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Platonic Writing Romantic Reading / Video Games

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Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading in Video Games.

  • Ace Attorney: The relationship between Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth was meant to be entirely platonic male friendship, based on the creator's experience as a kid where he was accused of theft and wondering what it would have been like if someone had stood up for him. Fans overwhelmingly prefer the two to be together romantically; it doesn't help that some their lines sound really homoerotic out of context, like Edgeworth's infamous "unnecessary feelings" line. Said feelings were meant to be him having a suppressed Heel Realization over being an Amoral Attorney, but you need to have actually played the game to know that.
  • Arknights: The epilogue to Gavial: The Great Chief Returns features Eunectes being reduced to excited gibberish and asking to hug Rhodes Island's medical robot Lancet-2 upon first meeting her, amazed that she's a machine that can move and talk on her own. While dialogue and documents from after Eunectes joined Rhodes Island would clarify that she's come to think of Lancet-2 like a big sister, enough fans read this first meeting romantically that the two of them became a popular joke ship.
  • Bayonetta has a particularly massive and now infamous example with the titular character and The Lancer and fellow Umbra Witch Jeanne. Similar to the DMC examples below, Jeanne wasn’t intended to be the Love Interest just The Rival turned friend after being cured of brainwashing, whilst Butt-Monkey and Non-Action Guy Luka was the actual traditional love interest with Bayo being The Tease to him. However in the sequel Luka had far less importance in the story whilst Bayo and Jeanne’s bond was played up to the hilt with them living together and being extremely affectionate to each other. The main story even concerns Bayo dropping everything to rescue Jeanne’s soul from hell in what can easily be seen as a romantic rescue. So a good deal of fans were upset when the third game brutally derailed the Bayonetta/Jeanne pairing having Luka as definitely Bayo’s lover and the father of her child Viola whilst killing off Jeanne. Made even more painful by the fumbling of Bayonetta/Jeanne‘s relationship being still apparent in the third game, especially in the Paris section. The fact that several developers along with creator Hideki Kamiya showed Shrug of God support for the Bayonetta/Jeanne pairing and a good deal of official art depicting them in intimate fashion also didn’t help in the slightest.
  • Chzo Mythos: The sex scene in Six Days A Sacrifice; the idea is that the character who'd lost most of their hope for survival proceeded to hop into bed with each other, in what Word of God says was supposed to be representative of their descent into near-savagery. This was widely assumed to be badly done Fanservice. He's remarked that if he had the chance to remake the game he would turn it into a rape instead to properly convey the tone he was going for.
  • The relationship between V and Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077, though how much of it is this trope and how much is deliberate Ship Tease is debatable. The game features four romance sidequests, and Johnny isn't one of them. In a mission called "Tapeworm", V can jokingly ask if sex was the first thing Johnny thought of when he took over their body, with Johnny quickly saying that V's not his type. Despite that, there's a lot of moments that hint that their bond might be something deeper than simple Platonic Life-Partners/Heterosexual Life-Partners: The achievement for completing the mission where V gets the biochip with Johnny's Virtual Ghost on it is called "The Lovers" (after the arcana symbolising human relationships, not only romantic ones), he can compare his and female V's dynamic to an old married couple, he seems jealous when V pays attention to someone other than him, and a sidequest where you fix a broken rollercoaster and take it for a ride together is called "Rollercoaster of Love", after a song, like most missions in the game. The pair's constant snarking and bickering can be read as Belligerent Sexual Tension, and the whole progress of their relationship brings to mind countless "enemies to lovers" stories. There are also Dummied Out voicelines of Johnny calling V "My princess/prince" completely sincerely (why they were cut is unclear). Johnny's behavior in the "Temperance" ending makes him look like he's mourning his soulmate. Their relationship can be easily read as platonic or romantic, depending on the player's preference. There are so many of these moments and the subtext of Johnny growing to love V as the game progresses is so strong, that some fans speculate that in early development, Johnny was actually a fully-fledged romance path.
  • Devil May Cry:
  • In the Dynasty Warriors series, while Wang Yuanji is Sima Zhao's wife, she seems to show more affection towards his brother Sima Shi. This was remedied in Warriors Orochi 3 and the official sequel Dynasty Warriors 8, where Yuanji showed a lot more affection and loyalty to Zhao.
  • All Final Fantasy games suffer a little from this. Most of the time, the main hero usually doesn't show his emotions for other girls, or any kind of romantic feelings. That is somewhat justified, since you can root for you favorite couple, but at the same time, the canon couples tend to have a Broken Base.
