The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything / Video Games

• AdventureQuest: There's vampires who never drink blood, rogues who never do anything particularly rogue-like, a treasure hunter that's almost never seen hunting treasure, a water elf who spends disturbing amounts of time on dry land well away from water, and a farmer who'd rather be a dread necromancer... among other things.
• Most of the pirates in Alundra 2, only time we see proper pirates is in the protagonist's flashback. Protagonist himself, a pirate hunter, doesn't really do any pirate hunting.
• American McGee's Alice and its sequel are Grimmifications of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, so of course the Mad Hatter will appear. Except he doesn't make hats, he's a Mad Scientist specializing in cybernetics and machines.
• Arknights: While Rhodes Island is referred to as a pharmaceutical corporation, they only engage in medical work in Operator Records, with most of the plot having them work as Private Military Contractors. They don't even make medicine in-game to sell for cash, instead using factories to make gold. The later chapters eventually offer a reason for this — Rhodes Island is the successor to Tower of Babel, created by the Sarkaz Queen Theresa to aid her during the Kazdel Civil War. The heavily militarized nature of the organization is likely because they were originally a military force.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Assassin's Creed II features "thieves" who can be hired by the player. When they are, they act as quick and agile fighters. The rest of the time, they are just hanging around on rooftops and other hidden areas and looking "stealthy". Either way, they never seem to do any thieving at all. And then there are the prostitutes (called courtesans). Their job is to distract guards, which they are remarkably good at considering that they never actually put out. This is handled better with the Romani dancers in Revelations, who are actually meant to be a distraction.
  • Averted with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag which takes place during The Golden Age of Piracy; everyone who calls himself/herself a pirate, player character Edward included, participate heartily in proper piracy. Funnily enough, it seems to have inverted the trope somewhat in-series as although there's plenty of piracy and Edward is fully capable of assassination, the actual nature of being an assassin is downplayed and Edward doesn't even join the cause formally until the last leg of his journey. This did not escape the notice of many longtime fans of the series.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, the vikings never seem to do any actual raiding. You're literally not allowed to kill civilians, the one thing Vikings were most famous for. The most you can do is politely steal the treasure from conveniently placed treasure chests in churches.
• Astra Hunter Zosma: Captain Scuttlebone is much less enthusiastic about pirating than in Brave Hero Yuusha and she feels that her best days are behind her. As a result, she and her crew spend their days eating and drinking in a seaside bar. Zosma's task in Scorpius Shoal is to reignite her passion for treasure hunting.
• The Baldur's Gate series at least tries to justify the latter as much as it can manage (mostly that said adventurers have come into a situation they couldn't handle alone and need a group to help them with), but still lets in a few Fridge Logic NPCs here and there. Subverted in Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. You find some adventurers in a dungeon, and they ARE actually on an adventure. They start pestering you to give them a quest, but you are so far above their level that you give them busywork to get them out of your hair.
• Buckshot Roulette: The dealer is suggested to be a demon, but aside from running a completely consensual Deadly Game, it doesn't do anything one would expect of a Hellish emissary onscreen. It doesn't even take the player's soul if they die, since their afterlife is a very abstract Heaven. It did apparently challenge God to its game and win, though - then again, perhaps the dealer is God.
• In Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle, the trope is discussed by the titular character. She's initially surprised that her father wants to take on cargo, thinking it's the wrong job for pirates, although is mollified somewhat when he says he means dangerous, maybe-illicit cargo. Also, she notes that Razzo probably needs to work on his piratical instincts. ("Isn't this stealing?")
• The "great adventurer" Toma in Chrono Trigger spends pretty much the entire game drinking in a bar and talking big... which does, at least, get acknowledged in-game. In the game's present day, you learn that he did find what he was looking for, at least.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Adam Jensen is supposed to be the chief of security to Sarif Industries, but after the opening scenes he doesn't spend two minutes doing his actual job, instead being turned into a spy/hitman/all around problem solver for his boss. The job description of a security chief should rarely involve crawling around ventilation ducts and disposing terrorists personally.
  • Somewhat lampshaded if your gaming instincts take over and you start looting your coworkers' offices: eventually you'll get emails asking Jensen to investigate a series of petty thefts in his capacity as chief of security.
  • The original plan for the opening level/tutorial averted this: it was going to feature Jensen breaking in to a secure facility, only to have it revealed at the end that the facility belongs to Sarif and it was all part of a demonstration of security vulnerabilities.
  • The previous idea is somewhat referenced the actual game: if Jensen infiltrates the terrorist occupied Sarif plant via the vent on the roof, he informs Prichard that he will mention the vent on his next security report, presumably with the intent of getting that liability resolved.
• Dr Z in Dinosaur King (the DS version) wants to realise his dream of riding on the backs of dinosaurs. He does nothing (aside from his initial act of acquiring a Dinoshot to summon dinosaurs) towards that aim during the entire game, instead getting his minions to go around, menace the local populations, and infest areas with robots.
• In Dishonored, the player character Corvo Attano is the Royal Protector, which means he is supposed to be the Empress' personal bodyguard and to protect her from threats at all times. So why does she send him far, far away for months on a quest to find a cure for the plague which is decimating her city? It turns out there's actually a reason for this: she did so on the recommendation of the Royal Spymaster, who's trying to assassinate the Empress and wants a few months without Corvo so he can hire some untraceable assassins that can bump her off without interference.
