The Phantasy Star series may as well be the most extreme example of this trope.
Alyssa was localized as Alis, then Alisa.
Lutz was translated as Noah, but was then changed back to Lutz.
This one has spawned so many arguments in the fandom, it's not even funny. What it basically comes down to is that in the Japanese version of the first game, Lutz is your friend, and in the second game, he comes out of cryo-sleep to aid Alisa's descendant, Eusis, in the same quest, a thousand years later. In the English version of the first game, Noah joins you on your quest, and then a thousand years later, some naked guy named Lutz gets himself out of cold storage to dump some exposition on Rolf and company. In the fourth game, in both versions, Lutz is a legendary godlike figure worshipped by the Espers, but players of the English version are likely to wonder what the hell happened to Noah and how did Lutz get this kind of publicity if he spends all his time in a box waiting for heroes to show up.
Noah/Lutz is at one point referred to as "her" in Phantasy Star I. In the first line of dialogue mentioning him. This was fixed in the GBA rerelease.
Lutz/Noah's master's name changes even over the course of a single game.
The recurring Big Bad of the entire series has had its name spelled differently on multiple occasions, with Dark Falz and Dark Force being the most common variations.
Minor example from Final Fantasy VI: a scholar early in the game tells you how people who used magic were called Mage Knights. By the time you actually meet their descendants later, they're called Mage Warriors. Later retranslations fixed this.
Many of the various Digimon games are completely inconsistent with using the localized or original Japanese attack names. For instance, in Digimon Survive Agumon uses Pepper Breath, the English name of its signature attack. But it's evolution Greymon uses the Japanese name Mega Flame instead of its localized attack name Nova Blast.
Extremely common in various long-running RPG video game series, where item, spell or monster names that are the same in Japanese are localized differently in different games.
The spell Esuna has appeared as Heal and Esna. Holy has appeared as Fade, White, Pearl and Holy. Potions have also been Cure (Potion) and Tonic. Are they Golden Needles or Soft Potions? Remember when Thundara was called Lit2? And who can forget Cactuar/Cactrot/Sabotender, and Coeurl/Cuahl?
The reason "Thundara" was "Lit2" has more to do with character limits in the early games than inconsistency. Final Fantasy only allowed four characters per name, whereas Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI allowed five and six, respectively. The Holy situation is also related to Nintendo's former draconian policies involving any sort of religious content. In all these cases, the localization team had to work with the resources (and within the limits) they were given, and it was only starting from the PlayStation era that they could be consistent with the Japanese naming schemes. In fact, it's only Final Fantasy VII which is the truly inconsistent installment, since it was translated in-house by Sony.
Most of the English spell names became standardized by Final Fantasy VIII, becoming closer to the original Japanese names, but there were still some odd inconsistencies here and there. Like the "Scan" spell, which eventually became "Libra", but only years later.
In the Castilian Spanish version, Dragon Knights (AKA "Dragoons") seem to change name depending of the game: "Dragon Knight" in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and its sequel, "Dragontino" ("Draconesque", and no, it wasn't "Dragonesque Knight") in III and V, "Draconarius" in II and "Draconius" in IV - the FF translator evidently loved Gratuitous Latin. Curaja can't keep its own name consistent either; the previous spells are always "Cura", "Cura+", and "Cura++", but in IV it's "Cura+++", in I "Cura++2". And the crowner, III changes the entire system to be "Cura, Omnicura, Cura+, Omnicura+" for the hell of it. Thanks for making this simple, Square. And we won't even get on how VII had completely different translations from later games, though that might be forgiven since VII was a "Blind Idiot" Translationfrom the already blindly-idiotic English translation and the others are translated from the Japanese versions.
Even in English, the translation of "Dragon Knight" was inconsistent for a while, being translated directly in Final Fantasy IX and translated as "Lancer" in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy V (Playstation versions of both). Every other game refers to them as "Dragoons", despite the word "dragoon" meaning something very different in English normally (and you can blame Final Fantasy IV for that one, being the first game in the series to have the class and be translated into English... sorta.)
Final Fantasy also flipped flopped on what to call the status effect characters slipped into when their HP reached zero. Names ranged from disabled, dead, swoon, wounded, etc. It wasn't until Final Fantasy VIII and later that the series stuck with using KO or Knocked Out to represent a character who has fallen in battle.
The many-armed fiend of fire was translated as "Kary" in the original release of Final Fantasy and her cameo in Final Fantasy Adventure (this was pretty obviously a mangling of Kali, who she closely resembles.) Later releases and cameo appearances went back to the more faithful "Marilith". The king of Lorim even lampshades this in Adventures Of Mana.
Orthros/Ultros, everyone's favorite purple octopus villain who began life in Final Fantasy VI. The former is his name in Japanese, but it was changed in the localization of VI, and later localizations have flip-flopped between which name to use in English, although "Ultros" seems to be a bit more common.
