Eddie Riggs: "What are you looking at?"
Happens often in video games. In between missions or cutscenes, you'll sometimes see characters just standing there, staring in a random direction. This is either because said person activates a mission and moving about would make it more difficult for the player to find him/her or it would flat-out take way too much time to make every character do something different. Note that if a character is shown actually doing something aside from standing, blinking, and occasionally talking, this doesn't count (i.e., if a character is chopping wood or getting anything done besides wearing a hole in the ground).
See also
Artificial Atmospheric Actions,
Welcome to Corneria. Contrast with
NPC Scheduling.
Video Game Examples:
- Brutal Legend is the Trope Namer and perhaps the only game to lampshade it.
- God Hand after any of the human characters are rescued they give you fruit then just stand there staring.
- Pretty much every other RPG in existence.
- A nice example is Dark Chronicle, where you're able to recruit people to inhabit the towns you build. When they aren't assigned a house to live in, they are always inside the train. You'd think they get bored, poor sods.
- In the Pokémon games, the other trainers are deliberately staring in order to catch the eye of any passer-by and challenge them to battles.
- Also pretty much every point-and-click adventure game in existence.
- Shenmue is very guilty of this, having people that stare at walls for no apparent reason.
- An odd quirk happens in Mass Effect 3 where Shepard can get distracted by another object in the room when he's in the middle of a conversation. This leads to really bizarre looking image as his body is facing the correct way while his head is craning as far as possible to the side. A fun place to try this is out is in Liara's room where Shepard is often fixated on Glyph.
- In Harvest Moon characters move around to different places on schedule, but don't expect to seem them doing anything else when they get there other than stare at a different wall.
Other Examples:
- Yureka: Thanks to this trope, Piri can't leave her shop, even if it's burning around her ears.
- Played for laughs in Black Books where Frank is trying to "blank" her boyfriend... while in an ambulance. He keeps trying to get her to look at him and she keeps staring off to the side.