    • Final Fantasy VI:
      • Terra has some Ship Tease with any male character she talks to. At first, Locke saves her, then Edgar gives her a reason to fight, Banon welcomes her into the fold, Sabin helps her with her faith — and even Celes (a woman) get to bond with her about their mutual ability to use magic and whether or not they can fall in love. Later she has a long talk about feelings with General Leo, and about not having feelings with Shadow. Her lover? No canon love interest.
      • Ultros is supposed to be a Dirty Old Man with a taste for pretty girls, but has a non-trivial amount of Ho Yay with Chupon (especially in the Japanese version). Square and the fans alike have run with this and make frequent jokes about his bisexuality — from his description in Final Fantasy All the Bravest (which describes his relationship with Typhon as 'questionable'), to the description on his menu item in Square Enix's Eorza Cafe, to his attraction to Bishōnen Noel in Final Fantasy XIII-2.
    • Final Fantasy VII:
      • Many gamers when playing VII for the first time thought Barret and Tifa were a couple, or a couple that had recently split up.
      • Marlene is introduced in a Bait-and-Switch scene implying she's Cloud's daughter with Tifa, and although it's immediately revealed that she's actually Barret's, the perception influenced Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children where Cloud and Tifa act like Marlene's parents, with her dad Barret never interacting with her beside appearing with her in the group photo in the ending.
      • Johnny's relationship to Cloud has confused fans for years. The intention behind Johnny was that he was a friend of Tifa's (possibly ex-boyfriend) who had grown up in Midgar before the start of the game and feels jealous of Tifa's crush, Cloud. Unfortunately, the crucial early scene establishing Johnny's antagonism towards Cloud (where he yells at him and begs him to 'treat her like an angel of this slum') was cut, so the player's interactions with him in Midgar only show his good side, and we never learn about his affiliation with Tifa. This means the later scene where Cloud encounters Johnny in Costa del Sol and he berates Cloud seems to come out of nowhere, in addition to his lines being mistranslated so that he ends up telling Cloud: "We were in SOLDIER, and childhood friends before that. You were such a playboy. And a @&$%ing murderer!" Since Cloud's backstory is extremely confusing anyway, fans were stuck. Many assumed Johnny was mistaking Cloud for Zack (the person Cloud had taken his Fake Memories of being in SOLDIER from); a previous (unrelated) scene had shown Cloud reading a letter Tifa had received from a childhood friend who'd left Nibelheim to live in Midgar, which many other fans assumed was Johnny. In reality, all Johnny had been saying was something like "It can't be! You're that ex-SOLDIER, [Tifa's] childhood friend, and sexy playboy! A, and... a murderer!" It's at least finally cleared up in Final Fantasy VII Remake where Johnny just has a crush on Tifa while he's trying to get to Cloud's good side by calling him "bro" with little success.
      • Part of the reason the Complete cut of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children came out was because, in the original movie, Cloud had far more to do with the unrelated Vincent than he ever spent willingly talking to his own family members. The extended version gives him an actual relationship with his adopted ward Marlene, when in the original he only had a couple of scenes where he was even in the same room with her.
      • Vincent in Dirge of Cerberus has UST with Shalua, a certain flirty tinge to his relationship with Yuffie, and an Implied Love Interest plotline with a character that biologically appears as a ten-year-old. His official love interest is still Lucrecia.
      • In Final Fantasy VII Remake, Tifa and Aerith are both Cloud's love interests, who get parallel scenes where each one shows him around the area of Midgar they live in, each asks him about their outfit, each do the Pietà Plagiarism pose with him, and so on... until they meet each other, get on better with each other than they do Cloud, agree to go on "a date" with each other, and start to exclude Cloud from their plans and dungeon puzzle activities, which makes him visibly annoyed. Since Cloud (in this continuity) is a Celibate Hero with No Social Skills who is always defensive around the girls, showing profound discomfort and clumsiness even with hugging or touching them, his romantic chemistry with them is limited compared to how much they are both able to react with open affection for each other. Even in The Drum, when the party is divided, Cloud is partnered up with Barret to develop their bromance while the girls continue to cheer each other on, joke and, apparently, flirt.
    • Final Fantasy X After Tidus has met Yuna, he has a dream about the two of them preparing to run away to Zanarkand—only for Rikku to show up, angrily saying he said he would take her. The dream looks as if it's setting up a love triangle between the three. But by the time Rikku joins the party, Tidus and Yuna are already established as the Official Couple and later all Rikku's scenes with Tidus make it clear they're Like Brother and Sister.
