Malaproper / Video Games

• In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, Bullet Luckfield has a terrible habit of screwing up Japanese idioms, as it's not his native language. This is not helped by the fact that a fellow American keeps supplying him with intentionally bad idioms.
  • Not to mention Excellen "Float like a flutterby, sting like a flea" Browning.
• Abercrombie Fizzwidget of Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando was a caricature of this. Although it is revealed at the end that Captain Qwark was impersonating him the whole time; the real Abercrombie Fizzwidget speaks perfect English. Qwark was trying to impersonate someone with a larger vocabulary than his own, and all his attempts to complexitize his languification resulted in confusified speechitude.
• Yangus from Dragon Quest VIII occasionally slips into this, attempting to separate himself from other bandits by sounding "smart".
• In Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, early-game boss/job contact Lukan the Witless has this as his shtick. If you're wondering about the epithet, he named himself that — for he is merciless and without humor, thus, Wit-less. Attempts to correct his abuse of the English language are met with obliviousness or initiation of combat, depending on how blunt you are.
• Half the fun of the otherwise good English in Metal Wolf Chaos is the President of the United States' awkward one-liners. This includes such gems as "I'll make you just like perforated cheese!" and was entirely unintentional.
• Beat from The World Ends with You slips into this on occasion.
• The Orc nobleman Lord Rugdumph in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion does this all the time. "I am Lord Rugdumph gro-Shurgak. How may I persist you?"◊
• The Heavy Weapons Guy in Team Fortress 2, being a stereotypical Russian, has a fairly good grasp of English that fails him when he gets excited. Probably the most egregious instance is his mangling of "That's a real kneeslapper" to "That slaps me on the knee".
  • The Soldier is a Cloud Cuckoolander who has a severe inability to pronounce words properly, constantly mangling the names of literary characters and other such things on a regular basis. On the other hand, that might just be the lead poisoning speaking.
• Barnum of Fable II puts a bit too much stock in his trusty thesaurus without understanding the meaning or nuances of many of the words he tosses about. He gets better, though, Riiight before Reaver removes a vital portion of his brain and decorates his house with it.
• In Star Control 3, the K'Tang. Every chance they get. "We are the K'Tang! Identificate yourselves imminently!"
• Professor Ort-Meyer in Hitman: Codename 47 mangles his metaphors horribly ("I was standing on the shoulders of midgets!" for example), nearly (due to cuts in the production process) causing the protagonist to remark "Madness and mixed metaphors. There's really no hope for him." (The quote can be found in game files, but doesn't appear in the game proper.)
• Redd White from Ace Attorney, who would bungle words in order to make himself seem more impressive. (This is a Woolseyism - in the original Japanese, he speaks Gratuitous English.)
  • Zinc Lablanc from Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, being a Punny Derringer, mangles English idiomatic phrases, followed by remarking "Yes, I think that is how you say it!" On one occasion, Edgeworth corrects his use of "Fox in the duck pen!", replying "It's 'fox guarding the henhouse'."
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the Judge describes himself as "the great Poker-Head of Courtroom No. 3". Apollo thinks he probably meant "poker-face".
• Donny, the sign-in guy from the 2011 version of You Don't Know Jack. Older games had "Gibberish Questions" where players tried to translate one into the proper phrase.
• The Think Tank from the Fallout: New Vegas add-on, Old World Blues have a problem with this? That's unpossible! Doctor Mobius, however, has it quiet, quiet bad.
  • Dr. 0 even gets mad if you correct him.
  "O really? Now the Lobotomite is master of the dictionary arts. What, do you have a doctorate in verbology? No? I do."
  • The Player Character can be like this if the intelligence is 3 or lower.
    "I is scientistic"
    "Do flowers of Pock-Lips and NCR bear play together?"
• Sister Theohild makes various food-related malapropisms when reciting the Chant of Light in Dragon Age: Origins.
  Sister Theohild: Those who bring ham without provocation to the least of His children are breaded and accursed by the Maker.
  Mother Perpetua: "Those who bring ham"? And the Maker does not bread sinners!
• Though not pronounced wrongly, Brain Dead 13 has Lance's "It's Personal" speech in the final confrontation, which has prompted this exchange in Obscure Game Theatre's Let's Play:
  Lance: [to Dr. Neurosis] Hey, New-free!!! It's just me and you!!!
  Frankomatic: Uh, "It's just you and me!" sounds better, Lance.
• In Persona 4: Arena, Elizabeth lapses into malapropisms frequently as a part of her overall Raised by Wolves characterization. She doesn't seem to realize what words she's actually saying, though, leading to recurring Chain of Corrections-style dialogue:
  Elizabeth: I believe our encounter has borne much flute.
  Yu: "Flute"...?
  Elizabeth: ...Flue? ...Chimneys?
• Persona 5 has Eiko, who tells Makoto her opinion of her has done "a complete 360". Makoto points out that this would be a full circle.
• Mario himself, aside from the thick Italian accent. In the computer game Mario's FUNdamentals, Mario has a rather tenuous grasp on the English language in this game, leading to strange turns of phrases. For example of one such quirk, he'll often use "I'm-a" when he should be using "I" "I'm-a like-a [game of choice]" "I'm-a lost". Tellingly, this aspect of the way Mario talked was largely abandoned in the years to come.
• Stuffwell of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time has a habit of taking two words, either of which would be perfectly appropriate in-context, and fusing them into strange compound words.
• One gag in Doki Doki Literature Club! has Sayori bungling the word "retribution" after she gets caught trying to trick the player character into buying a snack for her.
  Sayori: [after a cookie hits her in the face] I-Is this a miracle? It's because I paid my restitution!
