Informed Flaw / Video Games

• According to Art of Fighting's canon, Kyokugen's Ryuugeki discipline is said to be flawed, due to the severe imbalances of focusing almost exclusively on kicks. Which places it below the Kooh discipline (used by Ryo) that emphasizes equal activity between the arms and legs. Tell that to Robert, 'cuz apparently, he didn't get that memo. Not only is he canonically stated to be Ryo's equal, he's been described as "a natural genius" by friend and foe alike, and has defeated some of the most proficient martial artists in SNK's universe.
• For someone so supposedly afraid of her past and future, Bayonetta doesn't seem very afraid to charge ahead and massacre anything in the way of her getting her memories back.
• BlazBlue:
  • Noel Vermillion is stated in-universe to be a poor physical combatant with little in the way of athletic skill. In gameplay, however, she's a textbook Fragile Speedster and her fighting style is very acrobatic, with plenty of graceful jumps and flips. Heck, just look at her standing neutral throw.^note Granted, that could simply be explained by her Nox Nyctores Bolverk doing most of the legwork for her.
  • Kokonoe likes to say that Sector Seven are “total idiots” by releasing Azrael. As it turns out, they put a limiter on Azrael basically preventing him from hurting ANYONE unless they desire to fight in the first place. The only exceptions seems to be Ragna, Tager, and Kokonoe but they’re exactly his targets. To be fair to Kokonoe, even if she knew about the limiter in advance, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out ways to circumvent it; Azrael nearly cripples a Sector Seven soldier with a “light pat on the back”. If he put the energy into it, he probably could have demolished Sector Seven on his own, restraints or otherwise.
• Darkest Dungeon has this as a mechanic. Because of the way the quirk system works it is entirely possible to have a melee character with a damage, accuracy and critical chance reduction to ranged attacks (and vice versa).
• Big Hat Logan in Dark Souls is said to be famously antisocial, with him wearing his famous big hat in order to block out the people around him. When you actually meet him, he is nothing but friendly and helpful.
• In Disco Elysium, it's mentioned that the Visual Calculus skill, which is based on being able to reconstruct scenes based on small details (for instance, identifying the number of people involved in a lynching by looking at their bootprints), when taken too far, causes the user to become unaware of the world around them by overfocusing on those small details. However, you can raise the skill as high as you like without ever seeing these kinds of problems. This contrasts with other skills, which can frequently end up chipping in with entirely worthless advice or dialogue options that make you sound like a crazy person when raised too high.
• A plot point in Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future is that the Foe stole virtues (actual literal virtues, like Compassion and Intelligence) from the dolphins. In practice, the altered dolphins don't completely lack these traits, though to be fair the game does usually at least imply reasons why. The ancestors of the Man's Nightmare dolphins lacked their native Intelligence, but they were later uplifted to sapience by humans. The Dolphin's Nightmare dolphins lack Compassion, but in a village that's right above the globe that contains the virtue, there's a dolphin desperate to save his sick father; the implication is that he's being affected by the globe.
• In Fate/EXTRA CCC, Elizabeth Bathory is said to have zero talent for writing songs and is tone-deaf, to the point that her Noble Phantasm is belting out a song through castle sized amplifiers (though one might argue that any sound blasted out of amps that powerful would be severely damaging). In Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star, we do hear her sing, and while the lyrics are trashy, her actual singing is very good. All the characters still react as though it grates on their ears. Stories have varied for why this is — one of the more common explanations is that Liz's voice is essentially her Breath Weapon (being part dragon), and it's less her lack of talent and more that she's throwing sonic magic into her song that makes it unpleasant.
• In Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, each of the kids has to get over their flaws to reunite and save the world—Aire the Royal Brat, Brandt trying Ineffectual Loner, Jusqua getting more heart of gold in his Jerk With A. Yunita is variously described as The Load, prideful, or an Ineffectual Loner by the others, but since her experience in the first half is getting hit with the backlash of their issues, we never really see this apart from some subtle indications that are open to interpretation.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade has the character of Kishuna, who was rejected as a failure by Nergal because of his frail body. This tends to throw players for a loop, as Kishuna in gameplay is a massive Stone Wall with HP and evasion only matched by the final bosses, a permanent field of Anti-Magic surrounding him, and the ability to teleport on top of this (which he tends to do so whenever he seems endangered). This makes him one of the most difficult enemies to take down; the standard strategy is to just pray for a crit. He can't attack at all, but it's rather hard to imagine Nergal couldn't find some way to put such a phenomenal asset to good use.
• Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: The ending says Aran became known for his honest, if clumsy, work. However, none of his (admittedly little) dialogue suggests that he is clumsy at all, and his fantastic Skill growth would imply that he's not clumsy at all.
• In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Clair is said to not get along with her future sister-in-law Mathilda, and disapproves of her seeing Clair's older brother Clive. Apart from one offscreen moment in which Clair apparently criticized Mathilda for overshadowing Clive, and once getting annoyed when Mathilda claims to know Clive best at the end of the third Rise of the Deliverance map, Clair is completely respectful to Mathilda.
• On the Crimson Flower route of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, several characters will deride Dimitri as being extremely violent, vengeance-driven, and extensively hateful towards Edelgard (the Main Lord of this route). These are all true...on every route other than Crimson Flower, ironically. This is the only route in the game where instead of being nearly executed and forced into exile, Dimitri is crowned King of Faerghus fairly quickly, has the support of the Knights of Seiros due to the Kingdom's positive relationship with the church, and he puts his need for answers regarding the Tragedy of Duscur on the back burner. Not only is he far more level-headed compared to the other three routes, but his anger towards Edelgard and the player is also generally more justified, as here you're invading both Faerghus and the Leicester Alliance and forcibly reuniting them under the Empire, in addition to gunning for Rhea and the Church of Seiros. It also makes Edelgard's derision of his anger at her come off as lacking in self-awareness, given that his grievances on this route are all about her causing the war to begin with. On the other hand, considering the biases that these characters discussing Dimitri share, as well as how much of it is heard second-hand, this can come off as a case of Unreliable Expositor.
• In Fire Emblem Engage, Celine, a princess of Firene and Alfred's younger sister, is described as a kindhearted and innocent philanthropist. The "innocent" part is contradicted by her in-game characterization as being pragmatic and ruthless when necessary. During her supports with Alear, she sets up a cunning plan to hunt down and exterminate some bandits who have been terrorizing trade routes, while in her supports with Prince Fogado of Solm, she realizes that his small talk is a way of subtly prying information out of her and concludes the support chain by threateningly implying that it wouldn't be a good idea to get on her bad side.
• Garet in the original Golden Sun is mentioned by his little brother to be a compulsive glutton. This is never mentioned again in canon (though Tyrell gives it a Call-Back in Dark Dawn). Likewise, the official Nintendo strategy guide for The Lost Age directly describes Agatio as "... [lacking] substance between the ears". This is the guy who outwits Alex to his face, and later sabotages Isaac's party because he knows he won't win a fair fight with them. Lacking substance he ain't.
• In Grand Theft Auto V Michael is repeatedly teased and mocked for being overweight. However, Michael doesn't look close to being overweight. He starts the game with the most stamina of the three protagonists and he does most of the field work during missions.
• Heavy Rain has Madison Paige who is stated to be suffering from insomnia. In her first playable sequence, she can't sleep due to her insomnia, but she's perfectly fine and fully alert for the rest of the game. She also is able to have a peaceful sleep in one scene where she has sex with Ethan. There's also Scott Shelby, a pretty overweight man in his 40s who also suffers from asthma. In his first scene, Scott reaches for his inhaler due to the bad weather triggering his asthma, but he never needs it again afterwards. Despite Scott being out of shape, he can easily keep up with Madison in the final chapter and go toe to toe with Norman, who is an FBI agent that is in much better shape.
