History GoneHorriblyRight / VideoGames

-->[[spoiler:'''Raiden:''' That nickname you love so much... Wanna know how I got it? Actually, why don't I give you a demonstration?]]

->''I'm not a patient. I'm an executive, just like him. Like... Trager. But he got the treatment. He's too alive. Filled with Wernicke's nightmares. It worked... too well. They couldn't control it. And you can't control it. Nobody. Nobody! NOBODY!!''
-->-- '''Trager's captive.'''

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'': A man by the name of Klaus once tried performing scientific experiments to create a new universe, with himself as a god. Doing so destroyed the one he was living in at the time, and all its inhabitants with it. The worst part being: it did work: [[spoiler:Klaus '''did''' become one of the gods of the new universe, in which he created sentient human-like lifeforms out of boredom and loneliness, and repeatedly slaughtered them every time they became too autonomous before recreating sentient life again in a never ending ViciousCycle. The sequel revealing that this was actually his evil half, and the good half was still back in the old universe, which wasn't actually destroyed and most of the inhabitants were instead scattered across dimensions, where he know worked to try and reseed life.]]

** In ''Torna, the Golden Country'', Malos being a BloodKnight tries to trigger Mythra's full power, when she refuses to do so, he forces it out [[spoiler:by killing Milton]]. It succeeds, but Malos almost dies as a result.

-->[[spoiler:'''Raiden:''' That nickname you love so much. Wanna know how I got it? Actually, why don't I give you a demonstration?]]

** In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' an Enclave scientist explains how he genetically engineered intelligent animals to be used in combat. At first he thought he had failed, until he discovered that their wild animal behavior was merely ObfuscatingStupidity and that they were capable of reasoning and human speech. He cites the fact that they were intelligent enough to intentionally hide their intelligence as evidence they were too dangerous and needed to be killed.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' reveals that the leader of The Institute [[spoiler:intentionally de-froze the player character, one of his parents, because they wanted to see if an ordinary citizen of the pre-war world could redeem The Institute]]. The closest to a GoldenEnding involves destroying The Institute and enslaving its scientists to work for various and conflicting factions... which can be a potentially good thing, since the scientists are no longer free to work on their dangerous mad science and must help the factions with their technologically stagnant logistics and resource issues, or a disastrously horrible thing since every extremist faction is no longer held back logistically and gearing up for a greater ideological war.

* ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'' has one terrifying example near the end of the game. After you defeat [[spoiler:Porky, he retreats in his Absolutely Safe Capsule. Said capsule is designed to be ''completely'' impervious to damage, but there's one catch: once you enter it, you can't leave. And since Porky has been rendered more or less immortal due to abusing TimeTravel, [[AndIMustScream he is stuck permanently inside the capsule, in absolute safety, for eternity]]. WordOfGod has confirmed that Porky will remain alive until the sun burns out in 5 billions years, and possibly even longer depending on how strong the capsule is]].

** [=GlaDOS=]: Aperture Science wanted to develop an AI that was as [[ForScience committed to science]] as they were. They succeeded. Unfortunately for them, [=GlaDOS=] also embodied the company's [[MadScientist complete lack of morals or ethics]] and promptly killed them all so they wouldn't get in the way. It is clarified further in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}''. Her body is designed so whichever AI uses it gets an "itch" to [[DeathCourse test]] and feels [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything intense euphoria]] upon completing a test. Thing is, like real drugs, AIs on the system develop tolerance and need to do more and more elaborate tests to get the high, as demonstrated by Wheatly throughout Chapter 8. [=GlaDOS=] was actually the most stable AI for testing because she didn't need the stimulation: "I was in it [[ForScience for the science]]. Him, though..."

* Most of the [[LostTechnology Lost Technology]] in ''VideoGame/WildARMs1'' fell into this, hence why it ended up hidden away or destroyed while technology became feared as destructive by most of the population.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'':
** A man by the name of Klaus once tried performing scientific experiments to create a new universe, with himself as a god. Doing so destroyed the one he was living in at the time, and all its inhabitants with it.
*** The worst part being: it did work: [[spoiler:Klaus '''did''' become one of the gods of the new universe, in which he created sentient human-like lifeforms out of boredom and loneliness, and repeatedly slaughtered them every time they became too autonomous before recreating sentient life again in a never ending ViciousCycle. The sequel revealing that this was actually his evil half, and the good half was still back in the old universe.]]
** In ''[[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2 Torna the Golden Country]]'', Malos being a BloodKnight tries to trigger Mythra's full power, when she refuses to do so, he forces it out [[spoiler:by killing Milton]]. It succeeds, but Malos almost dies as a result.

** In ''Tasty Planet Forever'', the scientists screw up once again with the experimental Parsian Cat, whom the older one had sent out with the intention of cleaning the restaurant they were working at in a similar manner to the Grey Goo. At least the Parsian Cat seems fine with only eating the entirety of Paris (where the restaurant was located).

* ''VideoGame/TastyPlanet'': A pair of scientists create a ''GreyGoo'' designed to eat dirt for use as a bathroom cleaner. Indeed, it eats dirt. All kinds of dirt. [[PlanetEater You think they noticed the planet we live on is named "Earth"?]]

