Light Is Not Good / Video Games

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A - E

• In the online Flash RPG AdventureQuest, Brilhado are humanoids with dark purple wings with red tips. Books in the Temple of Hope say people once called them Angels but are really Greater Light Demons. AQ Demons are not satanic, but are creatures from the elemental realms. The Brilhado are Greater Demons because they are seen as demons even by the elemental realms' standards. Most of them work for N.O.V.A.. Subverted by Diviara: though being a Brilhado, he's a Necromancer who wears black robes, though his weapon, Duality, switches between Light and Darkness elements. He is a general of N.O.V.A. but joins you after his brother's death.
• Gravelyn from AdventureQuest Worlds is the Champion of Light, and is on the side of evil.
• The Elyos in Aion. They look angelic, and tend to be comparatively more gentle than the Asmodians. They're also arrogant, self-absorbed, and just as dedicated to the petty and vindictive war against the Asmodians as are the Asmodians to the war against them.
• The "Crusade" in Anno 1404's campaign, which is a decidedly sinister power grab under a veneer of holiness. The storyline ultimately results in the player defeating the wicked Cardinal Lucius' Corrupt Church with an institution that proves Light is Good after all.
• Aragami focuses on a very Grey-and-Grey Morality conflict between Light and Shadow, which have been warring so long that both sides have committed many atrocities.
• Mildred Avalon, the Big Bad of the first Arcana Heart game, uses a light-elemental arcana, wears white clothing, is incredibly beautiful, and has shiny, beautiful blonde hair. She's also an angel bent on tearing down the barrier between the human and Elemental worlds, regardless of how many people she kills in the process. Averted in later games after being reunited with her sister, where she has become The Atoner.
• In Assassin's Creed, Abstergo Industries, the Present Day incarnation of the Templar Order, favour sterile white surroundings, with Big Bad Dr. Vidic as a Villain in a White Suit.
• In Asura's Wrath, most of the Shinkoku forces (plus the commanders) utilize Gold and White Are Divine in their colorations, and most attacks are light based. Deus wears all white and wields lightning for his attacks. Charavartin is this even more so, by proxy of being God and the Creator and uses light as his main attacks. His Creator form invokes this and Dark Is Evil with a pure white skin color yet a black and white aura in his attacks.
• Attack the Light has the cast of Steven Universe fighting enemies made of Hard Light.
• In the point-and-click adventure Baron Wittard, the world-destroying entity Fenrir manifests as a silhouette of pure white light.
• Baldur's Gate III: The Oathbreaker Knight described a lord to whom he had sworn an Oath thusly: "Where his light shone, my sword followed". Said lord ordered him to kill countless people and destroy villages in his name, until his conscious could abide it no more and he turned his sword on his lord. The Oathbreaker Knight, himself, firmly believes this and Dark Is Not Evil: the holy powers of a Paladin can be used for wicked ends, while the dark powers of an Oathbreaker can serve the greater good.
• The Bastard of Kosigan series (fan-made Neverwinter Nights expansion) has the classic angels and demons of Christian mythology as the 'order' and 'freedom' factions of a race of precursor humans, but the 'order' faction (who are definitely rather nasty, going directly to deadly force whenever anyone says 'no' to them) eventually won their war for the hearts and minds of ordinary humans and killed all the 'chaos' faction (except for two 'demons', one of whom is revealed to have been St. John and the other is your character's deceased mother, who stole Archangel Gabriel's (the leader of the 'order' faction) sword.)
• Baelheit’s special moves in Baten Kaitos Origins are not only Light-based, they're callbacks to the special attacks of the protagonist from the first game in the series (of which Origins is a prequel). This makes sense, considering Baelheit is the real Spiriter. And a Well-Intentioned Extremist Disc-One Final Boss to boot.
  • Baelheit has a whole evil empire that tries to get rid of people's Wings of the Heart by attempting to build a glorious utopian artificial continent floating in the sky and destroying all the other natural floating continents. Thousands of years in the past, however, is an evil cultist, Wiseman, who teaches his followers that their Wings of the Heart are the only things that truly matter. This eventually leads to a war where he can be seen draining energy from some corpses with his shadow dragon. You even fight him during the second phase of the final battle.
  • In the original Baten Kaitos, Melodia wears all white and has white hair and turns out to be the true Big Bad behind Geldoblame.
• Bayonetta:
  • The Angels, which are best described as "grotesque monstrosities with marble-colored skin, stereotypical Greekish clothing, wings, and halos." They are literally from the 'World of Light' called Paradiso (in contrast to Inferno, the 'World of Darkness', and the human world, also known as the 'World of Chaos'), but beyond being angels of light, they are actually quite evil, full of themselves, and express a great hatred for humankind. In fact, they might as well be described as "Light Is Evil", as throughout three games they have never shown any redeemable qualities whatsoever (even with the Infernal Demons, both Dark Is Evil and Dark Is Not Evil varieties exist).
  • More extreme is the Big Bad, Father Balder. The last of the Lumen Sages, he orchestrated the genocide of both them and the Umbra Witches, killed Luka's father, is the one commanding the angels, and does not seem to care for his daughter beyond being a tool for the awakening of Jubileus, who he intends to use to destroy the current universe so that a prettier one can be created (although it turns out to be a circumstance of Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can as Balder housed the pure evil half of the former God of Chaos and humankind, Loptr). Both the Umbra Witches and the Lumen Sages were essential to the balance of light and darkness in the universe before the great war between them ruined everything. In Bayonetta 2 we find out that Father Balder was in a sort of "Romeo and Juliet" relationship with Bayonetta's mother Rosa before she died in his arms.
  • Singularity and his Homunculi are of a bright silver and green-cyan and resemble mystical Hindu/Vedic deities that also have a Sci-Fi weapon feel to them. However, Singularity is also a vicious madman of a Reality Warper who wants to erase and reshape the multiverse (with 2,042 universes destroyed before prime Bayonetta meets him), and the Homunculi are his nanomachine-bioweapons of doing so.
• The Binding of Isaac: Repentance: Dogma is a bright being who can transform in to a seraphim that uses light attacks. It is the only boss in the game with a white background in its versus splash screen. However, it attacks a child completely unprovoked, and is a representation of a corrupt fire-and-brimstone religious broadcasting. It's the game's Greater-Scope Villain.
• BioShock 2: Sofia Lamb, with her blonde hair, sociopathic interpretation of altruism, and identity-destroying cult that preaches The Evils of Free Will.
• BioShock Infinite:
  • Columbia is a very brightly and vibrantly lit city very visually reminiscent of Heaven, right down to being a city in the clouds. It’s also a militantly nationalistic city that openly practices slavery and is plotting to destroy the “Sodom Below”.
  • Comstock heavily associates himself with holy imagery yet is a very depraved man.
• BlazBlue:
  • Jin Kisaragi is very handsome, has blonde hair, wears brightly colored clothing, and is celebrated as the Hero of Ikaruga, a war which took place some years before the game. He's also an enormous Jerkass who possesses very few redeeming qualities, is easily angered, and who's Yandere for his brother, Ragna. However, by the end of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, it has appeared that he's pulled a Heel–Face Turn, and may be slightly closer to Light Is Good.
  • On the other hand, Jin's girlfriend, Tsubaki Yayoi, uses the Armagus Izayoi, a light-based weapon. Except that rather than simple light manipulation, this is some sort of Evil Weapon that steals light from other people, causing the user to go blind. Tsubaki thus far managed to avert this trope... until she got Mind Raped by Hazama, turning into a Green-Eyed Monster bent to kill Noel for a selfish desire, playing the trope straight.