    • Final Fantasy XII has no official romance, but a lot of Ship Tease. Vaan and Penelo look as if they're set up to be Like Brother and Sister, and Penelo seems to be The Not-Love Interest to him. But then the game ends with an implication that there is a romance involved ("every sky pirate needs a partner"). Balthier is The Casanova but he has special affection towards Fran, and there is a line from her in the sequel that says he tried to woo her. There's also a line in the ending about how Ashe misses Basch; the way it's delivered suggests it's in a romantic way rather than platonic. There are also one or two scenes that hint at a Vaan and Ashe pairing—as her Defrosting Ice Queen moments are usually with him. But again nothing is confirmed.
    • Final Fantasy XIII:
      • Fang and Vanille. Nothing is exactly stated, but Fang's heavy concern for Vanille and her readiness to take on the world if it meant to protect Vanille, just made their interactions a little subtext-heavy. Same with Vanille, who went out to find Fang, after being separated from her earlier on. Whether it's intended as Homoerotic Subtext, Heterosexual Life-Partners, a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship or simply a carry-over from the original concept of Fang being a man and their interactions not changed is anyone's guess.
      • Hope and Lightning. They spend a good amount of time alone together when the party splits up and Lightning does take Hope under her wing, to toughen him up. Their interactions can easily swing between motherly/mentor feelings on Lightning's side, but can just as easily be seen as romantic. Then came Lightning Returns and put a heavy subtext into the relationship of Lightning and Hope note , to the point that it almost feels like they are being set up as a romantic couple, which caused the English localization to lessen this emphasis and throw in a nod towards a potential crush from Hope towards Vanille, only to be immediately denied and never brought up again as the game keeps marching into Lightning and Hope's territory. Then the post-game novel was released, and any kind of subtlety is thrown off the window, starting with Hope (now reborn as a young man) denying having ever seen Lightning as a mother figure and revealing he went insane over illusions of Lightning prior to his abduction and the author (who is also the scenario writer for the trilogy) dropping major hints towards Lightning going to meet Hope in the in-game epilogue.
    • Final Fantasy XIV: Due to the relaunch of the game, much of the Scions characters and relationships were a case of All There in the Manual for players who didn't play 1.0. 2.0 didn't spend much time re-establishing them. For the most part this wasn't a huge deal, but it did lead multiple players to misunderstand the relationship between Thancred and Minfillia. Since the former is a pretty big playboy and also cares very deeply for the latter, many players misconstrued this as romantic love, when in actuality it was closer to parental. See, in 1.0, Minfillia's father died in an accident, and Thancred felt guilty for being unable to save him, leaving her an orphan, so he (along with F'lhamnin, the woman responsible for said accident) essentially became her foster parents. He even at one point in Heavensward has to clarify to Krile that his interest in Minfillia is strictly non-romantic. So when he Took a Level in Jerkass during Shadowbringers, it wasn't due to potentially losing his love for a child, it was because his daughter was planning to sacrifice herself for a young girl that looks just like her. If there is anyone that Thancred is really interested in beyond his playboy ways, it's F'lhamnin.
    • Final Fantasy XV:
      • The entire game, practically. The story's constant focus on the relationship between Noctis and his three male friends, combined with his obvious reluctance to get married, can come across as him being a closeted gay man and marrying purely for politics. It doesn't help that he only interacts with his canon love interest in two or three scenes on-screen, while there are entire quests called "Tours" dedicated to Noctis just hanging out and bonding with any three of his friends one-on-one.
      • Ignis, towards Noctis. Brotherhood is a major theme of the game, and the four main characters are described at various points as having a brotherly bond of friendship. At one point Regis explicitly tells a young Ignis to serve as a brother to Noctis. But Ignis's extreme level of dedication to Noctis, including his willingness to throw away the entire world's future in exchange for his friend's safety among other things, and the fact that his relationship with Noctis employs numerous of what are typically thought of as Love Tropes, to the same or even greater degree than what Noctis's actual love interest gets, caused quite a lot of players to come away believing his attachment to Noctis is rooted in feelings of a more romantic than brotherly nature instead, and not always because of Shipping Goggles.
