Screw You, Elves! moments in Video Games.
- Deconstructed in Age of Wonders. In the first game, the elves are invaded by the humans for no real reason, and are chased out of their homelands. It takes the entire second game for them to redeem themselves. In the third game, The Empire, run by humans, accuses the elves of being responsible for the alien invasion, and initiates a genocide. As if that was not enough, whenever you play as the elves, you can expect human enemies to invoke this trope, every now and then.
- Baldur's Gate:
- Some Elven NPCs have the unfortunate tendency to come off as snobbish wankers, and the player (or, in his place, many of your party members) does indeed get the option of telling them where to stick it. The game does not punish you for this.
- Irenicus actively refers to humans as vermin. The proper way to say "screw you" to that (should you be playing a human) is to stave in his skull with Crom Faeyr. And when you find out just how much the elves screwed up, you and some of your party members get to tell them where to stick it.
- Despite being an elf himself, Xan is happy (or not) to remind other elves of how doomed they are. Of course, he has this attitude towards everyone and everything...
- This has already happened in Dragon Age.
- Elves were formerly slaves and are still heavily discriminated against. The trope is basically inverted, since Elves are treated as the "low men" and humans as the "high men" of the setting. Playing an elf gives you numerous dialogue options on the lines of "Screw You, Human!"
- The Dalish elves of Thedas refused to convert to the Chantry and submit to human rule, becoming vilified by Andrastian society and criminals under Chantry law due to their religious beliefs. As a result, there are often harsh "Screw You, Dalish!" burns and a general "Screw You, Dalish!" attitude in the series directed toward the Dalish for not being part of the status quo. Anders condescendingly acts as if Merrill's elven upbringing is simply wrong in a few conversations and tries to persuade her to adopt Andrastian views in Dragon Age II:Anders: Maybe you don't really understand the difference between spirits and demons.
Merrill: Did I ask you?
Anders: Spirits were the first children of the Maker, but He turned his back on them to dote on His mortal creations. The ones who resented this became demons, driven to take everything mortals had and gain back the Maker's favor.
Merrill: Your "Maker" is a story you humans use to explain the world. We have our own stories. I don't need to borrow yours. - Even other elves can get in on this. In the City Elf origin, if you ask the local shopkeeper in the Alienage what he knows about the Dalish, he'll outright tell you to forget whatever idyllic things you've heard about them because in his experience, they're barely better than savages.
- There's also an example of Screw You, Dwarves; the Dwarven capital of Orzammar has strict Fantastic Caste System and looks down on those outside it... despite it being the biggest reason they're dying out. Surface dwarves often express bewilderment that Ozammar dwarves can be so smug despite living in a dank hole in the ground that's constantly under attack by darkspawn. Casteless dwarves (which technically includes all Surface dwarves) tend to agree.Varric: You know what Orzammar is? It's cramped tunnels, filled with nug-shit and body-odour. And every person there thinks he's better than you because his great-great-great grandfather made a water-clock or something.
- In Dragon Age: Inquisition this sentiment is expressed by Solas. (Not just towards Elves—any hidebound traditionalist culture that restricts the freedom of its people is fair game.) Also by Sera, who detests elven culture (especially Dalish, even though she gives no indication she's met any Dalish elves before meeting the Dalish Inquisitor) and any elf she thinks acts "too elfy." Probably best summed up in this exchange:Solas: It is a shame, Sera, that you were denied an elven life. Even one as patchwork as the Dalish interpretation.
Sera: Who said I was?
Solas: Were you not orphaned young and raised by humans?
Sera: (Groans) You think the only reason I'm not "elfy" is because I have no choice? Poor me, right? Well, I've seen. I know. "Elven life" is backwards and boring. - The Inquisitor can choose to say "screw you" to the Qun if he or she decides saving Iron Bull's mercenary company is more important than the Qun alliance.
- Overall, perhaps the biggest Screw You! to the elves was done by their own people. As it turns out, the ancient empire of the elves was just as corrupt and oppressive as the modern Tevinter Empire, with only the rich and powerful possessing the coveted immortality while the rest were treated as second class citizens at best, slaves at worst. It only stopped when the nobles got trapped in the Fade after they murdered one of their own in their lust for power. Oh, and the gods that the Dalish worship? The ones that they pray to for protection and blessings, and whom they dedicate their traditional facial tattoos to, and whom were genrally believed to have been sealed away by a trickster god? They were the aforementioned nobles. The tattoos were slave markings meant to identify which "god" (noble) the slave belonged to, and the "trickster god" sealed them away to keep them from destroying the world. It just goes to show that humans and elves weren't so different after all.
