Informed Ability / Video Games

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• Ace Attorney:
  • Godot is feared by police and other prosecutors alike for being a powerful attorney. He's the least successful prosecutor in the entire series. He never wins a case, both on-screen or off, whereas Winston Payne is at least noted for being undefeated up until his trial against Mia. Of course, he's actually a defense attorney (and a competent co-counsel to Mia during 3-4), and only became a prosecutor to oppose Phoenix, which would be terrible for anyone's win record.
  • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, there's many remarks to the effect that Furio Tigre is a criminal mastermind and a great planner. While he does manage to put together a pretty complex scheme, "complex" is not the same thing as "smart"; for the most part, he only makes it as far as he does because the Judge was an idiot. He murders a man who (though no longer in danger of bankruptcy) still owed him 500,000 dollars and was about to trade him something valuable, sets up a pointless restaging of the murder to fool a single eyewitness (resulting in discrepancies that blow a hole in his case), uses a Paper-Thin Disguise, spends his time on the witness stand openly threatening the Judge, and ultimately falls by way of implicating himself.
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Kristoph Gavin is supposedly an excellent defense attorney, but he's only shown defending in one case, and only as co-counsel at that.
  • And then there's the above-mentioned Winston Payne, called the Rookie Killer for his habit of crushing rookie defense attorneys. He never wins a single case on-screen (except when the defense is trying to lose,) even when his opponent has amnesia, and quickly falls to Butt-Monkey status. (Then again, "Rookie Killer" is basically a nice way of saying "picks on smaller targets...")
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies says that Simon Blackquill is a subtle manipulator, getting people to do what he wants with suggestions. He does convince a few people this way, but it's anything but subtle. Apollo and Athena both comment on how obvious Blackquill's being.
  • Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth has Justine Courtney, a judge. Both Sebastian and his father Blaise talk up how incredibly intelligent she is, and even Edgeworth praises her. However, just like any opponent in the series, she makes basic lapses in judgment that a supposedly experienced judge would never make. For instance, she claims a piece of evidence found in a murder victim's breast pocket implicates a defendant. However, that pocket was pierced by the murder weapon, and yet the letter has no holes or blood on it, making it an obvious plant.
• Hawke in the Advance Wars series is repeatedly praised for how powerful and unstoppable he is, when in reality he's a middle-tier commander at best who boasts a pitiful 10% power boost in exchange for the slowest charging power in the game. Ironically, the Insufferable Genius / Perky Goth Lash, even after being nerfed for Dual Strike, has a FAR superior power (Her attack raises along with her defense depending on the terrain, making her unstoppable on mountains and cities) yet is seen as nothing more than an annoyance by the good and bad guys alike.
• Supposedly, Isabelle of Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a super hard worker with no time to rest, but the only evidence for this is just taking Isabelle's word for it that she isn't lying about being busy. The player never actually sees her do any sort of work, she's always either standing in place or sleeping, she doesn't contribute to the public work projects, and the only service she provides that doesn't involve just telling you information is organizing a few events, so what exactly Isabelle does as your secretary that keeps her busy every day is highly questionable.
• In BlazBlue:
  • Iron Tager is supposedly around 550 kg, as Teach me, Ms. Litchi! tells us, but you wouldn't know that from the way everyone else lighter than him can still toss him around. Admittedly, it would be unbalanced to make him immovable to others' attacks.
  • Several of the characters are apparently capable of impressive feats, but even Gameplay and Story Segregation aside, the player never gets to see these powers without the character in question having outside help. In fact, when given the chance to prove it, more often than not they are found wanting.
• Averted in Boktai. Master Otenko is the representation of The Sun, and a guardian of the Solar System... but he makes it clear to Django in the first game that he can't fight. Indeed, Otenko does get his leafy stem handed to him on a regular basis.
• Used to subtle effect in Borderlands 2 with Wilhelm, Handsome Jack's Dragon, a massive cyborg warrior so powerful he supposedly defeated the previous set of Vault Hunters from the first Borderlands game. When you fight him, he turns out to be a pushover and you easily defeat him. All part of Jack's plan, because by defeating the supposed ultimate minion and looting his corpse, you get a certain power core that lets Jack shut down the shields for your base and leave it vulnerable to orbital bombardment. Also, a cut piece of dialog from Jack states that he had Wilhelm poisoned prior to the fight. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! shows that Wilhelm was indeed a powerful mercenary.
• Call of Duty: Ghosts: The titular Ghosts themselves have this in spades. They are hyped as this ultra-legendary unit of special elite among the elite special force commandos capable of taking out entire armies with such silence and stealth, that nobody even knows they're there. In the actual game, they're notoriously noisy. Their first mission has them ramming a truck set on fire, on a stadium full of enemy forces, guns blazing. Not very subtle. In fact, most of what little sneaking around there is in this game happens before meeting the actual Ghosts.
• To quote an LP of the Chzo Mythos: "In case you haven't noticed, John is even worse at psychiatry than Trilby is at stealing. There is not a single instance in the entire series of a protagonist actually demonstrating a skill we're supposed to believe they have." Note that this is referring to the Chzo Mythos series, which doesn't include Trilby: The Art of Theft. Trilby's case is an especially unfortunate one, in that we get to see him break into quite a few places and things in an effort to steal stuff, it's just that there's never anything in those places and things for him to take. The one time he could have and didn't, the item in question is under an annoyingly heavy glass bell jar and has no apparent monetary worth, so it wasn't worth the trouble.
• Most commander characters in Command & Conquer have bios stating how smart they are, but fail live up in the game's plot, apart from Slavik and McNiel in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, but only because they're the player characters.
• Celestia Ludenberg from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is allegedly a "Super High School Level Gambler", with tons of notorious gambling-related exploits under her belt. However, when she ends up as the killer in Day 3, she's only slightly better at bluffing than the previous two killers, makes a couple of key slip-ups, and loses her composure faster than one would expect from someone with her skills. Then again, it's hard to tell how many of her claims about her skills and experience are actually the truth (for instance, the past exploits she mentions in her Free Time segments are all plots from gambling mangas).
• In Dead or Alive: Hayate is supposed to be Ryu Hayabusa's equal in combat. But if you look at their performances throughout the series, it sure doesn't seem that way. Ryu lays waste to the forces of darkness on an almost regular basis, whereas Hayate hasn't so much as won a single tournament. Even his sisters have more accomplishments under their belts than he does. The most Hayate's done is take out a blimp during a cutscene and mow dow a small group of mooks.
• Of comparable informed ability status is Isaac Clarke, the protagonist of Dead Space.
  • He is said to be known for original and innovative engineering solutions, yet he never displays any knowledge of engineering through the first game. This is a notable example in that the longer the series went, the less true true this became.
  • Averted in Dead Space 2; the first things Isaac does is flaunt his engineering degree by combining a medical laser and a flashlight to make a plasma cutter, and then going about manually rewiring electronics.
