Aerith And Bob / Video Games

• As the Ace Combat series takes place in a setting that is relatively similar to Earth, a vast majority of the characters’ names are normal sounding names,^note Kei Nagase, Jack Bartlett, Larry Foulke, Melissa Hermanespecially in the game’s Fantasy Counterpart Culture of real life nations. Then you have Abyssal Dission, the main antagonist of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, which is a name that you’d expect out of a Saturday-Morning Cartoon.
• AMC Squad: The titular squad has a range of names from the exotic (Zaxtor Znort), to the foreign-but-recognizable (Merlijn van Oostrum, Kagura Takahashi), to the mundane (James Stanfield, Micky Crisp). Some names, on the other hand, are nicknames rather than actual names (Highwire, Bombshell).
• Animal Crossing has animal villagers that live in your town. You could get residents with names like Eugene, Bella, Alice and Bob, and then you could also get residents with names like Poncho, Tangy, Dizzy, and Ankha.
• The main character in Ape Escape is called Spike. His rival? Jake. Jake was changed to Buzz for the European release, though.
• The Flores siblings in ANNO: Mutationem are Ann, Ryan, Helen... and Nakamura. This discrepancy is an early tipoff to the fact that they're all adopted.
• Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia has Jack Hamilton and Misha, with the rest of the party having names that sound close to actual names but aren't: Lyner Barsett (who might be the German name Reiner mistranslated through Japanese Ranguage), Aurica Nestmile, Krusche Elendia, Radolf Schneizen (sounds close to "Rudolf Schneider" but it's not), Ayatane Michitaka (Michitaka is an actual Japanese name, but an Aerith to Western audiences) and Shurelia. An antagonist has this trope by himself: he's known as Falss but his real name was Kyle Clancy.
• Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica: Croix Bartel, Cocona Bartel, Cloche Leytal Pastalia, Leglius Brancheska, Amarie Gelade (who might be "Amalie Gerade" with Japanese Ranguage), and Jacqli are in the same party as Luca Trulyworth and Shun (a common Chinese and Japanese name).
• Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel switches from having the majority of Aeriths to actual Japanese names: Aoto, Tatsumi, Hikari and Saki. Plus the very non-Japanese Finnel and Tyria.
• Arc Rise Fantasia has more fanciful names like Ryfia, Rasta, and L'Arc alongside more "normal" names like Adele, Alfonse, and Leslie.
• In Asura's Wrath, along with the conventionally Hindu-sounding Asura, Mithra, and Yasha, you have gods named Olga, Sergei, and Deus. It's a bit baffling.
• Baldur's Gate mostly has unusual names: Valygar, Ajantis, Keldorn, Jaheira, Imoen, Viconia... And then there's the remarkably ordinary Jan Jansen. (That is to say, his name is ordinary. He isn't.) But even then it's odd, as it's an ordinary human name borne by a gnome.
  • The villain is named Sarevok in Baldur's Gate I. But in the sequel the villain is Jon Irenicus, revealed to be short for Joneleth.
• Beyond the Beyond's humanoid characters are given names like Finn, Annie, Edward and Samson, while the non-human and demonic characters have weird names like Ramue, Shutat, Yeon and Dagoot.
• Blaseball: Thanks to the randomly generated names, players like Allison Abbot and Reese Clark exist side-by-side with Blood Hamburger and Comfort Septemberish.
  • Team locations also range from places with actual sports teams (New York, Dallas) to very small or large places that wouldn't normally have a competing team (Breckenridge, Colorado; all of Canada) to exotic locations like Hades and Atlantis.
• BlazBlue plays around with this trope. Some characters have perfectly ordinary Western names (Rachel, Carl, Noel), some characters have perfectly ordinary Japanese names (Jin, Tsubaki, Kagura, Makoto), some have exotic names from other languages (Litchi ^note Chinese, Ragna ^note Old Norse, Azrael ^note Hebrew) and some have downright awesome names (Bang Shishigami, Iron Tager, Valkenhayn R. Hellsing).
  • Blazblue Cross Tag Battle is inevitably this, being a Crossover Tag Team fighting game incorporating characters from Persona 4: Arena, Under Night In-Birth and RWBY. Characters confirmed include Ragna, Noel, Yu Narukami, Linne, Waldstein, Ruby, Weiss and Rachel.
• Borderlands tend to give its characters unusual names, likely to fit with the cyberpunk atmosphere the game aims for. For example, the protagonists of Borderlands 2 are named Axton, Salvador, Maya, Zer0, Gaige and Krieg.^note "Salvador" and "Maya" are both real give names in Spanish and Greek respectively. "Axton", "Gaige" and "Krieg" are last names used here as first one. And "Zer0" is well, Leet Lingo.
• The cast of BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has a wide mix of names, from the normal (Catie, Eddie, Anita), to the fantastical (Arianna, Tyalie), to the downright weird (One_Wing, GmasterRED). This is entirely justified, as the game is set in Cyberspace and those are the characters’ usernames.
• Bravely Default and its sequel have a mix of rather normal names (Owen, Karl, Olivia), the clearly fantasy names (Tiz, Ominas, Qada), and the in-between with names (Edea, Agnes) which are debatably just old-fashioned. And then theres Ringabel. Justified in that it's a made up name for someone with no memory. But his real name, Alternis Dim, is not much better.
• Bug Fables has names ranging from common ones like Chuck, Bianca, Vanessa, or Janet; to corruptions of regular names like Elizant; to fantasy-like names such as Vi, Mothiva, Samira, Kabbu, or Zasp. The first and last are the most common, and distributed fairly evenly among the characters.
• In Caravaneer 2, the name generator uses all sort of thing from real life brands (Pepsi, Telefunken, MTV, etc), obscure names from various languages (Sawala, Laugar, Alise, etc), two or three letters name (Lo, Da, Aja, etc), and even outright pop-culture references.
• Cave Story has, among its cast of named characters, Arthur, Jack, Sue, King, and Jenka with translated names; and Toroko, Itoh, Kazuma, and Momorin with their names in transliterated Japanese.
• Chrono Cross:
  • The main protagonist is named Serge, and his mother is Marge, his first girlfriend was Leena, and that girlfriend's father was Miguel. All of these are Bob-level names - but they are thrown into disarray by Serge's father and Miguel's friend, Wazuki, who got transformed into "Lynx" before the game begins. Since the game is Japanese, the trope is inverted in its native country.
  • The game's militaries feature regular names like Dario, Glenn, Norris, and Marcy alongside not-so-regular names like Garai, Radius, and Karsh.
  • One character had his Aerith name "Slash" changed to the Bob name "Nikki" by the localization. (Note that both of these names are taken from rockstars.)
• Chrono Trigger has Glenn, Cyrus, Dalton, Fritz, Johnny and Lara among Crono, Spekkio, Schala, and Azala. Ozzie, Slash and Flea are all named after famous musicians, though in the Japanese version they were named after condiments - Vinegar, Soyso (soy sauce) and Mayonne (mayonnaise) respectively. Yes, THAT Akira Toriyama was part of the team behind the game.
• The implemented characters in Club Penguin have both normal, real-life names and unusual names. Gary, Franky, Petey (K), (Stompin) Bob, (G) Billy, Dot, Herbert and Paige (although she's only called PH or Puffle Handler in the game) are normal, while (Aunt) Arctic, Rockhopper, Rookie, Sensei, Cadence, Klutzy and Jet Pack Guy (whose real name really is Guy) are unusual.
• CP3D: The game carries this trope over from the original Club Penguin. The trope applies to Gary himself - his alternate dimension counterpart is called Gartree.
• Commander Blood has the protagonist Commander Blood and his employer, Bob Morlock. On your journey you meet characters with names ranging from relatively mundane (Tina Burner, Jerry Khan, Yoko, Beauregard) to oddball names like Bronko, Morning Oil, Scruter Mac, Bug Deluxe, Otto van Smile and Super Zen. The fact that they're all aliens and robots portrayed by puppets or CGI models only makes it more bizarre.
  • It's predecessor Captain Blood goes even further, with Captain Blood himself being the only one with a fairly mundane name. You encounter planets named things like "Reproduction 128" and characters named "Missile Brave", "Howdy Prison", "Dead Genetic" and "Brain Radioactivity".
• Cragne Manor: Some characters have normal names like Dan and Peter, alongside stranger ones like Christabell and Fulvous.
• Crash Bandicoot plays with it. Alongside characters with names like Crash, Dingodile and Nefarious, a lot of its characters have normal names, but with the exception of Coco and Nina, they're part a pun. (Neo Cortex, Victor and Moritz).
• Dance Central has commonly named characters like Emilia, Aubrey, and Taye share the spotlight with characters named Oblio, Jaryn, and Dare.
• The characters of Dark Souls are named like this. You'll run into characters named Laurentius (archaic for "Lawrence"), Griggs, Quelaag, Logan and Oswald. There's also the gods, who are mostly composed of Aeriths with the glaring exceptions of Gwyn, Gwynevere and Gwyndolin, who ironically have variants of real-life human names that survived to the modern day.
• In Dark Souls III, the three sisters who founded the Sable Church of Londor are Liliane (common name), Yuria (unusual name), and Friede (unusual spelling of a common name). Friede's case gets even weirder, because while she's now known as Friede, she was called Elfriede while she was part of the Sable Church (why she left is a long story), which is an unusual name but is a name that is actually used in the real world (unlike “Friede”, a spelling of that name which is unique to her.)
• Deltarune: Most of the monsters returning from Undertale sport made up or unusual names, such as Toriel, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, and Asgore. However, many of the newly introduced monsters have more mundane names, such as Rudy or Alvin. In particular, the roster of party members during Chapters 1 and 2 consist of Kris, Susie, Noelle... and Ralsei.
