Psychological Projection in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- All For Luz: All For One appears to have a low opinion on churches viewing them as "those who share in the business in deluding the weak-willed", even though he himself has taken advantage of vulnerable people throughout his supervillain career.
- Like her mythological counterpart, Hera in Child of the Storm takes out her anger at Zeus cheating on her on his children. And on all other demigods, too.
- Constellations: After suffering through an extensive Trauma Conga Line, Emma corners Taylor at Pawprint Shrine and launches into a massive rant about all the things she hates about her: that she's needy, nobody actually likes her, and that she ruins everything she touches. Her sobbing throughout the whole speech makes it clear that she's not really talking about Taylor.
- In A Game of Cat and Cat, Kazuya gets upset when Soma tells him that he left his friend Mina behind in Castlevania until Soma specifies that she stayed in a safe room while he explored dangerous territory. Soma thinks that Kazuya is suffering from Survivor Guilt because he wasn't there when a loved one died, the same way his past life was away on a Crusade when his wife died. However, it's implied that Kazuya is bitter because he was abandoned; in his game, the Chaos Hero left him and the Law Hero to fend for themselves after fusing with a demon.
- After learning about Josuke's heritage from Jotaro in Remnant's Bizarre Adventure, Yang thinks that Joseph Joestar, Josuke's father, intentionally abandoned both Josuke and his mother Tomoko, just as her own mother Raven abandoned her and her father. This stops when she learns that Joseph does care for Josuke and wants to get to know him while in Vale, but that only increases Yang's frustration at her birth mother.
- In Turnabout Communication
, Yamai Ren accuses Apollo Justice of being a creep with perverted thoughts towards Komi Shouko. This is after she tried to set Komi in a position so she can peak up her skirt, which Trucy and Najimi were thankfully able to prevent. Apollo lampshades this in his First-Person Smartass.Apollo: Girl, you’ve got a promising career as a movie theatre attendant with all of that projection you’re doing… - The Vigilante Boss and His Failed Retirement Plan: Forms the crux of an Armor-Piercing Question Aizawa poses to Bakugou, after learning that he sees all of Izuku's efforts to help him as covering up a condescending attitude, and that he's suggesting he's weak for requiring help:Aizawa: Bakugou... all heroes help people, even All Might gets help from Recovery Girl and other heroes. Does it make him weak? Or do you think heroes look down on people we protect? Is that what you think of us?
- Fragmentation points this out as being the dirty secret behind ComStar.Historically, men judge others by their own acts. If a man is willing to steal from others, he lives in fear that others will steal from him. Murderers fear being murdered themselves. ComStar's greatest fear was that the technological advances that Kerensky had taken with him would one day return to the hands of others, making ComStar itself obsolete. So when rumors of new weapons of types never before seen had surfaced, weapons that even the Star League hadn't possessed, ComStar felt an understandable tremor of fear work its way down the backs of the persons responsible for maintaining that edge.
- Tyrantly Ever After: Kurtis suggests that the reason why Flonne mistakenly assumed that he'd fallen in Love at First Sight with her when they met was because Flonne herself was crushing on him, and that was her way of dealing with it. Flonne's flustered reaction to his theory doesn't clear up whether or not he hit the mark.
- Darkest Destiny:
- Cassandra assumes that Rapunzel is just as duplicitous as her, and that she similarly doesn't have any real faith or trust in others.
- In a flashback, Varian assumes that Cassandra sees him as annoying and creepy.
- Cassandra accuses Varian of erasing the king and queen's memories in order to avoid dealing with the guilt or consequences of his past villainy. She refuses to acknowledge the part she played in any of this.
- Fate/Black Dawn:
- Shirou spends quite a lot of time worried about how much he might be projecting his feelings for Arturia onto Morgan. Even Morgan notices that he looks at them in a similar way.
- He also compares Morgan to Rin quite a bit, though that's a less positive association because Rin had become bitter and angry by the time he cast his final ritual.
- An Unpleasant Surprise, Ashley believes that Molly and Libby have been Brainwashed and groomed into being gay by their parents. Reading between the lines, it becomes clear Ashley is the one that's been indoctrinated to hate gay people by her own parents, parroting the same crap that she's heard from them.
- A Thing of Vikings:
- This is why the Hooligans of Berk have so many enemies. Many foreign kings cannot accept that the Hooligans are peaceful since they themselves would use dragons to wipe out their enemies.
- Psychological projection in espionage is the subject for chapter 135's epigraph.
