Spotting the Thread in Video Games.
- Set up and subsequently subverted in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood when Ezio has Bartolomeo pretend to surrender to his own men who are disguised as French troops. A guard at the main gate asks their business in French and Ezio is able to hold a conversation in it. The guard then asks where in France he's from, Ezio is able to provide an acceptable answer. Apparently, his womanizing days paid major dividends almost a quarter-century later.
- Every game of (Advanced) Wanted requires this. The newbies who run on rooftops openly aren't even trying, but to spot more skilled players demands that you know what NPCs will and will not do. Then again that might not save you...
- Baldur's Gate: Enforced in Chapter 6, in the caves under Candlekeep, when you meet Diarmid and he immediately assumes you must be a contact agent named Prat - whom you killed right before. Despite your total ignorance of many points of the conspiracy which would have made everyone else become suspicious, he will tell you all the details you wanted to know. But in the end the only available dialogue option (besides pulling off the mask) is saying that you should then proceed because you didn't want Sarevok to attack you just like Rieltar. Diarmid replies that was never the plan: Sarevok wouldn't have sullied his hands with those he didn't deem worthy of personal killing. The plan was for using doppelgangers to kill Rieltar, or fooling the protagonist to attack him unprovoked, which "you should know this". He then slowly realizes you must be Charname.
- Baldur's Gate II: This happens again in Chapter 3 when you meet the contact of the other guild (if you sided with Aran), but it's more believable. If you manage to keep the facade, in the end you can only either ask about what was the reward again (which is a topic never addressed in the context of the defecting thieves) or thank him and ask to bring your regards to Lassal (a name you cannot possibly know if you are who you pretend to be).
- The mission of BioShock Infinite starts as Booker needing to rescue Elizabeth from the floating city of Columbia and return her to New York and wipe away his debt. When Booker manages to escape with her from her tower, he gets her to come along onto an escape airship by claiming it'll take her to Paris, a place she's all too eager to travel to. However, as Booker punches in the coordinates of their destination, she recognizes the longitude and latitude (she had a lot of time to learn about geography in her tower) and immediately calls out Booker's lie. Cue Elizabeth suddenly "crying" in disappointment, followed Booker trying to comfort her before getting clocked in the head with a wrench.
- After losing his temper and murdering his father over disputing an invasion of Musa, Savalon's usurper Prince Castor of Bravely Default II did everything in his power to cover up the crime, including cowing Dromed into subservience to only record what truths are not inconvenient to him. The usurpation and subsequent dominion over Savalon's affairs seemed to have the appearance of a sane and benevolent man who does all for Savalon's sake, even after the Heroes of Light beat him up... up until Castor's Asterisk resonates with Elvis' book and projects a flashback of all that transpired that day to everyone present, guards included, upon which one of the guards checks the clock at the edge of the room. Inside is the evidence that kills Castor's entire scheme. And through his own paranoia trying to cover it up, it kills Castor too when a handrail he damaged trying to kill his father leaves him to fall into the water flooding Savalon thanks to his machinations.
- Catherine: Vincent gets told by his friends that none of them ever saw Catherine, the woman he supposedly was cheating on Katherine with. As he's trying to find proof that she was real, and not just a figment of his imagination, he recalls that Boss actually talked to her on the first night Vincent met her. Vincent asks Boss about Catherine, who describes the woman perfectly. He ends up running his mouth and revealing himself to be Dumuzid, the man who is behind the nightmares that have plagued men, and who purposefully sent Catherine, a succubus, onto Vincent.
- In Chrono Cross, Kid doesn't realize that Lynx has pulled a Grand Theft Me and swapped bodies with Serge until Serge pulls Kid's knife, intending to kill Lynx while saying "I'll avenge Lucca for you!" Up to this point, Kid hadn't mentioned Lucca by name, and only spoke about Lucca's orphanage in vague terms. Kid can't really do anything about it, as before she realizes what happened, she gets stabbed in the stomach.