• The Demon Rush features such characters as Brooks Cracktackle, a private investigator; Knight the horned knight; the Legend Viper of Thunder; Jimmy the necromancer; Cherry Venus the fighter ace; and Steve the half-dragon semi-divine entity.
• Dimension Spark is a game about the adventures of characters named Zach, Garret, and Pisces.
• The Dio Field Chronicle: The first four characters you meet are Andrias, Fredret, Izelar, and Lorraine.
• Most people in Disco Elysium have ordinary European names, but the player character later finds out he's the one with the weird name - Harrier. Kim apparently believes Harrier is a silly name that no-one has, and refuses to use it for this reason.
• Happens in the Dishonored series. Compare names like Corvo, Jessamine, and Kirin to... Emily, Samuel, and Lydia. Although upper class characters tend to have more "exotic" names, and lower class characters have simpler ones, Emily Kaldwin (the Empress's daughter) bucks this trend pretty much right out of the gate.
• Dragon Age II includes people such as Sebastian Vael, Bethany and Carver Hawke, Knight-Commander Meredith and Viscount Marlowe Dumar, who have respectable normal names. Anders is a very common name in Scandinavia (though Word of God is that it's the rebel mage's nickname rather than his real name). Normal names spelled oddly include Merrill, Isabela and Saemus (the latter is pronounced like the Irish Séamus). Straight fantasy names include Varric Tethras, Orsino, Xenon, Corypheus and Xebenkeck. You'll meet Non Player Characters with names like Evelina, Olivia, Grace, and Ella alongside odder ones like Thrask, Tomwise, Gamlen, and Tarohne.
• Dragon Age: Origins: Alistair, Wynne, Morrigan, and Leliana have perfectly respectable medieval names, while Zevran and Oghren have random fantastic names (although they are from fantasy cultures; elf and dwarf respectively). Sten doesn't count, it's a title, not a name.
  • The various breeds of darkspawn are hurlocks, genlocks, shrieks, and ... ogres? Justified: the first three have been around since the first Blight (they're created from blighted female humans, dwarves, and elves, respectively). Ogres are derived from qunari, which only recently arrived on the continent.
• Once upon a time, a Japanese video game called Dragon Quest II had a Final Boss called Sidoh, which to Japanese ears sounded like Satan or Sodom, and a little bit like "Death King". English speakers didn't get the pun, and so this boss was localized as Malroth. Fast forward a couple decades, and this boss reincarnates as a major character in Dragon Quest Builders 2, taking the form of a human with the same name and a few strange features. Now, Sidoh (シドー) is also very similar to the Japanese kana for the common Western name "Cid" or "Sid" (シド), so out of context, he's just a guy who spells his name a funny way. But since the English localization of Builders kept the localized name, Malroth sounds incredibly evil compared to modern names like Rosie and Lulu, and real but archaic names like Warwick and Jeremiah.
• Dwarf Fortress actively averts this in adventurer mode, where people remark upon your strange name if you don't use one of the generated ones for your culture.
• EarthBound has both ordinary names, like Tracy, Paula, Jeff along with many Aerith-like names, such as Ness, Porky, Picky and (you guessed it) Poo.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The series in general plays with this. You can find a vast mix of names within the Elder Scrolls universe, from the exotic (Mannimarco, Wadarkhu) to the common (Jon, Jim) but most of the races have their own naming conventions (based heavily in their Fantasy Counterpart Culture,) and stick to those naming conventions. So it's generally played straight for the world as a whole and ranges from downplayed to averted within the races themselves. Exceptions do exist, but they are fairly rare. (Take, for example, Emperor Uriel Septim VII, and his sons, Geldall, Enman, Ebel, and....Martin. Granted, the last one is illegitimate, but...)
  • The Nord race averts it in general, taking their names from their Scandinavian counterpart culture. However, this trope comes into play with the real world time periods their names are drawn from. You can see Nords with perfectly modern names like Jon and Harold living side by side with Nords who have more classic medieval Norse names like Ulfgar and Mjoll.
• The Elite Beat Agents are named Agent J, Chieftain, Spin, Commander Kahn, Starr, Foxx, Missy, Derek and Morris.
• Elite Dangerous runs the full gamut of names from Aerith to Bob, both Player-wise (By nature) and NPC-wise, meaning you could collect a bounty on an NPC named Jacob Henry one moment then conversing with a CMDR Hyvieal Dyhenna the next; and due to there there being no aliens ANYWHERE in the game (...yet), those will both be humans with those names. And THEN there's the issue of Zorgon Peterson, which is the name of an in-game ship manufacturer.
• In EV Nova it's justified by different cultures. Humans of Federation extraction use Earth-derived names like Jerry O'Donnell, Paul Pentecost, and Eamon Flannigan. Auroran humans have names like Charengo, Techerakh, and Kuron. Polaran humans have names like Mu'Randa ("Randa" being her given name, "Mu" indicating her caste). Each culture is internally consistent.
• Fable of Dwarves has names like Antin and Nilyam right alongside names like Joe and Bob.
• Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas is a pseudo-Roman society created by the conquest and forcible assimilation of eighty-six tribes. Hence it has Vulpes Inculta, Lucius, and Aurelius of Phoenix... as well as Canyon Runner, Dead Sea, and Karl. Also, Joshua Graham - one of the Legion's progenitors - specifically kept his original name (and, in a visual reflection of this, waltzed around in a SWAT vest while those around him went for football pads and skirts). Caesar's real name is Edward Sallow, which is probably why he adopted his alias.
• Fatal Fury. While some names, such as "Terry Bogard", "Richard Meyer", "Li Xiangfei" and "Marco Rodriguez" are perfectly reasonable names, one would question what they were thinking with names like "Duck King" (which, although it makes sense, is still funny), "Khushnood Butt" (the English translation of "Marco Rodriguez", god knows why), "Lucky Glauber", and "Geese Howard".
  • Garou: Mark of the Wolves includes a character known mainly as "B. Jenet". Her real name is actually Jennie.
• Usually, the Final Fantasy series of games have "cool" or exotic names for the most part, with a few standard Western names for flavor. Final Fantasy II inverts this: The named cast consists of Maria, Guy, Leon, Josef, Richard, Leila, Gordon, Scott, Hilda, Paul, Cid, a Mr. Borghen, and Mateus...plus Minwu and Firion/Frioniel.
  • Final Fantasy IV: In a world populated by Tellah, Fusoya, Golbez, Rydia, and twins Palom and Porom, the hero and his girlfriend are Cecil and Rosa. And the Quirky Bard is named Edward. Rydia is very likely Lydia according to Japanese Ranguage, but the R stuck as the official spelling.
    • Tellah is probably meant to be Terah, which is a Hebrew name (the father of Abraham) and Hebrew slang for old man.
    • Then Final Fantasy IV: The After Years presents us with the Eblan Four, Gekkou, Izayoi, Tsukinowa, and Zangetsu...and their master, Edge, short for Edward Geraldine.
  • Final Fantasy IX gives us this trope all in one person, with Dagger, a.k.a. Garnet Til Alexandros XVII, whose real name is actually Sarah.
  • The generics in Final Fantasy Tactics can have a range of names from the mundane to the fantastic (a fact not helped by the debatable quality of the original version's translation).
  • Final Fantasy V's Butz. Or, depending on your preference, Bartz. The rest of the characters maintain their original names, though to some extent that's possibly explained by two characters hailing from a different world entirely.
  • There's often at least one "normal" name mixed in with the fantastic names. Final Fantasy VI gave us Edgar and Terra, not-impossible names like Cyan and Locke, and ninja mercenary Shadow, a.k.a. Clyde.
    • Sabin is also Mash in Japan, which is supposedly a nickname based on "Macias".
    • In the original Japanese version of Final Fantasy VI, Cyan's name was actually "Cayenne". As in the chili pepper. Which anybody familiar with the character will recognize as spectacularly inappropriate.
    • And Terra is this trope unto herself. Her original Japanese name was "Tina", but Ted Woolsey opted to change it to something more exotic-sounding feeling that "Tina" would sound too every-day and mundane to Western audiences, particularly given the character's exotic origins.
  • Final Fantasy VII has Vincent, Zack, Barret Wallace and his daughter Marlene, Scarlet, Priscilla, Reno, Elena, Lucrecia, Ester, Joe and Rufus mixed in with names like Sephiroth, Cloud Strife and Genesis Rhapsodos (and actually having Trope Namer Aeris/Aerith). Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade also has a character named "Billy Bob", so the VII branch of the franchise literally has an Aerith and a Bob in it.
    • The full name Aerith Gainsborough alone contains this trope (though it might be worth noting this is Aerith's adoptive mother's surname, not her birth family name. Her father was Faremis Gast while her mother Ifalna's surname is unknown, but both her parents fall into the unusual name camp).
    • The full name Tifa Lockhart also qualifies for both. Tifa is an unusual example as Western fans may assume it's short for Tiffany, though it's much more likely she was named for the sefirot Tifaret/Tiphareth of the Kabbalah.
    • In a world of unusual names Vincent Valentine is a relatively normal, if dramatic sounding combination of names. However, Dirge of Cerberus added his father, who's called the much more unusual Grimoire Valentine.
    • It seems as though the majority of the player characters have the "Aerith" names while the non-player characters got the "Bob" end of the stick.
    • For the Spanish players, this happens with the geography of the game as well. In a world where we find Midgar, Gongaga, Nibelheim, Junon, etc. we suddenly find Costa del Sol. Which was not Woolseyized in the (admittedly subpar) Spanish translation. If you're an American, imagine playing the game and ending up in Malibu Beach or the Ozarks.