- For the Glory of Irk: During the lead-up to his and Lor's wedding, Dib deflects his nervousness by claiming that he's just worried for Lor, who is definitely extremely worried about how important the wedding is for Earth/Syndicate relations. Needless to say, no one believes this, and Lor himself is very casual through the whole thing.
- Karma Circle: Judgement: Daan Yel briefly conflates Gaz with the Irken who tortured him, due to her similarly cruel personality. His mentor Purgatory warns him that he's falling into this trope, and not to do so, as it will affect his judgement of her.
- For His Own Sake: Naru falsely believes that her parents favor her stepsister Mei over her. This is not remotely the case; Naru is simply so self-absorbed that she interprets Mei getting any favorable attention as taking it away from her. When her mother and stepsister come to bail her out of jail, she hits them both with a vicious diatribe, accusing them of not really caring about her at all, insisting that Mei is a Spoiled Brat who is only pretending to give a damn about Naru in order to make this all about her. The entire "The Reason You Suck" Speech would be better aimed at Naru herself, but she's so caught up in her delusions that she's incapable of seeing that.
- Played for Laughs in The Childhood Friend Alliance, where Ayuma Uehara tells Chisato Arashi that she shouldn't panic and act weird over her Childhood Friend Kanon getting close to another girl... which is what happened to Ayuma regarding her childhood friend in the anime and in Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS. Chisato herself is very confused at this statement, especially when Ayuma claims that this what she heard happened with a different school idol and certainly she didn't do.
- It's common for Lila to be depicted doing this. She thinks that everyone is lying about everything they say — be it their troubled home lives or how they interact with other people — just to garner attention and sympathy. Naturally, this reeks of hypocrisy on Lila's part.
- All's Fair in Love and War (And Turnabout's Fair Play): Lila firmly believes that there's no such thing as friendship — instead, all relationships boil down to people trying to manipulate each other for their own gain. She also believes that the only real difference between her and Marinette is that her rival is a bit too cautious, and simply lacks the wherewithal to make the kind of bold moves she does.
- In Chloe's Lament, Chloe accuses Marinette of being Secretly Selfish, only protecting Paris as Ladybug for admiration and praise while looking down upon the rabble as beneath her. Adrien calls her out on it — while she only cared about being a Nominal Hero in order to feed her ego, that doesn't mean Marinette shares her motivations. This directly leads to her downfall, as she Wishes to trade places with her, expecting to become Ladybug in the new reality while Marinette abuses her position as the Mayor's daughter and is just as despised as she was... only to find that no, Marinette is just as kind as ever, and she's still built up a reputation for being a bully. Except now she's in a world where her father's connections aren't good enough to protect her from the consequences of her actions.
- In Crimson and Noire, past Ladybug wielders frequently treated their Black Cat partners poorly. Plagg assumes that Crimson Beetle/Adrien is exactly the same; despite his staunchly supporting Lady Noir as both her heroic partner and a civilian, he continues to expect an inevitable betrayal. After Tikki calls him out on this, he decides to give Crimson a chance but makes clear that if he ever hurts Marinette, he will never forgive or forget that betrayal.
- A unique case in Hero Chat. In The Winter Gala, it's confirmed that Lila is aromantic, though not knowing the term exists and unaware that sexual and romantic attraction is real. She sees romance only as a means to find the right partner to start a family, and sees acts of romance as a flattery display no different than her own lying.
- Juleka vs. the Forces of the Universe: Chat Noir accuses Purple Tigress of being jealous of his "special partnership" with Ladybug. In reality, Chat Noir's a Green-Eyed Monster who hates Purple Tigress and the other heroes for existing, as he wants to force Ladybug into a Relationship Upgrade and has less leverage for doing so when she's got other heroes she can actually rely upon to support her. He's also been growing especially jealous of Tigress in the face of mounting evidence that Ladybug trusts her in ways that she doesn't trust Chat Noir, refusing to accept that she doesn't trust him due to his Skewed Priorities and unreliability.
- The Karma of Lies: One of the reasons why Adrien underestimates Lila so much is because he sees her as a Small Name, Big Ego who dramatically overestimates her importance and abilities. This applies more to Adrien himself, who believes that he benefits from Protagonist-Centered Morality and that he doesn't even need to work for his happy ending, as it's already guaranteed. Lila lets him assume that she's no real threat, twisting his arrogance to her advantage until she doesn't need him anymore, recognizing when to cut her losses and run... while Adrien refuses to accept that his choices have had undesirable consequences for him.
