Demonic Possession / Video Games

Demonic Possession in video games.

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• The Phoenix arc of Ace Attorney features spirit channeling, in which a spirit medium allows herself to be possessed by a dead spirit. It's not hazardous in itself, but possession by a vengeful spirit can force the medium to do violent acts. And Dahlia Hawthorne's as vengeful as they get.
• The Taken in Alan Wake are an army of this, possessed permanently by the Darkness. The Darkness can do a more limited version of this, which was used on Rose, Alan, Thomas Zane, and Cynthia Weaver.
• Ao Oni features a spin on the first variation listed above: in Version 6.23, if the Oni kills a character, their dead body is taken over and they transform into an Oni themselves. The most jarring case is probably Takuro, who does it in the status screen. Also, this may be the reason Takeshi kills themselves. It doesn't work.
• Tragically done AND gloriously inverted in Arc the Lad II: the Big Bad manages to take control of Kukuru and "absorb" her, only to discover that Arc's girlfriend's soul is stronger than his own: she promptly inverts the demonic possession and gives Arc the time to seal him again
• Mithra from Asura's Wrath gets possessed for a short time by Chakravartin in order for him to use her power to regain his true form.
• The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble: The Bigwig was a decent man until he opened a sealed Bazouk artifact, freeing the Beast and being overtaken by its evil. Two of the bad endings have Woodruff suffer the same fate.
• Bleeding Sun: The Tortured Soul boss will attempt to possess Yori after their boss battle. The player has the choice to accept the possession or resist. In the revenge path, if Yori loses the first round against the rest of the party, the Tortured Soul gather's Chiyo's dark energy to give Yori a Superpowered Evil Side.
• Survival horror game Camp Sunshine has Isaac Illerman, the serial slasher who turns out to have been possessed all along.
• Celestial Hearts: When the party returns to Gravehart Manor, Lilith takes control of Edgar's body and mutates him.
• Once summoned to a particular location, demons in Conrad Stevenson's Paranormal P.I. can exert their influence over vulnerable individuals and eventually take full control of them for certain periods of time, after which the individual is often unable to recall the event. While the player character can't fall prey to this ability on account of the comparatively brief amount of time he spends at each location and his collected nature, stories of individuals suddenly acting more aggressively without explanation, especially if they've gone on to commit massacres, can be compelling evidence of demonic presence in conjunction with other paranormal indicators.
• Courage's Curse has the ghost of Ramses II possess Muriel after Eustace steals his ancient slab.
• Crush Crush: At certain relationship levels, when you buy Nina things, she references you being possessed by the big man (er, demon) himself:
  Nina: What possessed you to buy this? Satan?
• This is a big part of Morella, the twelfth game in the Dark Tales series. Not only are you and C. Auguste Dupin trying desperately to rescue a little girl who's been possessed, but in the process of doing so, you inadvertently become possessed yourself and spend much of the rest of the game Fighting from the Inside.
• Dawn of War II: If Jonah is the traitor in Chaos Rising, this is the reason. He suffered severe mental scars when he fought the Tyranid Hive Mind, and between that and Kyras betraying him by handing Chaos the access rites to his psychic hood, he is possessed by a daemon, though he manages to keep it corralled long enough for his battle-brothers to fight back.
• In Devil Survivor, Amane is possessed by not only Remiel, an angel, but Jezebel, a demon.
• Diablo. Why won't this game not have one if its title itself is a dead giveaway?
  • Diablo: Diablo has possessed Prince Albrecht, the Warrior's little brother. And the ending? The player character gets possessed after he got tricked into inserting the dark Soul Stone unto his forehead
  • Diablo II: The other two heroes that helped The Warrior became evil. as a result of the darkness that tortured their minds. And that is just the tip of the iceberg! Tal Rasha was possessed completely by Baal as a result of Marius' action thus mutating into a dark lord. Well? Are we there yet? No! Almost all of the Zakarum's followers became possessed as well. The Pope equivalent of the game's universe, the current Que Hegan was already possessed by Mephisto and mutated into him.
  • Diablo III: Leah was then betrayed by her own mom, who revived not just Diablo, but the overall Eldritch Abomination Tathamet. Oh boy. Heaven got invaded thanks to that.
• In Die Reise ins All, Professor Heissen is possessed by an evil ghost from Mars.
• Happens from time to time in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and its interquel Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory, as Digimon are Emotion Eaters that gain power from and can influence human emotion, be it positive or negative.
