Evil Is Petty / Video Games

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• Ace Attorney:
  • The whole plot of the first game happened because Manfred von Karma was such a perfectionist he couldn't stand getting a single penalty on his record. So the one time it did happen, he murdered the attorney who got him penalized and raised his son, Miles Edgeworth, to be an Amoral Attorney just because he knew his victim was a Crusading Lawyer who would hate that, gaslit Miles into believing that he'd killed his own father, and finally framed him for murder. That's a lot to do because he got embarrassed once in a case he didn't even lose...
  • The victim and culprit of Farewell, My Turnabout are a pair of these, having a toxic rivalry that caused them to ruin lives just because neither could bear to be seconded to the other, with the main difference between them being that the culprit was willing to go further faster and hired an assassin to kill the victim. Matt Engarde decided to ruin Juan Corrida and Celeste Inpax's marriage simply because they were happy together, and all he needed to do to break them up was say that Celeste had previously dated him, which immediately caused Juan to break up with her because of his bruised ego. This led to Celeste committing suicide, and Juan forged a suicide note to implicate Matt, and when Matt found out about it, he preempted the problem by hiring Shelly de Killer to off Juan.
  • The reason Phoenix got disbarred 7 years before Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is because Kristoph Gavin was an even pettier Jerkass than Manfred von Karma. The inciting incident was Zak Gramarye firing Kristoph and hiring Phoenix because he didn't think the former was trustworthy- which, as the following shows, was quite an accurate character assessment. Phoenix never even knew Zak had a previous lawyer, but for the crime of being honest and good at his job Kristoph passed the forged evidence he'd originally intended to use himself onto Phoenix and used his brother Klavier as an Unwitting Pawn to expose the forgery, ruining Phoenix's career until Apollo proved him innocent 7 years later. And the next time Kristoph meets Zak, he murders Zak with his own hands for daring to think that Phoenix was a better lawyer than him- and, admittedly, to stop Zak from potentially revealing information that would've led Phoenix to realize Kristoph was behind the forgery.
  • The second culprit of Dual Destinies commits all his crimes because he's heavily in debt and desperately needs a lot of money fast. Why is he in so much debt? He invented a line of beauty products exclusively for his own personal use, and refuses to sell them to the public despite them being very highly in demand. Which might have been fine, was he not so narcissistic that he insists on wasting all of his money advertising them to the public just to rub it in the filthy peasants' faces that they'll never be able to have them.
  • In Spirit of Justice: Roger Retinz wants revenge on Troupe Gramarye for kicking him out... in what was possibly the most reasonable decision Magnifi Gramarye ever made, because Retinz had insisted in performing while injured, which, given the nature of Troupe Gramarye's act, could've endangered himself or the audience.
• Assassin's Creed II featured several villains who seemed mainly to be involved with the Knights Templar for political cover who are as mean, vicious, and cruel as possible, though Vieri de' Pazzi and Marco Barbarigo stand out as the most overt examples; overall, the Templar order seems to have devolved towards this by the time of the game's events (compared to its Assassin's Creed incarnation).
  • Rodrigo Borgia himself mentions to Ezio that he didn't need to execute Ezio's brothers Federico and Petruccio (their father was the star witness against a Borgia-backed conspiracy), but did it simply because he could.
• Pick a BioWare RPG. Any Bioware RPG.
  • In Baldur's Gate, the only way for the game to register you being evil is to randomly murder townspeople, though you can also choose to be unpleasant to everyone you meet. Most of the main- and side-quests shift your reputation upwards, to the degree that the Superpowered Evil Side you eventually gain is often used by evil players just for controlling unchecked alignment growth.
  • Similarly, the large number of quests that shift up your Karma Meter in the first Neverwinter Nights mean that unless you go out of your way to threaten and murder people for no particular reason, you automatically do a Heel–Face Turn. Even a lot of actions that should be evil but aren't pointlessly so (like committing genocide on the Elk Tribe instead of negotiating peace) don't shift you down.
  • Despite the pretenses of being a deeper philosophical movement, with only a few exceptions the Way of the Closed Fist in Jade Empire in practice seems to amount to being a dick to everyone you meet, mugging peasants for insignificant amounts of silver, and generally ostracizing and ruining the lives of everyone around you for no other reason than because you can.
    • A particularly egregious example is a situation where a mother asks you to help her daughter who is being sold into slavery. The choices are to save the daughter, to sell the daughter AND the mother to the slaver or to convince the daughter to show her individual strength by killing the slaver and thus "earn" her freedom. According to the stated philosophy of the Closed Fist, the third option is the closest to it, as the daughter has proved that she has the strength and will to survive by overcoming her would-be captor. Yet, it is the cartoonishly evil option, selling both to the slaver, that earns the most Closed Fist points AND a Closed Fist martial arts move. Exemplified by the fact that, once you have enough Dark Si...Closed Fist points, the game actually unlocks a context-sensitive move to KICK PUPPIES.
  • Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith in KOTOR are defined by this. The way their philosophy is written actually sounds reasonable — following your passions will lead to personal freedom. Taken to a reasonable level, this is putting the people/things you care about first. Taken to a realistically extremist level, this is being willed to protect the people/things you care about at the expense of anything else out there. Taken to Stupid Evil, this is killing people just because you don't like them, or just because you can. Guess which one BioWare picked?
    • A long sidequest that, at one point, requires you to notify a father of the death of his son (who was mauled by a pack of space wolves) offers the option to refer to the unfortunate lad as a chew toy. Truly a sign of pure evil. Although in Bioware's defense, it DOES offer the option to extort money from the poor man in exchange for his son's journal.
    • Discussed in the second game. You can threaten to kill a beggar, sending him running away. Your creepy mentor Kreia will ask what the point was and the Exile will reply that these petty cruelties are all the universe gives them most of the time. Kreia suggests that with a little forethought, and the Force, even these little moments can be turned into greater tragedies.
  • Mass Effect tends to be one of the better implementations of a Karma Meter, with Paragon and Renegade being more like Merciful vs. Ruthless than Good vs. Evil. However, to get all the Renegade points still requires some level of petty jerkiness such as being highly xenophobic and pointlessly rude. Thankfully, the special options requiring Renegade points are more just pragmatic and badass.
    • Stupid jellies.
    • Pointlessly killing enemies who've already surrendered, shaking people down for money, and helping carry out less than honorable tasks issued by morally ambiguous individuals.
    • Kai Leng, the series' biggest Smug Snake and immensely fun to hate, at one point sends Shepard a gloating email. He even uses a deceptive email title to trick you into reading it. Not to mention the infamous rumor that he once ate Captain Anderson's cereal.
    • General Oleg Petrovsky, of Cerberus, took Omega from Aria, has ruthlessly suppressed its citizenry, has a multistage plan to deal with Aria when she comes back, replaced her nightclub headquarters with a sophisticated tactical command hub... and threw out that couch she likes lounging around on. Certainly not the high point in his career. It does help get her angry enough to blindly charge into a trap later, though.
    • The Big Bad of Mass Effect 3's DLC Citadel (a Cerberus-crafted clone of Commander Shepard) may be the most petty villain in the series, including belittling Shepard's companions, getting Samantha Traynor fired for fraternization, and throwing Shepard's hamster in the garbage (with a note attached requesting it be sent to an animal shelter and euthanized), making Kai Leng appear humane, in comparison.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Dragon Age: Origins doesn't have a Karma Meter and thus has no mechanical way of measuring your evil. Still, many of the 'evil' dialogue options (Morrigan, Sten, Shale approve, Wynne, Alistair, Leliana disapprove) are needlessly confrontational and petty.
    • Still a lot less anvilicious than most BioWare Role Playing Games. There are a lot of petty Jerkass options, but there are also a fair number where you can commit atrocities in a sneaky way and still end up looking like a saint. For example, selling a child's soul for the power of blood magic. And in general, what your party members don't know won't hurt them.
    • Bonus points for selling a child's soul for sex.
    • In Dragon Age II:
    • A sillier version of Hawke considers Meredith's command to slaughter mages who have surrendered to him in the templar campaign of The Last Straw as being petty. When s/he decides to spare them, Meredith angrily glares at Hawke while her men carry out Hawke's orders.
    • Rather than talk their way through a situation, Angry!Hawke can choose to demonstrate that they have no love for the Qunari to the resident fanatic racist mob by flat out killing the hostage, leaving the resident Knight Templar shocked and impressed that you're actually as much of a jerk as him.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic plays it a little odd in regard to faction. Many times, the Republic players' "dark side" action is cold-hearted pragmatism (like sacrificing a ship's engineers or an obnoxious ambassador during a crisis instead of taking extra time to rescue them) and the Light Sided actions are very much "Wide-Eyed Idealist." The Empire's Light side actions are more Pragmatic Villainy or Noble Demon, with their Dark Side actions falling squarely in this territory. Oddly enough, on flashpoints that are shared by both factions what is the Light Sided option for one faction is the Dark Sided one on the other.
• Handsome Jack of Borderlands 2, a self-centered bastard who brings a constant barrage of general nastiness For the Evulz. He frequently calls up the Vault Hunters from time to time just to throw petty mockery at them and/or brag about how mind-blowingly rich he is, and can be counted on to twist the knife after every Player Punch.
  • Hyperion in general, possibly because Jack is the head of the company. From building respawn machines that mock you to giving you, as a quest reward, a gun that berates you for firing it, Hyperion can be relied upon to go out of its way to make everyone's life just a little bit worse.