- In fact, Dragon Age: Inquisition seems to have a hard-on for this trope. The Elven Inquisitor can only be Dalish, and pretty much every named Elven Companion and NPC gets a dig at the Dalish's supposed haughty superiority at least once, and several non-elven characters too. The Inquisitor's only two elven companions Solas and Sera both despise the Dalish, and never fail to let the Inquisitor know it. In fact, if they're romanced by a Dalish Inquisitor, they often pepper their praise with backhanded comments against her people, and make it clear they still think her people are trash but she's okay because she's not like other Dalish.
- Dwarf Fortress. Nobody likes the elves. Especially not the dwarves, due to their strongly differing views on various ethical topics like making trophies from kills and eating sentients; sometimes they'll end up on friendly terms during world generation, but war is pretty typical in most cases. Players do not like elves because said elves are often condescending or even rude ("A hairy drunkard has come hither to once more disrespect the sanctity of life, I see"), order dwarves to limit their tree-cutting (depending on the fortress' industries and climate, this can be anywhere from easily obeyed to utterly unreasonable), and generally bring subpar goods — occasionally mixed with something useful, like elephants and bears. Dwarves in worldgen say "screw you" by slaughtering elves in combat a hundred to one (elven armor and weapons are wooden, dwarves have steel), while players get very brutally creative in their methods. It's brought to its extreme by Cacame Awemedinade Monípalóthi, who became the only Elf King of the Dwarves to avenge his wife. As the story goes, a fellow elf literally ate his wife. In a deep rage he joined the Dwarven Military and rose to the station of King through sheer hatred of his own species. According to his nickname, The Immortal Onslaught, he succeeded.
- The Elder Scrolls provides a ton of antipathy between the the races of Mer (Elves) and the races of Men throughout the series and in the backstory. In fact, much of Tamriellic history can be summed up as "Elves and Men fighting," with "Men" winning more often than not, leading to this trope. To note:
- Several of the series' Big Bads have been Elves of one type or another. Dagoth Ur from Morrowind, Almalexia in the Tribunal expansion, Mankar Camoran in Oblivion, and Umaril the Unfeathered in the Knights of the Nine expansion. Jagar Tharn, the Big Bad Evil Sorcerer in Arena is later revealed to have Dunmer ancestry. While Daggerfall is mostly Gray-and-Grey Morality, one of the most "villainous" characters who can receive the totem in the game's Multiple Endings is Mannimarco ("the King of Worms") who is an Altmer-turned-Lich.
- The backstory provides numerous examples of massive conflicts between the races of Men and Elves. The earliest such conflict took place in the 1st Era between the Atmorans (ancestors of the Nords) and the Falmer (Snow Elves) in Skyrim. An event known as the "Night of Tears" (which each side blames the other for) saw the Falmer slaughter and burn the Atmoran/Nord city of Saarthal. In revenge, Ysgramor recruited an army of 500 Atmorans and invaded Skyrim, nearly driving the Falmer to extinction.
- The Alessian Revolt, later in the 1st Era, was an uprising of Cyrodiil's native human population which had been enslaved and brutally tortured by the Ayleids (Wild Elves). With her freed slave army, the support of the Nordic Empire, several rebel Ayleid lords, and a few of the gods themselves, St. Alessia drove the Ayleids into virtual extinction. She would become the founder of the first empire of men in Cyrodiil in the process. Alessia's champion, the divine warrior Pelinal Whitestrake, was perhaps the living embodiment of this trope. He was sent by the Divines to answer a prayer from Alessia. Decked out in a full suit of platemail armor (which only the Dwemer could craft at the time, and everyone else had bronze armor at best), he was a bloodthirsty (specifically Elf blood) Berserker of the highest order. He first wandered into Alessia's camp drenched in Ayleid blood and would fly into such Berserker Rages that he permanently damaged the lands themselves while fighting Ayleids. He was in fact so Ax-Crazy that he even butchered thousands of Khajiit under the assumption they were another breed of elf before realizing his mistake. Countless scores of Ayleids fell in his wake, to the point where the Divines had to send in rains to cleanse Ayleids forts and villages of Ayleids blood before they could be used by Alessia's forces, and he even defeated (but could not kill) the immortal Ayleid leader, Umaril the Unfeathered, before he was cut into pieces by Umaril's servants. (In Oblivion's Knights of the Nine expansion, the Player Character is granted the title Pelinal Reborn, seeking to defeat a resurrected and vengence-filled Umaril.)
