Hideo Kojima, owing to the surely intentional fan-bashing in later Metal Gear games. Kojima took his trolling to a new level with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, with trailers misleading players into believing they'd be playing as Solid Snake, only for players to discover that they'll be playing as Raiden instead for most of the game.

Kojima has continued to play what can only be described as a Kansas City Shuffle with English fans surrounding the voice acting of Metal Gear Solid V, since the announcement of Kiefer Sutherland replacing David Hayter as the voice of Big Boss. Well, you do get to play the Big Boss who was first introduced in the very first Metal Gear... until you find out that he's actually a doppelgänger. That means not only did you not get to play as Big Boss for the entire game, you never fought Big Boss the first time around either.

The sheer fact that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance even exists is proof to Kojima's troll status. The other games in the franchise were touching character dramas, full of philosophical dilemmas about the tragedy of war and, hey, here's a game where you play as a badass cyborg ninja slicing through watermelons while fighting giant robots with your electric sword! Well, there is some philosophy in that game... it's just a simple "If you believe in your philosophy, bash the other guy who doesn't agree with you."

Let's just say he's earned the title "The Man Who Trolled The World" for a good reason.

Notch once announced that Minecraft contained one recipe which nobody had ever found and that didn't appear in the recipe-finding Recipe Book mod. This was all he ever said on the matter.

Square Enix when it comes to Bonus Boss Absolute Virtue. Every time the players find a way to beat him, the dev team goes out of their way to squash the methods used to beat the monster. Square Enix seem to either want to make Absolute Virtue unbeatable or they enjoy watching players cry as Absolute Virtue's weaknesses gets changed every time people find a way to weaken him. This has since been subverted with expansions increasing the level cap to the point players can beat Absolute Virtue by sheer force, and they seem to be content with that. note There is a specific way to beat Absolute Virtue (involving the use of two-hour abilities to mirror the boss's use of said two-hour abilities), and that was, according to the devs, the intended way to beat the boss. So it's not so much trolling (although there is quite a bit of that in the process), but rather removing exploits that allowed players to circumvent the intended method for winning. The fact that there's zero indication of the intended method, and that no one found out how to do it until Square Enix almost literally pointed it out, on the other hand...

With Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels, director Motomu Toriyama is seen this way by much of the fanbase. His statements in interviews paint him as either naively unaware of the fandom's opinions, or he knows and is purposefully invoking this trope. Such statements include that the sequel will answer the question of "is Lightning happy" (her presence turned out to be Wolverine Publicity and this question was never addressed), and he requested a hotter and sexier design for Lightning in the third game (which fans and critics reacted negatively to). Furthermore, in both games, fans have criticized the stories for not making sense, and he's an advocate for the interactive movie design model that fans hated in the first game. The Memetic Mutation "Toriyama'd" is now shorthand for this trope when it comes to Final Fantasy.

Square Enix also shows infinite amounts of trolling regarding Final Fantasy VII, forever denying fans any remake of the game. The apex of this came in December 2014, during a gaming panel, the lights dimmed, the screens started showing letters and the announcement: "Final Fantasy VII is coming to the PS4." The whole room (and whoever was watching the live stream) burst into applause and cheers, only to fall silent a few seconds later, as it was revealed that it was just a port of the version available on PC, without any difference. Take a guess at the reaction of the fans on Twitter. Less than a year later, Square Enix finally announced the remake at E3. And that it had already been in development for over eighteen months. That's an epic level of trolling right there.

It turns out the Final Fantasy VII Remake is not just an HD remake of Final Fantasy VII.

David Gaider, a BioWare employee and the chief writer of the Dragon Age series, is very fond of telling the story of how he came up with the idea to kill off Alistair in the end if he was romanced Evil Laugh, foreseeing the fangirls' reaction, and he still smiles fondly whenever a player is devastated by that event.

Takeshi's Challenge announces on its title screen that it was created by a man who hates video games. Much of what the player is supposed to do in the game falls under Violation of Common Sense.