  • In Hacker's Memory, The Leader & Broken Ace Ryuji ends up being possessed by Arcadiamon in the latter half of the game, who amplifies his negative emotions and drives him to attack people & mons almost indiscriminately while helping it feed on other Digimon.
  • Again in Memory, the Player Character's yandere Gay Best Friend Yu ends up being possessed by a Matadormon which uses his feelings for the player to drive him to more unstable behavior before attempting a Kill and Replace on him.
• Digital Devil Saga: the Four Seraphs and Metatron joined in, converting five poor saps into their physical bodies through the Demon Virus and obliterating their memories and personalities, making it a horrific combo between Type 1 and 2.
• Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: In the worst ending, the real Overlord Zenon possesses Adell after he is forced to kill Rozalin.
• Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance: The Final Boss of the game is the revived Liezerota, albeit possessed by the disembodied malice of her younger brother, Void Dark.
• In Dishonored, Corvo Attano can possess animals (rats are small and quiet, fish can swim through otherwise inaccessible points of entry, hounds run swiftly), and then upgrade the ability to possess humans as well, allowing him to position guards to disable them or walk past security systems undetected. The downside is that it won't last longer than several seconds and controlling human bodies is too clumsy and awkward to do anything with them besides move around. He seems to become incorporeal to do so. Leaving his victim causes nausea in humans and instant death in animals. The power is supernatural, but not demonic — it was gifted to him, no strings attached, by the Outsider.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Lohse, who can either be a Player Character Avatar or recruitable to the Player Party, is described as a "playground" for sprites and spirits. Chiefly, she's troubled by a new, darker presence that's compelling her to do terrible things like murder an innocent elf apropos of nothing. Her personal quest revolves around discovering information about this powerful demon within her. You can, through the course of dialogue and several quests, excise the demon and free her from its influence or Lohse can choose to co-operate with it and share her ascension to Divinity in a unique ending where they rule as dual Divines of Light and Dark.
• The various Doom games have "former humans", soldiers who were killed, possessed by the demons invading our reality, and reanimated as zombies. They vary from walking, gun-toting corpses, to fully-cognizant possessed ex-humans with heavy firepower.
• In DON'T LOOK AWAY, the Entity is implied to be an intangible demonic force that is possessing the mannequins.
• Dragon Age:
  • Most of the inhuman enemies in Dragon Age: Origins who aren't Darkspawn are the results of Demonic Possession, which is a risk anyone with magic talent faces. Corpses and trees can also be possessed. And those are just the ones the player fights. There is also discussion of a cat that got possessed by a Rage Demon and killed three Templars.
  • Anders in Dragon Age II suffers from a case of this, though it's not as clear cut as most cases. He voluntarily allowed his friend, the spirit of Justice, to come into his body. Anders' own hatred of his magically inclined brethren's oppression perverted Justice into Vengeance, who's a tad more angry.
• Dragon Quest
  • In Dragon Quest VIII it is revealed that the antagonist Dhoulmagus is actually possessed by the REAL antagonist Rhapthorne, who possesses many other people throughout the game.
  • In Dragon Quest XI, King Carnelian is revealed at the end of the first act to have been possessed by Mordegon, explaining his intense hostility toward the Luminary.
• The Watchers in Drakengard have possessed the Big Bad. This becomes evident when she starts talking in two different voices, or shades between: her normal, little girl voice, and a foreboding, evil man voice.
• A core player ability in the Dungeon Keeper series, in which you can do this to any creature under your control. Mainly useful for combat, fast scouting, digging and claiming of territory, and in the unofficial expansion, Ancient Keeper to suppress normal emotional responses at key times.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, the Daedric Princes (and presumably the other various deities of the series) have been shown to be capable of this, though it isn't a common occurrence. (They far more often take the form of a mortal avatar if needed.) In Skyrim, Boethiah, the Daedric Price of Plots (and Murder, Deceit, Betrayal, etc.) communicates with the player by taking over the dead body of one of her followers. However, Boethiah finds mortal flesh "distasteful", which could explain the rarity of this occurrence. (As seen elsewhere in the series', it is basically a Brown Note to immortal beings for them to have to experience limitation or mortality.)
• In Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy in the U.S.) the protagonist is possessed by the Big Bad and murders a man in a diner.
• Finding Light: The third boss of Heaven's Door is Abbie, who is being possessed by Zamas. He can possess her directly unlike his other pawns, since she has no soul.