  • Dead Space 3 also averts this with the workbenches, which let Isaac build his own guns out of spare parts.
• Gigolo/Loki from Devil Survivor despite his title doesn’t really act much like a gigolo. The audience never sees him in the company of any older women nor any other kind of women for that matter. He doesn’t appear to be paid or financially supported by an older women for being an escort or social companion. He doesn’t even dance or flirt unless one counts the mildly flirty dialogue he has with the male protagonist.
• Diablo III
  • Belial is described as The Lord of Lies and a brilliant manipulator. But your character is able to figure out his true identity when he impersonates Emperor Hakkan before Belial can use it to steal the MacGuffin from you. And besides that, there was an even better manipulator in the midst: Diablo himself, who manipulated Belial and the other Demon Lords into fighting the Nephalem so that Diablo could become the Prime Evil once they were all dead. In other words, the "master manipulator" not only couldn't fool the Player Character, but was Out-Gambitted by someone else on top of that.
  • Azmodan is described as Hell's finest general and a tactical genius. The only clever thing he does is attempting a sneak attack and making you have to fight in your safe zone one time. Other than that, Azmodan's tactics amount to throwing all his forces at you in the hopes of crushing you with sheer numbers. And his habit of taunting you with telepathic messages allows you to figure out his plans before he puts them into action, often because Azmodan just outright tells you what he's going to do. Finally, Azmodan's strategy was only working when ordinary humans were fighting the demons, since the demons were reborn in the Hells every time they died. But the Player Character is a Physical God that's Immune to Fate, allowing them to permanently kill demons and slow their advance. And for a supposed tactical genius, Azmodan never changes his strategy once it becomes clear that it's not working.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, Queen Anora is said to be a forceful presence and thus many believe she is the better choice for monarch. But she has already been Queen-consort for five years prior to the events of the game. She couldn't dissuade her husband from his campaign at Ostagar, even though she and her father believed it to be ill-advised, and she couldn't stop Loghain from going down the path he walked as regent. Both the horrific events of the Tabris origin (in which a noble crashes the player character's wedding, murders a bunch of the men, and kidnaps a bunch of the women to rape and abuse for fun) happen in what's essentially her backyard, meaning she either wasn't paying attention or didn't care. Alistair at least stood up to Loghain and will (if chosen) take him down in a duel. Anora's supposed advantage is also somewhat hurt by the epilogue slides which confirm that Alistair does end up being a good King. Granted, the sequels have a tendency to ignore the epilogue when it suits them, but there's nothing in them to suggest that Alistair isn't a good King or that Anora is more effective if you choose her.
  • Loghain himself is universally praised as a military tactical genius, yet what few military strategies he shows in-game are elementary at best (like the "Hammer and Anvil" tactic at Ostagar), and incompetent at worst. On the latter, he withdrew all his troops from the southern border after (he claims) he realized the darkspawn horde was too huge and organized for him to defeat even with the King's army and the Grey Wardens, yet immediately afterwards dismisses that same massive horde as "not a true threat," and spends months allowing said horde to pour into the unprotected countryside while he instead instigates a civil war with the nobles, and then gets locked into a months-long stalemate. So much for being a tactical genius. Reading The Stolen Throne does give a little more insight into how he gained this reputation.
  • Even the loading screens talk about how powerful and dangerous abominations are. In practice, while some of them are boss-level adversaries, your party can kill their way through a staggering number of them in the "Broken Circle" questline alone.
  • Zevran explicitly states in his introduction that he's skilled at picking locks. He joins the party with absolutely no stats in the lockpicking ability. This one, however, might be hand waved by the idea that he was lying to get into your good graces.
  • The Antivan Crows are allegedly the deadliest assassins in Thedas - yet when Zevran, a single elf, rebels and starts a war against them, they fare very badly. In Dragon Age II, Hawke has no difficulty killing them either and in Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dorian can tell an Assassin Inquisitor they're not all that good by Tevinter's standards. In fact, it's outright stated in a codex entry about Queen Asha of Antiva that the Crows being the reason other countires won't attack them is a flat-out lie spread by the Crows themselves.
  • Warden-Commander Clarel de Chanson in Dragon Age: Inquisition is frequently touted as a wise, brave, and resourceful leader. So when the Grey Wardens all simultaneously feel "the Calling" (which tells them they are dying and traditionally it is time to make a demon-battling suicidal pilgrimage), she essentially accepts this at face value and assumes they're all screwed. Then she agrees to a plan from a shady non-Warden mage from Tevinter to use sinister blood magic to murder her skilled and loyal Grey Warden warriors and use their deaths to summon the kind of weak demons that Grey Wardens can eat for breakfast. This is done so she can send her demon conscripts to go fight archdemons. Then she exiles or kills all Grey Wardens who oppose this blood-magic murder-sacrifice demon-summoning... plan. Then when the Inquisition arrives to tell her she's making a huge mistake, she orders her Wardens to kill them. To cap it all, she fails until the last minute to see this whole thing was a ruse by Corypheus to enslave the Grey Wardens, or even contemplate that the matter should even be thoroughly investigated before flying off the handle. Even Livius Erimond, the magister, who proposed the plan, lampshades how incredibly easy it was to trick her. She wasn't evil all along; she didn't make a Face–Heel Turn along the way. She really thought she was acting logically and courageously, and the tone is such that she is meant to be seen as a tragic heroine rather than a monstrous idiot.
  • Also in Inquisition, if the Herald asks Cassandra about the Seekers and her own abilities, she talks about being able to ignite the lyrium in the veins of either mages or Templars. At no time, even when this would be a very useful tactic, does she ever do anything of the sort.
  • In Inquisition, if you have an antagonistic relationship with Solas, and choose to argue with him about whether he should be doing more to help people, he will retort that you could give the elves their lost city of Halamshiral back, but you haven't. At no point in the game, before or after this conversation, is there an option to make such a choice about Halamshiral.
• So Drake from Drake of the 99 Dragons is the best and deadliest assassin in the world. Yet his main strategy involves running into rooms shooting everything in sight, pulling two more guns out of his jacket instead of reloading his previous guns (which is probably the best way to have the cops on your trail), and running after the bad guys head on without any sort of disguise. He also dies five times in the story, one of which had him jump out of a window because he thought he was invincible. And that's not even getting into his deaths in gameplay, where due to terrible lock-on and movement mechanics, the dude has the aiming skills of a blind narcoleptic and the survivability of a suicidal mayfly.
• Fallout:
  • In Fallout 3, Protectrons are stated to be "sturdy", and a popular commercial security robot, even though they're one of the most fragile robotic enemies in the game, and have even fewer hit points than the Robot Butler Mr. Handy. Though they were beefed up significantly in Fallout 4, averting this trope.