  • Final Fantasy X has Lulu and Seymour amidst Auron, Braska, Kimahri, and Wakka. Depending on which pronunciation you use, Tidus can be pronounced like "Titus"—a bit uncommon, but nothing people would actually remark on. Yuna and Rikku are both a bit of a gray area—they're the "Aerith" counterparts to Western audiences, but in reality both are perfectly normal Japanese names.
  • Final Fantasy XI allows Dragoon characters to select a name for their pet wyvern from a list that includes Firewing, Cerulean, Eisenzahn... and Rover, Buster and George. (The last may be a reference to St. George the dragon slayer.)
  • Final Fantasy XII has Fran and her sister Mjrn. Thank God they included that second name in the voice-acting, or most non-Slavic players would have no idea how to pronounce it (pronounced like "yearn" with an M tacked on the beginning). This one was explained retroactively when Viera and their naming conventions were added to XIV (see below); Viera who leave the forest consider themselves to have abandoned their old identity and culture, "forest name" included. They then adopt "city names" borrowing from whichever culture lured them to make that decision. "Fran" is one such city name.
  • Also in Final Fantasy XII are the fon Ronsenburg brothers, Basch and Noah.
  • Final Fantasy XIII introduces a cast with names like Snow, Vanille, Fang, and Sazh, and a boy named Hope. And then you get the two sisters Lightning and... Serah. (Lightning is just a nickname, however; her real name is fairly commonplace.)
    • Lightning's English name (Claire) is extremely normal. Her Japanese name, however, is Éclair (a French word that means "flash," as in "flash of lightning"). It was changed because the word can also refer to a type of pastry (un éclair au chocolat), which is the most familiar meaning for most English speakers. The name "Claire" has a similar enough meaning, though ("bright" or "clear").
  • Final Fantasy XIV player names tend to come in a few categories. There's your "serious" names, either assigned by the game or designed by the player to follow the in-universe naming conventions, giving you something like "Gustavain Derinloire" for an Elezen, or "Nhago'li Lihzeh" for a Miqo'te. There's your Shout-Out names, which simply copy the name of a fictional character whole cloth, from "Karkat Vantas" to "Goku Kakarot". And there's your "silly" names, which run the gamut from "Chicken Nugget" to "Viewing Cutscene" to "Healers Adjust". The game's heavy emphasis on Pick Up Groups means you're likely to encounter every combination of these on a regular basis.
  • Your party in Final Fantasy XV goes by names of "Noctis", "Ignis", and "Prompto" (which are extravagant Latin words). During the first chapter you run into a mechanic named "Cindy" and she has you look for a friend of hers named "Dave" while "Gladiolus" lies more in the realm of possibility for names by virtue of being a real world flower .
  • Unlike XV, Final Fantasy XVI has more Bobs than Aeriths. The protagonists are Clive, Joshua and Jill.
    • Even the nations of Valisthea have this trope: there are Sanbreque, Rosaria, Dhalmek, Waloed and... Iron Kingdom.
  • Most recurring Summons in the series have names rooted in mythology, like Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, Odin, Bahamut, Leviathan, and then there's Alexander. A heavy holy-elemental fortress-mech named Alexander.
• Fire Emblem does this, as expected from a fantasy game. For example, at any given time it's possible to have an Ike, Roy, Oscar, Edward, Mia, Katrina, Sonia, Frederik, Cynthia, Chris, or Hector fighting alongside an Erk, Makalov, Nephenee, Haar, Saleh, Tharja, Owain, Chrom, or Nah (Which is "Nn" in Japanese).
  • The Boss characters get shafted with weirder names than the main characters. Eubans, Jasmine (for a man), Kishuna, Puzon, Bool, Migal, Batta, Vaida, Limstella, Uhai, Groznyi, Zugo, alongside Bug, Wire, Glass, Kenneth, Lloyd, Bernard and Cameron for example.
    • Not to mention Dheginsea, whose name was actually simplified for the English version from the original Dheginhansea.
  • To sum up, the names in the Fire Emblem series are a grab bag, ranging from normal, everyday names (Arthur, Anna), less common but still plausible names (Lyndis, Mordecai, Soren, Lucina), names with interesting spellings that wouldn't be out of place in your average medieval fantasy book (Rickard, Jeorge), names that sound like last names (Eliwood, Makalov), several names from mythology around the world (Minerva, Cain and Abel, Percival), and then the downright unusual (Zihark, Gharnef). Nowhere is this more evident than in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, where the four main characters are Byleth and Edelgard, and Dimitri and Claude. And since Byleth could be either gender, it's possible to have the two Aeriths as girls and the two Bobs as boys.
  • Justified in Fire Emblem Fates where the settings are Fantasy Counterpart Equivalents of Japan and Europe. Now, there's characters named Kaze and Silas that are playable on any path.
    • And Played Straight in the localised version in which the Hoshidan royal family includes Sumeragi, Mikoto, Ryoma, Hinoka, Takumi, Sakura... and Corrin. Justified in two ways: Corrin has been adopted by the Nohrians (and they might have chosen a Nohrian name for him), not to mention he's not actually related to the Hoshidan family, being a dragon and the son of Anankos (whose name is Greek for "fate").
• Flight Rising has a random name generator for if you can't think of a good name yourself. If you were to name an entire clutch with the generator, you could possibly get a set of siblings named Ilyana, Enthusiasm, Haruko, Blueberrycobbler, and Dave.
• FTL's random list of crew names include names such as Jon, Matthew, and Elizabeth, alongside names such as Elnubnub, Gumpo, and Yeoz. Any of these names can apply to any species, meaning you can have a Rockman named "Charlie" alongside a human named "Triko", or an Engi named "Notch".
• In Galaxy Angel the main character Takuto Mayers has a Japanese first name and a surname that came from a brand of Jamaican rum. The main heroine, Milfeulle Sakuraba ('Milfie' for short), has a weird first name and a Japanese surname. Everyone else, for the most part, have weird full names (sans Chitose Karasuma, which is more like Milfie's).
  • The second trilogy Galaxy Angel II features another name similar to Milfie's, in the form of her little sister Apricot (or 'Rico' for short). Lily has a similar setup as well, but it's her first name that's normal in English-speaking places. Anise and Natsume may also be like Milfie's (weird first name, normal last name).
• The main characters of the Golden Sun games: Isaac, Garet, Ivan, Mia, Felix, Jenna, Sheba, Piers. Only the last two could be considered slightly unusual. On the other hand, Saturos, Menardi, Karst, Agatio...and then Alex. Granted, the first four of those are from a specific town, and are also kinda a different race. And hilariously, Alex is the closest thing the games have to a Big Bad.
  • There's an inseparable pair of warriors in the first game who play the trope almost painfully straight. Their names: Ouranos and Sean.
• In Granblue Fantasy, the naming conventions for the recruitable characters are all over the place. You can generally class them in five categories: normal (Jessica, Stan, Eugen), unusual but technically realistic (Apollonia, Arriet, Yngwie), famous names, real or fictional (Jeanne d'Arc, Cagliostro, Rackham), standard fantasy style (Sarunan, Metera, Danua), and "clearly trying to cheat at Scrabble" (like Zahlhamelina or Yodarha).
• The names of all of the party members acquired in the first Grandia game, in order: Justin, Sue, Feena, Gadwin, Rapp, Milda, Guido, Liete. The first two are the only ones who are fully human.
• Most characters in the Growlanser series have rather common names such as Karen, Julia, Ernest, Brett, Hugh, Regina, and Wendy... but these characters associate with others with names such as Ariost, Xenos, Slayn, Pernagi, Crevaniel, and Rukias.
• Occurs in Guenevere as a result of being based on the Arthurian Legend and using names from the original legends, some of which (like Elaine) are still common today, while others (like Palomedes) have fallen from favor.
• Guild Wars lampshades this in one of the NPC dialogues. "We haven't survived this long against the Charr by giving our supplies to every Tom, Dick, and Teardrinker who passes through here."
• The cast of the Guilty Gear games have names ranging from Johnny, May, Bridget and Eddie (who just so happens to be possessing the body of someone named Zato-1) to I-No, Dizzy, Zappa and A.B.A.
  • As well as Sol Badguy, whose real name is Frederick.
  • The large bulk of Guilty Gear character names are extremely unusual, to be fair - even by Japanese standards. One character, Kuradoberi Jam(u), is very Chinese, but her name (蔵土縁 紗夢) is a mostly nonsense (but still theoretically valid) Japanese name, meaning something along the lines of "Gossamer dreams at the edge of a dirt cellar." Really?
• Halo has this with regards to the names of the UNSC ships, which can either have unusual and poetic names like Pillar of Autumn, Spirit of Fire, Aegis Fate, In Amber Clad, Forward Unto Dawn, and The Heart of Midlothian, or more conventional single word names like Leviathan, Fairweather, Gettysburg, Texas, and Basra. There are also some semi-comedic ones, like Say My Name, Ready or Not, Do You Feel Lucky?, and Two for Flinching.
• The Harvest Moon series has some good example:
  • The potential brides from 64 (and some subsequent games) have the names Ann, Elli, Karen, Mary...and Popuri. Popuri has a Meaningful Name as her parents are the local florists. In fact if she marries Kai they name their daughter "Mint".
  • In the first Rune Factory game, exotic names like Mist and Lynette are interspersed with names like Sharron and Tori.
  • In Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, there are characters with mundane names like Ellen, Jeff, Doug, and May, but then there's Saibara and Barley. Also, there are three women who meet in the town square every day to exchange gossip. Their names? Anna, Manna...and Sabrina (more of a disruption in theme naming, but still).
