Informing the Fourth Wall

aka: I Cant Use These Things Together

"Nightshade's hard to impress. You take him to a history museum and you're like, 'Look at that giant bronze horse from the early BCE times!', and he's like "Nothing unusual here." You take him to the Future History Museum and you're like, 'Look at that giant hologram horse from the distant CE times!' and he's like, "Nightshade can't do that."

— JonTron

In Video Games, Adventure Games in particular, characters often talk to themselves. However, they tend to do so in a way that people simply do not in real life. None of the other characters find anything odd about their friend wandering around saying "It's a shiny key.", "That doesn't seem to work." or "Hmm, this door appears to be locked."

This can become one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality on occasions where the dialogue is in the character's head, but when spoken aloud, this can be on the verge of He Knows About Timed Hits, where the player character is the one who knows about them and explains it to himself.

Contrast with Heroic Mime, where the hero either keeps his mouth shut, or seems to communicate via a form of telepathy that only other game characters can hear. Compare with Expospeak, which also uses awkward dialogue for the viewer's benefit, but is used to drive the plot instead of the gameplay. Luckily, My Powers Will Protect Me is a very similar trope found mainly in comic books. The difference between the tropes is whether or not the character is responding to a player request. Both tropes can exist separately in the same work.

Often the result of the Combinatorial Explosion. In the case of Developer's Foresight, expect this trope to be averted.

This is not the same as You Can't Get Ye Flask, which is where the text parser for a text-based adventure game incorrectly interprets what you're saying, preventing you from completing your action. Nor is it the same as Noodle Implements, which are an illogical set of items allegedly being used together.

A manifestation of the Rule of Perception. Compare Addressing the Player, in which the characters talk to the player directly.

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Examples:

LucasArts

• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders: "That doesn't seem to work."
• Grim Fandango lampshades this all the time.
  • When examining recurring character Eva, Manny remarks, "It's my boss's secretary Eva". She responds, "It's my boss's whipping boy, Manny." Later in the game, this becomes "my ex-boss's secretary Eva" and finally "my ex-boss's ex-secretary Eva". At this point, Eva says, "You're never going to let me forget that secretary thing, are you?"
    • If you try to pick up the moon in Rubacava, Manny will quip, "Don't have that kind of equipment."
    • "They're locked." [From the other room] "They're LOCKERS!"
    • When Manny steals a pair of Mercedes' stockings and comments, "Good enough for me", she hears him and asks, "What is?"
• The protagonist of The Dig, who can get quite sarcastic if you try to do something unhelpful. "That won't accomplish anything."
  • Interestingly, since the first act of The Dig takes place entirely in Earth orbit with the characters wearing space suits, all actual conversation has a radio/static filter added to it. However, any "inner monologue" (i.e. the kind of observations that fit this trope) don't have that filter, implying that Boston is talking to himself inside his suit and that the player is in there with him. It also implies that since his radio is off while he's saying that, the other characters can't hear what he's saying and probably just see him mouthing to himself. Which is just as well, because if the mission commander was heard muttering that he couldn't combine random pieces of vital equipment, he'd probably be removed from duty.
  • There's also a particularly funny and/or unsettling moment early in the game, where Boston, exploring the ruins alone, starts ranting about how he'd really like to have an instruction manual for the apparatus he's looking at, a map, a sandwich, a hot jukebox and a cold beer, and/or a starship heading back home, in that order. He finishes with a sigh and an admonition to himself to "get a grip."
• In Sam & Max Hit the Road, Sam is the fourth wall informant. Repeatedly requesting that Sam pick up a particular object gets him frustrated, and eventually reduces him to tears; Max berates you for breaking his spirit.
  • It receives a Lampshade Hanging in a Telltale Games Sam & Max: Freelance Police episode Chariots of the Dogs, Sam meets his past self, who wanders around looking at things and commenting on them as if there were a player controlling him. "I can't shoot my future self!" "That doesn't need to be made radioactive." Past Sam even pauses during conversations with the playable Sam, as if his player were choosing what to say. Seeing Past Sam, Present Sam asks Present Max whether he's really that annoying when solving cases, to which Max responds, "I always assumed you were dictating your memoirs."
  • And in the same episode, Sam meets his future self, who is old and has grown senile. Future Sam blurts out various stock adventure game phrases, which the playable Sam Hand Waves as "all those years of adventuring have taken their toll."
  • By Season 3 of Telltale's games, Max (who gets upgraded to semi-playable character) gets to do some of this as well, such as protesting that he shouldn't teleport away from interesting events.
• In Full Throttle, the main character, Ben, needed the ability to suck fuel out of gas tanks to fix a Broken Bridge, which means that you can try to get Ben to use his mouth on any object. (It usually means you want to talk to people.) Nothing like a leathered muscular mass of square jawed kick-ass standing alone in an alley looking at a dumpster and proclaiming to himself:
  I'm not putting my lips on that.
• In Loom, the PC, Bobbin, complains aloud about things that are green (and voices his preference for the color white).
  • Guess what color the Big Bad's city is? (hint: it's not orange)
• The Secret of Monkey Island: the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle gets a lot of mileage. Also, if you select "Walk" and click on the sun at one point on Monkey Island, Guybrush will respond sarcastically "Oh, sure. Walk to the sun."
  • In the second game, Guybrush gets shushed by the librarian in the Phatt Island library whenever he talks to himself, even though he's not loud and there are no other people there.
  • In the later Telltale game, Tales of Monkey Island, Guybrush is locked in a swordfight on his ship with pirate-hunter, Morgan LeFlay. Clicking repeatedly on the ship's mast will cause Guybrush to loudly proclaim, "That's the mast!" and Morgan will, in an increasingly annoyed tune, answer every time that she already knows that, until she only emits an annoyed grunt. This even unlocks a trophy in the PS3 port.
  • In the 5th chapter of the game, Guybrush can utter the same proclamation on LeChuck's ship if he looks at the mast before taking the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu. The response? Both LeChuck and Elaine pause at look at him with a very clear "WTF?!" expression for about five seconds.
• Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb: If Indy tries to open a door that can't be opened, or uses a key that's not meant for that door, he says, "That's not gonna work."
• Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures: Sometimes, trying an apparently logical solution which the developers/random puzzle generator didn't intend (e.g. trying to use a branch as an oar when you're supposed to use something else instead) will result in Indy handwaving as to why it wouldn't work (e.g. the water is too deep for the branch). Other times, however, he's content to just say the generic "Hmm... not a bad idea, but it didn't quite work."

