History Main / PoorCommunicationKills

* ''WebAnimation/HelluvaBoss'': Blitzo and Stolas are officially in a transactional physical relationship where Blitzo [[SexForServices has monthly sex with]] Stolas in exchange for continuous possession of Stolas's grimoire. Stolas is head over heels in love with Blitzo, but has NoSocialSkills and only expresses his affection through sexually explicit or unwittingly condescending flirting, made worse by their [[UnequalPairing difference in status and power]]. Blitzo is implied to return Stolas's love, but fears intimacy as much as he [[IJustWantToBeLoved craves it]] and believes Stolas only sees him as a living sex toy, which Stolas's flirtations seem to corroborate.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheBadGuys'', gang leader Mr. Wolf has an incident during the Golden Dolphin heist where he accidentally saves an old woman from falling, he's praised for his deed and experiences the [[GoodFeelsGood good feeling from doing good]]. Worried about how his friends would react, he elects not to tell them. [[spoiler:Professor Marmalade exploits this to make the gang believe Mr. Wolf was willing to abandon them in search of a better life, leading to their nasty falling out in the prison.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'':

* LoveYouAndEverybody: A character confesses platonic love for something, and is misunderstood to mean romantic love.

* Then there's ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'', in which Lytek, God of Exaltation, who's known for a very long time about the Great Curse, has utterly failed to tell anyone else about this for 2000+ years. By this point, if he ''does'' tell anyone, it's likely he'll be mined for starmetal.
* One of the Fluff asides in ''TabletopGame/{{Reign}}'' involves an instance of NonverbalMiscommunication that rises to this level -- the mercenary commander had a troop of mixed nationality that each knew one of three different sets of military hand signals; he'd only bothered to check that they all knew hand signals, not that they all knew the ''same ones''. His signal to "hold up" was variously interpreted correctly, as an order to attack, or as an order to retreat, and they were routed in the chaos resulting.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'',

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

* In ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' Ganymedians didn't realise that human prospectors couldn't survive being separated from their organs, so their first attempts at taking prisoners went badly.
* There is an uncertain story about TabletopGame/{{Xiangqi}} that says that the General (analogous to the king in western TabletopGame/{{Chess}}) was once called the Emperor, until the actual Emperor passing by a game overheard two players discussing killing or capturing the Emperor and misunderstood them. Heads rolled, and the General name stuck.

* Of all the things this could refer to in ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'', you wouldn't think it would be the SCP itself, but it has happened. SCP-2703 is a [[EldritchAbomination horned, tentacled griffon-thing]], but she's also a polite and classy lady who just wants to [[DidWeJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu have platonic dinner-dates and see shows with humans]]. Unfortunately, she chooses to advertise these things in ways that seem like prostitution (apparently she never realized what "For a good time, call..." in BathroomStallGraffiti refers to), and as such she's apparently had a bad experience with a would-be "friend".

* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' has this problem a lot. Vague letters or notes with no clear addressee on them are the most common culprits, although the entire backstory of "Bridge to the Turnabout" could have been solved by good communication [[spoiler:without anyone dying.]]

* PoorCommunicationKills/RealLife

* Considered by Richard Wiseman's "LaughLab" as the world's funniest joke, there's a rather dark one about two hunters on a trip in the woods where one fell out of the tree stand and lay unconscious. His friend calls 911 saying he thinks his friend is dead. The operator's instructions are "Okay, first thing is to make sure he's dead." There's a pause on the other end before a gunshot is heard, with the hunter coming back and asking "Okay, now what?"

* Considered world's funniest joke, there's a rather dark one about two hunters on a trip in the woods where one fell out of the tree stand and lay unconscious. His friend calls 911 saying he thinks his friend is dead. The operator's instructions are "Okay, first thing is to make sure he's dead." There's a pause on the other end before a gunshot is heard, with the hunter coming back and asking "Okay, now what?"

* There's a rather dark joke about two hunters on a trip where one fell out of the tree stand and lay unconscious. His friend calls 911 saying he thinks his friend is dead. The operator's instructions are "Okay, first thing is to make sure he's dead." There's a pause on the other end before a gunshot is heard, with the hunter coming back and asking "Okay, now what?"

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'', the Slaans - the mage-priests of the Lizardmen - sleep most of the time, and when they wake up, they speak in very short sentences without any context. As a result, unpleasant things have happened. When the High Elves arrived in Lustria, they were brought before a Slaan who said, "They should not be here". His Saurus guards read this as "Destroy all High Elves" and killed them. Whether he actually meant "Send them home" will never be known.

** Ruby defies the trope after she and Weiss initial disastrous pairing in Volume 1. She interrupts Weiss's attack strategy against a Beowolf by appearing out of nowhere and slashing it right in front of her; Weiss is forced to awkwardly divert her momentum and inadvertently sets the forest on fire to avoid hitting Ruby. Weiss angrily calls Ruby out for her lack of communication, but Ruby dismisses it because she hasn't yet learned how to fight with others. By Volume 2, Ruby has learned and become very organised at developing team strategies and attack combinations for her team to use in battle.