- Dark Souls:
- Mimics appear almost exactly like treasure chests, except for some minor differences - more elaborate front designs, slightly open lids, chains that coil in the wrong direction, and so on. Learning to recognise these clues can significantly increase your character's lifespan. That being said, with the way online connectivity works in Souls games, another valuable tipoff is that if a chest is surrounded by bloodstains and glowing orange messages, it's probably a Mimic.
- Some enemies in Dark Souls II appear to be the ghost images of other players up until they attack you. These enemies, however, all have similar equipment (in particular, they all have crossbows), do not fade away like player ghosts usually do, typically have repetitive behaviour, and sometimes do things that players usually wouldn't - for example, in Scholar of the First Sin, there's a ghost near the Shaded Ruins bonfire that is usually found sitting down, a thing players can do but usually wouldn't in the context of an area so full of murderous lion-men and jars that shower you with Curse.
- One sidequest in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided involves retrieving some data off a 3.5" floppy disk before some mercenaries hired by Picus can retrieve it, which requires a trip to an antiques store for a (by now 40-years obsolete) disk reader. The store clerk offers to let Jensen rummage around in the basement to look for one, but his overly inquisitive nature, and the fact that he constantly gets the name of his store wrong, tips Jensen off that the "clerk" is really one of the mercenaries, waiting to ambush him.
- Dragon Age:
- Dragon Age: Origins: During the "Urn of Sacred Ashes" quest, you eventually talk to Brother Genitivi's assistant Weylon. If your Cunning score is high enough, you can pick up on various inconsistencies in his story outing him as an imposter. Otherwise you have to follow what he tells you and survive an ambush, tipping you off that way he's an imposter.
- Blackwall casually mentions early on in Dragon Age: Inquisition that he was in Ferelden during the Blight: "Quietly killed my fair share of darkspawn, too." This is the first clue that he's not who he seems, since anyone who's played Dragon Age: Origins will remember that all the Wardens except Alistair and the PC got killed at Ostagar due to Loghain leaving everyone to die.
- In fact, the more you know about Grey Wardens, the more clues there are that Blackwall isn't who he claims to be. He talks about Grey Wardens having a sacred duty to protect the innocent, when in fact their duty is to stop the Blight at any cost. You can see him training some "recruits" before sending them home for the day, Wardens don't offer any training until the recruits survive the initiation ritual (to keep said ritual a secret, which Blackwall also doesn't know about), and then you're in for life. On that note, the Grey Wardens do take volunteers but they also wouldn't accept untrained farmers, and with an active Blight would be sourcing their new members from using the Right of Conscription.
- In Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, at one point an impostor QA shows up, and they each accuse the other of being the impostor, but Matt already knows the red one is bad. How? Well, aside from Good Colors, Evil Colors, she actually flirted with Matt, and gave nothing but bad advice.
- Emperor: Battle for Dune: When a pair of Sardaukar leaders meet to discuss the eponymous impending battle's potential victor, a Face Dancer disguised as a servant tries to kill them by serving them poisoned drinks. While the Burseg (General) is completely fooled, his subordinate Caid quickly figures out that something's off because the servant isn't one he recognises, prompting him to stop his commander from ingesting the drink and call the "servant" out. When the disguised assassin claims they're a new arrival, the Caid promptly orders the Face Dancer to drink first to prove they're an actual Sardaukar servant, which unsurprisingly kills them.
- Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom: Enemy spies will disguise themselves as workers in your city but can sometimes be spotted doing something that that worker type wouldn't do, like walking through a roadblock that should keep them out. Clicking on a spy makes them panic about blowing their cover and vanish, but they'll only reappear later in a new disguise unless apprehended by an in-game constable.