Sierra

• Sierra adventure games are slightly different: there is a narrator, in the style of Interactive Fiction, which tells players not just the result of their actions, but also describes anything that is examined. (Or tasted. Or smelled.) Initially it was mostly flat and expositiony, but as the years went by, even in more serious series it has no qualms about poking fun at the player for the attempted actions. And then CD versions were made, complete with full voice acting...
  • Space Quest, especially from number 4 onwards, just hams it up. Appropriate, for a series that is mostly a parody of the sort of works that Mystery Science Theater 3000 made a fortune off of.
    "This rough area tastes strangely like blood. Oh, that is blood! You shredded your tongue! Your mother should have warned you about licking strange areas..."
    • There isn't actually anything useful to be done in SQ 4 with the "smell" or "taste" actions, so they're pretty much meant to be made fun of from the start. This is probably why they didn't make an appearance in other games that took themselves more seriously (ie. King's Quest).
    • Space Quest 6 has a mouth icon used to talk to people. Using it on objects results in lines such as "Don't put your mouth on that! We don't know where you've been."
    • Space Quest 6 also has these gems from the narrator:
      "Careful! Combining those items might cause a rip in the space-time continuum, a tear in the very fabric of space itself! (Or not.)"
      "Excellent guess, Kreskin. Wrong, but excellent."
      "Don't touch that. We don't know where you've been."
      "You drool in that general direction, but no one notices."
    • Or this lampshade from Roger himself:
      "I hope I never get so far gone that I start talking to myself... like... this."
  • In Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!, there are a few lines traded between Larry and the narrator himself. Most are Larry criticizing the narrator's intentionally awful jokes.
    • On a few occasions, the narrator even interacts with other characters.
    Captain Thygh: Who the hell is that?
    Larry: I don't know, but I hear him all the time!
  • Quest for Glory IV. John Rhys-Davies. Hurricane of Puns. That is all.
    • Of note is his "That doesn't do ANYTHING!" delivered in the most exasperated tone of voice.
  • King's Quest: Mask of Eternity: "This will not work."