  • In the extension Knife of Dunwall, you play the master assassin Daud. Daud is not a nice guy and killing people is supposed to be his job, but you can play in a completely non-lethal way if you want. If you do so, this is lampshaded by your lieutenant, who points out that you're not yourself these days and that not killing people is not your habit. (This is more or less justified by the fact that Daud is questioning himself and feeling guilty for murdering the Empress.) However, if you go out of your way to murder everyone and leave a pile of bodies at your wake, your lieutenant will think that you're slipping since as a master assassin you really shouldn't be killing that many people.
• Dungeons & Dragons-based video games (such as Neverwinter Nights or Stormreach) tend to feature an inordinate number of career adventurers sitting around in taverns or campsites, practically begging you to delve into loot-filled dungeons in their stead, as well as a bunch of adventurers who are just waiting for someone with actual work ethic to turn up and talk them into seeking fortune and glory (i.e. the main character).
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In general throughout the series, the player can become the head of several guilds and factions. Fortunately, nobody expects you to do things like run the organizations, participate in politics, debate religious doctrine, etc. After all, that would interfere with your actual job of delving into caves and fighting bandits and monsters. There are a few exceptions, however. To note:
  • Downplayed in Daggerfall, in that it is established that you aren't actually head of the various guilds (not even of the regional guild, as in Morrowind), just amongst the most high-ranking members.
  • Morrowind:
    • Averted with the Imperial Cult. You can only advance so far due to not being a full time priest, even after the local leadership has noticed you have met several of their gods.
    • Great House Telvanni plays with it — their outlook on things means it actually makes sense that most of the actual running or details are left to someone else once you become a Master or the Archmagister. It is, instead, the mid-level ranks where the player doesn't have to do any of the stuff that is supposed to come with the rank^note The entire point of the Mouth position is to represent their Master in council and handle a lot of the actual political running of things so their Master doesn't have to..
    • Most people recognize that the protagonist is sufficiently badass that their time is better spent battling world-threatening events than doing paperwork. For instance, far enough into the main quest, you end up appointed "Hortator" by the three Great Houses, supposedly making you a joint warchief. Rather than being put in charge of any armies, though, you are officially recognized as a one-person army. They even tell you that your new duty is to venture into dark and dangerous places where no one else would dare to enter. In addition, many organisations have established procedures with middle-management people running things smoothly (and possibly dipping into the till) without the important people at the top having to bother.
  • Skyrim:
    • None of the named members of the Thieves' Guild or Dark Brotherhood are ever shown actually doing their jobs (unless they are specifically accompanying the Dragonborn). They much prefer sitting around the clubhouse, swapping stories of their past exploits, and cajoling the Dragonborn into doing their missions for them.
    • Downplayed by the Companions, who you may run into in random encounters in the wilderness hunting sabrecats and mammoths and such. If you are observant on your way to Whiterun for the first time, you may see a group of them killing a giant who was harassing a farm when you come to Whiterun.
    • Also Downplayed with the College of Winterhold, but it's very easy to miss. Every day at around 2 PM, lectures on magic will be held in the college, so it is carrying out some educational practices.
    • Minor guild the Bard's College generally averts this — the members are seen brushing up on lore, practicing musical instruments, singing, all of the usual bardic stuff. You are the one they allow in to explicitly handle outside jobs.
• The Pirate storyline in Escape Velocity Nova really doesn't make the player character into much of a pirate — it is about resurrecting and then leading the Association of Free Traders, who are more smugglers than pirates (they're a group of semi-legal free traders banded together to protect themselves from piratical predations and the Federation's blatantly MegaCorp-slanted trade laws). The only plundering going on is aimed at actual pirates, and consequently tends to be ignored by the legal authorities.
• The MMORPG EverQuest features gnome pirates who have to constantly remind each other to talk "piratey." They're bad at following through on the details, but they like the idea of being pirates.
• The player character in Fallout 3 never does any marriage counselling or pedicuring or whatever the GOAT selected for them. Justified in that it was supposed to be your job in the Vault... which you end up having to flee from the very day you turn of age. Averted by Butch DeLoria, who was assigned "hairdresser", and later admits to being a barber.
  • Like the above Elder Scrolls examples, Fallout 4 can have the player become the General of the Minutemen and the Head of the Institute within relatively short order of meeting both. As the heads of such, you don't seem to do much battle planning for the Minutemen (unless "walk in with Power Armor and a mini gun and kill everything in sight" counts as planning), and you don't do much actual scientific research for the Institute (hell, you can become the leader of the greatest post-war scientific institution with a comically low Intelligence score of 1).
• Officially, Bambi "Buck" Hughes is supposed to be a former soldier turned mercenary who kills people for Hoyt Volker on the Rook Islands in Far Cry 3. In the actual game, all we see him do is hang around bars for beer like a stereotypical crass Aussie, and coerce Jason Brody into going on a Fetch Quest for him while he lies around in the sunlight. The closest he comes to actual combat is when Jason finds out he's keeping his friend Keith as a Sex Slave and engages him in a Knife Fight, and even then, the fight doesn't go in Buck's favor. At all.
• In Final Fantasy XII Vaan wants to escape the poverty and oppression of Archadian occupation to become a sky pirate. Fran and Balthier are notorious sky pirates. And Reddas is a former sky pirate who runs a whole smuggler's port full of sky pirates. Don't expect to see any actual piracy in the skies though (or on the high seas or anywhere else for that matter), or even an explanation of what sky pirates actually do with the massive amount of free time they seem to have.
