Cassandra Truth / Video Games

Cassandra Truths in Video Games.

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• In most online multiplayer games, a player telling people that they are experiencing lag (usually clientside) is usually accused of making it up to excuse poor performance during the time where you rubber-banded.

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• In Arc Rise Fantasia, the party (and the player) is quick to jump to the conclusion that Rastan is Leon, which Rastan corrects at every opportunity. It comes as quite a shock that this was the truth all along, and it's a major headdesk moment when everyone realizes that Leon is actually Serge, who fits all the clues just as well as Rastan and hasn't been denying it all along. He's just not what anyone was expecting the legendary Lightning Leon to really be like.
• In Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky, Wilbell performs magic shows on the side for a little money. She says that it's real magic that she's using in the shows, which it is, but nobody believes her, because nobody believes in magicians, save those that Wilbell has specifically revealed the truth to.
• In the Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal expansion of Baldur's Gate II, listen to Gromnir Il-Khan's paranoid ravings about Melissan. He's absolutely right about all of it. Too bad he's also been executing other Bhaalspawn under suspicion of betrayal and now everyone thinks he's gone mad.
• This plays into the ending of The Breach: our hero has survived, but he's a nervous wreck locked in an insane asylum, and since he blew up the spaceship to destroy everything on it, he has no way of convincing anyone of what really happened, and no way to prevent the experiment from being replicated. Then he turns into a monster and apparently eats his psychiatrist. On camera. Well, at least that ought to put a stop to the experiment...
• Chrono Trigger: After the Time Key gets stolen and you go find it, Azala asks you what it does. If you tell her, she doesn't believe you, saying if it were true, you wouldn't tell an enemy.
• In Cookie Clicker, the news ticker mentions a scientist who becomes a laughingstock among his peers for predicting a cookie-related end of the world. His prediction turns out to be scarily accurate once the Grandmapocalypse is triggered, with the news ticker announcing reports of The End of the World as We Know It.
  News: scientist predicts imminent cookie-related "end of the world"; becomes joke among peers.
• Happens in the final world of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. As part of his plan to unmake Crash and Coco, Cortex travels back to the start of the series and warns his past counterpart not to send them into the Cortex Vortex. Unfortunately, Past Cortex simply won’t believe him, no matter what he says.
• Crysis 3: No one believes Prophet's warnings that the Ceph are back until it's too late.
• Deltarune: During the course of the game, the player enters the Dark Worlds, and has to seal the Fountains of Darkness that form the Dark Worlds in order to prevent the apocalypse. Attempting to tell Undyne, the local police chief about the Dark Worlds has her laugh you off.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: By the time Greed stops messing around, Gun goes into full denial because he can't trust demons anymore. Unfortunately, Greed is shown to be sincere at least with most his exposition.
• Disco Elysium hits the player with a meta one. When examing the murder victim, the Hanged Man, it possible to use the Inland Empire skill, the Detective's imagination and lateral thinking ability, to have a conversation with the corpse. When asking the Hanged Man who killed him, he will answer that "communism killed [him]" but also that "love did [him] in". This is painfully accurate, but it will not make any real sense until you actually find the killer and interrogate him about his motive.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: If you attempt to tell anyone about the Stones on Solstiem before you’ve gotten far enough into the quest line to deal with them, they simply won’t know what you’re talking about. It’s justified in this case in that Miraak probably put some sort of spell on them to not know.
• Eternal Darkness: No, really. The darkness DOES come and will damn us all if nobody stops it, so may the rats eat your eyes for not listening to Max Roivas.
• Far Cry 5 has Joseph Seed's apocalyptic rants where he's preparing bunkers for the end of the world and tells the main chracter & player attempting to take him will end in nothing but death and destruction. In all endings but the one you refuse to take him, it's proven he's 100% right. The world being nuked is the event he predicts and it happens due to a series of diplomatic breakdowns you can easily miss being talked about on the in-game raido.
• Happens in Final Fantasy X, where no one will believe Tidus about being from Zanarkand.