Other Point and Click Adventure Games

• In The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm's Revenge this is taken to hilarious levels with the Malcolm and Gunther's running commentary on the players decisions. Especially Malcolm's twenty-four different responses to eating a Fish Cream Sandwich.
• In The Longest Journey, April occasionally lampshades how absurd she must sound when talking to herself, and occasionally seems aware of the player's presence. On top of that, there are moments when April responds, and an NPC responds back, like in Sam and Max. The most memorable example being describing the old man on the docks, whereupon he responds that his hearing is fine.
• Done with flair in Edna & Harvey: The Breakout. Edna and Harvey (her talking rabbit) have a fully voiced individual response for nearly every combination. One time Edna says “This doesn’t work”, only to state how unimaginative this reaction was.
• Realms of the Haunting has the protagonist spending most of the first disc mumbling to himself about doors being locked or rattling off stats about his weapons. Later the protagonist discusses things with psychic Rebecca, who follows him around. The developers were thorough, which meant that you could interact with most objects, even if only in a limited way, and there was often a back-and-forwards chat to be had.
  Adam: Plain old chair.
  Rebecca: Guess so.
  Adam: Candle.
  Rebecca: Tallow, I believe.
• Limbo of the Lost handwaves this trope by establishing that the main character is not actually under the player's control, but is constantly advised by an 'Earthly Guide'...that is, the player. Which means that he narrates his thoughts to the player as opposed to himself.
• Any of the CSI games: "You can't use that here".
• Rincewind in the Discworld games: "That Doesn't Work." A phrase that, due to its constant repetition (because you had to try everything, just in case), drove players mad. The fact that the volume of this phrase seemed much louder than other dialogue did not help. In Discworld Noir, Lewton says "I resisted the temptation to say 'That doesn't work'". Noir specifically had the creators work as much as possible to avoid this aspect of the trope; practically every combination has a specific line describing it.
• Simon the Sorcerer had lines talking to the player, depending on the objects you wanted to use together. Use Crowbar on any person: "Very tempting and very illegal", pick up any person: "I prefer blondes", and eat anything not meant to be eaten: "That is not part of a balanced diet". It's interesting to note that, if you want to pick up a blond girl, you get a different response, usually something on the lines of "Not my type" or "She wouldn't like that".
• One of the best things about Ben There, Dan That! is that, while generic 'that doesn't work' placeholder text does exist, most of the useless responses are individually and carefully written, even for things so illogical most people would never even think to try them, like talking to trails of blood, using Dan on himself, trying to to cut a wire with a poster of Sam and Max... Most of the best lines in the games are failure speech.
  Ben: I'm not talking to my bedroom door.
  Door: Fine. Then I'm not talking to you either.
• Lampshaded in grand fashion in Telltale' Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures series, where the solution to two different puzzles is based on the fact that Wallace will describe things aloud for no obvious reason.
• Pajama Sam: "I don't that'll work." "That's not gonna do me any good." And when you try to use a weapon-ish object (like a crowbar) on another object, he replies, "That would get me into trouble.". And against another character? "That wouldn't be very nice".
• Pretty much the applies for all Humongous Entertainment games of the same genre like Freddi Fish.
• The Nancy Drew adventure games:
  • In the earlier games in the series, there were a number of variations; (That doesn't go there. Something's missing here. Iiiiiinteresting. It's locked. It's locked. It's locked. It's locked. It's locked....).
  • The newer games have a few prime examples, with "I should listen!" being used when entering an unavoidable eavesdropping session, and variations of "Hmm" being used if you click on an item that requires something else to work.
  • In the earliest games, a sound bite from one of the developers' previous games, The Vampire Diaries, was included but not used in the game. The bite? "I can't use that here."
• Both Shay and Vella do this in Broken Age but seeing as the game is from Tim Schafer it's hardly surprising. At least Shay has the excuse that he was brought up completely alone and with a omnipresent computer for company.
• Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites usually had the player controlling an entire away team of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a disposable redshirt. Despite the option of various characters stopping the others from doing things the game doesn't want you to do, Kirk still resorts to self narration.
  • The big exception to this is when you inevitably get frustrated and start trying to phaser everything, Spock or McCoy will chastise you for getting frustrated and trying to phaser everything.
    • McCoy has the best lines for doing insane things. There's one situation where you have to pick up a snake without it slithering back into its burrow. McCoy is the only one who won't do it.
      McCoy: It's a damn snake! I'm not picking it up!
      McCoy: (If you try to make him look inside the snake's burrow) I'm not sticking my hand in there!
      McCoy: (If you have captured the snake and have it highlighted and click on McCoy with it) Get that thing away from me!
    • If you click on Kirk with the snake after capturing it, the narrator informs you that the snake enjoys biting your hand.
• Runaway: A Road Adventure, along with its sequel Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle, takes this trope to the extreme. Not only does the hero Brian use such lines to describe things the player tries that don't work, but he also uses them to describe the ones that do. Every time a puzzle is solved, Brian explains, out loud, exactly what he's doing and how he's doing it. He also describes every item picked up.
• In Jolly Rover, this is commonly lampshaded by both the protagonist Gaius James Rover, and the characters around him:
  Captain Howell: Are you always talking to yourself like that?
• In SpongeBob SquarePants: Employee of the Year, SpongeBob will say "Why would I want to put that there?", "I don't think that's such a good idea.", or "I don't wanna do that." if you try to use something with the wrong person or combine two objects that can't be used together.
• Myosotis of The Trader of Stories does this in the snarkiest way she can.
• In The Darkside Detective, McQueen has the usual collection of phrases for when the player tries to use an object in a way that won't progress the story. Each episode has its own variants, such as "That's no way to spend Christmas Eve!" and "Nobody's buying that as a solution!" in the Christmas Episode. At one point, he also addresses the player directly for a Recursive Reality moment. In the "Police Farce" chapter, after examining what turns out to be an entirely unremarkable mug, he remarks that he doesn't know where he picked up the habit of commenting on every item in a room.

