Fantastic Racism/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Pretty much every single NPC in Ryzom displays this. There are four civilizations and two different factions, and everyone thinks that everyone else is an idiot.
  • The Witcher ...a major theme of the game...both the humans and the non-humans (elves and dwarves) display this, which leads to armed groups like the religious fanatical Order of the Flaming Rose and the terroristic Scoia'tel to commit horrific atrocities against the other race. Geralt himself is also a target of the racism.
  • Another Bioware game, Neverwinter Nights, also pulls on this, moreso in the first game than the second. In the first game, talking to common people on the streets would garner variable responses depending on your race or even class. The only race not discriminated was (surprise surprise) Human, but even then, if you were a Sorcerer or Barbarian, expect some hatred. It isn't like that in the second game as much, but there is some racism taken for laughs (like Neeshka the Tiefling calling dwarves "squat, smelly drunks" and Kelgar the Dwarf calling Tieflings "backstabbers").
  • Inphyy in Ninety-Nine Nights has a problem with goblins. Other people fight them and their evil leader. She hunts down their women and children to the dismay of her comrades.
  • Psychonauts: Raz's dad hates psychics because they cursed his whole family to die in water. Or does he?
  • Several games in the Tales (series) invoke this trope to varying degrees.
    • Much of the plot of Tales of Symphonia involves racism against half-elves on the part of humans and elves. Like the Teen Titans example above, the word "racism" itself is never actually used: the word "discrimination" is always used instead, even when it's just describing racial hatred rather than actual unfair treatment.
    • Mind you, the modern people have a semi-legitimate reason to hate half-elves, since the majority of the half-elves in the game belong to the Desians, a faction representing The Devil in the Big Bad's made-up religion that subjugates each world in turn to encourage them to do the whole "world regeneration" thing. However, it is eventually revealed that half-elves were already hated before the Big Bad set all this up.
    • Also, although not much is made of it, there seems to be a level of distrust of people from Mizuho.
    • Ozette too, because they oppose the Church of Martel.
      • Which is ironic, as that's the place that acts most racist towards half-elves. Pretty much anyone you talk to in Ozette makes a remark about how much they hate half-elves, even the children.
    • There's also a degree of this in Tales of Phantasia, although it's less central to the plot. It's not surprising, because Tales of Symphonia is implied to be set in the distant past of the same world as Tales of Phantasia.
    • In Tales of Eternia, the Inferian perception of Celestians is of warmongering, bloodthirsty monsters.
      • A library book in Imen reveals that Celestians have only a slightly better view of the Inferians. In fact, it was the racist feelings of the Celestians that triggered most of the games events.
    • Tales of Legendia has the Orerines (land dwellers) and the Ferines (sea dwellers).
      • This trope comes front and center in Tales of Rebirth with the humans versus the Gajumas (beast people).
      • And in the latter half of Tales of the Abyss, society must learn to accept "Replicas," exact copies of humans, exploring the question of What Measure Is a Non-Human?.
    • Tales of the Tempest had this trope as its entire plot. The fandom was not amused.
    • Tales of Innocence. A good slice of humanity is gaining powers from their status as reincarnations, and the government is kidnapping them for research purposes. Bonus points: the reincarnatees were having a race war with each other, which is bleeding into the awakened reincarnated humans. A real world war is being thrown into chaos because some of the soldiers have decided to fight the heaven war instead of the Earth war, and the divisions don't always match up.
  • Half the point of the Zone of the Enders series. In fact, "Ender" is a pejorative term by Earthlings referring to those born on Mars and the outer colonies. In turn, the Martians use it for those living on the outskirts of the solar system.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the main character Marche unknowingly refers to a bangaa (a race of reptilian humanoids) as a "lizard", which is soon revealed to be a form of ethnic slur against them. Though this is probably similar, if not equivalent, to someone calling you an 'ape' (Something that happens a few times to Humans in fiction, too) The lizard comment is used by some NPCs in Final Fantasy XII, and there are other indications of fantastic racism in that title, the most notable being a comment that "The Emperor is willing to overlook race for his more talented servants."
    • Similarly in Final Fantasy IX, the Burmecians are referred to as 'rats' and 'rodents' as a racial slur by those attempting their genocide.
      • On the other side of the coin, friendly NPCs are often shown to be afraid of Vivi because he's a black mage, and most of their experience with black mages involves them destroying their cities.
      • Lastly, to the game's credit, nobody even once raises an eyebrow or disrespects any members of the Qu race, despite them being universally depicted as food-obsessed, bumbling, baby-talking clown-looking things.
    • In Final Fantasy X, the stateless Al Bhed tend to be looked down on by regular humans, with the Church of Yevon being particularly harsh due to the Al Bhed violating Yevon's restrictions on the use of technology. Even Wakka is shown throughout the game to be distrustful of Al Bhed, though he becomes less so the further along the story gets.
    • Used to hell and back in Final Fantasy XI. Beastmen hate the player races, the player races hate Beastmen, Humes exploit African-Americans Native-Americans Galka, Elvaan are snooty to everyone, and even the cutesy Tarutaru have performed genocide on walking, talking frogs. To top it all off, the Precursors hate everyone but them. If there's a solid theme to FFXI, it's Fantastic Racism.