  Protagonist: Retribution...
  Yuri: Actually, that one almost worked...
• Final Fantasy:
  • At one point in Final Fantasy V, Bartz mixes up the words "psychically" and "psychotically," to Galuf's embarrassment.
  • Frequently done by Laguna in Final Fantasy VIII. Gets a Shout-Out in Dissidia 012, when Laguna tells Squall to "Expand your horizontals!", to which the latter lampshades (to himself, naturally) that the phrase should've been "Expand your horizions".
  • Tidus famously does this in Final Fantasy X when the party is discussing how Seymour went to Macalania Temple. He instead refers to it as Macarena Temple.
  • Little Yuri does this in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. He calls a woman who seems to know a lot a "clair-voyeur" and describes himself and Chelinka as "practically adulterous."^note he meant just "adult"
  • In World of Final Fantasy, Lann is this to the point of it being a Running Gag.
  Lann: Tama?
  Tama: I believe the word you're looking for is "preordained."
  Lann: Right! There's no way all of this could have been preordinated.
• In Dragon Ball Xenoverse, male created characters using voice option #8 mispronounce attack names left and right. Quite fitting, since the voice is based on (and performed by) the Dragon Ball Z Abridged version of Nappa.
  "Ten to the Kamehame-HO!"
• During the April Fool's Day event in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, where the faceless cat Blanca impersonates your villagers and you have to guess which is the real villager and which is Blanca in disguise, uchi villagers will try to say that their imposter is a doppelganger. Emphasis on the word "try."
  Villager: Another me popped outta nowhere! She's a doppel...wopple...waffle... Wafflehanger! [...] Don't be fooled, <player>! I'm the real deal! She's the...waffle gangster! Can't you tell?
• In Jade Empire, Qui the Promoter is a champion Malaproper. If the player character tries to call him on it, he references Perfectly Cromulent Word.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse:
  • Shantae dresses up as a pirate, and has this little gem when she tries to shove off:
    Shantae: Moist the main snail! Keep the port blubber!
  • Bolo does this at times as part of his nature as The Ditz. For example, if you talk to him in Propeller Town after delivering the Targeting Module.
    Bolo: The breath up here is GREAT for my fresh air!
• In Virtue's Last Reward, both Sigma and Phi do this. When Sigma does it, he gets called out by Phi. Later, Phi does this by saying "take the piss out of a lime" instead of "as a way to pass the time" and similarly gets called out for her mistake.
• Fire Emblem has a few characters who are prone to these due to their unfamiliarity with the local language.
  • New Mystery of the Emblem has Athena, whose Vampire Vords and insistence on referring to herself in plural only make things worse.
    Athena: Ve vill apologise vith our life.
    Kris: Excuse me? No no, you used the wrong word again. Didn't you mean "thank", instead of "apologize"?
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening, meanwhile, has the Russian-accented mercenary Gregor, who uses a malaproper practically every other sentence.
    Gregor: Is just, how you say, flatulence? No, wait. ...Flippery? ...Flatness? ...Gregor does not remember. Is that word when people say lies to make other person feel better.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Petra, a princess of Brigid who's unfamiliar with the language of Fodlan, often makes these kinds of mistakes. For example, if few of her stats improve after she levels up, she says, "I must not misplace my heart," when she should be saying "lose heart."
• Shortly after the film's release, the Commodore 64 computer was released in a special pack containing the game adaptation of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. However, rather than riffing off of Arnold's catchphrase and proclaiming, "I'm back", the box proudly announced that, "I've returned."
• Goofy in the Kingdom Hearts games does this occasionally, such as saying "muddling" instead of "meddling" and "traffic system" instead of "transit system". In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Doc does it too, just like in the original movie.
  • Pete is also prone to them in Kingdom Hearts Re:coded due to his unfamiliarity with computing terms, resulting in him coming up with words like "data-matronics".
  • Beat does this a couple of times in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], just like in his native game. Specifically, he says "inverse psychiatry" instead of "reverse psychology", and "garnish my reputation" instead of "tarnish".
• Xenoblade Chronicles X: The alien L'cirufe taught himself English by studying human literature, and he's practically fluent as a result, but whenever he tries to use an idiom, he screws it up somehow. Perhaps most famously, referring to a group of enemy aliens as "asscaves".
  L: This pleases us greatly! Truly we are on the ninth cloud of seventh heaven!
• Dragalia Lost: Curran has a tendency to mix up his words. In the Japanese version, it was just him biting his tongue, but in English, we get gems like "Heretics, like beauty, are in the eye of the buttholder."
  Notte: Heh... buttholder.
• In Resonance of Fate, Gangster enemies taunt the party members by telling them that they're "Gonna have more holes than a beehive." It's probably swiss cheese they're thinking of.
• Planescape: Torment: Ravel Puzzlewell has a Verbal Tic of confusing words with their homophones, causing her to go on tangents while she looks for the right one. Despite this oddity of speaking she's shown to have a very sharp mind.
• Half-Life: Alyx: Alyx and Russell talk idly about what they might do after the Combine are defeated. Russell suggests mass-producing his anti-grav technology for profit and Alyx — having grown up after the apocalypse and thus having a… mixed understanding of what pre-Combine Earth was like — declares he's "sitting on a landmine". It takes Russell a moment to realize she was trying to say he's sitting on a goldmine.
• Galaxy Angel II: Anise Azeat often mixes up words that sound similar but have different meanings, prompting the other characters to correct her. She also goes into Accidental Misnaming when she rarely bothers to remember people's names (Mint in particular always retalliates when Anise mispronounces her surname as "Butamanjuu" by raising the interests on Anise's debt).

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