  • Tidus saying that "there has to be another way to beat Sin". There is, but the people of Spira are so resigned to the regular method (a human sacrifice) that they don't bother to see his point.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • In one questline in the Peaks, the Warrior of Light escorts Berehta, an aging woman who has never left her hamlet of Coldhearth, to the trading town of Ala Ghiri. She calls it the grandest town she's ever seen. When the well-traveled Warrior tells her that they've visited cities ten times the size of Ala Ghiri, she thinks they're pulling her leg. In the same questline, the Warrior learns that Berehta's son, Erart, is Faking the Dead as part of his actions as The Mole for the Ala Mhigan Resistance, believing that there's no place for him in Ala Mhigo after all the horrible things he did to maintain his cover. While he asks the Warrior to keep it a secret from Berehta, the Warrior can try to tell her that he's alive, only for her to say that of course Erart is alive in their hearts.
  • The Endwalker expansion deals with this during the first part of the story in Garlemald. Prior to this, Alphinaud and Alisaie are told by their mother Ameliance that sometimes, words won't be enough, and that people need to speak with their actions. After going to Garlemald on a mission of mercy to provide aid, the Eorzeans are met with suicidal resistance from the remaining Garleans, many of whom see the Eorzeans as vultures who have come to pick over the remains of the Empire. Several Garleans die tragic, avoidable, and utterly pointless deaths rather than accept that the Eorzeans are there to help, despite that really being the reason that they're there. Alphinaud and Alisaie eventually realize the truth to their mother's words and come to the conclusion that actions, not words, are what are needed to convince the Garleans that they're there to help.
• Glory of Heracles (DS) has Cassandra herself show up, and gives a different reason why her prophecies are not believed: when she tries to give them, half the words are rendered unintelligible. Only Achilles can hear her prophecies, and he gets offed pretty fast. Eventually, the party takes her into a room lined with stone that cuts off the power of the gods, and her curse lifts long enough for her to give them her prophecy (which says "Typhon is coming").
• An especially dark version in God of War (PS4): Modi tells his father Thor about Kratos killing Magni... but because of numerous prophecies declaring that Magni and Modi were supposed to survive Ragnarok and everything before it, Thor understandably scoffs at Modi’s claim that some random dude was able to kill a demigod and defy destiny. He comes to the conclusion that the ever-jealous Modi murdered Magni or left him to die, and proceeds to beat him within an inch of his life. In truth, Kratos is a god himself, meaning what he did was perfectly feasible... but Thor doesn’t know that and simply makes assumptions based on the flawed information Modi gives him.
• Golden Sun
  • Feizhi is essentially a kung-fu Anime Chinese Girl Cassandra. Several of the NPCs in Xian are indicated to believe her visions, after the first two came true... but her father not only disbelieves, he rebukes her for having a vision that her friend was caught in a rockslide and worrying about him, which is the part our heroes see before she runs off in tears to find her friend.
  • Saturos and Menardi. They tried to explain the situation to the Vale elders, but when they didn't believe them, they were forced to take drastic actions.
• In Guenevere, Guenevere has the option to tell King Arthur that Lancelot is inappropriately interested in her. He laughs it off as a misunderstanding.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist:
  • Sol tries to tell people about their visions, but (because not all of them come true) is dismissed as a liar. Eventually, Sol mostly stops talking about them, for reasons decided by the player. If the player insists on continuing to talk about them, they start being considered delusional, and they get Delusion cards, which have negative values.
  • Sol themself turns out to not be completely immune to this in one instance. They dismiss Dys telling them that he saw Sym recently, while Sol is mourning after witnessing Sym's death, as Dys responding to the information with denial. If Sol ever leaves the colony again after their mourning period is over, it turns out that Sym has a Body Backup Drive, meaning Dys had truly seen Sym more recently than Sol had.
  • In Nomi's holonovel, you can report to the police about the alien invasion, but they don't believe you, and they imprison you as you helplessly watch the aliens destroy earth.
• In inFAMOUS: Second Son, Delsin Rowe has just gained Conduit powers at the start of the game. When confronted by Brooke Augustine, Good Karma Delsin will try to turn himself in as a Conduit in an attempt to keep her from hurting the other Akomish. However, because Delsin doesn't realize that his ability is Power Copying, he says he "caught it" off the Conduit Augustine just captured. Augustine, who actually knows how Conduit powers (generally) work, doesn't believe him and proceeds to torture everyone in an attempt to find out what Delsin was really hiding, setting off the plot of the game.
