Bad Boss / Video Games

Bad Bosses in Video Games.

---

• Murakumo turns out to have been this to Akatsuki in the backstory of Akatsuki Blitzkampf, knowingly sending him into a mission to the Arctic Pole that should have been fatal. When Akatsuki "revives" 50 years later and finds out about Murakumo's actual goals and intentions, he's not happy.
• Every Templar in the Assassin's Creed series.
  • The biggest being Cesare Borgia in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
  • Abbas in Assassin's Creed: Revelations was one to the Assassins. He wasn't just an evil jerk, he was an incompetent evil jerk.
  • The Crocodile in Assassin's Creed Origins will kill any minion who starts displaying qualms about what they're made to do, even if that's something like drowning a little girl in front of her mother. This attitude passes down to the Crocodiles' underlings, who try justifying their deeds with the explanation that if they don't, the 'dile will just have them murdered and get someone else to do it.
• Gruntilda from Banjo-Kazooie is very well this towards her assistant Klungo. She abuses him so much for his failures that even he dislikes her for her offensive attitude. She's also this towards Clanker, the Cyborg shark who she uses as a garbage grinder, forcing him to live in polluted water and having a chain wrapped around his tail to limit his ability to swim.
• Jean-Luc, the "Boss" of Bar Oasis is frequently seen slacking off, leaving the bar to Vic and Carla. This comes to bite him in the ass when he gets arrested for spreading John MacDuff's ashes into the sea. Those ashes were stolen from his family.
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Joker is very fond of going on the asylum intercom system to yell at his underlings, threaten their families, and mock them by pointing out that Batman's basically going to wipe the floor with them.
  • Batman: Arkham City has a few different varieties and also provides some justification as to why people would work for them in the first place. The Penguin is a big fan of You Have Failed Me and makes potential members fight to the death for his amusement. He also is the richest man in Arkham City and his gang members get all the perks that implies. The Joker is absurdly wild and unpredictable, fond of killing people in 'funny' ways and working for him is no guarantee of your safety. His gang mostly consist of insane convicts and those that are amused by his antics rather than scared shitless by them. Lastly, there's Strange, who sends his Tyger guards on suicide missions and gives them fatal overdoses of Truth Serums just to get accurate reports. He's also brainwashed all of them into Undying Loyalty.
    The Penguin: I give you one simple task: stick up a couple of freaking machines. And what? You couldn't even get that right? I hope Batman broke every bone in your stupid bodies. I hope you're lying there, desperately trying to breathe through fractured ribs and punctured lungs. If you're not, you'd better summon up whatever strength you've got left and run, 'cause after I'm done with the Bat, you're all next!
  • Several villains in Batman: Arkham Origins have just as little in the way of respect for their underlings. The most notable is probably Deadshot, who repeatedly threatens his Mooks with death for any hint of slackness; when you take him down, his minions are as eager to flee as his hostage is, and chatter during the fight makes it clear they're only there because he'd shoot them if they tried to make a run for it.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight, naturally, follows suit.
    • When Scarecrow has his turn on the radio in a stealth segment, he doesn't threaten his militia — instead, he describes in loving detail how Batman taking them out one-by-one will psychologically scar them all for years to come.
    • Two-Face was portrayed as a Benevolent Boss in City (if simply because of his small role), but as a bad one in Knight. When Batman starts picking off his men robbing banks, Two-Face decides to flip his coin. Heads, their family gets their hazard pay while they rot in prison; Tails, their family gets punished ("Tails, that's two bullets for each kid"). Another mook at one point says they typically live a single coin flip away from death.
    • Christina Bell clearly inherited this trait of the Joker. She spends the Predator encounter encouraging Batman to beat them up. The mooks even say that she's actually worse than Joker, since he at least wanted them to win (even if he was unsurprised by their failure).
      "He's got another! You boys need a new boss, a better boss, a maniacal, terrifying boss with a hands-on, not-afraid-to-torture-people management style. Too bad I'm Team Bats, eh?"
    • And then there's the titular Arkham Knight. The Militia talk of him like he's a Benevolent Boss and A Father to His Men who saved them when he recruited them. In practice he berates them for their failure, calls them unworthy of the training he gave them, warns them that while Batman can break bones he knows true pain, and once a single mook remains during Predator encounters will dismissively tell you to finish him off as he has plenty more.
      "I don't carry cowards. Fail and I will bury you in the dirt."
• Battle for Wesnoth: The Big Bad of The Rise of Wesnoth, Lich-Lord Jevyan, ditched his very own people for the Orcs and even then he treats his hordes as a pack of starving hounds and nothing more, showing little concern for them and even forcing them to fight even when the tide is against them.
• Joey Drew, the Greater-Scope Villain of Bendy and the Ink Machine is described as one of these. Recordings left behind by employees of Joey Drew Studios talk of how he would take their belongings to "Appease the gods", his insistence on using the Awesome, but Impractical Ink Machine even though it made work even harder, and just generally being All Take and No Give. Chapter 4 gives us an audio log made by Joey himself reveals that he himself doesn't believe in the "Dreams" rhetoric, only saying whatever he needs to keep people working for him.
• Borderlands 2:
  • Brick is this to his Slabs, though in-game, this is mostly shown as him treating his men with utter contempt and freely acknowledging them as psychotic morons.
    Brick: My slabs'll probably still try to kill ya, cause they're friggin' idiots. Don't feel bad about killin' em. I never do.
  • Even worse is Handsome Jack, President of Hyperion. He treats all of his workers abysmally and is not above having their kids killed just for pointing out the flaws of his great city of Opportunity. He even treats his Vice-President Jeffery Blake more like his butler than anything else, and also constantly calls him Jimmy. Jack at least has a Freudian Excuse, as before he took over the company, his own boss treated him exactly the same way, including calling him by the wrong name (John).
• The game manual of Bug states that the Giant Spider Queen Cadavra not only berates her insect minions, but also eats them.
  Game Manual: When she's not eating her minions, she's chewing them out!