  • A lot of the villains in Dissidia Final Fantasy have a habit of referring to Zidane & Kuja with terms like "simian," "monkey," etc.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the Espers are the Other race that is being literally used by the humans. Terra's existence as a 'mixed' lineage child and the problems she has because of this are obviously her working through the 'racism.'
    • The empire treats Espers as basically magic batteries, not even awknowledging them as living creatures. No other humans interact with espers. As a result Terra's half esper nature is never brought up beyond it giving her terrifying power. A better example is the Thamasa residents and their ancestors that were feared and driven away due to their magic potential.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, after he goes insane, Sephiroth first believes that the humans betrayed "his" species, the Cetra, and develops a hostility bordering on vendetta towards them. After he finds out the truth (that what he was "cloned" from was not one of the Cetra, but something quite different), he just becomes completely evil without any particular prejudice.
  • The ninth and tenth Fire Emblem games have the Beorc (basically normal humans) and Laguz (humanoid shapeshifters). Despite being created equally by the universe's goddess, they both tend to have a tremendous amount of contempt for the other, as well as for hybrids between the two.
    • And in the 7th game, there was Marquess Arapham's hatred for the nomadic people of Sacae, which includes our plucky heroine and his very own captain of the guard.
  • Averted in Game Arts' Lunar and Grandia series. Despite being populated with many different humanoid species, both series avoid this trope with a few exceptions.
    • In Lunar Dragon Song, the humans, beastmen and the Vile Tribe hate each other. Eventually the beastmen learn to accept humans, and the Vile Tribe generally accept anyone who forsakes Althena and own darkness in the form of crystals as their own (near the end a few begin to question themselves).
    • This is also the case in Lunar Magic School, where the beastmen's hate of humans stands in the way of a human and a beastgirl getting married. And the Vile Tribe essentially hate everybody, and vice versa.
    • Vile Tribe versus humans also comes up in Silver Star Story. Eternal Blue might be the only game in the series that doesn't have some Fantastic Racism against the Vile Tribe, and that's only if you don't count the Childhood's End tie-in manga...
  • The orcs of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura are consistently oppressed, discriminated against, and stereotyped as near-mindless subhumans. There's even a political screed in the game titled "The Orcish Problem". Half-orcs got the same treatment as orcs even though there was no difference in intelligence between them and humans. A half-orc labour organiser is one of the most eloquent NPCs in the game. The trope is also subverted via the game's Space Jews, the stereotypically Jewish gnomes, who really are engaged in a globe-spanning Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion-style conspiracy to manipulate the other races of the world for profit and power.
    • The hostility between Mages and Technolist also counts. (This makes sense, considering one critically fails in the presence of the other...)
  • Mass Effect is replete with the speciesism the page quote describes. Salarians and krogans are on bad terms, as the latter are a bit miffed about the Depopulation Bomb that's rendered their species impotent and dying. Turians and humans have strained relations, mostly on the human side, as First Contact came in the form of the turians bombing a human colony from orbit. The batarians outright hate humans due to them encroaching on territory the batarians themselves want to develop for their own ends. Humans don't particularly like batarians for the latter's practice of slavery. Most of the alien species in general are sore toward humans due to their surprising expansionism, unprecedented growth, and their disproportionately powerful role in galactic politics. And humans themselves have formed extremist groups (Cerberus) and political parties (Terra Firma) encouraging something similar.
    • This does get a lot of healing if you save the Destiny Ascension and its ten thousand passengers at the end of the first game and carry that save file into the second. Bonus points if you put Anderson on the council, at least if you want your Spectre status back.
    • Not to mention the turian representative on the council will call out you out for committing genocide if you kill the rachni queen... and call you a fool if you spare it, exclaiming they will be lucky if the rachni don't overrun the galaxy now.
      • He is at least consistent; his remarks on the player's handling of the Zhu's Hope situation on Feros are similarly negative regardless of whether Shepard managed to save the Thorian-controlled colonists or simply killed them all.
    • The game also features a clever inversion of expected prejudices. The all-female asari species can reproduce with any other species. If you discuss this with your asari teammate, she'll explain that union between two asari is looked down upon as nothing has been gained. Indeed, she herself suffers under the stigma of being a *shudder* "pureblood."
    • Ashley also shows what looks like outward hints of fantastic racism by not trusting the alien team members at first, though a lot of her concerns are justified by the fact that she is pretty much in charge of operational security on the Normandy, and the alien crewmembers include a turian (whose species have had a violent history with humanity), a self-admitted quarian drifter, the asari daughter of the Big Bad's second in command, and a krogan mercenary - pretty much the most untrustworthy thing in the galaxy.
    • Then there's the quarians: No one likes them. The labor unions hate them because they're scabs, the council hates them because they made the geth, and all the other aliens see them as beggars and thieves, not helped by their habit of strip-mining planets as the Migrant Fleet travels. In fact, they dump their criminals on civilized planets as they move because they lack the resources to support a prison population.
    • Tali's loyalty quest in Mass Effect 2 revolves around a debate that resembles post-WWII debates about Israel: Whether the Quarians should maintain the status quo wandering around the galaxy, retake their homeworld from the Geth by force, re-enslave the Geth or colonize some other planet.