  • In the Lonesome Road DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, according to Ulysses, the mutated creatures called the Tunnelers are capable of overwhelming Deathclaws and are poised to be a massive threat to the Mojave. First-hand experience reveals a significantly lesser threat than hyped up: they can be taken out by a few headshots like almost everything else in the wasteland, and in a combination case with Gameplay and Story Segregation, an adult Deathclaw is perfectly capable of utterly massacring a Tunneler (though admittedly the Tunnelers tend to attack en masse and win via Zerg Rush).
  • In Fallout 4, Coursers are made out to be the most dangerous things in all the Commonwealth. Their descriptions by other characters make them sound an awful lot like Terminators, and you might expect to be fighting an indestructible Implacable Man. In actuality, Coursers are weaker than many human enemies and totally outclassed by high-end mutants like Deathclaws. Their only real gimmick is turning (nearly) invisible in combat.
  • The Institute in 4 are frequently labeled as the most technologically advanced and intelligent faction in the entire franchise by far, having surpassed pre-war America many times over. Browsing the rest of the series, though, you'll find that everything the Institute ever invented, barring maybe some aspects of Synths, has been created or surpassed by at least one other group (Vault-Tec, West-Tek, the Big MT, the Enclave, the Shi, Mr. House), often despite less time and resources, and a lot of the Institute's inventions are inferior to pre-war technology. It makes them come across as a collective Know-Nothing Know-It-All, especially given how utterly incompetent and inefficient they are at actually using this tech.
  • In the Nuka-World DLC, The Creon Porter Gage states that he's survived numerous betrayals and always knows when to clear out or switch plans. However, if you betray the raiders and kill them, Gage will stick around to fight you like any other armed NPC, even though it's clear he could never win.
• In Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, the protagonist claims to be a black belt, but never has any proper opportunity to show off his skills besides doing a few rapid-fire kicks in front of Ayumi. When he was about to fight the Weird Kid over a misunderstanding, Ayumi gets him to calm down, and during the one time she was held hostage, he simply tackled her captor while the latter was distracted by some strong wind.
• Fate Series:
  • Fate/stay night:
    • Gilgamesh apparently has such a high charisma (A+ rank) that his goes beyond "Can be said to have achieved the greatest level of popularity as a human being" (which is A rank). However, you never, never see him doing anything remotely charismatic. Quite the opposite, actually. He spends his whole time being a Jerkass, Smug Snake, Social Darwinist who tries to rape Saber. Later works to feature him ended up writing him as more obviously charismatic (though he's still usually a jackass in those works). His physical stats are also stated to be pretty impressive, just a bit below Berserker and Saber, but he almost never shows them off, relying exclusively on his Game-Breaking Gate of Babylon. Hell, one of the few times he did get forced into melee, he was thrown off-guard, disarmed, and defeated... by a human.
    • Saber is frequently referred to as among the strongest of all the Servants. In practice, though, she tends to be fairly average. While some of this can be blamed on her Master Shirou not being the brightest bulb or the best at providing her with power, or her refusal to throw out her Too Awesome to Use techniques like Excalibur, she's roughly even with other Servants like Lancer and Assassin (the latter of which isn't even a true Servant), and in one route is even overpowered by a magically-enhanced mortal and held hostage. Rather than the strongest Servant, she is more akin to the one most protected by Plot Armor.
    • Shinji gets good grades, is popular with girls at school, and is the vice-captain of the archery club. Sounds smart, charming, and dangerous, right? His academic standing is just an offhand remark and he doesn't come across as particularly intelligent, he behaves onscreen like a creep or Jerkass at best and none of the named female characters like him, and he's 100-percent badassery-free, with his archery skills never being demonstrated and his combat tactics consisting of "order my Servant to attack, gloat about their power, and if things start going against me, either start insulting my opponent or engage Inelegant Blubbering and beg for life."
  • Scathach from Fate/Grand Order has been hyped up by the cast and her profile as incredibly strong because of her long-lived experience as immortal witch queen of the Land of Shadows but she has never actually been shown to win a fight as they either happen offscreen with ambiguity over who won or she is shown to lose. Her skills are very vaguely defined in the first place, so it's not even clear what she's capable of.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Garland from Final Fantasy is supposed to be a great warrior that no force in Corneria was able to stop once he turned to evil. His reputation for being quite easy to beat by the Light Warriors has become legendary (as well as creating the second-greatest meme in the franchise's history). Only on the surface, anyway, as he does turn out to be the Big Bad. With the power of Time Travel, he actually arranges his own rescue, ensuring he can be set up to go all A God Am I later on, while still summoning the Fiends to wreak havoc.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Tidus is a famous blitzball player, which implies some degree of skill, but in the actual blitzball minigame he starts out fairly mediocre - at the start he's the best shooter on the team, sure, but that team is the Besaid Aurochs, who start out with the overall blitzball competence of a spoon.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Balthier and Fran are introduced with guns and bows respectively, and are shown with those weapons in promotional material, as if to say "these guys should be your ranged specialists". In fact, not only do they not get any bonuses using these weapons, the special animations they use make them marginally slower than everyone else, making them the worst to wield their preferred weapons! Fran is also discussed as if she's mystically quite powerful, with doors being described as having too strong a magical lock for her to break through, but she's one of the weaker mages in the party.
  • The universe of Final Fantasy XIII (Specifically, Final Fantasy XIII-2) has Caius of the Ballads. Promoted as one of the most sinister villains of the entire franchise. You wouldn't know it by how easily you kick his ass during boss battles. Honestly, even though his battles end when he uses auto-life, you'd probably take down that second bar with no trouble.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy many characters fall victims to the separation between story and gameplay.
    • Shantotto is depicted as incredibly powerful magic user, with even her enemies showing her great respect or outright admitting she is more powerful than them. Gameplay-wise, Shantotto is a Low-Tier Letdown, often in the front running for the game's worst character.
    • Terra is supposed to be afraid of her powers and the least willing of all of the warriors to actually fight. In battle, she throws around giant fireballs and ice blocks. Her EX Mode makes these attacks even stronger. Though this could be a case of Beware the Nice Ones.
    • Cloud's described as being a highly intelligent strategist and leader who is admired by the other Cosmos warriors for his brilliant mind. In gameplay, he's a 'high risk, high reward' fighter designed to be easy for beginners to use, with straightforward, predictable and obvious attacks and next to no potential for mind games. In story, he's never actually shown commanding the others, at most serving as a tiebreaker in a group decision; he spends most of his time being led into obvious traps by any villain available; and his most heroic actions are made on the spur of the moment because he 'just felt like it'. The 'big brother' of the FF heroes comes across as being a lot less thoughtful than, say, Firion. However, it's possible Cloud's dislike of his good reputation comes from the fact that he knows he's not as good as he's made out to be.
• In God of War, Kratos was stated to have a large amount of success as a general in the Spartan army, which would be more passable if not for the fact the sequels depict him as being Too Dumb to Live. Presumably, his status as a One-Man Army made up for any strategic failings.