• Bayonetta 3: In Alternate Paris, the Big Bad Singularity launches a bunch of parasitic Homunculi drones to possess the French military...just to have them bust out a dance move to mock her Demon Slave dances. The parasitic Homuncili are all but a horrible Fate Worse than Death to anyone possessed by them and he could easily crush the French military, meaning that there's really no reason for him to do that bar spiting Bayonetta.
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Hugh Darrow is willing to drive a good chunk of the world insane to smear augmentation technology, ostensibly to prevent The Illuminati from using it for Mind Control. Except he's not even consciously aware that he's doing it because he himself is incompatible with augmentation technology; while anyone else with the money can turn themselves into a superhuman, he, its inventor, is stuck with a cane and a leg brace. When Adam uses his CASIE mod to point this out, the revelation that he's committed the worst terrorist act in recorded history simply because he feels “I was betrayed by my own genetics! Ruined by my own flesh!” will trigger a Villainous Breakdown.
• In the Disgaea series, it's generally accepted that, no matter what demons themselves actually tell you, most of them aren't really evil so much as they're just jackasses.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Linder Kemm sold his soul to the Greater-Scope Villain, orchestrated a massacre of his political rivals, tries to execute a subordinate for accepting enemies' surrender, and throws a dog's favourite ball away.
• In the free RPG Maker game Easter, the eponymous main character was raped as a child by his father, so he decides to ruin his friends and his little brother' lives because he can't stand they're happier than him.
• In The Elder Scrolls, while not inherently "evil", this is a trait of Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge. In Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC, Mora covets the secrets of the Skaal, a shamanistic Nord community on the isle of Solstheim. These secrets are nothing more than religious rituals of no real consequence or meaning to outsiders, but Hermaeus Mora refuses to help the Dragonborn against Miraak unless he gets the secrets, because as the Prince of Knowledge, he can't abide the thought of not knowing something.
• In EvilQuest, Galvis, aside from his grandiose schemes, he isn't above general dickishness. In one case he refuses to Mercy Kill a man afflicted with frostbite.
• The Fable series:
  • Fable. There are very few evil sidequests, and several of the story quests give good points, so the only way to get evil points is random acts of cruelty, such as petty theft, random murder, and the game's Moral Event Horizon: beating your wife, which is viewed as ten times as evil as actually killing her. There are a (very) few story actions that are construed as evil, but you're railroaded into saving the world anyway.
  • Fable II is much better about this: the main story quests are neither good nor evil, but you get the option of committing decidedly evil acts during at least one such quest. In addition, every sidequest either has an evil path from the beginning or culminates in a choice between good and evil by the end of it. It's much, ''much'' easier to go full evil and never go back. Conversely, it's much harder to go full good and never go back.
  • One quest in Fable III has you tracking down rare books for the Brightwall Academy. A few of them are of famous killers, but one of them is not a killer at all; The author only wrote that he was to make his life miserable. All because he sat in the author's chair.
• The Fallout series:
  • The first and second Fallout games essentially invert this trope, as every little errand you can run for anyone gives good karma, even if you're paid to do it. Bad karma is usually only gained from the bad choices in large quests or wanton slaughter.
  • Fallout 3 adopts a karma system that gives more evil brownie points for petty and obnoxious comments and actions, and yet the scale so easily slides toward good that you can nuke an unsuspecting population and, if you don't pay attention, you'll be a saint before you realize! This is bizarre coming from a development company that has tended toward reputation over alignment-based systems, applied to a series that has never placed as much story or game emphasis on karma as on reputation, and in a genre that just doesn't support the polar alignment model.
  • Fallout: New Vegas puts little emphasis on karma, so the game mostly averts this. That, and it's borderline impossible to end up with anything but Very Good karma, unless you ironically choose to not fight back against Powder Gangers trying to rob you, which would be something you'd think a Good character would do.
    • In-story, we have Big Bad Caesar, a man who threatens to kill you if you bring up his defeat at Hoover Dam and throws a temper tantrum, complete with name-calling if you refuse to work for him. In Honest Hearts it's also revealed that he ordered New Canaan — a peaceful, prosperous, altruistic town — to be slaughtered and burned. He did this just to spite Joshua Graham, who was born there. His entire faction seems to operate on this logic. One of the actions that gets you Legion fame? Taking a little girl's teddy bear, watching her cry, and then ripping it up in front of her.
    • For the NCR, there's Colonel Cassandra Moore. If the player works with Ambassador Dennis Crocker to resolve the situation with the Kings peacefully as well as make a truce with the Brotherhood of Steel, Moore will not only get Crocker fired from his job but also go on a smear campaign that reduces the Courier's rep with the NCR.
    • A particular stand-out case comes up during Cold Sniper companion Craig Boone's introductory quest, where he asks you to help him find out who in the town helped the Legion kidnap his pregnant wife Carla, ultimately leading to her death. With a bit of sleuthing, the truth is revealed: the hotel owner, Jeannie May-Crawford loves her town of Novac, to the point that she is standoffish and passive-aggressive towards those who she believes besmirch its humble reputation. Because Carla expressed mild discontent living there, Jeannie saw fit to broker a deal with the slaver army, getting a hefty sum of caps for her and even a promised bonus for when her child was born. All because she felt slighted by the woman's attitude.