The first game was translated by Square, the later ones (sometimes very poorly) by Capcom. The goddess Tyr became Myria in her second appearance (the latter is actually correct); recurring character Deis was sometimes called Bleu (Originating with the Square release of the original, and kept as an Artifact for the Capcom translation of Breath of Fire 2); and Winlan/Windia/Wyndia was supposedly the same place in each game. Gobi/Maniro/Manillo is another case — all Capcom can be accused of is poor romanization, and yet again it was Square who was the root problem, picking a name out of thin air rather than using the original Japanese name; most cases of Inconsistent Dubbing in Breath of Fire can be traced back to this, actually — although some of these were necessitated by technical limitations, there's actually no particularly good reason to change Deis to Bleu.
A few more that are legitimately Capcom's fault: Baba/Bunyan, Great Tree/Yggdrasil.
Unusually averted in Chrono Cross, where Luminaire and the Flea/Slash/Ozzie trio, for instance, were translated the same as in Chrono Trigger. This becomes even odder when a character shows up in Chrono Cross with the Japanese name of Slash, making the translators change his name to Nikki in order to accommodate the returning purposefully-mistranslated Slash from Chrono Trigger.
The final boss was originally called Necrosaro, but was renamed Pizarro for some of the Dragon Quest Monsters games, and is going by Psaro in the latest DQM and DQ 4 remake.
And, unlike some cases of this, none of these actually match the original Japanese name; "Death Pisaro" is just plain too long for English versions, even if they want to be faithful.
The guy actually goes by multiple names, complicating it further. In the original, he is Pisaro, who becomes Death Pisaro when he decides to exterminate humanity. The first localization has him as Saro/Necrosaro, while a later one calls him Psaro/Psaro the Manslayer. He loses the upgraded name when he joins your party.
In Final Fantasy VI, Cyan's samurai talk/Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe is a consistent character quirk in the Japanese and GBA scripts. In the SNES version, it only pops up when it's plot-relevant (i.e. actually alluded to in dialogue) and he's written exactly like any other character otherwise, which renders Sabin's Got Me Doing It moment after he first meets him inexplicable.
Cloud's catchphrase "kyoumi ga nai ne" (translated later on as "Not interested") was translated as something different every time it came up in the script, meaning a huge majority of players didn't even realize he had a catchphrase at all until later on, when supplementary works with more consistent translations came along.
Music tracks from the game also went through various translations over time: The regular battle music is known as "Fighting", "Those who fight" and "Let the battles begin" depending on translation, and the boss music is known both as "Still more fighting" and "Those who fight further".
In the original English translation of Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, Volk is always called the Kingdom of Discord. The Phantasy Reverie Series remake changes every instance of "discord" to "anger" at first, but reverts to calling it "discord" halfway through.
Lunar: Silver Star Story has a few instances. Most notibly, there's a part where you need to catch creature called a fluffy bug, which can be found in a field among similarly named creatures called puffy bugs. ...Except they're only called puffy bugs in battle. Dialog refers to them as puwapuwa bugs, their Japanese name. There's also the group known as the Prairie Tribe. All dialog refers to them as well, the Prairie Tribe, but in Tempest's introductory cutscene he introduces himself as being from the Plains Tribe.
The English version of Lux-Pain is rather infamous for flip flopping between whether the game takes place in America or Japan, characters' genders, the spelling of names, and numerous other details. There are even instances where the voiced lines say the exact opposite of what the text says!
The English translation of Dynasty Warriors consistently uses the traditional East Asian name format of Family Name first, then Given Name. Samurai Warriors instead consistently used the Given Name, Family Name format more common in the West. Since they each used it consistently, this wasn't too much of a problem... until Warriors Orochi, where you now get characters who are inconsistently named using one format or the other, depending on the source game. It should be noted that the English localization team of Samurai Warriors actually breached convention when it decided to use Given Name, Family Name for characters, because you're not supposed to do that for Japanese figures born before the Meiji Restoration. (Rival series Sengoku Basara still keeps the names in the original order, as its translators apparently got the memo.)
The Polish translations of The Sims expansions have a case that messes up the user interface. Most of the game's expansions add additional areas to enjoy their contents, to get to them you need to use a phone to call for a taxi. The translators brilliantly decided to translate the "Call Cab" function on the phone in completely different manner for each expansion, thus making the player browse through differently worded sub-menus on the phone for each type of cab rather than having them neatly arranged under a single menu.
There's a bizarre example between this game and Smash Bros. Dojo, which apparently have their own separate translation teams. The game pluralizes the recurring enemies in the Subspace Emissary as "Primids", while the site prefers just "Primid" (made even more jarring when the Trophy Stand update had a screenshot of the Big Primid trophy that includes the game's pluralization). Additionally, the game level "Outside the Ancient Ruins" is referred to on the site as "Outer Ancient Ruins" in the Secret Element List update, and the Mysteries of The Subspace Emissary update calls what is named the "Island of the Ancients" in the game the "Isle of Ancients". To be fair, however, the site did correct some of its own errors later on, as at one point, Samurai Goroh and the Wario Bike and Drill Rush attacks are called Samurai Goro, the Wario Chopper and the Triple Dash.
The Italian site also has Ike's Aether being renamed "Twilight" all of a sudden some months before the game's release, where it was still called "Aether".