• Golden Sun:
  • At the beginning, Kraden mentions that carrying just one of the Elemental Stars could give you enough power to rule the world. The player character for the first two games has one in his inventory, and all it does is take up space. Sure, they don't want to rule the world, but one has to imagine they'd get some use out of them.
  • Also, the Feelies for The Lost Age mention that Sheba has the power of precognition. The only time this comes up in-game is when Sheba insists it's her destiny to accompany Felix on his journey... and she later admits she was lying about that.
  • A cutscene in the first game has Hama state that Ivan also has the power of prediction... to which Ivan himself replies that if he does, it's news to him.
• Dunkoro in Guild Wars is supposed to be a good planner, but doesn't actually get to show this much in game. (Partly because a lot of the story consists of reacting to things, though when Dunkoro does give advice, it is often quite basic.)
• Gordon Freeman from Half-Life is a theoretical physicist... yet the most technically advanced things he does in the series is push a cart, flip switches, and plug in equipment. Lampshaded by Barney in Half-Life 2 when he says "Good job hitting that switch. I can see that MIT education really pays for itself." He apparently picked up some mechanical knowledge at least, picking up any weapon and figuring out the controls quickly, even alien ones like the overwatch pulse rifle, successfully subverting Unusable Enemy Equipment.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Luxord of Organization XIII is stated to have time-based powers, which extends to putting a "Time Limit" in his boss battle that really just ends up meaning "Hit Luxord a lot" and fights more with his cards.
  • The other characters regard Master Xehanort as the ultimate schemer, leaving nothing to chance and being skilled in long-term plans with multiple back-ups just in case. However, this status of his only comes about due to 3D retconning the actions of Maleficent, Ansem, and Xemnas as them acting in accordance with Master Xehanort's plans, and everything that happened in the prior games was All According to Plan. Also, his Manipulative Bastard successes frequently and noticeably involve his targets holding the Idiot Ball until it's too late (which certainly isn't helped by his Obviously Evil-ness). Further, all of Xehanort's incarnations are rather frequently blindsided or make mistakes, which Master Xehanort even admits in 3D. He's really not so much a great schemer as he is lucky at playing Gambit Roulette, and having Plot Armor until Kingdom Hearts III.
• Karate Blazers, a rather generic arcade Beat 'em Up, is pretty bad when it comes to this. For instance, one of your four playable characters is Glen, the "Invincible" Wrestler, a Scary Black Man who... have roughly the same amount of health as any other player. There's also a "ninja" character named Akira, who wears a regular purple outfit that doesn't resemble a ninja, to say the list. Nor does he use ninjutsu or ninja-themed attacks, only regular punches and kicks.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, HK-47 is supposed to be a consummate and perfect assassin, but he acts more like a psychotic thug and cannot keep himself from slipping threats and sinister implications into his dialogue all the time. In the sequel, the palette-swapped copies of him are supposed to be expert political subversionists, but they are if anything even more obvious about their malice and execute their plans in blatantly obvious ways.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
  • Prince Sidon is said to be a great warrior of the Zora people and he accompanies you in taking down Vah Ruta...by swimming you close enough to it so you can destroy the barrier preventing you from entering it. As a Zora, that isn't particularly impressive, since all of them can do that. He never enters the dungeon with you, nor does the game imply he ever had any intention to. The other three descendant characters don't enter their respective Divine Beasts either, but in their cases it's justified - Riju is only a child (and the chief of the Gerudo), Yunobo is a Lovable Coward and Stone Wall so he is only useful for his shield ability, and Teba was going to accompany Link but gets injured when he helps destroy Vah Medoh's barrier and has to sit it out. You could argue that with Mipha dead, Sidon has to stay behind as the only remaining heir to King Doraphan, but it doesn't stop him getting close enough to the Divine Beast to help Link actually enter it, so it still seems odd he's hyped up as such a great fighter and we never see him deliver on this (until the sequels, at least.)
  • Mipha is described as having been without equal when it came to wielding a trident, yet all of the flashbacks featuring her instead focus on her healing ability, her crush on Link, or her nurturing side towards Sidon. This especially stands out in the "The Champions' Ballad" DLC, which gave the other three Champions scenes to show off their combat skill, yet she's just shown swimming up a waterfall. Fortunately, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity helps rectify this thanks to her being a playable character who can mow down armies just as easily as her peers. And so can Sidon.
• For those unfamiliar with the books, a number of NPCs from The Lord of the Rings Online can be seen like this. One of the most jarring examples is Samwise Gamgee: The Guardian class (a tank class who is described as protectors of those in need) is partly based on him and how protective he was of Frodo in the books, and higher-level players are sent to Sam as part of their training. Imagine the surprise when learning that the "guardian of unmatched skill" is a nervous hobbit who says things like "We are in quite a pickle, aren't we, Samwise old boy?" It's even more noticeable if you're playing as a hobbit yourself, who by then should have a good number of heroic deeds behind them.
• In Lunar: The Silver Star, Luna is loved by her entire village for her singing voice. Unfortunately, they gave her a voice actress who doesn't measure up to the apparent reverence and occasionally hits a sour note.
• Liam Kosta in Mass Effect: Andromeda is stated to be an ex-cop who even studied law. However, he does absolutely nothing to assist the protagonist in the criminal investigations you get to carry out. Even when brought along in the field on missions where some investigative work needs doing, such as the Kadara serial killings, the “water filter murders”, Nilken Rensis or the Spender treason investigations, Liam behaves like any other squadmate.
• Mega Man:
  • Omega in Mega Man Zero is supposed to be a Lightning Bruiser even when wearing his armor, but due to sprite limitations, he's unable to be depicted as doing other than floating in place and detaching his arms to attack. His Lightning Bruiser status comes through much better when he sheds his armor and fights in his true form: Zero's original body.
  • Mega Man Battle Network:
    • Used for a gag in 2; when a villain is captured, he expresses disbelief at how two kids could beat him, future head of Gospel (note: ego), with an IQ of 170. Chaud informs him "Your IQ of 170 didn't help you this time."
    • In 3, Tora constantly mentions "strategy" and "thinking several moves ahead" and is even introduced in the N1 as a "master strategist". His navi, KingMan is one of the cheapest bosses in the entire series; its "strategy" consisting of staying in back row while a bunch of autonomous chess pieces continually harass the player.
• Metal Gear:
  • Solid Snake is supposed to have a 180 IQ, but you'd never know it from his dialogue. Most of the time he comes across as above-average at best, and that's discounting his instances of Cutscene Incompetence. In the first game, for instance, he fails to piece together on his own that the Anderson he spoke to was Decoy Octopus in disguise, even though he found the original Anderson's decomposing body, and continues to trust the information he got from the guy even after being told this and shown that said information doesn't add up.