For April Fools Day 2012, Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, hyped up to a new champion release, a manatee named Urf. On the day of his release, they released a story about how the day before, Urf had been murdered by Warwick, to whom they released a skin featuring Urf's carcass. However, rather than rage, the fandom just went with it and turned Urf into the unofficial mascot of League. Riot Games noticed, and eventually turned Urf into the official go-to for gags, such as Ultra Rapid Fire mode which they insisted was "the future of League."

Blizzard Entertainment had to put up with constant complaints about how "cartoony" and "colorful" Diablo III is compared to its predecessors. As a pisstake to that section of the fanbase, they put this level into the game. Prior to that, testers for the Cataclysm expansion complained that their visit to the Maelstrom wasn't "epic" enough. Shortly after, Blizzard added Epicus Maximus.

On a related note, Blizzard gave their two newest playable characters in World of Warcraft trollbait dances: the male Pandaren has the Party Rock Shuffle, and the female Pandaren has the Caramelldansen. These are the people who date their releases and patches as either "Soon," "Very Soon" or "Soonish," all of which they define as any time between now and the end of time with Very Soon being most likely to be closer to now and Soonish to be closer to said end of time.



In Dark Souls, there is a starting item you can choose at the very beginning called "the Pendant". It has no obvious use, but many players assumed there had to be some significance behind it, because why would it be in the game otherwise? It helps that Dark Souls is a game in which even the tiniest of details can be extremely important for understanding the story or the gameplay, making fans even more on the lookout for such things. The game's director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, would repeatedly hint that there was some great secret behind this item, but no matter how hard the fans looked, they couldn't find anything. After years of this, Miyazaki finally revealed what the Pendant does: absolutely nothing. It was a Red Herring from the start. And just to rub it in, the key item for accessing the game's DLC is a Pendant... a different Pendant with no relation to the first.

Kayin, creator of I Wanna Be the Guy, delves into this occasionally. Perhaps not surprising, considering the game itself trolls the player at every opportunity. Best exemplified when EG Floe premiered I Wanna Be The Guy Gaiden at EVO 2012; Kayin logged into the game session and proceeded to either help Floe with particularly hard sections or spawn random death traps and Interface Screw, whichever was funnier at the moment.

ZUN has developed a habit of subverting the Moe personalities fandom attributes to the cast of Touhou. First, in Double Spoiler, he revealed that Momiji is more of a "lone wolf" type than the Genki Girl portrayed by fandom, and actually hates Aya, the person she was most shipped with. Then, in Symposium of Post-Mysticism, he did this to about half the cast of Mountain of Faith and Subterranean Animism: Nitori (the "shy kappa") is a shameless racist, possible murderer, and Insufferable Genius, Kisume ("bucket loli" who is also treated as really shy) is depicted as a Creepy Child... and Tenshi, who spent much of her fighting game being a gigantic, destructive asshole (even by Touhou standards), just needs a hug after being bullied by the cast.

Hideki Kamiya uses Twitter to troll his English-speaking fans mercilessly. A reoccurring troll is when he's asked when we'll hear new info on his latest project, and he'll say "Next week... in game magazines/Nintendo Direct/other events" and news sites will report on it not realizing what Kamiya was doing. He will also drop some vague hints to a possible Switch port of or project related to The Wonderful 101, but without directly confirming or denying anything.

Yager's Spec Ops: The Line falls into the "to prove a point" category without any ill intent on the dev's part. The game frequently and harshly criticizes the player for fulfilling a Power Fantasy by way of gruesome virtual war crimes. The devs have stated in interviews they wanted the players coming in with a certain set of expectations, kept the initial part of the game very familiar to players in order to foster that feeling, then set up their shots at the player. Even loading screens get in on the act, mocking the players with phrases such as "This is all your fault." "How many Americans have you killed today?" and "To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless."

