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{{trope}}
This trope occurs whenever there is inconsistency in how things work or behave between the gameplay and storyline sections of the game, the latter of which consists of [[Cutscene|cutscenescutscene]]s and dialogue. While this trope is generally forgivable due to technological limitations, [[Egregious]] instances can result in the shattering of the player's [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]]. Typically, it's done to try and make a more interesting game, since simply hitting [[One Hit KO]] all the time like in that cutscene would be utterly boring, while having a person who actually ''can't'' open doors like in that last cutscene would make the game [[Fake Difficulty|needlessly frustrating]]. Accordingly, it's sometimes excused by [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]], but by ''no'' stretch does that justification cover all of the flat-out weird mismatches [[They Just Didn't Care|perpetrated]] by game makers over the years.
 
Since large-scale [[Cutscene|cutscenescutscene]]s and extensive dialogue have only been present in games the last twenty years or so, [['''Gameplay and Story Segregation]]''' is far more prevalent from the 16-bit era onwards, especially ones in which the storyline is a focal point of the game.
 
 
'''Forms of [['''Gameplay and Story Segregation]]''' include:'''
* [[Arbitrary Headcount Limit]] <br />Arbitrary requirement that stops you from having too many characters in a party or unit.
** [[Lazy Backup]] <br />If you're only allowed three out of eighteen party members, and those three are killed, you get a Game Over even though the rest are still alive.
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* [[Selective Condemnation]] <br />The slaughter of a single NPC is a tragedy; the slaughter of [[What Measure Is a Mook?|one thousand]] [[Mooks]] is a [[A Million Is a Statistic|statistic]].
* [[Separate but Identical]] <br />In strategy games, some sub-factions are said to be different in composition, outlook etc., but ultimately only differ [[Palette Swap|in their color palette]].
* [[Simultaneous Warning and Action]] <br />Enemy [[NPC|NPCs]]s will always attack you, even when they yell things that indicate they're going to arrest you.
* [[Solve the Soup Cans]] <br />A puzzle with bizarre and disconnected elements included in a game purely to serve as an obstacle to the player.
** [[Alphabet Soup Cans]] <br />''Educational'' obstacles that are bizarre and disconnected.
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* [[Story Overwrite]] <br />When the storyline ignores, overwrites or [[Retcon|RetCons]] one of the player's in-game accomplishments.
** [[Cutscene Drop]] <br />When a cutscene begins, a character may be "teleported" to where the plot says they should be, rather than where they really are.
** [[No Cutscene Inventory Inertia]] <br />No matter what weapon or armor you have equipped, you will be shown with specific (often default) equipment in [[Cutscene|cutscenescutscene]]s.
** [[The Battle Didn't Count]] <br />After beating a boss, instead of dying, he pulls a [[Villain Exit Stage Left]]. Or worse....
*** [[Heads I Win, Tails You Lose]] <br />A boss battle where you get a [[Game Over]] if you lose, but if you win, the boss activates ''his'' [[Cutscene Power to the Max]] and overrides it.
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=== [[Beat'Em Up]] ===
* ''[[Streets of Rage]] 3'' starts with a [[Cutscene]] where the five characters decide to shake up the [[Mook|mooksmook]]s for information. After a few levels of assaulting mooks by yourself, everyone else appears for another cutscene and says "This is useless. No-one told us anything." How could they? I just kicked the crap out of anyone who came close. And where the hell have you been, anyway?
* In the arcade version of ''Double Dragon 3'', there is a third Lee brother named Sonny, plus three different [[Sibling Team|sibling teams]] consisting of three brothers each (the Chin, Oyama, and Urquidez brothers). However, only Billy and Jimmy are shown in the opening and ending, and only a single member of each of the other sibling teams are shown in the ending.
 
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** It's worth noting that while they're fairly weak from ''SFII'' onwards, in the first game, the special moves were ''very'' powerful, with a successful hit knocking a third of an opponent's health off. Each hit was also rated from one to three stars, and this acted as a damage multiplier; it was entirely possible to one-shot someone with ridiculous lucky.
** Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu attack only seems to kill opponents in the story.
* Modern [[WWE]] games with career modes fall victim to this. Your status as a [[face]] or [[heel]] is solely dependent on the choices you make during storyline [[Cutscene|cutscenescutscene]]s, meaning your actual behavior in the ring is entirely irrelevant. For example, you may play your matches dirty, doing things such as using weapons, removing turnbuckle pads, delivering low bows, and taking advantage of the [[Easily-Distracted Referee]], but as long as you make the corresponding decisions during [[Cutscene|cutscenescutscene]]s, the game will act as if you're a straight-up [[face]]. Some games will penalize you by taking away momentum (the stuff that lets you perform special moves) for using tactics that don't match your alignment. However, you can still ''do'' them at any time, and the storyline will never acknowledge it.
** This may actually reflect a lot of developments from the Attitude Era and subsequent years, and the popularity of superstars such as Eddie Guerrero, who would "Lie, Cheat, and Steal" but still be a fan-favorite because he was amazing in the ring and could convince the crowd to eat out of the palm of his hand.
** Another, more pernicious thing WWE career modes like to do is every now and then have you beat an opponent, and then have them get back up and pin your wrestler in the following cutscene, or some such thing. It should be a normal part of kayfabe, except that you're then stuck with a ''real'' loss that goes on your wrestler's statistics record, even though you put in the effort of winning the friggin' match. Grr.
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** This was averted in one section in ''[[Halo 3: ODST]]''; during a cutscene Romeo fires three shots at an enemy, and when gameplay starts he's missing three rounds. Of course, at the end of that segment, the cutscene has him wielding a sniper rifle, regardless of what he was using instants earlier during gameplay. This is necessary for the Rookie to be able to find the rifle later. Throughout the game, cutscenes tend to show the squad with their signature suppressed SMG rather than whatever they had during gameplay.
* In ''[[BioShock (series)]]'', ADAM is described by NPCs as a substance you need to have injected into you to make plasmids and gene tonics work, and after that regular injections are required to prevent physical and psychological damage. In the game itself, it is simply treated like a currency you use to buy said plasmids and tonics, which cost no actual money besides. The game also features the corresponding EVE, which acts as fuel for the plasmids, and is never touched on in the narrative.
** One of the [[Public Service Announcement|Public Service Announcements]]s might even be lampshading this: "A Rapture reminder: We all have bills to pay, and the temptation to break curfew to make a little extra ADAM is forgivable..." So, wait, you can pay your bills in ADAM instead of dollars?
** However, ''Bioshock'' also makes {{spoiler|the game's inherent linearity and lack of open-endedness}} a plot point: as it turns out, {{spoiler|you were under mind control the whole time, triggered by Atlas saying "would you kindly"}}.
** In the recorded messages for you to find in the second game, one character taking note of how powerful an addiction everybody has makes a reference EVE, saying "... and everybody is eager to suck on EVE's tit..." in reference that EVE is used to allow you to use your powers, and everybody wanted to use the powers as well as get more ADAM.
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=== [[Hack and Slash]] ===
* In ''[[Drakengard]]'', you're only allowed to take one party member with you into battle, and he doesn't follow along with you on the battlefield, no; you transform into him for a predetermined amount of time. Contrast this to the [[Cutscene|cutscenescutscene]]s, which show all the party members present in the battles when applicable. Dragonfire kills anything human in a single blow, but not so for some higher-end Mooks in-game. Caim wields a relatively smallish BFS as his default weapon in the cutscenes, but his default weapon in-game is realistically proportioned to be used by a human being. Manah can obliterate armies in cutscenes, but never displays this sort of power when fighting you in-game. And so on in that order.
