History Main / FirstContactFauxPas

** When the Citadel made first contact with the Yahg, they made the mistake of trying a peaceful approach. The Yahg were insulted and they killed the delegation.[[labelnote:*]]In Yahg culture, a position of power is earned either through brute force or social engineering. The very idea of equality is utterly foreign and offensive to them[[/labelnote]] The Citadel promptly ceased any further efforts to communicate with the Yahg and declared their homeworld of Parnack off-limits.

* Before the events of ''[[Literature/TheShipWho PartnerShip]]'', a species of roughly humanoid creatures was discovered on Angalia, living in marshes regularly swept by muddy tsunamis. Flagging them as potentially sentient, well-meaning humans dubbed them the Loosies and saw how they struggled to survive and arranged for massive deliveries of NastyNondescriptNutritious food. The Loosies took advantage of the resource and their population boomed into something far larger than what their meager homeland could support, making them entirely dependent on humans. After two generations a cursory study was made, determining that they had no language or culture and thus were not people, but the food shipments continued and a position was set up to oversee and study them. ReassignedToAntarctica, Blaize finds that his predecessor has been abusing them and is kinder as he takes over, idly teaching one sign language and discovering that they ''are'' people.

* ''VideoGame/DaveTheDiver''; according to some ancient murals the heroes uncover during the game, the old Sea People civilization came in contact with humanity and, in an effort to be friendly, offered some of their sacred Divine Tree fruit to the humans. Unfortunately, the fruit is toxic to humans and several died, leading the humans to think the Sea People tried to deliberately poison them and sparking a war that drove the Sea People back to their HiddenElfVillage. The next moment of FirstContact thousands of years later goes much better, as Dave save the Sea People's princess from a giant squid and ingratiates himself by performing odd tasks around the village.

** When the Citadel made first contact with the Yahg, they made the mistake of trying a peaceful approach. The Yahg were offended that the Citadel delegation didn't try to fight them, and thus they killed the delegation. The Citadel promptly ceased any further efforts to communicate with the Yahg.

But if the aliens really ARE 'alien', it's far more likely that somebody will horribly misunderstand something. Maybe it'll be us, maybe it'll be the aliens, but either way, it'll probably turn into a horrific war and everybody will feel really bad about it all afterwards, when the smoke clears and we finally get things straightened out.

* The central conflict between the [[BeePeople Vajra]] and humanity in ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'' was started by this. [[spoiler: The Vajra mistook humanity for a broken HiveMind because HumanityIsInsane, and 'rescued' what they perceived to be the queen bee in the hopes of helping her. From humanity's perspective, however, a young girl had just been kidnapped by a HordeOfAlienLocusts, and the BugWar was on...]]

* In ''Literature/ThebeAndTheAngryRedEye'', CharacterNarrator Thomas theorizes that this is the reason for the story's central tragedy. Thomas and his shipmates approach UsefulNotes/{{Jupiter}}, unaware that a BenevolentAbomination in the form of a gigantic snake alien lives inside the planet. The being sends a radioactive surge as an attempt at communication which [[GoneHorriblyWrong goes horribly wrong]]; the surge hits the ship, causing a series of disasters that kills all the astronauts except Thomas himself. When Thomas finally makes contact with the alien, its remorseful actions indicate that he probably guessed right about its lack of hostile intentions.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E3TheAmbassadorsOfDeath The Ambassadors of Death]]", something unclear went horribly wrong when an unnamed alien species first encountered humans, with two of the three astronauts involved being killed and the third becoming a vengeance-crazed psychotic. This was probably related to the aliens' extreme biological incompatibility with humans - they are [[EnergyAbsorption radiation-eaters]] who even communicate by [[StarfishLanguage exchanging short coded bursts]] of hard ionising radiation, and a friendly greeting from them fired directly at a human causes instant death.

* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' story "The Ambassadors of Death", something unclear went horribly wrong when an unnamed alien species first encountered humans, with two of the three astronauts involved being killed and the third becoming a vengeance-crazed psychotic. This was probably related to the aliens' extreme biological incompatibility with humans - they are [[EnergyAbsorption radiation-eaters]] who even communicate by [[StarfishLanguage exchanging short coded bursts]] of hard ionising radiation, and a friendly greeting from them fired directly at a human causes instant death.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. Captain Picard states that a disastrous contact with the Klingon Empire led to decades of war (unfortunately this is contradicted by the events of the prequel series ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' where the Klingons are often hostile, but not to the extent of waging war).
** However Picard might be referring not to the first Earth-Klingon contact which is what is shown in Enterprise (as is pre-Federation time) but the first Federation-Klingon contact as shown in "The Vulcan Hello" episode of Series/StarTrekDiscovery which did caused a war. Of course such episode was not writen at the time of the TNG episode is just a retroactive fix. Kirk in TOS does mentions that a bad first contact caused "decades of war" (which is also contradicted as a no point in the franchise we have seen the Federation in "decades of war" with the Klingon in the prime timeline, unless you count a cold war).
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''. Captain Archer does run into this trope however, because Starfleet lacks experience and Earth is regarded as an InsignificantBluePlanet. The B-plot of one episode had delegates of a newly encountered alien race being offended after being given a tour of Enterprise, storming off after ten minutes. It ultimately turns out that what offended them was being shown the mess hall, as the thought of communal eating is repulsive to them. Eating and personal displays of affection [[YourNormalIsOurTaboo should be conducted in private]].
** On another occasion Archer landed himself in hot water with the exact same race during a second diplomatic visit because he had the bright idea to bring [[TeamPet Porthos]] along, and the dog pissed on a tree that turned out to be part of a temple garden and thus had great spiritual significance, and ended up having to carry out a rather embarrassing ritual of penance in order to smooth things over.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' has a couple of amusing {{Noodle Incident}}s mentioned where an AccidentalUnfortunateGesture led to this trope.

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* The central conflict between the [[BeePeople Vajra]] and humanity in ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'' was started by this. [[spoiler: The Vajra mistook humanity for a broken HiveMind because HumanityIsInsane, and 'rescued' what they perceived to be the queen bee in the hopes of helping her. From humanity's perspective, however, their princess had just been kidnapped by a HordeOfAlienLocusts, and the BugWar was on...]]

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** However Picard might be referring not to the first Earth-Klingon contact which is what is shown in Enterprise (as is pre-Federation time) but the first Federation-Klingon contact as shown in "The Vulcan Hello" episode of Series/StarTrekDiscovery which thus caused a war. Of course such episode was not writen at the time of the TNG episode is just a retroactive fix. Kirk in TOS does mentions that a bad first contact caused "decades of war" (which is also contradicted as a no point in the franchise we have seen the Federation in "decades of war" with the Klingon in the prime timeline, unless you count a cold war).

* In the ''Literature/{{Foreigner}}'' series humans initially had no idea that the ''atevi'' have no conception of borders. As a result, humans who ''thought'' they were dealing with a single group of atevi were actually double-crossing and triple-crossing multiple groups, which eventually led to a war that almost wiped out the human LostColony.

* In James Cambias' ''A Darkling Sea'', the first contact with humans by Ilmatarans involve the Ilmatarans capturing and dissecting a human who's trying to observe them close-up in secret and screwed up, not knowing that humans are sapient. Weirdly enough for this trope, the ensuring conflict ''isn't'' with the Ilmatarans, but with another spacefaring species, the Sholen, who humans are pretty much forced to sign AlienNonInterferenceClause treaty with. In fact, later on a proper first contact is established between Ilmatarans and humans via FirstContactMath.

* ''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space''

* In the Peter Watts' novel, ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}'', the alien Scramblers are StarfishAliens on all levels, including the [[BizarreAlienPsychology psychological]]: [[spoiler: intelligent without sapience, they are incapable of conceptualizing things like “art” or “emotion”, which means when they first receive human communications (i.e. from radio and TV transmissions), they determine it to be an attack intended to make them waste cognitive resources trying to interpret nonsense, classify humanity as an aggressive and dangerous threat, and set out to stamp us out.]]