of this early on, as there's one scene where you can see him drowning himself in liquor — odd behavior for a monk, no?
    • Masque is a strange, taciturn man who at first appears to be nondescript, unapproachable Dumb Muscle. However, he is actually highly knowledgeable about masks, and collects them in an attempt to preserve the cultural history that surrounds them. If you manage to actually bring up the subject, he becomes quite the chatterbox.
  • Virtually everybirdie in Hatoful Boyfriend has some of these; at a glance the whole cast seems to fit into otome game stereotypes, but digging deeper always produces something that runs counter to appearances. The heroine is a cheerfully bombastic Contemporary Cavewoman whose parents were killed when she was a child. Sweet crossdressing Childhood Friend Ryouta is taking care of his dying mother, very aware of mortality, and unnervingly possessive of Hiyoko. French Jerk Royal Brat Sakuya really likes music and has a terribly stern Fantasy-Forbidding Father who he's starting to doubt, and a secret core of actual integrity. Shy bookish Nageki is a ghost bound to the library, who is willing to sacrifice himself painfully to save people. Cloudcuckoolander Oko San... doesn't have much depth, but he has a sort of simple wisdom that makes him valuable in a crisis. Doctor Shuu is exactly as bad as he seems but has a The Lost Lenore thing going on, and appears to be pretty good with little kids, if Miru and Kaku are any indication. Talkative Loon Anghel is more aware of things than he seems and apparently can sense the future.
  • Heart of the Woods
    • Madison Raines initially comes off as mature and responsible compared to her best friend Tara Bryck, but she can be Not So Above It All at times, such as when she notices that the cabin where they're staying doesn't have wi-fi.
    • At the start of the visual novel, Madison has announced her decision to quit her job as manager for Tara's Vlog Series Taranormal, due to being exhausted by it. However, it turns out that she was more passionate about the show in the past, coming up with the name, convincing Tara to wear moon shirts, and even dropping out of college and quitting her barista job to devote more time to the series. Morgan Fischer is rather surprised to hear all this from Tara.
    • Abigail Dalsing, the ghost of a young woman who died 200 years ago, is rather prim and proper, as might be expected of a woman from the 19th century, but is rather eager about having sex with Madison, even dropping the f-bomb when she orgasms. Abigail also feels extremely guilty about feeling happy that Madison is able to be with her, since that happened as a result of Madison dying in a snowstorm and Abigail using most of her power to save Madison's soul.
    • Despite seeming like the most outgoing and confident of the main characters, Tara can be rather insecure and self-deprecating. It's also revealed that part of her cheerfulness is a facade, as she mentions that there were many times when she went on Taranormal with a smile despite feeling sick and/or tired
  • Highway Blossoms
    • Marina Hale initially comes off as childish and ditzy, but is surprisingly perceptive, often spotting her eventual girlfriend Amber Golley’s emotional states and triggers and working out her sexual orientation at least a short while before it actually comes up in conversation. In Next Exit, Amber is given POV scenes that show that she is capable of being insecure, resentful and even jealous, emotions that she keeps to herself, and that she puts up with Amber's patronizing treatment of her partly out of fear of Amber abandoning her and partly because she knows Amber's been through a lot.
    • Mariah Pastorius is initially the resident Jerkass of the cast, but Next Exit reveals that she has a troubled family life, was a good friend to Joseph Nowell after his brother's death, and genuinely cares for her much younger sister Tess, knowing that Tess seems to suffer from depression.
  • Idol Hakkenden: Despite supposedly not having any talents other than singing, Erika points out to Kuwashi that Ronald Reagan is actually the fortieth president of the United States and not the fiftieth, since she's good at social studies.
  • In Katawa Shoujo, when you go through their routes, all of the girls have much more depth than they first appear.
    • Emi, an athletic Plucky Girl who is one of the stars of the school track despite having no legs who is also haunted by the emotional trauma of losing her father in the same accident where she lost her legs and actively avoids trying to get to close to anyone because she can't deal with the pain of losing anyone else.
    • Hanako, suffering from having been badly burned in a house fire that claimed the lives of her parents who would prefer it if you did *not* pity her thank you very much and will really let you have it if you try too hard to white knight for her.
    • Lilly a perfect and motherly and probably a little *too* good at concealing her emotions to the point where it is difficult for her defy her own parents even when it means being parted from the boy she loves forever, which she does not want.
    • Rin the Crazy Cloudcuckoolander who is frustrated by the fact that it is impossible for people to understand her.