 
=== Miscellaneous Games ===
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=== [[MMORPG]]s ===
* This trope is pretty much universal and constantly active in [[MMORPG|MMORPGs]]s - typically in the "infinite-lives bosses", the "what do you mean, resurrect spell?", ''and'' the "we desperately need level 1 fighters even though we have level 70 shopkeepers" varieties.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' is rife with this trope, but one of the more nonsensical examples is in the Caverns of Time dungeons, where PCs are sent back in time by the Bronze Dragonflight to various famous incidents in past ''[[Warcraft]]'' titles. In many cases, most of the current playable races could not have been present for various reasons (Horde characters in particular, but also Night Elves and Draenei). So in those dungeons, those characters get hit with a illusion buff that disguises them as a Human for the duration of the dungeon. You would think this would make it an inversion of the trope, except that it also applies to Blood Elves--whoElves—who all would have been Alliance High Elves in those days, and so could have been present for all these events. Turning them Human is just odd, when a simple eye color change would suffice. It's especially nonsensical in the Culling of Stratholme instance, where you see a variety of Warcraft 3 units represented at the front gate of the city, one of which is a ''High Elf Priest''. It turns specially weird when you take into account that classes aren't disguised in any way, so you can have Warlocks and Death Knights helping Thrall escape from Durnholde, shapeshifted Druids running about, and Humans casting Shaman spells. But no High Elves.
** The game is full of big examples of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]], but one of the biggest is illness death. In the game, four playable classes can remove curses and/or cure poisons and cast resurrection spells that will restore to life any player character they are cast on. But in the storyline of both tie-ins in other media and in the stories of the game's own quests, curing each type of disease or poison requires multiple unique components, death is feared like in [[Real Life]], and resurrection (not counting [[Came Back Wrong]]) is almost unheard of. For example, there's one quest in Northrend where you find a poor poisoned goblin and have to run around killing giant spiders until one of them barfs up a poison sac. Never mind that at least three classes can easily cure poisons, as well as anyone with high enough first aid has the ability to make antivenom out of those self-same spiders, or (by the game mechanics) if he died, four classes could easily resurrect him, and any engineer would have the ability to at least try.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' has a rather glaring example of this in the Freedom Phalanx. The premier superheroes of the setting, akin to Superman, Batman, Captain America, and other A-listers....sit around waiting to give you quests, and generally do absolutely nothing else, with poor excuses for why they never fight at your side. In the few times you DO team up with them, they're generally as bad as any of the other NPC allies, and die in short order, while their villainous counterparts will kick your butt all over the surrounding environs, generally being some of the most dangerous bosses in the game. Even more confusingly, when you face the same heroes in ''City of Villains'', you can face the same heroes in single combat, and they're now, like their counterparts, the hardest bosses in the game. Apparently the only time the game can give these people the powers they're storyline-wise credited with is when they're beating on you instead of random [[Mooks]].
** This was mocked/played with on the games forums, when a player asked the developer that plays Positron why he never helps players during Rikti Invasions and they gather at that characters feet in Steel Canyon. He responded that the Rikti 'con grey, so I wouldn't get XP.'
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* One of the cutscenes in ''[[Warcraft]] II'' depicts a human footman commandeering an orcish catapult and using it to destroy a goblin zeppelin. In gameplay, catapults can't even attack zeppelins, let alone strike them down in one hit.
** Another example occurs in the Human ending to the "Tides of Darkness" campaign: No matter how you destroy the Dark Portal to end the war against the Orcs, the cutscene will always show the Arch Mage Khadgar using his magic ritual to destroy the portal. This can be quite noticeable, if you decided to use a force of [[Death From Above|Gryphon Riders]] to get the job done for the mission, and no Land troops were present on the land mass where the portal resides.
* ''[[Lost Magic]]'' has a field day with this; Bosses use special Runes they aren't supposed to have ''at all' as they're their respective Sage's secret power, [[Useless Useful Spell|Useless Useful Spells]]s [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|work better for the bosses then for you]], and then comes the [[Cutscene Power to the Max]]. Or not.
* In ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'' one of the areas (an industrial district) is protected by huge and seemingly impenetrable gates that ward off relentless hordes of both Orks and Tyranids. Yet, in the expansion ''Chaos Rising'' there is the option to destroy them and can be done with a single satchel charge. Huh.