- Fallout: New Vegas: During "One for My Baby" in Novac, when you're helping Boone find out who helped the Legion kidnap his wife Carla, he mentions that nobody else in town knows that he knows she was kidnapped. Talking to the locals to find out who might have had motive includes talking to the local motel proprietor, Jeannie May Crawford. When asked about Boone, she offhandedly mentions that his believing Carla was kidnapped is absurd. This, coupled with talking to the hermit, No-Bark Noonan and looking into the motel lobby where Jeannie's safe is culminates in the reveal of the truth: Jeannie May arranged for Legion slavers to kidnap the pregnant Carla in exchange for a caps sum, with a promised bonus once the woman gave birth. Should the Courier ask Jeannie to come to the Dinky statue with them and put on Boone's beret, the Cold Sniper widower successfully gets his revenge.
- Final Fantasy:
- In Final Fantasy VIII, Rinoa drops a big clue about where she's really from when the party gets to Galbadia and she tells them the best bus route to General Caraway's manor.
- In Final Fantasy XIV, the player character and Estenien are able to confront and defeat Nidhogg, weakening him using his own eye removed centuries ago and defeating him by ripping out his remaining eye. However, they notice something very off - the eye they used to find the dragon and the eye they ripped out of him are two different colors. As it turns out, the other eye belongs to Nidhogg's brother, Hraesvelgr, who was guilt-tripped by Nidhogg into passing it over after Nidhogg lost both of his eyes.
- In The Force Unleashed 2, Starkiller realizes that a droid is impersonating Juno Eclipse because the real Juno had been shot in the shoulder earlier.
- In God of War: Ascension, Kratos sees through Tisiphone's illusion because she was wearing the ring of his wife Lysandra.
- In God of War Ragnarök this happens near the end of the game when Tyr decides that he will lead the charge to Ragnarok via a previously-unmentioned way into Asgard. Brok then asks why he never mentioned this, to which everyone else starts asking questions. Brok proceeds to point out other suspicions and inconsistencies he has, such as how he's suddenly referring to Atreus as Loki or how quickly he's taking the MacGuffin despite not being his. Eventually this leads to "Tyr" stabbing Brok with a knife and dropping the disguise, revealing himself as Odin all this time.
- In Iji, if you kill few enough Tasen in the first few levels, Iji will opt not to call the Komato, who she had learned about from a marooned scout team. Since the Tasen sent a fake "final report" on their behalf, this would result in the whole thing quietly going away in the Komato's eyes...except that the fake report referenced "planetary scan" technology that never worked and only survives as propaganda. So the Komato show up anyway.
- League of Legends:
- Shaco, LeBlanc and Neeko can all create duplicates of themselves to mislead enemies and make them waste abilities on the fake (and, for Shaco, to increase damage output). However, duplicates are controlled by the AI, so they behave slightly differently to humans such as not prioritising Shaco's Backstab passive*. More tellingly, all three champions are heavily reliant on abilities, but duplicates can only use basic attacks.
- Neeko can take an ally's appearance, including their apparent health stats (masking her own health bar). Spotting enemies that aren't trying to escape from unnecessarily-precarious positions can be important to stop yourself taking her bait.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: All of the maidens were sealed inside magic crystals, just as Ganondorf intended in the first place. So in the Thieves' Town dungeon, you probably realize immediately that something isn't right when you find the maiden imprisoned in a prison cell. The "maiden" also asks you to take her outside, but if you try to do so, she won't actually let you. Turns out, "she" is actually the dungeon boss in disguise.
"Maiden": Gyaaah! Too bright!- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: Veterans who played A Link to the Past will find this is subverted in this game. During Lorule's counterpart of Thieves' Town, the game essentially spoonfeeds you the exact same scenario as the first one with Link finding a captive girl who claims she can help him if he will only take her outside. Fans of the original likely will come to the conclusion that she's the dungeon boss who will reveal itself at the entrance and be wary of her. After working together to make their way back through the dungeon, the reveal that she was being perfectly honest comes to light when she's captured by Stalblind, the real boss, and then takes him to the house containing the dungeon's Painting upon his defeat.