  • It's mentioned in-game that the moniker "sky pirate" has drifted from "person who robs airships" to a generalized sort of adventurer-type who probably spends more time hunting monsters and raiding ruins.
  • We do get to see plenty of sky pirates in action in Revenant Wings. Aside from the player characters it seems to involve theft, murder, slavery, and the odd bit of genocide. The player characters prefer to beat up other sky pirates and take their money, which is only somewhat less reprehensible.
  • Duodecim lampshades this, as the name for the mannikin version of Vaan is "Idle Sky Pirate."
• Final Fantasy V has a band of pirates stuck in an inland sea, where there is little to no sea travel, because of the Torna Canal being closed. Pillaging seems to be beyond their understanding; if you do sail into town, they'll just head for the inn and get drunk, forcing you to actually pay the undefended townsfolk for any goods you need.
  • Averted by their leader Faris, whose first reaction to finding out she has a princess in her custody is to hold said princess for ransom, and then subverted again when she discovers that said princess has the same Orphan's Plot Trinket as she does and realizes that they are long lost siblings.
• In Final Fantasy VII, we have the Turks (Reno, Rude, Elena and Tseng mostly), who are supposed to be high ranking officials of the intelligence and security division of the Shinra Electric Company. Instead of doing any administrative or security work, they spend most of the game trying to abduct Aeris.
  • Lampshaded by Elena, the Rookie. When you meet them in Wutai Rude and Reno are too drunk to stand and she tries to get them to fight you. Rude replies that they are in Wutai on vacation.
  • The Mayor of Midgar is an Authority in Name Only whose only real purpose is to be officially in charge so Shinra can pretend that the city isn't a Company Town. In truth, he does almost nothing in regards to running the city (or at all), and when Avalanche raids Shinra HQ, he helps them out of sheer boredom.
• Similar to other Pirate examples; the pirate crew in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade doesn't seem to be, well, that piratey. They seem to be more Mercenaries/hirable ferry. However; they are a bit of an aversion of the pirate tropes — Lyn is very distrustful of them merely because pirates actually do pillage and plunder because her parents and the rest of her tribesmates WERE killed by bandits...
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Garreg Mach is called a monastery, but in practice it's just ye olde military base. The population mostly consists of soldiers, groundskeepers, merchants, combat teachers, and students. Nobody lives there for purposes of spiritual contemplation/isolation from secular life/tending to pilgrims/copying manuscripts, as in real life monasteries. If not for the optional choir practice and two rooms that contain religious iconography, it would be a bog-standard fortress.
• Captain Falcon from F-Zero falls into a similar rut, although the focus of his series is mainly on his side-business, racing. All of his Bounty Hunting (other than an aside mention in GX's Story Mode about him chasing a bounty through Samurai Goroh's territory and getting caught up in a race with him) is literally All There in the Manual.
• Subverted in Garou: Mark of the Wolves. You would think Bonne Jenet's pirate band are a literal case of the trope, but in their ending they actually do something pirate-related - namely, robbing Kain Heinlein's mansion of everything even vaguely valuable.
• Johnny from Guilty Gear is ostensibly a pirate captain, but all we really see him doing is flying around on his airship and hitting on the various female cast members. He also seems to be friends with Ky, who is head of the world police force.
• Half-Life series:
  • Gordon Freeman is a scientist who is never really seen doing any science. Even in the beginning of Half-Life, briefly depicting him working with the other Anomalous Materials Team members, his contribution to the experiment is pressing a button and pushing a cart. General consensus is that all the other scientists were better qualified (at least had seniority), given they all had access past biometric scanners where Freeman did not. On the other hand, Barney's comment ("Looks like you're in the barrel today") suggests Gordon just drew the short straw for this particular anomalous materials assignment, and would otherwise be reading gauges and writing equations on chalkboards with the other labcoats.
  • Lampshaded in Half-Life 2, after Gordon has thrown a switch as part of a lab experiment:
    Barney: Good job Gordon, throwing that switch and all. I can see your MIT education really pays for itself.
  • Perhaps also referenced in Gordon's meetings with the G-Man, who alternately refers to Gordon as "Mister Freeman" and "Doctor Freeman", with audible sarcasm quotes around the latter.
  • Less obvious is that he is stated to be a theoretical physicist. In reality, theoretical physicist don't really conduct many experiments, they basically sit around and think about really complicated math problems. The name was probably chosen to indicate Black Mesa research is getting at technology we can only imagine in real life, but if they're using it, it shouldn't be considered theoretical for them.
• In Hands of the Killer, the students of Murder College aren't actually murderers. They just like to practice on dolls, with the director even claiming that real death is too kitsch.
• The Mayor of Hidden City is almost never seen doing anything remotely mayorly. The other characters just do whatever they want with or without his authorization, and most of the cases involving him deal with his personal issues rather than his role and responsibility as the purported leader of the City.
• Kingdom of Loathing has a burgeoning pirate population, all of whom seemingly just wander around their cove and/or play drinking games. They make you clean their ship because they're too "busy" to do it, or anything else, themselves. Their ship never even leaves port unless you pretend to be the captain and guide them somewhere. The only time they do anything significant is in the special secret ending to the hippy/frat war, where the pirates launch a barrage of cannonballs and bomber airships to destroy most of the island. And that still isn't really pirating, because they don't bother with stealing things or capturing hapless maidens; they just blow stuff up.
