Discussion Main / MoralDissonance

Disambiguated per TRS:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1639024871050593100&page=2#comment-48

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: How's this not subjective?, started by Tyoria on Jan 22nd 2011 at 3:28:29 AM

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Not Tropeworthy, started by BURGINABC on Oct 17th 2015 at 7:40:57 AM

As described this sounds more like an audience reaction than a trope. A character does something that a viewer perceives as going against said character's usual values, but there's nothing at all in-universe acknowledging the hypocrisy, and the viewer is like "Come on, why is no one calling them out on that blatant hypocrisy?"

I mean seriously, look at the page quote. It's literally just an out-of-universe commentator calling a character out on hypocrisy when no one else will.

Moving this here:

• Tangled:
  • Doing domestic things (baking, sewing, cleaning, everything homemakers do for their families on a regular basis) means you don't have a life. However, these are wonderful hobbies and careers when it's men doing them [note: Though it's implied this is more to do with Rapunzel never doing anything new at all than what the actual tasks are. /endnote].
  • Gothel hoarding the flower from the rest of the world (all while preserving it for centuries) is described by Flynn as selfish in his opening narration. Yet the King and Queen destroying the flower to save the Queen and her unborn child - rendering the flower unusable to anyone else ever- is conveniently sugarcoated. They may not have known there was another way [note: And most people would agree saving two people from death is far from selfish. /endnote], but it doesn't change the fact that they destroyed it forever.

Because:

• (a) It's made abundantly clear that the problem in the former is less "I have to do domestic chores, which sucks" and is more "I've been imprisoned in the top of a huge tower for my whole life and never get to go anywhere or do anything different";
• (b) Saving the life of a pregnant woman and her unborn child is, at the very least, a very odd definition of selfish;
• (c) The fact that both of these examples have justifying notes attached is a pretty clear indicator that they are far from unambiguous examples of this trope;
• (d) To be honest, I half suspect that both of these examples are indicative of the Draco in Leather Pants / Ron the Death Eater effect that's fairly prominent in the fandom of this particular movie, since both of them have the subtle subtext of excusing or justifying the main villain's actions or over-harshly condemning the more heroic characters.

Either way, I think if this example does indeed belong on the page (which I don't think it does, but I'm willing to be convinced), it needs some serious restructuring.

Took out the example below. I'm arguing my point here because it would take to much space on the history page:

• This trope also repeatedly comes up in the opposite direction when people "call out" the Doctor for certain things. For example, Donna's calling out of the Doctor for exterminating the infant Racnoss was portrayed as a What the Hell, Hero? moment...even though the alternative would have been for the Doctor to walk away and let the Racnoss babies consume the Earth, and the Racnoss queen had repeatedly turned down his offer to safely find them a new world that wouldn't involve wiping out a species. Also, Rose berates the Ninth Doctor for trying to kill the lone Dalek after it murdered several dozen security personnel and as far as the Doctor knew, was intent on continuing its path of destruction onto the Earth's surface. And that's not to get into all the people who are portrayed as having a point when they shame him for wiping out his species rather than acknowledging that the entire universe owes him for saving it even though he could have just Ascended To A Higher Plane Of Existence with the rest of the Time Lords and left them to fry. The Doctor even does this to himself when he traps his clone in an alternate universe after the clone saves the universe by genociding all the Daleks for the fifth or so time (admittedly, this was just the excuse he gave so that Rose could be with the man she loved, but his reasoning still counts as this trope).

One by one:

1). Given the events of "Turn Left", I think Donna had a point in yelling at the Doctor that he should stop now. He literally would have permanently died otherwise. It's also been awhile since I've seen the episode, but the Doctor doesn't look particularly remorseful when he kills the Racnoss. He looks like an angry god. Given the events that would take place in "The Waters of Mars", this is important.

2.). Rose berates the ninth Doctor for trying to kill the Dalek because she had already gotten it to stop killing. All it wanted at that point was to feel the sun.

3.) I'm not sure which people this entry is referring to when it says "people who shamed the Doctor for wiping out his people." Not too many people know about the events of the Time War.

