Innocently Insensitive / Video Games

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Innocently Insensitive in Video Games.

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• In Advance Wars, your reward for finishing Wings of Victory as Sami, which is no easy feat as it pits her weaker vehicles against Eagle's stronger air units, is quite possibly the funniest line of dialogue in the game where Sami dumps a heaping amount of this on Andy to defend him from Eagle's accusations:
  Eagle: Very well... I'll tell you everything. I'll tell you all about it. All about how Andy attacked my homeland, Green Earth! The look on his face during the assault... I'll never forget! Never!
  Sami: Eagle! Stop it! Look who you're accusing! Andy couldn't pull off anything that complicated. You suspect this kid who has his hands full just getting dressed?
  Andy: Um... Excuse me?
  Eagle: Well, it's not really a face that shines with intelligence.
  Andy: Hold on a...
  Sami: Exactly! Andy spends the entire day not thinking of things!
  Andy: All right, that's...
  Eagle: If you put it that way, it's hard to imagine Andy pulling it off.
  Andy: You guys are mean!
• Assassin's Creed Origins: Throughout the game, various NPCs tell Bayek he couldn't possibly understand what it's like to lose a child. Bayek's whole motivation is avenging his son's death. Depending on the person, he may just brush it off, or angrily state that he does. By the time of the final DLC, it's much more likely to make him angry.
• Minsc in Baldur's Gate being a brain-damaged warrior with the mind of a child, has a few banters that paint him in this light. Everyone realises his true intentions, and nobody ever gets permanently insulted. Boo is also quick to correct him when he puts his foot in his mouth.
• Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly: When Lucas hears about Riona's struggles with discrimination as she strives to be an opera singer, he genuinely tries helping her overcome it by suggesting that she advertise herself as an underdog who can prove everyone's expectations wrong with her singing. Riona, who just wants nothing more than a chance to properly sing, calls him out for "selling a caricature" of her, and he apologizes for offending her.
• In Deltarune, Susie tries to reassure Lancer that she's in no danger from his dad because she, Ralsei, and Kris will thrash him easily. She doesn't quite take into account that Lancer is worried about him too and the more she goes on about it, the more it looks like a Sadistic Choice between seeing his friends killed or his father.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition has Cole, a spirit of compassion who took on human form. He's able to read others' minds to find out what's hurting them so he can try to help... but he tends to say what he's reading from them out loud and doesn't understand why certain things should or should not be said, be they personal traumas or the party's relationships and sexual activities. He doesn't understand what's wrong it it, since spirits in the Fade do it all the time. Helping him become more human can help him start to grow out of this, though even then he never loses his desire to help ease peoples' pain.
• Ensemble Stars! has a couple of cases:
  • Subaru is probably the biggest offender — he has a hard time understanding other people's feelings, particularly negative ones, which can lead to him seeming very insensitive. In reality, he genuinely does care about other people, and doesn't try to hurt people deliberately. It doesn't help that he doesn't even understand his own negative feelings very well, either, which makes it hard for him to express this regret or guilt.
  • Adonis occasionally does this as well, due to being rather awkward and not good at speaking. In particular, his motivation to protect 'the weak' can cause unintended offence.
• Fallout: New Vegas has the White Legs. After being rescued from implosion by Ulysses, who leads them to major victories and becoming stronger than ever, the tribes' warriors start braiding their hairs into dreadlocks as a show of respect for their savior. Ulysses, however, sees it as a grave insult as his former (wiped out) tribe used their dreadlocks as a form of writing, using different types of braids and knots to document their history; without knowing this, the White Legs' hair is both complete gibberish and a reminder of his fallen comrades for Ulysses.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy X, Tidus does this very often by talking to Yuna about what will happen after her pilgrimage is finished, not knowing that she'll die performing the Final Summoning and defeating Sin. When he does find out, he's devastated and furious; both at the others for not telling him earlier (in their defense, it was too hard to say), and at himself for unknowingly twisting the knife.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, Vaan asks Fran her age and is immediately called out by the rest of the party for being tactless.