- The Battle of Red Mountain in the 1st Era was a rare victory for the elves. After centuries of domination and expansion out of Skyrim, the Nord army, led by the Tongues (masters of the Thu'um), was annihilated at Red Mountain in Morrowind by a coalition of Dwemer and Chimer forces. This marked the farthest expanse of the Nordic Empire and led to a drop-off in the use of the Thu'um as a weapon after Jurgen Windcaller, one of the defeated Tongues, created the Way of the Voice to use the Thu'um only to honor the gods. The victory would only be a temporary one however, as the Dwemer and Chimer would split apart due to significant religious conflicts, with the entire Dwemer race disappearing without a trace and the Chimer becoming cursed into the modern Dunmer.
- The Tiber Wars were a series of wars fought in the late 2nd Era as part of Tiber Septim's campaign to conquer all of Tamriel. Septim had conquered all but Morrowind (protected by their Physical Gods and the Summerset Isles (protected by their powerful magics), the only two provinces the last empire out of Cyrodiil, led by the Reman Dynasty, had failed to conquer. Unknown to Septim, the Dunmer demi-gods of Morrowind, known as the Tribunal, had been cut off from their divine power source by their ancient enemy, Dagoth Ur. Septim's legions easily sacked Mournhold, the capital of Morrowind. Without their gods to protect them, the rest of Morrowind would have been devastated in a protracted war with Septim's legions. Knowing this, Vivec, one of these gods, met with Septim and forged an Armistice. Morrowind would join the empire as a Voluntary Vassal, sparing his people from war. In addition, Vivec offered the Dwemer-crafted Reality Warping Humongous Mecha - The Numidium - to Septim in exchange for special privileges for Morrowind. (Specifically, continued Great House rule, free worship of the Tribunal, and the right to continue practicing slavery which was outlawed elsewhere in the empire.) Septim then used the Numidium to Curb Stomp the Altmer of the Summerset Isles (devastating their army and sacking their capital in less than hour), bringing them under the rule of men for the first time in history.
- The Argonians, a long time Slave Race to the Dunmer, got to do this to the Dunmer in between the events of Oblivion and Skyrim. The Dunmer were subjected to the loss of their Physical Gods, the Oblivion Crisis, being abandoned by the Empire, a moon crashing into their province, and the eruption of Red Mountain. Then the Argonians invaded and captured the still-habitable parts of mainland Morrowind, along with the rich ebony deposits therein. The 4th Era Dunmer are now a broken and scattered race, in search of their place in the world (both literally and figuratively).
- The Khajiit pulled this on their long-time rivals, the Bosmer, during the Five Year War. After getting rid of their Nord advisors, whose fighting style was too different for the Khajiit to successfully adopt, the Khajiit proceeded to brutalize the Bosmer, capturing territory and raiding deep into Valenwood. The Bosmer had to invoke the Wild Hunt in order to finally bring the war to an end.
- Skyrim:
- The Aldmeri Dominion, governed by the Thalmor, has taken over Summerset Isles, Valenwood, Elsweyr, is in a stalemate in Hammerfell, and has a tenuous peace (with lots of strings they got to attach) with the remnants of the Empire (it's not really a lasting peace, everyone knows it's only an interbellum). You will feel the strong urge to kill off Thalmor goon squads roving the roads in Skyrim because of their supreme hubris and arrogance. Even several Empire players, Imperial Legion characters (who are supposedly allied with them), other elven races, and even many of their own race, the High Elves, have a strong antipathy towards them.