• Hypnospace Outlaw: While many of the "bad" musicians on the video game's fictional internet achieve Stylistic Suck, Chowder Man gets more heat than he deserves. In-universe, he's treated like a hack. The actual music Hot Dad wrote for him is musically solid, despite (or because of) lyrics that reflect Chowder Man's hilariously inflated ego and total lack of self-awareness.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Sora has a few of these:
    • Master Yen Sid throws Sora into the Dream Worlds in 3D to train under the notion that Sora's self-taught style is going to be insufficient to handle the upcoming battles, to which Sora objects. It's hard to disagree with Sora when all the amazing things he could already do in I and II were done with no formal training at all. He'd already beaten Xehanort and his forces several times by that point.
    • In III, the story frequently states that Sora can't do anything without someone there by his side, and that's the reason why he failed the Mark of Mastery exam. Previous games show Sora defeating plenty of enemies and managing to survive even when his friends weren't around. And the reason why he failed the Mark of Mastery exam is because Xehanort hijacked the exam and put Sora into a deep nightmare that put his heart to sleep by the darkness, as Xehanort wanted to make Sora his final vessel for his new Organization. Also, Sora unlocked all seven sleeping keyholes (which was his and Riku's task for the exam), but Xehanort interfered and caused most of Sora's powers to be stripped away from him, including the new power he was supposed to acquire for unlocking the seven sleeping keyholes known as the Power of Waking. This all means that, by any metric, Sora passed the exam and proved to be just fine on his own. Yet the series acts like Xehanort's interference somehow invalidates Sora doing exactly what was asked of him.
  • Terra is said to have an obsession with power. This is never really reflected in his attitude; though he is plainly interested in proving himself, Terra has a tendency to fear acquiring new power, with both Xehanort and Hades having to coax him into tapping into more power.
• Left 4 Dead series:
  • The first Left 4 Dead has Bill, a Vietnam veteran whose knees are messed up due to the shrapnel injury he got during the war. Despite the fact that Bill complains about having to go up flights of stairs, he can run up and down stairs without any problems during the game.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 states that Coach injured his knee during his days in college football and it sacked his football career. On top of this, Coach is overweight, which would make running and climbing more difficult for him. The injury and weight problem is shown off in the opening intro scene where Coach has to take a breather from climbing up several flights of stairs (while the younger and more fit Nick, while still noticeably out of breath, is blazing on past him), but Coach is not hindered at all during the actual game.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, at the start the game Zelda complains about how lazy Link is. For the rest of the game, Link comes off as far from lazy with all running around the surface killing a small army of demons he does. This is something of a Running Gag, as Link is often portrayed as having to be dragged out of bed and put to work at the start of quite a few of the games - but not being a morning person is not the same thing as being lazy.
  • Similar to the above example, in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Navi shouts at Link in the beginning of the game trying to wake him up and mentioning why with a greater destiny awaiting him would the kingdom depend on such a lazy boy. Throughout the game, Link is barely ever lazy, especially with all the dungeons, many creepy things he slays that would normally send even well-trained adult soldiers running for their homes, and surprisingly athletic things he does that wouldn't be normally expected of a boy of 10 years old. Not to mention all those cool front flips he does in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask while chasing after the Skull Kid.
  • Same applies to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where Link oversleeps on his birthday but is fully capable of setting sail overseas on his own.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a Rito woman visiting Gerudo Town claims that the Rito have especially poor night vision, but this is never dealt with in the story other than her comment about it.
  • Hyrule Warriors: After gaining the Master Sword, Link is said to grow arrogant, rushing into battle alone with no regard for his own safety. Too bad this is just how the gameplay works, so it seems like the other characters are getting upset over Link doing nothing different whatsoever.
• A recurring plot element in Mega Man games is that X was the first robot to be built with true free will, implying the cast of the classic series to be just following their programming. As the series runs on Ridiculously Human Robots, most stories involving Mega Man (who predates X by a good while) don't really show him as much less free-willed than X. Hell, Proto Man, who predates both, is arguably more emotional and willful than either.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid:
    • Meryl Silverburgh was mentioned as having had "special psychotherapy to destroy her interest in men". It didn't work. It's not even that Snake "cures" her — she's flirting with him from the very beginning, before she even knows who he is or what he's like, besides "handsome", and not five minutes after the supposed psychotherapy is mentioned, Psycho Mantis is telling Snake that she's fallen for him. The aim was probably to present her as someone who'd locked away all of her femininity in order to succeed as a soldier, but it has absolutely no effect on her character and absolutely no explanation is even attempted.