• Averted in League of Legends: the actual pirate champion, Captain Gangplank, used to be treated as one of the comic relief characters, with his stereotypical pirate slang and his cannonballs and his ability to eat oranges to "cure his scurvy" and break out of curses and stuns in the process. He is, however, the only champion who was willing to shoot his own men to give others a "morale boost" (now removed for balance reasons). As more lore was released, it became clear that behind the child-friendly model is one of the worst bastards in the League.
  • Miss Fortune isn't much better. While she does have a better reputation than Gangplank, this is by Bilgewater's standards, and it's made clear there's a reason she's also a wanted criminal. The main difference is she doesn't treat her crew as completely disposable.
• In one flashback sequence in The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd, it is shown that Lechter Arundel was this back when he was student council president at Jenis Academy. The primary duty of the rest of the council was to track him down and force him to do his work. He stops appearing as this once he graduates and starts doing his real job (Erebonian Spy) full time.
• The Legend of Zelda series:
  • Though the "pirates" from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker love to boast about being the terror of the seas, they mostly just act as roughneck ferrymen for Link and the many people he rescues or works with over the course of the game. They're even ruled by a little girl whose mother was the previous pirate leader. They do eventually engage in about one and a half acts of actual piracy, but they don't seem particularly cutthroat in either case.
  • It gets worse in Phantom Hourglass, where Tetra seems to have gone crusader of the seas and wants to scold the owners of the "Ghost Ship" for kidnapping people. Which should be common business for pirates.
  • In Oracle of Seasons, the skeletal pirates eventually stop being stranded and set sail on the open seas, only to immediately become seasick, dock their ship and proceed to stand around on a beach for the rest of the game.
  • The Gerudo in The Ocarina of Time. Nabooru is sincerely horrified, to the point of open mutiny, by Ganondorf's conduct: "Though we're both thieves, I'm completely different from Ganondorf. With his followers, he stole from women and children, and he even killed people!" The Gerudo have pretty high standards for a race of desert bandits. More to the point, no Gerudo besides Ganondorf ever steals anything; if they catch Link trespassing, they'll throw him in prison without bothering to confiscate his items, allowing him to hookshot his way to freedom. By the time of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild the Gerudo have disavowed Ganondorf's actions and formed thriving civilizations. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask subverts this however, as there's a group of Gerudo pirates who murdered a Zora and kidnapped his children.
  • Depending on the game, Princess Zelda is shown doing very little by way of actual ruling. This tends to be justified by her being taken prisoner by the Big Bad, being placed in an enchanted sleep, etc. In most cases, the best she can do is contact Link and send him to save her and Hyrule. In the case for Twilight Princess her non royal duties are somewhat explained in promo-materials because Hyrule was invaded before her coronation.
• In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the Dead Dunes are populated by a large gang of supposed bandits. They are never shown attacking or robbing anyone and there really isn't anyone else in the area for them to prey on even if they wanted to. It could be argued that they are plundering the local ruins but since the premise of the game is that the world is going to end in a few days it is doubtful that anyone would care.
• Seth and Sed of Lost Odyssey are both pirates, but we never actually see them participating in piracy, despite Sed, having a ship (though no crew).
• MapleStory The job branch of Pirates as a whole. Of the eleven-and-a-half classes who are called Pirates and wear pirate-themed equipment, only six of them have anything close to the typical themes associated with pirates in their abilities or stories, and even among them only two classes look like actual pirates! Don't expect to be getting into any actual pirating activities once you're let loose either, aside maybe from the mass murdering.
• Kelly Chambers, your Bridge Bunny in Mass Effect 2, is supposed to be a psychological analyst: providing insights into the crew and informing you if they are overly stressed. She actually does none of that, acting more like a secretary who informs you of incoming messages and tells you when a crew member asks to speak to you. And she feeds your fish, if you flirt with her. The only "insights" she provides are when a newly recruited squad mate reports aboard, and all she gives you are platitudes that you've already figured out for yourself. Jacob Taylor is the one who actually has a better handle on crew morale. Materials found in Mass Effect 3 indicate that she was intended as a Honey Trap to spy on Shepard and ensure they followed Cerberus' plans, but ultimately had a case of Becoming the Mask and chose to prioritize Shepard over her mission.
• The Mongols in Medieval II: Total War. They might take one or two fortifications or throw an army at your capital every once and so often, but overall they just tend to sit there looking menacing, even on higher difficulties. Guess the Khan just felt like taking a holiday in Europe rather than conquering it.
• Metroid:
  • Samus Aran is repeatedly called a Bounty Hunter, except most games start with her on contracted missions given to her by the Galactic Federation, which generally range from reconnaissance to extermination, and anything else is just Samus exploring and fighting on her own prerogative. Part of this is the result of a culture-based translation issue, as despite both Japanese and English versions calling her a "bounty hunter", her Japanese creators actually see her as more of a general space adventurer, with the terms they use not inherently carrying the specific connotations they carry in the west, leading to Retro Studios jokingly referring to her as a "pro-bono hunter" when they discovered the dissonance. Later games such as Metroid Dread split the difference by implying that she does occasionally go after bounties for the cash offscreen, but she's ultimately more inclined to take on missions that appeal to her altruism, with supplementary material like the Super Metroid comic even having her show disgust when hearing another hunter happily talk about turning in Space Pirate limbs for the bounties.
