Non-Indicative Name/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Non-Indicative Names in Video Games include:

  • Aqua Rhapsody doesn't feature any rhapsody at all, let alone an AQUA rhapsody.
  • The Elder Scrolls series very rarely include the eponymous Elder Scrolls, if at all.
    • And when they do (in Oblivion), the Elder Scroll in question is just an insignificant MacGuffin.
    • In Skyrim, however, it's a vital part of the main plot.
    • Of course, while the scrolls themselves aren't usually seen in-game, the events of the main quests in each game are events foretold by the scrolls, and the plots of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th games are kicked off by the Emperor taking action because of what the scrolls revealed to him.
    • Also from Skyrim, Grelod the Kind is anything but.
  • Metal Gear, since it doesn't look remotely like any kind of metal gear.
    • This is explained in Snake Eater by Granin as its intended purpose as the previously "missing link" between infantry and artillery (like a gear in an engine).
  • Donkey Kong is a gorilla. Shigeru Miyamoto came up with the name when trying to find a name to mean "Stubborn Ape", making this a case of Foreign Sounding Gibberish for him - specifically, he was looking up "stubborn" in a Japanese-to-English dictionary, and the sample sentence was "stubborn as a donkey".

Fry: Wait a second, I know that monkey, his name is Donkey!
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Monkeys aren't donkeys, quit messing with my head!

  • One level in Donkey Kong Country Returns is called "Peaceful Pier". Other than three very small wooden platforms floating in the sea, there is no pier, and the level consists of piloting a rocket-powered barrel over an ocean while being perpetually bombarded by fire from a pirate ship.
    • Similarly, Continental Circus is a race game. ("Circus" was a mistranslation and should have been "circuits"; this was later corrected.)
  • In itself, The Legend of Zelda franchise is a misnomer. Certainly, the eponymous character plays a prominent role in most of the games, but the Hero of Legend is the boy in the green hat. Some specific examples:

THE WIND FISH IN NAME ONLY, FOR IT IS NEITHER.

  • Also a Non-Indicative Name is the title—this and Majora's Mask are the only Zelda games that don't feature a Zelda. Although she's mentioned early on, and Marin's her Expy, it leaves you wondering why Link's awakening (that is, dream) has anything to do with Zelda's legend. Zelda technically appears in the game, but only in a flashback, and apart from re-teaching Link the Song of Time, her role in the game is otherwise irrelevant.
  • In Ocarina of Time, the Forest Temple is actually a ruined old mansion, and the Shadow Temple is actually a series of torture chambers - no reference is made to either being used for worship.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Clam Chowder is not made with clams, it is actually made with a Hearty Blueshell Snail (a freshwater snail), along with Fresh Milk, Tabantha Wheat, and Goat Butter. Indeed, it does not seem like there is anywhere in Hyrule where Link can find actual clams.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, the blaze gun shoots ice and the glacier gun shoots fire. This is one result of the Blind Idiot Translation that plagues the original PlayStation release - the guns were "Anti-Blaze Gun" and "Anti-Glacier Gun" respectively in the original Japanese, and the PSP remake fixes this by simply swapping the names.
    • While we're at it, the NPC ability "Steal Bracelet"? Instantly kills the target; "breath" was consistently mistranslated as "bracelet" in the English release, which is why dragons had "Fire Bracelet" as an ability.
    • Continuing this fashion in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 are what happens when you have mages named after colors—some fans think that they're named after clothing and sprite colors, but actually the names are perfectly indicative of what magic type they use. White mage uses white magic, black mage uses black magic, etc. Still leads to cases of Green Mages wearing purple clothing, though, when the player mages tend to have color-matching clothing.
    • Final Fantasy itself lives this trope with a whopping 15 sequels (including 2 MMOs, but not including the spinoffs). It is an Artifact Title due to the developers believing the original Final Fantasy being a one off title. Considering there is no continuity between main series games, referring to each game as "Final Fantasy" still makes sense for most of the series, since most of the game worlds only are used in one game.
  • Playable character Roger Jr. in Tekken. The character fighting is actually Roger's mate, Mrs. Roger, carrying their son (the actual Roger Jr.) in her pouch.
  • In Dark Sector, the main character gains access to a biomechanical weapon called a glaïve. It's the same sort of weird thing as in Krull, not an actual glaïve. Again.
    • This seems to be a theme, as a spinning bladed weapon referred to as a glaïve appears in both StarCraft (the Mutalisk's Glaïve Wurm) and Warcraft III (the Night Elf Glaïve Thrower).
  • In Kingdom Hearts, if your heart is removed, you become a Heartless, and sometimes a Nobody. However, the creatures called "The Heartless" are not made from the person-minus-the-heart, but rather the heart itself. The creatures made of everything but the heart are called "The Nobodies".
  • Played with in Tsukihime. Specifically, with the character Souka Tsukihime, who, despite the coincidence, is a very minor character.
  • The Warthog, a military jeep, in Halo, as lampshaded in Red vs. Blue.