    • Notably, AIs suffer extensively more so than even the quarians. Roughly half of the AIs one encounters in the game have justified reasons for being misguided antagonists.
      • The other half aren't even antagonists - their inability to communicate means they can't even protest when people kill them. The best they can do is self-defense which, naturally to many in the setting, looks like an AI gone rogue.
      • Though part of the problem with A Is according to the backstory, even after the war with the Quarians the Geth completely shut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy, and any ship sent to make contact with them was destroyed, along with any organics who entered their region of space for any reason, cementing their status as a threat. At the time the game takes place, most of the Geth would like to make peace with the rest of the galaxy. But the prejudice against them is only half of the problem: they don't really understand organics either, and they know they need to be cautious until they can find some common ground.
    • There's also some of this toward the krogan by the other Citadel species, who dropped the genophage on them during the war, and once the war was won they were in no particular hurry to cure it, leading to the krogan's slow depopulation and extinction.
      • Actually, if you believe what one of the scientist who worked on the genophage says, it leaves the krogan population at a finely calculated equilibrium. The krogan evolved on a Death World, and after their uplifting by the salarians their explosive birthrate rapidly lead to overpopulation and aggressive expansion. This started a galactic war that the genophage ended. Unfortunately, their current situation is not being helped by the fact that most krogan (who, comparing to the old birthrates, thinks they're doomed) become mercenaries and die (although less often than most other species would, being really hard to kill by comparison).
    • Perhaps the most hated race, managing to surpass humans and quarians, are the Vorcha. No matter where you are, most races view them as nothing more than vermin.
      • Which is not helped by the position that evolution has left the vorcha in. A lifespan of twenty years, coupled with below average intelligence and the fact that vorcha are only spread around by stowing away on ships visiting their homeworld, has not given them many opportunities to improve their species' reputation.
    • You humans are all racist!
    • The Reapers see all organic life as a mistake that they need to periodically correct.
      • Yeah, well ... they don't. We wish they did, though.
    • From Mass Effect 3 we have Javik, a Prothean who's been in stasis for 50,000 years. His Fantastic Racism towards the "Primitives" of this Cycle is a prevalent aspect of his character, often coming across as dismissive of various races, bemoaning their lack of potential from what the Protheans had expected from them and occasionally indulges in light-hearted mockery. Naturally this characteristic has earned him Ensemble Darkhorse status among the Fandom and the sobriquet of "The Oldest Troll in the Galaxy".
  • This is part of the reason for the hostile relations between Horde and Alliance in World of Warcraft after they formed an Alliance against the demons in Warcraft III. There are other instances of this all over the place in the backstory novels. For instance, in the first war against the demons, the night elf nobles initially refuse to accept the help of other races (at that time, dwarves, the ursine furbolg and the tauren), and the demons manipulate the orcs into fighting the draenei by fueling the mistrust.
    • And of course, who can forget Grand Marshal Garithos from the Frozen Throne expansion, probably the biggest fantastic racist in the series. His comeuppance was exquisitely satisfying because of it.
    • World of Warcraft, debatably, makes a lot of money off of keeping people interested in the 'us vs. them' mentality and the racist overtones between the orcs and the humans and their respective allies. When these mentalities were toned down in the Burning Crusade expansion, players complained. Cue a 180' turn in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, where fueling said racism seems to be a part of the Big Bad's Xanatos Gambit.
    • In an interesting take on this trope, you'll find plenty of "racism" in the player base against gnomes.
    • The Horde counterpart is the Blood Elves, who are the only "pretty" race among the Horde. And considering that the Blood Elves were added in the Burning Crusade expansion, Suffers Newbies Poorly is probably a contributing factor. No such Freudian Excuse is available for gnome haters.
    • Some built-in emotes are racist. This is a /silly from human males: "So, an orc walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender says 'Hey, where'd you get that?' The parrot says Durotar. They've got them all over the place!'" And this from undead males: "I can't stand the smell of Orcs."
    • The Forsaken have a general contempt for all races other than their own, even the Tauren who have a genuine desire to cure their undead state. They start off as Neutral with all other Horde races, whereas others start at Friendly. The Forsaken have a particular hatred for humans as a result of their forced conversion and the disgust of their former friends and family to their undead states.
      • The most obvious example of the hatred between family members was a set of now removed quests in Alterac Valley. Two brothers, one Human and one Forsaken, sent players to kill their own brother.
    • A lot of the Blood Elves' emotes are racist against their own faction: "We're allied with the Tauren? Fantastic! We'll have steak every night!" and that really long one that the female blood elves have about the undead.
    • The Blood Elves get a truly ridiculous amount of hate. How ridiculous? The High Elves of Dalaran rebelled when Rhonin considered allowing Blood Elves back into the Kirin Tor. Not actually allowing them to return, but considering it. To be fair, High Elves and Blood Elves were once the same race. But ~10% of the remaining High Elves didn't agree with Kael'Thas and didn't become Blood Elves and instead stayed loyal to the Alliance. The high elves consider the Blood Elves traitors and refuse to have anything to do with them to the point where no high elf would ever wear red because it's the color of Blood Elves.
    • Varian Wrynn does not like orcs very much.