    • The Dead Money add-on perhaps has the game's crowning example: Dean Domino is pretty much the entire reason the Sierra Madre is a ghost-infested, poisonous deathtrap that can and has killed anyone not hardy enough to survive there, even before Elijah showed up. It was all part of his scheme to utterly ruin the pre-War owner, Frederick Sinclair. Why would he want to do that, one might wonder? Because Sinclair was happier than him, something that Dean could not fathom nor accept in the slightest. Instead, he convinced himself that Sinclair was deliberately and maliciously rubbing his success in his face. 200 years did nothing to quash this attitude either; if you ever insult him, make him feel inferior, or do anything to show him up, Dean will ultimately betray you and force you to kill him toward the story's end. This means you constantly have to kiss his ass whenever you talk to him and deliberately not pass any of his (very low) skill checks (because, like with Sinclair, he'll interpret that as you showing off and thinking you're better than him), even though he's a total dick who you'd probably gun down within two seconds if it wasn't for the fact that your Explosive Leashes are linked to each other so that if he dies, so do you. In fact, it's the same and only reason as to why he doesn't immediately gun you down.
• Sephiroth's deeds in Final Fantasy VII run the gamut between: torching a town of innocent civilians; manipulating Cloud into obtaining an artifact of unspeakable black magic and delivering it to him; summoning a Meteor to kill all life on the Planet other than himself; killing the woman attempting to stop him; Gaslighting various characters, especially Cloud, apparently more out of amusement than because it helps his plan; and throwing a Materia at Cloud like a rock before flying off over Cloud's head with his mouth open. There's a reason Sephiroth likes to torment Cloud; Spikey had challenged Sephiroth during the Nibelheim incident and won and Cloud had been a regular infantry grunt at the time. Sephiroth's Pride just won't let him accept this, so he uses every opportunity he can to "put Cloud back in his place", so to speak. Still petty, though.
  • In Crisis Core Chapter 3, Zack is about to run after Angeal and Genesis... trips him.
• Final Fantasy XV:
  • In the Episode Ardyn DLC, the Villain Protagonist takes pleasure in killing the people of the kingdom his brother founded, hoping to commit regicide of his distant descendant, and... destroying public decorations.
  • It is implied in the supplementary novel, Dawn of the Future, that Bahamut chose Somnus as the Founder King and condemned Ardyn to become the Immortal Accursed simply because Somnus bore a greater physical resemblance to him.
• With rare exceptions, "evil" in Forum Warz is almost exclusively petty, since there's not much you can do to people over the Internet. Most of your darker actions are things like directing people to Shock Sites or faking a terrorist threat.
• In The Godfather: The Game, you are advised against overly indulging in the Videogame Cruelty Potential.
• The Combine "Civil Protection" goons in Half-Life 2 are happy to assault citizens for littering, loitering, getting within a few feet of them, or just because they feel like it. It quickly becomes apparent that undercover resistance member Barney isn't exaggerating when he mentions his "beating quota".
  • The most iconic example of this is just before leaving the train station, you have to get past a CP officer blocking a doorway who waits for you to get close, knocks an empty can off a trash bin, and makes you dispose of it before letting you through. It's simultaneously a tutorial on how to solve future physics puzzles and a way not to feel bad about all the Civil Protection grunts you'll be mowing down in later levels.
• Guenevere: Hrothulf and Cornelia hire a Byzantine assassin and wage war against Arthur for no other reason than that Arthur's council didn't agree for him to marry their daughter.
• A Hat in Time: At the end of Chapter 2, "Battle of the Birds", whichever bird wins the movie award is revealed to have kept a Time Piece for himself, becoming the boss of that chapter. The Always Second Best DJ Grooves wants to use it to go back in time and undo all of his previous losses, believing the Conductor had to have cheated to keep winning year after year (despite, by his own admission, having no proof of said claim), while the Conductor takes pettiness to extremes and wants to use it to go back in time and undo his one loss in 52 years of competing for the award, just to have a perfect winning streak.
• Hazelnut Hex, a silly Cute 'em Up that runs on an absurd premise, have it's villainess, the Wicked Witch Lamona, trying to deprive the world of breakfast... because nobody wants to buy her cereal brand. Her cauliflower-flavored-cereal brand, for reference.
• Averted in inFAMOUS, where, while you have the option of being a dick and killing random people for the lulz, such actions don't give you evil points. Just like killing enemies won't give you good points. The good/evil axis is defined instead as selflessness vs. selfishness: are you going to turn off that valve and get more psychotropic gunk all over you or are you going to make that random dude there do it for you?