• Chicken Feet: Eric is an awful boss to his employees. He sends several of his interns to find and capture the giant chicken and is callous about any dying. He also plans to off your Player Character after you successfully capture the chicken.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: In the Allied "Last Chance" mission, upon the player's success an enraged General Vladimir will nuke Chicago with his own troops still inside the city.
• Cuphead:
  • King Dice is shown mistreating his servants, as when Mr. Wheezy loses in a fight with Cuphead and Mugman, he just crushes him under his foot for failure.
  • Immediately after Cuphead and Mugman defeat King Dice, his most loyal employee and the only one who tried to warn him that they might pose a threat, the Devil dismisses him as a "good-for-nothing lackey".
• Darkest Dungeon has the Ancestor. Let's preface this by saying he betrayed practically everyone who worked under him or was in his employment, usually inflicted a Cruel and Unusual Death in the process. The Pirates who plundered loot and gathered artifacts for him? Drop a cursed Anchor on their ship that plunges them into the depths for eternity. The Necromancers he invited to the estate to learn the shadowy art? Murder them in their sleep and steal their secrets. The Miners who helped him unearth The Heart of Darkness? Abandon them to be nommed on by Cthulhu while you flee in terror. Desperate miller under his employ who asked for help with his barren fields? Fool him into thinking he was using magic to help their growth while really arranging for them to be hit by an eldritch meteorite. And countless other examples. This is by far his most detestable trait.
• Dead Rising 2 has Reed and Roger, a pair of magician psychopaths (the game's bosses). Reed berates Roger throughout their intro cutscene, calling him incompetent and blaming him for messing up their "trick" (which involved sawing a woman in half, killing her). He also implies that if the pair ever became famous magicians, then he would hog all the glory and leave Roger in the dust. Roger gets his revenge in their death cutscene, where he uses the last of his strength to crawl over to his dying partner and finish the job himself by stabbing him repeatedly with one of his swords. He then rolls over on his back and says "I've always wanted to do that." before dying with a smile on his face.
• In Densetsu no Stafy 3, the shaved ice machines in Kachiwari Iceberg include worker penguins being attacked by their bosses with whips.
• In Dicey Dungeons, no one who works for Lady Luck seems to like her very much (with a few exceptions, like Madison) because of how sadistic she is in rigging the dungeons against the contestants. Defeating her at the end of the Backstage chapter pushes her to officially allow her minions to leave the dungeon and to give the ones who choose to stay perks like a breakroom and vacation days.
• Both played straight and subverted in Disgaea. Prinnies, in the Netherworld at least, are treated as easily replaceable slaves/cannon fodder that face horrible work conditions for minimum wage (this is how it's supposed to work, though, as Prinnies are usually in Hell for being rat bastards). The subversion is with Kricheveskoy and Laharl; accounts from the vassals, particularly Etna, imply that King Kricheveskoy was actually a very good boss, which is part of the reason why Laharl's Bad Boss tendencies don't to go over very well with them — Well, and because they know that Laharl doesn't really have the heart to do worse than snark at them for it.
  • Etna, on the other hand, has no such issues. She can — and, as any of the Prinny Squad can tell you, WILL — abuse her Prinnies for any reason at all. When her level tanks as a result of a summoning she helped botch, the Prinnies take that as the perfect opportunity to seek new management. Yukimaru even points out how badly they're willing to fight just to stay out from under Etna's heel. Her counterpart in Disgaea 5, Seraphina, is barely any better.
  • And if you thought she was bad, Void Dark from Disgaea 5 is even worse. The Lost run on a principle of "obey or die" when conquering Netherworlds, but even obedience isn't enough to sate his madness; by the time you first see him, he's on his eighty-third secretary, who speaks for him just before he splatters a slime for delivering bad news regarding Blood Parch. And the kill count only rises from there. Citing another instance, Brutall Beast Overlord Gradrius VI and his ilk attack Void Dark directly while his eighty-fifth secretary addresses him; his response is to charge a death ball, sucking said secretary into it, before flinging it at the enemy, obliterating them and their Netherworld, and he doesn't give a damn about the secretary or any Lost forces garrisoned on Brutall Beast.
• Donkey Kong Country: King K. Rool, who keeps his minions in a constant state of misery, rules through fear, and is perfectly willing to sic Klaptraps on his already overworked engineers to speed things up.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest V: Grandmaster Nimzo demands absolute obedience and perfection from the Order, and will not tolerate any form of failure. King Korol finds this out the hard way.
  • Lieutenant Hootingham-Gore of Dragon Quest IX acts this way in his introductory scene by incinerating the subordinate that was sent to destroy your team but failed to do so.
• The big bad Downy in Duel Savior Destiny has a tendency to leave minions to die or kill them outright. Not because they've really done anything wrong, but just because he feels like absorbing their power.
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG:
  • President Zazz tries to arrange for Akira's death simply because they want to quit being a Hunter and live peacefully. He also orders Kekkan to kill Genesis and Fredek despite their loyalty, since he believes they aren't useful enough to him.
  • Prime Minister Morgalia incinerates a bodyguard for talking out of turn. Additionally, her sync partner Archdemon Leo is terrified of her abusive treatment and actually backs away in fear when they are introduced.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Several of the Daedric Princes qualify. To note:
    • Boethiah, the Daedric Prince of Plots, whose sphere covers all manner of high crimes including Murder, Assassination, Treason, and Betrayal, is a major offender, crossing over with You Have Outlived Your Usefulness. Boethiah demands that his (sometimes "her") followers independently follow their own desires...just as long as those desires are completely in line with his own. The minute a follower fails that balancing act, things turn ugly, with betrayal and murder as legitimate options. Being considered a "champion" of Boethiah practically paints a target on your back, one that Boethiah himself is often all too happy to hit the moment he considers you unworthy or simply gets bored.
    • Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction, is another. He treats everyone under his command as pawns to be sacrificed to further his goals, or simply because they displeased him. The lesser Daedra who serve as his Legions of Hell, being immortal, can take this sort of treatment. If they are slain, they simply reform in Oblivion. Any mortals who voluntarily choose to worship a deity of Omnicidal Mania should not expect any other kind of treatment.
    • Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of Domination and Corruption, who sphere also includes Violation, Defilement, and Rape. He is probably the closest thing to a true God of Evil in the ES universe, as even the other typically malevolent Princes have some redeeming qualities. (Mehrunes Dagon's sphere also includes change, for example.) Working for Molag Bal never ends well. Any power he offers or tempts a minion with will immediately disappear the moment that Bal realizes they're no longer useful, and sometimes even before that point. Those who disobey or disappoint him are often met with a Fate Worse than Death.
  • In Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC, Master Neloth treats all of his employees horribly, often threatening to fire them (or worse) for little reason. He's also a magical Mad Scientist and Insufferable Genius. Needless to say, few people in Raven Rock are willing to be his steward.
• In Evil Genius and Evil Genius 2, the titular character is one, able to execute any minion at the drop of a hat. In the sequel, even Henchmen are not safe from this, as there's a limited number of slots available.
• Fallen London: Mr Fires combines the abusive nature of an Industrial Revolution factory boss with the disregard for human well-being of a Master of the Bazaar, and ends up being one of the outright nastier Masters of the group. The pay is crappy and is almost always late, the hours are completely horrible (helped by the fact there isn't a sun to keep up a better schedule), he'll have agents spying on you constantly and meddling in your affairs (even your love affairs), and if you dare protest he'll bring in his strikebreakers, who will club the shit out of you until you get back to work.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • Elder Elijah is described by his former apprentice Veronica as treating the people around him like machines, expecting total compliance and dispising backchat or any questioning of his methods. When the Courier finally meets him in the "Dead Money" DLC, he uses Explosive Leashes to force his subordinates to co-operate with his scheme, then encourages them to murder each other once their role in his plans has ended.
  • According to a news report broadcast on the local radio, when Legate Lanius is faced with fixing an underperforming squad, he beats the commander to death in front of his troops, then orders 9/10ths of the squad to kill the other 1/10th. In all fairness, this is consistent with Roman treatment of their soldiers, but still...
  • Caesar had Joshua Graham, his battlefield commander before Lanius, set on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon in full view of his men for losing at the First Battle of Hoover Dam. Simply mentioning Graham or the loss at Hoover Dam carries the death penalty, and groups allied with the Legion are exterminated or enslaved when they are no longer useful. At the first sign of disobedience, Caesar threatens to torture the Courier for his own amusement. There's no such thing as respect from Caesar; no matter how much he likes or admires someone he'll kill them if they stop being slavishly deferential.
• Far Cry:
  • Hoyt Volker, the South African Big Bad of Far Cry 3, is a Faux Affably Evil type who expects his band of Ruthless Modern Pirates and slavers to follow three company rules: 1) protect his product/slaves (and make sure not to damage them if they rape them); 2) kill any Rook Island natives on sight; and 3) make sure all the company profits go to him. If any of his men break one of these rules, expect him to Make an Example of Them by locking them in a furnace and immolating them. He openly tells Player Character Jason Brody that fear is "the true secret to keeping employees happy". Indeed, before we even meet Hoyt, we get to hear a recorded chat concerning him and his Dragon Vaas Montenegro, in which he cows Vaas into nervous submission — and Vaas, need we remind you, is the Ax-Crazy Sadist who's spent most of the game making Jason's life hell.
    Hoyt: (To Vaas) I DON'T GIVE A FOCK ABOUT YOUR FAMILY! It is by my GRACE that your head isn't impaled on the antenna of my car! Therefore, I would like it, if you gave a FOCK about Jason Brody!
  • Pagan Min, the tyrant ruler of Kyrat in Far Cry 4, alternates between this and Benevolent Boss, depending on whom he's interacting with. In the opening of the game, Pagan's Establishing Character Moment consists of him stabbing an injured soldier to death with a pen for shooting at a bus that he was only supposed to detain until Pagan got there. Later on, after Ajay escapes Pagan's palace with the Golden Path, Pagan assumes he left because the crab Rangoon Pagan served him wasn't good enough and cheerfully tells him that he had the chef and his family sentenced to death. However, he has a Villainous Friendship with his top Dragon, Torture Technician Paul De Pleur, and when you confront him at the climax of the story, he's sent his servants home to prevent them from being caught in the crossfire when the Golden Path reaches his doorstep.
• Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI would gleefully take the chance to kill any of his own men, just for the sake of amusement. This wasn't even just limited to his own henchmen. Even being in the same organization as Kefka was a death sentence, as General Leo and Emperor Gestahl discovered, or being on the same planet as he is, thanks to his Omnicidal Tendencies.
• The Phase Commanders, Armacham's field commanders, in F.E.A.R. 3 will routinely threaten their subordinates if their orders aren't carried out to the letter. At one point, you hear one threatening to dismember the soldiers under his command to keep them from retreating.
• The management of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza from Five Nights at Freddy's. They never tell you about the killer animatronics, will pay you $4 an hour to watch over said animatronics, and clean up your dead body if you don't survive your shifts.
• In Halo, the higher-ranked Covenant species (Prophets, Elites, Brutes, and Hunters) tend to treat their subordinates from the lower-ranked species (especially the Grunts) very poorly, with examples including: ordering Grunts to charge into a minefield, literally flattening a Jackal because it couldn't get out of your way in time, forcibly strapping explosives onto Engineers, literally tearing a Grunt to pieces for not cooking your meal right, etc. Even high-ranking members of high-ranking species aren't immune to being executed by their superiors for purely political reasons.
• Gluttony from Hell Pie has a proclivity for eating the human employees in his own pizzeria, one half-digested delivery boy being an ingredient for the pie.
• Hyrule Warriors: Fitting her Dominatrix-themed personality, Cia constantly berates her subordinates and conscripts Wizzro and Volga through brainwashing after beating the stuffing out of them, and Zant and Ghirahim through sheer force. Ghirahim is the only one to willingly go with her, though it's heavily implied he only does so because he knows he's outmatched. Could also be that he sensed Ganondorf's energy on her and intended to use her to find his way back to his master.