- This is one of Alya's Fatal Flaws in LadyBugOut: While she's quick to believe the worst of Ladybug and Marinette — that they've betrayed her by setting up the titular blog — she fails to recognize how her own actions set things into motion. This results in her unintentionally describing herself while trying to convince Marinette that she needs to make amends:Alya: I can't be friends with someone who won't apologize and can't even see what she did.
Marinette: I can't be friends with someone like that either. So I guess we're not friends anymore. - In Penumbra, Lila projects all of her worst qualities onto Marinette. This includes assuming that they're both after Adrien for the exact same reasons.
- A Price to Pay has Adrien accuse Marinette of being petty and self-centered. Why? Because she doesn't accept his Backhanded Apology for how he betrayed her, helped his father rip the Earrings right off her ears and make a Wish that rewrote reality so that somebody else died in exchange for reviving Emilie: Tom Dupain-Cheng. Adrien is so self-absorbed that he legitimately thinks she's the one that's "being unfair" by not easily forgiving him for sacrificing their original world or helping him try to "fix" their new reality when the Wish didn't pan out the way he expected.
- In chapter 3 of A Sum of Little Choices, Kagami Tsurugi initially sees Tom Dupain's eagerness in learning about his daughter's Marinette love life as an action of a micro-managing and heteronormative parent no different than Kagami's own mother. This stops when Tom reveals the wedding cake he was practicing has a bride (Marinette) flanked by another bride (Kagami) and a groom (Adrien), showing his support for the potential three-way relationship his daughter is entering. It ends up endearing him to Kagami in the end, with her calling him "dad" in affection.
- Weight Off Your Shoulder: After Chloe's Karma Houdini Warranty runs out, Adrien angrily accuses Marinette and the rest of the class of being too harsh and unsympathetic towards her, claiming that they lack empathy and refuse to recognize how much she's hurting. In truth, Adrien is the one refusing to even try understanding their point of view: Chloe has been getting away with bullying them all for years, and has done so gleefully, without so much as a flicker of remorse. All Adrien sees when he looks at her is a fellow Lonely Rich Kid, not the Rich Bitch they're all familiar with.
- The Wolves in the Woods: Alya led the charge against Marinette when she was Made Out to Be a Jerkass, insisting that her former bestie was clearly Driven by Envy of how successful Lila was. Eventually, it's revealed that Alya knew from the start that Lila wasn't telling the truth but took advantage of her fibbing to turn her classmates against Marinette. Why? Because Alya herself was jealous of how much success Marinette had been enjoying as a fashion designer recently and decided to "knock her down a few pegs" in hopes of turning her into an Extreme Doormat dependent upon Alya's generous support.
- In the Announcer AU, Tsubasa insists that Izuku must have lied to Hawks in order to get the Pro Hero to offer him an internship. Tsubasa himself has been making up all kinds of Malicious Slander to try and paint Izuku in a bad light.
- Cain sees Katsuki constantly engaging in this, due to his completely self-centered reinterpretation of reality:
- He repeatedly insists that Izuku is obsessed with him, claiming that Deku is a creepy stalker hellbent not just on forcing his way into his life, but ruining everything for him. Meanwhile, Katsuki himself draws perverse pleasure from tormenting Izuku, even before he accidentally witnesses All Might making Izuku his apprentice and starts constantly spying on them.
- He accuses Izuku of being a Manipulative Bastard who loves Playing the Victim Card while treating Izuku's very existence as a personal slight against him. He also spreads Malicious Slander, even trying to convince Inko that Toshinori has been secretly abusing Izuku in hopes that she'll put a stop to their meetings.
- When he isn't insulting Izuku for being a 'worthless crybaby', he dismisses his emotional breakdowns as Crocodile Tears, exaggerated for the sole purpose of making others feel sorry for him. Katsuki himself dissolves into Inelegant Blubbering when Toshinori confronts and calls him out on his horrible, villainous behavior.
- When he learns that Izuku has transferred to another school, he immediately thinks that "Deku would go fucking ballistic isolated from him. Stalkers always go nuts the further from their target they get." Cue Sanity Slippage on Katsuki's end as he frantically tries to hunt his favorite target down.
- He convinces himself that Izuku is a Control Freak intent on locking down every aspect of Katsuki's life, while Katsuki was the one who spent years ensuring that Izuku had no friends, constantly terrorizing him, destroying his belongings, and trying to prevent him from pursuing any of his dreams.