** The entire mission is one huge example of this. [[Take Your Time|There is no time limit despite the apparent urgency]], it can be failed (all squads incapacitated) multiple times with no consequences, and while the wall is pretty huge not only are there two highly visible ''holes'' in it near the edges of the map, but Tyranid Carnifexes (of which there are plenty) are specifically designed to easily ram down such fortifications.
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** Regice is stated to be so cold that dipping it in magma would not harm it at all and instead freeze the magma solid. Just being near it exposes you to the intense aura of near-absolute zero air surrounding it. Yet its opponents suffer no ill effects from biting it, punching it, kicking it, wrapping their bodies around it, etc. And fire is still super-effective against it.
** Several Pokemon, such as Venomoth and Beedrill, can clearly fly but are not classified as flying types.
* The ''[[Tales (series)]]'' is generally pretty bad about plot-based injuries and the fact that you're usually carrying around a ton of medicine or food items that you can cook with. It's often [[Hand Wave|Hand Waved]]d by the healers, trying First Aid for a couple seconds and going "there's nothing I can do" or "they're too far gone." And then all the games have their own little quirks...
** The ''entire plot'' of ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' occurs because {{spoiler|Mithos wants to revive his dead sister Martel in a very complex way that takes about 4,000 years to get right (and is actually criticized by Martel for doing horrible things to revive her) when they could've easily just bought a Life Bottle for a couple hundred gald. Every merchant in the world sells them anyway.}}
*** Actually, {{spoiler|Life Bottles only cure what the manual refers to as being "knocked out" in battle. True, the name implies they can bring people back to life, but there's no evidence of that being the case.}}
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** Almost every MMO mechanic is superbly addressed and explained via some very elaborate and convincing-sounding tech lore. How can you constantly die? [http://www.eveonline.com/background/cloning/ Clones.] How are you singularly operating a ship with effectively no crew? [http://www.eveonline.com/background/eggers/ Capsules.] The backstory has become so in depth that it has sparked what you could describe as 'lore within the lore;' cloning has caused discussions about transferals of consciousness, and the fact that capsuleers can indefinitely clone has in-game, as well as outside consideration about the fact that since they have clones, can do anything, and cause large amounts of destruction, that capsuleers are effectively [[Mind Screw|immortal, sociopathic, all-powerful demigods.]]
*** To put it shortly, it's pretty much the most effective, in depth, and descriptive [[Hand Wave]] ever.
* ''[[Mabinogi]]''. Player characters, aka ''Milletians'', are presented as spirits from outside the game world, who are temporarily incarnated within it. Because they are not normally part of the world, they do not "die", but simply lose the body they were using, which can be restored by a particular [[NPC]]. [[NPC|NPCs]]s are aware of your status, and will casually mention it from time to time. This is actually made a significant story point for Elf and Giant characters.
** In the semi-prequel ''Vindictus'', The fact that the Giant Polar Bear is such a popular target is referenced in a quest, where it is suddenly attacking more areas than before and you are the prime suspect because you bother, I.E. use it to grind, so much, and are thus demanded to either calm it down or prove that you weren't the one that caused it to get even more angry. {{spoiler|you weren't the one who made it mad.}}
* [[Runescape]] soundly averts this in most all cases. If your character is in a [[Cutscene]] everything about them is there when they are shown. They just place limits on what can be with you on a few.
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=== [[Role Playing Game]] ===
* The amateur game ''Sensible Erection RPG'' features quite a bit of [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshading]] and parody of the cliches of Japanese [[RPG|RPGs]]s. Before the final confrontation, a party member that had been killed in a cutscene returns as if nothing had happened, and his companion declares, "I used a 1up on him. What's the big deal?" To which the boss responds, "See? I told you, [we live in a] videogame."
* Crushingly averted in ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'', where the party members attempt to use the strongest healing items and spells at their disposal on a character who has been [[Killed Off for Real]] to no avail. Fighting at 0 HP rendered him [[Deader Than Dead]].