Other Adventure Games

• In Tex Murphy games from Under a Killing Moon onward the protagonist's voice has a echo that implies this sort of dialogue is purely internal. This is also used humorously via dissonance, such as the protagonist's monologuing about how nice a cigarette feels... while he's shown nearly choking on it.
  • The internal voice in Broken Sword is consistently clearer and louder as though the voice is going directly into your head whilst the external factors in other things such as character distance from screen and room echo.
• Done in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People; however, several times it is made clear that Strong Bad is talking to the player, the same way he would talk to the viewer in a Strong Bad E-Mail. Given the Homestar universe generally has No Fourth Wall anyhow, though...
  • One that can get annoying is "That's not flammable!" while in possession of the lighter, something you'll likely hear a lot trying to set things on fire for the sake of completion points.
  • One has to wonder how the other characters felt watching Dangeresque 3, when most of the time Dangeresque was wandering around doing random things and talking to himself.
  • Of course, there's also the outcome when you try to use the lighter on a person. "I'd love to see him not not on fire, but not not not now."
  • How about "*strains* Augh! I can't get ye flask!"
• Valdo, protagonist of Secrets of da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript, makes observations about things he sees and the player's attempts to do things. "I can't use that here," "No, it's not time for me to go there," "I don't think this is a good idea," etc. These comments are made in a slightly different tone of voice than he uses when addressing other characters, giving the impression that these may be his thoughts rather than his "outside voice."
• Mona, the protagonist of A Vampyre Story, makes observations like these when the player tries to do something the game won't let them. One of them is actually "I can't do that! Well, I could, but I don't see what that would accomplish."
  • This was probably in response to Yahtzee's complaint (in general, not Yahtzee specifically) against puzzle games that say "that doesn't work" with combinations where yes it motherfucking does! but the game doesn't want you to do that to make progress. It doesn't totally solve the problem, but at least it acknowledges that yes, that could be done, if it were the solution to a puzzle. Of course sometimes Mona doesn't even bother to give any excuses for why not and just flat out refuses to do it.
• In 5 Days A Stranger, examining doors makes Trilby get more and more sarcastic before culminating in a story about how his girlfriend left him for the singer of The Doors, which is what the door reminded him of.
  Trilby: "Sorry, I tend to get sidetracked when players WON'T STOP LOOKING AT THE BLOODY DOORS."
• In the The Famous Five PC games, when you are controlling Dick he will make silly comments about things you click on. Clicking on a tap elicits the response "I wonder what that does," and equally sarcastically if you click on a fusebox he says "It's a fusebox. How exciting." Clicking on a shovel lets you know that "Digging holes is one of my favourite pastimes!"
• Syberia: "No need to go down there." At least in part two, the "purely decorative" doors that caused this in the first game are unclickable.
• The Russian Pilot Brothers games are based on a series of popular Soviet/Russian cartoons where the titular brothers (Chief and Colleague) are private detectives. One of their most popular phrases from the cartoons is "I don't get it" ("Ничего не понимаю") when, well, they encounter something they can't explain (Chief in a gruff, seasoned voice; Colleague in a high-pitched voice). Naturally, this translates itself into the game quite well as this trope. Other ways of expressing this trope are non-verbal, such as Chief smoking his pipe or Colleague staring up in confusion.
• Ashley of the Another Code games is of course prone to this. The visuals in the second game imply she's merely thinking this instead of speaking aloud, though in the first game, D does poke a little fun at it when she comments on a baby picture of herself.
• Kyle Hyde will engage in a little of this, usually in First-Person Smartass style.