- A Clear Pattern of Behavior: Katsuki wrongly assumes that Aizawa, Inui and the rest of the staff at U.A. share his callous disregard for Izuku, and that the only reason they gave him detention after attempting to assault his fellow student was so they could remind him to stick to "plausible deniability" and only openly attack him during training exercises.
- Coyote: In one Omake, Riley suggests that the reason why Aizawa is so harsh on his students is due to this; his own Quirk would have been useless in U.A.'s Entrance Exam, making him envious of those who could pass without it. Rather than sympathizing, Riley calls him a Hypocrite.
- Dekugate:
- Members of the titular online community insist that the Hero Commission is made up of Control Freaks who have micromanaged the lives of All Might and those around him, forcing them to pretend that they're a happy family in order to suit their self-serving narrative. In particular, they want to position Izuku as his "fake father's" successor. Yet it's the members of the Dekugate community who treat everyone's lives as though they should be their own personal playthings, eagerly trying to workshop ways to break up All Might's marriage and get his son out of the way so they can hook him up with David Shield.
- Despite constantly railing against All Might's hypothetical homophobic "handlers", the whole Dekugate community also refuses to acknowledge that Toshinori and David Shield are both openly and proudly bisexual, insisting that their sexuality "doesn't count" if they're not currently with a partner of the same gender.
- It's very much implied in Dekiru: The Fusion Hero! that one of the reasons Izuku's Fusion Dance Quirk is such a Berserk Button for Shoto Todoroki is that it reminds him of how his father forced his mother into a Quirk Marriage. Notably when he brings up Izuku's Fusions in chapter 14, he only mentions his past fusions with Ochako and Momo and leaves out his fusion with Katsuki.
- Locked In Digital: When Todoroki realises Izuku was holding back during the first event of the Sports Festival, he becomes outraged since other people were giving their all and taking the Sports Festival seriously. This is all while Todoroki is still handicapping himself by not using his fire.
- Think Before You Speak: Aizawa's plan to get Izuku Convicted by Public Opinion and forced out of U.A. hinged heavily upon his assumption that others would naturally share the same sentiments he holds towards the boy. Namely, that he's a reckless Martyr Without a Cause who poses a danger to himself and others due to his poor control of his Quirk. The whole scheme blows up in his face because the majority don't cynically assume the worst of Izuku; instead, Aizawa gets into serious trouble for spreading Malicious Slander about an innocent student.
- We're Not Friends Kacchan: Since he was bullied for having a "naturally villainous Quirk", Aizawa assumes that Katsuki was subjected to the same torment, and that Izuku is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who loves Playing the Victim Card in order to get him into trouble. This colors his treatment of both, as he dismisses Katsuki's anger issues as simply being frustrated at constantly being Made Out to Be a Jerkass. When he finally learns that he's actually been enabling a Barbaric Bully and Blaming the Victim, Aizawa is understandably horrified, admitting that he let his own experiences blind him to what was really going on.
- In Witness (Good Neighbors), Fracture suggests that Shouto needs to take his job more seriously and that he's only in it for the glory and attention. In reality, Fracture himself is the one who cares more about his image and reputation than the work itself.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- A Brief History of Equestria: While the Narrator is generally good at giving alternative takes on historical events and ponies their due respect. But whenever the idea that Sullamander was gay or her predecessor was pedophiliac is brought up, the Narrator is quick to dismiss all such speculation as rooted in either shoddy investigation or scholars believing that Girl on Girl Is Hot.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!
- In Catarina Claes MUST DIE!, the Fortune Lover player reincarnated as Henrietta saw game!Catarina Claes as an amalgamation of all of her bullies, and enjoyed picking routes where Catarina's bullying got her killed. This is why she, in the Fortune Lover world, absolutely refuses to acknowledge that the Catarina she meets has done a Heel–Face Turn (because of her own Past-Life Memories) and no longer deserves her 'doom'; she subconsciously equates accepting Catarina's change of heart with forgiving her old bullies for what they did.
- Androgyninja's A Drop of Poison has this as one of Kakashi's Fatal Flaws. He mistakenly believed that the new Team Seven had much more in common with his old team than they actually did:
- While Naruto shares Obito's boisterous and outspoken nature, Obito was still a Child Soldier raised in the middle of war. He didn't enjoy killing, but understood that it was necessary at times, especially in self-defense. Naruto, by contrast, retains his initial naivete about how bloody and unforgiving the shinobi lifestyle can be, mistakenly assuming that any challenge can be conquered with enough stubborn determination.