• Takes place several times in the Fire Emblem franchise:
  • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War... upon reading the Tome of Eldritch Lore, Prince Julius ends up as an avatar of a Dark God. Irredeemably so, at that through a combination of Type 2 and 3 — and this was all set up by the head of the game's Religion of Evil as to unseal the Sealed Evil in a Can... right down to the victim's birth.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Prince Lyon has either type two or type four depending on which sibling's path is chosen.
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening this happens to the Player Character of the game in the Bad Future, who (kinda like Julius) was the product of a Super Breeding Program destined to get the perfect host for the local Evil God. When said Evil God time-traveled to the present to stop the pesky kids of the heroes from preventing his rise and became weakened in the process, however, he tries to forcibly do it again to the present Player Character after getting greedy, but he overestimates their current strength and fails, weakening himself further and giving them amnesia. Events then conspire to keep the Player Character from becoming his vessel in this time, so the Evil God uses himself to revive his present self instead.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has the Big Bad, Anankos, pull the trope on Prince Takumi in the Conquest path, and Gunter in the Revelations route. It's so bad in the first case that Anankos forces Takumi to kill himself and then uses his corpse as a puppet-like Final Boss; in the second one, however, Gunter is ultimately saved.
  • Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia's Adaptation Expansion explains that those who give their soul to the local Mad God Duma gain power in exchange for their identity and independent will. Most of them end up as Empty Shells that follow Duma's will almost like zombies, but co-protagonist Celica becomes a particularly animated vessel that Duma uses to try to kill The Hero, Alm. She probably retains her free will because she is a Brand Bearer, but with the Brand of Duma's sister Mila.
• In Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, the Big Bad Vanessa/Vanny is partially possessed by the Virtual Ghost of Serial Killer William Afton, who acts as a voice in her head manipulating her into continuing his work.
• FEAR 3 has Paxton Fettel possessing people, but without a constant intake of souls the possession will fail within a minute, causing the host to explode. Spectres also possess people in a similar way.
• Demonic possession forms a prevalent part of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. There are even specific mooks who quite happily invade the bodies of NPCs, including the Busters. The most obvious example of this is, of course, Ray, who gets possessed after playing the hero — "they'll have to go through me first!" Nice going, Doc. The Xbox version of the game has him get possessed again later on his way to the security office at the museum, with him babbling incoherently over the walkie-talkies. Then, of course, there's Illysa and Peck, both of whom get possessed at the museum. And the Mayor, who gets possessed by Ivo Shandor.
• Ghost Trick's Sissel can possess dead bodies, but only so he can contact their souls. Yomiel, on the other hand, can manipulate both the living and the dead.
• In Golden Axe III, players can fight other hero characters who had been possessed if they go on certain routes. After defeating them, something floats out of their bodies and they recover their senses. Same thing with the last fight against Eve the griffin.
• Grandia II kicks off with the Wings of Valmar possessing the priestess Elena, taking on the name Millennia and transforming Elena's body whenever she's in control. In time, the arrangement becomes more a case of Sharing a Body instead.
• Guilty Gear has a Shout-Out to The Bible in Zappa, (yes, named after THAT Zappa) who is possessed by five (or rather, seven — one is a set of triplets) separate ghosts. The players have no say in which one comes out, and they all fight differently (the only guaranteed emergence is if they summon with eight "eyes", in which case the strongest gets out). They're led by a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl named S-Ko. By the time REVELATOR hits, however, Zappa has managed to "tame" the seven ghosts and keep them at bay.
• Haunting Starring Polterguy: With a magic spell called "zombie eyes", poltergeist Polterguy can possess one family member and scare the other ones with them.
• Jade Empire: One of the supporting characters is a girl possessed by two demons. One of them is a "Heavenly Gate Guardian" who was sent along to aid the protagonist on his quest to restore balance to the world, while the other is his negative double whose thoughts bend towards world domination and human suffering. Your choices in the game determine which demon exhibits control.
• Kingdom Hearts
  • Riku in the first game, after losing a fight with the hero, is goaded by a mysterious figure into further opening his heart to darkness, telling him it will increase his power. He gets stronger, but not in the way he expects...
  • In Birth By Sleep it's revealed that that Xehanort, the Big Bad from the previous games, is actually a Keyblade master named Terra, who, like Riku, gave into the darkness in his desire for revenge, thus allowing the original Xehanort, an old Keyblade master, to possess his body, and become the Xehanort that we all know and love.