  • Liquid Snake is also supposed to be a genius, but has a grasp of genetics that would make a middle-school science student point and laugh. You might want to actually read about a subject before you build your entire life around it, Liquid.
  • Sniper Wolf is told to be Foxhound's greatest sniper, who can spend a week without sleep, food, or even water as she patiently keeps her sights on her target. In game the most we see her do is shoot at one target, who was standing up within a few hundred yards of Sniper Wolf, then stay in a compromised position with little cover, running back and forth in plain sight as Solid Snake snipes her down. She appears again later in the game during a blizzard, but she once again fails at properly taking cover or shooting at the very close Snake. Notably she doesn't do any better at sniping than the three Genome soldiers who lay a trap for Snake on the Comms Tower Bridge and can reliably hit him from a good distance in the dark and in a snowstorm, using FAMAS rifles with iron sights, and while wearing gas masks (and taking an accurate shot while wearing a two-lens gas mask is no easy feat, even in ideal conditions). Perhaps "Foxhound's best shot" is a bit like saying "the Stormtroopers' best shot".
  • Metal Gear RAY's ability to take down Metal Gear REX and its clones is either an informed ability, or in-universe false advertising. It's built for the express purpose of hunting down and destroying REX units, but the only time REX and RAY square off in MGS4, REX can take it down without too much difficulty. And this is a brand-new RAY^note no, it's not the prototype stolen by Ocelot in MGS2, since it lacks the original's long tail fighting a damaged REX after the latter was blown up, left in a freezing cold warehouse for almost a decade, and then had a major structural component removed without much thought for how the rest was going to balance without it, leaving it a wonder the REX in question can even stand upright, magical-science software upgrades from Otacon or not. And it's piloted by a man who has never piloted a Metal Gear, versus Ocelot who has spent considerable time VR training and personally piloting REX.
  • In Peace Walker, the Pupa is supposed to be amphibious, it's only seen doing kickflips on a perfectly dry circular base built like a giant half pipe, and its amphibious capabilities are never relevant to or mentioned in the story (unlike Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty's RAY, which is fought on land but has the swimming ability to destroy the Discovery).
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Skull Face is said to be Big Boss' equal as a soldier, to the extent that Zero considered him a worthy candidate to complete Operation Snake Eater if Snake himself could not. However, we never see him actually fight, and he loses his cool the second his plan starts to go off the rails.
• Metroid:
  • In both Metroid: Other M and Metroid Fusion, Adam Malkovich, Samus' former CO, is referred to as a tactical genius with a perfect military mind. When he's met in Other M, however, not only does he seem oblivious to things going on around him, but he makes several questionable decisions, and ultimately loses everyone in his squad except for Anthony. The game also likes to say that, underneath his cold exterior, he really does appreciate and care for Samus as a daughter. His actions over the course of the game include ignoring all her input and feedback, treating her with distrust, depriving her of protective gear, and shooting her in the back. The only action he takes in the game that could be interpreted as helpful to Samus (sacrificing himself to blow up part of the ship) is taken not because he wants Samus to live, but because he thinks Samus has a better chance of finishing the mission - implying that he views her as nothing more than a valuable-yet-disposable asset. If this is him being fatherly, he is one abusive parent.
  • Ridley is often stated to be intelligent, but he rarely displays intellect greater than that of an inarticulate animal in the games. We've never seen him doing any commanding or even speaking. Some supplementary material, such as the manga, does give him dialogue, though. Ironically, the first real ingame indicator of Ridley's intelligence was in his trailers for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where he displays stealth skills and a cruel sense of humor.
  • Other M claims that the Metroids located in Sector Zero have been experimented on to remove their vulnerability to cold and are therefore invincible. As these immune Metroids are never actually encountered, and you do encounter Metroids in the game (including one that came right out of Sector Zero) that aren't immune to cold, it comes across as Adam making a wild guess that even he doesn't seem all that sure about. And the idea that such a Metroid would be completely invincible is contradicted by the opening cinematic, where Mother Brain kills a Metroid with what seems to be brute force.
• Judging by his reputation, Amoral Attorney Igland of the Swift Sword in Neverwinter Nights is a very talented lawyer. Judging by his actual performance in the game, if this is true it is a dire statement on Neverwinter's legal system, since Igland's idea of a compelling case in a murder trial is "the defendant is a dirty savage and therefore we should hang him". One wonders how much of his reputation for having never lost a case involved passing Exhibit M, a large sack of money, to each juror.
• The player-character of Noctropolis is said by no less than elemental beings to be a worthy inheritor of the mantle of his favorite hero, the comic book avenger of the night Darksheer. This is in spite of how he totally fails to stop nearly every villain he runs into, almost all of whom catch him in a deathtrap and leave him mortally injured, then they simply leave, never to be seen in the confines of this game's adventure again. It actually turns out the Big Bad's plan depends on him completely sucking at being a hero and constantly getting badly injured. The couple times a villain is actually defeated, it's always through the efforts of someone else like his sidekick killing Master Macabre and an elemental warrior killing the previous Darksheer, or through a ploy that seems like something that would've been one of the first things anybody tried, like using holy water on a woman who's possessed by a demon. In the latter case one of the hero's most valuable allies is a priest, even.
• Pokémon:
  • A lot of Pokémon have an Informed Ability in their Pokédex entry, never actually seen, especially not after catching them. While many Ghost-type Pokémon are able to steal souls, some Psychic-types are hyper-intelligent and empathic and able to rip apart time and space. Also, some legendaries are stated to be able to travel through time, wipe people's memories, permanently paralyze, them or even kill them by merely looking in their eyes. In the end, all that's really impressive about them are their stats in battle... if you train them properly.
  • Ghost-type attacks in Generation I were supposed to be super-effective against Psychic-type Pokémon but possibly due to a programming oversight, Ghost-type moves cannot hit Psychics, leaving a major hole in the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors formula and resulting in the Psychic type becoming a major Game-Breaker until later generations fixed it. In fact, using Ghost-types is actively detrimental, as the three Pokémon of that type have a secondary typing weak to Psychic! By sheer coincidence, the same is true of the anime's first season; Ash brings a Haunter to fight Sabrina's Kadabra because Ghost hurts Psychic. But the Haunter in question never uses any Ghost attacks, instead using humor to make the opponent Sabrina to laugh nigh uncontrollably, causing the psychic-linked Kadabra to laugh just as hard, essentially causing a forfeit.