• Judgment Rites:
  • Dr. Ies Breddell is this to the Vardaine under his command. Not only does he treat them badly, and fails to respect their strict code of conduct, but he also puts their civilization at risk by planning to destroy the Federation, which would undoubtedly spark a massive retaliation from the survivors. This is one of the factors that ultimately leads most of the Vardaine guards to do a Mook–Face Turn.
  • In "No Man's Land", Commander Ellis believes that Kirk is one of these — callously throwing away the lives of his men during dangerous missions. He spends the entire mission snarking at Kirk every time there's a situation where Ellis (a Red Shirt) could potentially be sent to die.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising: Hades, in direct contrast to Palutena and Viridi. After his commander Thanatos is slain by Viridi's commander Phosphora, he elects to simply let his minions keep fighting while leaderless, leading to this exchange:
  Palutena: Are you saying it makes no difference whether your troops have a leader?
  Hades: They're all idiots. Seriously. I don't even know if any of them have actual brains.
• If you don't immediately kill every Helghast you come across in Killzone 2, you'll hear from some soldiers about how Colonel Radec executed some of his own men for dress code violations.
• Kirby has quite a lot of nasty leaders:
  • Queen Sectonia, the Big Bad of Kirby: Triple Deluxe. Her response to Taranza accidentally kidnapping King Dedede instead of Kirby is to simply blast him into oblivion for his failure... and ultimately set up his Heel–Face Turn in the progress. And given that she's a big Narcissist, she imprisons the People of the Sky when they try rebelling against her, attacks her own minions during her fights, and even tries to choke out all life on Popstar after performing a Fusion Dance with the Dreamstalk - Floralia included.
  • President Haltmann from Kirby: Planet Robobot. The moment he first appears, he dismisses Susie for her repeated failures to stop Kirby. And just like Sectonia, he's not afraid to hurt his own minions. He was more on the level before he lost his daughter, though.
  • Hyness from Kirby Star Allies establishes himself as one of these within the first 20 seconds he's on screen when he, with utter coldness, shoves Zan Partizanne out of the way after she begs for him to help her. In the second phase of his fight, he drains Zan, along with her sisters Francisca and Flamberge, of their energy and uses them as weapons and a shield. And after Kirby beats them, he mind controls them into jumping into the Jamba Heart to power it up (To give what little credit is due, he then jumps in himself). His ridiculously fast Motive Rant states that all of this stems back to him and his tribe being banished to the edge of the galaxy long ago, but that still doesn't help his case. The post-game reveals that he wasn't always like this, however.
  • Fecto Forgo in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. No other Kirby villain treats their minions like shit more than them. First, they assimilate just about every member of the Beast Pack in Lab Discovera to create their chimera form. Then, they break apart Leongar's soul in the post-game so they can have a new vessel to control, and even invoke Mind Rape on him.
• The Legend of Tian-ding has the main villain, General Shimada, who's introduced kicking his subordinate in the face for being unable to apprehend the titular hero. And near the end of the game, after sacrificing most of his men to a cavern filled with Booby Traps, with only half a dozen survivors with him, Shimada then personally kills all his remaining officers so he can claim the mausoleum's invincible sword for himself.
• Last Cloudia:
  • According to the lore for the Sandwyrm ark, Loug Zeus did not try to retaliate when his followers were caught up in a fight against creatures he brought to life for his amusement.
  • The first thing that happened when Galbor summoned the Galboran DX was the machine charging into his platoon of men, sending them all falling off the fortress.
• Ghirahim from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. At one point, he sends several platoons of mooks after Link and tells them they will suffer greatly if they fail to kill him. In his own words:
  You will keep that whelp from interfering with my ritual. I don't care if the whole lot of you get lodged on the end of his blade. You will buy me the time I need! Do not fear him... Fear my wrath if you fail me!"
• Lethal Company: The safety measures the titular company has for its workers, if they even exist, is miles away from the bare minimum. They send their workers to dangerous places to collect scrap with little to no equipment and has them PAY for it. They also prioritize the ship's integrity over the workers' lives and outright kill those who don't meet the quota by expelling them into deep space. There's also the implication that they're not even human in origin.
• Like a Dragon Series:
  • In the first game, Futoshi Shimano, Patriarch of the Shimano family, is a loud and abusive gangster who delights in punishing his minions in a variety of cruel ways (example, when an underling comes to him with bad news, he forces the guy to perform Yubitsume, only to take over half way through and hack off two of the underling's fingers and then some with a straight razor). He's also shown to take sadistic glee in his actions, as shown in flashbacks during Video Game Yakuza 2 when he happily gunned down members of the Jingweon mafia and civilians alike (contrasting Kazama, who had given the Jingweon a Last-Second Chance before circumstance forced his hand). Many of Shimano's underlings hate him, and Goro Majima isn't sad to see him go when he's killed near the end of the game.
  • Majima himself Zigzags this. He treats his men like shit, will beat them senseless at the drop of a hat, and doesn't really care when he sends them into the meatgrinder. That being said, his men love him and show Undying Loyalty despite his antics, and when Majima is shown pursuing non-criminal enterprises (such as the nightclubs he ran in Yakuza 0), he's a Benevolent Boss who is praised by staff and customers alike for his business savvy and comforting workplace practices.
• Saren in Mass Effect exhibits no concern whatsoever for his friends or allies, to the point of feeding an underling to a sapient, telepathic plant to foster communication. Justified because his ship has mind control powers, but at the end it's revealed he's gotten Hoist by His Own Petard, since the ship itself is sapient, controlling him, and every bit the Bad Boss itself.
  • The Reapers as a whole fit this trope. Look at what they did to The Collectors. There's also the horror of indoctrination, which is how they become bosses in the first place.