Would a company promoting one concept in comics and a different concept (of the same characters) in Real Life count? More specifically, would Marvel's portrayal of The X-Men as humans in comics versus Marvel's Toy Biz subsidiary portraying the X-Mean as non-human in court? If so, would it qualify as a meta-example or a comic example?

Did Harriet really not hear the Doctor's terms with the Sycorax? How far away was she from the sword fight?

Should we remove the Star Wars clones example from under "Films"? It seems very dependent on a bunch of stuff that never appears in the films.

Should we even have this page? It seems like an excuse to complain about things the heroes did that people didn't like. I move to have the examples cut.

Could this trope be considered a sub trope of Hypocrite?

EDIT: I originally wrote a whole thing here asking whether this trope could apply to villains and giving an example, and then looked at the earlier discussion and saw somebody had already specified that it was about when HEROES act this way.

Is there a similar trope for villains?

From the edit reasons

As before, Three criteria for the trope are: 1. A character holds a moral belief (for example, using Bloodbending is a despicable and vile thing to do, no matter what, ever). 2. The character does something that goes against the moral belief (for example, Katara uses Bloodbending because she's mad). 3. No one notices that the character has gone against the moral belief (No one says What The Hell Hero, there is no I Did What I Had To Do moment, it's simply not acknowledged). You insist that it isn't an example, but it meets the three discussed whatchacallems perfectly. Maybe Katara learned a lesson about vengeance,. Good for her. But she still used Bloodbending which diud not cease to be evil and bad and not nice for the purposes of her wanting revenge. The ends do not justify the means. I don;t know why you're so set on Katara not being guilty of but you've got no ground to stand on. Criteria match, a lack of acknowledgement of fault, a very poor attempt to justify it that just leads to Fridge Logic that further enhances guilt. There's no possible way it could be MORE blatantly Moral Dissonance.

I think the issue here is you're seeing Bloodbending as an entirely separate issue from her revenge, while we're looking at it as just part of her revenge. The revenge itself is the larger issue, and the Bloodbending is a tool of that. This addresses the first two points, in that she's clearly only using Bloodbending not just "because she's mad," but because she's in a murderous rage, which is way beyond "she's mad." She's already willing to kill someone in cold blood, which I think trumps her using Bloodbending itself. That was the whole point of the episode: Her mother's murder affected her so much that she's willing to kill over it when she previously wasn't. Bloodbending is just a subset of that.

On the third point, only one person actually saw her use Bloodbending in the episode, and that was Zuko. The others weren't there, and I doubt she told them she used it. Zuko wasn't around when she learned it, so he doesn't know about how she felt about it when Hama taught it to her, so he can't comment. The only reaction we do see is him going wide-eyed, probably in the sense of "Holy shit, that's what she meant three episodes ago when she said she'd kill me."

Another crucial point that the entry as it stands seems to ignore: She didn't kill the guy. The second she realized it wasn't the guy she was looking for, she immediately stopped Bloodbending and left. Saying "Hama's life was more important than the nameless mook's" completely ignores that she didn't kill him.

Re: clones of Riker and Pulaski:

As I recall, the clones were to early in their development to have any mental activity. It's, in a sense, an abortion debate.

A lot of the examples that i deleted don't fit this trope. This is supposed to be about a hero doing something that goes against what she/he believes in, not just about a protagonist doing something evil and is not called out for it. It says so on the main page.

"Moral Dissonance is the result of having a hero who has a double standard and no one notices. It can include pretty much any unintentional Double Standard on the hero's part that becomes obvious to the viewer during a walk to the fridge. It's important to point out the hero isn't acting the Jerkass, Anti Hero, or morally myopic villain, and may in fact be likable and decent, but their actions simply don't line up with their rhetoric and no one calls them on it."

Said characters pretended have any morality? I am moving this to Designated Hero.