** On the other hand, it's possible for characters in that cutscene to try to use Curaga and Raise on {{spoiler|Galuf}} even if they haven't gained a single level in any White Magic-related jobs. Or to use Pheonix Downs even if you don't currently have any in your inventory. As for how they got that far out without white magic...[[Unwinnable by Insanity|who'd actually try that?]]
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** ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' gives a good explanation for the world's [[Ghibli Hills]] and all their [[Random Encounters]]; all the towns in the world are shielded underneath giant energy shields that keep monsters out, and only highly trained professionals (like the party members) are allowed outside.
*** Character AI also prioritizes healing based on personality and character relationships. Flynn will spam healing on Yuri. And the [[Death Seeker]] [[Lovable Sex Maniac]] Raven prefers to heal women over a dog over men over himself.
** ''[[Tales of Innocence]]'' implements the [[Reincarnation]] storyline by letting the characters transform into their "original" forms for [[Limit Break|Limit Breaks]]s. This gets a tad amusing when you consider that Angi's previous life was {{spoiler|a man}}. The characters of course mention this in a skit.
** In ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'', when you use [[Waif Prophet|Ion's]] extension of Luke's first mystic arte, he'll waver and collapse instead of just disappearing. If Anise is in the party, [[Guilt Based Gaming|she calls for him, and he stutters "I-I'm... fine..."]].
*** Additionally, if you don't have Luke and Jade in your party, when Anise uses Final Fury, she yells "I'll kill you bastards!" Instead of the usual "O ravaging tragedy!"
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** To even further emphasize this, a [[Bonus Boss]] that you can defeat to unlock the second ending has a sort of a "Seal" attack that he starts with. It will not affect anyone ''except the Hero'' {{spoiler|because he is the one that placed the original curse that the Hero lives with}}.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', Rude of the Turks confesses to his partner (and the player, and the party hiding nearby) that he has a crush on Tifa, one of the heroes. In fights against the Turks, Rude will never attack Tifa, and if she is the only one standing, he'll give up and walk away.
* ''[[Pokémon Black and White]]'' make it mandatory to catch your version mascot to move the plot along. The pre-battle dialog says it's testing you, but ''wants'' to be caught; accordingly, it's ''fifteen times'' easier to capture than a normal legendary. <ref>Most legendaries have historically had capture numbers of 3, Reshiram and Zekrom have capture numbers of 45.</ref> However, the developers didn't account for a certain [[Sequence Breaking|sequence-break]] where the mascot can be skipped; even if you do encounter it later than usual, the catch rate of 45 is still there.
* The ''[[Star Ocean]]'' series has a tendency to break the fourth wall once in a while. Edge even speaks the words "Item creation" out loud at one point during ''[[Star Ocean: The Last Hope]]''. Of course {{spoiler|''[[Star Ocean: Till the End of Time]]'' reveals that the entire series' continuity takes place in a giant MMORPG called the Eternal Sphere}} and while the characters are mostly oblivious to this, having access to status menus and being able to make a cake by purchasing a single egg at the shop and invoking a Cooking ability learned by beating up some monsters probably seems perfectly normal to them.
** The "low luck" stat quirk mentioned also applies to Ashton in the [[Star Ocean the Second Story|second game]], who has abyssmal luck and somehow manages to get the 2-headed dragon he was trying to kill fused on his back: his natural luck stat is a mere 17 regardless of how high his level is, and this is in a game where most endgame stats easily break quadruple digits.
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* ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' gets bonus points for having the aversion and the straight example occur simultaneously. When Sora enters a Drive Form in battle and then a cut scene comes up after the fight, Sora will still be in the Drive Form.(Assuming the Form Gauge didn't run out while he was fighting.) That's the aversion. However, it's also played straight because the characters that you supposedly merged with in order to enter the Drive Form are still visible during the cut scene.