• In King of the Castle, the Possession scheme involves the Counts of the East summoning one of two demons to possess the King and have them act as a puppet until they outlive their usefulness and are quietly bumped off in favour of the real string-puller, the Counts' preferred claimant. If the scheme succeeds, the King is said to effectively be a prisoner in their own body, no longer able to speak or act for themselves.
• In the Kirby series, the Dark Matter is a possessor even capable of changing the shape of the body currently being possessed.
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land: The Master Crown. It may look like it only grants its wearer limitless power, but when it does so, it corrupts their heart with darkness and turns them into Omnicidal Maniacs hellbent on destroying everything. This is what happens to Magolor when the crown corrupts him after letting all of the power go to his head. Magolor Soul is even worse considering that he's described as an Empty Shell for the crown to control. Hammering this point home is Magolor Soul's True Arena rematch in Deluxe, where he faintly be heard crying for help after the Theme Music Power-Up kicks in.
  • Kirby Star Allies has the Jamba Heart, which corrupts and possesses King Dedede, Meta Knight, and Whispy Woods at the beginning of the game. These possessions would later go on to create their Parallel counterparts in the Heroes in Another Dimension post-game.
  • There's also Kirby and the Forgotten Land with Fecto Forgo, who uses mind control to control the members of the Beast Pack and drive them insane (King Dedede acting like a enraged boar as Forgo Dedede). This is most prominent with Leongar, whom Soul Forgo completely possesses in the post-game under the new name "Forgo Leon".
• Legacy of Kain. While it's not done by the actual demons, the ones who mainly do this are related. It's done to either corpses or unwilling living people. The host is gradually worn out, and can be immediately used up if the possessor decides to transform it.
• Legend of Legaia
  • It is strongly hinted that Cort's Seru is a piece of Rogue, the in-universe analogue of Satan. Where he was once a Well-Intentioned Extremist^note To the extent that he was motivated to help his country win a long-lasting war and generally good-natured, after becoming involved with the Mist, he took a far darker turn in personality and motives.
  • More generally, any human wearing a Seru in the presence of Mist will be possessed by the Seru and the Mist. The entire plot of the game revolves around eradicating the Mist and freeing the populace of the world.
• Lethal Company contains Comedy and Tragedy theatre masks that can be found on Rend, Titan, Dine, and Assurance, which may be collected as scrap or be worn. However, masks can possess the player holding them if worn for too long, converting the player into a Masked that will attempt to hunt and assimilate other players by spewing blood into their helmets. Becoming a Masked counts as death.
• The Legend of Zelda
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the Skull Kid is possessed by Majora by wearing Majora's Mask. This was a gradual and lighter-in-tone possession, for the Skull Kid could still decide most of his actions and he wasn't completely possessed until the night of the final day when the moon comes crashing down.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has Bellumbeck.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess features Puppet Zelda.
  • The plot of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is that the villains need Zelda's body in order to resurrect an ancient Demon King, and they boot out her soul first to prevent her from Fighting from the Inside.
    • As with Twilight Princess, Zelda gets possessed because her empty body is kidnapped, so the Evil Chancellor can revive a demon Paper Mario 2-style.
    • The reverse happens, too. Link is about to get his block hacked off by a Phantom, when it suddenly stops dead in its tracks. Considering that the Evil Chancellor has her empty body, that leaves her soul free to take other measures in aiding Link. Put two and two together, kids.
    • It also happens in the final battle. After Zelda gains her body back, Malladus simply possesses Chancellor Cole. He can't apparently maintain control of his form for long, but then wants to destroy the world in short time that's left.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games: This is Veran's trademark. First is Impa, briefly before possessing the Oracle Nayru, and lastly Queen Ambi.
  • This is implied to be the case with Agahnim in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, although it's also possible that he was just a disguise for Ganon the entire time.
  • The sequel The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds plays it a bit more straight with Yuga. He merges with Ganon with no ill effects to himself at least. Hilda isn't too pleased when she finds out he was never working for her.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon has turned into such a powerful Eldritch Abomination that he is able to possess all the Magitek Sheikah robots that had recently been unearthed and turn them against the Hyruleans who had planned to use them against him.
• The teachers and staff after the darkness swept through the school of LIT (2009). Presumably the students too, if those are what the hands that drag you down belong to.
• LittleBigPlanet 3: Early in the game, Newton opens the lid to the container that the Titans are sealed in, and ends up being possessed by them, becoming the game's main antagonist. He gets better by the end, though.
