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What we've got here is failure to communicate.
—Cool Hand Luke, 1967
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can fuckin kill you.
—Taylor Mali
Anthropologists posit that one of the turning points in human development was a growing ability to communicate. In fiction, one of the turning points in dramatic development was the ability not to communicate.
Sometimes the author wants the plot to go a certain direction, but for it to do so one or more characters have to misunderstand each other. Common enough in Real Life, so it should be no trouble to pull off in fiction, right? Well, there's a few problems... the misunderstanding is pretty easy to clear up, and the characters are pretty good speakers who are on good terms and speak frankly to each other without needlessly holding back.
So what's the author to do? They have the coolest plot twist or Climax Boss fight, but it absolutely hinges on these guys being, however briefly, unable to articulate their point.
To solve this problem the author gives the characters Poor Communication Kills, reducing their verbal skills to those of three-year-olds. Shy three-year-olds, with a stutter.
All the characters involved go out of character for a moment so that they can't (or won't) tell their side of the story, or creates a false urgency because there's " No Time To Explain", or just plain making them act like a disgruntled loner and telling their friends to Figure It Out Yourself when cooperation (or at least non-interference) is infinitely preferable. No matter which reason, it seems that at least half of the people involved have simultaneously gotten hold of the Idiot Ball, if not everyone.
Or to cut through all the pretentious Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness above: Poor Communication Kills is when a misunderstanding is entirely implausible and against the characters' previously exhibited communication skills, personality and relationship, and any normal person could clear up the misunderstanding in less than 30 seconds and solve the plot.
Though similar, this trope does not include things like Selective Obliviousness, Youre Just Jealous, or Sarcastic Confession as those are failures to listen rather than speak; though honestly authors can nerf even that ability when they need the Reasonable Authority Figure to become a useless adult.
Compare Right Hand Versus Left Hand.
Contrast: Just Eat Gilligan, Amnesia Danger.
Common ways to NOT get the point across:
- Cannot Spit It Out - The character purposefully keeps quiet out of conflicted feelings.
- Didnt Mention It - character chooses not to tell something that is very awkward NOT to mention, such as a child or marriage.
- Cannot Tell A Joke - A character's attempts to be humorous just leaves their audience bemused, bothered and bewildered.
- Cassandra Truth - A character who is never believed because her claims are seen as insane.
- Cryptic Conversation - Being mysterious for the sake of being vague, this rarely helps the heroes get anywhere or stop the villains.
- Culture Clash - Each character is quite certain that the other understands what is meant.
- Digging Yourself Deeper- How most people get tongue tied into being a Cassandra Truth.
- Friend Or Foe - You can't tell who to trust.
- Hanging Separately - Your
friends allies regard you as a greater threat than their (and your) enemies.
- Hulk's Cooldown Hug Corollary - Any time a non-violent solution against a nigh-unstoppable force seems likely, someone will shoot at it.
- Jedi Truth - Telling the recipient something the speaker knows is not true, or at least mostly not true, but considers it justified as being true "from a certain point of view."
- Let's You And Him Fight - Why any two Super Heroes or teams fight in comic books. At least it usually gets sorted out fairly quickly.
- Locked Out Of The Loop - Keeping vital information from the hero, either for valid reasons or "just because". Rarely ends amicably.
- Lost In Transmission - You are getting some vital information when suddenly, right as you are being told the key ingredient, the phone cuts out. Or the radio falls into static, or the computer has a psychotic break from reality. In any case, you are now standing there with a green wire in one hand, a red wire in the other, and no idea which one you were supposed to cut.
- No Time To Explain - An excuse for several of the following; considering how time works in movies, pretty much a non-excuse.
- Not Now Bernard - Shushing away children or allies when they have important news.
- Nonverbal Miscommunication - When words are out of the mix, things tend to get worse. If only someone created a language based on making signs... still they'd find a way to mess it up.
- One Side Of The Story - The result of several of these.
- Rage Against The Mentor - The result of heroes getting fed up with abstruse and cryptic mentors and allies.
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand - What happens when two groups who should be allies fight, simply because no one bothers to find out which side they're all on!
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness - When Smart people Can Not Spit It Out because their language is too elevated.
- We Could Have Avoided All This - The end result of many communication breakdowns.
- Why Didn't You Just Say So? - The standard response to finally breaking through Poor Communication Kills. An example of Lampshade Hanging.
- You Have To Believe Me - Very often in the disaster and horror genre, anyone who learns of the impending disaster in time to stop it loses the ability to not talk like a homeless schizophrenic.
- You Know What You Did - A soap opera staple, the result of a loved one thinking you're cheating because of One Side Of The Story. Worst part is the poor sap doesn't know what he did!
- You Make Me Sic - A character write something to another... but the only response they get is that their spelling needs work.
