Basic Trope: A character unwittingly projects their own (usually) negative traits onto another character.
- Straight: Connie tends to be selfish and mistrustful. When she befriends Alice, she thinks that Alice behaving oddly meant that Alice was planning to betray her, and thus planned her own preemptive strike. Alice really was a loyal friend, and she was actually planning a surprise party for Connie.
- Exaggerated: Connie befriends Alice purely to betray her because she assumes that all people only get close to others to stab them in the back, and so if Alice accepts her friendship, that meant that Alice was probably going to betray her, so Connie will betray her to prevent her betrayal. In fact, Alice is an All-Loving Hero.
- Downplayed: Connie offers to help Alice with her trust issues, even though she is the one with trust issues.
- Justified:
- Connie is The Sociopath, and thus incapable of understanding others' reactions.
- Connie is an AI who spends decades with only her own mind as a reference for others. That she even thinks of other entities as people who have minds instead of just objects which are a part of the environment means her empathy is strong for the circumstances.
- Connie believes she is a normal person, and that all normal people behave like her.
- Inverted:
- Connie projects all of Alice's negative traits onto herself.
- Connie projects her own positive traits onto Alice.
- Connie projects all of Alice's positive traits onto herself.
- Subverted: Bob accuses Connie of this when he learns about her preemptive strike plan, but Alice really was going to betray her.
- Double Subverted:
- Connie suffers breaks from reality that cause her to see and hear things that aren't there, like the evidence of Alice's betrayal.
- Connie was Right for the Wrong Reasons with Alice, but the very same habit of projecting onto others means she wrongly assumes the same of Bob, costing herself an ally.
- Parodied:
- Connie calls out Alice for projection at absolutely anything ("Hey, wanna go pet some dogs at a dog park?" "Projection! You're assuming I like dogs because you do!" "But ... you were the one who got me my dog in the first place ...").
- Everybody ascribes all their own traits to other people.
- Al, a serial killer, is afraid that every innocent bystander wants to murder him.
- Connie pulls out an actual projector and projects a video onto Alice of Connie saying "I'm self-important and untrustworthy!"
- Zig-Zagged: Is Alice really a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing? Or is Connie just an Unreliable Narrator? Decide for yourself, because the work isn't going to tell you and there's evidence for both sides.
- Averted: Connie knows full well that Alice is trustworthy and doesn't project onto her.
- Enforced: The writer wants Connie to be the Hate Sink. Abusing innocent people because she is a Jerkass but can't accept it is a very hateable trait.
- Lampshaded: "Connie, don't you realize that you're describing yourself, not Alice?"
- Invoked: Connie notices that Alice is too trusting of others, and given her own experience with untrustworthy people, decides to teach her that everyone has the potential for betrayal.
- Implied: On a blog, as part of an ARG, Connie is able to post things for real people to see. She constantly demonstrates the traits she accuses others of. We never have any other contact with most of the mentioned characters.
- Exploited: Mallory plays on Connie's trust issues in order to break her friendship with Alice. Since Connie is also projecting herself on Mallory (thus seeing her as someone who's Properly Paranoid), she doesn't suspect an ulterior motive.
- Defied: Connie realizes she is doing this and quickly gets over it.
- Discussed: "Not everyone is as conniving as you. You have to realize this or you'll never be able to suck the life out of any poor sap, because you'll be too worried that they'll pull a knife that they don't have the guts to use."
- Conversed: "Man, this Connie character is really projecty towards Alice. What's up with that?"
- Deconstruction: Connie sets up a Batman Gambit against Alice, based on the assumption that Alice will behave exactly as Connie herself would in the given situation. Alice, however, does not behave as expected; Connie's complete misreading of Alice utterly ruins her plan.
- Played for Laughs: Hypocritical Humor
- Played for Drama: Alice and Connie fall out over Connie's bad habit of this.
Back to Psychological Projection