- Like a Dragon:
- In Yakuza 4, it's revealed at the end of Tanimura's section that Sugiuchi is a yakuza spy. Tanimura actually suspected that something was off with them from the very beginning of the segment, thanks to noticing a small detail about their person. Namely, Sugiuchi's shoes, which were far too expensive for a detective's salary and far too impractical for someone who often worked murder scenes.
- In Yakuza 5, Daigo is able to narrow down the culprit of the case through personal investigation and some clever deductions. What first tipped him off, though, was the culprit revealing to him early on that they were dying of a disease. Though their body was frail, their eyes burned intensely with the prospect of a large task ahead of them, which Daigo immediately found suspicious.
- Mary Skelter Finale: Gallows, a member of Massacre Pink, infiltrates Clara's camp disguised as a girl named Rachel in order to earn everyone's trust and turn them against her fellow member Pyre after the latter turned on Massacre Pink and joined their team. The infiltration is successful for the most part, apparently everyone (including Pyre) doesn't suspect anything, but when Gallows attempts to put her plan into action, Gretel quickly exposes her as an imposter and reveals there were several inconsistencies she caught onto throughout her stay, especially after meeting Rachel's sisters Riley and Ellie. First, "Rachel" called Riley and Ellie her older and younger sisters because she was parroting Clara's mistake about the girls' age, when the real Rachel would know that her sisters are actually older than her. Second, "Rachel" told everyone that her parents had recently sacrificed themselves to save her, but Riley and Ellie told Clara's party that their parents died long ago when they were only children. Third, "Rachel" spoke as if she was familiar with Gallows, yet earlier had asked everyone who she was when she first heard the name and acted like she never met her before. And finally, "Rachel" tries to maintain her cover by pointing out Gretel saw Pyre spoke to Gallows, only for Gretel to point out that nobody at camp ever saw her eavesdrop on their conversation nor did she say this to anyone, so "Rachel" would have no reason to know that unless she was Gallows and had noticed Gretel was watching her talk to Pyre.
- Players may notice another flaw in "Rachel's" cover story early in the plot that Clara's party never pick up on. "Rachel" tells everyone that a Nightmare killed her father while a Marchen killed her mother. It's revealed later in the story that people on the surface actually call the monsters "contaminated", since the above terms originated from the underground, and the only people on the surface who actually use those terms were Massacre Pink, providing players a big clue that Rachel's not who she claims to be.
- Metal Gear:
- Metal Gear Solid:
- One of the signs that the DARPA chief was Decoy Octopus were that he referred to the terrorist act as the "revolution". No one picked up on it. Despite knowing there was a master of disguise among the enemy, it didn't occur to anyone on Snake's side that he might be impersonating someone. Another thread that no one picks up on is that Decoy Octopus as the DARPA chief claims the terrorists got his authorization code by having Psycho Mantis read his mind, only for the ArmsTech president to note that that's impossible, since the both of them were given cranial implants that shielded them from Mantis' abilities. One last sign is when the DARPA chief seemingly dies by way of FOXDIE - except FOXDIE was only programmed to target members of FOXHOUND and the ArmsTech president, though this fact is concealed from Snake for most of the game.
- Liquid Snake's disguise as Master Miller, for that matter, gets unraveled once Mei Ling and Colonel Campbell realize that his Codec calls were coming from within Shadow Moses itself and not from Master Miller's home in Alaska.
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty featured Iroquois Pliskin, a Navy SEAL. There are a few clues that he's not quite who he says he is. First, he claims to have arrived on the Big Shell via fast rope onto Strut E with the rest of the SEALs. But as he says this, one of the sea lice from the undersea dock in Strut A - the way Raiden got in - crawls away from his leg. Also, after meeting Stillman the demolitions expert, Pliskin gives inspiring mottos in the conversation. But rather than giving the SEALs' motto ("The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday"), he utters those of the British Special Air Service ("Who Dares, Wins") and US Marine Corps ("Semper Fi"). Stillman even points this out to Raiden when Pliskin walks away, which is where the thread is spotted in-universe. However, all of this is with the Dramatic Irony that Pliskin is actually Solid Snake. The game is not exactly subtle about this, since Pliskin not only has the same face as Snake, but the same voice. So the audience knows that Pliskin and Snake are the same person, but it takes an Internal Reveal before Raiden gets clued in.
