Basic Trope: What the Hell, Hero? or What the Hell, Player? in response to something the game railroads you into doing.
- Straight:
- The only way to get past an otherwise dead-end area is for your Player Character Alice to detonate a large-scale explosive, destroying a town that Evulz might be in. After doing so, she finds out that she did not kill Evulz, and everyone in the next areas treat Alice as a terrorist.
- Alice's reputation is ignored, but the game directly tells you how many people fell victim to your mindless genocide.
- Exaggerated:
- You have to start a thermonuclear war to get past one segment of the game, and commit numerous war crimes. The game tells you that you would like to actually be in control of something like this, wouldn't you?
- Bob outright tells Alice to destroy the town, and then calls her out for doing so, despite the fact that he told her to do it.
- Downplayed:
- You have to shoot an otherwise innocent person and hide their body to get past one area. The game partially blames it on Alice, and partially blames it on the nature of society.
- Alice is hated for killing the absolutely vile mind controlling witch Carol since her influence persists after her death.
- The player is railroaded into doing terrible things as the Anti-Hero or Villain Protagonist Alice, but they're treated as "things Alice did because they're in-character for her" rather than "things the player did and should feel bad about".
- You Bastard!
- Justified:
- The Man Behind the Man is trying to guilt-trip Alice while also getting her to do all the dirty work.
- Alice is a Villain Protagonist, so even if the player doesn’t want to detonate the explosion, the other characters think Alice wanted to.
- Inverted:
- Alice is railroaded into killing a Straw Character, and suddenly her reputation is greatly improved and/or the game starts acting nicer towards you.
- If you go off the deep end of Video Game Cruelty Potential of your own accord, the game pretends that it railroaded you into doing so and apologizes.
- Subverted:
- Alice is mentally unstable, and can't be truly blamed for what she's done.
- There actually is another way out of the situation — it just isn't explicitly pointed out by the UI and requires unusually realistic thinking. (And/or is really obtuse.)
- Double Subverted: You, however, can, for assisting her the whole way.
- Parodied:
- The game begins with a tutorial asking you to left-click to have your character Alice shoot an innocent orphaned child who is dying of cancer, with a But Thou Must! thrown in if you idle. Once you've done as the game asks, it lapses into a poorly-written Author Filibuster about how video games are making us all susceptible to performing acts of violence and immorality on demand, at one point claiming that there is no middleman whatsoever between the player and the gun.
- The entire game is just you making Alice commit horrible atrocities with zero context, and at the end you're blamed for... continuing to play a crappy video game.Game Over screen: You have no taste! Of all the satirical indie games you could have downloaded, why this one?
- In the tutorial, you have Alice pick up a few coins and spend them on a potion. An Author Avatar then walks into the screen and claims that the coins you took were actually $5,000 stolen from a fund for reconstructing the local orphanage, the potion you spent them on is actually LSD, and just for playing the tutorial you've already been assigned a special spot in Hell. Nonetheless, the game continues, with Alice wondering who that loud guy is and what he was rambling on about.
- The "game" is a Flash animation where Alice runs around killing random people, while a narrator asks you why you're commanding Alice to do all this.
- You are railroaded into benign and mundane actions. The narrator goes off on a rant about how morally wrong it was using Insane Troll Logic. It ends with the narrator being replaced with a new sane one who promptly apologizes for their predecessor's nervous breakdown.
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice is legitimately insane, but the game's place on the Sliding Scale of Player and Protagonist Integration keeps shifting around so it's uncertain as to whether or not you're the one to blame. Neither can NPCs make up their minds if she can be blamed; after all, she's lost her mind.
- The first time the game blames you for murdering Bob to obtain the spellbook. However on New Game Plus you can bypass Bob. Evulz will attempt to compare your philosophy to his about the ends and the means. Repeat the game exactly as before and he will scold you for your blind obedience. Defy the railroading on the first play-through by cheating or hacking however and everyone will be legitimately terrified of Alice as an Eldritch Abomination turning reality into her plaything.
- Averted: There is no railroading present, and all immoral situations can be avoided.
- Enforced:
- This is considered to be a necessary part of Alice performing a Face–Heel Turn.
- "Guilt-Based Gaming is pretty popular. How about we force the player to do something terrible and then call 'em out on it?"
- Lampshaded: "You killed them, you killed them all, You Monster!" "I literally had to, there was no way of getting past that town otherwise."
- Invoked: As part of a Character Filibuster, Evulz will put you through a simulator that can only end this way, to demonstrate that being a villain isn't his fault.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Just before Alice activates the explosive, she realizes that she doesn't know where Evulz really is, and tries to find a way out of the town.
- After the fact, townspeople try to berate Alice, but she tells them where to shove it and makes it clear she was left with no viable alternative.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The Author Avatar keeps blaming you for worse and worse unavoidable things, until Alice realizes just who's putting you and her through all this and kills off the author.
- Intended Audience Reaction: The person laying the blame is supposed to be seen as unreasonable.
- Played For Laughs: At one point in the game, Alice can not progress through an area unless she literally pokes a fluffy poodle with a stick. Everyone around her screams and runs in fear when she does this, and after the area is done, the game gives you a Player Personality Quiz built "to determine precisely what is wrong with you", and includes such questions as "do you wear socks with sandals?" and "do you eat pizza with ketchup?"
- Played For Drama: Alice being blamed constantly is a symptom of survivor's guilt and an anxiety disorder after a traumatic event. She was given legitimate orders to launch ordinance which had an undetectable without factory disassembly defect and killed Bob. Despite being physically unharmed it looks like she may not make it.
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