    • Cataclysm had Garrosh kicking almost all of the other Horde races out of Orgrimmar. It's turned into an "Orcs Only" town.
      • Its actually worse than that: he allows trolls, goblins and tauren to live in the city, but in crappy slums on the outskirts. The insult is not lost on those affected.
      • At one point, Garrosh tells Vol'jin, the much more experienced leader of the trolls and somebody who, before Thrall left, was in a higher position than Garrosh, to return to his slum. Thrall must have been slipped some crazy drugs or something to put Garrosh in charge.
    • In Northrend, there are very few Draenei are among the Alliance forces; a recurring discussion in Valliance Keep reveals that most of the Alliance forces are from people native to Northrend, who up until now have never seen a Draenei, and are suspicious of them. Harbinger Vurenn suspects the Cult of the Damned is deliberately stoking this to weaken the Alliance forces.
    • Also in Northrend, tn one Alliance quest line in the Grizzly Hills, Lieutenant Damont clearly does not like Worgen much, calling them "savages" and "filthy animals". This was at least understandable when Wrath of the Lich King, first came out especially seeing as the worgen exclusive Wolf Cult (the bad guys in this scenario) are known to murder civilians. However, no change to his dialogue was made after Cataclysm (when Worgan become playable characters and members of the Alliance) was released, so this seems rather crass, especially if the player character he is speaking to is a worgen. And no, as hilarious as it would be to tell him "I'm Standing Right Here!" There is no option that lets you do that.
    • Gilnean Lords Godfrey and Walden also despise worgen, their contempt extending to the player in the Worgen Starting Zone, viewing them as little better than animals even though the transformation is not the players fault and the player is the first worgen who manages to remain fully sapient despite it. When Gilneas' citizens are given the choice to be transformed to avoid assimilation into the Forsaken, most accept the offer, but Godfrey and Walden do not, willing to voluntarily join Sylvanus and become undead rather than become something they hate.
      • Of course, Darius Crowley accepts the change even sooner than the rest of Gilneas, as he utterly despises the Foresaken. Although in his case, one can at least see where he is coming from, as Sylvanus had his daughter kidnapped, giving him the choice of retreating and abandoning his homeland or having his daughter forcibly converted.
  • The background lore in The Elder Scrolls series makes heavy use of this trope. The most obvious examples? The Bretons and Orcs hate each other, the Nords and Dark Elves hate each other due to war, the Argonians and Dark Elves loathe each other due to slave raids and slavery by the latter, and the Khajiit and Wood Elves regard each other with hatred, both of them raiding each other's homeland. The High Elves and Dark Elves, in particular, are both racist against all other races; ironically, the Redguards (who are to all extent Blacks) are treated in a pretty much neutral light, possibly due to the fact that they only arrived recently compared to the long histories between the other races.
    • To its credit, the series tends to portray these tensions as somewhat-realistic social and cultural problems, rather than issues arising solely from inherent racial characteristics. For instance, it's less "dark elves are racists" and more "Morrowind is insular and xenophobic".
    • Even if you play a Dunmer in TES3, you're still considered an outlander. It's not a question of race so much as culture. And the Ashlanders consider all other Dunmer as outlanders.
    • This gets even worse in Oblivion when you hear rumours of a countess interested in species 'purity' and torturing Argonians, then find a torture chamber in their castle.
    • Speaking of Oblivion, in the Shivering Isles expansion pack, one NPC is terrified of cats, he has a pet dog. And he has the unfortunate problem of a Khajiit that happens to really like his dog, resulting in him being constantly wary. If you are a Khajiit yourself, you can't even take his sidequest, and he'll sick his dog on you!
    • In the first game there were Jesters that would make offensive jokes about your race.
    • Don't forget Valen Dreth, the first NPC you meet in Oblivion, who has a nice rant to deliver against whichever race you may be.
    • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes this Up to Eleven after introducing the Thalmor, High Elf supremacists who are for all intents and purposes the Tamrielic equivalent to the Nazi party.
      • Also, many of the Stormcloaks have this attitude. Especially in their capital of Windhelm, where the Dunmer are forced to live in a slum and the Argonians are only allowed to live and work on the docks. According to one of the Nords in the city, Ulfric will not even lift a finger to help non-Nords in his hold of Eastmarch.
  • Despite the game's humorous, light-hearted nature, one of the central underlying themes of Disgaea (mostly the first game) is racism, particularly the issue of judging a group without actually knowing them. Lamington talks about this before the final battle. Almaz says something similar in the third game, even admitting his own pre-game prejudices.
  • Wild ARMs 5 has this trope as its Anvilicious morality tale - the tall, beautiful Veruni constantly oppress the smaller, weaker humans, while the protagonists work tirelessly to prove The Power of Friendship and how we're all really the same inside. Unusually, this is because they are - the Veruni used to be humans long ago, before they left for space.
  • Anti-nonhuman prejudice is touched on in Knights of the Old Republic. On Taris, the only nonhumans who can walk around in the Upper City work for the local Exchange boss or are pretty Twi'lek shopkeepers. Others get pelted by stones thrown by children, as seen once. There is a street preacher calling nonhumans a "plague that sweeps through our streets". A seedy hotel has alien occupants despite this being illegal. The slum-like and generally miserable Lower City, overrun by gangs, is where most of the nonhumans live. The racism Juhani experienced as a child on Taris is a major point in her sidequest.