Examples
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Anime
- In Gakuen Tengoku, Oshino's inability to articulate the fact that he's a new teacher got him his ass beat.
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni takes a very... er... literal angle on this due to the fact that most arcs are One Side Of The Story, and that the series in general contains proliferations of Cryptic Conversations and characters who Can Not Spit It Out. In fact, the latter point becomes a major Aesop of the series.
- However, to be fair, it's mildly justified in some cases by the fact that the 'main' character hasn't really known the rest of the cast for that long — and the things they're not talking about are often rather more serious secrets than is usual for this trope. Like, say, the fact that you just murdered someone. Still comes off as inexplicable at other points, though — especially since the character with the most important secrets obviously has nothing to lose by telling them.
- It's assumed due to the Groundhog Day Loop that she has tried to tell them, hundreds and thousands of times, but just is never believed, and after a few centuries, she has resigned herself to her fate.
- One Detective Conan case had an injured American tourist recuperating in a Japanese household and falling in love with a young woman. Because of a mouth injury, at first he could only communicate by writing out Japanese phrases phonetically. As he was leaving, the young woman asked if he loved her, and he wrote down the word "shine", referring to his earlier words that he wanted a "shining bride", but which she quite naturally interpreted as "shi-ne," which happens to be Japanese for "die". The woman committed suicide after he left, and when he came back he ended up murdering most of the family in revenge. What An Idiot.
- Monster sometimes relies on this trope. The show is full of characters who know bits and pieces of the overall puzzle; two of them will often unknowingly meet up, but fail to say the right things. Examples include Tenma's first meeting with Grimmer and Nina's first meeting with Lotte (who even mentions her friend Johan, just never by name).
- Elfen Lied is also a noteworthy offender. The good guys have almost enough information to explain the whole plot and background story, but never get the idea that any of their friends might be interested in their personal side adventures.
- Most trouble in Binbou Shimai Monogatari stems from the two sisters simply not talking with each other about what's bothering them.
- This was Colonel Badass Sergei Smirnov's Fatal Flaw in Gundam 00. His inability to reach for his son Andrei after the death of his mom Holly, leads to Andrei growing so embittered and hateful that he ends up killing his father in battle, believing him to be a traitor on top of responsible for Holly's death.
- A significant amount of the angst from the beginning of Gundam SEED could have been avoided, had Kira (or anyone else on the Archangel) felt the need say to ZAFT something along the lines of "Hey, there's about 30 civilians on board this ship".
- Or maybe not, Yzak would most likely just shoot them anyway, believing them to be fleeing soldiers.
- However Athrun telling Nicol that the pilot was Strike was a friend of his whom tragic circumstances forced him into reluctantly fighting, and not and evil natural hell bent on slaughtering them, instead of just sighing and staring off into space would have likely saved Nicol's life later on. Instead Nicol suicides into Strike in a vain attempt to save Athrun's life, which was never in danger because Kira would likely have just left Athrun alone.
- In Appleseed Ex Machina the government advices the general public to hand over very handy Connexus-devices telling that they've been "deemed harmful". Instead of simply saying: "These devices turn you into insane cyber-zombie and may force the police to shoot you." Needless to say, few listen.
- Mai-HiME....ohhhh yes. Mai-HiME. Let's count the ways, shall we?
- Mai gets involved with the HiME Festival by being told she'll have to risk the most important thing to her. She assumes it's her life. Not quite.
- Nagi informs the HiME that the HiME Star is descending and will continue to do so until someone gains its power. The earthquakes and weather shifts caused by its movemement make the HiME consider that it will destroy the world otherwise. Not really, but the perceived time crunch forces several of the more impulsive HiME into actions they might've waited before taking otherwise.
- Yukariko blames Nao for attacking her after the above revelation, in reality an illusion projected by her CHILD. Nao, already a bitter, cynical girl by nature, assumes the HiME coming to confront her about attacking Yukariko are attacking her first, and loses an eye in the resulting fight, firmly shoving her from Anti-Hero into an antagonist slot.
- Yuiichi has no idea how deep the feelings his Unlucky Childhood Friend, Shiho, are. Naturally, she ends up trying to Murder The Hypotenuse multiple times, and her defeat in the end causes his death.
- Mikoto's training and arguable brainwashing at a young age repeatedly spawn Diabolus Ex Machina, killing Takumi and Yuiichi both.
- Shizuru's failure to inform Haruka she was leaving the school to look after her grievously hurt best friend leads to Haruka tracking her down, seeing Shizuru's private actions while Natsuki is asleep, and jumping to all the wrong conclusions. Her eventual accusations of her molesting Natsuki while she slept, in Natsuki's hearing, cause Natsuki to react...poorly to Shizuru's attempts to reassure her, and the perceived rejection causes Shizuru to have a psychotic break and kill lots of people that "could threaten Natsuki", ending in the deaths of Haruka, Section 1, Nao's mother, and Shizuru and Natsuki themselves in the final showdown.
