Felony Misdemeanor / Video Games

• Bangai-O's Excuse Plot revolves around the protagonists punishing a gang that smuggles fruit. Bangai-O Spirits doesn't even bother with the Excuse Plot, making new players wonder why destroyed enemies leave behind fruit pickups.
• Batman: Arkham City: The game begins when Bruce Wayne is violently arrested by TYGER Security goons and thrown into Arkham City for the heinous crime of... leading a peaceful protest to have the complex shut down. As with most things Batman, this is All According to Plan.
• Disgaea:
  • Sometime before the start of Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, Etna abandoned Larharl and set out to become an Overlord stronger than him, because he committed the heinous crime of... eating her favorite pudding, an act so vile that, to make sure you agree with Etna, a game was made to cover that!
  • In Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Almaz will have you know that he would never indulge in such perverse, vile temptations as... wearing matching outfits on dates with his crush, or getting her to make him a sandwich.
• The dwarven justice system in Dwarf Fortress has values skewed along this trope's lines. Heinous crimes such as smashing nearly-valueless furniture or failing to manufacture the specific pointless trinket demanded by one of the fort's nobles can net a dwarf a month in prison (which is often a death sentence because feeding prisoners is a low-priority task^note Though a well-designed prison can bypass those issues and make jail time a passing inconvenience rather than something more severe) or a "beating" by an officer of the fortress guard. The fortress guard assigned to deliver the beating will use whatever weapon he's carrying to full effect in the course of the beating, so if you've given your fortress guard battleaxes expect a fountain of blood and severed limbs to ensue. Conversely, outright murder is usually punished by a sentence of around 200 days in prison.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • This is a recurring trend throughout the series, relating to Artificial Stupidity as well as Shoplift and Die. City Guards will call you "criminal scum" and relentlessly pursue you to the ends of Tamriel, regardless of whether you've incurred a 5-gold bounty for stealing some loot or 5000 gold bounty for committing multiple murders. Skyrim takes steps to address this trope for the first time in the series in regard to bounties — if your bounty is low enough, they won't bother seeking you out and, should you speak to them first with a bounty, they can be convinced to let you go since you aren't worth their time.
  • This is also a frequent issue within the series' various guilds and factions. You can be the leader of a given faction, but accidentally pick up an item belonging to another member (thus, counting as theft) or even sleep in a bed that belongs to someone else, and you can be expelled. In some cases, the other faction members will even attempt to kill you.
  • Arena takes it up to eleven. Committing literally any crime will cause guards to spawn out of nowhere. Think they'll simply arrest you? Think again. Whether you murder someone outright or simply fail to pick a lock, they will attempt to kill you without mercy.
  • Skyrim:
    • As mentioned above, Skyrim takes the first major steps in the series to address the issues that come with this trope. That said, it still isn't a perfect solution. For example, you can be defending a town from a rampaging dragon attack, but if you accidentally kill a chicken caught in the crossfire, the villagers and guards will break off from fighting the dragon to attack you instead.
    • Sanguine's Daedric quest has you partake in a great orgy of debauchery, after which you learn that you've committed a horrible crime: selling a farmer's prize-winning goat to a giant.
• In Elite Dangerous, one of the regular public service station announcements is "Loitering is a crime, punishable by death. Please ensure you have authorization before entering the docking bay." They're not kidding about the death thing.
• Fallout:
  • In the series backstory, it's mentioned that the last President of the United States prior to the apocalypse was impeached for jaywalking. However, in this case, it's all but explicitly stated that the jaywalking thing was just an excuse; the real reason Congress wanted him out of office was that he pretty much kicked off the whole conflict by ordering the annexation of Canada.
  • In the first Fallout, in Junktown, a doctor named Doc Morbid (seriously) is questionable in his ethics: he won't think twice about removing one of your eyes if you tick him off, and he has a butcher lab in his basement from which he sells human meat to a trader, saying it's gecko meat. Seems enough of a psychopath to kill without issue, right? Well, it turns out that despite all that, he is still a good doctor regardless, and the only doctor in the city, so people will be pretty pissed if you kill him.
  • In the Fallout 3 DLC Broken Steel, there's a radio in the Jefferson Memorial. When you shut it down, all the Brotherhood of Steel soldiers inside it will try to kill you, even if you turn it on again. However, if they don't see you turning it off, they won't bother a second.
  • Fallout 3 and New Vegas are based off the same engine as the above The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It makes sense that the local citizenry react the same way; although this does get rather irritating when you're going to, say, go activate Trudy's radio so you can fix it, you turn an inch too far or stop an inch too short, accidentally hit "steal glass mug" instead... And now have the entire bar trying to shoot you in the damn head as you're yelling at the screen "MY HAND SLIPPED, IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!" Related to this, everyone who sees you even look at something as seemingly insignificant as a coffee cup or pencil that doesn't belong to you (even if you don't actually select it) loudly makes it clear they're ready to throw down in an instant over it. People in this universe are paranoid about their random junk. This was thankfully removed in New Vegas.