      • Speaking of Lunafreya, although she and Noctis are supposed to be the Official Couple, and is said to have been in love with him since childhood, most fans who saw Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV believe she had more romantic chemistry with Nyx Ulric. This is likely the result of Kingsglaive being based on the early portion of the game from when it was still Versus XIII, and in taking over Noctis's original role, whatever romantic development Noctis was supposed to have with Stella was inadvertently carried over to Nyx's interactions with Lunafreya. It also doesn't help that Lunafreya is a notorious case of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character in the main game and that even fans of her and Noctis's romance have heavily criticized it for being Strangled by the Red String, leaving her relationship with Nyx to be the better developed of the two.
    • The two main characters of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates are the (twin) brother and sister pair Yuri and Chelinka. Presumably their interaction was intended to be platonic, but when Yuri is swearing to always protect Chelinka and never to leave her side, this gets a lot harder for the players to believe...
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Ike, The Hero of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn has a very ambiguous sexuality that has been debated for years in the fandom. In the first game, it looked like he was bisexual on account of having massive amounts of Ship Tease with Princess Elincia and Soren (though Elincia's share of Ship Tease seems to have been added only the English script). In the second game, Ike's romantic subtext with Elincia was written out entirely, to both give way to Elincia being more receptive to Geoffrey's Bodyguard Crush on her (which can end up in marriage if the player so desires) and ramp up the amount of Ho Yay between Ike and Soren, painting the second more as a Straight Gay. Then Fire Emblem: Awakening revealed a character named Priam, who wields Ike's sword and claims to be his descendant. While some fans have simply settled on believing Priam to simply be a descendant of Ike's sister Mist, which is a rather plausible idea due to Marth being a descendant of Anri the Hero through Anri's brother Marcellus, it's not necessarily a perfect theory, so any attempt to "prove" Ike's sexuality one way or another through the way inheritance now works have fallen through. As such, if Priam is Ike's direct descendant and Ike was intended to be either straight or straight-leaning bisexual all along, the writers on both sides of the ocean did a pretty terrible job of getting that across. However, due to Ike's lack of what could be perceived as romantic attraction to either of them from his side of things, it is possible for none of the above to be true at all.
    • On paper, Kris in Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem is straight regardless of which gender you chose, can only romance opposite-gender characters, and the game frequently alters conversations to compensate for this, to the point of some supports being rewritten almost entirely. In practice, though, there's a very strong sense that most of said supports were initially written with a male Kris in mind, and being designed as an Escapist Character, Kris gets at least some level of Ship Tease with just about every female character in the game. A lot of said tease sticks around despite the rewrites, and some of it becomes even worse due to acknowledging the gender issue and then moving past it to get back to flirting. And then there's the Implied Love Interest, Katarina, who has a near-unmistakably romantic plot arc that is barely altered between versions. The result is that it's rather hard to read a female Kris's supports without getting the impression that she's at the very least bisexual, despite this being impossible to actually express in-game.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening can be seen as doing this with Chrom and the Avatar. While it makes sense for them to be close, due to them being the main characters and best friends, Chrom has four (five if you count the Village Maiden) other possible brides and the Avatar of either gender can marry anyone of the opposite gender. But the writing in the final arc puts so much emphasis on the relationship that it's like they're married no matter who you chose for their spouses; with the possible exception of Lissa, Frederick, Lucina and maybe Basilio and Flavia, any other spouse of the Avatar gets pushed into the background, and Chrom's wife stops being relevant after chapter 13. Even the Future Past DLC makes a big deal of how much the Avatar loved Chrom and features them watching over Lucina together at the end. If you ship either character with anyone else, it can be really jarring. Part of this (such as the "love" line during The Future Past) was a case of Lost in Translation: the Japanese version was always careful to be ambiguous about their relationship (so that their dialogue would make sense regardless if they were married, in-laws or just friends) but the English language has much less room for ambiguity.
  • Isaac, from the Golden Sun series, has a warning for his fellow Heroic Mimes: Don't have a talkative best friend (Garet) who constantly reminds you that you have to rescue your girlfriend (Jenna). The fealty to the pairing, plus scenes where the two interact directly, could easily be misconstrued as intent on him staking his own claim. (And since you're a Heroic Mime, you can't say anything to counteract that impression; not even to the Player!) Furthermore, don't make things worse by allowing another female on the team, no matter how useful she is (Mia).
  • Rox the Charr and Braham the Norn from Guild Wars 2 had a relationship layered with Ship Tease when they were first introduced in Season 1 of the Living World, most notably when Braham reacted to Rox excitedly telling him that she might earn a place in a Charr warband like a boy hearing from the girl he has a crush on that she's getting a scholarship to a university on the other side of the country. It came to a head during the climax of the season, when Braham's leg was broken and Rox refused to leave his side, despite it costing her the place in the warband she craved, even when Braham was telling her she had to go. Unfortunately this was never developed further after this, with the developers admitting on a livestream that the two were Just Friends.