    Larsa: Surprisingly rude.
  • The first chapters of Final Fantasy XIII are packed with this. Examples include Hope ranting about how terrible his father is (unaware that Sazh is a father at his wits' end trying to save his own son), Sazh telling Vanille that he used to be skeptical of the government's anti-Pulse mania but now agrees that they were right all along (unaware that she is secretly from Pulse), Snow telling Hope that fighting the army is a thing for dumb adults to do in an effort to discourage him from getting in danger (unaware that Hope's mom got killed doing that when volunteering to help Snow).
• Girl!Morgan in Fire Emblem: Awakening is a kind-hearted Genki Girl, but she can be sometimes rather pushy with her love interests. May be somewhat of a Justified Trope as she not only has heavy Laser-Guided Amnesia but seems to be the youngest of her group of friends and thus is more sheltered than them.
  • Chrom has moments when he is like this. Lucina asked to train with him and Chrom, not realizing that he's dead in Lucina's future and Lucina actually wanted to spend more time with him, told her it would be pointless because he has nothing to teach her. He also finds life as a royal stifling and a hassle at times, not realizing he was complaining to other Shepherds who either lived on the run or grew up in poverty.
• Ike in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. He's never met Laguz before and only heard them called "sub-humans". So when he first meets one, he uses the only name he knows, which naturally offends the one greeting him. However, he also picks up on the Laguz's offense and apologizes, explaining that he doesn't know any other name.
• Clair in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. She's prone to making rather rude remarks in general, though especially about commoners. However, she's genuinely curious about how common people live, since she's been fairly sheltered at court, and Clair does apologize to Alm when Lukas points out she's being insensitive.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
  • If Byleth should join the Black Eagles, Petra tries to tell her new professor that they have guts to take on a new line of work, but because she comes from Brigid and is still learning the Fódlan language, she winds up saying that Byleth has "a gut". Her classmate Dorothea has to correct her and remind her of the difference between the two terms
  • The laid-back Sylvain often makes jokes or otherwise lighthearted potentially offensive comments during tense situations. Notably, he is on the receiving end of a slap from Ingrid when Sylvain suggested that the missing Flayn had gone to elope.
  • Caspar didn't understand why Bernadetta wasn't happy for dragging her around like a piece of luggage when he was genuinely trying to show her a place with a new view.
  • Raphael means well when he tries to act like a Cool Big Bro to Lysithea (as she reminds him of his sister Maya) but his approach was rather patronizing, and being treated like a child is a major Berserk Button for Lysithea.
  • Mercedes touches quite a nerve in her C-support with Felix when she compares him to her little brother Emile, leading Felix to snap at her that he's not her brother and to leave him alone before he stalks off. Given that Felix's older brother Glenn died rather traumatically, it makes sense that Felix bristled at the comparison, even if Mercedes didn't mean it in a bad way.
  • Lorenz often comes off this way. For example, he genuinely wants to help commoners, but the way he phrases things is condescending, so it sounds like he's saying that nobles are just better than commoners. His reluctance to marry a common-born girl also stems partly from the fact that he thinks they'll genuinely have a hard time adjusting to court life, but he (again) sounds classist about it at first due to poor wording. Shez can lampshade this in general in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, saying that Lorenz's poor wording is why nobody believes that he's actually a decent guy.
• Get in the Car, Loser!: When Grace uses the Sword of Fate against the Machine Devil, she temporarily dies and talks to the spirit of the previous wielder, Agi. Thanks to gender norms from his era, Agi initially assumes the hero is a male and that Grace is a party member or love interest, but Grace retorts that she's the current heroine. Despite that exchange, he's pleased that anyone in the modern age can become a hero, regardless of gender.
• God of War (PS4): Look, Atreus is a good kid and he means well. But he's also too young to pick up on the clear hints that Kratos really doesn't want to talk about his Dark and Troubled Past.
• Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony: Yusuf Amir loves to say the n-word, especially toward the main protagonist Luis, who is Dominican and gets offended every time he does it. With that said, due to his exposure to hip-hop culture, Yusuf thinks the n-word is something cool that people in the West call each other and is unaware of the word's historical context.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: Because Marz is not hurt by others' words thanks to her augment that makes her immune to shame, she is unaware of how her own words can hurt others. She laments how she treated Dys poorly as a child after she realizes this.
• KanColle: One of Iowa's hourly lines has her call Yamato the Yamato Hotel (while complimenting Yamato's cooking). Her next hourly line is wondering why Yamato reacted so badly to the compliment. The 4koma explains it as Iowa mistakenly assuming that 'Yamato Hotel' was similar to 'Iowa Museum' (Iowa herself having some hotel-like amenities), and forgetting that Japan wasn't able to regularly sortie Yamato, unlike the U.S. with Iowa and her sisters.
• The King of Fighters:
  • Athena Asamiya shows some traces of this, especially in KOF XIII. She launches in a rant-inducing slight when she sees Kula fighting despite her willingly being there, inadvertently embarrassing her friend Kyo via asking him if he did graduate from high school...
  • Kyo's girlfriend, Yuki was like this in the manga. After learning that he and Athena fought in the previous tournament, she becomes angry at Kyo for "beating on girls". Being a martial artist herself, Athena feels insulted.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:
  • Rean gets a visit from his sister, Elise, regarding something he said in one of his letters to her.^note He said at the end of his latest letter that he's thinking of enlisting in the army, and even if he didn't, he might not return home. Elise asks if Rean has no intention of succeeding his foster father as the next baron, and outright admits it. He says that Baron Schwarzer adopting him into the family has sparked a whirlwind of controversy around him, causing him not to show his face among the nobility except on special occasions. This only upsets her.
    Elise: ...You don't get it.
    Rean: Wha...?
    Elise: You don't get it all... you don't understand how Father feels, you don't understand how Mother feels... and you don't understand how I feel.
    Rean: Elise...?
    Elise: You're the worst! Why do you always have to be so stubborn?! I hate you, I hate you!!
  • Of course, that wasn't the first time Rean got in a tight spot due to him opening his mouth without consideration towards his audience or their reaction to what he says. Earlier in the game, during the field study in Celdic, Laura recognizes Rean's sword style and is impressed by it. Rean, on the other hand, doesn't think the same way, believing himself to be "a dropout who's never even been able to progress past beginner level," feeling that he couldn't go farther in his abilities, which prompted his master to cut his training short. He apologizes to Laura for not meeting his expectations, but she plainly states that he has no reason to apologize to him, adding that it's a matter he needs to come to terms with by himself. The morning after, when the group is gathered for the next set of tasks, Rean apologizes to Laura once more, only to be fed the same line from last night. This prompts Rean to expand on his apology, saying that what he said was disrespectful to his master, the school he follows, and the way of the sword, which he apologizes (again) for making light of. Hearing this, Laura delivers her response.
    Laura: If that's the case, then there is one other person you should be apologizing to as well.
    Rean: ...?
    Laura: I can't pretend to know much about your personal circumstances. But regardless of one's background or social standing, one should always be able to live with pride in him or herself. Thus, if you truly did make light of yourself and your own abilities, it is an act of shame for which you owe yourself recompense.
• In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Zill can "strike a nerve without realizing it", as mentioned by his figurine. It shows when you return to Outset Island; talk to Zill, and he'll bluntly but innocently ask Link if he's rescued his kidnapped little sister Aryll yet, to his brother and mother's shock.
• Maxim in Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals/Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals constantly infuriates Tia with his inability to recognize her feelings and concern towards him. The remake even names one of Maxim's Titles "Insensitive".