More from the Italian translation of Brawl: for some reason, the translators made up new Italian names for the characters from Panel de Pon (which was never released in Europe) in the sticker list. The odd part comes when you get the Lip sticker and she is renamed "Fiorella"... yet Lip's Stick is still called "Bacchetta di Lip" and not "Bacchetta di Fiorella"!
Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2. The English manual describes Birdo as a transgender female. Nintendo kept on swaying between her being trans or cis for years, though over time they've described Birdo in a more neutral manner. Curiously, the North American and British English versions of Super Mario Party (which are otherwise identical) split the difference and refer to Birdo with female pronouns in the former and male in the latter. Other British translations during the Nintendo Switch era initially used male pronouns (or in some cases either gender-neutral ones or no pronouns at all), but in 2022 they switched to female ones.
A minor inconsistency in Super Mario Bros. 3: the items "Kuribo's Shoe" and "Jugem's Cloud" are obviously named after the enemies otherwise translated into English as Goomba and Lakitu. This was averted in later ports of the game (and Super Mario Maker). Kuribo's Shoe has since been renamed "Goomba's Shoe". However, a reference to the item in Super Paper Mario (in the form of of the name of one of 100 Samurai-like characters that can be fought, each one referencing something from the series' past) used the translation "Shoe of Kuribo".
The manual and credits sequences for SMB2 (and the Super Mario All-Stars version) switched the names of Birdo and Ostro.
This is a huge issue with enemy names between games and sub series. For instance, Super Mario Land, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG and a couple of others did a pretty poor job at translating anything, leaving us with Mario enemies given Japanese names instead of English ones in the 'dub' (Mario Land 1), Big Boos the size of normal ones (Mario RPG), misnamed fish (how Cheep Cheeps and Fishbones were called Flopsy Fish in Yoshi's Island) and a whole host of Paper Mario examples where traditional Mario enemies got new names for a single game. Like Lava Bubbles in Paper Mario (which are just Podoboos).
Kamek in general. His English name is the same as the Japanese species name for a generic Magikoopa, meaning that there's a whole host of examples where either he gets mistaken for a different Magikoopa by the translators (Super Mario RPG, Mario Party 9) or has a completely different character end with the same name (Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga with Psycho Kamek). This makes even figuring out what games he appears in near impossible.
In the Italian translation of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Hermie III speaks normally. In the remake, the Italian script was copypasted verbatim from the original version with only a few edits, so Hermie still speaks normally... then, in the new Minion Quest part, he suddenly has a German accent for no reason whatsoever.
The occasionally appearing giant eel enemy is known as "Unagi" in Super Mario 64, with this name sticking for most of its subsequent appearances... until Super Mario Odyssey, where they're suddenly referred to as "Maw-Rays".
Paper Mario 64 and Super Paper Mario both contain a ghostly blue character who tells long, boring stories and happens to be related to Merlon. In Japanese, she's named "Kurisutāru". However, her English name varies; in 64, she's called Madam Merlar, but in Super, she's called Merlumina.
The English version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has a pretty bad record when it comes to translating references to its predecessor. For instance, Li'l Oinks are called "Bubu" (their Japanese name), the Crystal Palace is called the "Goomstar Temple", the Goomba King becomes the "Chestnut King", and Toad Town is called "Mushville". Then there's a reference to Chuck Quizmo, an NPC in the previous game, being completely scrubbed out.
A minigame in Mario Party 4 takes place in a burger joint. A poster on the wall reveals that the resturant is called "Kinopio Burger". "Kinopio" is Toad's name in Japanese, and the poster says "Kinopio" in all versions of the game. The name wasn't likely changed due to an oversight in localization.
Yoshi's Cookie was released near the end of the "Princess Toadstool" naming, and it uses that name for her. However, in the battle mode, every character has a three-letter shortened form of their name for "who will be targeted with what status if you match Yoshis now". The Princess's is PEA, thus "Peach" before America learned that name.
Suikoden Tierkreis. Dear god, Suikoden Tierkreis. If you're lucky, the name will just be spelled one way and pronounced another. If you're not, the pronunciation will also vary depending on the character speaking. Two examples that spring immediately to mind are Shairah/Shailah, and Kureyah/Claire.
Dear God, Suikoden II as well. Bright/Shining Shield Rune, Han/Hal Cunningham, Crystal Valley/Ballet, Jilia/Jilian Blight, just to name a few.
The Tales Series has been getting better about standardizing the translations of certain techs that have been passed from main character to main character since Tales of Phantasia, but we're still at the point where we need a guide to list the various English names of some shared techs. Or even the same tech on the same character as a result of remakes and cameos. At least they've generally settled on what we're calling tokugi, ougi and hi-ougi.
The most common inconsistency comes in the incantation for the lightning arte Indignation. Whereas the Japanese version retains the incantation across games due to nostalgia, the fact that the various English localisations are rarely produced by the same team means that the incantation is inevitably translated differently each time.