  • Blue in the first generation games is supposed to be an incredibly skilled trainer, but his team's setup by the time he's the Champion is pretty awful in Red/Green/Blue. While it would be a good team in theory, with its members being among the strongest Pokemon in the game, the problem is that barring his starter, none of them know any TM moves and are stuck with their natural learnsets. This means that his Rhydon has two moves that do the exact same thing and no Rock or Ground moves, his Charizard has Rage (one of the worst moves in the game), his Gyarados has kept Dragon Rage long after when it would be useful, his Arcanine is still using Ember, and his Exeggutor only has three moves. He also has Pidgeot, which is a pretty bad Pokemon even by Gen I standards, and is wholly outclassed by two completely different Pokemon found in Kanto with identical typing. He is the strongest trainer in the game, but this mostly just amounts to the fact that he has a high-level team of six, something possessed by no other trainers. The remakes mostly fixed this (for instance, in Yellow, his team now has fully bespoke movesets), and by the time of HeartGold/SoulSilver, he's an actual threat.
  • Geeta from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is the resident "Top Champion" of Paldea. Three of her Pokemon are terrible, and of the three that are good one is completely wasted by having ability that lets it lay down Toxic Spikes without having to do anything and being her last Pokemon. She also has two Psychic-type Pokemon as well as her team having crippling weaknesses to Fire and Bug as well as being generally ill-equipped to deal with Ghost and Dark types. Her ace also has Tera Blast despite being a Rock Type that Terastallizes into a Rock Type, which raises the question of why she just doesn't a Rock move to begin with since Tera Blast is primarily meant for Pokemon who are using a Tera type different from their regular type and so might not have good STAB moves while Terastallized.
  • N is immediately labeled as a Motor Mouth, and though his text speed is always faster than your text speed settings, his text is normal in terms of spacing and he uses ellipses often, which comes across as strange for a person known for speaking quickly.
  • Charizard's flames, according to several Pokedex entries, can melt boulders. Except the boulders that require Strength to move. And the smaller boulders that require Rock Smash to break. And Rock-type Pokemon, which not only resist Charizard in Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, but deal Quad Damage to it.
  • Pidgeot is noted in no less than five Pokedex entries to be capable of flight at Mach 2. You'd think this would make Pidgeot one of the fastest Pokemon ever, but until Gen VI, its base Speed was 91, which is more or less just above average - in fact, it's pretty slow by the standards of fully-evolved regional birds, outstripped by Fearow, Swellow, Staraptor, Dodrio, Unfezant, and plenty of others. Gen VI eventually took pity on the thing and gave it a speed boost to 101 (which is actually respectable), and a Mega Evolution that boosted it further to something that actually would approximate Mach 2.
  • Though Escavalier's entry doesn't say it breaks the sound barrier, it does describe it as flying at high speed. Given that Escavalier's Speed is 20 (tied with Ferrothorn for the lowest of any final-stage Pokemon, and significantly behind such lightning-quick luminaries as Snorlax and Slowbro), many fans wonder under what metric Escavalier could be described as high-speed.
  • A particularly glaring example is Vikavolt. A lot of materials all claim it is a very fast Pokemon, even though its base speed stat is a glacially slow 43, making it the second slowest fully-evolved Electric-type in the series, only beating out Stunfisk. Even Vikavolt's wingless larval form is faster than it is.
  • Psyduck's defining trait in all its appearances, and its Pokédex entries, is its Psychic Powers, with most conveying it as an Unskilled, but Strong sort that releases powerful but uncontrolled effects when its headache pains it. You'd expect from this that it be some kind of incredibly strong Psychic-type, but it's actually a pure Water-type that can learn just a handful of Psychic-type moves (and up until the fourth generation, the only one that did damage was very weak). Even its abilities are related primarily to weather mechanics rather than psychic abilities.
  • One scene in Black & White has Bianca claim that if Pokemon really didn't like their trainers, they could leave them at any time. Other characters don't dispute this idea, but this can never happen either to you for lowering your Pokemon's friendship value, or to various NPCs who are known to be cruel to their Pokemon (Silver in Gold & Silver, Ghetsis in Black & White 2). It really feels like the writers included that bit just to make the anti-Pokemon-training Team Plasma seem to have less of a point.
  • Geeta in Scarlet & Violet claims that Nemona is the youngest champion level trainer that Paldea has ever seen. While Nemona is in her mid-teens, Poppy of the Elite Four is only nine (though she looks even younger).
• Rave Heart: Ellemine believes Eryn is wiser than her when it comes to politics and would make a great leader. In practice, he comes off as the weak link of Count Vorakia Estuuban's conspiracy. While Vorakia, Lady Marselva, and Reverend Sergio perform their roles without making significant mistakes, Eryn puts their entire operation at risk by imprisoning Chad merely for speaking up for Arcturo's innocence. This achieves nothing for the conspiracy and causes the rest of the council to become suspicious, forcing the conspirators to kill and imprison the other council members.
• The lore and characters of the Red Dead Redemption treat Dutch Van Der Linde as an exceptional outlaw gang leader who formed and kept his gang together for years by being a A Father to His Men and a skilled demagogue. In the storyline of the prequel game, however, his moments where he actually inspires the gang instead of just telling them to have faith in him are few, far-between, and rather underwhelming, and his schemes constantly have disasterous, but more or less predictable results even before his Sanity Slippage begins proper. Many characters, including his supposed top liutennants, treat him more like a Know-Nothing Know-It-All big brother than a father and question his choices, making it puzzling why it takes them as long as it does to lose faith in him.
• The various "ultimate weapons" in Resident Evil are repeatedly shown to not at all meet such a boast. All the various Tyrants tend to fall to either a single opponent or a group of two armed with conventional weaponry, the Nemesis is debatably only a threat because his opponent is a single underarmed person already struggling to survive with limited access to supplies, and all are rather easily finished off by a single explosive. Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis really hammers this home with the five Tyrants sent to kill the single United States Army unit that was investigating the Dead Factory. As evidenced by the numerous Tyrant corpses littering the area, it seems a proper military unit was able to take down all five with standard military-grade gear. True they took heavy casualties, but if they also had no clue what they would be facing; a military unit with proper intel on these things would smear them all over the landscape with weapons readily available to their soldiers.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police:
  • In Sam & Max Hit the Road, Conroy Bumpus is supposed to be an incredibly highly-rated country-western singer. When the player hears his Villain Song, his voice is a decent attempt at singing, but pretty shaky. Lampshaded in that Max calls Bumpus's singing "atonal warbling."
  • Also, a lot is discussed about Trixie's singing, she's never heard singing even once in the game. Particularly noticeable since she's part of Conroy's backing band, yet plays tambourine instead of the song's female backing vocals.
  • Sam & Max Save the World, Sam's singing/banjo playing is supposed to be horrible, to the point where in a later game, Girl Stinky claims Poison Control insists she has a CD of him singing to use as an emetic. Other than a bit of contrived Hollywood Tone-Deaf dog-like howling, his singing voice is actually pretty good.
• In Scary Robber Home Clash, Felix and Lester are noted to have become the most wanted robbers in the world. Considering how incompetent they are and how they are repeatedly outsmarted by a child, how they achieved that status is a mystery.