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect: Liara has a tendency to be this, thanks to No Social Skills, especially in conversations with Shepard. She also does it with Kaidan, telling him that the Training from Hell he went through was better than asari training. Said training involved a viciously racist turian instructor, who Kaidan eventually killed in self-defense, something he still feels guilty over.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: Comes up between squadmates Peebee and Vetra. Peebee asks about Vetra's Promotion to Parent, and thanks to her own troubled youth (with a controlling, speciest mom and controlling, distant older sister), assumes Vetra was desperate to act like a mom. Vetra's mother left their family, and her dad went "missing", leaving a teenaged Vetra to try and look after her sister alone. To her credit, Peebee at least apologises afterwards.
• Onmyoji:
  • When Kingyo-hime and Susabi are told a story of a horribly abused boy, the former immediately jumps to the conclusion that he probably deserved it for misbehaving, not knowing that the boy in question is Susabi, sitting right in front of her. What makes it even worse is that Susabi was actually a nice, good kid all along rather than a bad one like Kingyo-hime thought.
  • This conversation between Hiromasa and Seimei after the latter has been wrongfully accused of murder:
    Hiromasa: Didn't you say you don't remember a thing about your past? Doesn't that mean that you could have killed somebody back then?
    Seimei: ...
    Kagura: Hiromasa, stop it.
  • Yaobikuni manages to have a moment as well. After Seimei has a nightmare in which he involuntarily kills his charge Kagura, she responds that "dreams are a mirror reflecting one's heart", making Seimei fear that he might subconsciously want to do such a thing.
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: The PC can find a crumpled note from a sculptor named Floggy who kept making art pieces that unintentionally offended a different group of people each time, usually resulting in him getting beaten up: a statue of the dead god Aroden was thought to resemble the prime minister of Absalom and brought corruption allegations, a statue of the Tien goddess Shizuru offended her followers because he misspelled it "Tchizuru", etc. In an attempt to offend absolutely no one, he made a completely innocuous statue of a chicken, only to first attract cultists of the obscure infernal duke Iaoazrael, and then Knight Templars who killed the cultists and began looking for the creator of "the blasphemous chicken".
  "If you've found this note, I want you to know: art is pain."
• Persona:
  • In Persona 3, Mitsuru's rich upbringing occasionally makes her fail to comprehend that can't treat the rest of the cast like they're her paid subordinates, nor do they have access to the same luxuries she's used to. A prime example is in Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, where she criticizes the lower quality of Yasogami High compared to Gekkoukan High, and Shinjiro has to spell out for her that most schools aren't directly funded by a Fiction 500 megacorp.
  • In Persona 4, the first time Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko meet Nanako, Yosuke challenges Chie to a cook-off, offering to have Nanako judge and saying that one of them would probably "make something that ranks up there with your mom's cooking." Nanako points out that her mother died in an accident, and forgives him for saying that when he quickly apologizes.
  • In Persona 5, due to her lack of social skills, Futaba can be rather tactless as she tends to freely speak her mind. She calls Mishima an "overwhelmingly forgettable guy" to his face upon their introduction to his chagrin. And when she hacks into public records to gather evidence from her abusive uncle who was trying to extort Sojiro for money, she didn't understand why Sojiro was so upset that she had done something illegal.
    • Royal combines this trope with Poor Communication Kills to tragic consequence: The real Kasumi Yoshizawa proved unable to grasp the mental state of her younger sister, Sumire, as Kasumi tries to cheer Sumire up when she's feeling down after failing her gymnastic routines while Kasumi completes them effortlessly. However due to Sumire's feelings of inadequacy, Kasumi's comments end up coming off as Condescending Compassion which leads to Sumire to try and physically distance herself from her sister. Unfortunately, Sumire gets so stuck in her own head as she runs away that she ends up running into the middle of traffic, and it was only through Kasumi's Diving Save that she lived, with Kasumi taking the hit and dying.
  • Persona 5 Strikers has Sophia innocently asking her creator Ichinose what a heart was and to tell her about what the latter knew about it, unintentionally hitting the latter's Trauma Button.