• Lucifer Within Us revolves around this, as the player is sent to investigate murders committed by people hiding demonic possession and root them out. Subverted when it's revealed that the "demons" were in fact rogue AI that took the names of actual demons.
• Mass Effect has Reapers do this once they decide their mooks have failed, or the fight is important enough to require personal intervention.
  • The final fight of the first game has Sovereign melt the flesh off Saren's corpse to fight Commander Shepard with Saren's cybernetic implants.
  • "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!!!" Sound familiar? It should: the Reaper known as Harbinger can possess a bog-standard Collector and turn it into a dangerous mini-boss. If you're unlucky this will happen almost every Collector fight.
• The protagonist of Messiah. He is an angel, not a demon, but can possess people all the same — it's the game's main gimmick, in fact. It's implied that when possessing, you have access to some of the victim's knowledge and skills, since in a worker body you can repair and use machinery that "only workers know how to operate". At the end of the game, you get to meet Satan's imps, who can possess people as well.
• While the Ing from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes aren't really demons (although being extradimensional creatures of darkness, they're probably close enough), they fit this trope as they must possess the bodies of other creatures to survive in our dimension. They open a dimensional portal and come through in a gaseous form, entering the body of a nearby creature (be it organic or robotic) and possessing it. The possessed creature will gain a darker colour and become more powerful. Once Dark Aether is destroyed by Samus, the only remaining surviving Ing in the universe are the ones who managed to pull this off. The revelation in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption that Phazon, the substance that created Dark Aether and the Ing that live on it, is sentient and can corrupt any living creature (or even machines that hold value to them, such as Ingsmashers) to evil means that it also retroactively applies to all Phazon-mutated creatures in the first Metroid Prime game as well, made most readily apparent with the previously benign Chozo Ghosts.
• Early on in Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Momohime gets possessed by a demon named Jinkuro, forcing her original soul out of her body. An evil monk then steals the soul to give to a giant demon, and Momohime-Jinkuro has to rush to get it back, because if the original soul is destroyed, then Momohime's body will wither and die, leaving him once again without a vessel.
• In one of the endings of Ogre Battle, the demon Galf possesses your victorious character, ruling the now united continent in your name.
• Oxenfree: This begins to happen to everybody after Alex and Jonas accidentally release the ghosts trapped on the island. As the game goes on, the ghosts begin to talk through the main characters — particularly Clarissa and Jonas. About two thirds of the way through the game, a possessed Clarissa tells Alex that the ghosts have been slowly 'soaking' into her and her friends, and will have complete control by dawn.
• Two characters are possessed by a demon in Phantasmagoria. The original host, magician Zoltan Carnovash, murders his wives under its influence, and is finally killed by the final victim's lover during a rigged stage performance. The forcibly exorcised demon returns to the spellbook from where it was summoned, which another character places inside the small chapel and weighted under a large Bible. Much later, protagonist Adrienne Delaney stumbles upon the chapel and curiously looks inside the spellbook, unknowingly releasing the demon which proceeds to possess her husband Donald Gordon, who starts exhibiting increasingly violent tendencies until the final chapter has him trying very hard to kill Adrienne.
• Pilgrim (RPG Maker): Master Alice is hinted to have done this to Mary after taking her soul — they look exactly the same, but Mary is much more compassionate, and is implied to have made a deal with Alice.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Local folklore about the undead known as Revenants, as said in the Guide:
  After a human dies, it is said that the body can be possessed by a demon with a strong enough grudge against the world.
• Putty has a ghost that turns Bots into demons. The possessed Bots grow horns and explode after a minute.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, the Channelers in Pokémon Tower have been possessed by their own Ghost Pokémon, causing them to attack anyone who gets too close while moaning like zombies, screaming, or demanding the player's blood. Defeating them in battle brings them back to normal and they'll thank the player for freeing them.
  • It's said the Ghost-type Sentient Sands Pokémon Palossand in Pokémon Sun and Moon would maintain its shape by possessing humans to form it into a sandcastle, with each grain having its own consciousness, allowing it to do this en masse.
• Puyo Puyo Fever 2 has Klug transforming into Strange Klug when the demon in the possessed book decides to move in. Some people just never learn that carrying around something like that book is a BAD IDEA.
• Happens in Quest for Glory III: Wages of War, where Demons possess humans and humanoids, and can either chose to remain hidden inside a fleshy suit, or completely morph the host into their original Demon (And Bulky) form.
• Randal's Monday: Sally gets possessed by Satan, though it's implied she may have more control.
• Happens gradually to Globox in Rayman: Hoodlum's Revenge, in which Andre, the big bad of the previous game, manifests as a spirit inside his body; this causes Globox’s personality to become more malevolent as time goes on. It gets to the point where Andre is able to transform the poor amphibian into a clone of his old partner Reflux, resulting in this game’s final battle. Bonus points for this example because Andre never appears on-screen in Revenge, only being represented through the corrupted Globox the entire time.
• Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins: The spirit of Titus I intends to take over the protagonist's body after the latter proves themselves worthy. When that fails, Titus takes over the body of one of the protagonist's close friends, depending on the route.
• Nicholai Conrad in Shadow Hearts Covenant gets a nice power boost by making a certain Deal with the Devil. At first, he has a great control over his demon (due to his massive ego), but when he gets captured and experimented on by the Japanese army, he is weakened enough that he is overtaken by Astaroth, the fallen angel of vanity and sloth.
• Shadow of the Colossus has Wander gradually possessed by Dormin.
• Several characters from Shining the Holy Ark are possessed by evil spirits. Notably the King and one of your former allies. The spirits are mostly invisible but a certain spell can bring them into corporeal form; enabling you to sever their connection to the host and their life expectancy.
• In Shounen Kininden Tsumuji, it is revealed that the Dark Ninjas were possessed by Demon Ghosts controlled by the Big Bad.
• Sonic Unleashed: you can converse with the townsfolk in the hub worlds, and some of them at night become possessed by Dark Gaia monsters, who make them either depressed, apathetic, or weirdly for some normally serious characters, laid-back and happy. As side missions, you can perform 'exorcisms' on them by flashing them with a camera and then defeating their "demons."
• Soul Nomad & the World Eaters
  • Invoked: the main character's mentor purposefully exposes the main character to possession by Gig, an evil force inhabiting an Artifact of Doom, because she's aware that the main character is strong-souled enough not to be booted out and you need the power from the possession to save the world. Gig is not pleased when he discovers that he's forced to play second-fiddle and power battery to some bright-eyed Heroic Mime he has no real control over — still, sooner or later, the hero will draw on too much of his power, and then it's his time to shine...
  • The New Game Plus has the demon path, where the main character willingly gives in to Gig's influence, much to his delight; until he is ''out-eviled’’.
  • Raksha bought two slave children, then broke them so he could inhabit their soulless bodies...and then he starts to really be a jerk.
• The main antagonist of the Soul Series is the spirit of an Evil Weapon called "Soul Edge". This spirit, named "Inferno", can't normally exist in the world of the living but must feast on the souls of those that do. In order to do this, it subjugates people who come into contact with Soul Edge to do its genocidal bidding. The process of becoming enslaved to Soul Edge's will is called "Malfestation" and the most noteworthy person to succumb is Siegfried Schtauffen, who picked up the male Soul Edge sword after Cervantes was felled in his ending of Soul Edge, taking the moniker "Nightmare" in the following two games.
• Spirits of Anglerwood Forest: After luring Edgar to Angler's Maw, Ezra tries possessing Edgar's body, but Edgar manages to drive him off.
• The Rise of the Emperor storyline in Star Wars: The Old Republic has the ghost of Emperor Vitiate perform an almost planet-wide possession of the people of the planet Ziost, driving everyone under his control to kill each other before draining the planet of all life altogether in order to come back from the dead. And the player is powerless to stop him.
• Oni in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition is either this or a Superpowered Evil Side, depending on how one interprets the Satsui no Hadou (as a sentient entity whom Akuma channeled to gain power then it is possession, otherwise it is Akuma sacrificing more of his humanity than he was able to control and not being able to come back from it).
• Wonderfully inverted in Summon Night Sword Craft Story 2 where a demon girl is possessed by an angel girl. The later only comes out when the former goes too far on the tsun side however.
• Super Mario: This actually happens frequently in the franchise as a whole.
  • Bowser definitely gets this the most. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has Cackletta possess Bowser after their defeats in Woohoo University to form Bowletta for the game's second half; it's only when the Mario Bros. defeat her soul in Bowser's body that he is freed from her possession. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time has the Elder Princess Shroob inhabit Bowser's body as a last-ditch effort to defeat the Mario Bros. (and their past selves), though Bowser retains his personality. Bowser would later be possessed by other things, whether its black paint, the MegaBug, or (as required to complete the last portion of the Super Mario Odyssey main storyline), Mario himself.