• Ramirez in Skies of Arcadia is referred to as a brilliant strategist and tactician. However his strategies tend to simply be bombarding stationary or slow-moving targets into submission from afar. He's never actually seen to command a battle (occasionally just hanging back while his own ships or troops are destroyed and then either bombarding from afar or wading in and single-handedly taking down the heroes' party. He doesn't even take part in either of the game's climactic large-scale ship battles.
• In the Sonic The Hedgehog games, Sonic's speed is sometimes this relative to the other main characters, especially in the older games before the characters' abilities had speciated as much.
  • For instance, some of the earlier games contain situations where Knuckles, Tails, and even Robotnik can run as fast as Sonic. Tails can still fly as fast as Sonic runs, but they make sure it looks like he's flying. Especially prominent in the 2D games. In every single one before Sonic Advance 3, all characters share the exact same running and jumping physics, with the sole exception of Knuckles having a lower jump in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Amy not being able to curl into a ball in Sonic Advance.
  • It's also stated that Sonic can run faster than the speed of sound. This seems to be an exaggeration. Even though he moves unbelievably fast, he never actually comes close to breaking the sound barrier. He doesn't actually quite manage to beat the real fastest thing alive, the Peregrine Falcon, though he does come close in Sonic Generations while boosting.
  • Averted in most 3D games, where Sonic is noticeably faster than the rest of the cast as a result of Divergent Character Evolution. (Except when he's not.)
• In Soul Calibur IV, Angol Fear, the "King of Terror" is said to weigh 1.44 tons, and be 14800 years old. Given that, you would think that she would be super strong, unjugglable, and more of a threat than all of the fighters in the game considering the knowledge she should have amassed. The character is Seong Mina. Not Shin Seong Mina or Seong Mina with a speed boost or a health boost or extra combos or power armor or juggle resistance or any discernible advantage whatsoever. It's just Seong Mina. Actually a little worse, because her weapon is slightly shorter than Seong Mina's, meaning that in a scant few cases, she doesn't have the range that Mina has.
• Soul Nomad & the World Eaters has Thuris. He's supposed to be the smartest of the three world eaters, and while he IS pretty clever (creating a cult out of the fact that no one can see him and creating a dreaded disease), he's outsmarted by everyone. This wouldn't be a big deal (since these tend to be people more powerful than him and knowing more than he does anyways), if one of the people outsmarting didn't include one of the other supposedly not as smart world eaters.
• Inklings in Splatoon are allegedly boneless, as reaffirmed in various dialogues throughout the games and a Secret Scroll in the first one, but they have visible elbows, wrists, knuckles, and knees instead of Rubber-Hose Limbs and generally look (sort of) and move around like human beings instead of flopping all over the place. They even show collarbones when wearing low-necked outfits, which obviously have no business anywhere in a boneless creature. Non-anthropomorphic squids don't have bones, but since they're underwater most of the time, they don't need them.
• In Star Control 3, you are told over and over again how powerful The Eternal Ones are, and yet, you never actually fight them, even when you get to the end, expecting to at least be able to fight the big baddy in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Instead, you meet up with the secretary of The Eternal Ones, who lost to the last secretary, and somehow have never been defeated before. Of course, this is found out after you defeat them with a single ship and no losses.
• In Starcraft II, General Warfield is supposed to be this badass general, and yet his entire career over the course of the game involves screwing up the attack on Char and handing over command to Raynor, who lampshades it prior to touchdown.
  You can't plan for the zerg, general. They won't fit into your nice, clean timetable.
• In Stardew Valley, the town blacksmith Clint displays swords in his grange stall and boasts about the iridium-infused maces he's made. At no point in the game does he sell weapons; those must be bought from the unrelated Adventurer's Guild, and no iridium weapons can be found anywhere.
• Leon Silverberg of Suikoden II is supposed to be perhaps the greatest strategists to ever live. Except the player only sees brilliance from his former student Shu, who is so terrified of Leon's unbeatable brilliance that he nearly kills himself to bring Leon down. This is, however, subverted when Leon himself admits that his reputation is vastly overblown, and that many of his apparent feats aren't quite as awesome as they might sound.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Princess Peach is said in the first game's manual to have magical powers that can reverse Bowser's curse. This is never shown, and is not mentioned again past this game ^note That being said, she does prove to be something of an impressive White Mage in several RPGs, though those are all side games instead of main platformers. It's worth pointing out that this, as well as the "curse", are only mentioned in the instruction manual which doesn't elaborate much on anything.
  • Hilariously deconstructed in Super Paper Mario. In World 3-3, Dimentio claims that his Pocket Dimension makes him 256 times stronger (which, given how he's already a Master of Illusion and Reality Warper, does sound Oh, Crap!-worthy); it doesn't seem to happen. Turns out, said boost automatically affects everyone inside (not just him), thus canceling his advantage - to which he can only invoke I Meant to Do That.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Destiny 2:
    • Nanaly's skills with Archery is said to put 1,000 men to shame. However, in Gameplay, the battle system works against her massively, as arrows are both slower than melee (and thus can't do damage as quickly) and do less damage than magical attacks, and she is frequently placed on the bench the second a fifth party member is available - because the game gives her the shaft. However, in other games where she cameos, her archery abilities don't get the shaft at all.
    • Judas is said to have picked a dragon skull mask for its defensive attributes, but he's the resident Glass Cannon whether he has the mask on or not, essentially the same as he was in the first game, giving the impression that the mask does nothing. It doesn't even hide his face.
  • Tales of the Abyss:
    • Guy Cecil is revealed to be a qualified lifeguard but this is never relevant to the plot.
    • Van is stated to have taught Tear the Fonic Hyms, but in actual battles he only uses the fifth, and even then he doesn't sing it. Though is implied to have used them off-screen after his first defeat.

• Touhou Project characters possess a vast array of magical abilities, ranging from control of insects to being an intense luck charm to manipulation of wind to absolute mastery of borders, however as the genre of the games is Bullet Hell those abilities rarely appear in gameplay, which a few exceptions (like Utsuho throwing miniature suns at the player, Cirno throwing Icicles or Mystia making the player's field of vision reduced in Imperishable Night). This is given an in-story explanation with the implementation of the spell card rules, both providing the weaker denizens of Gensokyo a reasonable chance of success and preventing the stronger denizens from simply vaporising their opponents.
• João Franco playing the lute in Uncharted Waters: New Horizons. Although his leitmotif is called "Caprice for Lute."
• Vagrant Story: 'Commander' Samantha is a Catholic-schoolgirl-styled, doe-eyed ingenue who is never seen doing any kind of commanding or ever really understanding what is going on around her.
• Valkyria Chronicles: Welkin, who the game says is a genius. Mostly, he's just Lieutenant Obvious who happens to pay more attention to the environment because he's a biology geek. The one time he's ever seriously pressed for a solution to a crisis, he flubs it. When the problem is solved by means he doesn't like, he can't argue with the logic behind it or come up with a better solution, so he just socks Faldio in the face. Further, Isara's death occurs when Welkin apparently thought it was cool to have the army camp out in an open field for tank repairs without cover, or even posting watch, and Alicia attempts suicide because Welkin gave her the brush-off when she came to him, in tears, for support. In Maniac's case, the stunts he pulls while flying as a wingman are in-character for him.
