Control Freaks in Video Games.
- Pretty much everything the Templars have been doing since they have existed in Assassin's Creed is to control everyone in the world. The Assassins believe in free will and fight to stop them.
- Baldur's Gate III:
- The Chessmaster Raphael, son of the archdevil Mephistopheles who has the goal of conquering Hell (with the Player Character's help) to impose order upon it and end the Blood War. He's a Hope Crusher and Manipulative Bastard who likes to make deals his victims have no choice but to accept so he always has a winning hand.
- Astarion's vampire master Cazador was, like all true vampires, a sociopathic sadist but to such a degree even Raphael found him disgusting. He would frequently use his Playing with Puppets abilities for the sake of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse towards his spawns. If Astarion doesn't escape The Chain of Harm he becomes just like him, to the point he'll break things off with a romanced Player Character if he can't turn them and ensure they can never leave him. When the party confronts him they find that he was planning to take over the titular city by turning the nobility.
- Walking Spoiler The Emperor. He was once the kind and generous explorer Balduran, the founder of Baldur's Gate. But after being captured and turned into a mind flayer he became ruthless and secretive. Upon becoming their Mysterious Protector, he appears to the party in A Form You Are Comfortable With (the default being an attractive woman) so they'd be more inclined to do what he says, and justifies this by saying illusion is just another language to illithids. Despite him constantly withholding information or even outright lying, he'll be incensed if you do the same to him and even try to forcibly take the information from your mind. He constantly attempts to railroad the party into doing things his way, and any attempts of finding an alternative path forward is met with chastisement. When you finally reach the end of the story, if you free Orpheus to save the githyanki he'll immediately betray the party out of spite. If you stay on his good side and give him a We Can Rule Together offer, he'll immediately betray the party out of opportunism.
- Villain of Another Story Lich Queen Vlaakith of the githyanki forces her people to worship her as a God Empress and shun actual deities while she attempts to become one herself. When she's met by the party the entire interaction is her being extremely condescending before screaming like a petulant child when her orders are questioned.
- Taking the cake is Evil Overlord Lord Gortash, The Chosen One of Bane, the god of tyranny and strife. He turns the city into a Police State with towering Mecha-Mooks patrolling the streets, and wrote an entire manifesto espousing The Evils of Free Will while wishing that people were more like the emotionless robots he controls.
- Andrew Ryan became this by the time of BioShock as he started implementing more extreme measures to stay in control of Rapture, eventually turning Rapture into an elitist dictatorship, the kind of thing he despised.
- Sophia Lamb also, when she took over Rapture she turned most of the splicers into obedient cogs of her so-called perfect society, anyone who doesn't fit in or listen to her gets eliminated.
- Zachariah Comstock imprisoned his own daughter for over twenty years with only a psycho giant bird for company, and treats the minorities like animals; if they won't sit and stay, he'll order his men to hunt them down.
- If you're a villain with The Joker as your mentor in DC Universe Online, he'll comment that Brainiac is a Control Freak that "makes Batman look slightly neurotic".
- Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2 lived, breathed, and thrived on this trope. He wanted everything under his thumb and watchful eye, from a planet filled with bandits and hostile creatures to a powerful Vault Monster to his own daughter. Even after his own death at the hands of the Vault Hunters, his control freak tendencies lingered on in later games.
- Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: President Zazz cannot stand any hunter who refuses to work directly for Zetacorp. He intends to send Akira on a suicide mission because he fears their popularity as an indie Hunter could result in them becoming a potential political rival.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order, is essentially the divine embodiment of this trope. It is his driving mission to put the universe in perfect order. In an age before recorded history, the other Daedric Princes, who feared Jyggalag's growing power, came together and cursed him into his own antithesis, Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. The plot of Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion is Jyggalag finding a way to escape this.
- Astrid, the leader of the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim. She forced the Brotherhood to abandon the tenets that guided them for centuries in favor of her own leadership style and claimed to have authority over the Night Mother, who the Brotherhood believes to be the wife of their god. When the Last Dragonborn is named Listener by the Night Mother, Astrid sees this as a threat to her authority and tries to have them killed (which backfires horribly).
- Every major Fallout: New Vegas faction has one of these at the helm:
- Caesar is a sadistic totalitarian who believes everyone below him is worthless unless they provide utility to his state, and if the player tries to leave he becomes quietly incensed and threatens to feed them to his hounds if they ever disobey him again.
- General Ripper Cassandra Moore is a Token Evil Teammate to the NCR, with a haughty "my way or the highway" attitude and a "shoot first ask questions never" tactical mindset, especially when dealing with the Brotherhood of Steel, the Great Khans, or the Kings.
- Mr. House is a Well-Intentioned Extremist and Insufferable Genius with this as the dark side to his calculating and pragmatic nature. He desires to have absolute control and oversight over all aspects of New Vegas in the name of ensuring efficiency, and anyone whom he views as a threat to his authority or the Mojave, he will either demand assurance of their loyalty, or have them removed from the region by force, even if it means their extermination. He has a passionate hatred of the Brotherhood of Steel in particular due to their dogmatic nature making it impossible for him to control them, and demands their extermination no matter what. Initially there would have been the option to convince him to leave them alone with the promise that you'd handle it if they ever became a problem, but this was Dummied Out presumably to keep his uncompromising characterization consistent.