  • In DS (Cute), the five bachelors are Marlin, Rock, Carter, Griffin and Gustafa. Island of Happiness features Vaughn, Mark, Elliot, Denny, Pierre, and Shea. Like shea butter. The available men from Magical Melody are Alex, Basil, Carl, Dan, Jamie, Joe, Kurt, Louis, Ray, and Bob. But the last bachelor, Blue, definitely takes the cake.
    • Some people appear to think "Rock" is an absurd name, but they can't smell what The Rock is cooking.
  • Most of the protagonists have typical Canon Name's. Pete, SaraClaire, Troy, Mark... Pony?
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream's protagonists are named Ted, Ellen, Benny, Nimdok and Gorrister. Nimdok applies this in-universe; AM forces everyone to call him that as he finds funny sounds amusing, and he cannot remember his real name. Gorrister's name is never explained.
• Iji (of the game of the same name) and her brother (and Voice With Access To The Loudspeaker System) Dan.
• Jeanne d'Arc keeps real (French and English) names for the humans in the cast, given that most are derived from real people, and many of the nonhumans as well. Though the lion-man La Hire is only known by that nickname (his real name in history was Étienne de Vignolles), and the therion Quirky Miniboss Squad consists of Mawra, Slinker, and Blaze. Then there are the reapers, who are mostly given the Latin names for various of the Seven Deadly Sins, except for their leader with the completely made-up name, Gilvaroth.
• Jet Force Gemini features three main characters named after constellations, the villainous Mizar, and King Jeff.
  • Again, the weirdness is compounded by naming the male hero after Juno, queen of the gods.
  • This game was done by Rare, so this was all very likely intentional.
• While the King of All Cosmos and his immediate family in Katamari Damacy are simply known by their title, the Royal Cousins run into this. So you have Ace, Colombo, Marcy and Velvet alongside Ichigo, Miki, Odeko and Fujio... Then you get into the really odd names like Ban-Ban, Pokkle, Nutsuo and Dangle.
• Kerbal Space Program provides a somewhat odd example - all the Kerbonauts have names that sound fairly Middle American, but anyone who is not an orange suit has a name randomly generated from a list of prefixes and suffixes. So alongside Jeb, Bill, and Bob may sit Melzer, Bardrin, or Billy-Bobfred.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The apprentices to Ansem the Wise in Kingdom Hearts II are named Xehanort, Braig, Aeleus, Ienzo...then there's Dilan and Even.
  • Organization XIII is generally populated with Aeriths such as Xemnas, Xigbar, and Marluxia... and then there's the Bob-named trio of Axel and Roxas, in addition to Xion (a respelling of the real Japanese feminine given name "Shion"). Some of their human names are completely made-up, like Xehanort, Braig, Aeleus, Ienzo (though it may be an actual Japanese or Chinese name) and Lauriam, however Xaldin's human name is Dilan, Vexen is Even, Larxene's is Elrena (which is just Elena misspelled due to Japanese Ranguage) and Saix is Isa (a common feminine name in the West, that is also used for men in Japan, either way it's a real-life name). Inverted with Axel, as his Nobody name is a name used for boys while his true name is the very feminine name Lea (a variant of "Leah", pronounced both as "LEE" and "LAY-ah").
  • Because it's a crossover, the names in the series tend to be all over the place, with Sora, Goofy, Mickey, Ariel, Jack Skellington, Axel and Zack alongside Xehanort, Pete, Maleficent, Scar, Barbossa, Saïx and Cloud.
  • The first game's superbosses are Sephiroth, the Ice Titan, the Phantom... and Kurt Zisa. Square held a contest where the winner would get their name in the game, and the winner was a guy named Kurt Zisa, hence why a twelve-foot six-armed cobra-headed khopesh-wielding Evil Sorcerer Heartless has a human name.
• The four demonic members of the underworld band Infernal Rackets in Kingdom of Loathing are Bognort, Stinkface, Flargwurm, and Jim.
• King's Knight has the brave knight Rayjack, the powerful wizard Kaliva, the rampaging monster Barusa... and Toby the thief.
• The titular character of Kirby has a decently high number of people sharing his given name, but you'll definitely never meet a Dedede or a Waddle Dee or a Magolor etc. You could also find an Adeleine or a Susie in real life as well.
• The Last Remnant has this in spades. Names range from, for example, the fairly regular Emma, Kate and Hannah through to the slightly-odd Rush and Hinnah and anywhere past. Three generals on the hero's side are named Torgal, Blocter and Pagus- and are lead by the mighty Marquis... David (though pronounced 'Dah-Veed' for reasons unknown).
• The Last Story:
  • Everybody has a wacky name, except some NPCs. We've got Elza, Kanan, Quark, Seiren, Jackal and Manamia.
  • The English translation is similarly weird. Leading lady Calista has a perfectly respectable name, as does Lovable Sex Maniac Lowell. Yurick is made up, but sounds similar enough to "Yorick" to be within the realm of possibility. But Mirania? Dagran? Zael?
• All over the place in League of Legends. Where characters like Annie, Lucian and Diana fight alongside the likes of Garen, Ezreal and Fiddlesticks.
• The names of the four Elementals who accompany the main character in Legend of Fae are Nixie, Enki, Gust and Fred.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky has Estelle, Joshua, Olivert, Klaudia, Tita, Kevin, Kurt, Julia... And Scherazard, Agate, Zin, Anelace, Josette and Mueller. On the villain side we have Alan, Gilbert, Georg, Walter, and Luciola, Renne, Leonhardt (LAY-on-hart, NOT "Leonard") and Bleublanc.
• The Legend Of Heroes Trails From Zero And Trails To Azure continues the trend with Lloyd, Elie, Randy, Dudley and Garcia in the same party as Rixia, Tio and Wazy. Rixia is from Calvard, and Wazy is said to be from the outskirts of Zemuria (and his name stands out as the only Polish name in the series) but no such luck with Tio (she's Remiferian in origin, but Remiferia is based on Sweden and Tio is a Chinese name). Their enemies are Joachim, Dieter, Ian... and Marconi, Mariabell and Arios. Furthering the weirdness is the fact that Arios, who has the ordinary Scottish last name Maclaine, has a daughter named Shizuku, an oddly Japanese name.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, in terms of the main party, you have Rean, Jusis, Machias and Fie, then you have Gaius ^note  technically a real name, but it's Latin, and the character hails from a counterpart of Mongolia and Millium ^note  it's Miriam in Japanese, but was misromanized ...and then you have Emma, Alisa, Elliot and Laura. Rean is a real, very feminine Japanese name, spelled in an unorthodox way ^note  the most common romanization is Rin . Other instances of this trope involve Angelica's group, made of her and George, and Towa and Crow, and New Class VII from the third and fourth games, made from Kurt, Ash, Juna ^note  it's pronounced Yuna, which is a real name in Japan, but her last name is the non-Japanese Crawford and Musse, whose true name is the even weirder Mildine Juzalith de Cayenne, and Altina.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak has characters with ordinary, Western-sounding names, for instance Agnès Claudel, Judith Ranster, Roy Gramheart, Nina Fenly, Latoya Hamilton, Ellroy Harwood, Walter Kron, Gerard Dantes, Viola and Alexandre, but it also contains characters with Chinese names such as Cao Lee, Rixia Mao, Ashen Lu, Zin Vathek and Kilika Rouran. Party member Aaron Wei contains this trope by himself, having a very Western first name with a very Chinese last name. And then there's the protagonist Van Arkride, whose name is completely fictional and his first name is actually an acronym. ^note  Van Arkride may be an Inconsistent Spelling of "Wan Al-Quraidi", a composite of a Chinese first name and Arabic last name, but that's unlikely. Justified as the game is set in Calvard, which contains a lot of immigrants from the East.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • You know that something is weird, when you have a Link standing side by side with a Midna, a Tetra, and a Ruto, all ruled by a relatively normal (if old-fashioned) Zelda. As well as Shiro, Jiro, Saburo, and Ichiro the carpenters (which are common Japanese names, in a Medieval setting), and a little girl named Pamela (yes, that's her name in Japan too). Also, his sister goes by the name "Aryll", while the first king of Hyrule's name was "Gustaf". Well, probably normal names are a privilege of royalty.
  • Also, the children in Link's village in Twilight Princess are named Malo, Talo, and... Colin and Beth. Averted in Italian, where Talo is called Furio (an actual Italian name).
  • The Oracle games brings us such characters as Moosh, Onox, Rafton, Syrup, Dekadin, Veran, and Ambi, among many others (such as unusually-named Legacy Characters). Then there are characters like Holly, Rosa, Ricky, Dimitri, Blossom, and Ralph. (Admittedly, Holly and Blossom are Meaningful Names and Dimitri's still not exactly a common name, anyway.) Importance for all ranges from minor one-shot characters to major supporting cast to villains.
  • The Tingle brothers are named: Tingle, Ankle, Knuckle, and... David Jr.
  • Also, Maggie, Paige, Klaus, Anton, Jasmine, June, say hi to Gorman, Anju, Ezlo, and Vaati.
  • In Breath of the Wild, the Sheikah seem to all have exotic sounding names derived from fruit (with the exception of Impa), but the tribe has two Bobs among them in Dorian (although it still fits the Sheikah's fruit-themed naming by being derived from durian) and Robbie (derived from strawberry).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The first king of Hyrule has the name Rauru, fittingly exotic for a member of a race of Beast Men. His Hylian wife is named Sonia. Purah's assistant is also named Josha (or Joshua in the Japanese version), which falls outside of the Sheikah naming scheme and is a masculine name for a female character.
• Little Fighter 2 has characters named John, Henry, Davis, Dennis, Rudolph, Woody, Deep, Firen and Freeze.