  • In Fallout 2, Vault City residents hold themselves superior to all others, having achieved instant success at society-building from the moment they left their Vault. Their leader, First Citizen Lynette, is a black woman with strong prejudices bordering on genocidal, against ghouls, mutants, savages and anyone living above-ground when the bombs landed.
    • Not to mention the general hatred of Super Mutants. Given that only a few decades prior, the Super Mutants had every intention of overrunning, destroying or mutating all life, this may be a Justified Trope. Several mutants, including the one you can recruit, seem to still hold mutant elitist philosophy as well.
  • Averted in Fallout 3 if you allow Fawkes (one of the two friendly Super Mutants in the whole game) to become your ally. The only type of character she's willing to follow is one with a high positive karma - more or less a walking saint. The people may in fact hate her, but because of the player's reputation they'll never say anything. Fawkes comments on this in game.
    • Fallout 3 does, however, use this trope a lot when dealing with the ghouls; People who have been hideously mutated by prolonged exposure to radiation. There are feral ghouls which can't be reasoned with and attacks anything on sight, and there are civilized ghouls, which are pretty much just friendly NPCs without skin. Naturally, the population of the wasteland tend to mix this up and treat all ghouls as monsters. This conflict is vital to the quests "You gotta shoot 'em in the head" and "Tenpenny Tower."
      • Becomes a Justified Trope when one appreciates that Word of God indicates it is merely a matter of time before all civilized ghouls eventually turn feral. Given a choice between cautious discrimination and one day discovering your neighbor has become a crazed cannibalistic monster, it's easy to empathize with the racists.
      • Other Word of God claims that is false, as 99% of all Ghouls are over two hundread years old, hinting Ferals are driven insane during the process of becoming a ghoul (which is very, very slow and painful). Shown over in New Vegas as no one other than the Legion has any problem with Ghouls, hell the NCR has them as Rangers.
  • Somewhat subverted Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel- having to recruit tribals from outlying settlements goes against their own ideals just on its own, but the epynomous organization also accepts ghouls and intelligent deathclaws into their ranks despite the objections from Simon Barnaky. After he is captured and Dekker takes command, super mutants and reavers are also allowed to join. Keep in mind, this straying away from the original ideals of the Brotherhood of Steel is done more out of necessity in most cases, as their own numbers without them are too few.
    • Though the straying from the original ideals was probably helped along by the fact that that particular branch of the Brotherhood originated from a faction advocating increasing ties to the outside world and being more flexible with recruiting. They may not have intended to be quite that willing to take in recruits, but they already started out more willing to bend the rules even before they got into really desperate straits.
  • In Valkyria Chronicles, Rosie really hates the Darcsens often taking out rage her on Isara. Rosie eventually comes around and stops hating Darcsens.
    • There are a few other playable characters who also hate Darcsens, but unlike Rosie, this comes in the form of a potential that lowers their accuracy when they're near allied Darcsen. Rosie, meanwhile, learns a potential that actually improves her accuracy when near Darcsens, although she only gets it after Isara's Plotline Death.
    • Darcsen-hating is institutional in Europa, especially in the Empire (which is happy to round them up, burn their homes, and send them to work camps). In Varrot's side mission, Geld is court-martialed "for torturing non-Darcsen civilians."
    • The sequel Valkyria Chronicles 2 makes racism a bigger plot point as the antagonists are a Gallian Noble House that didn't take well the whole revelation of Gallia's ruling family being Darcsens.
  • While not in-game, per se, Halo suffers a bit with the Elite specisim. This may have something to do with "They're harder to headshot from behind" regarding SWAT, but the slur "Dinosaur" seems to come up too many times for it to be just that. Seriously, try making a thread on the forum about those guys, and you will invariably get at least one comment about "they're dinosaurs" and about -5 posts about how they're fun to play as. Say anything about liking to play as them, and you'll get called out on it because of the aforementioned headshot problem.
    • In-universe, however, this too happens. Grunts and Jackals are competing for higher billing while Elites and Brutes are at eachother's throats for leadership. The Prophets favor the Elites except for Truth, who orders genocide one them over Brutes but ignore the Gunt/Jackal conflict. In the Great Schism, the Brutes focus more on the Elites than humanity, acording to the Halo wiki.
  • The Vektans of Killzone view the Helghast as fascistic mutants while the Helghast view the Vektans (and by extension, the United Colonial Army) as evil oppressors. They're both right.
  • While this gets briefly touched upon in the first Phantasy Star game, and more expounded on in the second, the PlayStation 2 game Phantasy Star Universe features this as an apparent plot point (and background story), where the Humans have created CASTs (androids/robots), Beasts, and Newmans to inhabit the Gurhal System with them and serve as labor... but the hierarchy gets inverted quite a bit when the CASTs become the supremacists, the Beasts become resentful and rogue-ish, the Newmans become deeply religious, and the Humans still think everyone can get along. CAST speciesism and racism ensues throughout the entire game.