- Elder Elijah, the Big Bad of the DLC Dead Money, par excellence. He is a brutally pragmatic man, who thinks people should be basically machines and tools to achieve his ends; he tells them what to do and they go do it, and he gets incredibly angry if they disobey or question him, or merely do things he did not expect them to do. He was once a bit more stable, but a disastrous tenure as Elder of a Brotherhood of Steel chapter cracked the shell off the nut. Now he aims to plunder the treasures of the lost Sierra Madre Casino: Noxious lingering gas cloud to wipe the Mojave clean, immaterial death ray-shooting hologram soldiers to kill anyone that tries to intervene, and bomb collars to ensure compliance of whoever survives.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
- Edelgard has "losing control" listed in her bio as one of her dislikesnote , and mentions "forcing things to go her way" in an offhand comment during monastery exploration. This turns out to be a major issue once the Time Skip hits, as Edelgard's need to achieve her goals for changing the world by her way and her way alone leads to her becoming the enemy of every other faction during the war. Even Claude, who has similar goals and admits he might have been willing to work with her if she had been more open to co-operating, though Edelgard for her part considers him far too shifty/secretive to work with in confidence (a reputation he cultivated himself).
- Ingrid is incredibly bossy and is known for being a responsible, dependable knight, so she spends much of her supports lecturing people for not behaving how she thinks they should (even kicking the door down in her Support with Bernadetta when the former tries to skip out on training, terrifying her), which usually leads to the other person telling her to stop acting like their mother. She even does it with her childhood friends (Sylvain, Dimitri and Felix) or people who technically outrank her (Dimitri, who is expected to take the throne of Faerghus when he comes of age and Claude, who is next in line to lead the Leicester Alliance).
- Rhea, continuing the parallels with Edelgard, has a problem with needing to be the one in control as well. Her need for control over Fodlan's understanding of its past and influence over its people to accept Sothis as their goddess is part of what contributes to the quagmire of societal issues plaguing the continent, and she has very exact expectations of how Byleth as Sothis' vessel to the point of becoming annoyed when Byleth doesn't show knowledge of things that Sothis should have. And if Byleth decides to side with Edelgard over her? She goes crazy unable to accept that her mother's vessel would think she's in the wrong and running against her script.
- God of War Ragnarök: Mimir accuses Odin of being a ruthless control freak, from constantly lying and manipulating everyone he ever met to committing genocide whenever a foreign nation showed the possibility of defying him. This accusation proves concretely true as Odin screams at Thor to mindlessly follow orders during the apocalypse, only to murder Thor the moment Thor says no.Odin: You don't think, I DO! [...] I am your father! Take, the hammer, and KILL, who I tell you to kill!
- By the time of Mass Effect 3, The Illusive Man has gone full Control Freak. He regularly "terminates employment" of scientists whose work has been completed so there's no chance that anyone else can acquire the science, and has partially huskified huge hordes of people to make an obedient private army in short order. In fact, his espoused method of dealing with the Reapers is to attempt to gain control of them.
- From the same series, Miranda Lawson's father not only genetically engineered his children to be perfect, but he uses mercenaries to try to recapture them by force when they defy him. Lair Of The Shadow Broker DLC reveals that Miranda has a neoplasm in her uterus which renders her incapable of getting pregnant. The most likely explanations are that her father deliberately engineered it so that his "dynasty" would only develop along the lines he desired, or that it was the "imperfection" that prompted him to attempt to discard Miranda like he had her older sisters and create an even more perfect child in Oriana.
- Miranda herself also has this as an issue. It's heavily implied that she keeps a constant eye on Shepard's private messages and is overly concerned about her sister's private life. This is in addition to originally wanting to implant a control chip in Shepard's brain when she brought him/her back to life. What separates her from her father is that her over-concern for her sister is motivated by genuine love and protectiveness. And as for the control chip, she eventually reveals to Shepard how much guilt she feels about it and practically begs him/her for forgiveness and her serving under Shepard's command really shows that she is truly concerned over the safety of the galaxy.
- The Allies in Red Alert 3: Paradox control freak tendencies end up isolating the United States when they take over the government to prevent infiltration.
- In Red Dead Redemption 2, this is one of Dutch's many flaws. His controlling tendencies can already be seen early in the story but it gets worse by the end. Dutch wants to control all aspects of the gang and doesn't like it when others question his plans or appear loyal to someone else other than him. His relationship with Arthur begins to sour as Arthur is forced to go behind Dutch's back to mitigate the worst of Dutch's plans to protect the rest of the gang, but he sees Arthur as being disloyal to him. Dutch soon comes to believe that Micah is the most loyal because Micah never questions him, never realizing that Micah is The Mole for the Pinkertons.
- One of the female bullies, Meg, from Rule of Rose. Highly intelligent, but inflexible, she holds the third highest spot under the Princess of the Rose.
- YHVH, the Mad God of Order, in the Shin Megami Tensei series. He's the ultimate Knight Templar, seeking to erase The Evils of Free Will from the heart of humanity, so he may reign for all time, unchanging, unending. It's not quite clear if he was always like this, and signs point to "no".
- Staya from TinkerQuarry is determined to make sure everyone stays in the Dollhouse. He has written signs all over the place commanding its residents to stay where they are, and he angrily confronts anyone who he believes is trying to escape.
- In Twisted Wonderland, the dorm leader of Heartslabyul, Riddle Rosehearts has every single one of the dorm's 810 rules memorised and follows them obsessively, quickly losing his temper and punishing his dorm residents if they break even the most obscure, inconsequential rule, often by using his unque magic Off With Your Head on them. He eventually loosens up a little after recovering from his Overblot.
- Warframe: Ballas wishes to control everything. He wanted control over his lover Margulis, and couldn't stand the thought of her caring for the Tenno instead of dedicating herself entirely to serving him, eventually leading him to order her execution. During "The New War", this trait is shown in full force, as Ballas uses Narmer Veils to enslave nearly the entirety of the Origin System's population... and this still wasn't enough for him, as the Lotus, whom he had chosen as a Replacement Goldfish for Margulis, still refused to obey him.Erra: What does it matter? We... You have won. Narmer spreads across the system. Monuments rise to your glory. All who live, Bios and not, kneel before you-