- The manga Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo has the main character be a bad speaker with self-confidence issues whose only two friends in school suddenly stop talking to her after a transfer student comes in. She doesn't take it well and it gets to the part why the manga is titled what it is.
- How come Ranma wasn't mentioned yet? The entire series is more or less made of this trope.
- Parodied in Hayate The Combat Butler. There is an episode that has Hayate spending the night at Hinagiku's house; then Hinagiku end up bumping with Ayumu, Hayate's other love interest and Hina's new friend as well. That's when she says this is bad, and the narrator detailedly explains this trope, commenting that Hinagiku fears that Ayumu will find out somehow that Hayate is inside the house, then will run away and get frustrated because of a misunderstanding. And then it happens.
- Lelouch, in his arrogance, is guilty of this multiple times. The best (or worst) example is when he's informed by his enemies that their Ace Suzaku is carrying a weapon of mass destruction on board his mecha, but fails to tell any of his subordinates. When Lelouch's top pilot Kallen confronts him, Suzaku, despite not wanting to use the weapon, is forced by the command to "live" that Lelouch placed upon him to fire it, which killed 35 million people.
- In Sekirei, the protagonist's sister gets a Sekirei named Shiina. His goal is to find Kusano, his sister (whether they're actually related is unknown, but Shiina is #107 and Kusano is #108). Yukari proceeds to heartlessly beat any Ashikabi she comes across (she's become a massive bitch in the process somehow, even though some of her victims deserved it) and then ask them where Kusano is .
- Kusano is one of her brother's Sekirei.
- Even if she thinks she can't call him (you're not allowed to talk about Sekirei to Muggles, and she doesn't know he's an Ashikabi), visiting Izumo Inn would have resolved this whole subplot and now she's been kidnapped by Higa.
- Near the end of Vision Of Escaflowne, Van attempts to kill Dilandau and Allen leaps to his rescue, apparently having never bothered to let Van in on the fact that Dilandau is actually Allen's younger sister who has been sex-changed and driven psychotic by Zaibach. Rather than explain, "Hey, don't kill him, he's my kid sister, Allen tells Van that Allen himself should be held responsible for all of Dilandau's crimes. And rather than ask for further explanation, Van's response is along the lines of, "Okay, sure, then let's fight to the death."
Comic Books
- In the newspaper comic, 9 Chickweed Lane, Official Couple Amos and Edda have broken up mostly because she wouldn't tell him what was upsetting her (his dreamy ramblings about the concert violinist they'd watched) and it never occurs to him A) to ask what was wrong or B) the answer might be him.
- G.I.Joe, late in the series. Cobra has captured a bunch of G.I.Joes. Cobra Commander, off-site, says to let them go. Unfortunately he conveys this as 'Get rid of them'. The officers on site dither and whine. Instead of calling back to ask 'You mean shoot them?' they agree to let a mook do it. Several Joes get their heads ventilated. GRAPHICALLY. Yikes.
- In an issue of X-Factor, where Siryn is trying to tell Jamie she's pregnant and Jamie thinks she leaving the team. Following a brief argument after which Jamie storms off, Monet points out to Siryn that rather than Jamie being an insensitive ass, he obviously didn't know what she was trying to say.
Film
- The movie 28 Days Later, opens with a group of environmentalists attempting to break open cages of seemingly abused monkeys. A scientist tries to stop them and is given a chance to explain why they shouldn't torture him like he (seemingly) has done to the monkeys. His answer? " [They have] Rage." He doesn't try to explain that the Rage he is talking about is not just an emotion, even though there's a large enough of a pause to do so. Instead, he, for some reason, expects these people who have not worked in his lab, nor understand that the monkeys are sick, to comprehend a word that apparently now has two meanings. Some people might blame the PETA wannabes for killing most of Great Britain, but I blame that damn scientist.
- So do I. FOR CREATING THE DAMN VIRUS IN THE FIRST PLACE!
- As do I. For not keeping the 100% lethal pandemic virus infected monkey in a more secure location, while not even bothering to use warning signs such as "BLOODY DEADLY VIRUS INSIDE, KEEP THE FUCK OUT!"
- Still, had the Environmentalists not snuck in like that, the virus probably would've been contained.
- It also ought to be added that the warning signs were almost certainly there — this troper (due to work) knows exactly what kinds of signs to expect, too. This troper also knows from professors and the occasional news story that intelligence is not a membership requirement of theirs, which is why any scientists working there would be insisting on the place being secure and well-signed even if what they're working on is public knowledge.