- Killing any NPC in any hold who didn't provoke the attack will slap you with a rather large one thousand septim bounty for murder. Any NPC, that is, save for Thalmor. You'll still get the forty septim bounty for assault, but killing a Thalmor NPC incurs zero bounty. You can even get around this by first provoking the Thalmor into attacking you, which prompts any nearby city guards into attacking them. That's right, brutally murdering half a dozen elves in front of the city guard gets you little more than a slap on the wrist (and even that can be tossed out if you're a thane). That goes to show just how much the Thalmor are hated in Skyrim.
- Kill Ondolemar, the Thalmor leader in Markarth and pay the 40 Septim bounty. Upon exiting the prison you'll receive 100 gold Septims (tax deductible) and a letter of Inheritance from the Jarl, which really feels like he's thanking you for getting rid of the asshole.
- You may occasionally come across several Thalmor Justiciars escorting a prisoner, you can give the prisoner weapons and free him. And of course, you can overdo your job by shoving his pockets with dozens of Magic Staff and let him slaughter the Thalmor on his own.
- The stalemate between Hammerfell and the Dominion that existed just after the Great War was ended when the Redguards removed the Dominion by use of guerrilla warfare, thus giving the Redguards of Hammerfell their own Screw You, Elves! moment.
- Likewise, the Argonians, as mentioned above, have been less than enthused at the idea of returning to the days of Elves lording over them, besides Hammerfell, Black Marsh and the occupied Morrowind, as of current time the game takes place in is the only other one able to stop and repel the Thalmor's conquest.
- The main reason Ulfric started the Stormcloaks was so he and the Nords could do this, because the Empire was, in his mind, too weak and scared to do so. Of course, he probably takes it a little bit far.
- Even the game developers endorse this. The late concept artist Adam Adamowicz comments on an "Elf Grinder" trap he devised for Skyrim:
Adamowicz: It's kind of like a Cuisinart or a disposal in a sink, specifically for grinding up elves into a fine, purple, glittery powder. 'Cause they deserve it.- Ysgramor, the legendary Atmoran warrior who lead the Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Snow Elves during the Merethic Era, firmly believed this. Tellingly, his battle-axe Wuuthrad was enchanted to cause considerable damage against (most) Elven races and adorned with the image of a elf screaming in terror.
- Also, of course, there's a Whiterun quest and a section of the main quest line that specifically involves you messing up Thalmor bases of operation.
- And to top it all off, the current page image for this quote is three of the Thalmor being brutally slain by the Player Character.
- Playing as an elf or using elven weapons and armour will get you a few mocking comments by the Nord guards. Do both, and you will likely get a lot of mocking comments.
- First Emissary Elenwen is a Thalmor official who shows up repeatedly in the main story. Her role and attitude make most people strongly dislike her at best. Unfortunately, she's extremely important to the main story, so you can't kill her. Right? Wrong! Advance far enough in the main quest and Elenwen loses her essential tag, meaning that she's now fair game for murder. Yes, the devs went out of their way to make it possible to kill Elenwen specifically because she's so obnoxious.
- In Homeworld: Cataclysm the protagonist captain viciously scolds the Bentusi, an ancient alien race, for an attempt to run away from a galactic threat instead of helping the Kushans to fight it. Note that he did it while they were decimating his fleet for hampering their escape. Admittedly, Bentusi were generally nice guys, not at all arrogant or condescending to Kushans. They were just VERY afraid of said galactic threat and the fear embittered them.
- All over Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Specifically, there are the literal elves, and there are the Fae who better embody the trope the elves of most settings fill, they are immortal in only so much as they are always reborn to replay their unchanging role within the world where as mortals stay dead, thus with the surgance of mortals into the world an entire court of fae has gone crazy and tried to wipe all mortals out to bring things back to normalcy for themselves. The game is all about The Unchosen One being brought back to life and literally giving fate the middle finger, as you kill the shit out of the evil court of fae, and on one side quest early on, can even subvert the other court of fae's natural cycle of history just for the lulz.
- The Dragon Campaign in The Legend of Dragoon, in which humans waged war against the Winglies who ruled over them, was essentially this.
- Interestingly, while Mass Effect provides a quote, the game as a whole averts this. True, some of the aliens are jerks. The face of the turian Councilor comes to mind, usually accompanied by a strong urge to punch it,note but there are also plenty examples of really nice ones, such as the asari Liara and the quarian Tali (even Joker and Navigator Pressly like her). Like Kaidan said, the aliens are actually quite human once you know them. Even the krogans.
- The asari kinda-sorta fit the trope, due to their immense age and wisdom, and are held in very high regard by virtually every other species (for a couple of reasons...). As the quote page shows, however, they're not perfect.
- One of the biggest Screw You, Elves! comments about the asari comes from one of their own: Matriarch Aethyta, aka the bartender at Illium's Eternity lounge. She had great advice, which could have kept humans from becoming the most powerful race in the galaxy, and they "laughed the blue off [her] ass." So now she serves drinks behind a bar. She's a little bitter.
- The biggest Screw You, Elves! moment with the asari comes when it's revealed that reason they are the most advanced race in the galaxy is due to the Protheans having nurtured their early civilisation, manipulated their genetics to bestow "natural" biotic abilities, as well as leaving an intact Prothean Beacon to aid in their technological development. The Protheans intended them to become the dominant power in the next Cycle and have enough of a technological head-start to defeat the Reapers. However, it failed because the asari became technologically stagnant, as they relied on data-mining the Beacon to keep themselves ahead, allowing them to lord their superiority over the other races. When the next Cycle came, the asari retreated to their homeworld and buried their heads in the sand, and quickly got curbstomped by the Reapers.
- This trope of course gets brought up against the Reapers, especially with the one on Rannoch where Shepard can call it out for how the Reapers keep dodging any questions about the motives behind their genocidal wars and yet still claim their actions are for the best. Javik provides another case after the Leviathan DLC. After The Reveal about the Leviathans and their creation of the Reapers and their former dominance of the galaxy, he makes clear his hatred of the Leviathans and that they deserved their fate at the hands (so to speak) of the Reapers after they felt everything in the galaxy was theirs to do with as they pleased. Even the Catalyst has this opinion of them, saying they were "part of the problem" with chaos in the galaxy.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda has an asari squadmate who has a dim view on the asari's elvishness, brought on by a childhood raised by a mother who tried playing the trope to the hilt. Cora's Loyalty Mission also has the current asari Pathfinder trying to play the old "I've been doing this since before your ancestors etc" bit, but Ryder flatly refuses to have it (and in this case, it's shown even some of the other nearby asari think she's an arrogant prat).
- Not expressed directly, but Jaal the angaran has a low opinion of the Sages of Havarl, who tend to stay in their Hidden Elf Village and only rarely descend to interact with anyone else. He feels their goal of hoarding knowledge defeats the purpose of having it in the first place, which is to share it.
- This is the rallying cry of the Transcended from Nexus Clash whenever fighting Angels.
- A recurring theme in the Overlord games. Elves, being one of the "good" races serve as hero antagonists to your Evil Overlord. They're usually not all that much better than humans, serving mostly as a target of mockery for Evil Chancellor Gnarl and are usually screwed over royally throughout the games. The first game has them being enslaved by the Dwarves (with an option to ensure their extinction by choosing to save a sack of gold over the last Elven women) and the second one has most of them being enslaved by The Empire, with the remaining free elves all a bunch of annoying hippies and you later commit a Moral Event Horizon towards them by poisoning the soul of Queen Fay with your dark power, driving her insane and making her a Fallen Hero.
- With all the crap that elves of Shadowbane are responsible for (they made pacts with demons, worshiped the Beast Lords, and even waged war against the All-Father, slew the Archon of Peace with Shadowbane (when ended very badly for them), created the art of Necromancy, bread minotaurs from human slaves) it's pretty easy to understand why the Temple of the Cleansing Flame wants to burn them at the stake.
- Throughout the Shin Megami Tensei series, God and Satan Are Both Jerks (God Is Evil and Lucifer doesn't really give a crap about humanity so much as he wants things his way). And boy, do they like to lord their moral and intellectual superiority over man. As such, the Neutral path in most games invokes this trope - the main character tells both sides to shut the hell up, defeats them, and creates a world free from outside influence for humanity to live in peace.
- Jim Raynor from StarCraft doesn't hesitate to get up in the face of Protoss Judicator Aldaris, who's mocking his offer of help in the face of a Zerg invasion, pal.