• Love Nikki - Dress Up Queen offers up ordinary names like Nikki, Lisa, Sofia, Joe, Royce, and Queen Elle alongside Nidhogg, Starphenie, Orange, and Queen Nanari.
• Both Luminous Arc games use more Bob names than Aerith ones, but the first game does have Mavi and the second has Dia and Bharva.
• Lunar series:
  • The first game, Lunar: The Silver Star has more Bobs than Aeriths, with names such as Alex, Jessica, Mia... And Luna and Ghaleon. Luna is an actual name in Italy.
  • The sequel, Lunar: Eternal Blue, is the other way around with names like Hiro, Lemina, Ronfar... And Lucia, Leo and Jean.
• The workshop in Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis follows this trend: the girls (at least in the localized version) are named Jess, Nikki, Anna, and Pamela. The boys are Vayne, Roxis, Flay... and Muppy, though Muppy is an alien from another planet. Or something.
• In Mars: War Logs, most characters are named after Seven Heavenly Virtues, such as Charity, Temperance, Devotion, etc. Then we have characters named Sean, Mary, and... Bob.
• This trope can often be invoked in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. One example would be the team of Amaterasu, Dormammu and Chris.
• Mass Effect:
  • justified with Ashley Williams being in a party containing Urdnot Wrex, Garrus Vakarian, Liara T'soni, and Tali'zorah nar Rayya due to cultural differences, as they are all of different species. Human character names can give this impression to some players, as people with names like Ashley Williams, Jacob Taylor, Miranda Lawson, and David Anderson exist alongside people with names like Donnel Udina and Kaidan Alenko - these are still real names, just not very common ones among English-speakers.
  • The names of those different species can also apply. Out of all the species in the game, there are asari, krogan, and quarians and creatures named gas bags, space beetles, and space cows.
  • The turian primarch's name is Adrien. Pretty normal sounding considering other turians have names like Garrus, Chellick and Lilihierax.
  • This trope is a possibility in Mass Effect: Andromeda. The male and female player characters are twins; your character can have whatever name you want, but the twin you don't select will have the rather plain default name of Scott or Sara.
• In Mega Man series we have a girl named Kalinka, just like many characters after music terms. Scientists, on the other hand have real names- Thomas Light, Albert Wily and Michael Cossack.
• Melfand Stories is set in a D&D-inspired fantasy universe, and characters have names like Corse, El, Lemin and so on. The Big Bad Nomolwa's henchmen are a warlock with the weird name Labyuless, and a Black Knight named... Brad. There's also a Gratuitous Ninja named Kage, which is more of an Odd Name Out in a Medieval European-style setting.
• In Metal Gear most characters go by cool code names like Big Boss, Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, Revolver Ocelot, Grey Fox, Fortune, Fatman, Vamp, Raiden, The Fear, The Pain, The Fury, The End, The Boss, Laughing Octopus, Raging Raven, Crying Wolf, Sreaming Mantis, Akiba, Monsoon, Sundowner, Jetstream and Dr. Strangelove. On the other hand, most of these characters have fairly ordinary real names, and some characters go by their real names, such as Olga Gurlukovich, Gene, Ursula, Boris and Senator Armstrong. We also have Hot Coldman, which is apparently his real name.
• Metroid's Samus Aran is the daughter of Rodney and Virginia Aran (although the canon that their names come from is in dispute). She also has served under the Galactic Federation commander Adam Malkovich. In fact, due to the range of ordinary English names found in the squad deployed to the BOTTLE SHIP in Metroid: Other M, Samus is the only "Aerith" in her universe. This was likely done to hide her gender by coming up with a misleading made-up name.
  • Even stranger: her Arch-Enemy Ridley's name is derived from a human's (namely Ridley Scott), despite being a massive space dragon!
• Might and Magic has names spanning the entire spectrum, though human names (Haven) remain mostly plausible. Wizards and Necromancers (who used to be human)… not so much.
  • In the New World Computing setting, there was a trend for country leaders to have normal-ish given names while other characters were more varied. Hence, you had people like Roland, Archibald, Catherine, Finneas (odd spelling but still recognisable as Phineas), Gavin and Bastian alongside people like Piquedram, Astral, Alamar and Brekish.
• Minecraft: Story Mode: There are some names that are very common (such as Jesse, Olivia, Lukas, ^note  Even if it's spelled with a "k" instead of a "c", which is more common, Gabriel, Harper, Jack, Stella and Fred); some that are quite... unique, but chances are you've heard them before or will hear them again (such as Petra, Axel, Magnus, Radar, Romeo and Xara ^note  Pronounced "Zara" but spelled with an X; and then some that you'll probably only ever hear here (Soren, Ellegaard, Ivor, Isa). Most names are of Scandinavian origin because of the original game's Swedish roots.
• The central couple in the Monkey Island series are named Elaine Marley and... Guybrush Threepwood.
• Monster Racers is set in various locations around the globe, with the races you fight in those locations generally having typical names for that place, such as Polly and Gene in Australia, and Alejandro and Rita in South America. But when "worldwide" races happen, you tend to get NPCs with names that are not only contrasting but also uncommon even for their area: Fancy a race against Aristotle, Xerxes, and Dave?
• Myst gives us such characters as Atrus, Gehn, Sirrus, Achenar, and Catherine. It's explained in the backstory that her name was Katran, but Atrus for some reason misheard the introduction and it stuck.
  • These names are also from different cultures. Atrus (actually Aitrus), Gehn and Yeesha are D'ni names, Katran is Rivenese, and Sirrus and Achenar aren't explicitly described as either (they may well be D'ni, but are probably differently spelled).
• Neverwinter Nights 2 has half-brothers Daegun and… Duncan.
  • The player's allies too, having completely ridiculous names like Neeshka and Casavir existing alongside almost normal names like Elanee and Bishop.
  • The first game kept it to mostly consistent fantastic names like Linu, Sedos, and Maugrim, but Tomi and Aarin Gend have pretty ordinary-sounding names. And Aribeth wouldn't raise more than one or two eyebrows in a real-world setting.
• The Kingmakers in Ni no Kuni 2 are named Oakenhart, Longfang, Brineskimmer, Bastion, Alisandra… and Lofty.
• In Ōkamiden, nearly every character has a Japanese name. Then there's Manpuku's mom, Charity. She's never stated to be foreign, and looks just like any other young Japanese woman in the game. In Japan she's named Motenashi (Japanese for "hospitality") so her name is Translation Convention.
• Outer Wilds: All Hearthians use Rock Theme Naming, with names such as Chert, Gabbro and Feldspar. While Hal and Mica still fit the theme (named after halite and a silicate mineral group), their names sound quite normal to English speakers.
• The ghosts from Pac-Man are named Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and... Clyde. Clyde is replaced by Sue in Ms. Pac-Man and by Tim in Jr. Pac-Man.
• Paladins runs the gamut when it comes to naming the Champions. Some names are plain, such as Cassie, Lex, Vivian, Evie and Buck. Others are from different countries, with the characters only sometimes corresponding to them, such as Maeve (Irish^note which is funny since she's portrayed as French), Viktor (Russian), Fernando (Spanish), Tyra (Scandinavian), Makoa (Madagascan^note which is actually an ethnic group name than a given name), Torvald (Nordic; variant of "Thorvald"), Willo (Irish; variation of "Willow"), Grover (English) and Inara (African/Middle Eastern). Then you have Asian names like Ying, Sha Lin, Lian, Zhin and Khan. And of course, there are names that were completely made up for the setting, like Androxus, Kinessa^note Sounds like it could be a real name, but isn't, Mal'Damba, Drogoz, Grohk, Jenos, Talus and Barik^note It's actually a less common Persian name, but it's unlikely that had to do with naming a Scottish dwarf that most likely was a play on "barricade". Let's not forget that there are names like Ash, Pip, Strix, Terminus, Moji, Ruckus and Bomb King either. Let's just say that nothing is off-limits when it comes what how Hi-Rez names each Champion.
  • Seris and Furia sound like examples of "Aerith", but their original names were much more "Bob" with the comparatively mundane Abby and Sarah.
• Papa Louie Arcade has this trope all over place. You get the ordinary names such as Rita, Marty, Roy, Matt, Wally, Taylor, Cooper, etc co-exist with unusual/bizzare names such as Radlynn, Whiff, Foodini, Boomer, Prudence, Xandra, and Xolo.
  • Androxus and Lex were once partners as lawmen, which perfectly highlights this in effect.
• The main cast of Persona 4 includes Yu Narukami, Yosuke Hanamura, Chie Satonaka, Yukiko Amagi, Kanji Tatsumi, Rise Kujikawa, Naoto Shirogane....and Teddie. Averted in Japan where Teddie is called Kuma (Japanese for "Bear").
  • There's also Igor, Margaret, and Marie from the Velvet Room. Interestingly enough, all of them,(even Teddie), have human appearances, but are in fact not human.
• The Phantasy Star series has a good number of them. Myau, Mieu, Gryz, Zio, Wren, Rulakir and Orakio get mixed with common names like Noah, Ryan, Tyler, Sean, Amy, Anna, Lyle, Rhys and Seth, as well as real but less common names like Rune, Nial, Rolf, Alair, Nei, Sari, Demi, Alis and Laya (and her sister, who is also named Laya). Nearly all of the playable ones are four letters long too owing to namespace limitations, though a small handful have three or five.
  • A couple are also shortened nicknames made into full names. Shir may be short for Shirley, though she's never referred to as such, and her Japanese name is Shilka. Chaz could also be short for Charles, though again, this is never stated (and his Japanese name is Rudy). The only confirmed case is Rudolf being shortened to "Rudo" because of the aforementioned namespace limits.