  • The Space Pirates. While we do briefly get to see evidence of them destroying and pillaging things in supplementary material, with one such instance being part of Samus's backstory, the games themselves lack any instances of piracy save for the iconic scene in Super Metroid where Ridley successfully stole the Baby Metroid from the Galactic Federation facility. The Prime subseries has the Pirate Logs throughout the games establish that the Space Pirates do have a life and plans outside of trying to kill "the Hunter" (their little nickname for her gives you a guess what Samus does during her down time), with a few scans revealing that some of their weaponry is stolen from other species, but that's the extent of it. They seem to target galactic domination rather than plunder, making them closer to a warlord force than a pirate one.
• Villagers in Minecraft all have "professions" (except for the rare Nitwit type), but this mostly just determines the type of items they offer in trades; most of them never appear to do anything besides wander around their town. Farmers will plant crops, but fishers don't go near water or catch any fish, smiths don't construct weapons or armor, etc.
• Faith of Mirror's Edge is a Runner, carrying important data across one of the few remaining unmonitored channels left in the City. Or at least, that's what we're told. She only actually gets one message to deliver, and passes it off to Celeste before the end of the first chapter. Later events reveal it probably never got there. There are some Kent Brockman News reports paranoid about those employing the Runners suggesting a good portion of the population has hired one before, but there isn't much reason to actually believe them. Most of the other Runners seem to be more interested in political assassination or selling out friends. Justified, since Faith spends the rest of the game being hunted by the government after they interrupted her first delivery of the game.
  • This is also a case of What Could Have Been: unlockable content reveals that the bags played a larger role in early drafts of the plot, which seems to have been recycled into Mirror's Edge Catalyst, which makes much more of an effort to show the Runners in action: they're hired as couriers, thieves, and occasionally saboteurs by everyone from ordinary citizens, to crime lords, and even, it's implied, the Conglomerate themselves on occasion. La Résistance is explicitly a separate group from the Runners (though some Runners do work for them). The early main story missions and the side missions are all about standard day-to-day Runner activities, before Faith sticks her nose into matters that get the State Sec on her tail.
• In Monkey Island, pirates who actually do anything pirate-related are about as frequent as chicken's teeth. Even the protagonist, self-proclaimed "mighty pirate" that he is, never does anything more nefarious than your average Kleptomaniac Hero. The first game lampoons the idea with Guybrush's crew (who he has travelled all over Melee Island to find) flat out refusing to help him and instead sunbathing on the deck, treating the journey to Monkey Island like it's a cruise holiday. He does get the opportunity to sink the ship later in the game, instead travelling back with the Island's hermit, Herman Toothrot, who has his own ship. It turns out in the fourth game that this is canon and his former crew are pissed off with him because they had to find their way back to Melee without a ship (i.e., had to make some effort).
  • Justified in The Secret of Monkey Island (in which the pirates are afraid to sail because there's an evil ghost ship on the loose) and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (in which the Largo Embargo does not allow them to sail). Also lampshaded all the time by the responses Guybrush gets when he claims he's a mighty pirate ("You look more like a flooring inspector!").
  • This gets tossed out the window in The Curse of Monkey Island. You even get defenseless tourists to prey on if you want. In the same game, Guybrush calls his crew out on this trope when it seems they'd rather sing than sail.
    You say you're nasty pirates,
    Scheming, thieving bad bushwhackers;
    From what I've seen, I tell you
    you're not pirates, you're just slackers!
  • Out of the first two games full of pirates who don't do anything, the Men of Low Moral Fiber do by far the most nothing. They're slack enough in the original, but they spend pretty much the entire sequel dozing on a ledge. They have a lot of excuses for why they're up there.
    Man of Low Moral Fiber: No, it's the opposite of acrophobia...
    Guybrush: Sounds more like WORKAPHOBIA to me.
  • Escape from Monkey Island ramps this trope up to 11, to the extent that it lessens the blow of the pirates getting overrun by tourists. For instance, compare the SCUMM Bar from the first game, where pirates are downing grog, swinging on chandeliers and passing out on tables, to the one in the fourth game, which has about two or three people sitting around and playing darts.
  • The rather dynamic opening of Tales of Monkey Island's first episode is one large callback to series traditions. Guybrush faces LeChuck once more, complete with mystical voodoo artifact — assembled through yet another long-winded quest — a ship, lots of alleged treasure and a lazy crew sleeping in the hold.
    • Then in the second episode, you finally see some proper pirates (besides LeChuck) in The Siege of Spinner Cay. You do not fuck with McGillicutty.
    • In the fourth episode, it's revealed that the Pox of LeChuck that's been driving the conflict only affects real pirates, proving that while Guybrush may not be much of a pirate, he is a pirate.
• Zigzagged with Mortal Kombat character Kurtis Stryker. While from the beginning, he is described as and seen doing the duties of a police officer, his Mortal Kombat: Armageddon bio card says he is also a former member of the United States Marine Corps. and had served in the Gulf War. Unlike with Sonya and Jax, who are members of the U.S. Army Special Forces and wear their military identification necklaces, no evidence before or since has ever been seen of him being in the service.