- This Troper remembers another story where the scientists did in fact label the cages as containing animals infected with level 5 bioweapons, only for the leader of the Animal Wrongs Group to go "Oh, scientists just use those signs to try and scare us off! But they can't fool me!", and releases the animals anyway. Sure enough, death plague.
- In Revenge Of The Sith, Master Yoda helps get the entire Jedi Order put to the sword because he couldn't get across to Anakin how important it was to be clear-headed when he tries to change what his visions show him. He just told Anakin what to do, expecting either that Anakin would simply do what he was told or that he would respect Yoda's wisdom. Yoda does this rather than take the time to explain that if he was so terrified of losing someone, he would be willing to do anything to save them, no matter how far-fetched, dangerous, or self-destructive. And that this is a bad mental state to make any kind of decision in.
- The Finnish film Tali-Ihantala 1944
 has a scene that shows the tragic results of a language barrier between the Finnish troops and Swedish volunteers. One of the Finnish veterans is instructing the volunteer troops on using a panzerfaust, stressing the fact that the weapon releases a lethal tail flame upon firing. However, he tells this in Finnish, which the Swedish troops do not understand. Later, during an ambush against Soviet tanks, one of the volunteers gets killed by the tail flame. One of the Finnish soldiers tries to warn him not to hold the weapon against his shoulder while firing, but since the warning is again in Finnish, he does not understand it and fires anyway.
- Subverted in Mars Attacks!. At first it appears that poor communication is the cause of the Martians' attacks on the humans. Later it's made clear that the Martians intended to invade and destroy humanity anyway.
Literature
- Harry Potter's godfather Sirius Black was a valiant and caring daredevil who would willingly give his life for his friends, but boy, did he SUCK when it came to explaining his innocence.
- Dracula, where the excessively gentlemanly heroes deliberately choose not to tell Mina Harker about their vampire hunt so as not to distress her, thus making her the perfect target. Ironically, once the damage is done and they must let her in on it, she copes rather better than her husband did.
- Everything bad that ever happened to Bertie Wooster.
- Every....single...protagonist in Robert Jordan's The Wheel Of Time series appears to suffer from this. Seriously.
- Luckily, the antagonists have the exact same problem, and while the protagonists have a long-term scheme and may be able to at least put aside their differences, the antagonists are busy squabbling over who gets to be The Dragon.
- Unluckily, the Big Bad can (and does) give concrete orders that will be carried out. The side of good has... about 50 chronic arguments? At least?
- Considering the whole Aiel vs. the Whitecloaks vs. the Rebel Tower vs. the White Tower vs. Elidia vs. the Asha'man vs.... well, everyone the Dark one could probably just sit back and wait for the good guys to kill each other off, although at least half of the disputes arise or are at least made worse by agents of the Dark one amongst them.
- Shakespeare seemed to be fond of this trope. The most famous example is probably Romeo And Juliet, where Juliet fakes her own death, and her message to Romeo explaining the situation never reaches him, causing Romeo to kill Paris and commit suicide. Upon discovering this, Juliet also kills herself.
- In The Ruins, poor communication literally kills, as the Mayan-speaking locals are unable to effectively warn the main characters away from the titular ruins. Why they don't speak Spanish is not explained.
- Because it's very common for Mayans in the poor rural areas of Mexico to speak no or very little Spanish.
- Herman Melville took this trope literally in his little-known novella Billy Budd, in which Billy, a Christlike figure whose only flaw is a tendency to stutter when he gets upset, killed the master-at-arms, Claggart, after Claggart falsely accused him of conspiracy to mutiny. He got so upset when he couldn't stop stuttering long enough to defend himself that he punched Claggart in the temple and he died. All three main characters—Billy, Claggart, and Captain Vere—die. But, then again, without it all of Melville's lovely symbolism falls apart, and we can't have that.
- David Weber has this on a grander scale then most with his Hells Gate series when poor communication causes two civilizations, which hadn't even known the other existed until recently, to start what is promising to be a long and brutal war.
- In The Forever War, a war that lasts centuries between humans and an alien race turns out to be based on a misunderstanding. Considering that the author is a Vietnam vet, one need merely read The Pentagon Papers to see where he gets his idea.
- A large part of later books in the Enders Game series. Turns out the formians were not hostile, but simply unaware that humans were intelligent, at least on an individual level. After the second war, the tried to apologize, but were destroyed before the learned to communicate with us. In addition, the whole debate over whether two alien species can communicate and coexist is dominant, especially as a situation gets closer and closer to "Communicate with them, or commit Xenocide." Placing our heroes in the exact same situation as the formians.
- Being There is a variation; the whole plot is based on characters misinterpreting most everything Chance The Gardener says (with the twist that he cannot correct them because he isn't able to understand what's going on).