• In ...Iru!, when Inaba goes to Housou-sensei about how Rie killed Kyoka and then came after him, she doesn't believe him.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Zelda's claims that Hyrule is in danger and that Ganondorf might be a traitor are disregarded by the king as such. When Link has to send a letter to the guard of Death Mountain gate, the guard, while he acknowledges the writing as authentic, assumes that Zelda is playing pretend.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2; When the prisoners with nanites injected into them rebel, Nick Fury sees this and attempts to warn Iron Man and Captain America. The former shoots down this claim because, well, Nick Fury has a history of lying, despite his goals of protecting the world in doing so. That and Iron Man thinks he has a handle on things. The latter dismisses this claim as well because he needs more than just his word, and he believes that even if the nanite controlled prisoners really have betrayed Iron Man, then he had it coming because of his actions during the superhuman civil war. They eventually come around, but the problem gets too out of hand at that point and it nearly costs Fury his life.
• Mass Effect:
  • The entire damn story. Specifically, it's understandable for the Citadel Council to be skeptical of a lone human warning of ageless giant robot monsters from outer-outer space coming to wipe out all galactic life, at first. But after said human and their cohorts are proven right, time and time again, in everything else they've told you, some smidgen of acceptance wouldn't kill you!
    Turian Council Member: Ah yes, (air quotes) "Reapers".
  • This occurs within the game itself, in regards to the player. On the very first mission you encounter an apparently insane scientist that you (and the other characters) dismiss for being nuts as he's rambling. He's utterly correct about everything. One of the random planets you can scan has a description indicating it was bought by a millionaire who went nuts because voices in his head told him about an enemy he's looking for weapons to fight... he also is spot on in his description of who the Big Bad of the series is.
  • Lampshaded in the third game, where Legion reveals that the geth collective believed his/her evidence about the Reapers returning from Day 1.
    Shepard: ...That must have been nice.
  • The Asari Councillor finally gets smart about this during the Cerberus coup. Shepard claims that Udina is leading them into a trap, as he's partially behind the coup, but gets dismissed by most of the Council and their bodyguard. However, the Asari Councillor points out that every single time the Council has disregarded Shepard, it's come back to bite them in the ass, and decides to hear him/her out.
  • You also encounter a Spectre who explains that, although the Council dismissed Shepard's warnings, many Spectres took them at face value.
  • Apparently subverted with Garrus' father, offscreen. Garrus later tells Shepard that he sought his father out, and told the whole story from start to finish. According to Garrus when it came to his father, "if the connections were there, he would see it" and believed Garrus. He took it higher up and their government gave Garrus some people and resources. Though Garrus thinks they just did it to get him to shut up about it, it may have helped a little... (and as Mass Effect: Andromeda shows, some people did listen).
• Mortal Kombat 11: In some pre-fight dialogues, Johnny Cage tries to brag about how he beat up Shinnok in the previous game, but his opponents tend to think he's making it up.
• Azazel from Nexus War was the angelic personification of Truth. His demonic archrival Tlacolotl was losing the war against the angels and knew it, and managed to convince Azazel to have a talk with the unyielding god of justice Namm about his overall strategy. Azazel, being incapable of telling lies, told Namm that he was going too far with the Black-and-White Insanity and thus became its next casualty, creating a division between angelkind at a critical moment in time.
• Nobody seems to believe Chef Fujimoto from Octodad, the only person able to see through the titular character's paper-thin disguise, despite his constant frustrated attempts to expose the lie. That is, until the sequel, where everyone is shocked by the revelation except Stacy, who is incredulous that nobody else figured it out, either.
• In Octopath Traveler II, after remembering that Trousseau said that he'll spread his poison rain in Timberain next, Castti heads there and tries to talk to a few guards to have them evacuate the townspeople, but they don't believe in her and laugh it off. Fortunately, Edmund, despite also not knowing what's going on, trusts in Castti and successfully convinces the guards.
• Persona 4: The protagonists never talk to the police about the crimes because, really, who would believe 'there's an alternate dimension inside the TV that certain people can access, people inside die when it's foggy out, and also we have superpowers in there' if a bunch of teenagers told them?
  • Played for Laughs when the team gets Drunk on Milk and explains the entire thing to Naoto Shirogane... who of course thinks they're just drunkenly teasing. When Naoto later does experience the whole tv thing firsthand, they apologize for doubting and join the team.
  • Played for Drama when the protagonist's uncle Dojima finds one of the threatening notes the killer sent to the house and correctly deduces that they're involved in the case, but even if you tell him the complete truth, he doesn't believe you and drags you down to the police station. This gives Namatame the opportunity to kidnap Nanako while she's home alone.