• Moshi Monsters:
  • Dr. C Fingz is said to be a doctor, but he's never shown actually treating anyone. His main duty seems to be reading minds.
  • There's a whole species called "caped assassins" (who resemble Cat Ninjas), but due to it being a kids' game, they're never shown actually assassinating anyone (they also don't wear capes).
  • Missy Kix is said to be both a secret agent and a musician, and while she is shown making music, she's never shown being a secret agent.
  • Justified for Bjorn Squish, who's a worker for the power station but never does any work, but he's explicitly said to be a Lazy Bum.
  • Oiler's job is apparently to oil things but he never actually does it onscreen.
  • Big Chief Tiny Head has the title of chief, but is never shown actually leading anyone and in fact seems to be subservient to some of the other villains.
  • Professor Purplex isn't shown teaching anyone; she's only really seen as a pet.
• Mother 3 has Wess and Duster, practitioners of the Thief Arts. One of the conversations with the townsfolk involves a girl calling you "a thief that doesn't steal anything." They do sneaky things, yes, but not in a criminal way. They are considered to be somewhat odd by the other villagers, though.
  • It does bear mentioning that, pre-Time Skip, Tazmily was an idealistic paradise that didn't have or need any form of currency, and everyone was happy to help one another out; there WAS nothing to steal (the Hummingbird Egg aside, but Wess was the one who'd put it where it was, anyway).
• Natamin's Big Adventure: Ardala is the captain of a pirate ship, but she mostly uses it as a glorified transport vessel so that she can travel the world and rob houses like a burglar. Her crew resents her for that, and they actually mutiny at some point so that they can once more pillage like real pirates.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, you become a squire... which explicitly, as your knight tells you, doesn't require you to clean his stables and polish his armor, or really do anything at all expected of a squire. You don't even see him again and are perfectly free to continue adventuring with your own Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. This is justified, though, in that the sole reason for your promotion to squire was a legal technicality to let you face your court trial in Neverwinter rather than the Kangaroo Court of Luskan.
• In New Horizons, players can board and plunder ships to their heart's content, ransom or slaughter prisoners, and even attack towns, all things that real pirates definitely did. In fact, to become a pirate (unless they start as one), they must commit acts of piracy. Freeplay players can also potentially play this straight if they choose to do so, sailing around and doing quests that don't involve piracy acts.
• The shepherd in Oedipus in my Inventory never does any actual shepherding, and seems to spend all his life being summoned by kings and queens to do things.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness, there's an exploration team composed of a Slakoth and a Slowpoke who call themselves "Team Slackers, the zero-motivation exploration team". Each time they appear, they point out the fact that they don't really do anything besides just laying around, and they wonder why they even formed an exploration team in the first place.
  • Pokémon X and Y introduce Zygarde, a legendary Pokémon who is the protector of the ecosystem, acts as a mediator between Xerneas and Yveltal, and deals swift punishment to those that threaten the environment. That said, we never see it acting as a mediator, and in the game canon, there are at least three instances of ecosystem-destroying calamities^*Team Flare exploiting the power of Xerneas/Yveltal and the Ultimate Weapon for mass genocide in Pokémon X and Y, the Ultra Beasts attacking Alola in Pokémon Sun and Moon, and Necrozma draining the light of the Pokémon world on top of the Ultra Beast invasion in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon occurring while Zygarde's around, and in all three, we never see it do anything to curb them.
• The titular Professor Layton is noted for being an exceptional archaeologist and teacher, but is very often seen solving puzzles or deducting mysteries instead. In fact, he has to continually remind his assistant Luke that he's an archeologist, not a professional puzzle solver. His total canon appearances of him at his job? One. It wasn't even in one of the games!
• The only time we ever see any member of the World Annihilation Front actually trying to destroy much of anything is the very start of Sands of Destruction, where Morte tries to bomb Viteaux (she mostly just succeeds in scaring people, not actually causing damage — and one city is by no means the whole world). She's technically the leader of your group, but never manages to talk anybody into trying to actually, y'know, destroy the world (she does at least mention the idea, but everyone else just kind of chalks it up to Morte being nuts and goes on with their business; you actually end up helping more people than you hurt. There are other members of the Front, too, but you never see them or hear of their exploits. Perhaps justified in the end, since the Front's leader actually wants to remake the world with himself as its supreme ruler, rather than just raze the place to the ground.
• When Sea of Thieves first launched, treasure could only be sold to the three trading companies, meaning that although player pirates could rob other players of their loot, they were still going to give it to the company it was owed to, meaning all that really changes in raids is who’s doing the delivery. This was eventually changed with the addition of the fourth company The Reaper’s Bones, which accepts loot stolen from any company and makes robbery and warfare the central goal of their organization. In addition, the subsequent inclusion of sirens and their treasuries where they make siren gems added a neutral active party to be robbed, rather than just treasure buried by vague long-gone Precursors.
• Skies of Arcadia:
  • Blue Rogues are more in the nature of random do-gooders and adventurers, and look down on pirates who actually engage in, y'know, piracy. Some exposition reveals that Blue Rogues are in it for the challenge; any ship that can defend itself is technically a valid target. Vyse's little group still kill people and take their stuff, as per the genre standard... they're just very selective of who they do the "killing" part to. As they do spend a lot of time messing up the navy of the not-Spanish-really Empire, one could think of them as English privateers without an actual England to endorse them, at least until the end of the game when they essentially start their own England.