** After a history of being abandoned and betrayed, [[BigGood Ozpin]] hides the AwfulTruth [[NeverBeHurtAgain from even his closest allies]]. Ironwood secretly conspires with Vale's council to strip him of Vytal Festival's security, Yang warns him she'll only support him if he stops hiding things, and all the heroes turn on him when the truth finally comes out. How he handles this information can make allies vulnerable to Salem's machinations and Theodore thinks he fails to prepare people by coddling them. In the Atlas Arc, Oscar states that Ozpin is [[HopeCrusher terrified]] of [[DespairEventHorizon destroying people's hope]] after Ruby leads the heroes into repeating his mistake with Ironwood; Ozpin and the kids reconcile once Ozpin faces his mistakes and the kids acknowledge just how risky it is to trust people with the truth about Salem.

* After a history of being abandoned and betrayed, [[BigGood Ozpin]] hides the AwfulTruth [[NeverBeHurtAgain from even his closest allies]]. Ironwood secretly conspires with Vale's council to strip him of Vytal Festival's security, Yang warns him she'll only support him if he stops hiding things, and all the heroes turn on him when the truth finally comes out. How he handles this information can make allies vulnerable to Salem's machinations and Theodore thinks he fails to prepare people by coddling them. In the Atlas Arc, Oscar states that Ozpin is [[HopeCrusher terrified]] of [[DespairEventHorizon destroying people's hope]] after Ruby leads the heroes into repeating his mistake with Ironwood; Ozpin and the kids reconcile once Ozpin faces his mistakes and the kids acknowledge just how risky it is to trust people with the truth about Salem.

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' turns this trope into an anvil that needs to be dropped:
** Ozpin is a BigGood involuntarily dragged into an eternal war with [[BigBad Salem]], and he knows pretty much all the ups and downs about the things needed and done around the world. However, he has a habit of being "need to know" with the information and not telling people when it's really needed (like, say, before things go pear-shaped). This has lead to many many people, both Hunters/Huntresses and innocents, to die at the hands of the Grimm and Salem's associates and has, rightfully, pissed off Team RWBY and the remains of Team JNPR. Ozpin himself is well aware of this flaw, but past betrayals by trusted allies have left him too jaded to fully trust anyone.
** In Volume 7, [[spoiler: Blake and Yang promised General Ironwood that they won't tell anybody about the Amity Colosseum being turned into a satellite as part of a plan that involved uniting the entirety of Remnant against Salem and his minions. A promise that's broken once both of them decide to tell Robyn Hill the truth. For a time, it worked, as Robyn allied with Ironwood believing they were doing the right thing, however, as soon as Ironwood knows the truth, trust between Team RWBY and the Atlas authorities begin to crack and they begin to fight each other, thus attracting even more Grimm to Mantle and Atlas]].
** Volume 7 was this all around. [[spoiler: Ruby's decision not to tell Ironwood what they knew about Salem until the almost literal last second when Grimm were attacking Mantle. Robyn being left in the dark about why Ironwood has been taking supplies resulted in her stealing from him and heavily crippling the supplies needed to launch the reboot for his communication systems. The resulting two miscommunications results in Ironwood's full [[FaceHeelTurn turn to the dark side]] and forcing RWBY to split up to tackle different jobs]].