    • The Izayoi's reputation as a very nasty Sealed Weapon has spread far and wide, and everyone in the know who isn't Hazama or Relius voices their objections to her wielding it. In her Story mode, Jin is exasperated that she would wield it, and Hakumen's Story mode conversation with Jin is a request to save her both from Terumi's machinations and from it. Ragna, after defeating her in Arcade mode, tells her to get rid of it immediately, and if her combat quotes are any indication, Makoto's not fond of it either.
  • When we first see Mu-12, she descends from the Cauldron bathed in a bright light, lending her an almost angelic appearance. Also, most of her attacks are light-based to some extent. She's also known as Kusanagi, the sword that slays gods, and is brainwashed by the Big Bad.
• In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, demons with light elemental attacks are rare, but not unheard of: Light Elementals, created by "wicked means", are the most obvious source of light attacks, but a number of the demonic bosses use them as well, and demonic corruption doesn't stop Dominque from using light powers either.
• Bomberman 64:
  • Each of the five major NPC's in this game (Sirius, Regulus, Artemis, Orion, Altair) are Color-Coded for Your Convenience, (White, Blue, Red, Green, and Black, respectively). For most of the game, Sirius acts as your ally, giving you sage advice and convenient power-ups just before boss fights. That is, until you get 100 gold cards and beat the game's initial Big Bad, Altair. Instead of escaping, Altair gets ambushed by Sirius, who steals Altair's Omni Cube (later explaining that Altair had stolen it form him in the first place) and reveals himself as the real Big Bad after vaporizing Altair with a laser beam.
  • The sequel, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack provides three examples to this trope. First there's the boss, Zoniha, whose title is "The Purifying Light" and attacks with, you guessed it, light based attacks. The second case is the penultimate boss who is literally a goddess of light who decides to pass judgment on Bomberman for refusing to cooperate with her. The final example is the final boss, the angel of light and darkness, who seems to focus more on light attacks than dark ones.
• The creatures in The Breach have a thing for yellow light, and the final boss seems to be made entirely out of it. They're rather forceful with those who refuse to join them.
• The goddess in Breath of Fire III loves all of her children in creation to the point where she ordered her followers to kill all of the dragon brood because she thought their very existence was too dangerous.
• Castlevania:
  • Despite Dracula representing the power of darkness, he has a few light-aligned minions, including the Amalaric Sniper, a fallen angel, Nemesis, an angel that hunts men, and Valkyries, divine warriors from Norse lore.
  • Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia introduces the White Fomor, a twelve-foot-tall hovering goat-headed man-thing who shot balls of light at you, and he "mocks God with his blasphemous chanting." Also, Ecclesia's true purpose is to fulfill mankind's "greatest wish": The return of Dracula.
• In Chrono Cross, light (white) is the elemental attribute of the hero, but also of many villains, often among the most powerful, including the final boss. Most of the strong white innate bosses you fight are placed in the time where you will be in Lynx's body. Lynx's innate is black, and white elements deal extra damage to black innate. Hope you got some Diminish.
• Nova Praetoria by far the brightest, shiniest zone in all of City of Heroes. There's a bright Gold on White Motif, all of the civilians are happy, statues of superheroes dot the landscape, and one of the first missions involves picking flowers. This is the Evil Mirror Universe version of Paragon City.
  • With the new side switching system, now even the brightest, most light oriented Empathy/Energy Blast Defender can be a villain!
• Command & Conquer: Tiberium: The Brotherhood of Nod's most powerful defense structure is the "Obelisk of Light."
• Control: Areas contaminated by the Hiss are full of ugly, glaring bright red light that can make it hard to see and easier for its forces to sneak up on Jesse. Most of their forces also have bleached-white skin, with the Hiss's scarlet light visibly glowing just under the surface.
• Cookie Run: Longan Dragon Cookie is known as the Ivory Dragon, wears a flowing white robe with golden accessories, and seems to use some sort of Energy Weapon. They are also a firm believer in Might Makes Right, believing that weaker beings do not deserve life. They plan to eradicate all Cookies by turning them to stone, and they have the power to back it up, one-shotting a dragoned-up Snakefruit Cookie with just a glance.
• Crash Bandicoot has the Big Bad, Neo Cortex and his closest minions (particularly N. Brio and N. Gin), wearing their trademark white lab coats. Clearly they are deranged, but also some of the series' most formidable and creative bosses. Even if they treat each other like trash from time-to-time.
• Cultist Simulator has the principle of Lantern, which is associated in equal parts with both the pursuit of truth and the absence of mercy. Lantern-aspect cards can be used to drive Hunters, your followers, and on unfortunate occasions yourself insane.
  Fascination: Light LEAKS through the CRACKS. My mind is BRIGHTER than it EVER was. THE HIGHER I RISE THE MORE I SEE.
• Nagito Komaeda from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is a total Hope Freak, presenting himself as selfless All-Loving Hero and also carrying the title of Super High School Level Good Luck, the same title as the main character from the previous game, with eventual aspirations to become Super High School Level Hope as he did. He's also one of the most Ax-Crazy characters in the series, quickly turning into a total Wild Card, whether he's trying to commit the first murder to kickstart the game, purposefully withholding information, jumping from supporting the main characters to supporting one of the killers and back again, and eventually even threatening to blow up the entire island while still ranting about hope, culminating in tricking an innocent girl into accidently murdering him.
• The Angelus displays this well in The Darkness II, albeit mostly through Flavor Text found in certain holy (and not so holy) relics. Bound the souls of a hundred children to her purpose, possessed a woman to slaughter a village, roasted the unkillable Cain alive when he came to her to help with his atonement, and managed to completely burn the soul of the one Brotherhood member to save the world from destruction, into absolute nothingness. And just for a kicker, proves itself even more underhanded than The Darkness itself, tricking Jackie into sending himself to hell to help Jenny, only to leave him in hell so she won't have to actually fight The Darkness herself.
• Dark Souls likes to play with this trope. The Age of Fire is presented as a good thing, and the Lord of Sunlight was actually noted to have been a great ruler over his kingdom. However, the lore quite firmly establishes that all life in the series, save the Dragons, was in fact born of Darkness. Humanity in particular is stated to have a very close connection to Dark, and this is variously presented as a good, bad, or neutral but dangerous thing. Furthermore, light in the series is linked with Fire. Anyone who works closely with fire knows how incredibly destructive it can be if not controlled, which is reflected in the series: when the Witch of Izalith, more learned in the ways of Fire than any other, attempted to create a new Flame with which to sustain the world, it resulted in the Flame of Chaos, the origin of all demons and which is presented as just as much a corrupting force as Dark ever was.
  • Gwyn, the Top God and lord of Sunlight is quite obviously associated with Light and the First Flame, and he at first seems like a benevolent entity who sacrificed himself to ensure the Age of Fire continues. The third game, however, building on elements from the second game, reveals the full picture: Gwyn was terrified of the Dark, and in his fanatic scramble to banish it entirely, made the Seal of Fire on mankind, imprisoning their natural darkness. This restriction turned it into a terrifying void raging against its seal, whereas it used to be calm and serene. Gwyn's fear broke the "logic of the world", the natural cycle of light and dark.
    Aldia: Once, the Lord of Light banished Dark, and all that stemmed from humanity. And men assumed a fleeting form. These are the roots of our world. Men are props on the stage of life, and no matter how tender, how exquisite... A lie will remain a lie.
