History TheBadGuyWins / Videogames

* VideoGame/GodOfWar: Ares turned Kratos into the perfect warrior to kill Zeus and destroy Olympus as this may have happened after he was killed, but he still won as his plan in lll works.

** In ''VideoGame/MortalKombat11'', if you lose the first round against Kronika in Story Mode, she succeeds in setting off a TimeCrash and rewinds history back to the dawn of time. While Liu Kang can still beat her at this point, the fact that his friends and loved ones are all RetGone makes it a PyrrhicVictory. If you lose to Kronika at the dawn of time, then a [[NonStandardGameOver Non Standard Game Over]] will happen, as Kronika beheads Liu Kang, and declares her start of New Era. Played even straighter in ''Aftermath'', as one of the two endings for that story mode lets you play as Shang Tsung as he wipes out his last remaining competition for the Crown, seizes the Hourglass and defeats his longtime nemesis Liu Kang, who set Shang's position up to take him down only for it to backfire horribly if the player wills it.

* By the end of the GoldenEnding for ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'', Zero (Akane and Aoi) has achieved their goals. Thr four people behind the first Nonary Game die, Past!Akane gets saved and they get away with everything.

* At the end of ''Videogame/RedDeadRedemptionII'', while he's ultimately killed by John, Micah Bell ultimately has a much better fate than most of the main cast. While John, Dutch, Bill and Javier are doomed to their fates in the first game and Arthur succumbs to tuberculosis, Micah not only got away with betraying the Van Der Linde gang, but managed to maintain his depraved lifestyle and becoming a bandit boss in his own right for 12 years afterwards before being brought down by John (and he's more amused than anything in his final moments).

* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate'', there are two possible bad endings. If you only defeat one of the two [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]], then the survivor will brutally kill the loser. Afterwards, it will proceed to unleash a WorldWreckingWave that either [[InTheirOwnImage remakes the world]] [[LightIsNotGood in light]] if Galeem wins, or [[OmnicidalManiac destroys it]] [[DarkIsEvil in darkness]] if Dharkon wins. In order to get the GoldenEnding, you need to defeat them both at the same time.

* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Touhou}} Touhou Project 12: Undefined Fantastic Object]]'', the antagonists are a group of {{Youkai}} trying to free a powerful magician who has been sealed away in the Demon Realm for centuries. Despite (or perhaps because of) the protagonist's interference, they succeed...except their mistress turns out to be a really nice person who just wants to live out her life in peace.
** ''Touhou 8: Imperishable Night'' might also count, as while Kaguya and Eirin were defeated by the protagonists and the moon was restored, they still succeeded in their primary goal of evading the Lunarian envoys.
** Suika, the FinalBoss of ''Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power'', did canonically defeat the main character in the end. But then again, Suika isn't exactly a villain, even if she is a bit bitchy in this game.
** ''Touhou 13: Ten Desires'' is similar to ''12'' in that the cause of the incident is a revival that you fail to stop. Unlike ''12'', Miko turns out to be a somewhat dubious person.

-->'''Hero''': What's his deal?\\

* By the end of the GoldenEnding for VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors, Zero (Akane and Aoi) has achieved their goals. Thr four people behind the first Nonary Game die, Past!Akane gets saved and they get away with everything.

*** After a third of the game, when Link opens the Temple of Time to get the Triforce, Ganondorf reveals that he [[MacGuffinDeliveryService manipulated Link and Zelda]] into opening it for him. The whole second third of the game starts with him actually getting to the Triforce and using its power to rule Hyrule for seven years. Link, sealed away in the temple and released as an adult, spends the rest of the game rescuing the Six Sages and overthrowing Ganondorf.
*** When Nintendo released an Official Timeline for the ''Zelda'' series, there were no fewer than three canonical timeline splits resulting from the game. In one of them, [[TheHero Link]] is defeated by [[BigBad Ganondorf]], although that's also the only timeline in which the royal family of Hyrule eventually gets the whole Triforce. (The first four games released in the series, along with [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames the Oracle games]], fall within this timeline.)

* ''VideoGame/LiveALive'' has a possible one. After the [[StartOfDarkness Medieval Chapter]], you can choose its protagonist Oersted, now known as [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Odio, as the final protagonist.]] Unlike with the rest of the characters, his version of this chapter is different in that you play as the [[MaouTheDemonKing Lord of Dark]] through all his incarnations in a inverted BossRush in where you kill the main characters of the rest of the chapters, ending with Odio and his incarnations as the true victors, and with him wandering alone through Lucrece, giving you the Sad End. Alternatively, if in Oersted's version one of the incarnations gets to critical HP, or in the other characters' version Odio wins the final battle against the other protagonists (as Purity of Odio in the original; any of his forms outside the BossRush in the remake) Odio can trigger Armageddon, ultimately ending all existence, and getting the Armageddon ending. Neither of these is a NonstandardGameOver, both are actual endings. Did we mention the rest of the game [[TearJerker probably had made you cry many times before?]]

* By the end of the GoldenEnding for VideoGame/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors, Zero (Akane and Aoi) has achieved their goals. Thr four people behind the first Nonary Game die, Past!Akane gets saved and they get away with everything.

** ''VideoGame/SonicForces'' plays this straight with the introduction of Infinite, who utterly curbstomps Sonic. This victory allows Eggman to conquer the whole world (or at least according to the in-game status bar, over 99% of it).

* ''VideoGame/Tekken7'': The Mishima Saga storyline ends with Kazuya Mishima defeating his father Heihachi in a fight to the death, ultimately leading to the latter's [[spoiler:[[KilledOffForReal permanent]]]] demise. [[spoiler:With no one left standing in his way of world domination and the Mishima Zaibatsu finished for good with Heihachi gone, Kazuya would go on to invade other nations that are actively defying his reign of terror, setting in motion the events of [[VideoGame/Tekken8 the eighth King of Iron Fist Tournament]].]]

* "VideoGame/GodOfWar": Ares turned Kratos into the perfect warrior to kill Zeus and destroy Olympus as this may have happened after he was killed, but he still won as his plan in lll works.

** The first trial ends this way, though it's not revealed until much later. The BigBad, Tsumugi Shirogane, manages to successfully frame [[DecoyProtagonist Kaede]] for Rantaro's murder by bashing in his head with her own shot put ball when Kaede's Rube Goldberg device fails to kill him. Kaede is executed believing she caused Rantaro's death, [[AcquittedTooLate and only in Chapter 6 do Shuichi and company find out her innocence]].

** Similarly, the fourth chapter's culprit, Kokichi Ouma, gets away with murdering his victim due to manipulating [[NiceGuy Gonta]] into doing the actual killing (by implanting FakeMemories of the outside world being dead in the kindhearted Gonta's head, making him believe that the only way to save everyone from this truth is to win the class trial and get everyone executed). By the game rules they can't convict Kokichi for the murder without dying themselves, as the person who actually killed the victim is the only one considered the Blackened, even if everyone knows the guy was manipulated into it. To make matters worse, Kokichi actively mocks both Gonta and the rest of the class during the trial and derives sadistic glee from Gonta's execution.