* ''VideoGame/TastyPlanet'': A pair of scientists create a ''GreyGoo'' designed to eat dirt for use as a bathroom cleaner. Indeed, it eats dirt. All kinds of dirt. [[PlanetEater You think they noticed the planet we live on is named "Earth"...?]]

* ''VideoGame/TastyPlanet'': Scientists create ''GreyGoo'' designed to eat dirt for use as a cleaner. Indeed, it eats dirt. All the dirt. [[PlanetEater You think they noticed the planet we live on is named "Earth"...?]]

* In ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami2WrongNumber'', [[spoiler:50 Blessings achieves its goal of breaking the Russo-American Coalition... which promptly results in Hawaii and Miami getting nuked by the Russians]].

* In ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow]]'''s bad ending, Celia Fortner ends up successfully resurrecting {{Dracula}}. She promptly becomes [[RogueProtagonist Dracula]]'s first victim. No matter the era, being (apparently) responsible for killing the person [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes Dracula loves]] is a ''very'' bad idea. Heck, this happens even the good ending, where her Plan B carries through[[note]]creating a new dark lord successor instead[[/note]], and yet she ''still'' becomes the first victim, [[FatalReward this time "as a favor" for raising the new candidate to such greatness.]]

** In the game's backstory [[spoiler:Iris attempted to seduce a guy while ImpersonatingTheEvilTwin. It worked, the guy fell for her hard, while convinced that he actually her for her twin sister Dahlia. The problem came when said EvilTwin appeared and no amount of evidence could convince said guy that Dahlia isn't as sweet and caring as Iris actually is.]]

* [[UnrealTournament2004]] features this trope almost word for word. The contender Brutalis is a human/demon looking hybrid who was created in an attempt to create the perfect killer. The project would be immediately scrapped due to it being "more successful than anyone could have imagined."

** Toward the end of the KillEmAll path, Flowey the Flower has an OhCrap moment of epic proportions when he suddenly realizes that his [[KillEmAll wonderful plan]] had a [[DidntThinkThisThrough glaring flaw]] and is headed straight for this trope. After all, [[spoiler:if he has successfully encouraged you to kill ''everything'' and not show ''anyone'' any mercy, why would ''he'' ever be exempt from your rampage]]?

** The ''Whistleblower'' DLC reveals that [[spoiler:after having suffered [[TraumaCongaLine immense amounts of torture (both physical and psychological)]] and being possessed by the Walrider at the end of the main game, the understandably pissed off Miles Upshur ([[DeathOfPersonality or alternatively the Walrider itself, supposing Miles' mind died after being killed and possessed]]) uses it to kill all of the Murkoff Spec Ops that were sent to cover up the incident and cause the destruction of the complex, all while also killing the BigBad of said DLC.]]

* In ''VideoGame/HorizonForbiddenWest'' Aloy finds Ted's shelter buried deep in the ruins of San Fransico. In it, she discovers that [[spoiler: he had employees working on a way to make him immortal so he could be the one to greet the new civilizations emerging from the creches with, quote, "open arms". But with his ego, paranoia, and despair coming to a head, the scientist(s) involved slowly dwindled down to none. The final test left him alive, oh yes, but as a horrific MeatMoss driven completely nonsensical by its agonizing exsistence lining the central reactor of Thebes for ''centuries''.]]

** Good ol' Ted seems to be a fan of this, intentionally or not. In ''VideoGame/HorizonForbiddenWest'' Aloy finds Ted's shelter buried deep in the ruins of San Fransico. In it, she discovers that [[spoiler: he had employees working on a way to make him immortal so he could be the one to greet the new civilizations emerging from the creches with, quote, "open arms". But with his ego, paranoia, and despair coming to a head, the scientist(s) involved slowly dwindled down to none. The final test left him alive, oh yes, but as a horrific MeatMoss driven completely nonsensical by its agonizing exsistence lining the central reactor of Thebes for ''centuries''.]]

-->'''Ares:''' [[FamousLastWords That day... I was trying to make you a great warrior]]!\\

** ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'' has the story of [[spoiler:Izuru Kamukura]]'s creation. [[spoiler:Hope's Peak Academy]] attempted to make the perfect human with every possible talent out of [[spoiler:OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent [[TheHero Hajime Hinata]]]]. They removed everything that could get in the way of talent, including [[DeathOfPersonality his personality, memories, and emotions]]. They ultimately succeeded in creating their ultimate MasterOfAll... but all the things they removed were the things that give people the drive to develop their talents. They ended up with an 'Ultimate Hope' who probably ''could'' have led humanity to incredible heights... but never actually ''did'' anything of note because he could never see any reason to, and instead spent most of his time drifting around being bored. [[spoiler:Then along came [[BigBad Junko Enoshima]], who showed him the boredom-curing unpredictability of despair, resulting in him helping (or at least, not using his StoryBreakerPower to immediately curbstomp) her.]] The title of Ultimate Hope ended up going to Makoto Naegi, a normal kid with negligible talent (he's BornLucky, but this is usually only enough keep him from getting killed by all the shit the universe puts him through) who used ThePowerOfFriendship to come through in the clutch- something the previous Ultimate Hope never could have done, because his enhancements meant he couldn't connect to others on any meaningful level.