• Among the themes in Howls Moving Castle is What a Senseless Waste of Human Life on the part of Howl, contrasted by his technically being soulless; for this and his pacifist neutrality on the massive war he is considered a threat by his mentor the witch Madame Suliman. She is prosecuting the war on her side by having lesser wizards transformed into War Magicians, flying monsters who will be forever trapped in the toad-like forms, and stripping the powers of those witches or wizards who refuse. (Though admittedly, the Witch Calamity had it coming). Despite this she's a Karma Houdini by the movie's end, happily calling off the war once the missing prince is found.
  • You totally missed the point right there. She wasn't particularly happy—it was obvious that the war was basically a game to her, for whatever reason. Damn, those Howl-clones scare the hell out of This Troper still...
    • ...wasn't it the King who was gleefully pursuing the war and making use of one-way transforming wizards? Madame Sullivan was using his summons as a convenient way to snare and remove dangerous wizards from society. When the missing Prince is discovered, she has to go around the King's back to the Prime Minister to actually end the war, which she calls "foolish."

Where the Moral Dissonance?

• Godzilla is contractually obliged to destroy at least one city per movie. However, past the first few movies the people of Earth seem to regard Godzilla as a giant guardian/friend and ignore the damage he does even when he's not trying to stop an even larger threat.
  • When Godzilla 1985 gave the series a Continuity Reboot, the whole Black-and-Grey Morality thing was intentionally cranked, with awesome results.
    • In the intentionally campy dub of Godzilla 2000, the annoying girl asks her scientist father why Godzilla saves them when all humans do is try to kill him. As she says this, Godzilla spins around 360 degrees, burning everything around him with his atomic breath.
      • It could be taken to mean that Godzilla considers this his world to destroy, and he simply won't tolerate other monsters stepping in on his territory.
        • Wait...what? Godzilla is destroying the city due to his hatred of humanity. He knows its human-made atomic bombs that mutated him into a radioactive abomination and so he wants revenge. It's more along the lines of a "Nobody destroys humanity except for me." when it comes to fighting other monsters. In Movie-Japan's eyes, Godzilla is the LESSER of two evils since they already know what he's capable of especially when compared to any unknown evil alien forces (IE: Ghidorah, Orga, Hedorah, etc.).
          • Likewise, in several Godzilla films (Particularly the Heisei era and a few Millennium films) in which Godzilla is more along the lines of an Anti-Hero or Neutral Evil, the citizens of Japan are torn between whether they should let Godzilla live and study him (Since he "saves" them from more dangerous monsters) or outright destroy him (He does tend to smash their cities after all...and kill countless millions in the process). In the later Showa Era, in which he's regarded more as a "hero", his battles against other monsters no longer take place in major cities...but on small uninhabited islands, or in the wilderness far away from civilization.

This sounds more as Easily Forgiven.

• In The Matrix there's the massive disregard for life in general Neo shows in the second film. Not only does he at least consider choosing Trinity's life over the life of everyone else in the world (and they tried to paint it as a selfless act of love), but that massive wave he causes in his ridiculously elaborate rush to catch her must have killed or maimed hundreds of people.
  • This is entirely in keeping with the morals and values already established by the Resistance, though. "Until they are unplugged, they are the enemy." While the heroic nature of this is debatable, it's also specifically spelled out that Neo is different from the previous Chosen Ones specifically because he's willing to make that choice.

"This is entirely in keeping with the morals and values already established by the Resistence".

• In First Knight, Lancelot rescues Guinevere by suggesting to the nameless evil dude who's holding her that they can both rape her. "I'll hold her for you, you hold her for me." He gets the guy to turn Guinevere around to look at her, so she can stab him. Cool. Then, as they're riding away, he calls her pretty; she's offended, so he grabs and kisses her to prove that that was nothing. Then he follows her around for a while hitting on her, saying he can tell when a woman wants him, etc. This is all treated as fine, of course, because secretly she does want him back, just as his spidey senses are telling him even as she vehemently denies it. Moral of the story: If you're a "good guy" and you're horny, treat her however you want. You're entitled. It's only that other kind of guy who would ever sexually assault someone, so what you're doing must be romantic instead of totally wrong and creepy.
  • So hitting on someone excessive is morally equivalent to kidnapping her?
  • Not totally equivalent, but it's still the same mentality that you're entitled to a woman no matter how much she says she's not interested.
    • I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the kicker of this part yet; she was scheduled to be married to King Arthur (who she apparently did have some feelings for, as well as Lancelot).