• Pillars of Eternity: Edér often unwittingly says offensive things (and promptly apologizes for it) thanks to growing up in a xenophobic small-town in Dyrwood. In particular, orlans are second-class citizens in Dyrwood, often stereotyped as thieves, so he tends to reflexively say stuff about them that he learned growing up without realizing that most places consider what he’s saying to be prejudiced, such as inadvertently calling his friend Hiravias “one of the good ones”. In the second game, he specifically turns down starting a romance with an orlan Watcher because of this, noting that this trope doesn’t go well with a romantic relationship.
• Wheatley from Portal 2 occasionally falls into this category.
  Wheatley: They ended up giving me the WORST possible job, tending to all the smelly humans. [looks at Chell] The... The, ah... sorry, I wouldn't say smelly. Just attending to the humans! Sorry 'bout that, that just slipped out...
• Mimmet from Silver Falls Gaiden: Deathly Delusion Destroyers and Ruby River has no filter. She tries flirting with Gus, who's desperately searching for his husband that has gone missing in the Lovecraft Country surrounding Silver Falls. Then she brings up the possibility that his husband could have been mauled to death by a bear in his sleep, or maybe torn apart by a pack of coyotes. Minutes later, she tries flirting with Bass, who clearly doesn't want to talk about relationships because he considers his divorce as his greatest failure.
• Red from Solatorobo. His sister Chocolat is constantly chiding him for not understanding girls' feelings, and Elh calls him "an idiot with a bad mouth" when he continues to stick his foot in there.
• In Stardew Valley, Penny, one of the romance options for the player, lives next door to George, a grumpy old fellow who happens to be wheelchair-bound and struggles to reach up to get letters out of the back of his mailbox. Penny spots him and rushes to help — by pushing George out of the way. The player can call her out on this.
• Presea from Tales of Symphonia is quite prone to this, especially before she has her Key Crest fixed. For example, when the party go to the Temple of Lightning so Sheena can make a pact with Volt (which she failed to do once before), Lloyd asks Sheena how they deactivate the traps. Sheena says she isn't sure, since she was just a kid last time and other people from Mizuho did it for her. When Lloyd asks if they can ask them, Presea responds, "They are dead." Ouch.
  • Not an aspect of her character that is always emphasized, but Colette also does this from time to time. She comments that Rodyle is "creepy" when they first meet him (and this is before it's revealed to the party he's a Desian, though the player is aware) and when the party see the Grand Tethe'alla Bridge, which is powered by exspheres, Colette remarks it's "kind of gross-looking". Zelos of all people points out that isn't an appropriate way to describe them and Colette apologises.
• Nova from Tales of Xillia 2 can easily be considered this. She's in charge of Ludger's huge debt and repeatedly calls him over the course of the game to remind him to pay back his loan in segments. Unfortunately, since she is locked out of what exactly Ludger is doing, she often calls at inopportune times or when the debt is the last thing on his mind. The player does have an option to snap at her about this, but how good that actually feels depends, since she honestly cannot help but do what she's doing: her job.
  • Elle is this as well, with the justification of her really just being 8-years-old.
• In the second episode of The Walking Dead, Lee and Kenny are trying to get in a locked building when Kenny innocently asks Lee (who is black) if he knows how to pick a lock. When Lee takes offense, a flustered Kenny says he didn’t mean it like that and adds that he’s from Florida so shit like that just slips out sometimes.
  Kenny: Hey. Lee. You know how to pick a lock, right?
  Lee: No! Why would you say that?
  Kenny: Well. You're...you know...urban?
  Lee: Oh, you are NOT saying what I think you're saying.
  Kenny: Jesus, man! I'm from Florida! Crazy shit just comes out of my mouth sometimes. Sorry.
• In Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Sigrun Engel, a recent defector from the Nazis, expresses her amazement that the resistance fighters "allow blacks" in their ranks. It is clear from the tone of her voice and her generally kind personality that she doesn't mean it in a pejorative way, but having grown up under the Nazi regime, the idea of black people being treated as equals is completely alien to her.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a scene where Mythra rails against humanity's reliance and abuse of technology, which she says will always lead to their downfall. She's talking to Poppi, immediately causing Poppi to worry that her existence is going to be part of destroying the world.

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