  • You actually do gain tiny amounts of evil karma for assaulting random pedestrians, but it's hardly enough to notice unless you really invest some time in it, and you can actually recover it by healing them afterward.
• In the Injustice: Gods Among Us universe, Superman and his Regime may all have a good reason to want to Take Over the World (eliminate crime altogether in the aftermath of The Joker nuking Metropolis), but all other media in which they have made an appearance or has expanded the universe demonstrates that they are all a bunch of super-destructive dicks who answer to any kind of criticism (be it from another superhuman or some random kid in the streets) with murder, terror and fascism and hide behind their Freudian Excuse because it's an easier thing to do.
• Hades, from Kid Icarus: Uprising, just loves to make fun of Pit and kick him when he's down, and that's before he admits that committing acts of destruction and evil is his idea of a good time.
• Kingdom Hearts: As pointed out by Master Eraqus during a flashback in Birth by Sleep, Master Xehanort's entire plan to cause a second Keyblade War and essentially bring about The End of the World as We Know It is motivated largely by his own personal curiosity.
  • In Birth By Sleep, the first sign of Terra's weak will is that he's tempted to use Darkness to win a harmless sparring match against a friend. Darkness isn't inherently evil — more like a potentially dangerous tool — but drawing on such an alien force solely out of competitiveness is like using a sword to cut fruit. It's possible, but not necessary or safe for you, and the more you do it the more reckless you become. This is why Master Eraqus was disturbed by the event.
• Legacy of Kain: While more of an Anti-Hero than truly evil, Kain has shades of this.
  • In the first Soul Reaver, it's believed that the reason he has Raziel executed is simply that Raziel grew wings and Kain was jealous that Raziel evolved before he did. Defiance subverts it by revealing that the truth is far more complicated; The visions within the Chronoplast informed him of Raziel's future, and in executing Raziel and ensuring his resurrection as a wraith, he created a creature that truly possesses free will and thus was Immune to Fate, a key factor in his ultimate goal to restore Nosgoth.
  • Kain holds a particular dislike of Malek, as he was the only Pillar Guardian in Blood Omen he couldn't defeat in single combat; he had to summon Vorador to do it. He defaced Malek's headstone in the Tomb of the Sarafan, and in Defiance when he needs to retrieve a sword and shield for a statue of Malek to open the path forward, he takes a moment to snark that restoring the statue's dignity is not a task he enjoys.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has the titular mask itself. While its ultimate goal is to destroy Termina, that doesn't stop it from committing smaller and petty acts of cruelty such as shattering the Great Fairies into fragments of themselves, de-aging Kafei into a child days before his wedding, turning Link into a Deku Scrub, attacking Koume in Woodfall Swamp and cursing Termina's four main regions. Unlike most examples, however, this only serves to make Majora all the more terrifying as like the Joker in the Western Animation page, it seems completely indiscriminate in its villainy. Whether it's ruining someone's life, turning people into strange objects, or wanton acts of mass slaughter, it's all part of the same sick game.
• This is one of Alphonse's defining traits in MacGuffin's Curse. Among other things, he pressured the mayor into banning the performing arts, just so he could get revenge on one performer (the protagonist) for seducing his girlfriend. (Also, he paid someone to cut a school bus' brakes just because the bus cut him off in traffic, but that ties into a different aspect of his evil...)
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Ultimately, Skull Face's entire Evil Plan is a mix of being Driven by Envy towards Big Boss and twisted payback at Zero, the latter because he's pissed at a black project Zero might not have even gone through with.
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance:
  • In the Jetstream Sam DLC, Senator Armstrong expresses disgust with cherry blossoms and other forms of transient beauty upon seeing the Japanese-style garden in World Marshal. He even states that, at the very least, he was going to fire the "candy-ass" who designed it.
  • Similarly, in the Bladewolf DLC, Mistral sets up an elaborate Batman Gambit to dupe Bladewolf into killing Khamsin simply because she found the latter obnoxious and annoying.
• Mortal Kombat 1 has Titan Shang Tsung, from the Bad End of the previous game's expansion. This person acted as The Man Behind the Man to Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, rescuing them from the mundane lifestyles that Fire God Liu Kang had planned out for them and empowering them to become the villainous selves of previous timelines, for the purpose of turning the realms against each other and eventually destroying them all. After The Reveal of the true identity and true motive of the Mysterious Benefactor, YouTuber Mike Trollinski is so Disappointed by the Motive he has to step away from his reaction video for a few seconds before giving the villain a piece of his mind (skip to 12:45 for The Reveal, or to 14:30 for his reaction):
  Mike Trollinski: What is your problem?! You had your own world, that you controlled, but that wasn't enough!? Shang Tsung is literally the biggest hater of all time. He is a max prestige hater. He literally had his own timeline to himself, but he sees Liu Kang doing good in this timeline and he just wanna come mess it up. If that's not top-tier hating, I literally don't know what is.