• Two of the bosses in Dark Souls II have bright appearances that belie their true dark nature. Queen Nashandra initially looks like a tall beautiful woman clad in white while her real form is the stuff of nightmares. Darklurker is an angelic being who resides in the darkest depths and is as hostile as any other enemy. Ironically, one of them (likely both) is a fragment of Manus, the purest example of Dark Is Evil from the previous game.
• Dark Messiah of Might and Magic creates a Love Triangle between the protagonist Sareth, a sweet young mage named Leanna, and a succubus named Xana. Leanna dresses in bright colors, acts innocent and blushes cutely, and her magic largely involves healing and the telekinetic lifting of heavy objects at plot important moments. Xana boldly flirts, alternates jealous and catty observations aimed at Leanna with subtle suggestions about threesomes, and her assistance includes giving Sareth brutal offensive upgrades based around demonic transformations. One of the two ladies demands the other be killed and will attack Sareth as a traitor if he refuses. Guess which one.
• The Light school of magic in Dawn Of Magic deals radiation damage.
• Brother Angelico from Dead In Vinland is this as a nasty surprise. Sweet gentle devoutly Christian monk in a white robe... who's also a Serial Killer. When he's caught, he'll be confused because he doesn't remember his crimes, and he'll politely offer to help the Team Mom with the dishes while standing in front of three mutilated corpses.
• Papa Blanc from de Blob 2. He poses as a benevolent religious leader decked out in white, as are his subordinates. He also uses remote-controlled drones that emit a gentle light that temporarily hypnotizes those who stare at it. Papa Blanc is really Comrade Black, who plots to take over the colorful planet of Raydia through any means possible. His ultimate weapon is a giant version of the small drones mentioned above, the Hypno Ray, which combines the colors siphoned from the planet below. This combined color energy takes the form of a brilliant beam white light when shot back down to the planet. Using this weapon, Comrade Black can hypnotize the entire planet in a matter of about 45 minutes.
• In Defense of the Ancients 2 the Radiant team is mostly filled with virtuous heroes who fight for good. Exceptions include:
  • Centaur Warrunner (A Blood Knight who loves to kill, and fights to prove that he is the most dangerous warrior ever)
  • Anti-Mage (Who seeks to eliminate every magic user on the planet, whether they are good or evil)
  • Troll Warlord (A Troll taken up to eleven, to the point where even his brothers couldn't stand him)
  • Chen (A zealous Knight Templar who will destroy all who refuse to convert)
  • Ogre Magi (More Chaotic Stupid than evil, some of their equipment descriptions suggest they kill and loot random travellers)
  • Mirana and Luna — not exactly evil, but working on a different scale of morality as commanded by Selemene. Their personalities can be nasty: Mirana is a haughty Rich Bitch with low opinions on nearly everyone, while Luna, in spite of already toning it down from her past, is an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight revelling in making her foes bleed and suffer.
• Densetsu no Stafy 4: Degil is pale white and uses a heart motif, as well as having attacks that involve roses and kisses. She's also the Big Bad of the game, who steals a powerful artifact from the Ami Kingdom in order to make the kingdom’s prince love her.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Devil May Cry 1: When Mundus appears on screen for the first time, he is seen in a serene, white-marble cathedral bathed in soft light, and takes the form of a gigantic marble statue of a winged, bearded man who looks like God. As a visual representation of this trope, Mundus's true form is revealed to be a grotesque, writhing mass of flesh.
  • Devil May Cry 2: This applies to Arius and Argosax, the main villains of the game. Arius wears a white suit and is an Evil Sorcerer, Mad Scientist and Corrupt Corporate Executive all rolled into one. Argsax meanwhile is a demonic Eldritch Abomination whose final form resembles a fiery angel.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has the "Fallen" enemies that appear angelic until they spread their wings and reveal a monstrous face on their torsos. There's also Beowulf (who has no relation to the mythical hero); a light-elemental demon, complete with pseudo-Tron Lines, with a desire to see every blood relation of Sparda dead. He is a tough nut to crack too. When Vergil defeats Beowulf, he acquires him as a Devil Arm which grants the user light powers.
  • Devil May Cry 4. The villains are a Corrupt Church. Their signature soldiers are the beautiful Angelo living armors, crafted with a glorious mixture of angelic and demonic features and deliberately created as "angels." By contrast, main character Nero's sinister Evil Hand turns out to be a powerful force for good. Interestingly, the villain's raison d'etre, using demonic energy to kill all the demons in the world, isn't necessarily a bad one, but in the third act of the game, it's pretty obviously shown that Extremism has taken root, so they've become da bad dudes.
• The angels in the Diablo franchise are portrayed as being manipulative and having no feelings for humans beyond using them to fight the demons. The necromancers believe that although the demons winning would lead to an eternity of torture for mankind, the angels winning would lead to domination and mental stagnation, and so the balance must be maintained. The main exception to this rule is the archangel Tyrael, who started out spiteful to humans but grew to appreciate them. And Auriel and a few others, but they certainly don't align with High Heavens policy. In fact, whereas the demons just want to enslave mankind, the angels in general and Imperius and Malthael in particular tried to destroy the mortal world because they deemed it a taint on creation. Also, humankind used to be a lot more magically powerful in the past, until the antimagic effects of the Worldstone (thanks to renegade angel, Inarius) took hold. Then when a group of humans rediscovered their ancient power and managed to resist an angelic invasion intent on destroying the mortal world, the only lasting impact was that the mortal plane was allowed to continue to exist — thanks to Tyrael convincing the Angiris Council that people do have feelings — albeit without their powers, with the Worldstone still there and the plane itself only protected from extraplanar influence by a brittle pact between the Council and Mephisto, who naturally circumvented the pact and proceeded to do the things demons do in Diablo while the angels stand by and watch. This plot twist is found in the third book of the Sin War series, and is rather scary in a Cthulhu sort of way. These are angels who almost destroyed our universe, then were only prevented from finishing the job by democratic vote, then took away humankind's power and allowed the mortal world to be overrun by demons and people to get killed in a lot of creative ways, just to see if humankind would eventually grow up to fight off the demons by themselves and join their ranks — or presumably face the judgement anyway. Think about that when you get killed by Blessed Hammer in PvP AGAIN.
  • When the Angel Tyrael sacrifices his powers, an uncontrolled amount of his power permeates the land surrounding New Tristram. His power is aligned with Justice so it awakens the dead who desire that, namely revenge on those who killed them. As their true targets are long dead, they instead turn on the living.
• In Digimon, the Royal Knights are a group of 13 "Holy Knight" Digimon that act as guardians of the Digital World but have a tendency to serve antagonistic roles, especially their Token Evil Teammate, the Virus Digimon Crusadermon. In Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, Crusadermon serves as the Big Bad for the majority of the storyline as she possesses the Corrupt Corporate Executive Rie Kishibe in order to bring the rest of the Knights into the real world. Once they get there, they end up having a small Civil War over whether to Kill All Humans or not in order to protect the Digital World.
• There are hints of this in the backstory of the Disciples series. The Highfather, head honcho god that the bright and shiny Empire worships, was a Jerkass who blamed the Satan expy Bethrezen for the flaws in creation that Bethrezen merely pointed out and imprisoned him in Hell. Reaches new heights in the third game, since the big reveal is that the angel Inoel sent from the heavens is the herald of the end of the world. The Highfather wants to destroy the world, believing it to be a hopeless mess, and the Final Boss is the archangel who was sent to do it. Bethrezen and his followers are actually trying to prevent this.
• A major theme in Disgaea, along with Dark Is Not Evil.
  • The villain in the first game, Vulcanus, is an archangel who manipulates humans to start a war with the demons and attempts to ascend into godhood in order to bring about absolute peace by forcing all angels, humans and demons to do as he commands. Despite what they themselves believe, neither demons or angels are absolute good or evil, but both are capable of actions of either morality.