- There's another one in the fourth game. The ending of Act 3: "Big Boss's Corpse" is missing the left eye. Big Boss lost his right eye. Solidus lost his left eye.
- Metal Gear Solid:
- Metal Slug 3 pulls this off nicely when you first meet Morden. It actually isn't him; his eye patch is on the wrong eye.
- Never Gives Up Her Dead: In the train murder mystery segment, you are given four suspects with their own alibis. The things you learn from talking between them will reveal a contradicting claim that you can use to press further and reveal more of the truth for that person's defense. For instance, if novelist suspect Maeve described the victim as a big fan of her writing, why did he request to get her book signed under his friend's name?
- Noita:
- One enemy variant is a Chest Monster which waits until players get close to attack. However, unlike chests it can become stained by liquids, at which point it will display a conspicuous icon over its head. Similarly, chests will sink in pools of liquid while the mimic will float. Finally, hovering your cursor over a mimic will not show a "Treasure Chest" tooltip like the real thing.
- The rare Leggy variant avoids having these tells; only attacking it or getting close enough to be attacked will reveal it.
- The Memory of Evil is a rare mimic variant which disguises itself as a bonus maximum HP pickup. The key to identifying it is that normal pickups have a white plus icon on their right, while the monster's icon is on the left.
- One enemy variant is a Chest Monster which waits until players get close to attack. However, unlike chests it can become stained by liquids, at which point it will display a conspicuous icon over its head. Similarly, chests will sink in pools of liquid while the mimic will float. Finally, hovering your cursor over a mimic will not show a "Treasure Chest" tooltip like the real thing.
- In Paper Mario, the captured Princess Peach eventually acquires an item called the Sneaky Parasol that lets her disguise herself as one of Bowser's troops. The only person who sees through this is Kammy Koopa, who notices that the 'guard' in question smells strangely nice.
- Persona 4:
- Late in the game, the Investigation Team begins to suspect that Adachi is the murderer, reasoning that his position in the police would give him the opportunity to cover his tracks. From there, they were able to reason his connection to the deaths of his previous victims, claiming to be assigned to guard one while questioning the second after she found the first victim's corpse. He had also been turning up in conspicuous places, feeding just enough misinformation to the team to keep them off his trail. When they go to confront him, they find Adachi at the hospital, ostensibly to relocate the official suspect for his safety, but possibly to kill him and keep him from linking Adachi to the kidnappings and murders. Adachi's insistence that he was not the one to throw them into the TVs is the thread that unravels his scheme and forces him to retreat into the TV World, as no one but the Investigation Team and the actual murderer would even know how the people were even being killed.
- Another clue was figured out by Naoto during that same confrontation — when she read Namatame's diary at the scene of Dojima's accident, she noted that even the victims who survived and were never released to the public were listed in it, with Adachi's response being "Well...then that settles it." The police had no idea that there had been other attempted murders related to the case, and Adachi would have had no reason to say something like this, since people disappear and reappear all the time, and Adachi's lack of objection to Naoto's reading off of the list of names struck her as odd and suspicious.
- Persona 5:
- Madarame says that the original painting of the Sayuri was stolen, and he had to resort to reproducing fakes. Ann Takamaki points out that Madarame's explanation doesn't make sense; how could Madarame have made copies of the Sayuri if he didn't have the original? When Madarame says he found a high-quality photograph of the painting, Ann shoots that down too by pointing out that Madarame's art-savvy clients would know if he was trying to sell them a copy. Shortly thereafter, Ann finds the real Sayuri hidden in the storage room. Madarame tries to lie one more time by saying it's a fake that he bought from a thief, but Ann responds that the very idea that he'd do that instead of calling the cops is "pushing it". Right after that, the lie collapses, and Madarame's scam is exposed.