• Octopath Traveler:
  • The Starter Villain of Primrose's route, Helgenish. The main reason why he is such a loathsome scumbag is because he flies into rages and inflicts Disproportionate Retribution on the women under his "care" for the most trivial of offenses. He once slaps Primrose across the face for not expressing immediate gratitude that he would "teach a completely useless girl everything she knows" (his words). Things go From Bad to Worse when Yusufa covers for Primrose when she leaves to pursue Rufus of the Crows; he beats Yusufa severely, catches up to Primrose, and stabs her in front of Primrose. It's very obvious that Helgenish is sick in the head!
  • The boss of Primrose's Chapter 3, Albus, the Right Hand of the Crow. He is a former friend of her father's who eventually betrayed him and sold him out to the Obsidians to become one of their highest-ranking members, and participated in his murder. Why would a once-honorable man do such a thing?
    Albus, the Right-hand Man: Honor's all well and good, but it doesn't buy you much.
  • The main antagonist of Cyrus's route, Lucia. She uses Headmaster Yvon to discover all the secrets within a magical tome before she betrays him once He Had Outlived His Usefulness, authorizes the conduction of horrific Blood Magic experiments that kill several innocent people, and throws away her own humanity to become a powerful demonic monstrosity... all so that she can become immortal and discover all the knowledge in the world to keep to herself so that she can feel superior to everybody else. Cyrus is not impressed, and he delivers an incredibly satisfying "The Reason You Suck" Speech on how petty and selfish Lucia is.
  • The main antagonist of Therion's route, Darius, is single-handedly responsible for the former's trust issues and cynicism. He betrayed Therion at a young age and attempted to murder him by kicking him off a cliff. The antagonist's motivation? He was offered a high-ranking position in a criminal group in exchange for disposing of Therion. In other words, money.
• Octopath Traveler II:
  • Harvey is Driven by Envy over the fact that Osvald is a better scholar than he is. This prompts Harvey to burn down Osvald's house, killing Osvald's wife and daughter in the process, steal Osvald's research, get him shipped off to prison for "murdering" Rita and Elena, and then gloat in the hammiest way possible once Osvald breaks out of jail and catches up with him. And it turns out Rita and Elena didn't even die in the fire; Harvey instead used them for experiments! All because... jealousy.
  • Captain Stenvar accepted bribes from Harvey to get Osvald arrested, implying that he knew Osvald was innocent and just didn't care, all because he wanted more money. Just like Albus from the last game.
• Persona 4:
  • When Tohru Adachi is revealed as the true culprit behind the murders, it's also revealed that both of his initial murders are for incredibly petty and perverted reasons; the first one was just him throwing a temper tantrum because a celebrity he had a crush on had an affair, and the second was just because he saw a high school girl talking to an older man and deemed her a "whore" who had to die. From then on, he freely admits that he did everything else, including the other attempted murders, purely because he could, and because it was fun; the Investigation Team even lampshade how petty and immature he is.
  • The first suspect for the murders, Mitsuo Kubo, is arguably just as bad, if not worse. He tried to take credit for the murders purely because he wanted people to pay attention to him and went so far as to commit an actual murder to this end. The entire Investigation Team is rightfully disgusted by his reasoning.
• Persona 5:
  • Masayoshi Shido, who proves he is willing to ruin innocent people's lives at the slightest provocation or the smallest of slights; just ask the Protagonist (framed for assault after he intervened in Shido's attempt to rape his subordinate and forging a falsified record that ensures he's stigmatized wherever he goes), Futaba (blamed for her mother's "suicide" after Shido pulled a He Knows Too Much on her), or Akechi's mother (abandoned after she got pregnant with his bastard son, driving her to suicide and turning Akechi into a man willing to kill countless people for acknowledgment and revenge). He also cuts Ryuji in line for the elevator at one point. When it's revealed that he was the one who put Joker on probation, Sojiro isn't the least bit surprised and reveals that Shido has always been that way.
  • The Traitor, who explains in a Motive Rant to the rest of the Phantom Thieves that he's a Bastard Bastard who only wants the attention of his father, Shido. And even then, just to rip it away from him by publicly revealing himself as Shido's bastard son after Shido is elected Prime Minister, which would cause a massive political scandal. However, after defeating the Traitor in battle, they admit they don't really care about their stated objective; they just want to prove they're better than Joker.
  • Starter Villain and Evil Teacher Suguru Kamoshida. His destruction of the track team and his conflict with the Protagonist boil down to him being a petty, spiteful bully who can't accept anyone else overshadowing him in any way and doesn't believe you deserve a second chance.
• In Portal 2, GLaDOS has a habit of slinging petty insults at Chell for killing her in the first game, most of them being targeted at her incompetence and saying how she's a horrible person. (And in both games she insults Chell because she was adopted. For some reason, GLaDOS thinks that's a bad thing.)