Action Adventure

• In the Tomb Raider series, when requested to use an item or medipack that she can't use in the current situation, Lara flatly responds "No."
  • Made even funnier in the games where Jonell Elliott voices her, as Lara's "No!" suddenly sounds hostile and admonishing.
  • And in Tomb Raider: Legend she shrugs her shoulders, which is just as strange.
    • Finally, in Tomb Raider II she says "Aha!" every single time she picks up an object, except of course when she's underwater.
• Raz from Psychonauts, like all good adventure game protagonists, tends to talk to himself, especially about whatever he's holding. "This is a rose. I should give it to someone who'll appreciate it." Occasionally, though, other characters will notice him muttering to himself, and respond to it. For example, in Ford's secret HQ, he'll talk about how he can use the Web Spinner to spin Mental Cobwebs into delicious taffy... And Ford, overhearing this, will get angry at him and quickly correct him, saying that it actually produces PSI Cards. But then, Ford is an Exposition Fairy...
  Raz: (holding a rifle) It's fake. I'm afraid the other assassins will make fun of me.
  Nearby G-Man: Shh! Don't advertise the fact, they look real.
  • And later:
    Raz: Well here I am, up in the tower of an abandoned insane asylum... wearing a straitjacket... *Beat*... talking to myself.
• Jade from Beyond Good & Evil has a tendency to do this, saying things like "I'll never be able to push this box on my own" or "We can't open this door without a special key." Since she is usually accompanied by an NPC buddy, this could be rationalised as her talking to them. Oddly, though, when she gives her sidekicks orders, she doesn't say anything — apparently relaying her commands through telepathy.
• In Star Wars Obi-Wan, it almost seems like Obi's catchphrase is practically, "I'm not sure," in a godawful Ewan McGregor impression.
• In Drakan, Rynn has several responses to impossible actions when the player tries to make her do them:
  • Try to get Rynn to pick up items she cannot use (such as standard dark union weapons dropped by orcs/wartoks when they are killed), and she'll respond with "I can't use that" (she can however pick up normal human use weapons like axes, battle hammers, and swords dropped by them if they wield such weapons).
  • Try to make her open a locked door without the necessary key, and she goes "It's locked" or "Hmm, I need a key".
  • If she's equipped with a bow, try to make her fire an arrow when she has no such ammo: "I don't have any arrows!"; conversely, if she has arrows of any type but doesn't have a bow and you try to equip her with the former: "I don't have any bows".
  • Lastly, try to pick up any item when her inventory is full or has no necessary contiguous space for the item: "I don't have any room."

First-Person Shooter

• Jurassic Park: Trespasser decided to do away with the player HUD. How to let the player know how many bullets are left in the gun? The main character counts them down out loud as you shoot. Wanna find out how much health you have? Just look down at the tattoo on your character's breast. Yes, really.
  • Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie had something similar, where you had to press a button to check the ammo, which would cause the character to exclaim "I've got about X bullets left!" Worked pretty well, though, especially since you usually have teammates, so the character might be informing them.
• In SiN, if you "use" a locked door, the PC will say out loud "Hmm, a security door." If you "use" it repeatedly, the PC will keep saying "Hmm, Hmm, Hmm, Hmm, ..."