  • The King of Fighters:
    • Kyo and Iori, the original rivalry of the franchise quickly became SNK's poster child for Foe Yay Shipping. From Kyo's general obsession with killing him to his unwilligness to actually go through(it's implied on occasion he CAN beat Kyo, yet never capitalizes on it), to other characters lampshading the odd nature of his behavior, to Kyo himself softening a bit to Iori's tendencies as time goes on, or even saving him on ocassion.
    • K' and Kula, the main characters of the "NESTS Chronicles" are intended to canonically be Like Brother and Sister. The NESTS Chronciles was meant to focus on the main characters becoming something of a Found Family, and many of the endings for Team K' and the games after often focus on this. Despite this, there fans were quick to notice there was a real disconnect between this and a lot of the promotional art for the games which often portrayed K' and Kula being rather intimate. The fact that this was the second big rivalry in the franchise, Kyo and Iori were already infamous in the fandom for their Foe Yay Shipping, led to the fanbase shipping the two rather than seeing their relationship to be like siblings.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • The writers have a strong tendency to overdo the scenes with Sora and Riku. Most people seem to agree that the actual fumble comes when they reunite in Kingdom Hearts II, in which Kairi and Sora simply have a hug (which, at first, he makes somewhat awkward-looking by not hugging back for a few seconds out of surprise), while in the reunion with Riku, he gets on his knees and cries his eyes out going "I looked for you!". At the same time, though, the series makes it very clear that Sora cares deeply Kairi, and he did get on his knees for her too earlier, albeit not in front of her and in a sadder context (and the HD remaster made it more apparent that he actually cried over her too in the Gummi Ship after learning she had been kidnapped by Axel.)
    • Many of Sora and Riku's interactions in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] are especially heavy on the Ho Yay. This probably stands out most near the end while Sora is comatose. One could argue that it's not even a fumble at this point, and the writers are well aware of what they're doing.
    • The first two games also created a bit of subtext between Sora and Ariel, not helped by the fact that her canon partner wasn't in the first game. The first scene between Sora and Ariel does have something that looks like flirting going on. Ariel's desire to see other worlds is paralleled to Sora's ambitions at the start of the game. Plus they share a couple of intimate scenes and Ariel is the only one of the Disney characters to worry about never seeing Sora again. But Sora is clearly attracted to Kairi and Ariel gets paired up with Eric in the second game (something that Sora actually helps with).
    • Kingdom Hearts III shows that they didn't learn from the Sora/Ariel thing, as it recreates almost exactly the same scenario with Sora/Rapunzel. Much of the gameplay in Corona boils down to "Rapunzel sees a new outside-world thing and Sora shows her how awesome it is". In KHIII, this is a vehicle for fun minigames, where in Tangled, it was a vehicle for romantic development. Making this either better or worse is that, unlike in KHI Atlantica, Rapunzel's canon romantic partner isn't Adapted Out — Flynn is right there in your party as well, watching as this all happens, and you half expect it to turn into a Love Triangle.
      • Also from KHIII is some strange Frozen subtext. Sora thinks about Elsa and Anna when he's in the light tunnel with Kairi, alongside Official Couple Rapunzel and Eugene. If, as others have speculated, he was imagining these pairs in comparison to himself and Kairi (romantically), then drawing a parallel between them and the sisters has some... unfortunate implications.