  • You might find you're getting less money than you could be for discoveries because a treasure hunter is discovering them first. You'll eventually meet him, in a restaurant run by a pirate you trounced earlier. He'll join you if you've discovered thirty discoveries, but if not he'll just hang around in the restaurant, not hunting much of anything, until you have.
• Star Fox:
  • The nominally "mercenary" team aren't very mercenary-ish in their business plans. Despite turning General Pepper's offer to join the army down cold in Star Fox 64, Peppy replaces him and leads the army in Star Fox Command. The ending to Star Fox 64 shows that Pepper paid the team quite a bit (depending on the score). They also were paid for Sauria and the Aparoid business. Star Fox Adventures actually begins with the team in a financial crisis from their lack of mercenary activity.
  • The rival Star Wolf team seem to get it wrong too, since they are considered criminals. Granted, realistically mercenaries are always a bit shady, but just living out the "whoever pays"-style doesn't warrant bounties.
• Story of Seasons (2014): The nature sprites who attend the young goddess Dessie—Flick, Pepita, Mora, Torque, and Gusto—are stated to be there to do Dessie's chores and educate her while she's growing up to be a full fledged goddess. But you never see them do their jobs, and only see them wandering the public fields. All but Mora actually talk about their jobs, at least—his is an Informed Ability.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • The Mario Brothers are allegedly plumbers. However, the only thing they ever seem to do involving plumbing is their habit of traveling via pipe — which real plumbers are not noted to do either. In the live-action movie and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, they do use their plumbing skills to stop an attempted sabotage/flooding at a dig site and then in a castle basement. Likewise, the animated series would occasionally show them using their plumbing skills and equipment, either for actual plumbing or for dire situations. This is referenced in Banjo-Tooie, when Loggo the toilet complains of being clogged:
    Kazooie: Then call a plumber. I think Mario's free at the moment.
    Loggo: I don't think he actually does that kind of work anymore...
  • Also referenced in There Will Be Brawl, where Mario claims to have done a lot of things, but denies being a plumber.
  • In contrast to most of the Mario universe, the Nintendo Comics System's Super Mario Bros. comics from the early 1990s feature a surprising amount of plumber-related content. The brothers built an impromptu network of water pipes to cool down a volcano, and saved the day when Bowser's poorly-thought-out plan to destroy the sewer resulted in a flood. There was also a running gag about Mario's obsession with a comic book series about a plunger-wielding plumber superhero. The shorter comic strips in between the stories included Luigi taking the reader on a tour of a plumbing museum, and Mario and Luigi's childhood trip to plumbing camp.
  • Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon: The first mission in the Haunted Towers is called "A Job For a Plumber", and indeed, Luigi has to restore the water supply to the mansion to complete the mission. Of course, the way he does it — fighting ghosts, monstrous crows, and Man-Eating Plants — isn't the type of thing you learn for such a profession. Professor E. Gadd's statement after finishing the mission implies he doesn't know that Luigi is actually a plumber by trade either.
  • This trend of the Mario Bros. not doing any plumbing is finally (and canonically) averted in Super Mario 3D World during the opening cutscene. Mario and Luigi use plumbing tools to fix an actual pipe.
  • Nintendo occasionally refers to Mario being a plumber in the past tense, it just being one of the many occupations he's had, alongside things like carpenter, doctor, and, of course, princess-rescuer. One instance of this caused a brief panic among fans until Nintendo reassured them that he's still a plumber, although he's "not limited to that."
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie defies the trope entirely, as they're shown in their first plumbing job after they decide to start their own business. The main plot kicks off when they try to address a burst pipe that's flooding the center of Brooklyn, and accidentally get sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • Princess Peach doesn't do many royal duties despite being the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom. She usually just stands around and looks pretty whenever she isn't kidnapped or playing games with her friends (and enemies). Sure, Peach does go on adventures herself and protect her kingdom in Super Princess Peach and the various RPG games, but she never does anything involving ruling her kingdom. The royal guards never do their job either, practically handing Peach over to the villains with next to no resistance. Bowser, on the other hand, actively rules his kingdom in many of the games. He commands his army and orders the construction of new settlements, among other things. Considering how much respect Bowser's minions have toward him despite his evil deeds (as seen in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, where they serve him out of admiration instead of fear), Bowser might very well be a better ruler than Peach.
  • Daisy's home kingdom of Sarasaland was only shown in her debut game, Super Mario Land, where Mario had to save her after she's been kidnapped by aliens, though it's sometimes mentioned in her biographies for the spinoffs where she's often seen with Peach beginning with Mario Tennis except for Super Smash Bros., not counting the trophies and stickers.
  • Mario Party Advance: All the Bob-ombs in Shroom City belong to a mysterious Bob-omb gang. However, despite the shady implications, they're all shown to be nice people who don't really do anything "ganglike" aside from having secret passwords.
  • The town of Rogueport in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a parody of the Grand Theft Auto Vice City-style setting, and as such has several examples of rogues, bandits, and roughnecks who are rarely, if ever, seen stealing or doing other unsavory things. Goombella even remarks of one character: "At least he's supposed to be a thief, but I've never seen him steal anything." While having a conversation with Toadsworth, the player can see two members of the Pianta Syndicate beating up members of the rival Robbo Gang. At one point, a bandit robs Mario of some coins, forcing the player to track said bandit down (the trope is zigzagged when the bandit returns the coins without a fuss, upon being caught). Also, one side quest has Mario track down a bandit that conned a Goomba. When the bandit is caught, the Goomba carts him off for, it's heavily implied, some less than savory retribution.