Live Action TV
- In Heroes episodes 2.09 and 2.10; Mohinder utterly failed to tell Overprotective Dad Noah that he didn't need Claire, just a pint of blood to save a life and stop a plague rather than kidnap her. Instead he made it seem like he had done a Face Heel Turn and was going after this Overprotective Dad's daughter and bringing about the season's Tear Jerker episode.
- Peter and Hiro ended up in a fight because neither was all too keen on examining why each was doing what they're doing by defending and attacking Adam respectively. And these are people who can stop time! Hiro and Peter could have had talked it out while sipping tea in Tokyo and come back with the whole thing handily resolved, were it not for "With great power goes all intelligence".
- The Writer's Strike is probably the reason they had to speed through that. If the season was allowed to take its natural course they might have done all that (well, maybe not the sipping tea in Tokyo part).
- According to a behind the scenes look, that scene was going to end with the plague vial falling to the floor and shattering, leading into a massive 'plague containment' arc. Which the Writer's Strike truncated. So it was going to turn out even stupider.
- That's nothing. In the first episode of Volume Four, Claire gets word that Nathan is sending government agents out to get Peter and Matt. So she calls Peter. Reasonable enough, right? She tells him people are after Matt ... then completely fails to mention they're after Peter too.
- Jeff in Coupling's entire personality comes from this trope. He's the page quotation provider for Digging Yourself Deeper.
- Fans (and detractors) of Lost have commented on the characters' apparent inability to ask the right questions. In particular, they've had Juliet among them since her Heel Face Turn, but have not asked her any questions about the intentions or nature of the Others. This tendency was lampshaded in the season 4 episode "Cabin Fever," as Christian says to Locke, "So why don't you ask the one question that does matter?"
- Not just the lack of asking "the right questions", But the lack of SHARING vital information as well, for whatever reason..
- The climax of the Firefly episode "The Message" has the intrepid crew under siege and almost certainly about to die at the hands of an overzealous cop hunting down Mal and Zoe's friend, Tracey. Shepherd Book hatches a plan: the first part is surrendering to the cop and telling him they're going to turn Tracey over to him. Tracey, upon hearing this, becomes understandably upset, but it's not until after he's flipped out for several seconds, threatened the crew with a gun, held Kaylee hostage, and finally been mortally wounded by Mal that they inform him that the rest of the plan was to threaten and blackmail the cop into leaving without actually giving him what he came for. Tracey, rather than angrily demanding why they didn't tell him that in the first place, feels bad for screwing up the plan before dying moments later. Although, to be fair, Tracey didn't really give them a chance to explain before becoming violent.
- Also mitigated in that Mal and Zoe were Tracey's superior officers in the military, accustomed to giving orders to him without a need for explanation. Given Mal's attitude about his Nakama, he may also have thought it obvious that Tracey would understand their plan, or at least their loyalty.
- Numerous situations like this seem to crop up in Firefly, particularly around Mal's tactics. Friends new and old are asked to implicitly trust him right at the point where he has given every indication that he's changeable as the wind and about to screw them (Simon and River frequently being the subjects here — perhaps most notably in "Safe"). This generally complicates things further, as above, by making the ostensible rescuees filled with anger and suspicion.
- In Babylon 5, the whole Human/Minbari war starts because of this, mostly because they don't know each-others language or cultural traditions.
- To be fair, at first contact the humans mistook the Minbari gesture of greeting as an attempt to attack and opened fire. After this event the Minbari, being Minbari, didn't bother with trying to communicate and instead just destroy all humans.
- Sheridan once mentions that the need for proper communication was the first thing he learned at the Academy.
- There's a whole lot of other unnecessary lack of communication. Just watch the end of Season 1 / the beginning of Season 2.
Tabletop Games
- In Warhammer, the Slaans - the mage-priests of the Lizardmen - sleep most of the time, and when they wake up, they speak in very short sentences without any context. As a result, unpleasant things have happened. When the High Elves arrived in Lustria, they were brought before a Slaan who said, "They should not be here". His Saurus guards read this as "Destroy all High Elves" and killed them. Whether he actually meant "Send them home" will never be known.
- One of the Fluff asides in Reign involves an instance of Nonverbal Miscommunication that rises to this level — the mercenary commander had a mixed troop that each knew one of three different sets of military hand signals; he'd only bothered to check that they all knew hand signals, not that they all knew the same ones. His signal to "hold up" was variously interpreted correctly, as an order to attack, or as an order to retreat, and they were routed in the chaos resulting.
Theater
- Gilbert And Sullivan were also fond of this trope, but the they actually hang a lampshade on it in the Act I finale of The Mikado, when Katisha tries to tell the people of Titipu that Nanki Poo is the son of the Mikado, only to have the chorus interrupt her every time she opens her mouth.
- Poor Communication Kills in Romeo And Juliet. Literally.