• Due to Values Dissonance, some stories of The Bible will seem like this to certain kind of modern readers, but the discussions are best left to the Bible's Apologists and Critics.
  • One story, however, does deserve mention on that (and this troper is a believer), Sodom and Gomorrah. The townsfolk of Sodom demand to have sexual relations (in essence they want to rape) two male travellers with Lot (who were previously revealed to be angels), one of the events that finally forces God's hand into destroying the town over Lot's pleas to save the citizens for the presence of a few good people within. The problem is, that Lot's response is: "I beg you, my brothers, do not do this wicked thing. I have two daughters who have never had intercourse with men. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please." In essence he says "Don't rape these two men -- here are my virgin daughters, you can rape THEM if you leave the men alone."
    • That was after the point where the deity was going to blam Sodom; the angels were visiting specifically to warn Lot to head for the hills, and fast. Given what his virgin daughters do later, there's more than enough Values Dissonance to go around, though.
    • The same thing happens in Judges (19:22-30). In that case the man throws his concubine to the mob of Benjaminites after denying them men. They gang-rape her to death. In the morning (because apparently rapists can only rape at night) the man finds her body at his doorstep where she's obviously been clawing at the door to get back in. He cuts it into twelve pieces and sends the pieces all over Israel.
    • Don't forget that after he does so, the rest of Israel exterminate almost all of the tribe of Benjamin-then they lament the fact that there is now a missing tribe in Israel. So they kill all the men of a nearby village because they hadn't sent anyone to help with the massacre and force their wives to marry the Benjaminite survivors so that they can reproduce.
    • To be fair to the original text, this is the book of Judges; it ends the whole book with the observation that 'in those days, everyone did what was right in his eyes.' The point of the book is that Humans Are Bastards.

As noted, Values Dissonance.

• L. E. Modesitt's Spellsong Cycle has a double example. The magic system of Erda differentiates between "Clearsong" (which lets you control inorganic matter, and can be used as a formidable weapon) and "Darksong" (which lets you control organic matter, and allows you to control human minds) - you can use the former all day long without any averse effect other than eventual fatigue, but using the latter causes the universe to slap you down. Anna, the protagonist, considers Erda to be suffering from Moral Dissonance in that punishes her for using Darksong to turn bad people into good people, but it has no objections to letting her use Clearsong to turn living people into dead people. The reader, in turn, might find some Moral Dissonance in the fact that Anna hates killing her enemies but apparently sees nothing wrong with Mind Raping them into submission...

"Kill is wrong" not conttradicts "Mind Control is okay"

Does anyone else think "Dennis the Menace" should be here? The protagonist is a child who constantly trespasses in an elderly neighbor's house, annoys the ever-loving shit out of said elderly neighbor, and even subjects elderly neighbor to physical harm/abuse, and we are supposed to side with Dennis, instead of Mr Wilson!

The Star Wars example doesn't seem to fit because it's an example of inconsistent values of an entire group — though no doubt many of the individual characters also suffer from moral dissonance, it doesn't say so. Plus, many Jedi are aware of the inconsistency. Delete?

Boiler Room. In the end, Seth convinces Chris to do "do one thing right" and sign a ticket sale making one schmuck client good by stealing from another anonymous buyer on the market.

If I remember rightly didn't he just refund his money? I don't remember him having to screw over anyone else to do it

Hey, remember when this page had a lot of perfectly valid examples and wasn't lobotomized by "Stop Having Fun" Guys?

Man, there sure is a lot of disagreement as to what belongs on this page. Seems to me that it's necessarily subjective because it's a trope about a writing fault — it's about a writer intending one moral standard but not applying it equally to all characters, or not thinking through the implications of their plot; so in order to say that the writer didn't consistently follow their own intentions, you have to figure out what those intentions were. Besides the difficulty of this mind-reading, there could legitimately be disagreement over how badly the writer messed up.

So this should perhaps go in the category of Subjective Tropes.