• In Red Dead Redemption II, it's strongly implied that Dutch chooses to abandon John to death during the final heist purely to spite Arthur who had stood up to him and insisted twice that Dutch allow John and his family to leave peacefully.
• In Shining Song Starnova, Kamijou wants to destroy the titular idol group because Starnova’s producer and two of its Idol Singers (Mariya and Sasami) all used to work for his company, Golden Calf Productions, before getting fired or washing out. He’ll be damned if he’s going to let people who couldn’t make it at Golden Calf become successful on their own.
• In The Sims 3, Sims with the "Evil" trait can do things like steal candy from babies, troll internet forums, ask a genie for "world misery," and donate money to sabotage a charity.
• The Big Bad of Skylanders, Kaos, has shown that he engages in this in the backstories of some of the Skylanders. In Slam Bam's backstory, Kaos grew jealous of the yeti's amazing snow-cones, and when surveillance proved fruitless, he destroyed the iceberg the yeti called home even though the yeti never actually did anything to him. Additionally, when Roller Brawl rejected his affections and her elder brothers intervened, he sent his Drow army to imprison them, and as revealed in the comic, he had Mesmeralda create voodoo puppets that brainwashed them into his henchmen, seeing this as vengeance for Roller Brawl rejecting him. This is also shown in the fifth game itself: when he has the Big Good Master Eon locked up by one of his minions, he calls him every half hour just to hear how much he's suffering.
• Sly Cooper has a few examples:
  • Clockwerk from the first game, who went so far as to roboticize himself to stay alive for hundreds of years just to stalk and destroy the entire Cooper family line simply because he was jealous of their reputation.
  • Le Paradox from the fourth game. At first, it seems like a case of Avenging the Villain because his father was shamed by Sly's own and left holding the bag for a crime he himself was about to commit, but it turns out he doesn't care about that: even though he's got a large power base already and is a Villain with Good Publicity, he still feels the need to Time Travel for Fun and Profit and steal the Cooper family's various canes simply to prove he's a better thief than them. Sly even calls him out on it; he blew his own cover to Carmelita and triggered Sly's interference because of his ego, and it cost him everything.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In SegaSonic Popcorn Shop, series antagonist Dr. Eggman, who typically wants to conquer the world, instead just aims to prevent Sonic from cooking popcorn.
  • In Sonic Shuffle, Eggman doesn't factor into the story: his only role in the game is to stop the players in events and mini-games, which can range from stealing a player's rings to abducting losers in some mini-games to shaking up a soda can and sticking it in a pop machine the players will order from.
  • In Sonic Heroes, Metal Sonic's entire scheme of copying the powers and traits of Sonic and his friends to empower himself stems solely from his grudge and desire to defeat Sonic and prove that he is better than him. Although to be fair it is technically all Eggman's fault because he created and programmed Metal for the sole purpose to kill Sonic and to believe he is the superior one. So Metal's actions are justified.
  • Sonic Lost World: The Deadly Six's Zeena develops a grudge against Sonic after their first meeting results in him messing up her nail polish, which only gets worse after he gives her a Backhanded Apology over it.
  • Sonic Forces: Infinite manages to make the examples above look like the pinnacles of maturity. He helps Dr. Eggman take over the world, murders the Avatar's entire squad, beats Sonic within an inch of his life, and generally does everything in his power to inflict suffering on everyone around him. Why? To soothe his fragile ego. He used to be the leader of a mercenary team and went around boasting about being "the Ultimate Mercenary" until Shadow effortlessly defeated him. His arrogance meant he couldn't accept the idea of others being better than him, so he joined up with Eggman to get access to the Phantom Ruby and become stronger. All the evil things he does are done purely because he's a petty, sadistic bully who hurts people to feel better about himself.
• Gig in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, who tries to encourage Revya to do anything that might be constructed as evil. This starts out with encouraging acts like mass murder and genocide, and, when that fails, stuff like being rude to your companions, pickpocketing people, and gluttony. One place it is averted, however, is in the Demon Path. Revya goes right on to using his/her powers for mass murder and wanton destruction, and suddenly, Gig isn't too fussed about the little stuff anymore. Possibly because Revya very quickly makes Gig's evil look petty.
  • From Gig's standpoint, this is actually pretty logical. If he can't corrupt Revya enough to let him take the driver's seat through quick, monstrous evil. He'll have to hope that tempting him/her towards smaller, less obviously objectionable acts will be enough to eventually do the job. If Revya's gone Demon Path, Gig quickly realizes his evil wasn't nearly monstrous enough for Reyva.
• In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Miles foils Kingpin's plot to expand his criminal enterprise into his hometown of Harlem. Kingpin, having nothing to lose since he's already in prison, retaliates by sending his remaining men to shoot up a festival purely out of spite.