The Spanish translation of Tales of Symphonia changed the names of many skills, enemies and even some characters (Such as the dwarves), but Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World used the English terms. In most cases, this was a good thing, since some names were too imaginative and clashed with the rest of the game. On a negative example (Still on Dawn), Arc Words "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality" was translated literally for 75% of the game, but suddenly changed to "With courage and galantry, any dream can be made true" (Which is not quite the same, mind you) right before the battle against Brute, then kept this way until the Final Boss, where they go back to the first translation.
Trails Series: Falcom can't seem to decide whether they want the English name of Crossbell's police force to be the Crossbell State Police Department (CSPD), or just the Crossbell Police Department (CPD). On one hand, Lloyd's jacket has a "CSPD" logo on it, and there are other examples of CSPD text around the police department's headquarters. On the other hand, the official badge of the police department abbreviates the name to "CPD," and it's a more accurate translation of what the department is called in Japanese. As a result of this ambiguity, Trails of Cold Steel II, localized by XSEED Games, uses CSPD, while the sequel, localized by NISA, uses CPD, as does the Geofront Fan Translation of The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure.
The remake of the original game, Wild ARMs: Alter Code F, despite being developed eight years after the original, still infamously had a poor translation. Perhaps the best example of this is Cecilia's middle name; she is referred to, at various points throughout the game, as Cecilia Lynne Adlehyde, Cecilia Raynne Adlehyde, and Cecilia Lynn Adlehyde. It's very jarring.
Alhazad's gender, which is referred to both as "she" and "fellow". Why is this jarring? Because, not only is Alhazad referred to as a male in both the original's translation and the Japanese version of the remake, but he also constantly makes creepy advances towards a certain female even in his first appearance, which should have been a huge tip-off on his gender from the start.
The Legendary Starfy refers to Shurikit as both a "he" and a "she" at different points in the game. Officially, she's a girl.
Capcom seems to like being inconsistent about terms in the first game and its sequel, Mega Man Star Force. The most notable ones are the By the Power of Grayskull! quotes: in the first Battle Network game, the sentence was "Jack In! MegaMan.EXE, Transmit!". In later games, it became "Jack In! Mega Man, Execute!". Doesn't help that the first quote became "Jack In! Mega Man, Power Up" in the anime version.
Translations of chip names change pretty often too. One very important chip went from the straightforward "Steal" to the ugly "AreaGrab". The anime split the difference with "AreaSteal".
Program Advances were called "Morphs" by characters in the first game, though the word "ADVANCE" would appear when using one.
In the first two games all the characters had their Japanese names translated to western sounding ones but for 3 and 4 they didn't bother with that anymore, so Lan, Mayl and Chaud were in the same game as people named Saiko, Inukai, Sunayama, Shuuko and Tamako, but then 5 and 6 went back to changing the Japanese names again, unless they were from 3 or 4. In Battle Network 5, Higsby says he's going to meet Ms. Mariko. Mariko is the Japanese name of Lan's homeroom teacher Ms. Mari.
Mega Man X5 suffered from this, mostly due to its heavy leaning on elements from previous games that the translators didn't catch: for instance, Volt Kraken's Boss Banter makes heavy reference to Launch Octopus from the first game, but they transliterated his Japanese name, Launcher Octopuld, literally, rendering it as "Octopardo". More than one boss also references the Repliforce from X4, Spiral Pegasus and Burn Dinorex being surviving members and Spike Rosered holing up in one of their abandoned bases, but their name is consistently mistranslated as "Reploid Air Force", with one or two references to just a "Reploid Force". That's also not getting into that this is the only game in the series to more significantly change the names of bosses - in its case, renaming them all after then-current and former members of Guns N' Roses (Spike Rosered to "Axle the Red", Crescent Grizzly to "Grizzly Slash", etc.) All of these were fixed/reverted for the Legacy Collection version of the game.
Atlus is usually good about this, but flubbed a scene in Endless Frontier: Super Robot Taisen OG Saga that mentions a character from a previous game. That character, a woman named Lemon, gets translated as Raymond. It doesn't help that Atlus wasn't sure at first which continuity the game was meant to tie into, if any. The same game also has a character using a weapon called "Goshiki Zankanto", which is a Shout-Out to another character's Reishiki/Sanshiki Zankanto. The previous games had translated them as Type 0/Type 3 Colossal Blade, but since Kaguya's dimension is Wutai, they left everything in Japanese.
Some of the Demon/Persona names in the series are inconsistent across different games and spinoffs. The Four Gods go back and forth from their Japanese names (Persona series) and Chinese names (Digital Devil Saga, among others), Mother Harlot is sometimes just called "The Harlot", etc. The recurring Status Buff skills that multiply the next physical or magical attack damage by 2.5 are referred to either as the literally-translated "Charge" and "Concentrate" or the more Wooleyized "Power Charge" and "Mind Charge" depending on the game. Other than that, most skills remain consistently translated between all games and spinoffs, though.