  • The second and third Paper Mario games has Mario (and co.) forced to fight the people closest to him (albeit possessed by the game's true Big Bad) as the Final Boss. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has the Shadow Queen possessing Peach upon her return by Sir Grodus, the latter of which offers the Princess as a vessel. Super Paper Mario has Dimentio fusing Luigi and the Chaos Heart to form Super Dimentio before taking control of the concoction itself.
  • Mario himself falls victim to this a little early on in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, where Doopliss steals Mario's body, and Mario himself is forced to fight him as a spirit.
  • Antasma does this to a few people in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, possessing Broque Monsieur in the intro and Bowser in a battle part way through the game.
  • Rosalina gets this in Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, where she is possessed by Cursa for the vast majority of the game.
  • Not even sports games are immune: Mario Tennis Aces sees Luigi, Wario and Waluigi all get possessed by the evil racket Lucien.
• Star Warrior II: In both endings, Vie turns out to be the host of the Cosmic Darkness. She isn't fully aware of it, but has a bad feeling if the player makes her go back to Dia's base. Sure enough, she's fully taken over in the bad ending and kills everyone in the base.
• In Super Robot Wars NEO, Amane Inaba gets possessed by Larva.
• Sword of Paladin: Augustus, and later Alex, are possessed by Ragnarek, a former Asgard emperor who betrayed Charlemagne. He intends to use them as proxies to control the Royal Gems and use them to destroy the world, out of spite towards those who dethroned him. This is made possible due to Ragnarek utilizing the power of Miasma to keep his spirit alive.
• Tales from the Borderlands has an interesting case very similar to demonic possession where Rhys accidentally uploads an AI version of the villain Handsome Jack, and at one point said entity tries to control him to commit suicide out of revenge. The only thing that moves it from typical possession is the possessor is technological rather than supernatural.
• Tales of Graces happens to Richard at the end of the childhood arc, and causes him to become the game's Big Bad. This is a special case in that the possession is actually somewhat symbiotic: Lambda is forcibly ejected from Richard's body by Emeraude, but after Emeraude is defeated, Richard asks Lambda to come back and possess him again.
• Taut has this occur with Maria, the policewoman, who was going to help Judith find her mother. After getting possessed, she slowly approaches the room Judith is in and she needs to escape, before being caught.
• Tears to Tiara 2: Metatronius possesses Abraxas to break his seal and resume heaven's original plan to turn humans into helpless praying idiots. Melqart, the Ax-Crazy Godofwar also came close to possessing Hamil.
• TOME: Spirits can possess any body on the ground; effectively raising them Back from the Dead. Gameplay and Story Segregation means there is little difference between a possessed corpse and its original. For clever individuals with a Wish spell, one can create a Familiar Spirit and have it possess anything with a corpse; making that your familiar. Gandalf, the Superboss, anything that you killed with a body that you preserved. One of the classes is "Symbiote" which means you can fuse yourself with any Familiar that doesn't move. One of the Bonus Bosses is a Mold...
• Unepic: Daniel ends up in a medieval fantasy universe and is promptly possessed by an evil spirit — which is unable to take over his body due to him having no faith.
• Until Dawn: People who commit cannibalism on the mountain are possessed by the spirit of the Wendigo, and transformed into monsters. When Hannah is forced to eat her dead twin sister to attempt to survive lost in a mine, she is possessed by Makkapitew, the most powerful Wendigo ever.
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter: All of Ethan's family members are befallen by a malevolent spirit known as the Sleeper which makes them want to kill Ethan.
• Varth: Operation Thunderstorm: DUO possessed DELTA-7 and turned mankind's defenses against it through the computer.
• Vermintide II: In her Necromancer career, Sienna is strongly hinted to be possessed, or at least strongly influenced, by Sofia's lingering ghost. Markus is the first to express doubts on the matter, although the others also find this concerning once he raises the point — after all, twins are known to share close bonds, and necromancers never die easy, and they did kill Sienna's necromancer twin right before she decided to become one too...
  Bardin: Let me get this straight. You reckon Zharrin's been possessed by the spirit of her twin sister? And this isn't a joke?
  Viktor: Not possessed exactly...
  Markus: But there's defintely more than one set of hands on the reins right now.