  • Regardless of their leader's alleged Omniscient Morality License, Celestia qualifies as this. Though not evil, they are people capable of being very wrong while also being very sure they're right, and aren't above Fantastic Racism towards demons and humans. We do know that Lamington and Flonne aren't as apeshit about order as Vulcanus, but the rest...
  • In this sense, it would seem that Lamington was usurped by the ambitious Vulcanus (despite him having no chance), and the rest of the angels merely followed orders. Lamington never actually does anything offensive besides dealing with Vulcanus and Flonne, however Flonne is dealt with by their laws and in the good ending returns as a fallen angel rather than being turned into a flower. Flonne seems to be ruled more by The Power of Love and the Rule of Cool than anything else. She has no prejudices (and in fact states as much early in the game) and no real desires beyond living a happy life and bringing love to those around her.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Throughout the game you are constantly being saved by the gods, who often heal you with a holy light after certain battles. However later in the game when you must feed your god with Source, they teach you the skill "Source Vampirism" which the Gods also use. To consume Source from a spirit is to completely destroy them, and deprive them from even having an afterlife. However the gods seem perfectly willing to use this horrific powers to feed themselves. Ultimately when you fail to become divine, the gods who once saved you and called you their "Champion", will turn on you. In Divinity, "Divine" is not always good. Even with the gods backing you, the protagonist is just as capable of being evil. The gods are just as self-centered as anyone else.
• Dominions 3 has its fair share of evil Light nations. Take for example Marignon, a nation led by an inquisition that went too far in their search of heresy that they made a pact with demons and started practicing blood magic to increase the effectiveness of the inquisition. But then, there are no "good" nations in Dominions.
  • Want to permanently brainwash enemy civilians into zealot loyal to your cause? (Disclaimer: The process is far from perfect, only some will be properly converted, others will be driven irrevocably insane or will simply die.) There's an astral spell for that. Want to curse somebody for the rest of their lives? There's an astral spell for that, too. Want to cause a province-wide epidemic of bad luck? Astral magic. Want to paint a unremovable bullseye on somebody that will make them a target for any passing Eldritch Abomination? Yep, astral magic. Want to send an Eldritch Abomination to wreck havoc on a distant province? You're going to need astral magic. Want to forge an Artifact of Doom? A lot of them require skill in astral magic. Want to taint the source of magic itself, so that only Blood Magic is safe to use? Hope you've got at least six levels in the astral path.
• Doom Eternal has the Maykrs, an angelic race that acts benevolent to all who worship them. In reality, they had made a deal with Hell and allowed demons to slaughter large portions of civilizations and harvest their souls for Argent Energy in order to stave off Transfiguration. When the Maykrs order it to be done to Earth, the Slayer responds in his usual manner. This eventually culminates in him killing the Khan Maykr for betraying him and his fellow Night Sentinels, as well as sacrificing countless worlds to The Legions of Hell.
• Dragon Age II likes this trope, just as it likes the inverse.
  • There are the templars in general — an order of religious knights in shining armor, devoted to their duty of protecting the people from supernatural menace...unfortunately, this involves locking up many innocent people who have been born with magical potential. While some templars are decent, others are viciously abusive of their charges (beating, raping, or effectively lobotomizing them), and the order ends up locking most mages in solitary confinement, forbidding any contact with their friends and families, sending death squads to kill people suspected of aiding runaway mages, and attempting to kill every mage in the city at the end.
  • In particular, there's Knight-Commander Meredith, the faction's leader and the game's Final Boss, who is driven mad by an Artifact of Doom; her shiny armor, regal bearing, and pretty pale-blonde hair accentuate this trope.
  • And, on the other hand, there's Anders: an altruistic, idealistic healer mage (handsome and blond too) who lives in the city's worst slum healing refugees for free and sheltering runaway mages, constantly risking his life for his patients and charges, the cause of mage freedom, and his friend and/or lover Hawke...who is gradually being corrupted from within by an otherworldly spirit twisted by his own anger at templars and the world's injustice, and who ends up blowing up a church with innocent clergy inside in order to start the Mage-Templar War.
• Dragon Quest has some enemies which are zombified priests, who use the same healing and support magic that the party's own priests can, too. From Dragon Quest IX onwards, monsters can breathe light on enemies to damage them, like the Godsteed.
  • Marcello, the half-brother of Angelo in Dragon Quest VIII definitely exemplifies this trope when he fights against the party after obtaining Rhapthorne's sceptre. One of his attacks, Pearly Gates, even smites the party with holy light. There are also fallen priest monsters that are servants to the Lord of Darkness, some of whom can even fully heal and revive their fallen compatriots.
  • In Dragon Quest XI, this is probably the reason the hero is attacked. Not that the hero himself is evil, but that the Luminary's reincarnation brings with it the return of evil. Jasper himself is evil, due to being Mordegon's right hand man.
• In Duel Savior Destiny, everyone important is training to become the Messiah, but it turns out that the Messiah has two candidates and that if the 'bad' one wins they might destroy everything or turn the world into a land for monsters. But it actually goes beyond that: The Messiah itself is a position that dooms the world. Also, God Is Evil.
• Dungeon Crawl is a really good example. Holy beings such as angels are just as bloodthirsty as demons. Even if you're not actually evil they'll still attack you on sight with intent to kill and, given how powerful they tend to be, they'll probably succeed at that goal. You can't sneak past them either, thanks to their glowing halo which will illuminate you and make you easy to spot. And if you do manage to kill one of them your reward is a blast of holy fire courtesy of their god, The Shining One. That's right. You get smote with holy fire... for defending yourself. The only characters safe from attacks by angels, daevas, and other holy monsters are followers of the three good gods, and even then it only works if your piety is high enough and the being in question isn't having a bad day. What's more, even on the off chance an angel does decide you deserve to live they'll still only become neutral, not friendly, meaning they'll still attack you if you're in their way.
• Dungeon Maker II: The Hidden War has white orcs, apostate priests, and other holy type monsters that are more than happy to try to kill you.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In the Backstory, the creations of the Dwemer used a lot of gold and bronze colors, along with glowing jewels and enchantments in their Magitek Steampunk technology. They were also Naytheists who would bend the laws of nature and physics in order to make their creations last, passed Abusive Precursors 101 with flying colors, and caused their entire race to disappear without a trace by attempting to tap into the power of the Heart of the "dead" god Lorkhan.
  • Meridia, a Daedric Prince associated with Life Energy, Light, and Beauty, was once a Magna-Ge, (essentially an angel of the god of magic) and retains the angelic imagery. Her titles include the Lady of Infinite Energies and the Radiant One, and she is generally regarded as one of the less malevolent of the Daedric Princes due to her loathing of the undead and opposition to some of her more obviously malevolent peers, such as the Daedric Prince Molag Bal. She is also a self-righteous, utterly selfish Narcissist who despises any mortal free will or defiance, casts aside her servants as soon as she decides they're of no more use to her, and only acts in defense of mortals when they have a common enemy. She serves as the Greater-Scope Villain of Oblivion's Knights of the Nine expansion, where her lesser Daedra servants, the Aurorans, act the muscle for Umaril the Unfeathered, who seeks the downfall of The Nine Divines.
  • In Morrowind, Tribunal deity Almalexia is frequently associated with light. Her Catchphrase is "come, bask in the light of my mercy" and her home city of Mournhold is known as "the City of Light, City of Magic." As the Face Heel Turned Big Bad of the Tribunal expansion, she shows that she is definitely not good.