  • This trope is the reason why there's lots of Ho Yay between Rean Schwarzer and Crow Armbrust in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. The game is supposed to treat the two of them as rivals who have differing opinions of the war and why Crow shot the chancellor, while Rean is a bonafide Chick Magnet and does have a few women attracted to him. Unfortunately, the game presents them being a couple who underwent a bad break-up and are trying to mend their relationship. The game does have some elements of dating sim for Rean to pair up with any girl but unfortunately, all those events end up being optional and can be skipped by players if so desired. Crow's events, however, are mandatory to the plot (he's technically The Dragon) and Rean always thinks about Crow even if he's not there. Even Rean's rant towards the chancellor that Crow supposedly killed but turned out to be not dead is all about for Crow and why the chancellor didn't stay dead (said chancellor is Rean's missing dad which complicates things). It doesn't help that both Rean and Crow end up having the only Combination Attack in the entire Erebonia arc. Even Lloyd and Rixia's combo attack from the previous game isn't in Cold Steel II! Succeeding games just made things worse where in Cold Steel III, Rean thinks about Crow way too much while on Crow's end, he starts remembering who he is after he sees Valimar (and Rean's students) fight against The Nameless One. After Rean kills The Nameless One in rage for killing one of his friends, Crow immediately stops fighting Alisa's team with his mask dropping and immediately jumps down thousands of miles to the bottom of the Gral of Erebos (summoning his mech) and immediately restrains Rean to get a hold of himself. Meanwhile in Cold Steel IV, an in-game month passing by where Rean breaks out of his confinement, Crow (and Duvalie) team up with him but before the fight starts, Crow tosses Rean, who is still in his Unstoppable Rage, a 50 mira coin and Rean has a mild response to it. And then there's the First Rivalry of the game (where all the Divine Knights have to fight in specific areas and whoever loses gets absorbed by the winner) where Crow nearly disappears but Rean won't let him by hugging Crow so tightly while Valimar reverses the absorption and gives the power back to Ordine to sustain Crow's life. All these happen before Rean even starts doing any bonding events.
    • If you thought that was the end of it, The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie takes things up to eleven where Crow joins Rean's route twice compared to the rest of Old Class VII. And in Rean (and C's) Final Boss fight against Zoa-Gilstein (who is not the Final Boss of the main game), he joins with them. In fact, he, Rean, and C cannot be taken to the main Final Boss of the game (as Lloyd leads that). Finally at the end of the game, he and Rean interact with each other instead of Rean interacting with one of his 11 Love Interests. In fact, the choice for Rean having a love interest at the start of Rean's chapter is only referenced twice throughout the entire game: once when Rean remembers her and the other is when Jusis apologizes to the simulated version of Normal Ending Rean from Cold Steel IV (long story) that he didn't bring his loved one in that Rean's final moments. Can anyone tell how Rean is supposed to be a harem protagonist?
  • X and Zero from Mega Man X are infamous for being the biggest Ho Yay couple in the series, despite only being best friends in official canon. The biggest source for this is X5, which had some pretty heartfelt lines during the climax and especially this line◊ from the ending.
  • The author of Mermaid Swamp has stated on her Twitter that she finds it surprising people ship Rin and Seitaro together, as she considers them to be Vitriolic Best Buds at best. In the game itself, they can unintentionally come off as having Belligerent Sexual Tension instead, due to scenes such as Seitaro running into the bathroom when he hears Rin scream, then staring at her while she's naked, and Rin teasingly suggesting they "sleep together". The pair also seem a little too insistent that they'd never be attracted to each other, and in one of the bad endings Rin outright commits suicide to be with Seitaro after he died.
  • Metal Gear:
  • Metroid: There was speculation after Metroid Fusion whether Adam was just Samus' CO or whether there was more going on between them. Metroid: Other M states Adam is a father figure to Samus, but there was still enough confusion that some reviewers accidentally listed Adam as Samus' boyfriend. The playable epilogue Other M doesn't help, as she risks her life to run through the Bottleship to retrieve his helmet from the communications room, then curls up in her ship while holding and caressing it. It makes her earlier "father figure" line seem more like an attempt to convince herself he wouldn't be interested in her since she was half his age. Her actual romantic relationship with Adam's younger brother Ian doesn't get explored as much, beyond her desperation to save him and her resentment for Adam refusing to act right before it happened.
  • In Millennium: A New Hope, an RPG by Indinera Falls, two of the main characters, Marine and Benoit, seem to have slight hints of Ship Tease in their dialogue, despite the fact that they are cousins. They even have their own mild Shipper on Deck, a fairy named Jeanne.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Not so much a "writing fumble" as "forgetting to delete the dialogue", but the player character's relationship with either Bishop or Neeshka. Depending on your dialogue choices, Neeshka can swear to a male PC that she won't let anything happen to him and that he's her "most important person", while Bishop will flat-out ask a female PC to run away with him, and may later admit to having romantic feelings for her.
  • Persona 5 has Ryuji and Ann, who have been friends since junior high. Their Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic seems to come across as Belligerent Sexual Tension. The game does make efforts to potray the two as Platonic Life-Partners, by having Ryuji bluntly reject Ann's offer for a date and asking her to introduce him to a rival model, while Ann is hinted to have a crush on Joker during her Confidant events. However, there are still some moments and cutscenes in the game's story, which can easily cause the player to second guess the nature of their relationship, such as Ann being shown to be the most devastated and later upset at Ryuji, for seemingly making a Heroic Sacrifice to save the rest of the Phantom Thieves during their escape from Shido's Palace, which can be a bit awkward if Joker is dating her, since he's just shown standing around smiling as he watches his girlfriend look like she's on the verge of confessing her love for his best friend. Even Ann's English voice actress, Erika Harlacher, ships the two.