Ed Boon, the creator of Mortal Kombat, likes to troll his fans quite a bit — everything from misleading tweets about possible characters in MK games to teasing at a crossover with Street Fighter.

When announcing names for Rune Factory 4, XSEED Games tweeted that they had changed Vishnal, one of the characters fans were more anxious about name changes in localization, to Vance. They tweeted again several minutes later announcing that they were only kidding, and his name had made the transition to the US intact.

Tameem Antoniades became this when his team, Ninja Theory, rebooted the hit action game series, Devil May Cry. The reboot made controversial changes to the series' hero, Dante, with Tameem commenting in the interviews he did not find the classic Dante appealing or cool. This angered fans a lot, of course. Even though he stated he did not care what fans thought, the reboot's Dante was modified during development to act like Dante and even look like him. Tameem's trolling status went even further when, in the reboot, Dante threw away a wig that made him look like the classic Dante.

Cryptic Studios likes to pull one over on its fans concerning Star Trek Online. They even go so far as to make fun of their own bugs: when one update caused the location Deep Space K-7 to disappear, the next patch revealed that it had returned as it had been cloaked by a Klingon. Go into the Admiral's office in DSK-7 and you'll find Starfleet Officers interrogating a Klingon on how he did it.

Another interesting incident happened during testing of Season 9 on the TRIBBLE Server: players had accidentally found out that you could shoot inside the newly redesigned Earth Spacedock (it's usually disabled) and people decided to have fun with doing so. Cryptic's response? Drop an army of Demonic Spiders on the players and let the Curb-Stomp Battle begin.

An inversion of sorts happens with Level-5 in the form of the Inazuma Eleven Japanese fanbase, who have a tendency to rig character polls left and right (notably picking as Level-5's most influential character an airplane from the obscure iOS game Aeroporter). The creators themselves are no better on this matter though, especially about their Periphery Demographic fanbase...

Persona: Persona 4: Arena Ultimax had a character referred to as "P5Protag" internally. This character would be eventually released as Sho Minazuki, a redheaded convict with split personality issues... who turned out to have absolutely nothing to do with P5 aside from sharing a motif color. And to top it all off, his only appearance in P5 would wind up being as DLC for its dancing spinoff.

to do with P5 aside from sharing a motif color. And to top it all off, his only appearance in P5 would wind up being as DLC for its dancing spinoff. From the same game, we have the Malevolent Entity, a creature whose ability to take on other Shadows' forms, use of false memories, and plan to get the characters to fall into despair make him look like the oft-requested comeback of Nyarlathotep, villain of the first two and a half games. Who does he turn out to be? Hi-no-Kagutsuchi, a completely unrelated deity .

. Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth marked the return of the Persona 3 Portable female protagonist. Fans were sure she'd finally get a Canon Name like the other featured protagonists, since her only other name came from the one continuity where both male and female protagonists were siblings. The Q series doesn't name any of its protagonists, instead calling them "Persona [X] Protagonist" where applicable on canon material. FeMC was no exception.

When The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was revealed during E3 2014, Eiji Aonuma, director of The Legend of Zelda, was asked a question about Link's appearance in the footage. His reply was "No one specifically said that was Link." This, combined with the somewhat feminine appearance of the character in the trailer, spawned loads of Wild Mass Guessing who it could be, whether it be Zelda, Link's sister, a Reincarnation of Link who was female, or some new female character. A day later, Aonuma admitted that he was joking, and that it really was Link in the footage. Aonuma: "Its not that I said that it wasn't Link. Its that I never said that it was Link. Its not really the same thing, but I can understand how it could be taken that way."

In a small interview about Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Uchikoshi says there's "something very important hidden throughout the entire game", vaguely implies that the ending doesn't wrap it up, and encourages internet discussion. While it's true that there are several moments of Fridge Brilliance throughout the game, who knows what that very specific 'something important' is.

Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada responded to a tweet complaining about Tekken 7 character Lucky Chloe, stating not to worry about it since characters can be deleted and replaced for the American market, and she would be replaced by a muscled skinhead with powerful attacks. News sites reported Lucky Chloe was exclusive to Japan and Europe, until Michael Murray, designer at Bandai Namco, responded on Twitter: "It's amusing how many [people] are [taking] Haradas trolling about Chloe seriously. Hes good at getting free publicity." That's not even getting into the tweet itself. To the user loudly proclaiming that Lucky Chloe should be removed from Tekken 7, he only had this to say: I'll remove you. ◊ "

Final Fantasy XIV has the relic weapons that can get powered up more and more, but each step gets more and more ridiculous. One step involves collecting 12 items with absurdly low drop rates and another involves binding materia whose success rate gets lower and lower each time you succeed. At the end of the quest chain (as of patch 2.45), the NPC involved in the quest suggests that you find 50 of the low drop rate items to finish the last step and your character gives a You Have Got to Be Kidding Me! look before another NPC wisely suggests that you use the relic itself as materia to get your Zodiac weapon. You're then told several times that you only have a 1.4% chance of success to meld the materia and failure will destroy the relic. Most players' hearts probably skipped a beat before realizing that Square was just screwing with them since the success rate is actually 100%.

Ryukishi07, creator and head writer of the When They Cry sound novels, loves to troll his audience, whether it's introducing text that no one understands or making the plot even more confusing than it already is! And is loved for it.

Fans of the dinosaur game Saurian kept requesting Spinosaurus in the game, despite the dinosaur not being found any place or time near the Hell Creek Formation where the game is set. As a response to this, the game devs during a livestream claimed that a new unpublished Spinosaurid called "Montanaspinus" had been discovered in the formation. Poe's Law ensued, however, which resulted in the devs having to explain this was just a prank and that "Montanaspinus" was not a real dinosaur.

Happens in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. Thought there was an in-game evolution trade that would allow the player to receive a Haunter that will immediately evolve into Gengar? Turns out the trading NPC had the Haunter hold an Everstone so that Haunter wouldn't evolve after trading it over to the player.

Landfall Games, creators of Clustertruck, can do this if your game is integrated with Twitch where they can use a set number of commands only for the game's creators, and mess with you while you stream the game. Things like stopping you in midair, changing your truck's colors, stopping the trucks altogether, or better yet, Rickrolling you.

In Bioware's Neverwinter Nights, there existed a popular player-made server called Path of Ascension. In it, the server's creators added a script that would trigger whenever a magic-based character cast the spell Time Stop in the hub town. After an instance of Time Stop was cast, anyone attempting to rest in town would immediately die. High-level players would often invoke this script on purpose to troll other players on the server. Lowbie player responses would always be "WTF, why am I dead?" with more knowledgeable players retorting with "Lol, TS." On the upside, the script would reset resting back to normal after another Time Stop spell was cast.

Kensuke Tanaka, the lead producer for Kantai Collection, is often regarded as one, and it's more than just for the truckloads of salt-inducing seasonal events and RNG-dependent outcomes. One of his first acts was to affirm that ships do sink at orange (i.e. 50% health or lower, aka "medium damage"), which was in direct contradiction to information provided in the tutorial (i.e. only heavily damaged ships are at risk of being sunk), and in at least two to four events, he intentionally withheld key information regarding the events, such as the existence of the sixth map in the Summer 2014 Event which bars all AL/MI participants, the precise location of the debuff nodes for the final map of Summer 2015, the air-raid debuff at E5 for Spring 2016 E6, on top of the boss having an Achilles' Heel that can only be struck during the initial airstrike, as well as understating the number of Saiuns needed for the Winter 2017 Event. Many Admirals consider him being the resident Scapegoat Creator of the game completely justified for this reason.