* In ''VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown'', Dr. Schroeder had Mihaly take increasingly risky and dangerous sorties in order to collect data to improve upon Erusea’s drone army. The result? [[spoiler:Two experimental drones named Hugin and Munin develop enough self-awareness that they try to use the [[SpaceElevator Lighthouse]] to transmit their data to automated drone factories all over Usea to start a RobotWar.]]

--> ''“The Crawler. Interesting attempt to merge human and arachnid genes. Sort-of worked, too -- these little nasties have a habit of appearing in all sorts of strange places!”''

* The title character of ''VisualNovel/{{Melody}}'' steals a plate of food so she and the protagonist could eat at the karaoke bar after they'd been told that no food was allowed in the booths. She doesn’t get caught stealing the food, the protagonist doesn’t suspect that she did anything wrong, and she stops him from saying anything that could blow her cover. However, she suspects (rightly) that Xianne got fired because of what she did. Subverted in that Xianne has a better-paying job the next time that the protagonist and Melody run into her.

** In ''VideoGame/AlltynexSecond'', the Senate ruling humanity [[spoiler:wanted to cull the human population to make them easier to rule. They therefore induced an extremely powerful supercomputer, the eponymous ALLTYNEX, to "go rogue" and cause a bunch of destruction.]] Within 72 hours, 85% of the human race was dead and the survivors were forced to flee Earth entirely, which was, to put it lightly, not as planned.

* ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' Basically any of Byrgenwerth's attempts to study the Great Ones that wasn't plain GoneHorriblyWrong was GoneHorriblyRight. [[spoiler: The Fishing Hamlet massacre was a great help to their research and might have provided them with a Cord of the Eye, but also left them with a curse from the hamlet's surviving residents. Rom became a Great One but was left utterly mindless, Willem became something Great One-esqe but was reduced to a vegetative state, and the Mensis Scholars' attempt to gain audience with the stillborn Great One Mergo succeeded, but the knowledge Mergo granted resulted in "the stillbirth of their brains."]] There's several good reasons why Byrgenwerth is abandoned, its scholars dead and/or insane, and Yharnam is overrun by werewolves, and it all traces back to Byrgenwerth's inability to stop trying to learn ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow.

** Most of the Vaults -- which were ''not'' underground bunkers designed to protect the citizenry but instead mass-scale experiments designed to evaluate their suitability for post-war survival and possibly space-travel on generation interstellar ships (read: torture them sadistically in a variety of psychological and physiological ways) have, by the time the player character stumbles upon them, have either GoneHorriblyWrong or have Gone Horribly Right instead. In either case, the result usually sees the player character find a ''lot'' of skeletal corpses lying around. It should be noted that, in an inversion of this trope, those experiments were carried away on the basis that "every single American civilian would want to be part of the Vaults to shelter themselves from an atomic tidal wave washing over the planet", cashing in the countrywide paranoia spread by the media. Standard fare, sure, but every Vault Tec CEO also believed that the news were blowing things out of proportion to press the war agenda on the masses, thus ensuring an much-needed influx of recruits and soldiers, and that nuclear warfare wouldn't be used despite looking like the likely scenario, exactly because of the SaltTheEarth implications, which are counterproductive to any war efforts.

* In ''VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown'', Dr. Schroeder had Mihaly take increasingly risky and dangerous sorties in order to collect data to improve upon Erusea’s drone army. The result? [[spoiler:Two experimental drones named Hugin and Munin develop enough self-awareness that they try to use the [[SpaceElevator Lighthouse]] to transmit their data to automated drone factories all over Usea to start a RobotWar.]]

--> ''“The Crawler. Interesting attempt to merge human and arachnid genes. Sort-of worked, too -- these little nasties have a habit of appearing in all sorts of strange places!”''

* The title character of ''VisualNovel/{{Melody}}'' steals a plate of food so she and the protagonist could eat at the karaoke bar after they'd been told that no food was allowed in the booths. She doesn’t get caught stealing the food, the protagonist doesn’t suspect that she did anything wrong, and she stops him from saying anything that could blow her cover. However, she suspects (rightly) that Xianne got fired because of what she did. Subverted in that Xianne has a better-paying job the next time that the protagonist and Melody run into her.

* In ''VideoGame/LiveALive'', [[spoiler:Straybow's plan to break Oersted's spirit]] turns out to be this. [[spoiler:He wanted to break down Oersted because [[AlwaysSecondBest he is tired of being in his shadow]], so out of jealousy he destroys his life piece by piece]]. In the end, [[spoiler:Straybow succeeds]] and as a result [[spoiler:[[FaceHeelTurn he]] [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom created]] [[ThenLetMeBeEvil Demon]] [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds King]] [[BigBad Odio]] to terrorize Lucretia and multiple dimensions suffer for it.]]