  • Kingdom Hearts II gives us this little gem from DiZ. "A Nobody doesn't have a right to know. Nor even does it have the right to be." Yeah, they're basically a person who's missing half of what makes them, but does that give you a right to treat a sapient being like a nothing?
    • To be fair to DiZ, the only Nobodies he had met before had thoroughly screwed him over and destroyed his entire world back when they were human, so he has a right to be bitter. He did apolgize to Roxas after learning he was capable of feeling emotion before exploding.
  • City of Heroes has two primary alien races. There's the Rikti, most of which want to kill every human on the planet. Then there's the Kheldians, half of which are good, half of which are evil. There's many people, players and NPCs, who believe all Kheldians are evil, and believe the policy should be to shoot first and ask questions later. The Rikti also have a few "good" ones. They've been tricked by Nemesis into the war they're waging on humanity, and most of the ones who are still fighting are the ones who don't know this or don't believe it.
    • For added fun, the Rikti are actually humans from an alternate universe, where alien intervention altered them so they go through a bizarre metamorphosis upon reaching adolescence. And the Lost are humans infected with an engineered virus that, over time, transforms them into Rikti. The Rikti themselves have their own internal racism, where Rikti transformed from the local humans are regarded as second-class citizens.
  • In Chrono Trigger, the player encounters a land inhabited by 'fiends' (monsters) who built their own civilisation after the human-fiend war. Although the first fiends you encounter are friendly towards humans since the war ended 400 years ago, everyone else either attacks you, sells things for exorbitant prices ('you think I'd give a human the going rate?') or expresses rather loudly that the Fiendlord should have eradicated the human race when he had the chance, which is mildly disturbing. Humans mostly seem to have gotten over it though, since it's hardly mentioned, and they believe that 'some' monsters can live among humans.
    • Regular humans don't seem to believe that ever happened, what with the monster village being somewhat secluded and the human-fiend war having happened during what would be the middle ages, they feel they have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. Also, most "monsters" that attack you in the present are just animals. A better example would be the "Dark Ages" segregation between Earthbounds and Enlighteneds. The later ones use magic and live happy in dreams (pretty literally), whereas the former don't, and live in utter misery. That is, until the source of Zeal's power goes boom.
    • This whole game is pretty anvilicious about this. In the prehistoric era it's the Reptites vs. the humans, 12,000 BC features the Enlightened vs the Earthbound Ones, both 600 AD and 1000 AD have the Mystics vs humans, and the future has the obligatory Robots Kill All Humans philosophy.
    • There was some human racism towards the fiends in the Japanese version that was Lost in Translation -- while the Fiends call themselves "Mazoku", translating along the lines of "demon tribe", the humans call them "Mamono" -- this literally translates as "Demon Thing", and is a term you would usually use for a mindlessly hostile monster, rather than a sapient being.
  • Spoofed in Atelier Annie. When Fitz is nice to Annie, but mean to her fairy master Pepe, he assumes that this trope has spontaneously manifested in a world completely devoid of it - it's actually because Fitz has a fawning girl-crush on Annie, and is jealous that Pepe gets to spend all his time with her.
  • Arc the Lad gives us the people from Holn (hometown of one of the main characters) who are distrusted by the Game's expy of Switzerland because of their ability to communicate with monsters. In Twilight of the Spirits, Human and Deimos (intelligent humanoid monsters) are locked into a cold war pretty close to heat up.
  • In Gaia Online racism plays a pretty large role in a lot of the events involving multiple races (beginning with humans-versus-Zombies, humans-versus-Aliens, humans-versus-vampires... see any trends?), especially Halloween 2008's "humans-versus-vampires-versus-elves-versus-zombies" free-for-all (due to a misinterpreted prophecy).
    • An ongoing example of this trope is Louie, who tends to be just a little too quick to pull the (vampiric) race card in his shop dialogue (calling those who ask if he sparkles "borderline racist" comes to mind).
    • Also the possibility that Gaia's orcs have been enslaved (which is asked about by Josie, who is black).
  • Dragon Age Origins is full of this. Human racism against elves. Elvish racism against humans or elves who act "too human". Human racism against humans of other ethnicities and nationalities. Classism in the Dwarven caste system. Prejudice and mistrust against Circle mages. Executions of non-Circle mages. Religious intolerance, schisms and Holy Wars. There's probably not a permutation of this they don't cover.
    • Humans and Dwarves. They are pretty respectful of each other for the most part, although the Dwarves view living on the surface as a weakness while human think the Dwarven caste system and politics are ridiculous. But there's no hostility.
    • In all fairness, Human racism against Elves is much more pronounced than vice versa. Also, Elves are either kept as an underclass in slums or forced to wander after their civilization was destroyed a second time. So, there is a big difference there too.
      • The city elves don't show as much antagonism, but various Dalish are openly racist towards humans. Much more justified than the racism by humans against them, but meeting people like Velanna and Zathrian (the latter whose actions are only partly justfied) is a reminder that the Dalish can be pretty extreme in their racism too.
    • Dragon Age II adds Qunari to the mix. It's mostly a religious conflict, but the anti-Qunari zealots don't hesitate to throw around terms like "ox-men" when referring to the Qunari. Qunari for their part are rather disdainful of other races, though this is mostly because the Qunari see anyone outside of the Qun as things, not people.