  • If you pickpocket someone and get caught, they will just say "That doesn't belong to you!" and take it back (often with compensation). However, if you take a bent tin can off the bar table, everyone wants you dead except your followers, who will always help you — so you can take Star Paladin Cross (good as good can be) into Megaton, steal some junk off a table, and she will gladly help you gun down all the not-exactly evil citizens.
  • If one gets the Good Karma ending for the inhabitants of the Sink in Fallout: New Vegas, the other residents of the Sink get fed up with the Ax-Crazy Token Evil Teammate, the Toaster, and throwing him in the tub. His response is this — he declares that the sink will rue the day they have bread — and no way to toast it.
• In The Feeble Files, the totalitarian Omni Corporation's directives are an absolute minefield of those. For instance, if Feeble attempts to talk to a police officer in a simple attempt to start a friendly conversation, the officer is quick to twist his innocent intents into a big enough of an affront towards the Corporation and OmniBrain to consider it justified to send him for personality restructuring; the only reason he doesn't is because he chose to be "merciful" that time. Also, if one of the Happiness Robots catches you being unhappy for any reason, then he has no qualms about erasing you from existence on the spot.
• Early in Final Fantasy VII, Reno, a guy who wants to kill the main character and kidnap Aeris, orders his troops to go after Cloud... and tells them "Don't step in the flowers", while standing in the flowers himself. One of his minions points this out.
• Due to its dystopian-like setting, almost any action in Freedom Wars can be considered as a violation of the People's Charter. Simply talking to another person or running for a certain amount of time is enough to add a few years to one's sentence. And that's not accounting the fact that being alive is worth a million years of penal servitude.
• Full Throttle: Subverted. Starting to make minivans seems like an odd but not particularly far-fetched step for a motorcycle manufacturer, but it has the bikers up in bloody arms. However, Corley Motors is the last motorcycle manufacturer in existence, and them halting production of motorbikes would be the same as condemning biker culture to a slow death.
• In GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, you can get unlocks by earning "rogue bonuses" which are awarded for particularly "evil" actions. Said actions are things like headshots, taking human shields, shooting Exploding Barrels, hacking enemy turrets, etc... all things that are present in many other FPS and which an experienced player will already be doing by this point. Apparently, we were evil all this time, who knew?
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • In all of the games, you can murder people on the street and no one would notice. But God help you if you so much as scratch a police car...
  • While we're at it, most of the series comes off as the ultimate inversion of this trope. You can do whatever you want. Just whatever. Stealing cars, commit mass murder on a public lane, cause damage of cataclysmic proportions on a main highway, Kill the entire police department, shoot down multiple helicopters, enter a military zone, hijack a jet, ride the aforementioned vehicle above the goddamned city and vandalize a graffiti. If a cop somehow manages to arrest you, you WILL be punished. Just hope you like 6 hours of your life and less than 1000$ as a fine. This whole thing seems to be just an egregious case of GameplayAndStorySegregation, though.
• Hitman:
  • In the series (especially in the first two games), guards will generally attack you with deadly force the moment your cover is blown. Now, this may be justified for your more murderous activities, but in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, guards everywhere passionately hate runners. Run by a guard too closely? Expect to get shot in the head two seconds later, no questions asked.
  • Likewise, you're in a party posing as a guest, you go to the back room or kitchen without permission, you get shot on sight. Those are some trigger-happy guards. This kind of behavior is mitigated in Blood Money.
• Legends Of Valour: The player can easily be arrested for "acting suspiciously".
• Mass Effect 3:
  • The Illusive Man's reaction to seeing Shepard after they storm the Cerberus base:
    The Illusive Man: Shepard. You're in my chair.
  • In the Citadel DLC, after locking them in an air-tight tank to suffocate, attempting to steal the Normandy and stealing their identity, what is it that Shepard's clone does that really pisses Shepard off? Messing with their hamster.
• Bribed referees in Mutant Football League will make up completely nonsensical penalties on the opposing team.
  Referee: Look, Killadelpha Evils, you friended me a while back and I'm sick of your political posts on Facelessbook. They still don't have a dislike button, so have a 10 yard penalty instead.
  Referee: Stupidity penalty on the New Yuck Tyrants for insisting that Rush is better than Led Zeppelin, that's 10 yards.
  Referee: 10 yard Unfashionable conduct penalty on the Scarolina Panzers, wearing Crocs and socks in public.
  Referee: 10 yard penalty on the Karcass City Creeps because life is harsh, unfair, and punishing, and nobody brought me any substances to cope.
  Referee: 10 yard penalty on the Grim Bay Attackers for watching those flat earth videos. You guys fell down a rabbit hole for idiots!
• One Nancy Drew game has a game over wherein Nancy get booked into jail because she caught and kept a female dungeness crab. While this is actually illegal for commercial purposes in real life, it's usually only a fine and recreational fishermen are just given a warning to be more careful (like Nancy was if she presents a female dungeness crab!) It's treated as a game over, but it's possible that Nancy didn't have the money on her so she just had to go to the station to work something out (ie, get her father to wire the money) and the game over is simply because she can't accomplish any objectives.