    • Shizune, the playful, ultra-competitive Student Council President who is frustrated by the fact that her deafness, and the communication problems that come with make it so hard for her get other people to open up to her, so she pours all of her efforts into making people happy in the hopes that they would like her.
    • This also applies to some of the secondary characters
      • Misha, a cheerful, energetic Genki Girl who is tormented by unrequited love for her best friend Shizune, and may even have been bullied for her sexual orientation
      • Yuuko, a clumsy and sometimes awkward librarian/waitress/college student, is actually a fairly good source of advice on relationships, especially considering that she's acquainted with some of the girls
      • Kenji, the paranoid misogynist conspiracy theorist, was in a relationship in a past, and while he broke up with his girlfriend, he still has fond memories of their relationship.
  • Kindred Spirits on the Roof
    • Yuuna Toomi, the protagonist, is a somewhat aloof loner at the start of the story, albeit a Defrosting Ice Queen, but some characters, such as Aki, Matsuri and Miyu notice that she's surprisingly organized and has a talent for leadership, such as when she cooks for the track team's training camp. The reason for this lies in her backstory, in which Yuna was a successful cooking club president in middle school, but was traumatized by overhearing her classmates talk about how much they resented her for pushing them so hard.
    • Sachi Enoki, the older of the two "kindred spirits" or ghosts(both as a girl who died 80 years ago and a third-year at the time of her death) comes off as a cool and mature Yamato Nadeshiko. It later turns out that she is actually timid at heart and only acted the way she does to emulate the girl she had a crush on, although Yuna believes she ended up Becoming the Mask. Sachi also apparently played some ghostly pranks on the student body, as well as operating an Ouija board, actions that would seem more characteristic of Megumi.
    • Sachi's fellow ghost Megumi Nagatani is surprisingly passionate about cooking, since she spent a lot of time at home due to being Delicate and Sickly, even if she isn't nearly as good at it as Yuna is. She wants other people, especially Sachi, to be able to taste her cooking.
    • Yuna's friend Fuji Ano initially seems like comic relief, but toward the end of the game, it's revealed that she can vaguely see (but not hear) the kindred spirits, and has known for the entire game that Yuna has been talking to ghosts, something she's reluctant to share because she's worried what people will think of her. Despite having the most friends(Yuna, Hina, Nena and Kiri) out of all the cast, who usually stick with their cliques, Ano isn't the most outgoing person and dislikes drawing attention to herself.
    • Nena Miyama initially seems sleepy and lazy, but she's actually quite intelligent, figuring out things such as her friends Umi and Sasa being in love with each other, as well as the fact that Yuna is talking to ghosts.
    • Youka Koba is a loudmouthed rocker who is chronically tardy, but she actually shows Tsukuyo Sonou the respect the latter is owed as a teacher.
    • Aki Ariu, who's part of the disciplinary committee, is highly prim and proper, but she also is perhaps the least angsty about being a lesbian out of everyone in the class, not to mention that she's known for the longest.
    • Miyu Inamoto is highly serious and disciplined compared to her girlfriend Matsuri Amishima, especially since Miyu is the one who insists that she and Matsuri refrain from public displays of affection so as to prevent people from learning that they're a couple. That said, she's rather eager during her and Matsuri's sex scene. She also can't resist the temptation of trolling Matsuri after she gets a Love Confession(due to being sick of how often Matsuri brings up the confessions she gets.
  • A major theme in Lessons in Love. Every character, even Sensei has more to them than it first seems.
  • The entire Nasuverse is ripe with this trope from a Boisterous Bruiser King who justifies tyranny, a Wide-Eyed Idealist Determinator who is also a broken Martyr Without a Cause, a Genki Girl who is emotionally dead, and a Psycho for Hire Tsundere who just wants to love amongst many.
  • The characters of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors were developed by building them upon stereotypes, then subverting them, according to an interview.
  • Almost everyone in Princess Waltz has something that counters their outward personality:
  • Spirit Hunter: NG:
    • Akira is surprised to learn that, despite her glamorous looks, Rosé's a fan of the peppy idol group Love&Hero.
    • Despite what his bulky appearance and boisterous attitude would suggest, Maruhashi is not a strong-arm for the Yakuza; rather, his job is information gathering, and he's more proficient at that than he is at picking fights.
  • Everybody (except Grave who really is just evil) in Symphonic Rain aren't what they seem to be at first glance such as Fal and Torta who initially seem to be nice girls who fall in love with Chris during their route but Fal is just a ruthless person who is using Chris for his skills and Torta is filled with self loathing.

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