Shouldn't the Twilight example be removed? If the example given was true to the books, it would indeed be Moral Dissonance... but whomever wrote it seems to have forgotten that the only people-eating vampires were the main villains, not "friends from out of town"—unless you consider the guy who goes on a murderous quest across the country in order to eat your girlfriend a "friend."

Removed the following

• How much of the Sword Of Truth series' protagonists engage in this is open to debate, but one instance even most fans will agree on is the climax of Naked Empire. Richard and his recruited army are ready to attack the Imperial Order troops. Except said troops are being guarded by ridiculously pacifistic villagers, who consider all violence to be wrong and see Richard as simply warmongering. Richard's solution, as he's under something of a time restraint, is to charge through the villagers. Rather than justify it as a regrettable but necessary action, the narration portrays it as absolutely right and moral.

Unless they are committing a double standard (the hero, not the narrator), it is not this trope.

In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "A Man Alone" it is explictly stated that killing a clone, including one's own, is treated like any other murder. Contrast this with the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Up the Long Ladder" (intended as An Aesop about abortion) in which Riker apparently feels perfectly justified in killing two clones of himself and Doctor Pulaski.

to extend the (possibly unintended) abortion metaphor, they nothing to suggest that the clones that Riker killed was activated or 'out of the womb', while the clone on "A Man Alone" was walking, talking and clearly had 'personhood'. while YMMY clearly applies with this, there is a difference between the two

""Princess is a Danish animated film about a missionary who goes on a Punisher-style rampage after his famous porn-star sister dies and her studio continues to exploit her image. Aside from the obvious dissonance of the premise, much of the story focuses on him tenderly caring for his sister's young daughter, Mia, who has suffered emotional and mental damage because of her exposure to the porn industry. When he finds out that one reason Mia is so damaged is because her mother's manager molested her, he takes her to the man's house, has her watch as he beats him to a bloody pulp, and then hands her a crowbar which she takes first to the man's crotch, then to his head. Did I mention that she's about five? Way to fix her psychological issues, guy.""

Not seeing the dissonance here, the man has all ready gone on a murder spree. Forcing a child to take bloody revenge would be a heroic not traumatizing in his world view.

• Another Pokemon example: In the Gamecube games, you play a trainer who goes around stealing Pokemon from the villains in order to free them from a Hate Plague. Most of these Pokemmon were stolen to begin with. Problem? YOU NEVER GIVE THEM BACK! While you do manage to rescue the pokemon from a life of abuse and bloodlust, you never really finish the job. It's still theft, even if you steal from a thief! The sequel tries to lighten this up by having the villains steal from a ship rather than from countless individual trainers. Though, considering the canon of the series, this poses it's own problems...
  • This is made blatant in Gale of Darkness, where in Gateon you can find a regular guy who asks if you want to battle and is one of the few optional battles in the game when looking for Shadow Pokemon. When you capture his Pokemon, he thinks it's a magic trick that made it look like you stole his Pokemon. If you talk to him later, he's depressed as he's been spending his time looking for the Ledyba you captured, as it was a gift from a friend. At no point in the game are you allowed to give back his Ledyba or at least tell him it was a Shadow Pokemon that needed to be purified. Way to go, PLAYERNAME.
  • XD corrects the first game (but not its self) by having recurring trainers use purified versions of their Shadow Pokemon from the first game.
  • Somewhat justified in most cases, seeing as most of the Trainers are either mebmers of Cipher/Team Snagem, or Mooks that received them from Cipher. The point? You don't know who the original Trainer was! Even the Ledyba example could count, if his friend was a member of Cipher!

The Pokemon Colosseum hero IS a thief. He was a member of Team Snagem before discover said Hate Plague.

There's a fair bit of natter in the part about the Mouth of Sauron. I'm thinking we should cut some (read: all) of it, in part because as long as it's there I'm really tempted to respond to it, which would just be more natter.

• Mild example in Final Fantasy VI: Because he couldn't cope with his girlfriend's death, Locke has had her body perfectly preserved by the creepiest embalmer in video game history, keeps it hidden in a basement, and has been visiting it for years while looking for a way to revive her. The game presents this little fact positively and Locke as a noble, tragic, romantic hero. A very large proportion of gamers are left astonished that Locke isn't shunned by the rest of the party and wishing that dead people could take out a restraining order.