The Persona series can be a bit inconsistent when it comes to which names the characters call each other by. In the third game, most of SEES uses first names on each other, with the exception of Mitsurunote Mitsuru's characterized as a bit aloof from most of the group besides Akihiko and later Yukari. Her decision to start calling the latter by her first name is a turning point in their relationship, and the fourth game does something similar. The fifth game, however, has characters using last names at first, until they switch to first names, and some characters, such as Mishima, are strictly on a Last-Name Basis with the protagonist. Interestingly enough, in Persona 3 Portable, some characters use last names in content that was added for the rerelease- for example, Ms. Toriumi calls the female protagonist by her first name in class, but by her last name in the scene in which she recruits the protagonist to a committee, which leads to the female version of the Hermit Social Link.
In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, the sign for the "You in Wonderland" maze is in English on the screen before the player enters it, but still in Japanese during a cutscene.
Despite an otherwise wonderful translation, Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) can't seem to decide whether the little leech-esque monsters should be called "Gigi" or "Giggi."
The Fighting Mania arcade game based on Fist of the North Star can't decide between using "South Star" or "South Dipper" as the English name for Nanto. While technically "South Dipper" is the correct choice, since Nanto is a Chinese asterism equivalent to Sagittarius and not a single star, "South Star" is more consistent with the way Hokuto is always translated as the "North Star" in the franchise itself.
The Progenitor Virusnote 始祖ウィルス, shiso uirusu is also referred as the Mother Virus and the Founder Virus.
The Supervisorsnote 監視員, kashiin. Literally observer or watchman. from Resident Evil 3 are also referred as the "Monitor" unit in Umbrella Chronicles and as the "Observers" in the English edition of Resident Evil Archives.
The Special Tactics And Rescue Service are also identified as the Special Tactics And Rescue Squad in certain promotional texts such as packaging descriptions and localized manuals.
In the Pokémon games, the key item that allows you to find hidden items has been inconsistently translated. In Japanese, it's always been known as "Dowsing Machine." From Generation I to III, it was known in English as "Itemfinder," but ever since Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, it's been translated as "Dowsing Machine", or occasionally an abbreviated form thereof.
As of 2010, the Pokémon franchise has generally gone the route of a "universal" set of translated Pokémon, character and location names for each language - causing some smaller translations to be phased out in the process. This includes the French-Canadian translation (which used the English names), any Latin American Spanish translated terms (usually identical to English) that differed from the European Spanish translation, and the Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese translations (which sparked real-life protests). This seems to be an application of the Fleeting Demographic Rule, where despite older fans' deep nostalgia for their smaller localized translations, the norm going forward is for fans to grow up with the same names and terms used by all other speakers of their native language.
Koga's daughter is known as Janine in most of her appearances. However, while a younger version of her appears in a Call-Forward in FireRed and LeafGreen, the Fame Checker item lists her name as "Charine".
In a similar fashion, the manager of the PC box system in Hoenn is called Lanette. The Italian translation keeps her name as such, but when Bill briefly mentions her in HeartGold and SoulSilver, she suddenly became "Michela".
The master of Mt. Battle in Pokémon Colosseum's story mode and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness is the same person, but Colosseum changed his name to Somek while XD kept his Japanese name of Battlus.
The function allowing transfers from the fourth generation games to the fifth generation games is called "Poké Shifter" in Japanese, but was referred to as "Poké Transfer" in the English release. However, the later companion app Pokémon HOME lists any Pokémon from the third or fourth generation games as having been met at the "Poké Shifter" even in English.
In the cutscene after defeating Dr. Cossack, when Mega Man goes after Dr. Wily, his name is initialised as "R" (for Rockman).
Dr. Light is called "Dr. Right" in the intro to the third Wily Stage.
When Mega Man first speaks to Kalinka upon rescuing her in the third Wily Stage, his name is again initialised as "R" (for Rockman).
If Proto Man comes to give Mega Man the Wily Buster during the final battle, his name is displayed as "Blues".
The Spark Chaser is abbreviated to "Earth" on the weapon select screen, after the Mega Man Killer you got it from. Problem: Earth's name was changed to Terra when Mega Man V GB was translated into English.
The manual for the Game Boy Advance remake of Mega Man & Bass (the first time the game was officially translated) referred to nearly every character except the two in the title by their Japanese names; the game itself, however, used their normal localized English names.
EarthBoundchanged the name of a minor NPC from the Balloon Monkey to the Bubble Monkey during the localization process in all but one instance: viewing the description of a Pak of Bubble Gum from the menu will still call it "the Balloon Monkey's favorite".
The Big Bad of EarthBound Beginnings was named "Giegue" in the English prototype that wasn't released until 2015 on the Wii UVirtual Console, but changed to "Giygas" in its sequel, EarthBound.
Porky Minch was renamed "Pokey" in the English version of EarthBound, but kept his original Japanese name of "Porky" in the Super Smash Bros. games.
In Final Fantasy XII, the subtitles and the spoken dialogue often end up being very different. This happened because the subtitles were translated long before the voices were recorded; the differences between the two are the result of the voice actors rewording lines to make them more natural or in-character.
BlazBlue had an incredibly well-done translation for the first few games but, due to Executive Meddling on Arc System Works' part, the new scenarios from Continuum Shift Extend have several instances where the script read by the voice actors and the subtitled text that is shown in the game do not match up. Characters even end up saying different things entirely. Chrono Phantasma takes it even further.