* Parodied in "The Poptart Tragedy", a SoBadItsGood story (most likely deliberately awful) about a boy and girl. The girl wants some Pop-Tarts, and asks her boyfriend to get them. When he returns, she tells him that she's pregnant and asks if he'll stay with her boyfriend. When he says "no," she cries and runs away--but without eating the Pop-Tarts, her blood sugar lowers and she tumbles to the ground, somehow dying. The boyfriend then reveals that he said he wasn't going to be her boyfriend because he planned on proposing, thus becoming her ''husband.'' Listen to the [[SarcasmMode heart-rending tragedy]] narrated [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcn1Q9fWahM here]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}'', after Lord Farquaad chooses Fiona as the princess he wants to marry, the Magic Mirror attempts to warn him about the "little thing that happens at night." However, Farquaad is so caught up in his own celebrating at being able to call himself a king that he cuts the Mirror off before he can explain. Had he let the Mirror finish, he would have learned that [[spoiler:Fiona was cursed to turn into an ogre every night until she kisses her true love. Though in the case her true love being the fellow ogre, Shrek, she ends up just staying an ogre full-time anyway.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}'':
** Anna gets struck in the head with Elsa's ice magic, so the sisters are separated for thirteen years to keep Anna from getting harmed again. Due to Anna's memories of the incident getting erased, she has no idea why Elsa shuts her out. A lot of the film's conflict (especially regarding Elsa's glove and the major argument between the two sisters over Anna's impromptu engagement to Hans) might have been avoided if Elsa or their parents had just told Anna about Elsa's powers when they felt she was old enough. One gets the idea that Elsa was ordered specifically not to tell her, and it seems to be suggested[[note]]and confirmed in a deleted scene from Frozen 2[[/note]] that had they not been killed prematurely, they may have had a point in time where they were going to tell Anna something along the lines of "we had to isolate you from Elsa because she has this ability to make ice that she is unable to control".
** The trolls have no idea how to help Elsa gain control of her powers — only that she shouldn't let fear control her. Ironically, [[spoiler: they are coincidentally love experts, which is exactly what helps Elsa gain control of her powers.]]
* The entire immediate conflict of ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'' happens because of [[spoiler:Miguel's mistaken belief of the identity of his great-great-grandfather]].
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie2TheSecondPart'' goes about this in a rather silly way. The GoodAllAlong "villains" outright tell the protagonists what they plan to do, but the protagonists are under the impression that they're lying. It doesn't help that the villains used to run on BlueAndOrangeMorality (being "controlled" by a younger sister who was once a toddler), which means that the protagonists tend to shoot first whenever it comes to an actual fight and then mistake defensiveness as aggression. Consequently, genuine changes of heart get mistaken as brainwashing, and a genuine SugarBowl is interpreted as a CrapsaccharineWorld. This gets lampshaded pretty hard later on.
* ''WesternAnimation/ParaNorman'':
** Little girl Aggie had no idea how to explain her ability to see and speak to the dead in terms that her [[TheFundamentalist accusers]] could see in any way except "witchcraft". In trying, she basically admits to being "guilty" and dies for it. [[spoiler: The result is a curse that causes Judge Hopkins and his jury to turn into zombies, doomed to wander the streets looking for a way to properly pass on.]]
** Old Mr Prenderghast clearly had ''decades'' during which he could have written out detailed instructions for whoever took over the task of keeping the witch asleep. Indeed, that information probably ''was'' in his study. But, being rather insane, his collection of information is a tangled mess that only makes sense to his irrational mind. He also seems to assume that Norman already knows what to do and just needs to be pushed into doing it.
* Pretty much the entirety of ''WesternAnimation/ChickenRun'' would have not only been avoided, but they'd have escaped years ago had any of the hens actually bothered to ''listen'' to any of Fowler's ramblings. It's not until late in the movie that they even ask what the R.A.F. or "the old crate" was, and learn it was the Royal Air Force and ''a flying machine''. Fowler on the other hand always assumed they were listening to him, and is genuinely surprised none of them know what either of those things are, as it's implied he's been going off about both for as long as he's been there.
* At the climax of ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'', just as Eugene and Rapunzel are about to kiss, the former saw the Stabbington Brothers waiting in the shore and in order to keep Rapunzel safe, he decides to head on shore to give the tiara to them. However, since he does not tell Rapunzel of their presence (whom she previously saw attempting to kill them), she is led to believe that Eugene truly abandoned her for the tiara, which traumatize her enough that led to Gothel successfully regaining hold of her to return to the tower.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheManCalledFlintstone'': Secret agents contact Fred Flintstone and send him on a mission to capture the Green Goose. They don't bother to clarify that the Green Goose is a dangerous criminal, so Fred agrees because he thinks he's been hired to capture a rare bird. Naturally, when he learns of the Green Goose's true nature, he is terrified.
* In ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'', Joy and Sadness focus on waking Riley up while Fear is on dream duty, but the other emotions have no idea that they doing this to get back to headquarters and Anger and Disgust chastise Fear for waking Riley up during a nightmare. Anger comes up with a plan to make Riley run away.
* In ''WesternAnimation/OverTheMoon'', if Chang'e had been ''slightly'' more patient with Fei Fei, Fei Fei could have had a chance to explain the gift Chang'e was seeking is most likely at Fei Fei's crashed rocket site and easily narrow the search. However, Chang'e becomes quickly irritated that the children don't know what she is talking so she sends all of Lunaria on a mad hunt, leaving Fei Fei and Chin, the only two people who know about the crash site, behind in the dust.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', Mei’s first transformation would have been significantly less stressful if her parents had given her the ‘panda talk’ beforehand. Ming’s explanation for waiting is that she didn’t expect the curse to effect Mei until years later. There’s also an implication that Ming was traumatized by her own experience with the curse, and wanted to avoid the subject for as long as possible.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Encanto}}'':
** Many bad things that happen to the Madrigals, such as [[spoiler: Bruno leaving, the Casita crumbling]], Mirabel feeling like a misfit, can be traced back to poor communication among the family members. Everyone is trying so hard to follow Alma's directive that the family ''needs'' to show they are worthy of the miracle that [[spoiler: they aren't able to share honestly that the effort and stress is causing individual members to falter, feel exhausted or feel pigeon-holed into roles they aren't sure they want to play anymore.]]
** [[spoiler: Bruno "ruining" Pepa's wedding]] is revealed to be this. The former was genuinely trying to joke and lighten the mood for the latter but it ended up backfiring horribly.

* In ''Roleplay/ManipulationGameOfFun'' after Aspiration send a pm to Checklad on day 3 asking whom he considered an enemy or ally, Checklad immediately went ahead to try and kill him. Why? The pm was so poorly worded that it was seen as a threat to Checklad, it let to Aspiration's dead on day 4.