Sarge: Gentlemen, presenting the M-12 L.R.V. I like to call it the "Warthog".
Simmons: Why Warthog, sir?
Sarge: Because M-12 L.R.V. is too hard to say in conversations, son.

    • This is simply indicative of the standard UNSC (human-forces) naming convention for their vehicles: nearly all of them (Warthog, Hornet, Mongoose, Pelican) are named after animals.
  • Pokémon:
    • Quite a few Pokémon have names that barely resemble what they're supposed to represent: Sandshrew looks more like a armadillo or pangolin then an actual shrew. Psyduck sounds like it'd be a psychic duck - but while it has Psychic-type moves, both Psyduck and its evolution Golduck lack the typing, and Golduck itself is blue rather than gold.
    • This extends to moves as well - for example, the animation for the move Submission suggests some sort of spinning grapple attack rather than a submission hold, which is also the case in the anime.
    • All the mainline games feature Victory Road, an area you must traverse to reach the Elite Four in that game - of note is that it was the exact same location from Pokémon Red and Blue to Pokémon Gold and Silver. It isn't a road in any of those cases, but a tunnel at most. Victory Road is also The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of the game in a way, though it's not the conclusion.
      • The first generation of games had a long route leading up to Victory Road proper, which required three of the five Hidden Machine (HM) techniques to cross. The naming convention could potentially be interpreted as inspiring, since the game is nearly over once you've cleared it, and the dungeon tests all of one's skills as a Pokémon trainer - thankfully, there are plenty of opportunities to heal freely after exiting.
    • Also, in the fourth generation, the Amplifier Artifacts for the main trio of legendaries are all called orbs, even though only one barely resembles an orb.
  • Wario Master of Disguise has as one of its treasures the Superfantastical Money Tree... which does absolutely nothing and is likely based on an ornamental plant popular in Japan and Taiwan.

Sure, it sounds fancy. But it's just a plant. A boring old potted plant. Slap anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

  • Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. Yeah, he does!
  • SimCity has this with the building names:
    • Generic "Small Shops" and "Retail Stores" are proper, but the high class "Boutiques" are wrong. A boutique usually is a very small building or something somebody has in their house, and none of those boutiques are tiny.
    • Apartment names are worse. The Hamster Tenement is not small and cute like a hamster, but a big ugly building. Most of the Condos are not very fancy either.
  • Team Star FOX is only composed of two actual foxes (Fox & Krystal) that are mercenaries. The other guys are a bird, frog, and rabbit, as well as a robot.
    • Likewise, there's only one wolf in Team Star Wolf, but that might be because of something else...
      • The teams are named after their leaders. There is even a Star Falco team in one of the alternate endings to Command. However, as far as the games go, Star Fox Adventures certainly fits the bill, as the rest of the team bascially does nothing and there isn't a lot of action in space like Star would imply.
  • In Brütal Legend, the Kill Master's job does indeed have to do with death...namely, preventing it. He uses the Power of Rock to heal anything up to but not quite including death. He only takes the name to frighten away intruders, and protect his flock... of giant spiders.
    • Not only does Kill Master have an Informed Ability to take your head clean off at will, he's an obvious expy of Lemmy Kilmister, legendary bassist and singer. Lita and Lars are supposed to remind you of other heavy metal legends, but only Kill Master is a straight up expy of the person they are named after. Lemmy Kilmister voiced Kill Master to boot. Quite an illustrative name.
  • None of the rinks in Backyard Hockey are in a backyard.
  • "Usagi" is Japanese for "rabbit". Usagi from Nezumi Man, however, is no more of a rabbit than Jessica Rabbit. Usagi is a kangaroo.
  • If anyone who played Team Fortress 2 actually cared about scouting, the Scout would not be a very good class for it as they're incredibly noticeable, and the Sniper's zoom vision and Spy's invisibility make them better at it.
    • A fairly funny example is the map "Gorge", whose eponymous land feature according to a blog post is not a gorge but "a large-ish hole not big enough to meet the U.S. Geological Survey’s standards for a gorge, disguised as a by-the-book, nothing-to-see-here gorge." A much later blog post state in development the gorge was originally a good deal larger and deeper.
    • The unlockable Heavy secondary "The Buffalo Steak Sandvich" is not a "sandvich", just a steak ("Who needs bread?")
    • What the team names are acronyms for, Reliable Excavation & Demolition and Builder's League Union, are rather the opposite of what the teams tend to when both sides don't have the same goal: RED is defense and thus tend to have Engineers making a lot of Sentry Guns to stop the other team while BLU is offense and thus need to demolish a lot of those Sentry Guns to advance (often relying heavily on Demomen).
      • Particularly noticeable in payload maps, where the Builders' League Union is trying to push a cart with a huge bomb on it to blow up Reliable Excavation and Demolition's base and weapons stockpile. Regardless, neither has anything to do with construction. The names are really just a Paper-Thin Disguise for the two teams of mercenaries.
  • Mega Man is a robot boy. At least his Japanese name Rockman is a reference to his civilian name Rock.
  • The main character in Twin Blades uses a single blade. There's not a player two to be the twin, either. Maybe the scythe is double-sided?
  • In Nox a prominent NPC is named Lord Horrendous. He's a bit of a Knight Templar, but essentially a decent guy.
  • In World of Warcraft Lady Deathwhisper actually yells a lot and does not in fact ever whisper. This would have been a better name for Herald Voljasz, or one of those animal bosses in Zul'Gurub that whisper random players with death threats.
    • The Fist of Subtlety, an insignificant quest reward, is a giant spiky "fist weapon" that covers most of your arm, and is used for punching people. The description even has the annotation "Not at all".
    • The Combat Rogue's Mastery skill is called "Main Gauche," and it gives the rogue a certain probability of landing an extra attack with the weapon in his right hand. "Main Gauche" means left hand in French.
    • It's possible to get a Dwarven Fishing Rod and Goblin Fishing Rod. The latter is several sticks of dynamite, the former is a shotgun.

"Dwarves are not known for their subtlety."