Rune Factory Frontier: Earlier (and most later) Rune Factory games were translated by Natsume — which is well-known for not being the most accurate translator around, among other issues. Frontier was a direct sequel to the first Rune Factory, but was translated by the usually much better XSEED Games. The problem is that XSeed didn't really bother to research Natsume's translation for the original game to maintain consistency, leading to things such as Tori becoming Tart (closer to her Japanese name, though "Torte" would be even closer) and the Sechs (Pronounced, roughly, Zeks) Empire becoming the Zzyzx (Pronounced, roughly, Zai-Zeks) Empire. When XSeed got another shot with the series with Rune Factory 4, they made sure to remain consistent with the Natsume translations, and mocked the Sechs/Zzyzx issue in the game's manual.
Starting in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Sun Cosmos from Animal Crossing were renamed Yellow Cosmos for unknown reasons. However, you can still buy seeds for Sun Cosmos, and when you plant them, their name changes to Yellow Cosmos. So the seeds have a different name than the flowers they grow into!
Earlier games have shaken trees occasionally have bees coming from a hive and chase the player around, but they're only called bees in the English version, as they're actually wasps. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the first game to properly refer to them as wasps in English.
The Fallout series is very inconsistent in its French translations. The firsttwo games are more or less consistent, but the translation team for Fallout 3 ditched most of the original translations and made their own (very good) translation. Then Fallout: New Vegas came along with another translation team that half-assed the job.
Example, originally, the Power Armor was translated as "Super Armor", while from Fallout 3 onwards it became "Assisted Armor". Same thing with Power Fists "(Super/Assisted Fist)".
Stealth Boys were originally called "L'homme invisible" ("The invisible man"). As of Fallout 3 they go untranslated.
The Fat Man was originally untranslated in Fallout 3. New Vegas translated it literally ("Gros Homme").
Psycho used to be called "Foldingue" (roughly translates as Ax-Crazy) only to later be called "Psycho".
"Raiders" were called "Pillards" in the first two games, Fallout 3 onward started calling them "Raiders" (you might be starting to notice a pattern here).
The Polish translation of Fallout 2 manages to do this within one game. The fictional Cat's Paw magazine's name is sometimes tranlated directly as "Kocia Łapka", sometimes it's called "Koci Pazur" (Cat's Claw), and sometimes it's left untranslated.
In the Italian versions of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time 3D Skull Kid was translated as "Bimbo Perduto" ("Lost Kid"), and it was called as such in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U too. When Majora's Mask 3D was released, they suddenly changed their minds and started keeping "Skull Kid" as a name in Italian translations too, and the April 2015 patch of Super Smash Bros. edited the name of the Skull Kid trophy and the tip about the corresponding Assist Trophy to reflect this change of heart in the localization. Twilight Princess HD on the Wii U used "Skull Kid" too.
The Italian translation of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap translated Peahat literally as "Pisello Cappello", rather than the usual translation "Bulbocottero".
The serpentine boss that appears in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Ocarina of Time is called Barba in the former and Volvagia in the latter. Dark Link is called "Link's Shadow" in The Adventure of Link.
The Great Bay Temple Mini-Boss in Majora's Mask is called Wart, a literal translation of the Japanese name of Arrghus, the boss of the Swamp Palace in A Link to the Past. The French, Spanish and German versions of Majora's Mask 3D changed Wart's name to match Arrghus's in those languages. Helmasaurs also use their Japanese name of "Hiploop", and Wizzrobe is spelled "Wizrobe" in the N64 version.
The Legend of Zelda: The English manual translation often doesn't match the in-game version, such as Ruby instead of Rupy (later Rupee), Whistle instead of Recorder, Magic Wand instead of Magical Rod, Magic Book instead of Book of Magic, and (most infamously) Ganon instead of Gannon.
Bubbles are called Anti-Fairies or Whisps in some games.
"Rupees" was mistakenly romanized as "Rubies" in early games.
The enemies in Twilight Princess that the Nintendo Power guide calls ReDead Knights and the Prima Guide calls ReDeads are called Gibdos in Japanese; they are wrapped in bandages and use a paralyzing shriek just like ReDeads and Gibdos in earlier 3D games, the only difference being that they attack with a BFS instead of grabbing Link. Adding to the confusion, Hyrule Warriors called the TP Gibdos by their original name and gave the name ReDead Knight to a stronger version that's called "Flame Gibdo" in Japanese.
In Kirby Super Star, Dyna Blade is female. The ending of her eponymous subgame even features Kirby discovering her chicks and raising them himself until she recovers. Despite this, the flavor text for the Dyna Blade event in Kirby Air Ride's City Trial tells you to aim for "his" head (similarly to the Watt example above).
The manual of Military Madness for the TurboGrafx-16 refers to "Porcupines" in the description for the Trigger M-77 mines. This is a literal translation of their Japanese name.
In the English version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Revival, Bison, Balrog and Vega's win quotes were given to the wrong boss: Balrog had Bison's, Vega had Balrog's and Bison had Vega's; the developers forgot to correct the winquote pointers when they enacted the usual Dub Name Change for these characters, meaning they ended up with their Japanese namesakes' quotes.
