Questionable friendships in Video Games.
- Baldur's Gate II has some:
- Edwin, perhaps the most powerful recruitable mage in the game, surely the less humble. He will constantly remember how amazing and superior he is, compared to the main character, while insulting everyone thinking nobody's listening;
- Safana, a potential companion in BG1, but now willingly looking for a bounty on the main character's head once met near the end;
- In the expansion Throne of Bhaal, Sarevok if the player chooses to recruit him, considering the story. However, the player has the choice to pursue a route where he/she can redeem him.
- Dragon Quest V: Tuppence Tends to be unusually rude to his king, to the point of planning to steal his wife from him after he dies. He does respect him as a leader though, he's just envious of his skill with the ladies.
- In Fallout 4, if your relationship with Deacon sinks very low to the point of him hating you, he'll say this:Deacon: With friends like you, the Railroad doesn't need enemies!
- Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core has Genesis on the giving end. He's extremely petty towards Angeal and especially Sephiroth, whether out of not taking their concerns seriously (Angeal) or simple jealousy (Sephiroth). It's pretty telling that Sephiroth tells him he can rot after everything he pulls.
- Fire Emblem:
- In Fire Emblem: Awakening, the Black Knight says the trope (almost) word for word after Gangrel mocks the hell out of him in Rogues and Redeemers 2. To quote: "With allies like him, who needs enemies?"
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Ingrid is supposed to be part of the Childhood Friends group along with Dimitri, Sylvain, and Felix, but you wouldn't know it from the way she interacts with them, as her supports with them involve her scolding/yelling at them for various reasons and complains about always "having to" run around cleaning up their messes. Felix arguably counts as well given how abrasive he is, but his attitude is more because of ideological differences than personal ones and he acts like that to pretty much everyone in his House (barring Annette), not just his friends, and he tends to get called out for his behaviour a lot more than Ingrid does.
- Grand Theft Auto V: Michael Townley and Trevor Phillips may just be the best example of this trope. The two fight about everything, from how to approach a job to Michael's decision to retire. Trevor is extremely bitter about Michael giving him up to the police as part of a deal with the FIB and becomes homicidal when he discovers that their partner Brad was killed, instead of arrested like Trevor thought. Yet, no matter how bad things get between them, they can never stop caring about the other's well being. To borrow a quote from South Park, they're best friends whether they like it or not.
- This can cross over to real life with the Ju-on game for the Wii. Its multiplayer mode is comprised of player 1 playing the game as normal, and player 2 adding to the haunting the player is experiencing with timed button presses.
- Hiveswap: The cloister Jades are constantly at each others throats, turning on each other for slights and insulting each other like no tomorrow. Not to mention some members having no issue with getting others killed.
- In Knights of the Old Republic, the crew of the Ebon Hawk, both incarnations. Particularly notable between Carth and Bastila, Bastila and a dark-side player, HK-47 and everyone, Mandalore and Bao-dur, and Kreia and everyone. It's much, much worse in the second, though. Almost every single person hates everyone else, except for the Exile, who is the reason they're all there in the first place.
- Master Detective Archives: Rain Code: The protagonist, Yuma, isn't a bad person, though he's certainly unsure of himself. However, the same can't be said for his colleagues.
- Shinigami is a Heroic Comedic Sociopath and naturally argues with Yuma all the time or is oblivious to any emotional problems he has, serving as his essential mentor. In her case, it's justified due to being a death god.
- Chief Yakou constantly berates Yuma for defying the Amaterasu Corporation Peacekeepers (AKA doing his job as a detective), and doesn't see a problem with endangering him alongside the rest of the agency in Chapter 4, hypocritically making him a target of those very Peacekeepers.
- Halara is money-obsessed and will do anything to get their payment from Yuma (or just about anyone from the detective agency), and doesn't willingly help with the Nail Man investigation in Chapter 1 for moral reasons, only doing it due to being promised payment from Yuma. To add to this, Yuma is also clearly distressed by this, but Halara doesn't even take notice of this.
- Desuhiko appears to not have an issue with devaluing Yuma at the beginning of Chapter 2 and only seems to stop doing so when he fulfills his perverted tendencies, though this can be explained by him having a big ego. Desuhiko happens to also be The Friend Nobody Likes.
- Downplayed for Fubuki. She is the only one who's actually kind to Yuma and has no ulterior motives behind her behavior, but she is prone to being Innocently Insensitive because she's clueless to her surroundings most of the time. This ends up in her making Yuma a frequent target of her occasional stupidity, which causes him great distress.
- Vivia is a Lazy Bum who is much more concerned with personal pleasure than he is with making any meaningful connection with the others, and he's also fine with becoming Yuma's opponent in Chapter 4 and trying to murder him to stop him from realizing who the case's culprit is later on in the story.
- This constantly happens in Koudelka. One or more of them argue every time they are in a cut-scene together.
- The Legion and the Trow in Myth II. There's even a mission named after the trope. On the evil side, the Watcher and the Deceiver, whose rivalry stretches back over a millennium, and who actually seem to prefer fighting each other than dealing with the good guys.