• In Viva Piñata, it is mentioned that the Eaglair "has earned respect through its natural nobility, tempered strength, and thumping great talons." Somehow that 'respect' doesn't seem to stop larger Pinatas from walking over it, and its 'talons' are somewhat nonexistent due to the Eaglair's legs and feet being a pair of stumps.
• Wing Commander:
  • The wingmen you fly with in the games are all supposed to be truly badass veteran pilots, but with a few exceptions... well, they aren't.
  • Knight rarely seems to make it back with any kills, or indeed his fighter, even though he has an impressive service record prior to the start of the campaign. Lampshaded in the movie, where he dies spectacularly.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Garrosh Hellscream has a long story regarding this:
    • In the original game, he is constantly regarded as being a "Tactical Genius", even from Major NPCs like Cairne Bloodhoof and Thrall, and even from the Blizzard Team themselves, but anyone who actually did the quests and events that involves him would know right off the bat that he is light years from being remotely regarded as this:
    • The Burning Crusade introduces Garrosh, who at the time was sooo wangsty about his father's legacy and the deteriorating health of the Greatmother, he never lifted a finger to help with the numerous issues plaguing his clan the Mag'har. You, the player character, end up covering his ass so much that upon the climax of the storyline, he was even willing to turn over leadership of the entire Mag'har clan to you so he can go die in a corner because he realized how much of a loser he was in comparison to you.
    • Fast forward one expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, Garrosh does a complete 180 turn of his personality, so instead of the mopey crybaby, his trademark Jerkass persona comes in. And during the early questlines of one of the first Northrend zones Horde players will enter, players witness firsthand that Garrosh is as impatient and reckless as his father (one of the reason he was so depressed in the previous expansion by the way), and was more interested in eliminating the Alliance forces on the opposite side of the zone than dealing with the numerous issues just outside his fortress. Later, when scout requested reinforcements to take out a Necromancer and his small army, Garrosh scoffs and sends only the player, who would have been promptly captured and zombified had resident Badass Saurfang not seen the stupidity himself and personally came to the rescue. Garrosh also had some followers in later zones who were as stupid and jerkass as he is, one of them even got herself killed by the player because of her own zeal and stupidity. Saurfang even called Garrosh out on the fact he was trying to fight a war without bother to gather supplies first. Supplies like artillery, armor, and provisions Garrosh in fact, regularly made claims along the lines of, "A true warrior doesn't need supplies, allies, or strategy to win."
    • In Cataclysm, Garrosh has grown up and is THE leader of the Horde. Naturally, this proved disastrous. He immediately breaks treaties and wages open war on the Alliance against the other leader's advice (effectively undoing EVERYTHING Thrall spent years trying to avoid), alienates three of the four other Horde leaders and their people from Orgrimmar, and his stupidity and hotheadedness results in getting the fourth leader killed in a duel. This is well after he was told by Thrall to listen to his advisers.
    • There's also the Stonetalon incident, in which Krom'Gar, a corrupt general of his, burns down half the zone and blows up the other half. Which result in Garrosh "dismissing" Krom'Gar after giving him a lecture on honor. Garrosh was the one who put Krom'gar in charge of that expedition in the first place, (and failed to check on him until it was far too late), and thus is the one ultimately responsible for the whole mess.
    • In the Twilight Highland quests, you witness an epic display of his monumental incompetence from the get-go: In his usual impatience, he orders his goblin engineers to build a fleet of zeppelins to protect his supply carriers from the Black Dragonflight with little time or resource to actually complete them. When the ships are deployed, they can't even stay in flight, and one of them actually crashes. And then Garrosh spots an Alliance navy fleet and immediately orders his escort ships to make a beeline for them, which would leave all the remaining supply and transport ships completely undefended, a Goblin Captain even questions who'd be stupid enough to do this, but gets punched by one of Garrosh's loyalists for protesting - who remarks that a "Winner" would do so. The Horde fleet attacks and defeats the alliance, however this leaves the carriers completely helpless, as expected the Twilight Dragonflight shows up shortly after and takes out every single carrier. Leaving Garrosh, the player, and a few survivors to be washed on shore after. And when you talk to one of the other survivors, apparently Garrosh, in an attempt to save face, claims the alliance attacked them unprovoked.
    • Aside from his lackluster command abilities, he's also supposed to be a great warrior. Now, he's probably pretty good in his own right, but so is every other noteworthy character in Warcraft, and when he's up against other lore figures he tends to do poorly. He was beating Thrall in their duel in the Wrath of the Lich King pre-event, but this was later explained as Thrall holding back to avoid humiliating him. He only won his Mak'gora with Cairne because Magatha Grimtotem poisoned his axe without his knowledge. And Varian had him beat in Wolfheart, were it not for his troops pulling him off the battlefield while Varian was distracted he likely would have been killed or taken prisoner. In fact, Garrosh has never won a fight with another major character with his skill alone. Garrosh himself may be becoming increasingly aware of this, as in patch 5.1 he attempts to have Vol'jin assassinated, rather than killing him outright.
    • Garrosh later gets his chance to shine and defeat another lore figure during the patch 5.4 cinematic, in which he fights Taran Zhu and gets to No-Sell his ninja abilities and beat him with his bare fists when he loses his axe, and later impale Zhu on it. Of course there's also the small problem that it will be his last victory since this is the patch in which the raid which has him as the final boss was released.
    • Garrosh gets a proper in game cinematic fight with Thrall in Warlords of Draenor. Thrall is on the defensive the whole time, but once the talking is over he brings out his shaman spells. It ends very quickly at that point.
  • Sylvanas Windrunner. Seeing how she is implied to be super threatening and intelligent despite her tendency of keeping potential traitors close to her AND having the "super brilliant" strategy of bombing everything with plague. She also gets her rotting ass handed to her on several occasions by other major characters - often having to resort in her underhanded tactics in the first place. She also gets killed by a single bullet through the chest by one of the said "potential traitors" just after ransoming another NPC.
  • The tie-in novel The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm informs that Aggra is an exemplary shaman in her own right. As far as she's actually written, however? She's Thrall's Satellite Love Interest and eventual babymama, but little else.
• In XCOM, you're told that the troops under your command are handpicked from elite special forces around the world. This can be hard to believe, since they tend to miss shots at point-blank range, die to any blow whatsoever and flee in panic at the slightest hindrance. They do get a lot better as they gain more experience, but, again... "elite special forces". The reboot series tends to at least let them start with enough accuracy to hit more than they miss... even the one where you're actually leading a ragtag grassroots militia.

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