** It's actually played straight in gameplay when you have to fuse with Donald/Goofy to use Drive, which didn't happen the first time Sora tried it (in a cutscene).
** The [[Kingdom Hearts]] series is full of minor or major aversions. For instance, [[Light Is Good|Light]] and and [[Dark Is Evil|Darkness]] are major themes and alignments in the games; in [[Birth By Sleep]], certain bosses will have a defensive moveset, requiring an aggressive beatdown strategy. These bosses are respectively a strongly Light-aligned character, and a villain trying to bring out the Darkness within the PC, which would make sense given that aggression (the necessary beatdown strategies) is generally a negative or Dark attribute--goodattribute—good to counter Light opponents and engendered by villains. Some of the very very Dark-aligned final bosses should be carefully tanked and patiently blocked while searching for an opening--patienceopening—patience and precision being positive or a Light attribute and a good counter to Darkness.
** Another aversion is the techniques the various playable characters use. Sora, the main character and the first introduced, possesses a large moveset somewhat limited to combos and combo-finishers (and takes [[When All You Have Is a Hammer]]). Come the prequel, where Terra, Ven, and Aqua have an extremely diverse set of moves based on it's new combat system utilizing separate special attacks and combos, and extremely customizable. At first, it looks like their techniques are improvements on Sora's in every manner, even though Sora should be similarly skilled. However, [[Fridge Brilliance|closer inspection]] shows that Sora's been using streamlined and enhanced versions of his predecessor's skills the whole time! So even if Sora wasn't customizable to the extent they were, his practical experience and the obstacles he faced (obstacles which are just as or more dangerous than the prequel trio's, which he took on at a younger age) prove that he is just about on their level.
** [[Kingdom Hearts II]] also brought with it the "[[Press X to Not Die|Press Triangle to Massacre]]'' button, where Sora will inevitably do something over the top. Roughly half of the of the things he'll do are pretty much cutscenes initiated by the Triangle button that do automatic damage. Some of said cutscenes portray his actions up to and including [[Absurdly Sharp Blade|slicing skyscrapers in half]] and/or using said [[Cutscene Power to the Max|skyscrapers as barrier breaking attacks]] (in a low gravity environment, granted) . The other half are neat little auxiliary actions preformed without interrupting gameplay, like a super jump that'll take you up to a Chandelier, a dodge roll, or taking a swing with a stolen enemy sword. The Kicker is, everything the triangle button initiates is something Sora can (currently) canonically accomplish. In fact, some of his regular combo's do in fact rival the things he does with the Action Commands, and [[Kingdom Hearts 3D]] is going to top [[Kingdom Hearts II]]'s ridiculous factor with a similar mechanic, but make it more seamless with gameplay.
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* ''[[Final Fantasy X-2]]'' contains a bizarre straight example in which the party chases down villain-wannabe LeBlanc, who has stolen Yuna's garment grid and impersonates her appearance ''exactly''... despite the fact that every other example of using the grid system, ''including'' the exact dressphere she's using, copies the outfit, not the user's appearance. On the flipside, the Dressphere skill/class system is frequently mentioned in cutscenes. And not just in "here's how the game works" exposition either, one of them is actually a [[McGuffin]] in the main storyline.
* ''[[Tales of Phantasia]]'' averts it multiple times and plays it straight twice: Averted near the start of the game, where Cless is betrayed and captured by a group of soldiers; you are quite weak and have low-powered equipment at the time, so it's very reasonable that you can't fight back as you probably would get slaughtered. Played straight when Cless is poisoned (and knocked unconscious) by an attack from a creature that you killed tons of as fodder just five minutes ago, and they were incapable of poisoning you then. Later, you get captured again, except this time you are much more powerful, as well as having a party, and could probably take them just fine (although they are actually the good guys, so you could assume that the characters just didn't want to cause a fuss). Averted by your encounters with the [[Big Bad]]; when you first meet him he is shown literally vaporising people in cutscenes with some sort of [[Death Ray|laser beam]] attack and a [[Sphere of Destruction|shockwave explosion]], and you are sent away to become more powerful so you can beat him. When you finally do get around to fighting him and are much MUCH more powerful than you were before, he casually throws these attacks around in battle and you can shrug them off just fine (and the storyline gives them no further prominence), although they are still his most powerful attacks and kill you in a few hits. Also averted in various small instances where characters use things like healing spells outside of battle.