• In Planescape: Torment, for those with names, there's Vhailor, Dak'kon, Nordom, Ignus, Fall-From-Grace (though she can be abbreviated to just Grace), Morte (not short for Mortimer)…and Annah. Annah Of The Shadows, to be specific, which while not quite Fall-From-Grace is still uncommon. And that's just your party members. One advantage of the Planescape setting's cultural mish-mash is that anyone can be called literally anything, up to and including '0' and nobody will bat an eyelid.
• The plants in Plants vs. Zombies are an example. Some have real plant names like Sunflower, Squash, and Jalapeño while Peashooter is named for a gun. Other plants like Wall-nut are a play on plants.
• Pokémon has several unique names for Pokemon, including "Giratina", "Sableye", "Raichu", "Shiftry" and "Lickilicky". Kanto also has very simple names, like "Gloom", "Golem" (which surprisingly enough is not based on an actual golem) and "Seel."
  • And that's only looking at the ones they kept in the English version. In Japanese, Drowzee was called "Sleep", Pidgeotto was called "Pigeon", Zapdos was called "Thunder", and Sandshrew was called "Sand". They cut down on the Gratuitous English in later generations after the games became popular overseas.
    • Also, Geodude's German name, "Kleinstein", meaning "little stone".
  • Protagonists & Rivals:
    • The Kanto main cast consists of Chase & Elaine, and… Red, Green (Blue outside of Japan), Leaf, & Trace.
    • The Johto main cast consists of Ethan, Lyra, & Kris, and… Silver
    • Hoenn main cast consists of pretty much normal names as Brendan, May, and Wally.
    • If you add Hisui main cast to Sinnoh, you get Lucas, Dawn, & Barry, and… more Japanese names Rei & Akari plus Volo.
    • The Kalos main cast consists of Serena, Shauna, & Trevor, and… Calem & Tierno.
    • The Alola main cast consists of all rarer to extend names.
    • The Galar main cast consists of Victor, Gloria, Marnie, & Avery, and… Hop, Bede, & Klara. ^note technically just Clara with a '''K''' instead of a '''C'''.
    • The Paldea main cast consists of Florian, Juliana & Penny, and… Nemona and Arven.
  • Gym Leaders, Trial Captains, and Kahunas:
    • In the Paldea League, standing alongside the likes of Brassius, Iono, Ryme, and Grusha, Medali's Normal-type Gym Leader is named... Larry. It fits into his overall image as an utterly ordinary salaryman.
  • Among the Elite Four and Champions, we have Bruno, Lance, Will, Karen, Drake, Steven, Aaron, Cynthia, Leon, and… Glacia, Shauntal, Grimsley, and Hassel.
    • The Kalos League is even more bizarre, consisting of Malva, Siebold, Wikstrom, and Drasna of the Elite Four, and Champion Diantha.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon: Lillie has a very common name compared to the rest of her family; her father is named Mohn, her mother is named Lusamine, and her older brother is named Gladion.
  • Pokémon Colosseum has Wes as the protagonist and its sequel has Michael, but the other characters have names like Diogo, Marcon, Liaks, Gonzap, Nascour, Nexir, Snattle, Miror B., and Skrub. Some of the names in Unova's Battle Subway are on par with Orre's in terms of randomness. Others are just random words, however. And then there's a School Girl named Percy.
    • A few more, specifically from XD: Furgy, Kwane, Jetsal, Hobble, Zook, Koiyt, & Jedo.
• In Potion Permit, most of the Moonbury residents have ordinary names such as Cassandra, Laura, and Victor, some have names that are uncommon spellings such as Reyner, Matheo, and Helene, and then there are those with outright unusual names such as Yorn, Opalheart, and Bubble.
• Psychonauts has characters with normal names like Bobby, Edgar, Gloria and Lili. Then it has weirder names like Dogen, Morceau, Caligosto and Sheegor.
• The major Compile-era Puyo Puyo characters are all named following European fantasy conventions, including exotic, but still distinctly European-sounding names (like Arle or Schezo) or just typical folkloric creatures from the continent (Witch, Satan, etc.). The sole exception is Suketoudara, which literally means "Alaskan Pollock" in Japanese.
  • Puyo Puyo Tetris introduces Jay and Elle of the S.S. Tetra who have crewmates with names like Tee and Ess. Since all of them have names based on block shapes — i.e. letters — the fact that Jay and Elle happen to be actual names is just a happy accident.
• The NPC names in Ragnarok Online seems to be either handpicked from a list or made up on the spot. Names like Tyler, Steven and John will be right next to Rhawnye, Titicupe, Seiyablem and Munkenro.
• Shows up in the original Ratchet & Clank trilogy. While most of the main characters get exotic names (Ratchet, Clank, Drek), the supporting characters get names like Angela and Lawrence.
• The characters in Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2 have names that are a mix of names that were popular in the second half of the 19th century when they were all born that remain popular today and ones that have fallen out of fashion. For the former, it’s names like Jack, Abigail, Mary, and Arthur. For the latter, some names like Hosea, Colm, Kieran, and Marion for a man.
• Resonance of Fate has three playable characters: Zephyr, Vashyron, and... Leanne? The NPCs also follow this trend, with Theresa and Bobby living alongside Barbarella and Garigliano. It's worth noting that in the Japanese version, Leanne was Reanbelle.
• Reverse: 1999 is a Gunpowder Fantasy that involves time traveling throughout the 20th century, all over the world. The humanoid cast is already pulled from a diverse swath of real life cultures, so you have characters like the Russian Lilya, the Hawaiian Leilani, and the French Matilda. Then, you have codenames, such as the German Bkornblume and the Necrologist, and the American Forget Me Not. Finally, you have utterly bizzare names, especially for the non-human sentient objects, like Mr. APPLe, an intelligent floating apple, the UFO alIEn T, and a sentient shard of glass named Door.
• RFCK Endless War: Given most characters are player discord profiles, you get characters like Lily, Ben, and Johnny alongside Dranknier, Chagarumagala and Schrafft Vortex.''
• Rhythm Star: Some characters have names like Rhythmy, Nana, Didi and Ppwarou while others have exotic but still recognizable real-person names like Beethoven, Clara, Liszt, etc. that are taken from Classic era composers.
• The Taiwanese video game Richman has many playable characters to choose from over many of its title, with characters like Candy, Daniel, James, and Sarah alongside DDR (who is an alien,) Lanai, Wednesday, and Igloo.
• Rogue Galaxy: The main eight-character team consists of six Aeriths and two Bobs. The two normal names are Simon and Steve, in with a crew consisting of Jaster Rogue, Lilika, Zegram Ghart, Jupis Tooki McGanel, Deego, and Kisala (actually Irieth).
• Romancing Saga 2 Gives theme names to its recruits, leading to characthers named things like Henry or Richard fighting along side people named Orion, Sagittarius, Ox, Garnet, Kojiro or Sidhe.
• Roots of Pacha, a game set in prehistoric times, has characters with tribal-sounding names such as Igrork, Brah, and Okka, and characters with modern names such as Ada, Ron, and Reese.
• Shadow Hearts series:
  • Koudelka: The party consists of two men named Edward and James, and a woman named Koudelka. Edward and James are English, while Koudelka is Romani and her name is Czech for someone with blonde hair, which could have easily diffused west amongst the Romani. Could double as named after someone famous, as Joseph Koudelka is a Czech photographer.
  • The series in general has the Valentine siblings, all roughly or over four hundred by the games' 1913-1929 timeline. The eldest, Joachim. The youngest, Hildegard. The middle? Keith. One of these names is not like the others… Actually, none of those names is like each other; one is Hebrew, one is German and one is Scottish. And their home is in Romania.
• Names in the Shining franchise can be all over the place, and unlike most RPG series, there's no One-Steve Limit in effect. So you have names like Max and Arthur intermingling with those like Synbios, Bleu or Xion, and occasionally getting recycled.
  • The names of several members of the Noswald Empire in Shining Force EXA. Ragnadaam The Third, Gadfort, Duga, and Phillip. Yes—Phillip. Not only that, he's the Camp Straight and a Dirty Coward.
• Easy to come across in The Sims series. The name generators for townies aren't very particular about whether the first and last names are a logical combination, whether the name is logical for the person's appearance, or in some cases even whether the names exist. However, the playable pre-generated characters for the Sims 2 neighborhoods have reasonable names, and most people who play will use some kind of sense in naming their Sims. So you'll get Angela or David talking to Goopy. (Of course, your Sims can be the Aeriths as easily as they can be the Bobs, depending on what kind of sense you use naming them, for example if you make Sims of fictional characters with odd names.)
• Solatorobo gives us Red and Bruno (common dog names) and Alicia (common human name) running around with Béluga (a type of whale), Opéra (like the music), and Chocolat and Waffle. Then there's the question of where Elh's name even came from.
• Sonic the Hedgehog's main characters are named Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Eggman/Robotnik, and... then there's Amy, and Tails is just a nickname: his real name is Miles Prower. The human characters are given pretty realistic names (Gerald, Maria, Elise). Ivo, Marine, and Rouge are real names as well, though significantly rarer. Further fantastical names include Cream, Shadow, Silver, Blaze, Vector, Espio, Charmy, Jet, Wave, and Storm.
• The main character in Spectrobes is named Rallen. His partner is Jeena. The bad guy's named Krux. The guy who sells you weapons is named Dave.
• The dragons you rescue in the original Spyro the Dragon games tend to suffer from this. For example, the baby dragons from the third game can have names that range from "Tom" to "Thelonious".
• In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games every single humanoid NPC is named (yes, even zombies). This can lead to many "normal" Russian names (e.g. Sidorovich, Sakharov, Oleg Gusarov, Vasiliev, etc.) or titles (e.g. The Confederate, Wolf, Snitch, Ghost, etc.) along with some quite strange ones for minor characters (e.g. Slavic Banana).
• In the first two Star Control games Umgah captains usually have alien-sounding names, like Ei'ei'o, Znork'i, O'guk'e or Chez'ef. But one Umgah captain is named... Bob.
• StarCraft has an interesting naming scheme for its cast. The Terran race spans the entire Aerith And Bob spectrum, but kind of classifies them such that Heroic or otherwise "commoner" characters are on the Bob side, with the villainous, upstanding, or sometimes eccentric ones in the Aerith side. The Zerg and Protoss largely remain exclusively in the Aerith side given that they are alien in nature.
  • "Commoner" Terrans include: Jim Raynor, Sarah Kerrigan, Edmund Duke, Gerard Du Galle, Alexi Stukov, Gabriel Tosh, Matt Horner, Mira Han, Egon Stetmann, Rory Swann, Ariel Hanson, and Lester and Sarge.
  • The Terrans on the other end of the spectrum include Arcturus Mengsk (plus his son Valerian), Tychus Findlay, Horace Warfield, and, most of all, November Annabella "Nova" Terra.
  • The Zerg have: Daggoth, Zasz, Izsha, Abathur, and Na'Fash, while the Protoss: Zeratul, Tassadar, Artanis, Aldaris, Raszagal, Ulrezaj, Karass, Urun, Mohandar, and Selendis. And there's even the Zerg-Protoss hybrid, Maar.
  • Perhaps the odd one out is Samir Duran, who remains a mystery. And Emil Narud, although admittedly that's sort of for the same reason.
• The original Star Fox team consisted of Peppy Hare, Pigma Dengar, and... James McCloud (who would go on to name his son "Fox"). Other characters include Andross, Bill Grey, Slippy Toad (and father Beltino Toad), Andrew Oikonny, and Dash Bowman.
• Four party members have been revealed for the yet-unreleased sixth Star Ocean RPG: Raymond, Elena, Laeticia and Albaird. Laeticia is pronounced like Leticia (which is a real name, though rare amongst English-speaking people), and then there's Albaird. Albaird's Japanese name could be romanized as Abelardo, which is an obscure Italian name that is now no longer in use.
• Star Wars: Galaxies has Johnson Smith, a Zabrak on Kashyyyk.
• The Story of Seasons (formerly known as Harvest Moon) series does this often.
  • Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (the remake of More Friends of Mineral Town) has names like Karen, Rick, Jennifer, and Cliff—and also Kai, Huang, Ran (formerly Ann), and Poupouri. There's even Doctor, who has no other name.
  • Storyof Seasons 2014 has mostly Western names such as Veronica, Angela, Melanie, Otmar—old fashioned as it is—and Eda. But then there's name like Raeger, Nadi, Licorice, Kamil,^note In Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns they had been renamed to Cam and Reina. and Agate—named after a gemstone!
  • Justified in Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns as the people of live in three separate themed towns. Westown, a New Old West town, has more "western" names like Wayne, Ford, Miranda, and Lisette; Lulukoko Village is a Hawaiian mix with names like Tototara, Ludus, Iluka, and Siluka; and Tsuyukusa—the Wutai town—is all Japanese inspired names like Kasumi, Yuzuki, Ittetsu, and Sumomo.
  • Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, in part because it returned to more accurate translations for the characters who were given Western names rather than the original translation in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, has this mix. So there's names like Molly, Matthew, Gary—and then Japanese exceptions like Nami, Tei, and Takakura. This also includes San—previously Samantha—who moves in with her husband Garrett and daughter Kate.
• In Stray, the robots’ names can vary between regular-sounding names, both common and uncommon, real words that could conceivably be nicknames, and nonsense words. Just within the main four Outsiders, you have Momo, Doc, Zbaltazar, and Clementine. Some robots, like The Guardian, are known only by their titles, and these may be their official names.
• Street Fighter has several instances of this, likely because they fit with characters' nationality. On the other hand, this creates Narm with names such as "Ken", "Dhalsim", "Dan Hibiki", "Twelve", and "Seth", who is the final boss of Street Fighter IV. Then there's Guile and Balrog...
• Suikoden 3 has its main POV characters, Hugo, Chris, Thomas and Geddoe.
• Super Mario Bros. has some Bob names like Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, and Rosalina, but they've mostly been phased out due to the One-Mario Limit. On the other hand, you won't be hearing anyone call their kid Toad, Wario, Waluigi, or Bowser (which is a real last name however). Yoshi is actually a real name (albeit it doesn't count in Japanese materials, where he's named Yossy), though here it's the name of both a character and his species.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door features several partners with unique and unusual names, such as Goombella, Koops, Flurrie, Bobbery, Ms. Mowz, and... Vivian. The Yoshi Kid may or may not also be another example, depending on how you name him.
• In Surviving Mars, colonists immigrating to your colony from Earth will keep their usual Earth-like names, but Mars-born colonists will have rather unusual space-themed names, like "Gamma Star" for instance.
• The entire Tales series is this. They have the usual names like Luke, Lloyd, Jay and Annie. The slightly less every day but still normal names like Yuri, Hubert, Jade and Emil. Then the just plain bizarre names like Kanonno, Mint, Genis and Bruiser. It works for the most part though (it should be stressed that some names were changed in the American versions to sound less strange: Genis and Raine were known as Genius and Refill around there, while Bruiser Khang was Mighty Khongman. The list goes on). Oddly, in one case, a normal name (Woodrow) was changed in the localization to "Garr."
  • Even more punctuated is Tales of Phantasia, which features four elemental spirits, Sylph, Undine, Gnome, and Efreet, and their leader, Maxwell. Also in Phantasia, there are the protagonist's parents Miguel and Maria, and then there's their son, Cress. Why two persons who, judging form the names, are ethnically "Hispanic" would give their son an ethnically "Salad" name is not explained. The Tales Series is also a Japanese game, so all these names would probably sound 'exotic' to the Japanese.
    • Cress is in fact an actual name (as in "Cress Williams"), but not a Hispanic one.
• Tales of the Abyss has some of the major characters originally from the isle of Hod: Gailardia (who shortens his name to the pretty commonplace Guy), Vandesdelca, Mystearica, and Mary, which is short for Marybelle.
• Tales of Symphonia. The names of the main characters range from relatively normal, such as Alice, Lloyd, Emil, Marta, Colette, Sheena, and Raine to fairly odd like Genis and Regal, to just plain weird like Zelos, Kratos, Decus, and Mithos. But if you excuse real-world name etymology, they really do work well together.
  • Kratos and Zelos are taken from Classical Mythology, thus the similarity with a certain homicidal "hero".
• The party in Tales of Legendia has a protagonist named Senel Coolidge and [[spoilers: a Physical God named]] Grune in a team of Shirley, Will, Chloe, Norma, Moses and Jay. Senel Coolidge is named after a Cuban writer, Senel Paz, but even then, that name is rare even in Spanish-speaking countries.
• Tales of Arise has Law and Shion (spelled as "Shionne") in a party of Alphen, Rinwell, Dohalim and Kisara.
• Invoked in Tears of Themis. Among the four love interests, we have Luke Pearce, Marius von Hagen, Artem Wing and Vyn Richter. It should be noted that all names have gone through a Dub Name Change - not only those of the aforementioned for, but everyone has (all of the names were originally Chinese). It is said that they did this so that they could have more variety as per name origins (i.e 'Artem' is a name of Slavic origin)...or perhaps to mirror another game known for their Dub Name Change.
  • Notably, in contrast to aforementioned game, Tears of Themis does feature Voice Actors, but all of them are foreign. This causes that, for example, the written dialogue will read 'Pedro Brooks' but the voice (if chosen to be Japanese) addressing this name will very audibly say 'Ishihara Kaito'.
• In the Thief series, you have a wide array of real historical names, sometimes with non-English or rarer spellings, and plenty of fantasy names in between - some intelligible as symbolic names, some as completely made up. It fits the eclectic, mostly urban and cosmopolitan setting of the series. Ordinary-sounding names include Garrett (the protagonist), Benny, Natalie, Jimmy, Elizabeth, Bernard, Nate, Julian, Olivia, Robert, Clive, Frederick, historical-sounding or rare names include Artemus, Constantine, Orland, Edwina, Cid, Bram, Gammall ("old"), Bertha, Egbert, Reuben, Edgar, Hal, unusually spelled names like Lauryl, Thom, Dyan, Lukas, Donal, Viktoria... Then there are apparently symbolic names like Dahlia, Lotus, Larkspur, Cavador ("digger" in Spanish), Uriel (angel name), Ember, a Shout-Out name like Karras for a Sinister Minister, and finally, outright made-up names like Basso, Jenivere, Issyt, Giri, Joce, Markander, Quince, Jacow, Aeric, Gredius, etc., etc. Most mentioned family names seem real world-esque (Rutherford, Shemenov, Huxley, Ramirez, Bafford, Davidson, Gervasius), with a few weird exceptions, such as Farkus, Drept or Kilgor. For pure Rule of Funny, there is also mention of a family named Bumbleson.
• In the Sega Saturn and PC game Three Dirty Dwarves, the lead dwarf is Greg, followed by Taconic and Corthag. (Having one named after the Taconic Parkway does makes sense in context.)
• Thwaite has NPCs like Tilda, Meg, and Justin in the same village as Gnivad, Isca,^*the original Hebrew form of Jessica, Genesis 11:29 and Briar.
• TinkerQuarry: Some of the toys have names like Peter, Clint, and Stella, and then there are others with names like Sera (spelled Cera in earlier builds), Whiskers, Frutti, and more. Probably justified by them being toys, who may have come from a variety of places, or it could be because they were named by a little girl, who probably wouldn't have had consistency in mind.