Video Games
- About half of everything bad that happens in Tales of Symphonia or Tales of the Abyss could be averted if not for the characters' refusal to explain certain things in order to keep certain information from the player, even when it is extremly obvious and logical that they should do so. The general hierarchy of screwedness is as follows:
- "Don't worry about it": You should be very worried.
- "It's not important": It's extremely important.
- "But could that mean?... No, impossible.": Yes it is and no it's not.
- "I'll tell you later.": They'll tell you after a sizeable portion of the world's population has died as a result of them not sharing this information. This is always somehow your fault.
- In the fighting game, Last Blade, three siblings end up fighting each other with bladed weapons because A) the one suspected of killing their master is too much of a loner to bother saying he's innocent, B) his brother won't stop and listen to their sister (who knows who really killed their master), and C) they both find it appropriate to thwart their sister's attempts to communicate with them by attacking her with swords.
- In Neverwinter Nights 2, Shadra Jerro wouldn't had had to die if she could have gotten her Grandfather line out before her grandfather Amnon Jerro blasted her for releasing the demons and devils that gave him his extra powers (and minor demon army).
- Also, a lot of people wouldn't have had to die if Ammon Jerro had just returned to Neverwinter and tried convincing people that the King of Shadows was becoming a threat again. It is not entirely unlikely they would have taken him seriously - since he originally died fighting him. Instead he launches his own search for the Shards to remake the Silver Sword of Gith, and on his way settles a few old scores - leaving quite a few dead bodies - many of whom were on the PC's side.
- Furthermore, while trying to get Neverwinter's support is a questionable idea, simply stopping to talk to the hero one of the many times they crossed paths would've prevented a LOT of unnecessary bloodshed. To make it worse, when they do finally team up, Ammon keeps blaming the hero for everything that's happened. It takes influence and the right words in an optional scene to finally get him to admit to some guilt over his deeds.
- While we're on the subject of Bio Ware [=RPGs=], Knights Of The Old Republic contains a joke the player character can tell based on this trope. A group of Sith ask the player to make them laugh, and they'll let him live in return. The player can fight, or go right into a wonderful joke (requires decent ranks in Persuade): Two Mandalorians are walking through the forests of Dxun, when they're attacked by an animal. One is critically wounded, but the other manages to kill the beast. The standing one radios back to base, saying, "My partner's wounded! What do I do?" His commanding officer responds, "Relax, trooper. First, make sure if your partner's dead." Blasterfire echoes through the communicator, followed by "Okay, now what?"
- Partially into the second third of Final Fantasy V, the party passes through a town of werewolves led by Kelgar, a wolf who once fought Exdeath alongside Galuf. As Galuf explains that the other three party members came from the "other half" of the world, Kelgar jumps to the conclusion that they work for Exdeath and were responsible for his release. Without giving Galuf a chance to deny this (never mind that he was the one who introduced them in the first place), he challenges main character Bartz to a fight to the death, which ends with the wolf bedridden for the rest of his life. Any possible explanation of how he reached his conclusion would be appreciated, especially considering that the two halves have never been at war at any point, and that the player is meant to acknowledge that Kelgar is a hero.
- In Starcraft: Brood War Judicator Aldaris learns that the Dark Templar Matriarch is being mind-controlled by Kerrigan. Instead of calmly informing Zertaul and Artanis upon their return to Shakuras, he incites a rebellion and babbles on like a deranged zealot. He nearly does get to tell them what's going on, but by then he wasted so much time spouting off apparent nonsense that Kerrigan manages to surround and kill him.
- Pretty much all of Starcraft: Brood War is an example of poor communication killing, or Kerrigan taking advantage of people's poor communication. The battles between the UED and the Dominion probably could have been avoided if the UED had attempted diplomacy, and Kerrigan probably couldn't have screwed over the Protoss so badly if Zeratul and Artanis still had contact with Raynor and Fenix. As things were, by the time those guys realized that teaming up was better than continuing to fight each other, it was too late to stop Kerrigan.
- In a bizarre example, YOUR poor communication also kills. Your character witnesses Duran abandon his position and allow the zerg to overrun a UED position. In the very next mission, your character also witnesses Duran tricking Du Galle into thinking that Stukov is the real traitor. Your character inexplicably does not mention Duran's treachery.
- Illidan Stormrage from Warcraft pretty much lives on this trope, bad decision making skills, and angst about his choices. Just about everything he's ever done, especially after he was freed from his prison, has been a terrible idea done for the right reasons, but since he never bothers to tell anyone, they assume he's evil. Specifically:
- He consumes the Super-Oh-My-God powerful demonic artifact, the Skull of Gul'Dan and turns into a half demon, but only because that's the only way he can not only deny the Burning Legion it's power, but defeat the otherwise invulnerable burning legion forces that would've conquered Azeroth. He never mentions this to anyone, so Malfurion tells him to go away, since he's clearly only looking after himself.