- Aside from gender, Sakura has very little in common with Rin. Yet Kakashi expected her to fill the role of peacemaker and keeping the boys in line even as he neglected her training, failing to notice just how much resentment was building up over his blatant Double Standards.
- The best example is Sasuke, onto whom Kakashi projected the memory of his past self. While Kakashi was also an arrogant and egotistical brat at his age, he still understood things that Sasuke takes completely for granted. He also failed to see that Sasuke was arrogant enough to completely ignore orders, while Kakashi was the sort who took being a shinobi too seriously. His failure to see his students for who and what they actually were causes massive amounts of friction within Team Seven; by the time he finally starts to catch on, the damage has already been done.
- Played for Drama in Sakura's Glasses, where Sakura has been helping out the Uchiha Elders, though she's aware that she is a Replacement Goldfish for the late Obito who did the same, especially when they gave her his old goggles. When she finds his name on the Memorial Stone, she asks if he helped them because he felt weak and useless, just as she started helping them since she felt the same way beforehand. Unfortunately, the still-alive Obito was watching the stone to check on Kakashi, and seeing her insult him leads him to use a genjutsu to shatter her mind.
- Three's A Crowd:
- Kakashi recognizes that Sasuke is just as arrogant and prideful as he used to be when he was his age. Unfortunately, this causes him to downplay the severity of his arrogance, writing it off as the typical hard-headedness of teenage boys and assuming that all Sakura needs to do to earn Sasuke and Uo's respect is prove that she's just as skilled as them, if not more so. Naturally, this backfires: when Kakashi forces Sakura to demonstrate her tree-walking skills, both boys are enraged that a girl outperformed them, making the rift in their team even worse.
- Kakashi also expects Sakura to fulfill the same role Rin had in his original team, acting as The Heart who helped him and Obito work together. What he fails to understand is that Sakura is not Rin, just like Sasuke and Uo are not him and Obito; neither one of the boys cares one whit about their teammate, convinced that she's just "holding them back" by being the Only Sane Member.
- Time to Disinfect: Mari's mother accuses her of being completely self-absorbed and refusing to consider how her behavior impacts others. This is blatantly untrue about Mari, who cares deeply for her brother and her friends but describes her mother quite well.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act IV: Hokuto constantly condemns other living things, human and monster alike, for being evil, destructive beings who only care about themselves and will destroy everything around them and attack anything different. Considering the fact that Hokuto's idea of "true peace" amounts to reviving Alucard to destroy the world, as well as the fact that he set Kuyou loose on Yokai Academy, let Jovian and Jacqueline rape Felucia to near-insanity, and specifically ordered them to kill as many people and destroy as much as Tsukune's hometown as possible in an effort to prove to Moka that his nihilism is justified and humans and monsters can never co-exist, when it comes down to it, the only one who's as destructive and evil as Hokuto claims all living things are is Hokuto himself.
- Arc Royale: Headmaster Jaune suggests that Fate Jaune's contempt for all other versions of himself is a projection of Fate's self-loathing upon all of the other Jaunes. Especially Regular Jaune, since that is effectively who Fate was before he started going through the time loops.
- Children of Remnant: Emerald constantly talks about how much Jaune likes Cinder, and how they're obviously going to announce their engagement any day now. The truth is that Emerald is so deep in the closet that projecting her own feelings for Cinder onto Jaune is the only way she knows how to deal with them. Jaune does have some feelings for Cinder (he's a little offended by how quickly she denies being in a relationship with him), but certainly not to the extent that Emerald pretends.
- Craving the Sky: Adam and Cinder each project their own issues on Weiss:
- Adam is deeply bitter towards humanity as a whole and Jacques Schnee in particular. He also has massive rejection issues with Blake that he projects onto Weiss.
- Cinder assumes that Weiss's relationship with her siblings must be as fraught with conflict and hatred as her relationship with her own family. As a result, she can't understand why Weiss is willing to protect Whitley.
- Throughout Not this time, Fate, those who try to figure out why Jaune acts the way he does tend to project their own issues onto him and base their explanations off of that. Ruby, for instance, believes he must have lost somebody important when he was younger, while Blake suspects he's hiding a Dark and Troubled Past. Out of everyone, Adam Taurus gets closest to the truth when he pegs him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist out to achieve his goals at any cost.