Hack and Slash

• In Diablo, whenever the player tries to make their avatar do something that it can't, it'll explain why:
  There's no room!
  I gotta pawn some of this stuff!
  Not enough mana!
  • More humorously, if the player clicks on a cow over and over, the avatar will confidently state: "Yup, that's a cow, all right." "I'm not thirsty." "I am no milkmaid."

Platform Game

• In Sonic Adventure 2, attempting to dig into an undiggable surface in a treasure hunting stage will have your character tell you "I can't!"
• All the hedgehogs have their moments in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):
  Sonic: Lava shoots up from that fiery ground!
  Shadow: The instability of time caused this space-time rift.
  Silver: I can't grab lasers with my psychokinesis!
• In The Fairly OddParents: Breakin' da Rules, walking over a wishing circle without all five wish stars prompts this dialogue between Timmy and Wanda:
  Timmy: I don't have enough wish stars yet.
  Wanda: We'd better go back and find more, then.

Real Time Strategy

• In Starcraft II, clicking on the protagonist in between missions will spur these in response.

Role-Playing Game

• Horizon Forbidden West: Aloy is very prone to announcing observations out loud, from commenting on enemies (including their elemental resistances, elemental weaknesses, and whether or not she can override them). When she gets to a puzzle area, she's extremely prone to announcing the next action she should take to get through it, like "I should scan the area with my Focus" or "I could use that crate to reach that ledge."
• Used in Pokémon games, where most of the time the main character tells himself stuff he doesn't know (as well as possibly yelling stuff like "Go, Squirtle!", "It's super effective!", or "Marowak gained 370 Exp. Points!"). However, in the Gen. I games, Professor Oak still suddenly appears (at least in voice) to tell you can't use THAT item HERE for some reason. This was a translation error, but even Nintendo Power got in on the act when they answered a fan's question on the subject, stating that Oak had set up a complex system of cameras and speakers across the Pokémon world to keep an eye on his students. The error was finally fixed in Diamond and Pearl. It's been somewhat fixed for a while since Ruby and Sapphire by referring the voice as so-and-so's advice, assuming the character was just recalling something they (but not the player) were told. After a while it also involved more than just Oak (such as Dad/Norman or the prominent professor in that new region).
• World of Warcraft, most often when trying to use/attack something from too far away or when you're out of mana.
  • Need more rage! I'm out of range! Need more rage!
  • I can't do that yet. I can't do that yet. That skill can't be used yet. I can't do that yet. Auuuughhh.
  • One humorous example is that if you try to loot an item you're not entitled to loot (i.e., it's still being rolled on by the group), your character will say "that would be stealing" in a perfectly innocent tone. Even if you're a rogue who specializes in stealing, or a warlock who regularly sucks the souls out of your enemies to feed them to demons in exchange for serving you.
  • "Ah can't use that!"
• The player characters in Darkstone will do this. It's quite annoying that a fighter/priest/sorceress will be wandering along on their quest and suddenly, loudly announce that "I am getting hungry!"
• Runescape lets you "Examine" EVERYTHING, and even nothing. This sometimes gets hilarious results. For example, examining a chicken will get "Yep, definitely a chicken." while examining a summoned slime familiar will get the memorable "In Soviet RuneScape, acid digests YOU!"
  • Also lampshaded back in Classic when you could even examine posts. "What am I examining posts for?"
  • The game tells you that "nothing interesting happens" when you try to use two items that don't go together with each other.
  • Your character used to say, "I can't reach that!" when trying to take an item, talk to an NPC, etc. that is out of his / her reach.
• Attempting to give Final Fantasy VII characters their final Limit Manuals before they've learned their other Limit Breaks will cause them to complain in their own voice.
  • Or when you try to use the final Limit Manual that doesn't belong to them.
• Super Paper Mario: Having Bowser trying to climb a ladder will have him attempt to climb the ladder and then say "I can't climb this...". This is due to his enormous size.
• There's a segment in Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden that turns into a parody of point-and-click adventure games (you still have to walk around with the arrow keys and use the generic Interact key, but it will bring up a menu of "Examine [thing]", "Use [thing]", "Take [thing]", and "Leave [thing]"). Every option except the last one will prompt a comment from Barkley's text box. At one point Balthios will chime in with "Who are you talking to?" Barkley answers "No one... Just taking some notes."

