Like all forms of entertainment, videogames require a suspension of disbelief. Would the police really let off Niko with just a fine after he murdered half the city? How do three different alien species use the same exact resources to build their bases? Can't Russian people stack their own blocks?
Most of the time, these discrepancies are choices made by the developers to make the game more fun. If the Russians stacked their own blocks, what would players dor Watch? That's not interesting. The Russians would just stack the blocks and talk about how things used to be better and you know things weren't, but it isn't your place to say so because you're a guest.
Unfortunately, developers often extend that suspension of disbelief to their characters with awful results. Ideas that work for gameplay result in characters who would be considered idiotic -- or worse, downright evil -- in real life.
Here are some videogame characters who would suck in the real world.*
*This excludes characters such as Pac-man and Q-Bert, who would instantly suffer a painful death upon materializing in reality dues to their impossible anatomy. I'm not a complete bastard; I'm not punishing goombas because there's no way they could've evolved on Earth.
In the Game:
Dr. Mario kills those nefarious germs by matching colored pills.
In Real Life:
The usual joke about Dr. Mario is that he's a drug dealer. He's not. Drug dealers know when to cut off their clientele. When Charlie Sheen goes on a public rampage, you know someone's not taking his weekly cocaine call for a little while.
Not to be callous, but you know who else just piled on pills to cure a patient? Michael Jackson's doctor. Yeah. Dr. Mario practices medicine the same way as the guy who's under investigation for murdering one of our nation's greatest musical treasures.
In the Game:
Male cheerleaders give struggling people the confidence to succeed!
In Real Life:
If I were going through a bad break-up and suddenly three dudes started dancing for me to the song "Time After Time," all I could think would be, "Are these dudes making fun of me? I thought, being an adult, I was done with this prank stuff where jocks mess with me. Maybe Jennifer was right; I'm not the type of man who a woman can spend the rest of her life with."
And then I'd start crying. Not because of the Elite Beat Agents. But because I'd never know the type of happiness I felt with Jennifer ever again.
In the Game:
The galaxy's greatest bounty hunter won't stop until her quarry is found.
In Real Life:
Only once has Samus actually brought her target back alive. Once. The other times she's ended up blowing up the space station or blowing up the colony or blowing up the planet. That's very poor bounty hunting. Maybe it's different in Space Year 4XX2, but nowadays most bounty hunters won't get paid if they burn down the target's workplace.
Samus may be less racist than Dog: The Bounty Hunter, but at least he knows that if you're told to pick up someone in west Honolulu you don't leave west Honolulu a smoking crater.
Also, Samus is a seemingly strong female character who strips and wears bikinis whenever she gets home early. So that's something we shouldn't be teaching our daughters.
In the Game:
The town's resident businessman gives you your house and job.
In Real Life:
Bosses like Tom Nook do exist in real life; they do that white slavery thing you see on the news every so often. You know it: It's the Dateline story so horrible you change the channel because you're eating and things like that are easier to ignore.
Imagine if your boss owned your house and only paid you a few bucks a day for manual labor. I mean, sure, it's your house! You know, just pay it back whenever you can. It's fine. Hey, but since you owe him hundreds of thousands of dollars on the house that he technically has a legal right to, could you please dig up this priceless fossil? He'll pay you fifty bucks for it. Which he'll hold onto as collateral towards the house.
In Animal Crossing, Tom Nook is annoying. In real life he would be terrifying.