    • Mages are a trickier situation as many people point out that there is many legitimate reasons to fear mages and want some sort governing power over people who can accidentally summon a demon and a zombie army big enough to wipe out a village. If that wasn't enough, DAII gives plenty of examples. Sure, sometimes it is bigotry. Sometimes, it is a very understanding concern about people with massive destructive that also happen to constantly hear voices of demons.
  • Seems like any and all games that have Petting Zoo People interacting with each other have this trope in play.
  • The Big Bad of Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal is a robot who hates organic beigns and wants them destroyed.
  • Ferals (beastmen) to humans in Sands of Destruction. Sure, there's a few places where they're more or less equal, but the rest of the world? There's a reason why Morte's a part of the World Annihilation Front.
  • The player-base for Dwarf Fortress often (jokingly) demonstrates a huge amount of hatred and disgust for the Elves, often going so far as to treat them as the mortal enemies of the Dwarves. This flies in the face of the existence of a race that already behave as the Dwarves' mortal enemies, the Goblins. Most of this is due to how the Elves subtly insult the Dwarves when trading, try to in-state limits to how many trees the Dwarves can cut down for wood, bring crappy trade goods, refuse to buy anything made of wood, and if they siege the player, they attack in their thousands and wear crappy armor that the Dwarves can't wear or easily destroy.
    • This isn't helped by the fact that Elves eat their enemies, and like to start wars over the treatment of plants (Then eating whoever they fight); they basically are designed to be as unreasonable as possible, whether or not they're at war with you. Goblins' reasons are far more reasonable: They want your stuff. After dealing with elves, one can almost respect that.
    • There is a massive exception to the rule: Cacame Awemedinade the Immortal Onslaught, Elf King of the Dwarves. His boundless rage for his own kind (They killed and ate his wife) so impressed the dwarves that they made him their king, and his skill with a hammer is legendary.
  • Present in the Touhou series, most obviously humans versus all forms of youkai, which is the most blatant in Undefined Fantastic Object. However, there's a few cases of fear and hatred between different species of youkai, such as the fact that everyone in the Underground hates the satori species, since they read minds and apparently can't control the urge to speak other peoples' thoughts aloud.
    • And in the manga Silent Sinner in Blue, we're introduced to Toyohime, the elder of the two Watatsuki sisters, both of whom are in charge of the Lunar Defense Corps. As far as Toyohime is concerned, everything on Earth is sin incarnate simply because it comes from Earth. And this is everything -- not just humans, youkai, and other sentient beings, everything.
  • Happens in Sins of a Solar Empire in the case of the Advent and the TEC. The Advent, when rediscovered by the Trade Union, were reviewed as outcasts because of their beliefs. They were exiled, and now they've come back to get revenge on the TEC.
  • Legacy of Kain has a three way racial conflict. The Ancient vampires and the Hylden were two Precursor races who considered themselves godlike. The Ancients began a holy war against the Hylden because the Hylden would not submit to their god. Hylden were banished to a hell dimension, but cursed the Ancients with blood thirst in revenge. Humans began to hate vampires, seeing them as a pestilence. As the vampire population became more turned humans than originals, they began to see themselves as dark gods, superior to humans and rightfully deserving to rule the humans. The Hylden, meanwhile, had a bitter hatred for vampires for their banishment, extending to vampires turned from humans who were so far removed from the original vampires that they didn't even know the ancient history. The Hylden also looked down on humans as inferior beings, but for the most part, the humans are unaware of the Hylden's existance.
  • The later Ultimas show this between Britannians and the Gargoyles.
  • Devan Shell decides to invade Carrotus...because he read "The Tortoise and The Hare" and came to the comclusion that the lesson was "All lagomorphs are smug, superior jackasses," and decided to show them a thing or two by eradicating them.
  • The Godwins of Suikoden V go as far as engaging in genocide against the non-human residents of Falena.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, certain shop owners refuse to do business with a species other than their own.
  • In Sam and Max Freelance Police: The Devil's Playhouse, Sam's mild prejudice-slash-Squick towards Sybil's marriage to the Statue of Abraham Lincoln is obviously reminiscent of attitudes towards gay marriage, with him wondering if it's even legal in this state, blanking out when Sybil describes how she and he have sex, and calling their union a 'sin against God'. Played for Laughs, though, and he gets over it by the end.
  • In Age of Wonders, it's possible to be friendly with the leaders of good and evil races, but put units from each in the same party and you may end up with deserters.
  • Played for laughs in Ultimate Spider-Man where Peter has a victim who is clinging on bridge say "mutants are people too" before rescuing him.
  • Humans in Eien no Aselia tend to look down on spirits to a great extent. The spirits themselves seem to take it for granted by this point until Yuuto starts making a fuss.
  • Most of the faction conflict in Rift seems to be more political and cultural than anything else. However, a Guardian NPC in the Defiant start zone does outright refer to bahmi (who are the descendants of human/air spirit hybrids) as "planetouched abominations."