  • The flash game Crazy Flasher does not involve a deranged pervert exposing themself.
  • The Archdemon in Dragon Age is not, in fact, a demon; it's actually a dragon.
  • Mother 3 had the Tower of Love and Peace.
  • StarCraft has nothing to do with stars, and the not much to do with crafting, unless you consider commanding an army a craft. Nor does it involve too many space-ships since a lot of the battles take place entirely between ground units.
    • The "star" part supposedly have to do with the main plot, with outer space races apart from humans (terrans). But the mystery on "craft" still remains.
    • Clearly, the name "StarCraft" is a play on "Warcraft," the original Real-Time Strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment; it is Warcraft ...but in space!
  • The Super Mario Bros. Fan Game Normal Super Mario Bros. is anything but normal. The same goes for its sequels.
  • The Four Guardians in Mega Man Zero are always called that even after one of them dies in the first game. This is even lampshaded on the spine card of one of the soundtracks.
  • The World Ends With You is not nearly as depressing and apocalyptic as the title makes it sound. This is largely due to copyright issue - the game's Japanese name is It's A Wonderful World, which makes the game sound rather more upbeat than it is.
    • It's revealed partway through to be very indicative of the game's theme, just not in the way you'd expect. It's a philosophical statement, and a reason why you should "expand your horizons".
  • Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon never features the actual Procyon. In fact, the player never even leaves the borders of The Empire. You do fight the Procyons, but this still doesn't explain the "at" preposition.
    • Lampshaded by an end credit that says, "No battle actually takes place at Procyon".
  • An example of a Non-Indicative Subtitle: Ufouria - The Saga is not a saga at all, since the other games in the Hebereke series have nothing to do with that one and no sequels were ever made.
  • Nexus the Jupiter Incident only features Jupiter at the very beginning, spending most of the time in other systems. The only reason for the name is an obvious Title Drop in a Captain's Log.
  • In Master of Orion, the Bulrathi are bears, not bulls.
  • Resident Evil:
    • Raccoon City is neither well-known for raccoons or particularly populated with them. Even when the city's population of humans and animals are zombified, there aren't any zombie-raccoons in sight. There is also a lack of raccoons in Raccoon Forest.
    • In the remake of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis the weapon Jill uses against the eponymous villain in the Final Battle is the the Ferromagnetic Infantry-use Next Generation Railgun, or F.I.N.Ge.R. This, of course, makes very little sense, as it could never possibly be used by infantry, as it is in no way portable; shooting the huge weapon requires tethering it to a generator the size of a house. It seems the developers really wanted Jill to make a joke here about "giving Nemesis the finger", and sadly, she does not, as said joke is only in the journal the heroine finds.
  • The Dawn of War game is not about the first war in history between ancient civilizations - it's a Real Time Strategy adaption of Warhammer 40,000, a futuristic setting with a Forever War, and the game certainly isn't set at the a very early time within the setting. The name get even more illogical for its sequel numbered 2, with a third set to happen. It does sound cool, though.
  • Many of the track names on Medal of Honor's OST don't correspond to the levels the songs are used in, as they were originally composed for levels that were Dummied Out. One, "Approaching Colditz Castle", didn't even appear in the game, although it was later used in the Behind Enemy Lines mission in Allied Assault. Same for Frontline's OST": "Border Town" and "Shipyards of Lorient" are switched around in-game, and "The Halftrack Chase" should have been titled "The Truck Chase".
  • Half-Life:
    • Antlions from Half-Life 2 don't resemble real life antlions. They are quadripedal quasi-crustacean creatures while real antlions resemble dragonflies.
    • The Half-Life games themselves have nothing to do with radioactive decay; the player character, though a PHD-holding scientist, works in theoretical physics and ballistics, not radiology.
  • Invoked in Bayonetta. Angels are really horrifying monsters that dress it up really nicely, and their names are no exception. To name a few: Affinity, Dear and Decorations, Kinship (really), Inspired, Balder and Jubileus. Averted with the Demon race, which likewise Invokes Names to Run Away From Really Fast.
    • It's perfectly indicative. Angels as depicted in the Bible were often horrifying, unearthly creatures, such as burning wheels within wheels, five-winged creatures that keep themselves perpetually covered in their wings to stop their radiances from killing anyone who looked upon them and all kinds of crazy stuff. Bayonetta's probbably the most accurate depiction (visually) of a lot of the angels from the Old Testament.
    • Also, there's Fairness, who... isn't.
    • Bayonetta herself; she does use guns a lot, but none of them have bayonets.
