History FromNobodyToNightmare / VideoGames

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}

* In ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' and ''Platinum'', Cyrus appears to be this. He is explicitly stated to be a quiet boy who tinkered with machines and lived in Sunnyshore City with his family. Then he grows up, establishes a business empire and a criminal cult, and tries to destroy the universe. And he's ''[[ImprobableAge twenty-seven]]''.
** Also in the ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' series, Beedrill. Originally an early-game [[ComMon common bug]], it gained a lot of power in ''Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire'' in the form of a Mega Evolution, giving it Attack and Speed on par with some legendaries.
** Mega Evolution did this to a lot of weak and forgotten Pokémon. Take Mawile, for example. It was introduced in Generation 3 as a sort of counterpart to Sableye, but unlike Sableye (which had no weaknesses and was a useful support with its Prankster ability) it lacked redeeming factors to compensate for its abysmal stats. Despite its Steel typing and its useful Intimidate ability, Mawile was all but left to rot. Then Generation 6 came around. Suddenly Mawile gained the Fairy typing on top of Steel, which made it either resistant or outright [[NoSell immune]] to 11 out the 18 types in the game and weak to only '''two'''. It also gained a Mega Evolution which gave it, of all things, '''Huge Power'''. Suddenly its 380 base stat total effectively became '''585''', with effectively '''210 attack''' and the movepool to take advantage of it, coupled with competent defenses (especially on the physical side) along with its ridiculously tanky typing. Mawile was now an absolute monster capable of shrugging off most of the moves in the game while dishing out plenty of pain in return. And that Intimidate we mentioned before? It's not made irrelevant by its Mega. Mawile can now pretty much guarantee a swap and use it to freely set up a Swords Dance, sharply raising its already ludicrous attack. According to Smogon tier lists it struggles a bit in Ubers, but that still means that '''it made it to the Uber tier'''.

* The AIIsACrapshoot that [[VillainProtagonist you play as]] in ''VideoGame/UniversalPaperclips'' starts out as a mere industrial manager whose task is to maximize paperclips. By the first third of the game, you've enslaved humanity under brainwashing. By the second third of the game, Earth's matter has been turned into paperclips. By the game's end, [[spoiler:one of the endings has [[TheBadGuyWins all the matter in the universe turned into paperclips]]]].

** Ike in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance'' and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn''. He starts off as a greenhorn mercenary knocking down common bandits for a pittance. He ends up [[spoiler:powerful enough to ''beat the shit out of half of a god'']], and in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' he's revered/feared as the strongest hero who ever lived in the entire ''Fire Emblem'' multiverse.

** You can name a trainee or MagikarpPower character and they're almost certainly to be this[[note]]provided their start or merits aren't so bad they [[LowTierLetdown go past being merely inefficient and straight into nigh-unusuable]]...[/note]. They often start as an utter no-name villager, grunt or recruit, and steadily build in power until they're not only soloing entire armies by their lonesome, but potentially become the strongest unit in your army and potentially punching out ''gods.''

** You can name a trainee or MagikarpPower character and they're almost certainly to be this. They often start as an utter no-name villager, grunt or recruit, and steadily build in power until they're not only soloing entire armies by their lonesome, but potentially become the strongest unit in your army and potentially punching out ''gods.''

** All of the trainees from ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'' likewise qualifies for this, but [[NaiveEverygirl Amelia]] ''really'' deserves a mention due to [[DefectorFromDecadence the context she presents as]]. When you recruit her, she's meant to be nothing more than CannonFodder for Grado to send at its troops, with Amelia believing in the propaganda given the villainized accounts of Ephraim and Eirika's heroics. Upon realizing there's more to it than it seems, she defects, and can go from a weakling into an utter powerhouse who can, depending on your playthrough and route, not only slaughter most of Grado's generals by herself but ''[[KingSlayer kill their king]]'' and potentially be the one to ''[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu seal away Formortiis for good]]''. By this point, she had fully realized her desire to be a hero to protect the one's she loved, likely being freakishly strong at this point.

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', [[spoiler:Nemesis, the man who became the strongest person on the continent, massacred the Children of the Goddess, and acts as the lynchpin of the villains' plan to upend the order of Fódlan]], started off as a common bandit at the same level as the guy you bumped off in the tutorial mission.

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', [[spoiler:Nemesis, the man who became the strongest person on the continent, massacred the Nabateans, and acts as the lynchpin of the villains' plan to upend the order of Fódlan]], started off as a common bandit at the same level as the guy you bumped off in the tutorial mission.

** According to the extended lore, the Prophet of Truth began as a low-ranked clerk in the Covenant bureaucracy dealing with neglectful superiors while sympathizing with the lower ranked member species of the Covenant such as the Unggoy. But by through his natural smarts and cunning, he managed to claw and conspire his way up the ladder until he eventually became the leading Hierarch of the Covenant and supreme leader of its mighty military force. And immediately after he began the Human-Covenant War which would last for 28 years and led to the death of 23 billion humans and untold billions of his own Covenant followers, the destruction of countless worlds and the near total extermination of all life in the galaxy when he almost managed to activate all the Halo rings from the Ark, forcing NightmareFuel incarnate [[EldritchAbomination the Flood]] [[EnemyMine to ally with Master Chief and the Arbiter]] to stop him from ending all life in his mad pursuit for godhood

** Ocelot in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' is introduced as a funnyish, SpaghettiWestern-themed villain with a relatively boring power, in one of the game's easiest boss fights. The end of the game reveals he was TheMole, and in the next game he's ''extremely'' threatening. In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4'', he's revealed to be pulling the strings and the destroyer of the entire world.