Where the Moral Dissonance?

• Likewise, in the final episode/move special, Vlad (after blaming Jack for turning him accidentally into a half-ghost and his love/lust for Maddie to the point where he's willing to kill Jack to get her) is unable to stop the asteroid (It's made of anti-ghost matter... do the math) and begs Jack to let him back onto the ship. Jack then refuses, and leaves Vlad to die alone in space. Uh, Jack, you're supposed to be the good guy, remember? Yes, Vlad is a crazed villain, but what you did to him was essentially MURDER!

Sounds perfectaly fine by Jack moral rethoric.

• This is Cyrus we're talking about. They didn't do anything because it was exactly what he deserved.

This not changes this is Moral Dissonance.

• Nearly deconstructed (if you can deconstruct a writing flaw) in Fate Stay Night when Archer and Shirou constantly fight about right, wrong and results. Shirou calls out Archer for being wiling to let hundreds of people fall into a coma so that they can feed an enemy... to which Archer tells him to shut up, because Caster can beat enemies they can't, and they can always take out Caster. If the war goes on for too long, the world could be destroyed. Basically, you can't save everyone, get over it.

a.He was called on this. b. This sounds as hero and anti-hero bickering, not Moral Dissonance.

• The whole Pokemon-series is all about meeting wild animals, beating them near unconsciousness, capturing them in a small ball, then throwing them into fights with other animals. The fights consist of the animals beating, biting, scratching, burning or doing anything to make the other animal unable to fight. Wait... no, sleeping doesn't count, it has to actually be beaten to the point it doesn't stand up anymore and needs medical treatment. Oh, of course the series doesn't get tired of saying how important the owner's love for their animals is.
• And this here is a perfect example of what people see when they don't realize that the pokemon world is vastly different from the real world. See, this entire argument that pokemon is a cruel world falls apart when you note that (and this is all Word of God).
  • Pokemon battles are in fact a test of strength; if you can catch the wild pokemon, they will respect your ability and fight for you.
  • Inside pokeballs are habitats perfectly suited for the pokemon inside (it's flat out stated in the trophy descriptions of Super Smash Brothers, so don't even try to contest this).
  • Pokemon are made of far tougher stuff then real life animals. Burns, poisoning, and paralysis are equivalent to bloody noses and black eyes.
  • When a pokemon "faints" they only can't battle anymore, as pokemon battles require quite a bit of energy. You'll note they can still do HM moves (which involve swimming up waterfalls, pushing boulders, flying long distance, and other strenuous activities) even at 0 Hp. This is shown in the anime; when a pokemon faints, they get back up again pretty quickly. They can move and eat, but they don't have the energy to have a battle.
• Or, they faint and quickly revive themselves, like the protagonist sometimes does when you lose a battle.
• The questionable morality of Pokemon training was parodied in Galactic Civilizations II. One of the random events was a new craze sweeping one of your planets - a blood sport involving caging the native animals in tiny balls and then forcing them to fight. Only you can stop the cruelty! Or cynically encourage it for political gain, if you swing that way...
  • The morality of Pokemon battles is not questionable at all. Pokemon choose to battle, they don't need to be forced into it. They fight on their own in the wild as real-world animals do, and when captured, they battle purely out of respect for the trainer, who they look up to. And as stated before, Pokemon are NEVER seriously injured or pushed to near-death, contrary to what haters and overly concerned parent groups claim. They are not slaves to the trainers, and battles are most certainly not the equivalent of dog/cockfights. All Word of God, so, again, don't even try to dispute this.
  • Word of God doesn't automatically right broken aesops, or forbid anyone from disputing them. Just saying.
  • The thing is, Pokemon's Word of God and the actual games themselves go out of their way to show pokemon battling as benevolent as a sport as possible. There is literally nothing in it that could qualify pokemon as being abused. And yet an insane amount of people look at this, and promptly proclaim it to be cockfighting and a horrible example for kids, with dozens upon dozens of SUPERUBERDARK fanfics being written every month. It really can tick off people who have actually played the games and read the script.
    • It's a little difficult to believe that every single non-human organism in the Pokemon world enjoys being attacked and captured by a random person and then spend the rest/most of its life fighting other Pokemon. But that excuse is probably the best if you're trying to keep Pokemon as far away from cockfighting as possible.
  • Also, these are the same Pokemon with the ability to breathe fire, summon lightning, cause earthquakes, and even more. One would think that they would easily be able to escape from a ten-year old if they really wanted to.
• The trouble is that this is feel Hand Wave afterthought compare to what's on screen i.e. cock fights.