  • Oblivion:
    • The Golden Saints (Aureal in their own language) are employed as enforcers by Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. While they aren't outright evil, they frown upon mortals as unworthy and are a lot less sympathetic than their counterparts, the Dark Seducers. They also guard the bright and happy "Mania" side of the Shivering Isles.
    • Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order. Despite his associations with order, light, and his shiny metal appearance, he is a destructive deity who stops at nothing in an attempt to put the universe into his idea of "perfect order". In the backstory, he threatened the other (chaotic-leaning) Daedric Princes so much that they cursed him into becoming his own antithesis — Sheogorath. At the end of every Era, Jyggalag is allowed to return to his true form in an event known as the Greymarch. During this time, he retakes and destroys the Shivering Isles (Sheogorath's and formerly his own realm), only to return to the form of Sheogorath at the end. The main plot of the Shivering Isles expansion is about him trying to break this Vicious Cycle once and for all.
  • In Skyrim, The Thalmor soldiers in wear the standard golden Elven Armor.
• Eternal Darkness: Of the trio of rivals that Mantorok has to deal with, Chattur'gha is a Ancient of Flesh, Xel'lo'tath is a Ancient of Spirits, and Ulyaoth is a Ancient of the Mind, fitting this trope. Said Ancient is the complete opposite of Mantorok, Ulyaoth being a God of Machines in contrast to Mantorok being a Fertility God.
• EVE Online has the Amarr Empire as one of the main factions in the game. They are a pure and devoutly religious people who protect the galaxy from evil with their beautiful golden spaceships. However, these beautiful spaceships are enormous monstrosities like the 'Apocalypse' and 'Armageddon' battleships with laser cannons that are among the most powerful weapons in the game that can turn most opponents into dust in minutes. And how do they protect the galaxy from evil? By conquering as much of it as they can, enslaving other races that oppose them and claiming divine right to do whatever they feel like to anyone they feel like as servants of a higher power. The only thing that stopped them cold was a far more advanced and powerful race which they tried to claim as their property. Since then, they have put their plans for purging the galaxy of evil on hold.

F - H

• Fall from Heaven, a Civilization IV Game Mod, features the Mercurians: angels so single-minded in their hunt for demons that they are often mistaken for the very demons they hunt.
• The Institute of Fallout 4 is quite possibly the cleanest place in the Wasteland (which isn't really saying much, but even isolated places like the Lucky 38 and Vault 101 still have signs of deterioration). They also create intelligent life to be used as tools, kidnap people from the surface to experiment on, and more. Even their leader, Father, who is your son is at best True Neutral, and holds no affections for you and only freed you from the Vault to see what would happen.
  • Similarly, the Sanctuary from before the war is shown as an idyllic, 1950s-esque community. However, other games and lore sources have implied that the life in Sanctuary is either a facade or an outlier, and most of the country was already suffering from resource shortages and succumbing to riots when the bombs dropped.
• Far Cry 5 has Faith Seed. She dresses in all white, and even sprouts white wings of glowing light while under the hallucinatory effects of Bliss. But she is also a mass murderer, drug queenpin, and master psychological manipulator who has driven dozens, if not hundreds of people to murder and suicide. Not that her brothers are any better...
• Final Fantasy:
  • The spell "Holy" in many installments of the series is a beam or explosion of divine light that burns the target from the astral plane, and is usually earned late in the game. Plenty of adversaries (mostly evil ones, who might even belong to a Corrupt Church) use it on you with impunity.
  • The GBA remake of Final Fantasy II has the Light Emperor. Specifically he is the "good" side of the Emperor's soul split from the "evil" side in Pandemonium. He tries to take over heaven, and succeeds completely, becoming master of heaven and hell before you even get there. He's still a tosser though.
  • Final Fantasy III had the good-guy Warriors of Darkness in its backstory, fighting the "Flood of Light" that threatened to burn away all of creation and was every bit as evil and dangerous as the Cloud of Darkness that the player-controlled Warriors of Light are now up against.
  • Exdeath, despite having a Name To Run Away From, is often seen clad in brilliant blue and white armor. One of his signature attacks, "Almagest," does Holy damage to the entire party.
  • Kefka's Light of Judgment from Final Fantasy VI is essentially a Nuke. His final form is a man/god/angel bathed in light, shown in the main page picture. Kefka also talks an awful lot about burning things, fire being a good example of the destructive side of light.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Sephiroth is the Trope Codifier for White Hair, Black Heart. He used to be a good guy, before he snapped and decided to try and fuse with the Lifestream and become a god to rule over the Planet. Between him and Kefka, they actually started a trend of angel-themed supervillains, with One-Winged Angels even being named after Sephiroth's angelic form.
    • Holy was supposed to save the Planet from Meteor. It was summoned so late, though, that its clash with the Black Magic spell was actually devastating what it was meant to protect, until the Lifestream surged up and helped it destroy Meteor. Even then, Bugenhagen theorized that Holy, a spell that obliterates that which is harmful to the Planet, could have very well destroyed mankind as well, if it judged humans to be harmful. The game's ending was deliberately ambiguous about whether this had in fact happened (with the ending's only post-Holy scene depicting solely non-human characters), but the spinoffs and sequel movie made it clear that humanity survived.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • The Church of Yevon, which (initially) seemed like a good organization, if a bit bigoted, bringing hope and order to Spira. Then the Maesters showed their true colors, the oppressive antagonist faction who worships a Demiurge Archetype.
    • There's also Yunalesca, a stunningly beautiful woman with long white hair, fair skin and silver clothes. She was the first summoner to defeat Sin and waits in Zanarkand to await summoners that complete their pilgrimage. And if they don't do what she says, she has a horrific One-Winged Angel.
  • Final Fantasy XI:
    • The gods Alexander (light) and Odin (darkness) are in constant opposition. Every few hundred years they break free from where ever they are to fight each other in a "Ragnarok", in an attempt to destroy each other and mowing down anyone in their paths. Showing that Dark Is Not Evil, Odin is the more magnanimous of the two as he, beseeched by a servant who had repeatedly defied Odin's orders, saves the life of an Empress who was shot with a holy beam meant for him.
    • Beastmen summoners are capable of using the Light-based Avatar Carbuncle for their Astral Flow ability, generally with more disastrous results than the normal elemental Avatars.
  • Final Fantasy XII:
    • Light elementals are just as pernicious once roused as their dark brethren, and by the same token, a dark elemental is just as peaceful as a light when left alone.
    • Ultima, the strongest of the main twelve Espers, is a personification of this trope. Her element of choice is light. She has a beautiful, angelic appearance (complete with platinum blonde hair and a feathery dress) — and is a very tough, powerful boss who uses magick fields to weaken the player, wields very strong Holy magick, and can inflict Reverse on a character and use Renew to KO them. She also led the rebellion of the Espers against the gods. Though you can get her to be on your side if you beat her...
    • The Occuria are essentially the "gods" of Ivalice, who desire order and harmony in their world. However, they are shown to be deceitful tyrants who manipulate mortals with visions of dead loved ones and who urge Ashe to destroy the Archadians, down to every innocent civilian, for defying their will.
  • While more Good is Not Nice, Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII is themed around this concept. While she does become genuinely heroic at the end of the game, until then she is a violent, driven and judgemental Anti-Hero who is trying to make up for ostracising her beloved sister due to her becoming L'Cie.