* ''[[Geneforge]]'' is perfectly integrated in some respects, but not at all in others. On the one hand, you're warned that [[Upgrade Artifact|Upgrade Artifacts]]s can affect the mind, and if you use too many you'll start to go into rages and attack people you could have negotiated with. Very high usage can even get you a bad ending. On the other hand, it's no longer legal to use [[Our Dragons Are Different|drakons]] as [[Mons]], but nobody says anything about it if you have one in your party.
* In ''[[Lost Odyssey]]'', the main character and several other party members are immortal, and revive within a few turns of being KOed. However, cutscenes and background material depict them as completely indestructible, which is ''not'' the case in gameplay, and the active party being KOed still results in a Game Over regardless of circumstances.
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' actually has an in-universe explanation for why guns have unlimited ammo. It is also a very good example of why [[Tropes Are Not Bad|this trope is not bad]], since said explanation is rather flimsy and only exists because the developers decided to use simplified combat gameplay. So when players complained and the developers decided to go for more complex combat in [[Mass Effect 2]], they had to tack on ''another'', even flimsier explanation for why you suddenly need to reload.
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=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===
* In ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', it's possible to summon storyline characters as Legendary creatures or Planeswalkers. Certain characters actually have multiple cards, depicting themselves at different times of their life, and they can be played at the same time. Early ''Magic'' stories explained that the character itself isn't being summoned - it's actually the caster's mental image of that character, made real with magic. ([[Plato|Platonic]]nic ideals are heavily referenced). However, this doesn't explain why there can't be two Legendary creatures with the same name in play.
** Gerrard Capashen manages to defeat Tsabo Tavoc in the storyline, despite three problems: one, Gerrard's card isn't powerful to harm Tsabo's; two, Tsabo can kill Gerrard with ease, both in and out of combat; and three, Tsabo's card is ''totally invulnerable'' to legendary creatures, like, say, Gerrard.
 
=== [[Turn-Based Strategy]] ===
* ''[[Fire Emblem]]: [[Fire Emblem Tellius|Path of Radiance]]'' introduces a skill called "Daunt", which lowers the hit and critical hit chances for any opposed units within three spaces of a unit that has it, and appears to work based on making the opponents fear you. In ''Path of Radiance'', it's exclusive to two enemies, both of whom are indeed quite fearsome. {{spoiler|And one of them happens to be a Branded, which means that laguz would be uneasy around her even if they didn't know ''why'' they're uneasy around her.}} In ''Radiant Dawn'', however, the player gets a scroll for giving this skill to a unit, and although the conversation that leads to your acquisition of this scroll again suggests that it works through being intimidating, the skill itself can be equipped on any unit, even [[White Magician Girl|Rhys,]] who is considered frail in-story as well as being a priest, or Leanne or Rafiel, who are [[Actual Pacifist|Actual Pacifists]]s and are generally calm-tempered. <ref>Reyson is also an [[Actual Pacifist]], as all herons are, but it's noted many times in-game that having spent so much time living with the hawks, he's become far more [[Hot-Blooded]] than most herons.</ref>
* ''[[Fire Emblem Elibe]]: Binding Blade'' has this. In Chapter 11A, Klein will shoot at his sister and seconds later say "Thank goodness you're okay!" But then in Chapter 16, General Douglass will not attack his adopted daughter Lalum, which makes her very useful for blocking him into a closed room with only one entrance/exit so that he can't get himself killed by your automatic counterattacks.
 
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[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]
[[Category:Consistency]]
[[Category:indexIndex]]
[[Category:Gameplay and Story Segregation]]
[[Category:Show, Don't Tell]]
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