I remember having read something interesting.
One day in France, an old person called the emergency services to complain about suffering from "mal au coeur". It literally means "heart pain", which is a serious symptom, but it usually serves to refer to feeling nauseous. Of course, the emergency operative understood the call as being non life-threatening, and the caller died of a heartattack.
I didn't manage to find sources about the story but I think it provides an example of the trope, that's why I wrote this on the discussion page. Does it remind something to readers?
So I went ahead and revised the definition of the trope in general to reflect poor communication leading to disaster, as Tropes Are Not Bad and the previous version was a little too complainy for my taste. Poor Communication Kills can and has been done badly in stories, but a little insight about how it could be done well was definitely called for.
This should really be called "Poor Communication Skill" because then the casual misplacement of the space would turn it into "Poor CommunicationS kill".
Edited by Pavlov Hide / Show Replies
I love the pun of "kills", but the number of times I've had to replace the trope in an article after someone not actually reading the trope removes it saying "No one dies so it's not the trope" have made me consider asking for this to be renamed Poor Communication Skills. (Most recently in It Follows.)
Edited by pittsburghmuggle "Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
I agree about changing the name, since this just happened in Steven Universe. It's kind of funny really, the fact that this trope has such a name makes it a Self-Demonstrating Article.
Edited by Booster137
I think I just watched this trope happen at the end of the second episode of Sword Art Online.
After playing a central role in beating a big boss, the main character is accused of witholding prior knowledge about the big boss that would have saved a guy's life who was killed in the battle with the boss. In actuality, both he and the guy who was killed had the same information, which turned out to be incorrect information. He had a "player's guide" proving that this is in fact the information he had, which he could have pointed out to his accusers, but instead, he puts on a facade, claiming that he's an elitist and selfish person, and is then willingly ostracised.
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that is, basically he could have said "Yes I was a beta tester, but the info I gained from fighting this guy in the beta test is not valid anymore. You can see in the player's guide, which is written by a beta tester, that the boss was supposed to have this other kind of sword. Instead, he switched to a completely different sword and style. So, I couldn't have saved Mr. Blue Hair because the info I had was invalid, and I was just as caught off guard as he was." This also would have helped make everyone involved aware of the very important point that the player's guide may not always have correct information so one should be very careful how one uses it.
Pittsburghmuggle
It should be better clarified that death is not required for this trope. The name is "kills" because it's a good pun for "skills", not because someone has to die from the lack of communication.
The Laconic explanation: Characters do not communicate with each other when needed, causing problems.
(Bold mine)
Edited by 216.99.32.44 "Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
Although this trope is supposed to be used only when the communication happens out of character, what about cases where it's not necessarily out of character but poor communication between some of the characters ends up killing anyway? (For instance, all the murders committed in Detective Conan by people with completely mistaken motives.)
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On the other hand, there are some times when poor communication is completely within character for the story, and it does end up killing (or at least harming).
If this trope is ONLY when the miscommuication is U Njustified. There must be a trope name for when miscommunication IS justified.
Grin and tonic
No sure if Men In Black should be on the list, The alien's message was "The galaxy is one orion's belt" unfortunately he left out two key pieces of information, Orion is the name of his cat and by belt he meant collar. Because of this at least one person died and their was huge amounts of property damage as well as evidence of aliens and secret technology. Admittedly he was dying, but saying "my cat has the galaxy on his collar" would have save people a lot of trouble. Idiot Ball territory perhaps.
Edited by MCE My latest Trope page: Shapeshifting Failure Hide / Show Replies
Not Idiot Ball. The alien clearly wasn't that great at speaking English (note at one point he mutters, "What is word?" when he can't think of the translation of something). He did say "My cat has the Galaxy on his collar," just not in those words. He got "belt" mixed up with "collar", and Jay didn't know that "Orion" was the name of his cat.
The communication issue did cause death and destruction though.
My latest Trope page: Shapeshifting Failure
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Poor Troping Kills?
, started by Robotech_Master on Oct 13th 2010 at 8:53:34 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman