History Main / SelectiveCondemnation

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}''. You can't get the True Pacifist Ending just from sparing plot-important monsters while still killing any of the generic ones, and they will do their best to remind you that all those other monsters had families and friends too.

* In the Xbox beat-um-up game ''VideoGame/MinorityReportEverybodyRuns'', your character is trying to prove himself innocent of the "future-murder" of someone that the precogs foresaw him killing. Most of the gameplay is your guy trying to escape the police, by violently beating the shit out of them, smashing them through tables/chairs, throwing them off of skyscrapers, throwing them into huge vats of luminous green shit in a robot factory, etc. And yet, despite the ''hundreds'' of murders of police you committed over the course of the game while you were violently resisting arrest and running from the law, you are welcomed back onto the force after it turns out that you didn't kill that one guy.
** Also, even before you were wanted, you were pretty much the most horrifically brutal cop the world has ever seen. In the first mission, for instance, you are trying to arrest a guy who runs a catering company. Apparently, the best way to do this was to beat dozens of his employees to death with your bare hands, continue to sadistically beat them and break all the furniture in the board room with their heads after they have gone limp and stopped resisting, force their faces onto lit stoves, and throw them out of skyscraper windows to their deaths. You don't even arrest them. And afterwards, you get complimented for fine police work.

* PAYDAYTheHeist has this in a weird way. You can gleefully murder hundreds of cops and SWAT units because they stand in your way of your heist, but [[WhatTheHellPlayer you are given a big scolding]] from your VoiceWithAnInternetConnection if you so much as kill one innocent civilian (which is also reflect by you having a longer respawn timer should you get arrested and a monetary penalty at the end of the mission). You're also told that if you go around killing civilians and the cops nab you, they will never let you go, and yet no one has a problem with bodies of cops you killed being piled up.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}''. You can't get the True Ending just from sparing plot-important monsters while still killing any of the generic ones, and they will do their best to remind you that all those other monsters had families and friends too.

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', the player is given the choice to go rescue a character called Grunt with his platoon of elite troopers who are overrun by enemies, or to call him to help in defending a powerful ally. If the player chooses the second, the platoon is decimated, but no one cares for those nameless masked soldiers: it is only Grunt whose death or survival is important to plotline and has emotional connections with the player and all other NPCs.

* Averted in Undertale, where if you choose to murder monsters left and right but spare plot-important monsters, you can't get the TrueEnding and the characters will remind you that the other monsters had families and friends too.

* Characters in ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' lose [[KarmaMeter Humanity]] when they kill people, representing the SanitySlippage and slow LossOfIdentity that come with denying their better nature and listening to the Beast within them -- unless they're in a combat zone, then they can murder as many people as they want with no consequences.

* SunsetRiders, after you defeat Chief Scalpem, his sister begs you not to shoot him as "He was only following orders". "You" agree not to shoot him, ignoring the hundreds of other mooks you killed and will continue to kill - who are surely only following orders themselves!

* ''Series/DoctorWho'', due to an ever-changing list of [[DependingOnTheWriter writers]] and [[TheNthDoctor actors]] over the decades, continually vacillates as to what the barrier is between self-defense, justifiable killing and murder, or between legitimate warfare and genocide, and when taken together it often falls into this trope. Probably the most infamous example is "Genesis of the Daleks", in which the Doctor has inexplicable pangs of doubt as to whether he has the right to kill [[AbsoluteXenophobe the Daleks]] before they become [[OmnicidalManiac a universal threat]], ignoring that he is personally, directly and indirectly, responsible for more dead Daleks than anyone else in history. Again, it comes down to the difference of "immediate threat" and "probable threat", except that the Doctor ''knows'' the Daleks will be a threat thanks to time travel ''and'' he earlier explicitly compared the Daleks to a virus that needed to be destroyed before it could kill all other life.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Condemned}}: Criminal Origins'', the player character must bludgeon dozens of homeless people to death in order to hopefully prove his innocence in the murder of two police officers. It must be said, however, that the bludgeonings were pretty much done in self-defense. Then again, they ''are'' homeless people. TruthInTelevision and all that.

* SunsetRiders, after you defeat Chief Scalpem, his sister begs you not to shoot him as "He was only following orders". "You" agree not to shoot him, ignoring the hundreds of other mooks you killed and will continue to kill - who are surely only following orders themselves!

* In the Xbox beat-um-up game ''Minority Report: Everybody Runs'', (loosely) based on [[Film/MinorityReport the movie]] with Tom Cruise, your character is trying to prove himself innocent of the "future-murder" of someone that the precogs foresaw him killing. Most of the gameplay is your guy trying to escape the police, by violently beating the shit out of them, smashing them through tables/chairs, throwing them off of skyscrapers, throwing them into huge vats of luminous green shit in a robot factory, etc. And yet, despite the ''hundreds'' of murders of police you committed over the course of the game while you were violently resisting arrest and running from the law, you are welcomed back onto the force after it turns out that you didn't kill that one guy.

* Averted in the dumbest way possible in the [=TekWar=] game. Your mission control ([[CreatorCameo played]] by Creator/WilliamShatner) will complain at you for your body count before and after missions if you kill anybody. So far, so good. However, the game's kill counter includes every enemy killed, regardless of type, so you can wind up getting a reprimand for all the blood you've shed when you, among other things, kill rats in the SewerLevel or blow up remote operated gun turrets. It does not ''at all'' help that police in civilian areas are programmed to react to your drawing a gun, but [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin not anybody else]], meaning it's fairly likely to be on a subway with half a dozen criminals shooting bullets at you while [[PoliceAreUseless the police stand by and ignore it]], then they sudden fire on you and call for backup because you pulled out your taser in self-defense.
* In the Xbox beat-um-up game ''Minority Report: Everybody Runs'', (loosely) based on [[Film/MinorityReport the movie]] with Tom Cruise, your character is trying to prove himself innocent of the "future-murder" of someone that the police psychics foresaw him killing. Most of the gameplay is your guy trying to escape the police, by violently beating the shit out of them, smashing them through tables/chairs, throwing them off of skyscrapers, throwing them into huge vats of luminous green shit in a robot factory, etc. And yet, despite the ''hundreds'' of murders of police you committed over the course of the game while you were violently resisting arrest and running from the law, you are welcomed back onto the force after it turns out that you didn't kill that one guy.
** Also, even before you were wanted, your guy was pretty much the most horrifically brutal cop the world has ever seen. In the first mission, you are trying to arrest a guy who runs a catering company. Apparently, the best way to do this was to beat dozens of his employees to death with your bare hands, continue to sadistically beat them and break all the furniture in the board room with their heads after they have gone limp and stopped resisting, force their faces onto lit stoves, and throw them out of skyscraper windows to their deaths. He doesn't even arrest them. And afterwards, he gets complimented for fine police work.

* Non-bideo gamme variant: At the end of the movie ''Film/{{Equilibrium}}'', the BigBad ([=Vice-Counsel DuPont=]) argues that protagonist John Preston cannot kill him, as doing so would be murder, something that should be reprehensible to the hero now that he can feel emotions. [=DuPont=] seems to be conveniently forgetting the 60 or so men Preston just slaughtered to get to him, a dozen or so of whom are laying dead ''right at his feet''. Unfortunately for him, the argument doesn't work.

* At the end of the movie ''Film/{{Equilibrium}}'', the BigBad argues that the hero cannot kill him, as doing so would be murder, something that should be reprehensible to the hero now that he can feel emotions. The BigBad seems to be conveniently forgetting the 60 or so Mooks the hero just slaughtered to get to him, a dozen or so of whom are laying dead ''right at his feet''. Unfortunately for him, the argument doesn't work.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}: Blood Money'' - The newspaper articles quite clearly say that dead guards just aren't that important; logical when you off a drug baron, not so much at the Paris Opera. This could be explained by the police simply assuming that any guards that were killed were murdered so the assassin could get to their real target, and thus it just makes sense to try to solve who killed the main target.

* Fallout: New Vegas has an example of this, in its Honest Hearts DLC. In the game, it's generally considered "good" to kill particularly evil characters. However, when Joshua Graham is about to execute the very evil Salt-Upon-Wounds, he's considered very close to JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope.
This ''would'' be downplayed (as Salt-Upon-Wounds is basically defenseless in that moment), but ultimately played straight because of how the game's karma-system works. Sniping a raider who hasn't even seen you yet is hardly self-defense, and you may even get moments where the enemy is unarmed and simply tries to run from you (or worse, crouch down in terror and beg for their lives). It's still considered acceptable to kill them, turning this into a BrokenAesop.

* PAYDAYTheHeist'' has this in a weird way. You can gleefully murder hundreds of cops and SWAT units because they stand in your way of your heist, but [[WhatTheHellPlayer you are given a big scolding]] from your VoiceWithAnInternetConnection if you so much as kill one innocent civilian (which is also reflect by you having a longer respawn timer should you get arrested and a monetary penalty at the end of the mission). You're also told that if you go around killing civilians and the cops nab you, they will never let you go, and yet no one has a problem with bodies of cops you killed being piled up.

* SunsetRiders, after you defeat Chief Scalpem, his sister begs you not to shoot him as "He was only following orders". "You" agree not to shoot him, ignoring the hundreds of other mooks you killed and will continue to kill - who are surely only following orders themselves!
* Nathan Drake, protagonist of the ''{{Uncharted}}'' series, is the most accomplished spree killer / mass murderer in the history of mankind by the end of the third game.
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* Averted in the dumbest way possible in the TekWar game. Your mission control (played by William Shatner) will complain at you for your body count before and after missions if you kill anybody. So far, so good. However the game's kill counter includes every enemy killed, regardless of type, so you can wind up getting a reprimand for all the blood you've shed when you, among other things, kill rats in the SewerLevel or blow up remote operated gun turrets. It does not ''at all'' help that police in civilian areas are programmed to react to your drawing a gun, but [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin not anybody else]], meaning it's fairly likely to be on a subway with half a dozen criminals shooting bullets at you while the police stand by and ignore it, then they sudden fire on you and call for backup because you pulled out your taser in self defense.
* In the Xbox beat-um-up game ''VideoGame/MinorityReportEverybodyRuns'', (loosely) based on [[Film/MinorityReport the movie]] with Tom Cruise, your character is trying to prove himself innocent of the "future-murder" of someone that the police psychics foresaw him killing. Most of the gameplay is your guy trying to escape the police, by violently beating the shit out of them, smashing them through tables/chairs, throwing them off of skyscrapers, throwing them into huge vats of luminous green shit in a robot factory, etc. And yet, despite the HUNDREDS of murders of police you committed over the course of the game while you were violently resisting arrest and running from the law, you are welcomed back onto the force after it turns out that you didn't kill that one guy.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Galerians}}'', Rion, the main character, seems upset and remorseful after killing [[spoiler:Birdman]], when the player could and most likely ''did'' kill several scientists, [[spoiler:security guards, insane people, guards in mechanical armor that initially appear to be robots, artificially created but intelligent monsters, and fellow psychics]], and also destroyed [[spoiler:an android that the player and character thought was human until he was severely injured]] before reaching this point in the game. It is possible, albeit highly difficult and impractical, to run from and not even have to attack a single enemy in the game up to that point (with the exception of [[spoiler:the first boss, who is aforementioned android]]), though due to how [[spoiler:Rion's powers can 'short' and cause him to automatically kill any normal enemy in the area until calmed down]] a player has to go considerably out of their way to avoid killing anyone.

** The protagonist of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity'' is said to have spent 15 years in prison before the beginning of the game on account of 11 counts of murder. The player can kill far more than that in a rampage, be arrested by the police and reappear immediately afterward outside a police station, having lost only his weapons and some cash. (There's a small Lampshade Hanging here, as an audio clip is played of the character's lawyer making vague threats to the cops, but one would think it'd take a little more than that...)
*** One Vice City mission ''requires'' the protagonist to shoot cars/kill people ... because apparently Vietnam really, really sucked. So, yeah.

** Oh, yes, in all three GTA games, if you are skilled you can escape punishment for murder of cops by -bribing- them.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Condemned}}: Criminal Origins'', the player character must bludgeon dozens of homeless people to death in order to hopefully prove his innocence in the murder of two police officers. It must be said, however, that the bluedgeonings were pretty much done in self-defense. Then again, they ''are'' homeless people. TruthInTelevision and all that.