- Spotting a lie is integral to deducing the identity of the traitor to the Phantom Thieves. Akechi's story about being pulled into the Metaverse and awakening his Persona seems pretty cut-and-dry, since it's basically what happened to the rest of the Phantom Thieves. But during his first meeting with the Thieves roughly four months prior, Akechi had unknowingly commented on a remark made by Morgana — which couldn't have been possible at the time if his claims were true, as only people who have heard Morgana's voice in the Metaverse can understand him in the real world. Once Joker and Morgana realize this, it doesn't take long for them to work out that if Akechi has had access to the Metaverse since that time, then only he can be the "Black Mask" who's been causing mental shutdowns across Japan for The Conspiracy.
- This is also a common thread among most Confidant plotlines, particularly at the end when reaching max rank with a Confidant: the Confidant, in question, confides the name of the person or persons making their lives miserable, the Phantom Thieves go into Mementos to enact a change of heart in said person or persons, and not long after, the Confidant connects the dots and realizes the protagonist is not some regular kid, but a Phantom Thief.
- Pokémon:
- Zorua and Zoroark have the ability Illusion, which causes them to disguise themselves as a different Pokemon in their party until they take damage. Well-studied opponents may notice this if they spot a Pokemon using moves it normally can't learn - more everyday opponents may spot the thread if their opponent doesn't interact with the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system in the way it should. It doesn't help that Zoroark has a Secret Art attack that serves as an immediate giveaway.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Darkness has one just before the Final Battle with Darkrai. As a last-ditch attempt, Darkrai envelopes the player character in a nightmare, having the partner decide to join Darkrai in ruling a world of darkness and offering the same to the player character. The player character nearly falls for it, until the partner says, "The world of darkness is going to be beautiful..." The player character then realizes that it's all an illusion: you and your partner have seen the world of darkness beforehand, and there is nothing beautiful about it whatsoever.
- Professor Layton and company catch the villainous Don Paolo multiple times throughout the series by way of this. His mistakes range from "Inspector Chelmey" flipping out over sweets, when the actual inspector is quite fond of his wife Amile's (who is not "Amy") sweet potato fritters, to "Flora" describing a picture 'she' couldn't have seen, to "Future Dean Delmona" having gray hair in the future despite secretly telling Layton that he wears a hairpiece.
- The multiplayer espionage game SpyParty is all about this. The person playing the Spy has to act as closely to the guests as possible while completing their objectives, lest the person playing the Sniper realize they are the spy and shoot them. If you're playing against a really good Sniper, even something as small as looking at a statue and putting it down before the animation is about to loop can blow your cover.
- Learning behaviors of disguised enemy Spies is a crucial skill required to successfully combat them in Team Fortress 2. The fact that Spies can only mimic the appearance of a different class means that various aberrant behaviors by "teammates" may mean that they're really not. Things like not shooting their guns, Medics not healing or having their Medi Guns equipped, Scouts not running fast enough or double jumping, seemingly wanting to always be behind teammates, colliding with a "teammate" (you can normally walk right through them)... The Team Fortress Wiki
has a list of threads to be aware of and look out for (as well as other Spy counter-strategies) to avoid a knife in your or your teammates' backs.- Inverted in the in-game comic "Shadow Boxers", where Miss Pauling is able to tell the Soldier isn't being delusional when he claims that he successfully infiltrated the robot base when he mentions that Gray Mann was raised by eagles, a fact known only to her and the Administrator.
- Inverted in the in-game comic "Shadow Boxers
- In Warnings at Waverly Academy, Nancy Drew has the chance to notice that one of the students is actually identical twins, who take turn attending classes because only one of them was awarded a scholarship. The Spottable Thread is that one twin's bangs are always falling into her eyes and is never tucked back while the other one tucks her bangs behind her left ear whenever the bangs are about to fall into her eyes.