  • Resident Evil is a No Hugging, No Kissing series, with a lot of the partnerships between the protagonists meant to be either professional or platonic. Yet the majority of them come off as extremely intimate and romantic.
    • Claire and Leon are easily the biggest example of this. Possibly due to having never supposed to meet up originally in the RE2 prototype (back when Claire was Elza Walker), Ada is Leon’s Love Interest instead who reappears with him across the series, whilst Leon and Claire are Just Friends. Except in the game itself they do seem like a viable couple thanks to a combination of voice acting with Claire passionately crying out Leon’s name every time she reunites with him (or when he’s climbing the roof of the train to escape Birkin in the climax) and the fact they become Sherry’s surrogate patents by the end of the game. Resident Evil: Degeneration only continues the fumble with Angela being Leon’s dalliance of the film and Claire just an old friend, yet Leon still goes out of his way to protect Claire and the little girl she’s caring for (which is the second time, they’ve been depicted with a child together). Conflicting matters further is titles like Resident Evil The Dark Side Chronicles in which Claire unsubtly dislikes Ada and gets jealously huffy of Leon’s fixation on her. Averted in the more recent RE2make and Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness which have (especially the latter) Claire as a genuine love interest to Leon, though it makes you wonder why there had to be so much rigmarole prior.
    • Jill and Carlos in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis are supposed to be just partners, with Carlos’s flirtation being one-sided as Jill’s real love interest seen in other games is Chris. But in the game Jill and Carlos are still extremely intimate as when she gets infected Carlos clutches her to his chest and pleading Jill not to die on him and one of the win screens has them on a romantic cruise together. Averted in RE3make which clears the waters having Jill actually reciprocate Carlos’s attraction over the course of the game.
    • Leon and Luis in Resident Evil 4. Just meant to be platonic buds while Ada and Ashley are the love interests but that is conflicted by moments like when Leon pulls the tape of Luis’s mouth and he says suggestively “Rather rough don’t you think?” before they both get tied up together. There’s also Luis’s death where Leon clutches his body in arms while passionately shouting his name in grief.
    • Resident Evil 6:
      • Chris and Piers. Their entire frigging campaign. Naturally they’re supposed to be just friends and Piers even having a love interest Merah in the prequel manga Resident Evil: The Marhawa Desire but it is all lost in the game where Chris and Piers have a ludicrous amount of intimate moments, relying on each other as Piers goes to great lengths to rescue his captain from a Despair Event Horizon upon Chris losing his entire squad. Not to mention Piers’s jealously of Finn receiving Chris’s attention or the final mission starting with Chris saying he would be honored if Piers took his place and Piers avoids looking at him saying "I...I don't think I'm ready”. The ending with Chris crying out Pier’s name has him be as emotional as when Jill (his actual love interest) was brainwashed by Wesker.
      • Leon and Helena. Despite Ada being ostensibly Leon’s love interest again in the game and Helena even shipping them, Leon actually only spends a disproportionately small portion of the game with Ada compared to the entire campaign he has with Helena where they evidently become closer together as it goes along, spend a inordinate amount of time starring into each other’s eyes and there’s an entire sequence where Leon drags and carries a wounded Helena to safety while clutching her close.
  • Street Fighter:
    • Super Street Fighter IV has Guy and Rose, most evident during their Rival Battle and during their endings. It seems as if Capcom was trying to pair these two up, despite the fact that Guy is already married to Rena (at least by the time of Final Fight: Streetwise, if one considers it canon). Never mind the fact that Rose would appear to be a Celibate Heroine (at least, as long as Bison is still menacing the planet), meaning that she and Guy were probably intended to be portrayed as Platonic Life-Partners.
    • Ryu and Chun-Li have had this across the series, being the two of the few still unmarried World Warriors who appear literally every crossover together. Generally they’re supposed be Just Friends with Ryu being a Celibate Hero who puts training above worldly matters like relationships, yet 80% of his win quotes against Chun-Li are him flattering her, calling Chunners’ kicks “stunning” and Chun-Li herself always delighted and happy to see him again while amazed at his fighting ability. This is most noticeable in SFV where she excitedly calls out his name upon seeing him and Ryu saves her and Li-Fen from flames with a Hadoken. SFVI is hardly any better, with Ryu fondly reminiscing over long he’s known Chun-Li and Chun-Li herself coming to the conclusion that it was Ryu who “brought out her true strength”, both sounding less like old friends and more like an old married couple being Sickeningly Sweethearts together. Not to mention official marketing having Ryu and Chun-Li suggestively depicted together. Averted in the SFII manga and manhwa which unambiguously has Ryu and Chun-Li as a couple and even married in the latter, but neither are canon to the games.