** Goes full circle in ''VideoGame/{{Metal Gear Solid 4|Guns Of The Patriots}}'', where offing too many people in a short time-span causes Snake to have a flashback to Liquid's "you enjoy all the killing" speech, after which he actually vomits and loses a healthy chunk of Psyche.
* ''VideoGame/RuneScape'', like many other [=MMORPGs=], is particularly heavy offender thus making your main character extremely hypocritical. That is {{Lampshaded}} quite often in this game.

* At the end of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', you have to option of sparing the life of Colonel Autumn, TheDragon whose only shown redeeming feature is that he doesn't want to use the modified FEV, who shot a defenseless female scientist just to encourage the rest of the team, and who willfully ordered the soldiers at Raven's Rock to attack you even after his ''superior'' had ordered them to stand down so he could talk to you. Meanwhile you don't spare a single thought for every drugged-up raider, every feral ghoul, every supermutant and every Enclave soldier following his Colonel's order that you've shot, burned, stabbed and vaporised over the course of the game. Even at the start of the game you're condemned by Amata if you kill the Overseer, but not a single word is said about all his guards you killed on the way out. ''People you've known all your life.''
** Well, in Amata's case, that's because the overseer is ''her dad''.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'', due to an ever-changing list of [[DependingOnTheWriter writers]] and [[TheNthDoctor actors]] over the decades, continually vacillates as to what the barrier is between self-defence, justifiable killing and murder, or between legitimate warfare and genocide, and when taken together it often falls into this trope. Probably the most infamous example is "Genesis of the Daleks", in which the Doctor has inexplicable pangs of doubt as to whether he has the right to kill [[AbsoluteXenophobe the Daleks]] before they become [[OmnicidalManiac a universal threat]], ignoring that he is personally, directly and indirectly, responsible for more dead Daleks than anyone else in history. Again, it comes down to the difference of "immediate threat" and "probable threat", except that the Doctor ''knows'' the Daleks will be a threat thanks to time travel ''and'' he earlier explicitly compared the Daleks to a virus that needed to be destroyed before it could kill all other life.

* In the Xbox beat-um-up game ''MinorityReport'', (loosely) based on the movie with Tom Cruise, your character is trying to prove himself innocent of the "future-murder" of someone that the police psychics foresaw him killing. Most of the gameplay is your guy trying to escape the police, by violently beating the shit out of them, smashing them through tables/chairs, throwing them off of skyscrapers, throwing them into huge vats of luminous green shit in a robot factory, etc. And yet, despite the HUNDREDS of murders of police you committed over the course of the game while you were violently resisting arrest and running from the law, you are welcomed back onto the force after it turns out that you didn't kill that one guy.

* At the end of the movie ''{{Equilibrium}}'', the BigBad argues that the hero cannot kill him, as doing so would be murder, something that should be reprehensible to the hero now that he can feel emotions. The BigBad seems to be conveniently forgetting the 60 or so Mooks the hero just slaughtered to get to him, a dozen or so of whom are laying dead ''right at his feet''. Unfortunately for him, the argument doesn't work.

* Your VoiceWithAnInternetConnection in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' gets very upset if you massacre animals (even attack dogs ''that are attacking you''), but none of them bats an eye if you kill guards, even if you [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential do something horrible]] to them. The BigBad however ''doesn't'' ignore it, Liquid claiming that Snake enjoys the killing, and [[HannibalLecture calls him out for this]] near the end of the game. Snake claims that Liquid's plot to catapult the world into a chaotic, war-torn state is insane; Liquid argues that it was their father's dream to create a world where soldiers are respected. Snake claims he doesn't want that world, and Liquid counters by [[NotSoDifferent pointing out most of FoxHound and many mooks were killed by Snake]], presumably intended to make the player think about their actions.

** Goes full circle in ''VideoGame/{{Metal Gear Solid 4|Guns Of The Patriots}}'', where offing too many people causes Snake to have a flashback to Liquid's "you like the killing" speech, after which he loses a healthy chunk of Morale.