Similarly to Takeshi's Challenge, Kid Klown In Crazy Chase feels like a longform attempt by Kemco to troll the player with intentionally aggravating design decisions. Hurt animations are painfully long to waste time, there is absolutely no indication of which balloons contain the card symbols you need to beat each level and which ones just give coins and health or even damage you, certain hazards are secretly warps to bonus stages to collect coins (again, with absolutely no indication which ones are warps) and beating the bonus stage awards you with a unique power-up... that only serves to screw you over in different ways, such as making you jump constantly, and the normal and good endings are locked behind a Luck-Based Mission at the very end of the game. Oh, and you take damage at the very start of the game before you can even do anything.

Astroneer: In a more direct example than most, LordMinion777 and BreadHeroDan livestreamed the game together in late 2016. During their game, they found a large zebra-stripped orb, whose purpose or use they couldn't fathom. When the guys found out that one of the game's devs was in the audience, they asked him what the "zebra egg" was supposed to be; the dev acted like he didn't see anything. note Besides basic trolling, this might have been a Call-Back to earlier in the stream where Wade saw a spaceship rolling around in the background and Dan messed with him by acting like nothing was there.

Naughty Dog has been trolling fans about The Last of Us Part II since before the game even was announced. In Uncharted 4 (which came out in Spring 2016, roughly six months before TLOU was announced), there's a poster in Cassie's bedroom of a TLOU comic that features a pregnant woman who looks like Ellie ◊ . Speculation was that the woman was either Ellie or her mom, Anna. At that point in time, their public position was that they would make a sequel when they knew they had a good story, but that they were focused on wrapping up Uncharted. The thing is that they were actually in very early development on TLOU at the time. When the game went into full production in 2017, one of the writers said in an interview that she went home at night and talked to her husband about getting someone pregnant. There was also a picture posted to ND's social media from a motion capture session that had a baby doll in the background. When the first video made from the production (the initial 2016 announcement video was made when the game was in the writing phase) came out in October 2017, it featured a woman whose name they would not reveal ◊ , but was four letters long, like "Anna". The woman was in the process of being hanged by an Apocalypse Cult, and the cult leader put a knife up to her stomach and said she's "nested with sin". The internet went wild thinking it was Anna and that it was a flashback to when she was pregnant with Ellie, though she was not likely Anna, as she would have been pregnant with Ellie five years after the outbreak and the trailer takes place on a main drag place of an interstate in Seattle, WA, which is way too overgrown to be only five years later. The cult was also shown doing the same to men in a later trailer. In June 2018 at E3, they finally confirmed that someone was pregnant. When creative director Neil Druckmann was asked if the woman on the poster was Ellie's mom, he replied something to the effect of "she's someone's mom."

In a 2017 interview with Denis Dyack regarding the game Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, he was asked about the HMCS Bitter, a location that had been found by hackers who were looking through the game code regarding a conversion of the locations to 3D, and was considered to be Dummied Out content. Dyack instead claimed that there was a legitimate way to reach the Bitter by flipping four invisible switches located around Nosgoth, but he refused to elaborate further on the matter, saying he would never talk about it beyond this confirmation that it existed.

When players of Untitled Goose Game started creating left-wing narratives in which the goose was not just being a jerk, but disrupting capitalism, the creators jokingly claimed that in their canon the game was set in a socialist utopia, and everyone the goose harrassed was a good Marxist.

Toshihiro Kondo, president of Falcom is gaining traction among the fanbase in general where half of his interviews for promoting the next game in the Kiseki Series has him outright troll the fanbase or lie about one thing, only for the opposite to happen in-game. The most infamous example usually cited by fans is that the character named George Nome isn't part of the gnome faction before Cold Steel III came out.

Not the audience per se, but those independent coders who submitted their games to British Telecom's Telecomsoft division through their Firebird label when said games were included in a satirical compilation entitled Don't Buy This, whom Firebird released to mock the worst video game submissions they received. And it gets better: they outright disowned all copyrights to the game, encouraging people to pirate them at will to further humiliate the developers in question.