• Touhou Project has a weird relationship with this trope. Early on, youkai characters were given western names, with the exception of the Yakumo family and Kazami Yuuka. Then ZUN stopped doing that, causing those characters to retroactively have odd names.
  • Then there's Nazrin, who's name is neither western nor Japanese but is a rare name in Malay and is a name of Middle-Eastern origin, playing with this trope.
  • The Japanese names are, if anything, worse. Largely because ZUN tries to give characters meaningful names and only some characters have concepts that can be expressed by normal-sounding names.
• Triangle Strategy has normal names like Roland, Cordelia, Benedict, Anna, and Erika next to more unusual or uncommon names like Serenoa, Hossabara, Ezana, Exharme, and Gustadolph.
• Nearly all the characters in Undertale have completely non-human names that are either puns or otherwise play into their character in some meaningful way - for example, the first character you meet provides you with the game's tutorial, and her name is Toriel. Even the main character, the only one who's actually human, turns out to be named Frisk with deliberately no explanation. The only exception to this are Asriel as well as a handful of minor gag characters, such as Jerry, Aaron, and yes, Bob - no info on whether this was an intentional reference, and possibly the first fallen human, whose dubiously-canon name is Chara.
• Vagrant Story has characters with really normal first names - Ashley, Sydney, Joshua, Romeo, Samantha, Duane, Grissom... coupled with really awesome surnames: Riot, Losstarot, Merlose, Guildstern, Bardorba...etc,
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines:
  • The game has normal names for most of the humans and unusual names for most of the Kindred. There are exceptions on both sides, however. In an inversion of the norm for RPGs, the most important Kindred have the least exotic names. While Side Quest givers have names like Pisha, Skelter, Damsel, and Velvet, some important characters who drive the main story are named Jack, Gary, Isaac, and Jeanette.
  • Skelter and Damsel are anarch gangers, so presumably they made up names to sound cool. Pisha is explicitly states it's not her own name, but that she stole it from a long-dead lover. Also, Pisha is a semi-common Albanian family name. Velvet Velour is using a pseudonym; her real name is Susan. You can only find that out if you're Malkavian, and expect a sharp telling-off if you mention it.
  • In contrast, Sebastian, Maximilian and Bertram aren't really that strange, just foreign. Sebastian LaCroix is very explicitly French, and Maximilian Strauss has a German name and a German accent, so him actually being German isn't too far-fetched. Bertram is a rare but perfectly respectable German name. Tung is a German word (means heavy) and could, at least conceivably, be used as a surname. It could also be a Chinese name, but that would be quite weird. Unless, of course, the whole name is assumed just to mess with people, which would not be out-of-character for a Nosferatu information broker.
• WarioWare: Most characters have normal names (Jimmy, Mike, Penny, Kat, Ana, Mona) and some characters have very weird names (Dribble, Spitz, 9-Volt, 18-Volt, 5-Volt, Fronk)
• Will You Snail? features four named humans: Diana, Amelia, Lucy...and Dallin.
• Wild ARMs 2 has all the playable males being Bobs and the females being Aeriths: Ashley Winchester, Brad Evans, Tim Rhymeless are in the same party as Lilka Eleniak, Kanon and Marivel Armitage.
• Wild ARMs 3 has Virginia Maxwell and Clive Winslet teaming up with Jet Enduro and Gallows Carradine.
• World of Warcraft does this with humans (and undead who were humans in life).
  • On one end you have Arthas Menethil and Anduin Wrynn, and at the other end you have Jonathon Garret and Margaret Fowler. Somewhere in the middle you have the likes of Jaina Proudmoore, whose name is neither someone you'd meet at work nor all-out fantastic. In some cases it might be justified as an Azerothian Preppy Name since royalty are likely to sport one of these.
  • As a rule of thumb, plot importance determines how exotic the name is. Many minor NPCs who are relevant enough to have a name but not relevant enough to warrant a lot of thinking have perfectly normal names (often enough referring to another works).
  • Player names also tend to cower the whole spectrum, when they aren't being outright lazy and name their Blood Elven hunter Xxlégölasxx.
  • In an interesting aversion, there is a ghost named Matthias Lehner. A perfectly normal, innocent name... until you figure out its an anagram. (Of Arthas Menethil.)
  • Warcraft III has a Stop Poking Me! voice file for Pitlords with a talk show introducing "Malvingeroth, Hunter of Night! And his girlfriend Kim."
  • The most drastic example might be the fact that Kel'Thuzad was his name as a human back when he worked for Antonidas, Punctuation Shaker and everything. (So where was Kenan Thuzad?)
• WURM: Journey to the Center of the Earth has a heroine named Moby whose boyfriend is named Ziggy, and most of the other (human) characters have more or less regular names; Dan, Mike, Allan, Sylvia...even the princess of the underground empire, Diane.
• Most NPCs in Wynncraft have names that are unheard of in the real world, such as Aledar, Ormrod, and Rayshyroth, but Wynn's legendary hero is known simply as... Bob.
• Xeno Gears has a nice mix of normal names (Maria, Stone, Billy, Bart,) mixed in with Miang, Krelian, Citan, Zephyr... Subverted with the two protagonists Fei Fong Wong and Elly van Houten: the first looks strange and completely made-up, it was the actual name of a Chinese doctor and martial artist who lived at the end of the XIX century (famously portrayed by Jackie Chan in a movie), while the latter seems like a normal Western name but is in fact Elhaym. Like Fei, all the Contact's past incarnations have names that sound strange and unrealistic, but are all actually realistic: Abel, Kim Kasim, Lacan (which is taken from the name of Jacques Lacan).
• The Homs of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 have names that range from normal, like Minnie, Kenny, Andres, and Jan, to slightly more obscure but plausible like Sharla and Dionysis. High Entia have a couple normal names like Arielle and Don, but most are like Jer'ell and En that are more fantasy. Nopon are their own category with names like Gadada, Kilaki, Dunga, and Npa. Most of the main characters have Aerith-level names like Shulk, Fiora, Dunban (a Chinese name in a mostly European-based culture) and Reyn, and then there are Riki (who is a Nopon) and Dickson who is a Giant.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has Rex and Zeke in a party of Nia, Tora and Mòrag. The antagonists are named Malos, Akhos, Patroka, Mikhail and Jin.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: While the protagonists' names are of the "only mildly uncommon, if diverse" variety, all bets are off when it comes to the rest of the cast, which both draw names from multiple cultural backgrounds, but also just make some up. Even within the colonies you end up with Maxie and Jeremy serving alongside Bolearis and Fla'ran, or Alexandria commanding a group consisting of Fili, Sequoia, Chelle, and Chickadee, or Lenny, Carrie, and Roald living alongside Mwamba and Zeon. The City isn't exempt despite actually having actually family units; the fairly normal Monica ends up getting sandwiched between her father Guernica and her daughter Ghondor.
• Xenosaga. The four Testaments are, listed according to power, Luis Virgil, Erich Weber (codenamed Voyager), Albedo, and Kevin Winnicot. It doesn't help that while the first three are a war veteran, a hacker/terrorist and an immortal clone of Dimitri Yuriev respectively, the fourth's most villainous quality is being the main character's jerkass ex-boyfriend.
  • All the Testaments's real names are actually realistic: Erich Weber is a perfectly common German name, Luis is a Spanish name and a homophonous of "Lewis" and Dmitri Yuriev, the man Albedo was cloned from (and thus the closest thing he has to a "real name", is Russian. So yeah, the Testaments are more of a case of Special Person, Normal Name than a full-on Aerith and Bob. The only fully "Aerith" name is Albedo, and even then, he isn't human.
  • Let's not leave out the rest, either. On the protagonists' side, we've got Shion, Jin, MOMO (all normal Japanese names, though MOMO is written in all caps), Ziggy (short for Ziggurat 8, real name is the more mundane Jan Sauer), KOS-MOS, chaos real name Yeshua, and Gaignun Kukai Jr., who usually just goes by, well, Jr. Also, names like Allen, Tony, Richard or Wilhelm with the likes of Margulis, Pellegri or Canaan.
    • The ES mechs are named Asher, Dinah, Gad, Issachar, Reuben, Levi, Naphtali, Judah, Zebulun, Simeon and... Joseph, Dan and Joshua. Justified as those are the names of the children of Jacob in Genesis... minus Benjamin, who is replaced by another Hebrew form of Jesus.
• Yggdra Union, Blaze Union, and Yggdra Unison: You have Yggdra, Ordene, Russell, Cruz, Durant, Aegina, Emilia, Dort, Juvelon, Milanor, Elena, Leon, Pamela, Nessiah, Mizer, Nietzsche, Amareus, Kylier, Eudy, Rosary, Roswell, Gulcasa, Baldus, Soltier, Ortega, Emelone, and Luciana. And possibly some other people, too.
• The Ys series features lots of towns of characters with a mishmash of European-sounding names with a couple oddballs thrown in. For example, Xandria in Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand features Neina and Rije.
  • Ys: The Oath in Felghana is better about this. Characters other than villains (aside from Count McGuire having a real last name) tend to have normal names such as the sibling duo of Elena and Chester, Mayor Edgar, and even a miner who has recently been mistaken to have died in a mining accident named Bob.
  • Ys SEVEN gives us two sibling characters. The older one is a young man named Mustafa — a real Arabic name and thus one that works for someone from a location based on part of North Africa. His younger sister, Cruxie, however, has a name that doesn't sound like something someone from North Africa would have.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom: The Gemini Elf twins receive names in this game; the younger blonde is Lora and the older brunette is Kachua.

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