    • Psycho Mantis claims that Snake is even worse than the game's Big Bad, Liquid Snake. While Snake is undoubtedly a Jerkass, he's not without conscience and actually stopped World War III twice, while Liquid is trying to start it. There is no obvious indication in spoken dialogue or backstory to back up Mantis's claim. In fact, there is dialogue to the contrary when Snake's flippant description of him killing his father-figure Big Boss elicits such a reaction from Naomi, and Colonel Campbell points out that being a professional soldier — even one with the body count of Solid Snake — doesn't mean they don't have a heart.
    • Fox says that Snake "hasn't aged well", and while Snake does have accelerated aging which becomes very apparent in later games, in Metal Gear Solid he just appears like a handsome man in his early 30s, with all of the female characters noticing straight away how good-looking he is. Mind you, that's also Informed Attractiveness in itself, since, apart from the artworks used in the Codec and Briefing, his face is an immobile, low-poly block with no visible eyes. Still, his face is much more detailed in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, when he's 35 during the Tanker mission, and Liquid/Ocelot says, "Not so young anymore, eh, Snake?" Again, he looks for all the world like he's in his thirties, forties at most.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the radio characters frequently remind us that Para-Medic is considered obnoxious because she talks too much. She does talk an awful lot, but so does everyone else in the series. In fact, compared to most characters, she's relatively subdued, as she only talks to you when the player chooses to contact her directly, apart from a small handful of forced conversations here and there — most of which are her butting in on another radio character's conversation, in contrast to the legitimately annoying character who served her role in the previous game, who would at multiple points throughout the game force you into a ten-minute Codec call.
  • In Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Marionette Owl is a serial killer who murders women to collect bones to put in his Bunraku puppets, but refuses to kill men, even when this impedes his plans (Jimmy, the Metal Gear developer and potential informant, tells us Owl only kept him alive after he'd exhausted his use to him because he is male). However, Owl's opening boss battle speech against Snake (who is certainly a man) states that he's going to take Snake's collar bones for his doll Koharu, before pretty unambiguously attempting to kill him. Mind you, since it's stated he kills girls because he falls in love with them, if you're going to have an exception, it'd have to be Solid Snake...
• PAYDAY: The Heist has Dallas, a playable character who is a heavy smoker and has trouble breathing at times. This is never mentioned in the game at all nor does it reflect on Dallas' physical abilities since he can run around without being short of breath.
• Played with in Persona 5. Ryuji is constantly called dumb by Morgana, and while he sometimes fit the insult(he has the worst grades of the entire cast), it's shown various times that Ryuji can be quite smart, albeit in a case of Dumbass Has a Point; he points out that the easiest way to find out the true nature of Mementos is to get to the bottom and comes up with a correct answer to a multiple choice problem in the extra Palace in Royal.
• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice Maya describes her past attempts at channeling spirits as "hit-and-miss," and estimates that she had a 30% success rate in the original trilogy(the Master of Kurain must have a 100% success rate). This might've been true for the first game in the series where she did have a few failures, but that's when she's specifically described as being still in training. One game later, while she continues to train, she's considered full-fledged spirit medium, and from that point onward she never once she failed to channel a spirit of a dead person. (At one point she even beats out Pearl in channeling a spirit even though Pearl is a very strong medium herself^note It's also possible that Maya may have channeled the spirit first, since Mia told her to do it and Pearl was unaware that anyone else would channel Dahlia). However, it's also true that every situation Maya channelled a spirit is pretty much a desperate situation like the first one. Especially, in Bridge to the Turnabout, where Maya would have ended up dead, so it's not like she had much of a choice.