  • The explorer in Flipside in Super Paper Mario never actually goes out and explores anything, but he might say a few things about places Mario and company have already been to as the game progresses.
• Justified in Tales of Berseria, where Benwick and the other members of Aifread's Pirates happily talk about their past exploits, but don't really do any piracy during the game. That's because the captain has gone missing, and while nobody has any issues taking orders from First Mate Eizen, his priorities are trying to find the captain, then supporting the rest of the party's goals, both made much easier by keeping a low profile. Additionally, since every shipping lane in the world is controlled and protected by the Abbey, most pirate crews have given up on merchant raids and spend their time raiding the pristine-but-uninhabited ruins of the far islands instead.
• For bandits, we really don't see much banditing from Moses Sandor and his band in Tales of Legendia. Even when they move their base into town after being forced to leave their former base, the townspeople come to consider them to be pretty friendly people. Though their former does appear to show that they may have done plenty in past based on Moses room and all the gold they had.
• Downplayed and lampshaded in Tales of Vesperia. Karol, Yuri, and Judith form the guild "Brave Vesperia" at the start of the second act, but they ultimately don't do much guild work outside of sidequests (which are mostly available in the third arc). Considering the Big Bad and what he does, and them having to switch focus to dealing with the giant life eating Eldritch Abomination in the sky they don't have much time for guild work.
• Gameplay-wise, Medics in Team Fortress Classic gradually were used more and more exclusively for flag-capturing rather than as healers.
• Similarly, in Team Fortress 2, a lot of classes can specialize in things other than their job indicates: Demomen that engage in melee combat rather than any demolition, Medics who attack rather than heal, Spies and Scouts who engage in frontline combat rather than reconnaissance, Pyros who get most of their damage from their shotgun over their flamethrower, etc.
• Invoked and subverted in TimeShift: the protagonist is ostensibly a scientist, but he never really does any scientific tasks and his skill set seems more like that of a secret agent. Because that's exactly what he is. The "scientist" angle is a cover story. He's actually an undercover agent planted to keep an eye on Dr. Krone, as the government had suspected he was planning something.
• Reimu from the Touhou Project series is a miko in charge of maintaining the Great Hakurei barrier. From what everyone's seen, that consists of drinking tea, sweeping, and more tea.
  • Averted in Silent Sinner in Blue. Not only does Reimu spend the early part of the manga practicing to call upon the powers of Sumiyoshi, her opening battle with Yukari Yakumo involves her calling upon Ama no Iwata Wake no Mikoto. So she isn't so lazy that she never practiced channeling deities.
  • The official title of Patchouli Knowledge is librarian and tutor of the Scarlet Mansion, however no-one but her actually uses her library (with the exception of Marisa's regular bouts of kleptomania) and it seems unlikely Remilia values a good education. Granted, researching new magics might be what Remilia hired her for, this being an instance of "do what you love doing".
  • Reimu's case is lampshaded and deconstructed in Mountain of Faith; none of the humans pay the Hakurei Shrine more than lip service because Reimu doesn't fight the youkai as expected of a miko. So when the Moriya gang arrives, sets up their shrine, and starts actually sending their miko to fight youkai, Hakurei followers quit in favor of the new guys who actually do the job, endangering the Shrine and by extension the Barrier.
• Dupre in Ultima was apparently the mayor of Trinsic in Ultima IV. He joins the Avatar's party in the local tavern, where he's mostly busy drinking. And nobody ever brought his job up in the following parts of the series. But being a mayor was easy in Ultima IV, when characters didn't have daily schedules implemented yet, anyway!
• Remember all those mighty heroes of the first three Warcraft games? Well those who survived long enough to appear in World of Warcraft apparently earned the privilege of sitting around getting Player Characters to do all the heroing for them. Their main excuse is that they need to hold the fort. Partially justified as they are almost all royalty or rulers and can't go putting themselves in harms way.
• Xenogears:
  • Party member Citan Uzuki is supposed to be a doctor (well, as well as a mechanic, engineer, scholar, martial artist, master swordsman, spy for Solaris, ...), but he is never seen actually doing much medicine. He has one in-game ability related to healing, but it is more magical than medical and at least two other characters (who are not doctors) have similar abilities.
  • In the beginning of the game we can see that the main character Fei is a quite gifted painter and enjoys making art. During the rest of the game, Fei is arguably busy being the hero and generally being at the center of several multi-millenarian plans which will determine the fate of the world, but we never ever hear anything again about his artistic vocation. It only lasts for a few seconds at the beginning of the game. That said, his painting is still quite relevant to the plot, especially when the protagonists find a centuries old portrait with a similar technique....
• The Photography Club in Yandere Simulator is an In-Universe case of this. Supposedly, it's their job to take photos for the school yearbook, among other things (which is why all students allow you to photograph them if you're in the club). They actually just hang around their clubroom chatting all day. Their leader Fureddo Jonzu will straight up admit to this if you try to join, though he's happy to welcome you into their circle of friends anyway. Unless mysterious disappearances or murders start happening, and they decide that it's their job to go catch the killer...(If the leader's name didn't tip you off, they're expies of Mystery, Inc.)

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