The English release of Suikoden II is chock full of name inconsistencies, such as Bright Shield Rune and Shining Shield Rune, Jilia and Jilian Blight, Han and Hal Cunningham, and so on.
Fang the Sniper was called Nack the Weasel in the English manual of Sonic Triple Trouble, but was then referred to by his Japanese name in all other games. This was especially confusing when the Archie comics kept using "Nack the Weasel" for him. A nod to both of his names can be seen on a "Wanted!" Poster in Sonic Generations. Sonic Superstars would change it again to "Fang the Hunter" for good, with the game's prologue comic and the TailsTube series confirming that his constant name changing is due to him previously using fake names to avoid law enforcement.
Doctor Eggman/Robotnik's name switched between his Japanese and English names in Sonic Adventure. The translators initially tried to Hand Wave it as Eggman being his nickname and Robotnik was his real name (making "Robotnik" a family name, with his grandfather "Gerald Robotnik"). Later games refer to him as Eggman almost exclusively. Both TailsTube and Sonic Frontiers would go into this further, where "Eggman" was an insult Sonic came up with that the doctor chose to embrace, wanting to turn it into a name people all over the world fear.
Mecha Sonic from Sonic 3 & Knuckles was given many different and inconsistent dub names: Robotic Sonic, Evil Sonic, Q Zone, and even Metal Sonic (the name of a completely different robot Sonic who first appeared in Sonic CD). Finally, when he was featured as part of DLC in LEGO Dimensions, it was reverted to with its Japanese name.
Similarly, Mecha Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was called Robo Sonic and Silver Sonic in English. Lego Dimensions went with the former name to distinguish him from the other model.
In a clumsy attempt at tying up with contemporary cartoons and comics, Amy Rose was called "Princess Sally" in the original English manual, before switching to her canon name in later releases.
For a lengthy period of time between 2008-ish and 2016, most Nintendo games released had Same Language Dubs, one American localization for the North American market, and one British localization shared with Europe and Oceania. Because one hand wasn't talking to the other, several terms and concepts ended up with different names between versions, such as the game show in Paper Mario: Sticker Star or almost every proper noun in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. In late 2016, this eventually seemed to prove more trouble than it was worth, and Nintendo of Europe took over localization duties in full...except they also started using the North American English terms for everything, so the return of the aforementioned game show in Paper Mario: Color Splash calls it "Snifit or Whiffit" instead of "Hit It or Snifit", the Splatfest ranks in Splatoon 2 use the snappier American names instead of their more literally translated European counterparts, and so on. On the flip side, this resulted in oddities like the Hammerhead Bros. in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Marie in Splatoon 2 suddenly using British slang and speech patterns in the American versions for no in-game reason.
When Halo: Combat Evolved first came out in 2001, the French dub translated the Master Chief's rank as Adjudant by mistake. A French Army Adjudant is OR-8 in the NATO rank structure, comparable to a Senior Chief Petty Officer in the U.S Navy. Subsequent games had him referred to as a Major, which is comparable to a Master Chief Petty Officer in the U.S Navy note a Major in the French Army is an enlisted rank, not an officer rank.
In the NIS America English localization of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, the same class trial minigame is called "Mind Mine" in-game but "Imagination Excavation" in skill descriptions.
Crops up from time to time in the Castlevania series:
The whip-wielding skeleton enemies are called "Shimon" in Japanese, a pun on "shi," the Japanese word for death, and Simon Belmont's name, because they're undead beings that mimic Simon's fighting style. The kanji used to make up that name can be translated literally as "Gates of Death," which is what the English manual for Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse refers to them as, both missing the wordplay and not making any sense. The English version of Super Castlevania IV just calls them Whip Skeletons, and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance calls them Simon Wraiths, the closest to their Japanese name. Years later, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair would instead settle on Hellmont as a Woolseyism.
The sorceress introduced in Dracula's Curse is called "Syfa" in that game. Subsequent games render her name as "Sypha" fairly consistently, but Harmony of Dissonance calls her Cipher.
The enemies called Devils in Japanese are called Gargoyles in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest but, seemingly due to a translation error, they get labelled as "Cthulhu" in the English version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, while another enemy that actually resembles Lovecraft's famous monster is called "Malachi," meaning that even if the names got swapped, the Devil still wouldn't have been called a Devil. Later localizations manage to call them devils consistently.
The Holy Water subweapon is called the Fire Bomb in the localizations of most of the early games due to Nintendo of America's strict rules on religious content. Likewise the Cross subweapon usually got called Boomerangs.
The series can't seem to decide on what the suffix for the fourth tier of magic is in the English localization. I and II use "-gun", 3D and III use "-za", and 0.2 borrows "-ja" from Final Fantasy.
The Realm of Darkness is consistently translated as such in most games until 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage and III, where it is inexplicably called "Dark World" in the world logo and menu. In-game dialogues, however, still stick with the old name.
This also applies to abilities throughout the games. For example, Lucky Strike was translated as Lucky Lucky in Kingdom Hearts II but was reverted back to its original name in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, while Once More become Withstand Combo in Kingdom Hearts III.