  • Although it's played tragically with Taro Namatame, who actually suspects something after the first murder, fails to convince the second victim, and is brushed off by the cops when he thinks he knows the next target; his story was crazy and he was being played by the real killer. In fact, you can put the final nail in the coffin by not believing that he was only responsible for the kidnappings, not the murders, and throwing him into the TV world as punishment.
• Persona 5: As part of his interrogation, the Protagonist tells Sae Nijima all about the Palace and working with a talking cat right from the start, while leaving out details that would incriminate his allies. It unfortunately takes him explaining half a dozen incidents for her to actually believe it.
  • Persona 5 Strikers: The Phantom Thieves decide to tell their police ally Zenkichi Hasegawa the entire truth about the recent Metaverse epidemic. Zenkichi's initial reaction is to suggest they get tested for drugs. The Thieves then force the issue by bringing Zenkichi into the metaverse with them, giving the poor man a hilarious Freak Out.
• The Pokémon Absol sense danger and natural disasters and go to the people to warn them of the upcoming disasters. However, nobody listens to them, and thus the whole species has a horrible reputation for being the ones to cause disasters.
• In the Poptropica island Pelican Rock, the player and the Booted Bandit are such flawless lookalikes no one even considers the player could be telling the truth about not being the same person. The prison files wrote that the player claims their innocence “to a truly annoying degree.”
• RealityMinds:
  • Discussed. Astrake notes that few would believe Silvana was brainwashed by the ghost Kvena into attacking Arkeld village, but nonetheless gives this explanation to both the soldiers and the Arkeld villagers, since he thinks it's better than not saying anything and looking guilty anyways.
  • On the flip side, Kvena was ostracized by her peers because no one believed her research about essences, due to essences only being observable to those with strong magic. This causes her to commit suicide and set her on the path to becoming an evil ghost.
• Resident Evil 2 has Chris, through his diary, talk about how Police Chief Brian Irons refused to listen to him when he talked about what happened in the events of Resident Evil involving the Umbrella corporation. Likewise in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Jill tried to warn the townspeople about what happened in the first game, but no one would listen to her. In the former, Irons was actually a Corrupt Cop taking bribes from Umbrella while in the latter, the townsfolk either were too afraid to speak out against Umbrella or simply did not care. This results in the town being plagued with a viral outbreak that turns the town into a Zombie Apocalypse and it gets so out of control that the U.S. government decides that nuking the town was the only option they had to contain the outbreak.
  • The idea is revisited in Resident Evil 3 (Remake), with some changes: instead of Jill being in Raccoon City trying to warn people of Umbrella's wrongdoings, the reason for her being in the city is because she's under house arrest. Why is she under house arrest? Because she knows of Umbrella's wrongdoings, and the RPD are in Umbrella's pocket.
• in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Alfred accuses Claire of being an Umbrella spy who ordered her people to attack his facility. Claire obviously isn't affiliated with Umbrella and insists as such, but Alfred doesn't buy it and spends the whole game trying to kill her. The true culprit behind Alfred's woes is Wesker.
• Resident Evil 6: After distracting the President's security detail in Tall Oaks, Helena suffered a crisis of conscience and attempted to get them to go back before Simmons made his move, but they all dismissed her due to her reputation as "the CIA's problem child." Leon was the only one willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but by then, it was too late.
• In Spandex Force minor villain The Crossdresser sends your character's secret identity to the local newspaper, only for it to treat the suggestion as a joke because there's no way a "great superhero" like yourself could be a total dork. This leads you to comment "I don't know whether to be relieved or really really upset right now."
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Knights of the Old Republic:
    • Your first "actual" party member, Carth, is quick to point out that something stinks in the whole setup, it's a little odd that your Player Character happens to survive, that the Jedi Council is hiding something, etc. At the time, it's easy to chalk it up to the guy being paranoid after being backstabbed by his superior officer. But, come the Tomato in the Mirror, Carth turns out to be dead right on everything. It's implied in game that he may be Force-sensitive, but not trained enough to use it.
    • After The Reveal, the player character has the option several times to nonchalantly inform people that "I'm Darth Revan", only for them to assume they're sarcastically invoking another trope.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: Telling Atris that the entire staff on the Peragus Mining Station was already dead when the Exile awoke inside of their kolto tank? She'll just refuse to believe it, even though the lone HK-50 unit pulling this off is the irrefutable truth that the stuck-up bitch refuses to believe.