  • Shaper-to-creation racism in Geneforge parallels institutionalized slavery in America, down to the belief that creations who run away are mentally ill. At their worst, Shapers can't even conceive of the idea that creations might have rights, any more than you'd conceive of granting rights to a hammer or a saw. "Rogue" creations, for their part, view Shapers as a blight to be annihilated, and don't always distinguish between actual Shapers and normal humans. Meanwhile, drayks (incredibly powerful creations that the Shapers regret making and kill on sight) look down upon other creations as inferior, and are in turn looked down upon by drakons (drayks that learned how to rewrite their own genetic code for increased power). There's also a divide between Shapers and normal humans, but this can work out multiple ways--some people hate and fear Shapers (though not too openly), some venerate them, and some just accept them as a part of life.
  • The Humans Against Monsters (or H.A.M.) organisation in RuneScape are human supremacists, seemingly believing that humans are the chosen people of Saradomin.
  • Destroy All Humans! is practically nothing but a Fantastic Racism, where the main character views humans as morons or "monkeys". However, the longer he stayed on the planet, the more his racisim degraded to Pretend Prejudice.
  • While the underlying theme of Sands of Destruction is this trope, it's presented in a rather awkward direction. On paper, all of the Beastmen extremely revile the humans, to the point of deliberately torturing them for no reason. In action, even in the anime, it's presented as Narm, due to the... cartoonish characters as recommended by our beloved Executive Meddling.
  • This is what essentially sparked off the story in the Oddworld series: Originally the Mudokons and Glukkons were neighbours, until a crater in the shape of a Mudokon pawprint appeared on one of Oddworld's moons. The Mudokons declared that this was a divne sign that they were the 'chosen race', which royally pissed off the Glukkons to the point of closing off their society, turning to industry and enslaving most of the species on Oddworld, starting with the Mudokons. Congratulations.
  • In the Onimusha series, humans were created by the demon god Fortinbras for the Genma (who he also created) to prey upon. Therefore, many Genma have an intense hatred and scorn for humans, particularly Guildenstern, who, when he isn't transforming them into new Genma or performing horrific experiments/autopsies (while they're still alive!) on them, refers to them as "maggots" on a regular basis. He loves their internal organs, though...
  • In the BlazBlue series, beastkin are treated as second-class citizens at best. Hate and discrimination are fairly common, apparently. Makoto Nanaya was subjected to this pretty badly in the NOL military academy, turning her into a human-hating anti-social bitch. The Power of Friendship helped her get over this, but the abuse still left a lasting impression, and making fun of her race is one of her Berserk Buttons.

Relius: "You're merely doing as the animals do."

    • Also, Hakumen refers to Kokonoe as "grimalkin"[1], which is an offensive slang term for a beastkin, according to Jubei.
  • Speaking of beastkin, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was not at all subtle-- and deconstructed this trope by having the beastfolk fight back... well, tooth and claw. And then some.
    • Golden Sun has some history with this trope, in more ways than one. In The Lost Age, the werewolves of Garoh, precursors/descendents (it's complicated) to Dark Dawn's beastfolk, were persecuted for transforming into wolf-people under the full moon (not helped by their inability to speak while beast-like).
    • In the history of Weyard as described by NPCs and encyclopedia entries in Dark Dawn, it quickly becomes obvious that the "Golden Age of Man" was only golden if you were one of the Smug Super overlords. Among other things, the racial name of the non-powered people was used as a slur, and beastman slaves were used to build Apollo Sanctum. This latter one is in fact a major plot point, since it means that the only known set of safety gear for use in said dangerous building is made for beastfolk and won't fit anybody else.
  • The VUX of Star Control have it in for humanity, and want to wipe them out. Why? Well, they'll say it's because a human called a VUX a "Very Ugly Xenomorph" back during first contact (the VUX are not particularly attractive creatures, it's true). Not entirely true though. The real reason is that, by VUX standards, humans are so utterly disgusting and repulsive that they have to consciously hold back a vomiting reflex upon looking at us. They will even admit that this is unreasonable, that they recognize that humanity didn't choose to look they way they do... but we're just so ugly that they can't handle it.
  • The "Ace Attorney Universe" features the fictional country of Borginia. In "Apollo Justice", case 3 is centred quite heavily around this country and many characters make remarks that could be considered extremely racist if said country was real. These include people stating how "lying must be a Borginian pastime" over and over again.
  • While Undead in Dark Souls run a danger of becoming mindless, violent hollows should they lose all of their humanity, undead that still have their sense are brutally mistreated, imprisoned and sacrificed to maintain the First Fire.
  • In Rune Factory 3, protagonist Micah is (eventually) tasked with bringing the population of the human village and the monster encampment together in peace, though it seems that it's mostly the village leaders that are keeping up the conflict. It also seems to be the conflict is mostly between humans and the Unvir (basically unicorn elves), as the human village has four not-fully human residents (two are openly known, one is an Open Secret, the fourth constitutes a major reveal).
  • The main plot of Bloody Roar 2 involves anti- zoanthrope hate groups who are using propaganda to turn the public against the heroes. The game was harshly criticized for (allegedly) ripping the plot straight from X-Men comics, putting the zoanthropes in the same position as mutants. Not that this was a new idea when the X-Men used it, of course.
  1. ↑ An archaic term for a witch's cat, literally translating to modern English as "gray cat", which was used as the closest possible pre-existing English translation for bakeneko
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