  • Final Fantasy XIV takes the light versus dark concept from Final Fantasy III and takes it to a whole new level. The Warriors of Darkness you meet in the 3.1 to 3.4 story line appear to be evil since they claim they're fighting for darkness instead of light, but it turns out that when they tried to save their own world from darkness, it got flooded with light instead and is nearly destroyed. They're led to believe from the Ascians that killing the Warrior of Light would bring balance back, though Urianger manages to find another way and orchestrates the event from behind the scenes to make it happen.
    • The expansion Shadowbringers takes this concept and runs with it to its logical conclusion: the expansion takes place in The First, the aforementioned world where the Warriors of Darkness hailed from. It's one of several alternate dimensions where the balance between light and darkness has been gravely disrupted. Here, the darkness has been almost completely extinguished by the light, resulting in Endless Daytime that has given birth to a new breed of Eldritch Abomination known as "sin eaters" created from overexposure to the light; in contrast to the voidsent created by overexposure to the darkness of the Void. As such, the player will, themselves, take on the mantle of the Warrior of Darkness in order to restore balance to The First and deliver the realm from the brink of annihilation. Ironically, The First had a whole religion dedicated to the worshipping of Light, which obviously fell out of fashion pretty hard after the Flood.
    • One of the primary antagonists for most of Shadowbringers is a rich, viciously corrupt ruler named Vauthry. He somehow possesses the ability to control Sin Eaters, and has a moral superiority complex over everyone despite being heinously tyrannical. This is because he is a Sin Eater; more specifically, the final and most powerful of the Lightwardens, Innocence. When you encounter him in combat, you swiftly defeat his humanoid form only to have him change into a gloriously beautiful angel. Between this and his morally myopic ranting, Vauthry is one of the most blatant examples of this trope personified in the entire Final Fantasy series.
    • During the expansion, Urianger has revelations that refute knowledge aetherologists on the Source have about the role of Light and Darkness in the elemental wheel; while originally it was thought that Light was associated with creation and Darkness associated with stasis (and thus stagnation), he posits their beliefs may have it mixed up, with Darkness actually being the element associated with creation and Light associated with stasis. This is because the imbalance of Light in the First that is leaking back to the Source is the cause of aetherial thinning mentioned during Stormblood's post-launch patches, and why in Urianger's dark vision of the future, the Black Rose chemical weapon was able to spread like a plague; the chemical works by halting aetherial flow in a person's body, and with the added Light aether already thinning the aetherial flow across the Source, it becomes a hundredfold more potent. This doesn't make light bad per say — stasis and order is as important as creation and chaos — but much like everything else in the First, the abundance of Light is definitely not helping the heroes' case.
    • In addition, revelations expansion raise a lot of questions about Hydaelyn and the legitimacy of her status as the Big Good; namely, that she is a Primal rather than a Goddess. Moreso, it was not Hydaelyn who came first, but Zodiark, summoned by the Ascians to save their civilisation from an inevitable apocalypse. Hydaelyn was summoned in turn to stop Zodiark because the survivors were divided on whether they could trust such a powerful being. Once summoned, Hydaelyn destroyed Zodiark and shattered the Source and its inhabitants into the Thirteen shards, severely weakening their aetheric potential. The few Ascians who survived see Hydaelyn as both a tyrannical and unjust jailer of the very god who saved them, and the destroyer of their cherished homeworld. Of course, considering who's recounting the story and how they openly admit they're tempered to Zodiark, we're hearing a very biased version of the truth; Endwalker swiftly reveals that Hydaelyn is a straight-up case of Light Is Good, who did what she had to do at the very worst, and every piece of "evidence" towards her malevolence that was presented in Endwalker is taken waaaay out of context.
    • Patch 5.2 has Eden Shiva when Ryne channels the Warrior of Light's memories of Shiva into herself to become a Primal like Ysale did. Unfortunately she loses control and besides having Shiva's ice powers, she switches into a Light version based on her image of Hydaelyn that threatens to start a second Flood of Light on the First. After defeating her, she freezes the entire party and herself until Gaia breaks into the boss arena and breaks the party and Shiva out so the raid can finish the job before she ends up starting that second Flood of Light.
  • Patch 5.3 has this with Elidibus channeling The Warrior of Light as his true form, fully revealed as a Primal of the Ascians. Before getting to him in the Crystal Tower, he called down infinite Shades of Heroes from across time and space to attack the First on the basis that you are the Warrior of Darkness, just to wear you down.
• In The Final Fantasy Legend, the final Boss, the Creator, is not only light, but is God, and attacks with what is essentially the light of God.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics also relies heavily on this trope, as most of the main villains could fit this category in a way or another. All of the Shrine Knights and the high-ranking members of the Church of Glabados fit this trope well. The last boss in particular is the reincarnation of a false saint with a whole corrupted religion revolving around him/her/it.
  • All of the Totema bosses of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance use are healed by Holy, and some use it too. One of the game's most powerful swords does Holy-elemental damage, much to the dismay of many players who went into the final battle with it equipped.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia, the player party is made up of characters across the series who wander through space-time rifts called Torsions, and Mog scoops up the ones who bear the "light" to join the ever-expanding party in closing te Torsions. In Chapter 6, however,it is revealed that the "light" includes the power to open Torsions as well, meaning that the antagonists who are running around flooding the world with monsters are as much Warriors of Light as the heroes are.
• Finding Light: The Final Boss, Zamas, can use light spells like Holy, Smite 3, and Judgement despite being the god of chaos.
• If you get betrayed anywhere in the Fire Emblem series, 2:1 odds are that it was by a bishop, cleric, paladin, light magician... you get the point.
  • The entire series uses both this and Dark Is Not Evil, because classes specializing in healing or light magic are quite frequent in the enemy armies, including among their often flatly evil bosses, and classes specializing in dark magic can be good. (In fact, in every chapter of the first game's second half, expect at least one Cleric with a Reserve Wand.) However, there's still a tendency towards the nastiest magical characters being hideous and/or using dark magic, and the reverse for the good side.
    • It's explained that light magic draws its power from faith, and that dark magic draws its power from knowledge, creating a sort of religion-science dichotomy between the two. If you'll notice, even the most evil of Bishops (like Kenneth or Riev) have absolute faith in the villains, and most of the series' dark magic users (at least since Binding Blade) have been extremely intelligent bookworms, regardless of their alignment to good or evil. The series tries to avoid the subject of religion for the most part, but Kenneth laughs at the idea of gods, cementing the idea that the object of a light magic user's faith doesn't need to be divine.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, The most evil and irredeemable character, Riev, is the Bishop class and uses incredibly powerful light magic.
  • In Path of Radiance, you have to take down a corrupt bishop who stole a heron. He uses one of the most powerful light spells in the game. Said character also happens to have an army of other light magicians with him.
  • The Black Knight's mighty sword Alondite appears to use the light element. The Black Knight even explains to Ike at one point that his sword was forged by the goddess herself and its twin sword is the only one that could ever hope to defeat it.
  • Radiant Dawn uses this as well as Order Versus Chaos. The villains of the game are the Begnion Senate, which is obviously modeled after the medieval Catholic Church. All of the senators are the Bishop class and use light magic. One of them uses corrupted light magic. Ashera, Goddess of Order, is the final boss, as she wishes to punish the world with the light of judgment, and our heroes team up with the (very nice) Goddess of Chaos to stop her. The Order Versus Chaos page explains this all very nicely.
  • Three Houses plays with this trope with Archbishop Rhea/Seiros, otherwise known as The Immaculate One. In most of the game's routes, Rhea has been known to commit questionable acts, but remains as the Big Good nonetheless. However, in the Crimson Flower route, Rhea goes absolutely berserk upon what she believes to be Byleth's betrayal by siding with Edelgard in the Holy Tomb, and undergoes Sanity Slippage, becoming the Big Bad of that route.