• In Pokémon, we have the infamous Pokédex entries...which are basically written to fill in the blank. Sometimes they contradict each other.
  • Magikarp is said to be the weakest Pokémon ever, when it's not.^note Neither its Attack nor its Special Attack is the lowest in the series. From a utility standpoint, the title of "most useless Pokémon" goes to Cosmog and Cosmoem, both of which are flat-out unable to do anything to their opponent. Magikarp can at least attack, even if it's probably not dealing much damage. Certain entries also claim its Speed is "virtually worthless" even though it's actually pretty good for an unevolved Pokémon, and both of its Abilities can make it even faster.
  • Slowbro/Slowking is said to devolve if it ever loses the Shellder attached to its tail/head, but the mechanic doesn't exist in the games (outside of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Spin-Off) and the anime reinforces this by stating on multiple occasions it's impossible for any mon to revert to a prior form. The only exception would be the genetically engineered Silvally, whose Power Limiter apparently changes its species.
  • Goomy is described in the Pokédex as "The weakest Dragon-Type Pokémon" despite Noibat being introduced in the same game as Goomy. Noibat holds the true dishonor of being the Dragon-Type with the lowest base stat total, with Goomy outperforming Noibat in every stat except Speed.
  • Dracovish. If it can only breathe water then why can it be outside the Pokéball and show no sign of suffocating? Even in the anime, there are times when Dracovish is nowhere near the water and has no problem breathing.
  • Overlapping with Gameplay and Story Segregation, there's the process of Mega Evolution. Mega Evolution is described as requiring a strong bond between Trainer and Pokémon, and that most trainers cannot carry out due to lacking said bond. Despite these claims, the player will always pull off Mega Evolution without fail, even if they go out of their way to set a Pokémon's friendship value to 0. It's not just limited to the player, as people like Lysandre (whose evil plan involves killing all Pokemon) use Mega Evolution without issue. Even looking into media outside of the games, only yields a single instance of a trainer being incapable of performing Mega Evolution. This is in contrast to the dozens upon dozens of trainers in the franchise who use it.
  • In Pokémon Black and White, the ditzy Bianca is said to be a worse battler than her analytic friend Cheren. In your fights with them however, Bianca is actually the more challenging one, due to some extremely poor team design on Cheren's part.^note Cheren's two Pokémon that differ from hers are both physical attack based glass cannons. Knowing this he decides that both should use sets that depend on them surviving an attack and the second should run a set with no physical attacks. While he tries to give one a set up so he will always critical, he doesn't actually complete it and deletes the move needed to pull it off by the time he's put the other pieces together.
  • In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Arven needs your help fighting the Titan Pokémon because he's bad at battling. His first battle is pretty easy... However, during the actual Titan fights, he does a pretty decent job of fighting alongside you. He's always got an appropriately-leveled Pokémon, and usually one with a Type advantage against whatever you're fighting. His final battle in the Path of Legends quest is also on the harder side, with him having a high-leveled and very well-balanced party.
• Played for Laughs In-Universe in Portal and its sequel where GlaDOS takes every opportunity possible to mock Chell for being overweight, despite Chell not being even close to a Hollywood Pudgy woman who is slim and fit enough to run and jump non-stop without a rest. It's made very clear she's doing it because she knows humans as a species are sensitive about their weight and is trying to passive-aggressively get under Chell's skin, while Chell hilariously never even bothers to react to it and doesn't even speak back. Wheatley attempts this at one point too by uneloquently calling her "fatty fatty no-parents" in a sing-song voice: Chell couldn't care less and GlaDOS of course calls him a moron and points out she's not fat.
• In-Universe example in Portal 2. Wheatley is a personality core designed to make stupid decisions, and GLaDOS continually remarks how big of a moron he is. In reality he outsmarts her and Chell numerous times, even using traps that rely on their belief that he is stupid to work. Five possible justifications:
  • He was designed to be a moron in the same way GlaDOS was designed not to kill all of Aperture's employees with deadly neurotoxin.