- Although that was slightly a case of I'm Standing Right Here.
- Other Terrans generally respond by shooting them on sight or dropping tactical nuclear weapons on their heads. They're totally justified though: the initial response of the Protoss to the Zerg onslaught was to torch Terran planets without warning. The manual states that the Protoss had hated the way Terrans lived and wanted to torch them already, only to be held back by their non-interference policies. Then when the Zerg arrived, they'd intentionally wait until the only way to remove them was to burn the entire world, so they could exterminate the Terrans with a semi-clean conscience. Only Tassadar seemed to have a serious problem with this course of action.
- Pre-release versions of Starbound tended to give this treatment to the Hylotl, massively playing up their arrogance and snobbery while having most of the other races mock them for it. Post-release, much of the content was rewritten to allow them to have at least basic dignity and respect (the other races might not understand or agree with their culture, but they're not openly making fun of it). Even the Florans, their racial enemies, have a few nice things to say about them.
- Fallen Empires in Stellaris are remnants of Precursor empires. Their techs are millennia ahead of standard empires, they know this, and they will demand you submit to their requests lest you... displease them. But they had become complacent, they produce nothing and their ships are irreplaceable, so they're not invincible and you can (and encouraged to) defeat them. They will not take kindly that these upstart empires have defeated them, and boy it will feel good. Just be careful not to actually make them feel threatened before you're ready to deliver the deathblow though... This does vary depending on which Fallen Empire it is and what your own Empire is, though; in some combinations their attituded is more "proud and protective parents".
- In Suikoden, the elves have the worst relations with other races precisely because people react the way real-life people would to their constant condescension. This comes back to bite them in the first game, where their lack of allies results in them finding out the hard way that they are definitely not better, especially not when a small elven settlement is being attacked by an entire empire, and doesn't accept outside help.
- It's amazing how little superior magic, culture, and physical perfection will help when you live in a forest and someone has a giant mirror that can use the power of the sun to set things on fire from hundreds of miles away.
- Suikoden IV brings more of the same with its own group of elves, who are constantly on the verge of war with the neighboring human village, mainly because of their own pretentious posturing. The only elf in the game who's not an arrogant prick is the one who was born outside the village due to her mother being exiled for an unspecified offense (which probably involved not being obnoxious enough to the humans).
- Suikoden V has the elves of Alseid be very vocal about disliking the "barbarous humans", which is a shame since you can't even go there. There are instances, however, that show that they also fear the humans, like in the Furo Scene where Urda seems very intimidated by Cathari's gun.
- Every game has at least one elf who either went to live among humans or at least has an open mind about them. Kirkis in Suikoden I was the only one among his tribe who figured out allying with the Liberation Army was the only way to prevent their impending fiery deaths, Paula in IV is noticeable as an elf just because of her ears, otherwise behaving as a perfectly normal if slightly solemn girl, and Isato of V serves the human Oracle partly in order to preserve his lands, and partly just out of pure loyalty. In general, the subplots involving elves always result in one of them calling out their own kin on the stupidity of their attitude.
- On whole averted in Suikoden III where the elves you found, Roland and Nei, are perfectly sociable around humans and doesn't bother with any silly prejudices. Roland is even one of Chris' honored knights.
- A memorable moment in Tales of Phantasia happens somewhat toward the end. The uppity elves have finally agreed to accept humans in their Hidden Elf Village, but not half-elves, because they still blamed them for the debacle with the Mana Cannon a bit over a century ago.note The elves claimed that the halfbreeds could not be trusted, since they possessed the power of elven magic but lacked the elven values to employ it responsibly. Cless then kindly tells them to shove it, as the whole reason halfbreeds had human values was that the elves kicked them out in the first place and they had no choice but to live among humans.
- Interestingly enough, in Tales of Symphonia, after Lloyd calls out the elves for their racism towards half-elves giving rise to Cruxis, the elder will, if you talk to him after the party evacuates Heimdall, admit that perhaps the elves are the most to blame for what happened.
- Symphonia provides another odd case of this during its Wham Episode. Lord Remiel when he shows his true colors, shows the egotism usually associated with this trope and asks Kratos for aid, and Kratos mocks him for being an angel asking for help against humans (technically two humans and two half elves). The line is made odd by Kratos being an angel himself.