As noted, "the actual games themselves go out of their way to show pokemon as benevolent as a sport possible."

Ok, the gods are jerkasses. Where the Moral Dissonance?

• Chrono Cross. At the beginning of the game you have to get three Komodo Dragon scales to make a necklace for your girlfriend. You obtain these scales by slaughtering baby Komodo Dragons (who actually do everything they can to get away from you when you try and approach them), and then their mother when she comes in to intervene. No one says anything about this.
  • To be fair, this could be intentional, as the game later calls you out quite harshly on killing wildlife for your own benefit, and mankind's abuse of the environment is a running theme in the game.

The hero is a Silent Protagonist. How you know his morality?

• One star in Super Mario Galaxy is received by stealing a golden shell from a swimming penguin to pass a swim test. In the words of a GameFAQs writer: "Great moral values, Nintendo!"
  • If I recall correctly, it was an item that the penguins were seeking to get an A on their swim test, so it was open competition. Then again, the penguin instructor notes that Mario isn't supposed to be taking the test anyway.
  • Not to mention another bit of Moral Dissonance, on behalf of the penguin instructor. Why has he got a power star to give away as a test reward in the first place, when those were stolen by Bowser's forces from the Comet Observatory, and why not just give it to Mario to let him... you know, save the universe?
  • Shortpacked! has something to say about that.
  • It gets worse in Super Mario Sunshine when a guy opens a Shine Sprite shop in Delfino Plaza, selling 24 Shine Sprites for 10 blue coins each, during a national crisis due to the disapparition of said Shine Sprites, source of Delfino Island's warmth and light. It is specially absurd because there are police officers around the city.
  • Even worse from Galaxy - the Good Egg Galaxy and the Melty Molten Galaxy, specifically the Dino Piranha fights. Mario cracks open a creature's egg and causes it to be born prematurely, and then beats it to death with its own tail. This troper's played through the game multiple times and still feels all sorts of wrong during that fight.

Please, when Mario complained about cheating and when said guys show any morality?

• In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic is supposed to be the hero, right? Then how come he breaks open a military helicopter door, uses it as a skateboard, causes an oversized truck to crash, destroys one of the military's robots, lets his "girlfriend" bail him out of jail, then escapes from jail, all the while destroying even more of the military's Mecha-Mooks?
  • Because they're fascist assholes who, at one point, murdered a little girl and her grandfather just because he wouldn't build weapons of death for them? A better question is why the hell are GUN presented as HEROES in later games when they're clearly fascist scum?
  • To be fair with the truck's spectacular driving skills (running over cars and Big), I'd say that its karmic death was well deserved.
  • Besides G.U.N.'s dark side, Sonic had a rather imminent world-threatening crisis to deal with, and they weren't doing much to stop it. To count the number of precedents for this would be a page unto itself.
    • The newest games seem to handwave that GUN from SA 2 onwards had cleaned up a fair bit (The Commander probably hated Sonic because of his background with Shadow) and that it was totally fixed by the President at the true end of Shadow the Hedgehog. Whether it's an organisational heel-face turn or an ass pull is up to the player.

Please, when Sonic CARED to law or authority.

In the Fables example, the fact that Fabletown law forbids revealing Fable secrets to Mundys by does permit killing them has nothing to do with this trope. First of all, there's no dissonance: the Fables never propound any ideal that they would be violating by these laws. Also, Fabletown laws exist to protect the Fabletown community, not to serve some higher justice; they don't claim their laws are moral, only necessary. So I'm removing that example.