    • Ryu and Ken the series’ mascot best buds have occasionally dipped into this. Despite Ken being Happily Married to Eliza Ken still often prefers to hang out and fight with Ryu over spending time with his wife and son. The worst case is Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie where Ken is explicitly unhappy, despite his beautiful wife and mansion house as he just can’t get his mind off Ryu and flashes back to the good times when they would train together.
    • Chun-Li and Cammy similarly have had this going on. They are supposed to be just close friends with Cammy being a Celibate Heroine, but said degree of closeness becomes overt in later titles. Street Fighter V in particular has Cammy dive in to rescue Chun-Li from Bison resulting in a sensual clinch with their faces inches from each other and a later scene has them discussing the prospect of settling down like Ken did.
  • Soul Calibur V: Patroklos' goal of reuniting with his sister so he can take her home and live together comes off as obsessive and incestuous, rather than protective and familial. Given that they only meet for the first time during the course of the story, it's obvious this wasn't the intent. But his overbearing personality and single-minded drive to get her back at any cost make him come off as lust-driven. Pyrrha's timid and submissive personality doesn't help matters; rather than a Yamato Nadeshiko as intended, she comes off as a Little Sister Heroine.
  • Suikoden V:
    • The relationship between the main character and his younger sister — who is the crown princess and heir apparent of the queendom — is, perhaps, depicted as being a little too close. While it does work the way it was probably planned (making the player care for her, and providing a real motivation to rescue her when she becomes the prisoner of rebellious nobles early on), it can easily be misconstrued as Brother–Sister Incest (and No Yay, too, just for good measure). Especially considering that the two of them share a bed at one time, and that the "Good Ending" has you, following her coronation as Queen, take on the position of General of the Armies, which is reserved for the Queen's Consort.
    • If you talk to NPCs in Sol Falena before the final dungeons, they will say that your sisterly queen intends to radically reshape the state: turning the Queendom into a constitutional monarchy and abolishing the whole "tournament winner becomes Queens' Knight Captain and Queen Consort" tradition being at the top of her agenda. On the other hand, the good ending heavily implies that the prince ends up with Lyon, who also happens to be his sister albeit adopted... Well, at least, the children won't be inbred.
  • Tales Series:
    • In Tales of Rebirth, Claire is Veigue's Implied Love Interest, and he does show interest in her wellbeing. The problem with this is they are adopted siblings. This can Squick people out and have them seeking out another love interest for Veigue, which is easily found in Tytree. Tytree is constantly trying to win Veigue's approval and respect, and is in general his emotional support in later portions of the game. They also have a very subtext-laden fistfight partway through the game, and afterwards Tytree is ecstatic at being the "closest one to Veigue." Yeah. Add that Tytree doesn't seem all that interested in women and the alternate couple of Veigue/Tytree is quite reasonably popular, enough to rival Veigue/Claire.
    • Natalia and Guy in Tales of the Abyss. She is obviously in love with Asch and that is their relationship in the game. But during an emotional time at the mid-point of the game, Natalia gets some bad news and Guy becomes extremely kind and gentle towards her. While Guy has always been mentioned to be a bit of a smooth-talker towards women, despite his gynophobia, he pays extra attention to Natalia at this point, is the first one to notice when she is too distracted to move on and cheers her up. Ultimately, nothing comes from it and was never intended, despite the two still having moments of being together when the party splits up.
    • Tales of Xillia has the official couple as Jude and Milla. However, in Jude's route, he gets ship-teasing with any of the party members. He is the first person who is really kind to Elize and becomes important to her, with implication-to-outright-stating that her dream is to become Jude's bride. There is a ton of, though onesided, teasing with his childhood friend Leia. And then there's that tethering thing with Muzét. Whether the developers were a little too open or having fun with ship-teasing all over the place or because they honestly never intended it to go that far, most people saw more natural chemistry between him and the other girls. Even with Alvin. The flirting with Alvin is almost certainly deliberate, with how Alvin constantly draping his arm over Jude and flat out asks him very on whether he swings both ways.

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