  • The worst possible decision he could make would be to stay in control and let everything explode, and every smart decision he makes is allowed by his programming because of their final outcome if he succeeds.
  • GLaDOS is just lying about, or misinterpreting Wheatley's actual role.
  • He was designed specifically to distract GLaDOS and runs like the Facts Core. If the Facts Core constantly gave out incorrect facts you would be quick to just do the opposite of whatever it said. However, now and then it actually produces a correct fact which means you either always assume it's wrong and when a correct idea comes up you do the opposite and fail, or it forces you to analyze each one to check against the "broken clock being right twice a day". This is supported by GLaDOS's claims comparing Wheatley to a "tumor". If he was wrong about everything, she could just do the opposite of what he said. But since he is occasionally right, she must listen to and analyze everything he says.
  • Chell was right about the universe having gone mad and doing everything in its power to spite her.
• Rainbow Six: Vegas' Big Bad turns out to be Gabe Nowak, a teammate from the first mission who was effectively the team screw-up, and the prologue of the sequel decides to show us exactly how much of a screw-up he was... and it fails completely at this. Not least for the fact that the AI of Gabe and Logan for this mission is far superior to the might-as-well-be-brain-damaged duo of Mike and Jung you're babysitting for the rest of the game, but because Gabe keeps making decisions that the writing goes out of its way to portray as "bad" and not how you should do things, only for the gameplay to do nothing to bear this out - for instance, one of the first encounters with enemies has him suggest throwing a frag grenade to just kill them all immediately. Logan suggests that if you do so, other terrorists will hear it and execute their hostages, but you can then do exactly as Gabe suggests for every encounter, except maybe the one that actually involves hostages, and not suffer for it in the least. The worst he gets is accidentally getting the hostage negotiator killed, because it legitimately seemed like the terrorists were going to just kill the hostages anyway; being narcissistic, which only really comes up twice, once bragging that he could take a sniper out from twice the distance the player does and once assuming he performed a breaching maneuver perfectly; and, when the team is ambushed and he gets incapacitated after defusing a bomb at the end of the mission, angrily assuming that the team deliberately set him up to get killed for his screw-ups — screw-ups that aren't nearly as numerous or terrible as the game wants you to think. It's telling that when you finally confront him at the end of the game, he has to completely change track to being angry at you over covering for his screw-ups and not letting him learn from them — with the added bonus of him covering for the nonexistence of his own flaw by fabricating a completely new informed flaw for Bishop (their supposed "babying" of their recruits and not letting them mature on their own — even though Logan, the other recruit from the prologue, is as competent as you can get considering he's the player character in the previous game).
• In Red Dead Redemption, Seth Of The Dead's official bio on the website claims he's a meth addict. In game, he's completely insane and not healthy-looking, but we never see him anywhere near meth or impaired by need for it (especially in contrast to a character met later on who is a cocaine addict, and talks about almost nothing besides his addiction to the point where it reaches Overly Long Gag).
  • Landon Ricketts' bio describes him as 'vain and pretentious'. The worst he gets is slightly arrogant about his genuinely phenomenal gun-slinging ability, when poking fun at Marston for 'barely being able to shoot straight'. His self-deprecating attitude towards himself (and his love life), his genuine devotion to the people of Mexico, his compassion towards John Marston and his thoughtful but straight-talking manner actually lead to him coming across as humble, the precise opposite of what his bio says. Especially in contrast with the genuinely vain and pretentious Mexican politicians. He is vain and pretentious in the Alternate Universe zombie DLC, though.
  • In the game itself, John taunts Javier Escuella by claiming Abigail Roberts (John's wife) always thought he (Javier) was a creep. This never comes up in the prequel, where Javier is presented as one of the nicest members of the gang. Also, John tells Abraham Reyes that Javier was a man with "passion but no love" who cared little for anyone else, a stark contrast to his portrayal in RDR2.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Various sources state that Sonic can be a jerk at times. This contrasts with his in-game portrayal as always caring and friendly, if somewhat snarky.
  • While more a case of Characterization Marches On, bios sometimes refer to Tails being childlike and hyperactive, despite his personality being even more mature and rational than Sonic's for the large part.