- He uses another powerful artifact to attempt to destroy the Scourge (and Yog-Saron by virtue of the fact that Saron's prison is well inside the line of fire), but doesn't bother to tell anyone, so everyone rushes to stop him assuming he's doing something evil.
- He attacks the Scourge in Icecrown, trying to finish what he started, but never bothers to let his brother or any of the people with massive armies and a score to settle know, so he loses the fight.
- He conquers outland to raise an army not only to defeat the burning legion, but also to try fighting Arthas again, but never tells anyone so we go and kill him.
- Despite being dead, this troper expects him to do this sort of thing at least three more times, including once in an alternative timeline.
- ANY online game where you have to work as a team, such as in Left 4 Dead. Things will quickly go down the drain if players fail to even tell their teammates what plans they have or what is going on.
- This is utilized in a malicious manner by the titular Mastermind in a flash movie based off of Mastermind: World Conqueror. He uses it to confuse a superhero before pressing the Shark Tank button.
Superhero: I'm here to deliver a tall frosty glass of justice!
Mastermind: No, no, I ordered a glass of just ice!
Superhero: Just ice?
Mastermind: Yeah, a glass with only ice in it! Seriously, not a single ***ing thing gets done around here... ***.
Superhero: I'll get a glass for you, then.
Mastermind: Be a dear, won't you? *presses button*
- While a lack of communication will cause casualties, in Americas Army this trope is also subverted. When a player throws a grenade, the soldier will shout "Frag out" (albeit in a foreign language), giving away his position and alerting the enemy to the incoming grenade.
- In Devil May Cry 3, Dante finds Arkham's dead body, and is immediately confronted about it by his daughter. She asks if Dante killed him, and in spite of having no involvement whatsoever in his death, Dante responds "So what if I did?" Cue a fierce battle between the two...
- Near the end of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, we learn that the "vampire", Anton, is upset because he thought Sophia had left him for another man. Understandable, as she said something that could easily be interpreted that way! Is that really better than saying, "You're going to be a father, but I can't raise a child here. Since you can't leave, I've got to leave you."
- In Brutal Legend, Eddie uses some very flimsy evidence and some epic conclusion jumping to accuse Ophelia of being a demon - cue a broken cutie, Face Heel Turn, and pain for everybody. Then it gets worse. All of which could have been avoided if Eddie hadn't been such a prat, and they'd spent a couple of minutes talking things out.
- The Poxians from Golden Sun. Though you'd have a hard time believing the civilization was acting for the greater good when their first team of warriors accidentally destroy the hero's hometown and show no remorse for it. Oh, and the leader of their second group of warriors fighting for the sake of mankind was CONVINCED THAT PROX WAS PLANNING TO ENSLAVE ALL OTHER CIVILIZATIONS ON THE PLANET.
Web Comics
- In this Order Of The Stick strip, Thog is questioned by a prison guard, and gives an honest and accurate account that confirms Elan's attempt to explain that he was framed by his Evil Twin brother Nale. However, Thog's statement is chock-full of homophones (and far more elaborate than his usual speech), rendering it comprehensible (with a bit of effort) to the reader but total gibberish to the guard.
- Elan's aforementioned attempt to explain just digs him into deeper trouble, but that isn't an example of this trope — for him, it's perfectly in character to go off on ill-considered tangents.
- In a particularly tragic example of this, Varsuuvius in the Battle of Azure City is inadvertently discovered by fleeing soldiers who stumble upon him while invisible. They ask her to save them with his magic, but since she fled the battle because he was out of spells, the soldiers stand around allowing the hobgoblins to catch up and slaughter them. V might have convinced them to continue running if she said "I am out of spells you fools! Flee for your lives!", though doing so might have made the hobgoblins aware of him as well. V spends the next few months in a sleep-deprived equivalent state so as not to relive that nightmare.
- V's verbosity is such a strong characteristic that this could indicate the dream was a guilt-induced distortion rather than a true flashback of the events.
- It gets worse: when V tells her mate that she made a Deal With The Devil to save him and their children, and he gets angry. She insists that he doesn't know the whole story. He admits this, but calls her on keeping the power she needed to save their family, and asks her to make a choice between her power and their family. V could have tried to explain more, if only to justify herself and why she needs (or wants) to keep her power a little longer, but instead she just says that she needs to make everything right again. This troper will grant her some leniency since an ultimatum had been issued and time was slipping away, but for someone who wants to keep both, V certainly isn't acting in a manner that will let her do so. Though her mental state may be justified.