• The Hammer of Light from Freespace, a group of Scary Dogmatic Aliens who believe that the Big Bad Shivans are gods (the Shivans kill them just as quickly they do everyone else).
• Furcadia's "Light Primes" are generally not nice. For example, Viveravus, the good god of colors and the twilight, literally tore Tallus to itsy bitsy pieces with his own two hands in public, at Mycrofts of all places, regardless of what the game canon says. Tallus did not even fight back, he just kept trying to defend himself against an unprovoked attack against an angry drunk god. This happened in front of a bar full of horrified mortals. He also threatened to attack said mortals. Also, meeting many of the light primes in person can be a shock most of them are jerks. Aristaya, the goddess of good dreams, is a regal ice queen, M'rill the sun goddess is full of herself and will rob you blind, and Chim will challenge you to games at which you will almost certainly always lose. The rest of the gods can be even worse....
• Galaxy Angel II: The two final games of the trilogy have the Will, a race of extradimensional Winged Humanoids who look like angels, and while at first they try to come across as benevolent, in reality they've destroyed countless civilizations when they judged them "unworthy", and plan to reset the entire universe by causing what's essentially a Big Crunch as they consider the current one a "failure".
• In Genshin Impact, if you're playing as Aether, the male Player Character whose outfit is predominantly brown, then the leader of the Abyss Order will be Lumine, his sister, whose outfit is predominantly white.
• Gift: Little Clears and light where Little Darks live. Also green light which drains all magic powder from Gift's staff and red light which reduces his movement speed and jump height.
• In the God of War series, among the gods who oppose Kratos there is Helios, the god of the sun, and Hermes, who has his hair made of light. and Zeus who is a Grandpa God with a light glow One could argue that they were corrupted by the evils of Pandora's Box, but the only god who seems to have been significantly affected was Zeus, so it may just be that they are that way.
  • Some of the lesser foes, like the desert sirens, Perseus and undead sentries also use light attacks, throwing golden light at Kratos.
  • Ares (whose facial hair is literally fire) is confirmed to be an actual Jerkass God in God of War: Ascension, when it's revealed that he conspired with the Furies to violently take over Olympus. The Furies wear flashy golden jewelry made of the broken promises of their prisoners, and their prison itself does most of its work in bright sunlight.
  • The Big Bad in God of War (PS4) is none other than Baldur, the Norse God of Light, who is presented as a violent and psychotic Psychopathic Manchild that also happens to be almost invincible.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn uses this trope for the Apollo Sanctum, which is bathed in light so intense it will kill your party without somebody wearing the correct equipment to provide protection. The light around the Apollo Lens is so fierce that even the Umbra Gear cannot protect the person who has to fire it. Manly tears ensue.
• In Grandia II the Pope of the popular religion turns out to be helping to revive Valmar (the game's Satan analogue) because contrary to the world's standard mythology, Granas (the "God"/Crystal Dragon Jesus of said popular religion) lost the ancient "Battle Between Good and Evil." Said Pope also seems to actually be much more evil than Valmar, and sought to revive the "devil" to steal its power and make himself into a replacement for the long-dead Granas. Mareg's religion doesn't believe in complete evil or good (much to the disdain to one character) and is proved correct when the "real" history of the gods is shown to the heroes.
• In Guild Wars: Prophecies, the White Mantle (dressed, appropriately, in swishy white and gold getups) initially seem like great guys. They welcome a band of refugees from a formerly-enemy country, give them a nice patch of land, spend lots of time fighting the undead menace that has recently risen, recognize (and promote) talent, even among foreigners, and search the peasantry for those with magical talents so that those peasants can be educated and their talents developed. Turns out, though, that all those talented peasants are being sacrificed to golden, floating, not-really-gods, the undead were attracted by an artifact the White Mantle shouldn't have been messing with in the first place, and other Evil Things were afoot, ultimately caused by the dark god Abaddon, who has been trying to break his prison and destroy the world since the other five gods caged him up about a thousand years ago. Their counterparts the Shining Blade, with an equally bright name but more practical clothing, are pretty straightforward, though.
• Halo:
  • The Covenant are Scary Dogmatic Aliens who use a lot of light in their culture. Tron Lines abound in their architecture, the Prophets claim to be the guiding light of the Covenant, and they mostly use plasma weaponry, often employing their ships'Wave Motion Guns like a Bolt of Divine Retribution.
  • The Forerunners' technology is almost all bright and shiny, with Hard Light being integral to their architecture, ships, weapons, etc. Though they believed themselves to be the galaxy's caretakers, they were in practice imperialist Abusive Precursors, though mostly of the Believing Their Own Lies type.
• Hollow Knight: The infection that destroyed the kingdom that the Knight is exploring manifests itself as a sickly orange glow. Weaker enemies have glowing orange eyes and bleed orange when you hit them. Enemies with advanced infection are covered in glowing pustules, and certain areas that have fallen to the infection are covered in glowing Meat Moss thick enough to block passages. In the Golden Ending, you fight the creator of the infection. Her first appearance is as a glowing sun in the background in a dream world, and her attacks use white swords and golden energy blasts.
• The final bosses of the House of the Dead 2 and 3 are magnificent shiny quicksilvery creatures bearing a striking contrast with the usual shambling rotten and untidy lot of the zombie army. They are still dicks though.

I - R

• In Infernal, EtherLight uses a lot of white, pale grey, and shiny blue, but is the antagonist for most of the game. Not everyone working for them is evil, but they're certainly not all good.
• In INSIDE (2016), bright light is never a good thing. Running through it always means an instant death or alerting enemies who will charge after you like a bat out of hell. Oftentimes, it's even used as an ambient warning, like a bright single lamp over a hallway that leads to an area where a threat is waiting, or a brightly lit room being an area where guards are lurking.
• Jak 3:
  • Count Veger is a Well-Intentioned Extremist and Knight Templar who seeks to become "the glorious light that burns away the shadows." This includes Jak himself, who has already saved the world two times.
  • Jak's own Light form comes complete with a set of angelic wings. While its powers are mostly based on defense rather than offense, it still enables Jak to wreak havoc, for example by using Flash Freeze and then shooting everything in sight.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven features Heaven Ascension DIO and his Stand, The World Over Heaven, which has the ability to erase history and reality.
• Journey On: Chosen One Subject XIV is a boss monster who falsely believes themselves to be the true wielder of the Holy Sword and will fight to prevent Selena from claiming it. They can use imitations of the holy skills that Selena can learn if she obtains the sword. It's implied that they are a failed Ashkar experiment to control the sword.
• Despite the first game taking a straight "light is good, and dark is bad" angle, most of the Kingdom Hearts series affirms that light and darkness are simply sources of power. What you do with them is completely up to you, and later games introduce light-wielding villains.
  • One of the arc phrases of the first game: "The closer you are to the light, the greater your shadow becomes."
  • The Keyblade of Heart carried by Ansem-possessed Riku was forged from the hearts of the seven Princesses of Heart. One look at the thing will tell you that it's not a weapon of good.
  • Angel Stars are a species of The Heartless described as being born from Holy magic and resemble a cross between a spark plug and, well, an angel. They're also only found in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, a graveyard of worlds consumed by the darkness.
  • In Chain of Memories, Zexion tries to kill Riku with blasts of light.