• In Spore, the Ecologist attribute card points to a scary dogmatic side (namely, the belief that they must slaughter any sentient species that harms a world's environment), that doesn't seem to show up.
• Stardew Valley: According to Demetrius, Robin is quite short-tempered. In every interaction the player has with her, she is a Nice Girl.
• Street Fighter:
  • Dan Hibiki, the iconic Joke Character, frequently has the joke taken a bit too far. It's been variously claimed that his homegrown martial art is completely useless, that he can't land a single hit on Sakura despite her lack of experience, and that the Gadoken is about as powerful as a slap. Though Dan's power has fluctuated over his history, he's still an incredibly muscular man who can jump six feet straight up and shoot fireballs out of his hands, even if only for a few inches before it disappears. It can get especially disconcerting when playing Super Street Fighter IV, where Dan's Gadoken is actually stronger than the Hadoken when it hits.
  • Balrog's fighting style is often considered brutal and crude in-universe. In a fight, he's a highly competent, technical boxer with enough strength and finesse to fight against supernatural foes on even footing. He also uses a number of moves that are illegal in boxing — that's how he got kicked out of professional boxing — but this is just a vicious edge to solid technique.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Mario is said to be impatient, hotheaded, and impulsive sometimes, yet this is rarely seen in the mainline games, where he is normally a kind-hearted, cheerful and generally optimistic guy. Spin-offs show that he can be overly competitive at times and quick to anger, but even then, he's still normally happy-go-lucky.
  • While Luigi is commonly known for being the brother who scares easily, some characters will outright treat Luigi as if he is incapable of doing anything at all, despite that he has been shown time and time again that he is just as capable, optimistic, cheerful, heroic and brave as, if not more than, his older brother. Not to mention he's just as physically powerful and has a higher jump.
  • Peach is stated to be "Sassy and stubborn, but cute" although in the mainline games, she hasn't shown an ounce of sassiness nor stubbornness and is mostly depicted in a gentle, optimistic, and sometimes naive manner. The spin-offs, however, tend shown her sassy and stubborn side a lot more. This was mostly stated as a design choice of what Peach should represent rather than her actual personality, however.
  • In the various Mario RPGs, characters will mock Bowser's size with various insults like "overgrown turtle", "pudgy", "tubby", and so on. Bowser is large overall, but he's nowhere near fat.
  • Lord Crump from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is allegedly both a moron and, according to Grodus is his "most idiotic henchman". However, while a bit dense, Crump time and time again is very good at laying traps and out thinking the heroes, managing to outfox Mario and friends twice in the second dungeon, once by rigging a fake Puni Orb pedestal to entrap them, and once by letting them find the Crystal Star and swiping it from under their noses. He also only resorts to fighting them when he has superior numbers or Magnus Von Grapple at his side, otherwise he relies on said trickery or traps which tend to only fail to a Deus ex Machina nobody could have reasonably seen coming like Mario's brand new "curse" or Cortez and his crew unexpectedly aiding Mario's team.
• In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Kyosuke's mech Alt Eisen is stated to be an awkwardly-designed mech that Kyosuke can only use because of his insane luck, yet Statistically Speaking there isn't anything that keeps the thing from functioning perfectly as a Mighty Glacier and fair much better than the average Gespent.
• Ange in Tales of Innocence is a Big Eater and is said to be overweight. However, this doesn't detract from her ability to perform melee combos, and she certainly doesn't look any more pudgy than the rest of the cast.◊
• The mercs in Team Fortress 2 have a few:
  • While their sanity (or lack thereof) isn't questioned, they have been described as "mostly having below-average IQ's" by Miss Pauling, and as "idiots" by Helen the Administrator, though each of them later displayed smarts ranging from Genius Ditz to Ditzy Genius level, probably factoring in the "emotional stability" part of IQ amongst others. A later comic shows why they make such claims; Helen believes them to be just like the lead poisoned idiots of Teufort, while Miss Pauling has secretly been providing all of them with bottled water, except the Soldier, who didn't bother listening to her warnings.