  • Ace Attorney Investigations. Edgeworth is a prosecutor; in-universe, this is a very different job from an attorney (who are defense only). Also, none of the game involves trials. This title is, of course, just meant to link the game to the rest of the series, but still.
    • He has been called a "prosecuting Attorney" on at least one occasion, however.
  • Crazy Bus has very dull and straightforward gameplay, not very crazy at all. The music, on the other hand...
  • The Nihon Falcom RPG Dinosaur has no dinosaurs in it.
  • In Devil May Cry, the recurring boss "Phantom" is not a ghost or a person who walks through walls: he's a giant flaming spider made out of magma. The name might refer to his ability to tunnel into the earth to appear and disappear at will, but that's a stretch.
  • In Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, the Devil's Toybox is not, in fact, in any way associated with The Devil. He actually shows up in the final episode, during the Eldritch Abomination rampage, to dispel the rumors that he is involved with Junior's actions.
  • Most of the Riddle School games indeed take place in schools, but RS5 and Riddle Transfer take place on a spaceship and in Area 51, respectively.
  • If a spell, weapon or attack is named "Flare", it's probably either extremely powerful (Final Fantasy) or extremely weak (Descent, Guild Wars), depending on whether the name refers to solar flares or flare guns.
  • One of the games included in the Three Wonders arcade anthology is called "Chariot - Adventure through the sky". This refers to the eponymous vehicle, which is nothing like a chariot and in fact is more like a hang-glider.
  • The Lion King names several levels after songs from the movie it was based on. However, the level "Be Prepared" has nothing to do with the song "Be Prepared," which is instead used as background music to the "Elephant Graveyard" level.
  • The Koopa Clown Car from Super Mario World is actually a helicopter.
  • Just Dance for Wii doesn't have "Just Dance" by Lady Gaga.
  • Psycho Waluigi has the Home Hardware Kingdom, which is really a hardware store with the word "kingdom" in it (as Psycho Iris points out). Granted, there is a king to dethrone at the end of the level, but he's probably about as much of a king as the Burger King is.
  • The galaxies in Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are actually miniature solar systems.
  • One of Superhero from Superhero League of Hoboken is Captain Excitement. His special power is...talk animal to sleep.
  • Tiger in Monster Rancher is actually a wolf-like creature. However, Tiger is a mistranslation of the name of a hero in one of Tecmo's other games.
  • The side mission "Warring without Weapons" in Valkyria Chronicles is not a No-Gear Level. In fact, it's one of the game's few straight-up Kill'Em All missions.
  • The Ninja Gaiden games (gaiden meaning side story) are not a side story to anything
  • In Final Fight, Andore Jr. is Andore's younger brother, not his son.
  • U.S. Gold was a British video game publisher. Although their original purpose was to localize American games for the European market, they eventually branched out to publishing original European-developed games from companies such as Core Design and Delphine Software as well.
  • Two of the three games contained in the Three Wonders arcade anthology are about a quest to find and use something called the "Chariot". This "Chariot" is, for all intents and purposes, a sort of fancy hang-glider.
  • Quartet 2 is not the sequel to the Sega arcade game Quartet, it's just an alternate version of the same game made for 2-player cabinets (since the original was available only as a deluxe 4-player cabinet).
  • Hang-On II is not a sequel to Hang-On, it's just an SG-1000 port of the original game. The number was only added to distinguish it from the Master System port of Hang-On released prior to it.
  • Silent Hill
    • The eponymous town really isn't very hilly.
    • Pyramid Head, the Big Bad of the second game is named for his helmet, which is technically not pyramid-shaped, being seven-sided.
  • There is an arena in a few Mortal Kombat games called Jade's Desert. No reason has ever been given as to why it is named after Jade. In fact, it first appears in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and seeing as the plot of that game takes place in Earthrealm, it's doubtful that this arena is even part of Outworld, making it odd that it would be named after an Edenia native. To make it even more confusing, when the arena reappears in Mortal Kombat 9, a statue of Sindel is added, possibly suggesting the place had something to do with Edenia, but not Jade.
  • Despite the "Swedish Erotica" label used by American Multiple Industries in their porn games for the Atari 2600 (most notably Custer's Revenge), none of the games had anything to do with Sweden or its people for that matter. The label was simply licensed from a series of adult videos by its parent company Caballero Control Corporation.
    • The American Multiple Industries name itself is also something of a misnomer, as it seemingly implies to be of a conglomerate rather than a game developer whose specialty is pixelated smut simulators.
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