- The half-elf Desians also treat humans as cattle including Kratos's late wife. Kratos is less than happy about this.
- In Touhou, the plot of Silent Sinner in Blue and Cage in Lunatic Runagate could be summed up as "Screw You, Lunarians!".
- Earlier on, the back-story of Imperishable Night implies that the Lunarians suffered this at the hand of the Americans in an incident involving the Apollo Missions, largely resulting from the former having not fought an actual war for over a thousand years.
- This
World of Warcraft comic.- There's also a sword that does this to the Blood Elves in the game. To elaborate, there is a rare drop in the Icecrown Citadel instances that starts a long quest chain to reforge an old weapon given to the High Elves by the dragons. At one point you have to take the sword and submerge it in the sunwell, the Blood Elves' power source. After you do so, they assume you are returning the sword to them. Their leader tries to take it off you. Except the sword decides it likes you better and sends him flying. They're furious, even more so if you're a member of the Alliance. It doesn't play out this way if you're a Blood Elf, of course, in which case they're eager to assist you. Then again, one Blood Elf also points out that the leader's "foolish" attempt to seize the sword is to blame for his injuries.
- Warcraft III, WoW's RTS predecessor, has several campaigns where you take the fight to the elves and shove their superiority up their asses.
- First was the Undead campaign's assault on the Sunwell Plateau, which saw the player cruise through High Elf bases with zombie hordes, sweeping aside all the tricks and defenses of the High Elves and their Ranger General, Sylvanas Windrunner. Then you beat her, and to cap it all off, you raise her as an undead monstrosity and defile their precious Sunwell just to resurrect a high level Undead wizard as a powerful Lich.
Then there's the fight between the Orcs and the Night Elves, with the Warsong chieftain Grom Hellscream slaughtering his way through the forest, killing many Night Elf warriors and razing their forests and bases for lumber, and when the Night Elf demigod Cenarius interferes, Grom drinks from a demonic fountain of power and uses that power to wipe out Cenarius. - Their luck in the expansion, The Frozen Throne, doesn't improve. The Night Elves get embroiled in a war against one of their former heroes and the fish-like Naga, which all proves fruitless when all the Naga's leader wanted to do was destroy the Undead capital of Icecrown.
Then the High Elves get rejected by the Human Alliance leader and get imprisoned, only to flee to the protection of a demon, the same man who led the Naga, who has the High Elves assault a demon capital for their new home.....only to be forced by the demons' leader, Kil'jaeden, to hunt down and destroy the Undead capital of Icecrown once and for all.......a task they end up failing miserably.
- First was the Undead campaign's assault on the Sunwell Plateau, which saw the player cruise through High Elf bases with zombie hordes, sweeping aside all the tricks and defenses of the High Elves and their Ranger General, Sylvanas Windrunner. Then you beat her, and to cap it all off, you raise her as an undead monstrosity and defile their precious Sunwell just to resurrect a high level Undead wizard as a powerful Lich.
- The Blood Elves, the High Elves focused on in the expansion, are an odd case where this trope turns them into a Woobie Species. The loss of the Sunwell makes them realize they'd been addicted to mana all along but never noticed it, and they begin allying with ever more objectionable people to sate their hunger.
- Related to the previous point, Othmar Garithos, the leader of the Lordaeron Survivors in The Frozen Throne, believes he's making use of this trope by treating the Blood Elves like dirt and leaving them on a suicide mission against the Undead. However, he happened to be doing this to what was the only group of elves that weren't acting all arrogant and superior.
- Taken to extremes in The War of the Ancients novel trilogy against the Night Elf Highborne 10,000 years in the past. The leader of the coalition against the Burning Legion is against the use of accepting aid from the dwarves and tauren because he's an Upper-Class Twit, and even the other Night Elves consider this racist attitude in the face of an enemy threatening to wipe out all life on the planet idiotic.
- Next to the Elves are the Draenei, who are even older as a race than elves, appear to be more technologically and culturally advanced, are very tall, have very powerful magic, and have supposedly great wisdom. However, they are as a whole running from the Burning Legion, who seek to destroy them, and are partially composed of corrupted members of their own race. Though unlike most of the examples, they are fully aware of this, and make no pretensions otherwise.