- Onmyōji (2016): What makes Ibaraki-dōji memorable is his blatantly masochistic loyalty toward his old friend Shuten-dōji, even though the latter treats him like dirt the moment they reunite and, as commented by Seimei, never really acted like a proper friend in the first place.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic and Knuckles in the earlier games. Even after the two became allies at the end of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, they still find themselves clashing with each other either due to their contrasting attitudes, worldviews, and egos. As time goes on, they're getting along better; but still snark and tease each other every now and then, and like to be smug when they get one over on each other.
- Even after Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic considers Shadow a friend, which doesn't explain the times the two hedgehogs clashed due to their conflicting goals in various games, even during the time Shadow had amnesia. Even if Shadow doesn't consider Sonic a friend, he does work well with him when the situation calls for it; and does seem to at least care a bit about him deep down, despite being loath to admit it.
- The Babylon Rogues from the Sonic Riders series come across as this, mostly Wave and Storm who bicker and insult each other to no end, but Jet is also often shown getting annoyed with Wave's nagging and Storm's daftness, respectively.
- The actual name of a mission in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. In order to find the place where Jim Raynor is imprisoned, the Raiders want to use Colonel Orlan, the best hacker in the sector. Orlan is being kept on ice since the last game by Mira Han, who'll be happy to turn him over... as soon as Jim gives his okay since the imprisonment deal was made with him. And since she can't just hand over prisoners without damaging her reputation, which as a mercenary is her most prized possession... Oh, and she's Matt Horner's (Jim's Number Two) accidental ex-wife.
- Happens a lot in the first third of Tales of the Abyss. The party tells haughty Jerkass Luke virtually nothing about their motives, intentionally keeps valuable information from him, and is openly defying the one person he trusts. Then, after Luke is manipulated into destroying Akzeriuth, they all yell at him for not trusting them.
- Luke himself is typically quite abrasive toward his companions (even Ion and Mieu, the only two people who put up with him no matter what he does), refuses to admit that he is wrong or that Van is in any way untrustworthy and is also quite selfish (he wants to save Akzeriuth Van's way because it will make him a hero and because Van promised to take him to Daath). Of course, he's actually seven so his entire character during that point makes unfortunate sense. He gets better, to the point of being the nicest person in the entire game (discounting Ion).
- They don't really get away from this trope until the end game either as they continue to treat Luke as the Butt-Monkey and keep various secrets and avoid talking about their problems. A stand out example is the fact Anise is The Mole and the consequences of her being such.
- If this is sounds horribly unfair, well, it's meant to come across that way. One of game's main themes is Scapegoatism; the idea that humans, by our very nature, will often try to offload responsibility onto another being or entity rather than deal with it ourselves. Luke, being a Deconstruction of The Chosen One, makes an easy target for this sort of thing.
- Tony Hawk's Underground: Eric Sparrow in a nutshell! The guy starts off as your one true friend you help out and then later attempts to upstage the protagonist of the story just to rise on top in the skating fame by backstabbing the protagonist three times to a point where he's willing to have the protagonist kicked off the team after turning pro. It's very refreshing to play the game twice just to get the pleasure to watch the protagonist punch him out.
- Almost everyone in Touhou Project has at least one of these, and it seems to be one of those inevitable hazards of living in Gensokyo. Reimu in particular has managed to develop friendships with Suika Ibuki, a Stalker without a Crush oni that mooches off of her; Yukari Yakumo, a teasing, scheming Reality Warper; and most notably Marisa Kirisame, an insane kleptomaniac Cute Witch who has twice attempted to sic EX bosses on her by giving Reimu's name when introducing herself (Flandre Scarlet in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Mamizou Futatsuiwa in Ten Desires).
- In Until Dawn, aside from Sam, it's not really known how close the others were with Hannah, but they were willing to prank her in a humiliating fashion. For that matter, Hannah seemed perfectly okay with having an affair with Mike, knowing he was dating Emily at the time.
- In the present time, Jessica and Emily can get into a nasty catfight. Mike and Matt can wrestle with each other. They still pull pranks on each other which is slightly in poor taste, considering two of their friends (Hannah and Beth) died because of their hijinks the year before.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Dunban really needs to find better friends.
- At the very start of the game, when he and his friends are fighting a losing battle Mumkar doesn’t hesitate to abandon him and Dickson purely to save his own hide, and it gets even worse. It turns out that Mumkar was actually Metal Face the whole time, which means that he’s the one who nearly destroyed Dunban’s home and (presumably) killed his sister. The only reason that Mumkar allied himself with Dunban to begin with was because he planned on eventually betraying him from the start so that he could get his hands on the Monado.
- It’s eventually revealed that Dickson isn’t any better. He’s a disciple of Zanza, and he was raising Shulk simply because he was acting as a host for Zanza until he can re-awaken. Since the Monado is Zanza’s sword, it was Dickison’s job to keep an eye on it until he was ready to use it again. Dunban was wielding it at the time, which is why he acted as his friend. Like Mumkar, he was planning on betraying him from the start.