  • Also, both of them claim that the mercs are illiterate; videos seem to contradict this, as all of them except the Soldier and maybe the Pyro are able to read just fine, with the Heavy and the Engineer even holding PhDs and the Medic having an MD, since he had a medical license in the past.
• We're told that Tex Murphy's Love Interest Chelsee is a mutant, but unlike the other mutants featured in the game who all have noticeable physical deformities, Chelsee looks like a normal human. In fact, she's even rather pretty. Lampshaded, in that it's mentioned in-game that nobody knows what her mutation actually is, and she's not telling.
• The translocator in Unreal Tournament 2004 was slightly nerfed from the original game - it now has an ammo limit which slowly recharges. The justification for this is that using the thing too much can result in a disease called "Teleportation Related Dementia", even though in the original game there's literally nothing preventing you from just translocating everywhere for an hour or so, other than maybe someone sabotaging the disc or trying to take a flag with them. Much like replacing the Sniper Rifle with a Lightning Gun that shows exactly where the sniper's shooting from, the real reason is precisely to prevent people from translocating everywhere all the time as part of game balance.
• Until Dawn:
  • Sam has a low "funny" stat yet she is clearly shown having a good sense of humor.
  • Mike has low "brave" and "charitable" stats, even though he's friendly with everyone regardless how they treat him and is arguably one of the bravest characters.
  • Chris has the lowest stat for "brave" out of all the characters (ironically, even lower than Ashley who is an easily frightened Hysterical Woman). While not necessarily the bravest, Chris has shown and performed several feats of bravery, such as attempting to retrieve Josh despite knowing about the Wendigos outside the lodge.
  • Matt is often treated by Emily, Jess and potentially Mike as being Dumb Muscle but Matt has proven to show composure and be rational during tense situations.
• Done In-Universe in the final season of The Walking Dead (Telltale) when Clementine describes Lilly's father Larry as a "racist asshole" in spite of the fact that the man was a complete asshole to everyone except Lilly. His hatred of Lee was evidently from knowing the man was a convicted murderer rather than anything to do with race, as he seemed to treat Clementine and Glenn with the least hostility out of anyone in the group (though that's not saying much) and even cares enough about Clementine's well-being to threaten Lee if anything happens to her. It's a Call-Back to one dialogue option back in the very first season where Lee implies to Clem that Larry is a racist, which Clem took at face value since she barely knew him and didn't know the real reason he hated Lee so much.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The Goblins have a reputation of things they invent blowing up in their faces, most notably their zeppelins, where everyone remarks about crashes and explosions, yet no matter how many times you ride them, nothing bad happens. In particular, the Azshara-Twilight Highlands zeppelin is described as a virtual deathtrap filled with volatile gas, fuel that "shouldn't even be moved, much less flown", and even the parachutes will most likely kill you. Yet the zeppelin is brought down by dragons near its destination.
  • Worgen are stated to struggle with controlling their beastly instincts and rage. Yet, except for one or two times where it serves the story, neither players nor NPCs have any trouble at all. In Silverpine, an entire castle of humans are turned into worgen and instantly have no problem controlling themselves. There's even a pack of "feral" worgen who apparently never got the druidic cure to keep their minds and they're functionally no different than any other worgen NPC in the game, with one even acting as a questgiver for Alliance players.
  • Death Knights are told they need to regularly kill others or be wracked by terrible pain until they do. Somehow this doesn't prevent NPC Death Knights from working as merchants or otherwise retiring from combat entirely.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Amusingly, despite protagonist Noah apparently being really bad at naming things to the point that he refused to name his son in a past life, we never learn how bad they are because he's too ashamed to even mention them. The only hint we get is that his Infinity +1 Sword called Lucky Seven is also refered to as the Sword of the End or the Sword of Origin which seems fairly cool, though it's unclear if Noah came up with this name or it was a prexisting name for the weapon, and in Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed his past incarnation N dubs Matthew's powered up gauntlets as the Fist of the End.

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