  • You arrive in Iziz spaceport looking for a Jedi master, smuggled aboard the personal shuttle of the Mandalorian leader. Feel free to tell the customs officers any of this, they won't believe a word.
• In both versions of Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Carson Moss near constantly spouts off about how Fisher can't be trusted, how Fisher is up to something, and how he should just kill Fisher in the man's sleep. Naturally he was right on all accounts and then some, and if the JBA had listened to him they would have won, but because Moss is such a belligerent asshole to everyone in the organization for absolutely no reason naturally they never listened to him.
• In Suikoden III, a "mysterious sorceress" wanders into Karaya Village with a prophecy that the village will be attacked by Zexen forces and that everyone should clear out immediately. Nobody believes her, and the village is destroyed. The reason she knew about this is because she was part of the plot, and just wanted to minimize casualties.
• In Super Mario RPG, a star spirit comes down from the sky and possesses Geno (a doll owned by a kid named Gaz). Gaz tells his mother that he saw Geno walking towards the woods, and his mother dryly comments that Gaz also told her "Geno" was the one who broke her lamp last week. Later, when the now-living Geno returns with Mario and Mallow, Gaz's mother assumes it's just a guy in a costume.
• In Touhou Project, Iku Nagae is an anthropomorphic catfish that can forecast earthquakes. When Iku goes throughout Gensokyo to warn people about the calamity, everyone thinks she is the culprit... And when she discovers who's behind it...
• TRON 2.0: When Jet is captured by the Kernel and the system security forces, he quickly admits that he was born in 1982 and that he is a User. The Kernel finds both statements ridiculous; his code is much too complex to be from 1982, and there's no way he could be a User. He's only spared from being executed when Mercury hears he's working for Ma3a.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Jack warns you against trusting other vampires, especially elders who are guaranteed to milk you for favors at best and use you as cannon fodder for their plots at worst. Solid advice, and Jack is generally a helpful and likeable guy. Jack is also the oldest vampire you will encounter in the game and the entire main plot is a scheme by him to kill prince Lacroix.
• Warcraft:
  • The Prophet in Warcraft III tries to alert the human kingdoms of Lordaeron to the threat of the Burning Legion, but only Jaina Proudmoore heeds the call and takes an expeditionary force to Kalimdor. Lordaeron is destroyed by the Scourge, who bring forth the Burning Legion. It's really smart of him not to reveal his true name: Medivh. After all, Medivh (albeit while possessed by Sargeras) is the one who originally opened the Dark Portal.
  • Also played with in the Warcraft Expanded Universe novel The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm with the old Shaman Drek'thar. His visions were still heeded despite a growing level of senility up until the point where his vision of a peaceful meeting of druids being attacked by orcs, and sending of troops to provide protection, leads to a false alarm and increased distrust by the Night Elves. Later in the book however, this attack does occur, and Drek'thar's caretaker is horrified when he realizes that, not only was Drek'thar right all along, but his most recent visions were about an upcoming Cataclysm.
  • In Patch 4.3 of World of Warcraft, if you talk to Bishop Farthing and tell him that Archbishop Benedictus, who supposedly left to help the Dragon Aspects, is actually the Twilight Prophet, he will first laugh it off, and if you insist that it's true, he will scold you for believing and spreading false rumors, mentioning to one he heard about Bolvar (whom everyone thinks is dead but is actually the new Lich King).
  • Happens to Jaina so often it may as well be called Proudmoore's Wisdom.
  • One quest chain in Theramore through Vanilla and Cataclysm featured a group of deserters from the Theramore Army who were trying to convince others that Jaina's dad was right, and the Horde would eventually sack Theramore because of its proximity. Come Mists of Pandaria and the novel Tides of War, Garrosh's forces did end up attacking and decimating it.
• Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey:
  • After speaking with Athena for the first time, Wishbone has the option to tell Eurylochus about meeting Athena herself. Eurylochus doesn't believe him until Athena herself calls him out and orders him to help Wishbone take the chest to her temple.
  • Wishbone tells Calypso the story of how he got stuck in the Combobulator, albeit in terms that she'd understand. She naturally doesn't realize that the "little dog" he's talking about, who's "trapped in a magic story box", is himself.
  • When Wishbone tells Telemachus he's Odysseus, Telemachus refuses to believe him (justified in that a number of impostors have shown up in the intervening years) until he passes a test of finding and retrieving Odysseus's bow.

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