- In Girl Genius, much bloodshed could be avoided if certain main characters (most notably Agatha Heterodyne and Baron Klaus Wulfenbach and his son Gilgamesh) simply sat down and talked to each other. Instead, distrust and misunderstandings lead to characters fighting each other and working at cross-purposes when they could be allies, while the real enemy gets away. Happened especially during the Sturmhalten story arc. Tarvek deliberately sabotaging Agatha's holographic message to the Baron about Lucrezia being the Other and having taken over her body didn't help either. Instead, the edited message made it sounds like she was accusing the Baron of being the Other. And Dimo apparently forgot his previous conviction that the Baron should be informed ASAP about the Geisterdamen with the Hive Engines leaving Sturmhalten through underground tunnels. Various characters have pieces of the puzzle, but crucial information is not relayed. If only they shared this information, they could easily resolve their problems.
- Objection - if only they shared this information, Baron Wulfenbach would dissect Agatha, seeing as how she's possessed by the Other and all that's holding her back is a single flimsy amulet. As Gilgamesh said, let's be fair: He does have cause.
- On top of that, every last one of them is either a Mad Scientist or a creation thereof, both classifications of individual not normally known for their ability to think on a level we usually call "normal", let alone communicate on it.
- Exemplified in this comic, where the wrong impression is given simply because the relaying party has a different perception of the words, and thus gets the meaning wrong.
- The root of it is probably that the Big Bad is very good at sowing deception and hostility within groups. Something, probably the Big Bad, causing Barry to mistrust the Baron, resulting in the problems caused in the earlier chapters, while the problems caused in later chapters were most definitely due to the Big Bad's moles and hidden supporters along with seceretly mind controlling first Agatha and now the Baron
- However, they eventually could compare notes with Gil, making him the guy who knows the most about what's going on.
Web Original
- A literal example in Survival Of The Fittest Simon Wood mistakes Darnell Butler for a player of the game (not altogether unreasonable, as he is holding a bloodied sword) and attacks, obstentatiously to buy his girlfriend time to escape. Before Darnell can get the chance to explain, he has accidentally killed Simon.
Western Animation
Real Life
- There is a (false) urban legend about Napoleon standing over a mass of prisoners. His men asked what to do, and Napoleon coughed, said something about it, and all the prisoners were killed. Apparently, the words "Ma sacrée toux!" (My damned cough!) sound a lot like "Massacrez tout!" (Kill them all!) Oops.
- A real life example of this trope occurred during the Crimean War, during the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalized in the famous Tennyson poem. Poor communication, mutual jealousy and just plain incompetence among the British commanders led to the slaughter of hundreds of brave soldiers, sadly enough. Incidents like this led critics to later describe the Crimea as a "war of lions, led by donkeys."
- The anime industry in the US and UK. Unless it pertains to them being awesome, most companies will say absolutely nothing in regards to their shows and often any issue that happens will hit fans square in the chops where there was a perfectly decent about of time for someone, say, ADV to say that they had lost the rights to something.
- This was also one of the contributing factors to the end of Anime Central (the UK TV Channel).
- The aviation industry uses a standardized vocabulary and English is used even when the pilots and controllers aren't native speakers. Many crashes and incidents have been caused because someone ignores, misunderstands, or assumes wrongly what someone else said, the most notable being the 1977 Tenerife airport collision. Investigations focused around several misunderstandings in communication, especially the Dutch co-pilot saying "We are at takeoff" - a phrase the controller interpreted as 'we are ready' not 'we are taking off'.
- Preventing this sort of situation is why modern militaries and other organizations make such a big deal about communicating in specific ways: NATO armies have a standard method to issue orders, air traffic control and pilots (and submarine and ship crews) acknowledge instructions by repeating them back, and so on.
- It has been claimed that bad communication is the number one cause of major military disasters. From the top of my head, Gallipoli counts, and the Bravo Two Zero & the Black Hawk Down incident as well. The Grenada invasion of 1983 was full of communication snafus, but was saved due to the incompetence of the defenders. Interested parties are welcome to add to the list.
- The Lydian king Croesus, thought to be the richest man of his age, went to the Oracle of the Delphi to ask what would happen if he invaded the Persia. After being told that he "will destroy a great empire", Croesus went ahead and launched the invasion. Things did not go well for him, and he narrowly escaped being burned alive by Cyrus the Great. Later he sent another emissary to the Oracle asking for an explanation. Her response: Croesus had destroyed a great empire - his own.
- Henry II and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket had disagreements over the rights and privileges of the Anglican Church. Four of his knights were in the room when Henry said something along the lines of "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" The knights interpreted this as a royal command. On December 29, 1170, they arrived at Canterbury and killed Becket when he refused to leave the cathedral.
- Nicely spoofed in the first series of Black Adder, when two knights overhear the King merely quoting Henry II in midst of a discussion about how glad he is not to have the same trouble (the King is actually very pleased with the job Edmund is doing as the new Archbishop). Of course, it doesn't help that the King is played by Brian Blessed and so everything that comes out of his mouth sounds like an angry command.
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