• In Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion, Spooky has a rather lofty goal: conquer the world with an Cavalry of the Dead culled from the mansion's many victims. Her motivation on the other hand is as petty as it gets: she was an adorable little girl who wanted to scare people, but her own cuteness got in the way. The sole reason she wants to take over the world with an army of ghosts is so that no one will ever call her "cute" again.
• Wario and Waluigi from the Super Mario Bros. series mix this with Goldfish Poop Gang. Usually, their shenanigans when they appear together consist of doing something dickish because of some petty reason (like losing a tennis match) or for fun. There are times, however, when the things they do are pretty dangerous.
  • Especially Waluigi. Most of his acts consist of doing something crazy or jerkish for no explicit reason. Like the time when two Shy Guys interrupted him while he was looking for Luigi, asking him if they could borrow his binoculars. Waluigi threatened to beat them up if they showed up again. As the two Shy Guys fled, Waluigi just sneered and cackled to himself.
    Waluigi: Nobody gets between Waluigi and his scheming!
• Dr. Fetus from Super Meat Boy is not only the Big Bad of the franchise but an all-around massive dickhead in general. He's rude, narcissistic, and frequently commits Kick the Dog actions, such as kidnapping hero Meat Boy's girlfriend, beating up said girlfriend, kidnapping their daughter, and slaughtering forest critters for no reason other than the sake of it. He also pushes down old ladies and destroys sandcastles, according to a game manual. Oh, and he flips people off too.
• In the World of Light campaign for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, this is the most exploitable weakness of Galeem and Dharkon in the final battle of the adventure. It's so immediately obvious given their lack of redeeming qualities and come out for the sake of pure evil, because the two hate one another far too much to cooperate — even when they try to pull an Enemy Mine, it almost instantly disintegrates into the two's minions, and eventually they themselves, attacking one another with as much fervor or more than they have to stop the fighters.
• Megatron from Transformers: War for Cybertron and its sequel at first tells Optimus and his Autobots to leave Cybertron but they refuse to do so until they discover Cybertron is shutting down and they need to go but Megatron starts shooting down their escape ships because they defied him. He's even worse in the second game, trying to destroy the ark and even chasing it down in a warship because "No one leaves without his permission".
• Erika and Thalas from Triangle Strategy spend most of their time onscreen being petty bullies just because they can. For example, they constantly mock Frederica and Dragan for their illegitimate heritage, with a dash of Fantastic Racism in Frederica's case (as they also frequently insult her for her mixed heritage). Almost any time they're in Glenbrook, they also mock the country and its citizens, Erika likes to indulge in the kingdom's best food and wine, and Thalas is implied to frequently have trysts with the local women just because he's bored.
• Ultima IV makes the point that petty evils are just as significant as great evils. The millions of petty evils you're used to committing as an RPG protagonist (B&E, petty theft, occasional muggings and murders, running away before your allies do, etc...) are progress-hampering errors in a game where the goal is to become a paragon of self-denying and self-sacrificing virtue. Most evils you perform are when weighed against the crimes of villains past, petty and basically meaningless — but any of them can stop you in your tracks until you atone for them.
  • The Virtues which became a staple of the series from then on were partly a response to real life criticisms that the previous Ultimas let you be as evil and petty as you like without consequence. While this and future games would continue to allow you to be horribly petty up to causing a mass extinction event because you're bored, the series would no longer simply allow you to do it without consequence.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: pretty much the reason Prince LaCroix keeps trying to get you killed in increasingly more dangerous suicide missions, no matter how useful and loyal you have been to him. He knows absolutely nobody in Los Angeles remotely likes or respects him and the only reason he is still in power is that the Sheriff scares away opponents, and you just happen to be the only person he can throw his weight against, as well as someone he spared only to preserve his image.
  • In a rather hilarious case of this trope, Andrei the Tzimisce, one of the major villains in the game. When he isn't using his powers to create hideous monsters out of people he murders or coming up with plans to defeat the Camarilla, he apparently likes to troll late-night radio shows.
• The Prophets from Wild ARMs 3 have incredibly petty motivations and are not above attacking the heroes for equally petty reasons. Leehalt develops a particular ire for Virginia and injects her with nanomachines because she's the daughter of his romantic rival via the woman he'd hoped to end up with. The first time you fight Melody, she will only attack Clive because he insulted her beauty. And Malik? He gets annoyed with the heroes when they call him out for trying to revive his dead mother for... um... purposes.
• Squid, the megalomaniacal AI antagonist of Will You Snail? is not just out to destroy humanity, he's also here to sling insults at people who are bad at platformers. There's also this:
  Squid: By the way, every time you die I'll kill a simulated conscious entity in one of my simulations. Just for fun, because I can. Hehe.
• In Yakuza 3, Yoshitaka Mine has a group of thugs bulldoze an orphanage in front of the orphans, in addition to almost killing one of the children's caretakers with a sledgehammer, out of pure spite for Kiryu.

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