Stealth-Based Game

• Used in Thief II: The Metal Age, with an underwater Garrett informing the player that if he doesn't get some air soon, he'll die.
• The Assassin's Creed series generally doesn't do this, but the Ezio Trilogy has a number of Puzzle Platforming levels, during which Ezio will occasionally knock over a pillar or other object. These objects serendipitously provide a spot for him to climb back up to his current location, instead of going back to the beginning should the player fall. Appropriately, whenever this happens, Ezio will quip something along the lines of, "Now I have a way back up here if I fall."

Survival Horror

• The protagonists of Silent Hill will remark to themselves (one assumes in their head, although with Silent Hill you can't ever be sure) that 1) the door is inaccessible for whatever reason, 2) this particular object in their inventory can't be used, or 3) whatever the contents of the latest bit of text that they come across.
  • It even becomes a Continuity Nod/Shout-Out in the third game: if you have a save from SH 2 on your system, at one point Heather is in a bathroom and can look into a toilet just like James, the protagonist in 2, had to do. The difference is, just before actually reaching into said toilet (which, coincidentally, is actually MUCH less grody-looking than the previous) she stops, looks directly at the player, and says "Ugh, who would actually reach into such a disgusting place!?"
• Resident Evil. The remake has the ol' 'Not necessary use this now." Really. The protagonists also know when they've opened all the doors with a particular key and say they can throw it away.
• In Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Jack Walters (the protagonist) talks to himself a lot. The weird thing is that he always sounds very calm, even when seriously scary things are happening.
  • Jack (in a cool, disinterested voice): "Just looking at that thing is making my head swim!"
    • Even weirder is that when his "sanity" count drops low, he'll begin whispering to himself like a crazy person... but suddenly switch back to that same calm tone to inform the player of the outcome of the latest attempt to use that thing with that other thing.
• Clock Tower does this oddly. For the first game, any text in blue means Jennifer is thinking to herself, while white text means she's speaking. Naturally, most of the text is blue, but occasionally she'll remark something like "I don't have to go right now", "The door is locked!", or "Oh.. my head...".
  • The second and third games, which had voice acting, had a different way to differ between thoughts and speech. If something was a thought, it lacked voice acting, while if something was spoken, it had voice acting. The second game has a few optional scenes where they forgot to add voice acting, though, which resulted in entire conversations being totally silent.

Third-Person Shooter

• In MDK2, Dr. Hawkins' levels are all about combining items. Naturally, you'll end up hearing variants on the theme of "that won't work" pretty frequently until you hit upon whatever bizarre combination of items the developers decided should yield the item you need.^note Remember, kids: Electrical cord plus pipes equals infinite-length ladder!
  "Oh, yes, I will create—! ...nothing."
  • Particularly memorable: "AAAAAAAAAHHHH! No."

Visual Novel

• Dōkyūsei has surprisingly many objects which can be examined, prompting the Player Character, Takurou, to give the player some of his own thoughts about said object. Impressively, he even has several unique lines for repeated interactions. His tendency to do this even gets some occasional Lampshade Hanging; one memorable instance comes up if the player has Takurou visit Miho, while she is working her shift at the flower shop, where the player can have Takurou repeatedly examine her watering can. Miho will eventually express confusion and even a bit concern at why Takurou is suddenly so intensely and weirdly interested in her watering can.
• Snatcher attempted to justify this by having the main character's Robot Buddy take care of most of the environmental analysis and rattle it off to the main character, since, being a robot, he is able to sense more than the human main character. Most of the main character's dialogue was just to add colour.

Non-Video Game Examples

• Osiris of Voices combines this with Did I Just Say That Out Loud? for interesting results. It's theorized that as the voices (i.e., the players) have been in his head so long, Osiris is speaking these things out loud for the reader's benefit (and is in a mental asylum as a result). The three others, being newer to the voices, only think these things, rather than actually say them.
• Paw Dugan made fun of this where he tried to use items together, with the "narrator" getting more and more frustrated with every attempt.
• At the end of Spoony's Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh review, he simulates being in the game himself, picking up the phone and looking at a list of numbers to call, much like Curtis. One of the options is calling Batman. When he gets to it, Spoony dismisses doing so as stupid. Then Batman calls him.
• Wonder Woman (1942): The bank robber Pat Pending has a truly bizarre habit of talking aloud to himself on heists describing the objects in his utility belts and what the one he is selecting can be used for in his current situation despite working alone.

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