  Bardin: I'm still waiting for the part where you tell me this is all a joke.
• Warframe: Those who have been corrupted by the Void, possibly. While it's obvious that they go Axe-Crazy and try to kill everything in sight, it's possible that they are being puppeteered by "the Man in the Wall," a strange eldritch entity that may or may not want to wipe out all of humanity. Oh, and the Man definitely possesses the Tenno briefly at the end of The War Within. It occasionally pops up in your Orbiter, wearing your face, after the Chains of Harrow quest.
• Warhammer 40,000: Darktide: This happens more than a few times in the form of Daemonhosts that appear on the map. Essentially the game's version of a Witch, these are mortals who have had a daemon forcibly bound to their body. While inert, the Daemon host sits hunched over on the ground and whispering, including insisting that they are not bad people and praying to the Emperor for deliverance from their fate, implying that the hosts were unwilling and are fighting against the daemon's influence. When the players get close, the daemon begins to exert more and more control until finally, when fully active, the Daemonhost grows horns and claws made of green [[Hellfire balefire]], levitates off of the ground, and the daemon takes full control so it can begin its rampage against the players in an attempt to consume their souls.
• Wild ARMs: Happes a few times:
  • A very disturbing example happens in Wild ARMs when Mother turns out to be Not Quite Dead and possess her son Ziekfried by eating him alive. From then on Ziekfried changes from wanting to conquer Filgaia to replace the lost Hiades to wanting to destroy it. Something remarked on by Cecilia in the original and Alhazad in the remake.
  • Early in Wild ARMs 2, an entire building full of people are possessed by demons, including the main character. He manages to stumble over to the legendary sword used to seal away a great evil who happens to be the very demon possessing him and absorbs it into his body, effectively cancelling each other out. This is later revealed to have given him a Super Mode that's at risk of becoming a Superpowered Evil Side. The final battle is a one-on-one fight between the protagonist and the demon inside his own soul.
  • Wild ARMs: Million Memories implies re-use of Mother's demonic possession from the first game at the very end. Only this time it's Vinsfeld from the second game who's been possessed, as evidence by the red eyes and the sudden interest in destruction.
• A bizarre example in Wintermoor Tactics Club, as the demon Ilemauzar appears to have possessed every single Clubless Club member, all at once, draining and feeding off their pain and loneliness. On a more light-hearted note, Scarlet has apparently been demonically possessed multiple times, as she mentions when Jania breaks her out of it.
• World of Warcraft:
  • There is a Boss in the Serpentshrine Cavern instance. His name is Leotheras the Blind, and while he's an incredible danger all on his own, There exists an unnamed demon within him that occasionally transforms his body into a Chernabog-like creature and throws spells that can decimate any party member not specifically geared to survive his attacks. When Leo is nearly defeated, the Demon leaves the host, and the raid group has to fight them both simultaneously.
  • Also in the background, the fallen Titan Sargeras, lord of the Burning Legion possessed Medivh, the next Guardian of Tirisfal and an immensely powerful mage, before he was born. Medivh then opened the Dark Portal, through which the orcs came to the world. However, he was killed before Sargeras could fulfill his plans, causing him to be sent back to the nether without his body, effectively preventing from having further effect on the story... until right before the Third War, that is.
  • Grand Crusader Dathrohan/Balnazzar of the Scarlet Crusade. Dathrohan was killed first, but it's explicitly called possession. Wearing a paladin's body has given him lots of opportunity to cause trouble...
  • Kalecgos, the blue dragonflight youth, is possessed by a demon named Sathrovarr when you fight him in the Sunwell Plateau instance. The whole thing is set up as an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight, where players jump into Kalecgos's mind to help him fend off Sathrovarr in his Battle in the Center of the Mind.
• In Xenogears, Miang, a servant of Deus, can possess any woman with her genetic material. Since she's her planet's "Eve", that means effectively any woman. Ironically, the two main characters are using the very same MO to reincarnate themselves over and over: The Irony being that, Elly now has the genetic material of her first incarnation and Miang's genetic material.
• Yo-kai Watch features Youkai "inspiriting" humans and influencing their behavior, and the player can use this to their advantage by having their mons inspirit other Youkai and inflict status effects.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, after you defeat Bandit Keith in a duel, Reshef possesses him and makes him get back up. The added power makes Keith too dangerous to duel again, and he quickly gains the upper hand.
  • At the end of the game, you learn Pegasus is possessed by the spirit of Reshef.

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