  • Nassana Dantius from Mass Effect 2, who orders the murders of all of her employees out of paranoia. And it's hinted that if anyone leaves her service before their contract is up, she has them murdered as well. It's little wonder that she's the one who Thane Krios has been assigned to kill in his recruitment mission.
  • Zaeed when he was the Blue Suns commander is perfectly willing to send his comrades to the grinder or sacrifice a lot of civilians because he don't care about anything but himself, Jessie and his paycheck. It's implied in the Shadow Broker's profile on him that his willingness to get his men killed and his complete lack of charisma was directly responsible for the Blue Suns betraying him. However, his ability to get people killed in his place is implied to be a major part of how he's been able to survive deadly situations.
  • And Shepard can be played a bad boss as well. At one end of the spectrum, you can play favorites with crew, date (fraternization) within military ranks, and/or just be an ass with whoever speaks to you. On the other end of the spectrum, you can promote the belief that EVERYONE is expendable, not care about anyone except yourself and your mission, and kill certain members when the opportunity arises because you don't like them.
  • From Mass Effect: Andromeda, there's the Invictor, head of the kett regiment on Eos. One datapad Ryder can find mentions that when he told the underlings to ignore what his boss, the Archon, was telling them to do, one troop asked by what right he gave the order. And promptly got his head cut off. Not that the Archon is Mr. Personality himself, being willing to throw troops into the grinder for his own goals, caring more about the local precursor tech and his own advancement than them, so much so it instigates a mutiny.
  • The Primus, the Archon's chief underling. Being a kett Moral Guardian (or possibly a Political Officer), she turns against the Archon because of his jerkassery, but it's possible to find some of her own handiwork — dozens of Archon loyalists executed and left to rot in the sun as an warning to the rest. She claims the kett are a family, but has no problem killing anyone who doesn't toe the line.
  • Sloane Kelly, while not quite as awful as them, is implied to be seriously vindictive towards members of her gang who've displeased her. One sidequest has a character claiming she'll be killed, despite being a doctor, something in dire need on Kadara, if Ryder goes ahead and levels her drug farm. If Ryder does, it's implied Sloane actually did go ahead and do this, and blames Ryder for it.
• In Make A Good Mega Man Level: Episode Zero, an optional level has you going through the under-construction dojo and along the way encountering several construction workers who have nothing but bad things about to say about Yamato Man, the owner of the dojo who's overseeing construction. Subverted once you reach Yamato Man and hear his side of the story — said construction workers have been half-assing their work, and Yamato Man is rightfully frustrated at them for it.
• In Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X, Flame Mammoth often enjoyed picking on his subordinates in the 4th Land Battalion for being small and weak. This also resulted in Laser-Guided Karma, as it also meant that his subordinates did not follow Flame Mammoth to participate in Sigma's rebellion.
• The Metal Gear series has several:
  • Colonel Volgin is known to get off on torture, even more so than Ocelot, who himself (ironically) also hated Volgin's use of torture, despite becoming a Torture Technician in the future — it's implied that even for Ocelot, though, Volgin took things way too far. After he captured Snake, it is also implied that he threatened to kill any guards who fail to keep Snake alive before he does a second torture (that is, died from the torture Volgin himself had inflicted on him). He overworked the scientists/maintenance staff to complete the Shagohod, and it is also implied that he intended to execute them simply to keep them silent after the tests were completed. After being defeated by Naked Snake, he also ends up taking the Shagohod for a joyride, and... well, long story short, he killed/destroyed anyone and anything that was in his way.
  • Raikov, Volgin's second in command, and the only one that Volgin legitimately cares for, is also no different. Apparently, he used his title of Major to beat up personnel, or crush their joolies. This eventually came back to bite him later on in Portable Ops when the Soviet Military, not liking his abuse of power, shipped him off to a Soviet Missile Base on the San Hieronymo Peninsula, a missile base that just so happens to have been conveniently abandoned by the Soviet Military for Detente along with its personnel, and is later imprisoned, all before Gene and FOX arrived. It's also implied that the only reason why he was even allowed to continue to beat up personnel prior to Operation Snake Eater was because of Volgin's influence. Presumably, the exiling of Raikov had him deeply reconsider his treatment of his soldiers.
  • Gene can use his voice to have his men have an increase in morale. However, he also is just as likely to use his voice to have his own men kill each other, as evidenced by what happened after Gene makes off with the ICBMG.
  • Hot Coldman shoved a paraplegic down the stairs (a paraplegic who also called Coldman out on trying to launch a live nuke from Peace Walker), and was implied to have intended to kill off his own unit, the Peace Sentinels, after the tests are completed. Apparently, he (if not the entirety of the CIA) also pocketed a large percentage of The Boss's sleeper agent's pay. Then we have the whole issue about his setting The Boss up.
  • Ocelot. Oh, my, Ocelot. Work under him, hell, work with him and you might as well as calling your undertaker or prepare for bedlam to save time. Case in point: in Guns of the Patriots, when preparing for his SOP hacking test in Act 2, Vamp warns him that they don't know what could happen, only for him to nonchalantly state that he's "willing to make a few sacrifices"; the end result is that several of his mooks suffer brain damage and become Technically Living Zombies. During the Act 3 mission briefing, Naomi states that Ocelot in fact knew from the very beginning that said test would be a failure, and yet he chose to go through with it anyway.
  • As revealed in Peace Walker, Zero apparently became this while running the Patriots, to the extent that Paz/Pacifica Ocean was terrified of failing him and openly admitted that she considered incurring his wrath a Fate Worse than Death.
• Metroid Dread: Raven Beak's rule over ZDR, as shown in the Chozo Archives, depicts him as a brutal dictator who abuses Kraid in captivity and feeds Chozo tribesmen (implied to be Mawkin dissenters) to Drogyga. Even the picture showcasing the discovery of an X Parasite Chozo soldier depicts Raven Beak to be unmoved by this predicament, as if he saw his soldier's death to be an inconvenience or worse, an opportunity. Given he's the Sole Survivor of the Mawkin in the present, it's even subtly implied that he abandoned his troops to the X while he holed up in Itorash.
