10 Trailers That Completely Misrepresented Their Video Games

As gamers we rely on trailers to get a good idea of what to expect from a video game. Or at least, we used to, until the infamous wildly inaccurate trailer spike of the 2010s.

It’s safe to say things have come back around again since then, with studios now almost always linking the trailer to the game and labelling when trailer footage is in-engine or not, but luckily for our list today, there are still plenty of examples that have some wild dissonance between a trailer and the game it’s supposed to be showing off.

Think Dead Island, Anthem, or Brutal Legend. It’s not always a bad thing if trailers don’t represent their games. Sometimes the games end up being way better than expected, or sometimes it’s a deliberate choice to throw you off.

That said, other times it is just a case of dressing up a dud. And there are plenty of those on this list.

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10. Doki Doki Literature Club

An absolute classic in the category that we’d be remiss not to include is Doki Doki Literature Club.

While you’ll notice I’ve gone to some effort not to mention every game you might guess would take a slot on a list like this one, there are a handful of games I couldn’t help but include and this is one of them. Doki Doki Literature Club’s trailer goes out of its way to appear like it’s just another anime dating sim slash interactive novel with all the cutie pie schoolgirl stereotypes and standard fare that you’d expect from the genre.

In fact the only clue that things are not as they appear is a title card that kicks off the trailer stating “This game is not suitable for children or those easily disturbed.”

This is one of the admittedly few trailers on this list that both exceeds expectations set up by the trailer but also subverts them very deliberately. If you haven’t played this one because you expect it to be a standard dating sim you’re missing out. Unless you are, as the trailer itself says, a child or easily disturbed, then give it a miss.