Some of the Heartless that first appeared in Kingdom Hearts II were given different names when they reappeared in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Rabid Dog became Bad Dog, Cannon Gun became Li'l Cannon and Surveillance Robot became Watcher.
The pronunciation of Tidus's name also changes between games. In Kingdom Hearts, Wakka pronounces it "Tee-dus", but in Kingdom Hearts II, Selphie says "Tie-dus".
In the NES version of Alien Syndrome, the first boss, originally known as Squime, is called "Hugger", which is the name of a completely different boss in other versions.
The manual for the US Turbografx 16 CD version of Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair changes the protagonist's name from Leo to Adam, but the default initials on the ranking screen are still "LEO".
Some of the dialogue between Naruto: Ultimate Ninja was changed in Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2. One example is Sasuke's line "Killing him is the reason... for my existence!", which was changed to "Killing him is the reason... I exist!"
The NES version of Double Dragon I calls the mook Roper "Lopar" in its manual, and "Rowper" on the Vs. Mode select screen.
The English dubs of the second and third Valis games for the Turbografx-CD inconsistently pronounce the eponymous sword's name as either "Valis", "Varis", or "Balis", and can't decide whether Yuko's sister is named Varna or Valna either.
Back when Life Wonders first started to officially translate Tokyo Afterschool Summoners, the character Managarmr was localized to Hati, most likely to avoid confusing any connection with the vastly different Garmr from the same game. However, while the dialogue still referred to him as the later, his character files and text box headers still referred to him as the former. This has since been changed back to Hati.
In the English arcade version of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, one of the swords is correctly named "Excalibur" in the HUD, but called "Axecaliva" in dialogue.
The English translation of Puyo Puyo Fever, in regards to the green demihuman character's name. She's mostly referred to as Rider (pronounced "reed-AIR"), but in one cutscene Amitie refers to her as Rita. The later Puyo Puyo Tetris changes her English name to Lidelle.
There have been a good number of translation teams that have worked on the Fire Emblem series, which has resulted in some strange name changes. For instance, Ayra's son and Larcei's brother in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War has gone back and forth between being named "Ulster" and "Scáthach," and the hotheaded axe fighter in Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 has been named "Osian" and "Orsin". The main culprit is Fire Emblem: Awakening, which included a lot of offhand references and cameos from prior characters, and Fire Emblem Heroes, which made a lot of those prior characters directly playable.
The US arcade flyer for Ghosts 'n Goblins named the Player character Sir Michael, but the NES version and all subsequent material has called him Arthur. Later, the manual for Super Ghouls n' Ghosts changed the Damsel in Distress's name from Prin-Prin to Guinevere, perhaps to relate to Arthurian Legend.
The English SMS port of Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen calls Adol Arron and Dark Fact Dulk Dekt, while the MS-DOS and Apple IIGS versions rename them Arrick and Malificus, respectively, in addition to many other name changes.
The crater left behind when the eponymous civilization of Ys was raised into the sky, officially romanized as Bagyu Ba'dead, has at least three different English dub names: Bague Badet on the Sega Master System, Clifton's Cliff on the Turbografx CD, and the pseudo-French Vageux-Vardette on the Nintendo DS.
The localization of Ys I and II for the TurboGrafx-16 CD changes Dogi's name to Colin; however, they changed it back to Dogi for all versions of Wanderers from Ys.
Raba is Rasta in the English Turbo CD version, but all subsequent English localizations use his original name.
Galbalan, the Big Bad of Wanderers From Ys, is renamed Demonicus in both the Turbo CD and Genesis localizations, but retains his original name in the SNES version as well as all versions of the remake.
In the English dub of the PlayStation 2 port of Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, the location of the Flame Sword is the "Altar of Brillante", but all subsequent dialogue refers to the sword as "Blirante". Also, Ladoc's ship is named the Tres Mares, which is Spanish for "three seas", but in the intro cutscenes, Terra pronounces it as if it were Frenchnote The dub was handled by The Ocean Group, who are based in Canada. The actual French counterpart would be "trois mers".
Some item names are translated inconsistently between the first and second games. For example, Megumi no Hane (literally "Wings of Blessing") are called Charity Wings in the first game, but Magic Wings in the second. The Doka Pin also keeps its Japanese name in the second game, even though the first game called it the Grapplejack. (The name Doka Pin comes from the Japanese names of the Blackjack and Grapple weapons, which are Gurudoka and Gurupin respectively.
In the English Sega CD version of Prince of Persia, the only port to feature voice acting, the Evil Vizier's name is pronounced "Jaffa" instead of Jaf(f)ar.
Foreign translations of early Yu-Gi-Oh! games had a few inconsistencies regarding character names: for example, Yugi's grandpa was often called "Trusdale" instead of his proper dub name of Solomon Muto. In a more specific case, Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel has Tea being named with her English dub name for most of the time, except for the very first dialogue where she presents to the player and states her name is Anzu Shinzaki (which is a slightly altered version of her Japanese name, Anzu Mazaki).
, while another calls her Aerith