• The player in Monster Train, depending on their clan and build, can act like this to their underlings. Fitting, since they're commanding the Legions of Hell. The Hellhorned, the Umbra, and especially the Melting Remnant make doing this part of their central mechanics, in different ways:
  • The Hellhorned toss out cheap, expendable imps to protect their valuable, hard-hitting fiends, and have cards that outright sacrifice imps for useful effects.
  • The Umbra buff their biggest, most valuable units by feeding them an endless supply of hapless morsels.
  • For the Melting Remnant, Death Is Cheap. They have numerous Glass Cannon units, or even ones that have a timer before they "burn out" and die, and a lot of ways to resurrect them, stronger than before. Additionally, those Remnant units that aren't disposable usually draw power from any creature on the same floor, friend or foe, dying, further encouraging massive friendly casualties. A Remnant player's game plan is throwing their units into the grinder for later resurrection, and some strategies outright involve hitting one's own units with damaging spells to take advantage of post-resurrection buffs.
• Shao Kahn from the Mortal Kombat series. In the opening cutscene of Mortal Kombat II (the game in which he made his first appearance), he almost has Shang Tsung executed for failing to win the tenth Mortal Kombat tournament, only sparing his life because Tsung came up with a new plan of Kahn to conquer Earthrealm. And that's just the first example.
  • Quan Chi isn't much better. At one point in Armageddon, he demands information from one of his henchmen. The Mook nervously implies that he chose to memorize the information instead of risk detection by carrying it with him. With barely any hesitation, Quan Chi rips the poor guy's head off.
• Stone Corp in Mr. Shifty is run by Chairman Stone, who regularly yells at his employees for being killed by Mr. Shifty.
• Gru'ul in Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark runs an ice quarry in Cania, the eighth layer of Hell. When one of his imps deliberately jams an ice grinder with his own hand in order to have an excuse to take a break, he orders you to feed the imp through the grinder as punishment for laziness, since imps are 'ten-a-penny'. If you learn the True Name of one of your followers, he'll try and barter knowledge of the True Name away from you, so he can employ your followers as slaves for the rest of eternity.
• The Magog Cartel in the Oddworld series run a variety of spectacularly unsafe industries, and treat their Mudokon employees little better than slaves. Mistreatments of their Mudokon employees throughout the series include proposing plans to butcher them for meat when one of their meat factories stopped bringing in profits, sewing their eyes shut to keep them from realising they're mining a sacred Mudokon burial ground, and subjecting them to Electric Torture in order to harvest their tears, one of the key ingredients in the drink Soulstorm Brew.
• All of the antagonistic guardians in OFF. Dedan openly states that he refuses to help his workers deal with the ghosts infesting their barns because they "don't deserve it," and he threatens to fire one of them just for standing in his way. Japhet went insane due to their paranoia, and outright attacked a town of his people with an army of ghosts because they kept ignoring him. Enoch outright profits from their deaths — their bodies are used to make sugar, which is a highly addictive drug in the world of OFF with severe withdrawal effects.
• Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners opens with Professor Tsuchida getting one of his employees killed by a Death Trap. While his assistant Dr. Kuroe reacts with horror, Tsuchida's far more interested in examining the Razor Wire, and with exploring the ruins before the SCA learns about the site. He doesn't treat the tour group that he tricks into helping him any better. Plus there's the eventual revelation that he planned to work Kuroe to the bone as punishment for a past mistake, but 'upgraded' that to scheming to get him killed inside the pyramid.
• Pillars of Dust: Some of the bosses, such as the High Priestess of Naev and the wvvern Jezos, are servants of Almorigga. Unfortunately for them, Almorigga has no problem directing the heroes to attack them as part of his plan to get the heroes into the Outer Plane. Played with in that he can resurrect them to act as minibosses in the final dungeon, meaning they most likely cannot permanently die until Almorigga is killed.
• Cyrus from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl is nice to his Crobat, but lousy to his human minions. In Pokémon Platinum, he makes a speech to his followers about how Team Galactic will make the world a better place without human strife, but later admits to the player character that he was lying to them because his true goals are... not in their best interests.
  Cyrus: You heard my speech, I presume. A big lie.
• Apparently the player character is one in the Translation Train Wreck infamous bootleg version of Pokemon Crystal Version, Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal. Whenever a Pokemon is switched out in battle, instead of being sent to its Poke Ball, it is sent to a pillory (an old public humiliation device similar to stocks).
• In Portal 2, Cave Johnson made Aperture Science with the mindset that safe science is for sissies, kept employees in their cubicles with death lasers, and finally killed the survivors by making them go through the test chambers. On a less...overtly lethal level, he was in the habit of firing employees for reasons ranging from "ramps are expensive" to "was insufficiently gung-ho about Mad Science".
• Sir Maelstrom in Pray for Death once killed every one of his own soldiers thinking that "he no longer needed the help of mortal men".
• Psychonauts:
  • Bobby Zilch regularly threatens to beat up his lackey Benny and is just a big jerk to him all around.
  • Doctor Loboto keeps his assistant Sheegor in line by threatening to make a soup out of her pet turtle.
• Puyo Puyo!! Quest: Not excessively so, but Seo, who runs the Spacetime Detective Agency in Intral City, is known for not giving her employees adequate breaks and sending even rookies into excessively dangerous situations without batting an eye.
• In Rise of the Tomb Raider, Big Bad Konstantin cares little about his Trinity forces and even less about the countless independent mercenaries under his command. He gauges one merc's eyes out with his thumbs in a cutscene because the guy had failed him in some unspecified way, and his main strategy for dealing with any hurdles in his mission revolves around throwing troops at the problem until it goes away. With the opposition consisting of the Remnant and Lara Croft, this comes back to bite him in the ass when near the end of the story he's forced to realize that he has virtually no troops left.