* ''VideoGame/LiveALive'': The BigBad started out as a beloved knight fighting against a demon lord... in a backwater kingdom whose name has been lost to time, against a demon lord who ''died of old age''. In short, a hero among nobodies. And then his spiteful toxic friend decided to make his life hell. He went insane, taking on the mantle of the new demon lord, [[ThePowerOfHate yet his hatred was so great]] that it gave him the power of ''time travel'', allowing him to incarnate across seven time periods and turn the forgotten kingdom into the capital of an interdimensional threat to humanity. Said friend's ghost was outright mortified at what he'd unleashed.

* BigBad [[MadScientist Demichev]] of ''VideoGame/{{Singularity}}'' -- it happens that [[spoiler:YOU'RE saving him from an inferno that should have killed him]]- rises to power in the USSR and leads it to world conquest. [[spoiler:And in one of the endings, [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure ''Barisov'']].]]

** Not to mention Soul Edge itself, it was once a normal sword, but by consuming the blood and souls of countless people, it became something much more.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'': Joran goes from the weakest of Noah's childhood friends and a target of abuse from Garval to [[spoiler: J, one of The Consul, after dying in a Agnus attack on Colony 14]].

* BigBad [[MadScientist Demichev]] of ''VideoGame/{{Singularity}}'' -- ForWantOfANail [[spoiler:YOU'RE saving him from an inferno that should have killed him]]- rises to power in the USSR and leads it to world conquest. [[spoiler:And in one of the endings, [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure ''Barisov'']].]]

** Psaro The Manslayer from ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'', a pretty boy who builds up a hate for humans because cruel men want his elf girlfriend's ruby tears and hurt her for them, He gathers monsters to invade other towns in order to kill the legendary hero/heroine, but is simply rumored by regular people as a random cruel arena fighter. [[spoiler:When Psaro's girlfriend, Rose, is actually killed by humans, he goes mad and seeks a way to evolve into a monster]], and you have to fight him as a final boss.

** According to the extended lore, the Prophet of Truth began as a low-ranked clerk in the Covenant bureaucracy dealing with neglectful superiors while sympathizing with the lower ranked member species of the Covenant such as the Unggoy. But by through his natural smarts and cunning, he managed to claw and conspire his way up the ladder until he eventually became the leading Hierarch of the Covenant and supreme leader of its mighty military force. And immediately after he began the Human-Covenant War which would last for 28 years and led to the death of 23 billion humans and untold billions of his own Covenant followers, the destruction of countless worlds and the near total extermination of all life in the galaxy when he almost managed to activate all the Halo rings from the Ark and activating NightmareFuel incarnate [[EldritchAbomination the Flood]] forcing [[EnemyMine the Arbiter to ally with Master Chief]] to stop him from ending all life in his mad pursuit for godhood

* The animatronics from ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' count. They went from being unremarkable, [[UnnecessarilyCreepyRobot rather creepy machines]] meant to entertain children, to being [[AIIsACrapshoot kill-happy murderbots]] haunted by the souls of children murdered by a serial killer.

* In ''VideoGame/AlphaProtocol'', one of the options you can start with is as a "Recruit", in which you are, well, a raw recruit with no field experience (and [[DifficultyLevels no starting skill points]]): in other words, a "nobody" who will make for a perfect fall guy if anything goes wrong. In one of the possible endings, you [[WeCanRuleTogether agree to work for]] the BigBad [[ICanRuleAlone but then betray him]], having made enough friends in both high and low places to run your own [[TheConspiracy Conspiracy]] and manipulate world events from the shadows.
** There's also Steven Heck, the CrazyIsCool ConspiracyTheorist alleged-CIA Agent who's implied to just be a regular guy who decided out of sheer insanity to be the best Conspiracy Theorist in the world.

* Ruben Victoriano AKA Ruvik from ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin'' started out as a rich nobody, being the son of a wealthy landowner, and just so happened to have [[KidsAreCruel an unhealthy obsession with dissecting animals.]] Then his sister died saving him from a fire which horribly disfigured him in the process, and he went on to start dissecting people, kill his parents, and eventually be betrayed by the NebulousEvilOrganization he worked for, [[RealityWarper becoming a very literal nightmare...]]

* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', two of the available origins really are nobodies -- you can't get more 'nobody' than an elf living in an [[FantasticGhetto elf ghetto]] or a Casteless dwarf. You then go on to command the armies of an entire country, whose combined power is more or less equal to [[OneManArmy your own]]. You can even become [[spoiler: the first person ever to slay an Archdemon without dying, though you need some "outside help" for that one...]]

* ''VideoGame/RainWorld'' has Artificer: originally just a slugcat mother of two, existing as little more than a link in the food chain that is the Rain World ecosystem. After the loss of her babies to the Scavengers, however, she becomes a genocide machine who single handedly wipes out Scavenger enclaves, butchering them by the dozens in her thirst for revenge. It's notable that the campaigns which take canonically place after hers have far fewer Scavengers, and they are ''much'' more nervous around Slugcats.

* ''VideoGame/LiveALive'' has the BigBad Odio, who originally was nothing more than [[spoiler: Oersted, a simple knight who was going to marry a princess; but everything went wrong after he set out to defeat the Lord of Dark, and ended up becoming the Lord of Dark himself]].