• Nintendo Wars: Played for Laughs in Advance Wars: Dual Strike. Tag-teamed COs have an affinity rating based on how well they work together (e.g., Eagle and Sami have the highest bonus in the game), which gives firepower bonuses. Some characters get along so badly they get firepower penalties instead of bonuses when teaming up. Examples include Olaf and Lash (she destroyed his hometown), Hawke and any Green Earth CO (he led a brutal invasion of Green Earth in the last game) and any Allied Nations CO and the Big Bad. Which two COs have a worse Tag Affinity than all of the above, a whopping 35% firepower penalty? Rachel and Koal. The reason? He insulted her face.
• A downplayed example in Pokémon Red and Blue and their remakes; Cerulean City has a cop blocking the door to a house. He states that the house has been robbed, and that only Team Rocket could have committed such a heinous crime. Granted, robbery is a crime, and depending on how much they stole, it could be an actual felony, but the officer makes it sound like they burned down an orphanage.
• In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, in the spaceport on one planet, you'll sometimes hear a PSA over an intercom stating that due to heightened security restrictions, looking suspicious is now illegal and all violators will be disintegrated and fined.
• Bounties can be like this in Red Dead Redemption. If your horse accidentally knocks someone down in front of witnesses, vigilantes will shoot you dead to collect that $5 bounty.
• Saints Row:
  • In Saints Row: The Third, police will try to kill you for streaking. Interestingly this only applies when actively engaged in the streaking mini-game. Walking around with no clothes on does not draw any attention by itself.
  • In Saints Row IV, the Boss and Pierce treat Big Bad Zinyak butchering Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" by singing it in an opera-style voice as an equal if not greater crime than any of his actual villainy (invading Earth, abducting many noteworthy humans for his personal collection and trapping them in virtual reality simulations of their own personal Ironic Hell, blowing up Earth with the rest of humanity still on it, etc.).
• In Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, Ishida Mitsunari's Blue Path is set into motion when Mitsunari suddenly remembers that he once fought someone who mouthed off about his lord in his presence. When informed that the man in question (Date Masamune) is still alive, Mitsunari immediately decides to suspend his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against his Arch-Enemy (who killed said lord) just so he can hunt down the vile insulter first. Masamune's reaction when Mitsunari finally catches up to him is one of bemused disbelief that anyone could be that determined over a petty insult.
• Several of the dwarf grudges in Total War: Warhammer can get comedically petty, of the 'dark humor' variety. Sure, there's the usual "avenge our army/character/town falling to the enemy" grudge, but then there's the "Halfling nutty pudding grudge" which requires you to sabotage a dwarf faction (who's possibly your friend or ally) and set off a Cycle of Revenge over that faction having kidnapped a halfing chef who made a nut pudding your king was very fond of, the grudge where you start a war with the Vampire Counts to avenge the use of dwarf corpses in a terrible piece of amateur theater by a necromancer ("a terrible Grudge, for it is indeed a terrible play!"), or the one where you have to start raiding the human faction of Ostermark (again most likely starting a war) over their Elector Count having short-changed dwarf stonemasons two pennies after building him a public works project.
• Touhou Project:
  • A lot of the "incidents" behind the Excuse Plots fall into this trope, as apparently things like an unusual number of ghosts appearing, people having lots of parties, and lots of flowers blooming warrant going out and beating the crap out of whoever is responsible. This is mostly justified though, as the denizens of Gensoukyou are varying degrees of loopy and will use any excuse for a fight.
  • Interestingly, a number of "incidents" could be considered in the same category — "meteorological" — and could have also demonstrated either a failure of the Great Border or an ecological threat, both of which are terribly serious issues for a Pocket Dimension with a undefined degree of filtration from the Outside World. The red mist, delayed Spring, an incorrect gibbous moon, a delayed Autumn, earthquakes, geysers, more red mist.
  • Additionally, being a youkai is a crime, as far as Reimu is concerned.
    Reimu: A youkai was just sitting there minding its own business. And it was enjoying a book, too! I tried to exterminate it with a surprise attack...
  • The characters mostly don't consider these things heinous (Reimu kind of acts like she does, but she's a jerk); things have been set up so that reacting to something strange by going out and beating the shit out of everyone you meet is not only largely harmless but actually works towards preserving Gensoukyou.
• In the second game of the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series, what is Ty concerned about upon finding out that Boss Cass and his diplomats are above the law as long as they are there on official Cassopolis business? Double parking, opening other people's mail and leaving the milk out.
• In Ultima VIII Pagan, any crime committed in the main city will cause the local law-enforcing sorcerer to be summoned, who will promptly (and graphically) blow you to smithereens, without any means for self-defense or escape. Crimes may range from murder, assault or theft right down to being rude to said sorcerer.
• Type 3 crops up in episode 4 of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, "The Bogey Man", in which Miss Flitt and her stuffy aunt treat golf as a soul-scarring, life-destroying vice akin to alcoholism, and distribute tracts showing a man going mad with frustration as he struggles in vain to master the game, which turn out to be part of the solution to a puzzle.

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