• Sengoku Basara:
  • Motonari Mori, despite calling his troops "children of the sun", he has no compulsion of sending waves of them to their deaths, or even killing them himself, if it furthers his own ambition. Not only could he originally attack his allies in earlier games, he can summon archers and smack them towards his enemies as human missiles essentially. His victory quote in the third game sums it up perfectly:
  "I'll soak the earth with the blood of subordinates. Then I shall hunt down the strays".
  • Mitsunari has tendencies of this, being an incredibly volatile person who as a believer of blind loyalty above all else expects this from his allies and subordinates. His usual way of reaffirming loyalty is to either threaten them with painful death or to beat them into submission.
• Silent Debuggers: As he was behind the monster attacks that overrun OMHE, Charles Smith gave no care that his employees got caught up in the chaos with Steve being one of the confirmed kills and Ray being implicitly being killed next.
• Sly Cooper has a few examples:
  • Dr. M of Sly 3, in his first scene, poisons one of his subordinates simply because he forgot to change the searchlight password.
  • There's also Sheriff Toothpick of Thieves in Time, who enjoys overworking his mooks to the point where he makes time off illegal and overtime mandatory. He's also prone to I Just Shot Marvin in the Face.
• Sonic the Hedgehog's resident Dr. Eggman will only praise a minion of his in a way that allows him to take credit — to use Sonic Adventure as an example, his praises of E-102 Gamma were that the robot was "of use" to him. Otherwise:
  • His treatment of all the other named E-series robots were to banish them for failure (Delta and Epsilon), forcibly upgrade them (Zeta and Beta) or lock them in a room and reduce them to guard work (Omega).
  • The very first cutscene of Sonic Battle has him treating Emerl as a piece of junk and throwing him out to rot, only reconsidering when he learns the robot can harness Chaos energy for power.
  • From Sonic Colors onward, Cubot and especially Orbot very frequently aim not to incur their boss' wrath since he's the one who could dismantle them at any moment. In Sonic Lost World, one backchat too many from Orbot gets Eggman to forcibly attach Cubot's head to his own, and "Act 17" of the Sonic Channel gag webcomic also shows Orbot and Cubot researching the history of their predecessors, with the two being so horrified when learning about Zeta's fate that they start pampering Eggman even more than usual.
  • Speaking of Lost World, he frequently uses the Cacaphonic Conch to force the Zeti into submission until Sonic punts it away, and makes it clear that he'd rather care about how "very rare" the conch is as opposed to how "very painful" it might be to the Zeti, being perfectly fine with the idea of using another conch to get the six demon creatures back under his thumb.
  • Sonic Forces has him dispose of Infinite without hesitation after the jackal screws up his plans one time too many.
  • Even his prized creation Metal Sonic isn't safe from his negligence— following his defeat in Sonic the Hedgehog CD (one that Eggman himself technically contributed to), both interpretations of his return showed that Eggman left him to rot on Little Planet and only rescued or repaired him when it was convenient. The bonus episode of Sonic Mania Adventures also has Eggman kick Metal Sonic in the head and literally leave him to fend for himself in the wilderness— for months, it seems— after his failure to defeat Sonic and friends.
• Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions sees Doctor Octopus 2099 imprisoning her employees for questioning her sanity and Kraven's willing to shoot his own followers to shoot Spidey — but the worst are the villains from the Spider-Man Noir levels, as all three are horrible as they frequently threatened their lackeys, Hammerhead at one point pistol whips one of his and flat-out tell others he has no faith in them at one point, Vulture threatens his with eating them, and the Goblin won't warn his men before hitting him to hit Spidey.
• The villains of the Splinter Cell games aren't exactly well-known for treating their collaborators well, but when they resort to outright murder they usually have the excuse of trying to cover up their illicit activities. Then there's Emile Dufraisne, the Big Bad of Splinter Cell: Double Agent — at least in the 7th-gen version of the game. Depending on the player's choices, he might shoot Enrica Villablanca for messing up a test-detonation of their Red Mercury Bomb, and his ultimate plan is to use said bomb to blow up New York City... which is also where he and his organization's headquarters is. When a pair of loyal scientists point out that this will kill them as well, he orders a henchman to shoot them. He also yells at his computer expert when he tries to help him fix his computer using jargon he doesn't understand.
• Spooky, Spooky, Spooky! Callous, sociopathic, and totally willing to abandon her men to die just see how one of specimens kill, laughing all the while.
• The Legend of Spyro: The Apes inworked their butts off as Malefor's army and trying to free him, though only because he was giving them power. How does he reward all their hard work? By turning them into walking skeletons that are cursed to forever remain in the dark.
• Star Fox Adventures: In CloudRunner Fortress, while Fox is confronting General Scales and shooting at him, Scales promptly Neck Lifts a nearby SharpClaw soldier to use as a Human Shield, and then throws him at Fox. Needless to say, the entire SharpClaw tribe celebrates his defeat at the end of the game.
• In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, if you kill enough stormtroopers in the level where you play as Darth Vader, you get the achievement Worst Dayshift Manager Ever.
• Strider:
  • Grand Master Meio really thinks nothing of his subordinates or the people of Earth he rules over, seeing them as mere playthings to be used to fulfill his ambitions. As soon as they serve their purpose or don't measure up to his expectatives, he decides to kill the whole planet and start anew somewhere else.
  • Captain Beard Jr. from the first arcade game has no care in the world for his own underlings, as seen at the end of Stage 3 where he's whipping away the desperate soldiers who try to jump into his escape airship as the Balrog is collapsing.
• Luca Blight from Suikoden II sets the bar for this trope, punishing and/or killing any of his men for so much as hesitating in battle or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and having no qualms about needlessly sacrificing his own men. An example of his inhumanity is in the beginning of the game, where he, in order to justify starting a bloody war with a neighboring nation, betrays and slaughters his own completely innocent youth brigade. The only regret that he has towards this unbelievably heinous act is that he himself didn't participate in the massacre, in order to practise his swordsmanship, and his men are still willing to sacrifice their lives for him, even when Luca Blight faces utter and complete defeat.
• In Sunless Sea, the vast majority of players will become Bad Bosses to their own crew. Multiple stories can most easily or only be advanced by sacrificing crew members to being eaten or having their brains consumed by bees while still living. Even officers can either be dissuaded or encouraged to take extraordinary personal risks; guess which one pays off better for you? Sometimes even encouraged in-game; zailors don't enjoy captains who are soft on discipline, and may actually calm down if you feed the occasional troublemaker to a vicious zee-monster.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Foreman Spike of Wrecking Crew plays this straight. Despite hiring the Mario Bros. to tear down the various sites, he sends out Eggplant Men and Gotcha Wrenches to chase them around and even goes onto the field to directly impede them.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Elder Princess Shroob deliberately knocks down her Shroob minions' Flying Saucers in order to use them as projectiles against the Bros.
• The Big Bad of Tales of Symphonia, Mithos, called Lord Yggdrasil by everyone but his companions from the Kharlan War, does this with Pronyma, almost at the end of the game. You engage in a battle with said minion and wound her pretty bad. Pronyma then begs for help from him. He ignores her plea as he is too excited from reviving his dead sister, Martel. Pronyma then begs again, but this time she calls him Mithos, that makes him ultra mad for some reason and proceeds to kill Pronyma with a ball of mana.
• The CLO in Toontown: Corporate Clash, who drops her trainees into a trapdoor just for making a suggestion she doesn't like.
• The Tiamat Sacrament: Ry'jin uses synthetic dragon DNA to transform many of his soldiers into Reavers, who are stronger than normal DNA-enhanced soldiers, but are mentally unstable to the point where they can't distinguish friend and foe. After Gyle fails to secure Draslin, Ry'jin sends him to intercept the party at Fyradin, all while planning to blast them all with the Vulcan Cannon in the event that Gyle loses.
• Tomb Raider (2013): While Lara is escaping the Solarii fortress, Mathias promptly orders his men to blow the bridge. When one soldier objects, pointing out they'll be killing their own people, Mathias responds by grabbing a gun off said soldier and shooting him dead before asking the others if there are any other "non-believers."
• As if Megatron wasn't already the king of bad bosses, in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron Starscream manages to be an even worse leader over the Decepticons when Megatron dies. He forces all of his troops to divert resources for the war into rebuilding the capitol in his own image. Then, when Megatron returns he demands his loyalists to defend him from the former leader. Naturally, the troops side with the Lesser of Two Evils. It's actually mind-blowing that the troops thought Megatron as a saint compared to Starscream.
• Undertale has a rare minor example in the form of the Mad Dummy. It eventually gets so angry at its mini-dummies' incompetence that it fires them all mid-battle.^note You can't damage the Mad Dummy yourself; you have to lead the mini-dummies' attacks into it to damage it.
  Mad Dummy: Hey! Guys! Remember how I said NOT to shoot at me? Well...FAILURES! YOU'RE FIRED! YOU'RE ALL BEING REPLACED!!!
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines:
  • Head vampire LaCroix is only stopped from summarily executing the fledgling Player Character by PR concerns, makes them An Offer You Can't Refuse to work for him, and repeatedly tries to send the fledgling to their death via Uriah Gambit, even after they prove hugely useful to LaCroix's organization. He's revealed to be part of the Big Bad Duumvirate.
  • Grünfeld Bach leads the local chapter of Church Militant Vampire Hunters with a Knight Templar's fervor, even killing hunters who fail to follow orders and setting off explosives in their monastery in an attempt to kill the fledgling after he's defeated.
• View from Below:
  • Rose is the leader of the Crimson Skulls who kills her underlings because she wants to be the one to capture Ash and gain the Crimson God's favor.
  • Downplayed with the Crimson God, who is mostly a Mean Boss by treating his minions coldly when they fail. However, he tied the Crimson Skulls' lives to their leader, Rose, causing them all to turn to dust once Ash kills Rose. If Ash is fully able to commit to being evil, he will actually spare Ash, even if their relationship cannot be considered a Villainous Friendship. However, if he thinks Ash is wavering as a servant, he will kill Ash without hesitation.
• World of Warcraft has Garrosh Hellscream during his reign as Warchief. The orc race's motto is normally "Victory or death!" as in, "we will succeed or die honorably trying". Garrosh's motto is...also "Victory or death!" but the way he phrases it, it actually means "If you don't succeed, I'LL KILL YOU!" This eventually turns the majority of the Horde against him.
  • Lots of big bads and bosses in WoW do this. The Old Gods are notorious for it. They even got rid of their most powerful ally (Deathwing) simply because he wasn't needed anymore. You DO NOT want to work for these guys. Of course, most people aren't given a choice since they will mind control you or induce insanity with no reservations. Further justified in Deathwing's case since he was still a Dragon Aspect. Deathwing's very existence was an obstacle to them.
• Cookie Masterson from You Don't Know Jack, especially from 2011 onward. He has a penchant for abusing his interns, both verbally and physically (sometimes even during the game) and generally comes off as The Caligula on-set, yet the rest of the crew seems either too intimidated or too apathetic to call him out on it. However, they sometimes manage to give Cookie his comeuppance from time to time in their own passive-aggressive way (such as the question writers taking off for a picnic with an episode only half done, forcing Cookie to rely on the rest of the staff to finish it, with predictable results).
• In XCOM 2 and XCOM: Chimera Squad, it's established that the various alien species fought during and after the Alien Invasion were just as much victims of the cruelty of the Galactic Conqueror Ethereals as the humans were. The ADVENT Troopers were fitted with Mind Control Devices, the Snake People Vipers suffered gendercide, the Archons were forced to wear Shock Collars that Mind Raped them into submission, and multiple species under their control were tricked into eating their own kind.
• Whiplash: Mann is prone to firing people at the drop of a hat.
• Ys
  • Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys: When he is about to lose to Adol, Arem devours the souls of his followers to try and drag him down to the grave.
  • Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand: Jabir has Abyss die to prevent information from leaking and offs Rizze and King Kefin after they lose to Adol in the PS2 remake.

---