  • Master Eraqus from Birth by Sleep starts off with shades of Knight Templar. It gets worse, but by the time 0.2 rolls around he MIGHT have become The Atoner.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, Xehanort rips out the Light from Sora and wields it during the final battle. His new plan for Kingdom Hearts is also an example — he has come to believe that the hearts of people are the true source of Darkness and thinks that using the light of Kingdom Hearts to purge the worlds is the best way to bring about true peace. In other words, he wants to kill everybody in existence with light.
  • Xemnas is the most prominent example. His powers are literally laser beams, lightsabers and nothingness. His final form, has his usually black cloak turn white with black stripes. Suitable, since his pocket dimensions are mostly large voids of white emptiness.
• Orochi from The King of Fighters '97, who is a white pants-wearing white haired Bishōnen who can call lightning from the sky and blasts his opponents with light as one of his super moves.
• Kirby:
  • The recurring boss Galacta Knight, in contrast to Meta Knight, is pink and has bright white angelic wings. Despite this, he's so powerful that he was sealed away long ago because of it (one game even mentions he's capable of blowing up planets as collateral damage). More often than not, he's also one of the hardest bosses one can face in any game he appears in.
  • In Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, the final boss, Zero Two, has an angelic design, complete with "feathery" wings and a halo.
  • The main antagonist of Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Queen Sectonia, is associated with light and creation. In fact, there's no apparent traces of darkness on her even in both of her "Soul of Sectonia" forms.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot's final boss, Star Dream, is bright white with Tron Lines, and has an angel/heart motif. Despite this, it's one of the most destructive forces in the universe, with a goal of destroying all organic life in the universe, and possibly other universes.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land provides the most straight example with its Final Boss: Fecto Elfilis, the Ultimate Life Form. It sports a very bright and colorful design that resembles an angel with halo-like antlers and ears resembling angel wings. The final battle is fought in a bright sunset sky, complete with a music track that features a One-Woman Wail and a pipe organ to add to its "holy" presence. However, Fecto Elfilis proves to be the most evil entity in the entire Kirby franchise, due to the way it treats its minions and the fact that it has the ability to feel compassion and love (which is what its other half Elfilin is), but just doesn't care and prefers to conquer all worlds instead.
• In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Jedi Master Atris has an all-white motif: her robes are white, her hair is white (and she's rather pale with blue eyes), and keeps six servants who also have white hair and white clothing. She lives on a snowy white polar ice cap. She's positioned to contrast a Sith Lord on the game disc and promo art. She is also bitter and sanctimonious, extremely nasty to the player character, and manipulates the hell out of the Handmaiden who sees her as a Parental Substitute. The only reason she's not actually a Sith is because she's way in denial. One chat with Kreia and she happily starts throwing around Force Lighting.
• Throughout The Legend of Dragoon, historians, priests and various worshipers speak of the Moon Child, a saviour reincarnated once every one hundred and eight years to bring holy bliss and purity to the world: however, for the past eleven thousand years, the Moon Child has been killed by a nightmarish demon known only as "The Black Monster." Well, with all the cliches at work in this game, you'd expect that your ultimate goal in the last disc is to kill the Black Monster and help the latest incarnation of the Moon Child purify the world, right? Wrong. It turns out that the Moon Child is really the misplaced soul of the Virage Embryo, the God of Destruction. And once the two are reunited, the world will indeed be purified... by being completely destroyed.
  • The game's mechanics take it even further: Each character is associated with one of 7 elements. Your first archer and healer, Shana, turns out to be the Moon Child herself. What is her element? Light.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where the Twilight Realm would have stayed peaceful if not for Ganondorf, who despite being associated with darkness in other games, still technically comes from the realm of Light. Ganondorf is the Big Bad of the whole series, and he was one of the three people blessed with a piece of the Triforce. He also fights with a sword of Light in Twilight Princess.
  • Very little is known about the Fierce Deity from Majora's Mask, but when you get his mask, you get the message "Could its dark power be as bad as Majora?"
  • In Hyrule Warriors, Ganondorf of all characters gets a Darkness/Light version of his Great Swords called the Swords of Renewal as his Level 4+ weapon in Definitive Edition. This is probably a reference to the Sword of Sages that he used in Twilight Princess.
• WiiWare title The Magic Obelisk has the main character as a tree spirit who must remain in the shade, or else he will turn into a tree, resulting in Game Over.
• Magical Starsign assigns a starsign to everyone, including antagonists. Most of the Space Police is of Light, and a sizeable chunk of them cooperates with the pirate otters.
• Manafinder: King Vikar refers to himself as a Holy King, but he's really a tyrant who exiles his subjects over petty reasons. As the Final Boss of Starkas's route, he use use Enlight on himself to add a light elemental magic hit to all of his attacks.
• Mass Effect 3's Cerberus troops wear all white. They're also human-centric indoctrinated terrorists.
• Copy X from Mega Man Zero and Lumine from Mega Man X8, which take on angelic forms during their boss battles. The Classic series has Bright Man and Flash Man who also have light-based powers, and they're antagonists (though Bright Man is one of Dr. Cossack's creations, who attacked Mega Man due to Wily's manipulations).
  • There's also the light-themed Mavericks from the X series, such as Sting Chameleon, Neon Tiger, Cyber Peacock, Izzy Glow/Shining Firefly and Optic Sunflower. Especially Optic Sunflower.
  • Serpent and Master Albert from Mega Man ZX when Megamerged with Model W are clad in white and gold armor, the latter in particular taking on an angelic form. Fittingly, Model W's "original self" Dr. Weil predominantly wore white and gold, albeit mixed in with red and black.
  • Laser Man from Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon specializes in light-based attacks, but he is Dr. Regal's Navi, complete with a Card-Carrying Villain personality.
• The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, a defector to the Soviet Union who wears an all-white sneaking suit. However, even when she's beating the crap out of Snake in every scene she's in, the game gives her an incredibly sympathetic treatment, ending with going over her backstory and beliefs. Subverted even more when it turns out that she wasn't even a real defector, but a tragic scapegoat.
• In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, it becomes very clear by the end that the wraith Celebrimbor wanting to be the "Bright Lord" of Mordor (as opposed to Sauron's status as Dark Lord) is NOT a good thing. For all of his bright colors and intention of overthrowing Sauron, he's willing to mind control hundreds of Uruk-Hai (who scream in terror and despair as he does so), chastises Talion for his attachment to his murdered family and attempts to convince him to abandon his allies and love interest. Flashbacks reveal that he actually succeeded in stealing the One Ring from Sauron and raised an army to fight him. He would have won except that the ring flew off his finger to return to its true master as he was about to strike the final blow. The finale reveals that he's going to try to forge a new One Ring to destroy Sauron for good. He says this as Talion's eyes turn orange with the reflection of the fires of Orodruin (Mount Doom), the same way that Sauron's eyes glowed orange in his elven body in the flashbacks.
• In Miitopia, the Darker Lord has glowing, porcelain-white skin and wears a luminant cloak, and the Darkest Lord takes the form of a gigantic sunlike disc, contrasting against the Dark Lord's dark purple robes.
• Monster Girl Quest: At first, the setting seems to be Light Is Good and Dark Is Evil; the angels, humans, and the Big Good, Goddess Ilias (blonde hair, blue eyes, gold and white clothes, three sets of wings, a halo), embody the light, while the Big Bad Monster Lord and the monsters embody the dark. But then, Luka, in addition to meeting plenty of good monsters, encounters Ilias Kreuz, a terrorist group that worships Ilias and slaughters monsters, even the good ones, in her name. To make things even worse, it’s later revealed that Ilias approves of this, as from the beginning, she has been the true Big Bad who despises and has tried to wipe out monsters, only wishes to keep a controlled population enslaved to keep the world's global dark energies in balance (as the "Six Ancestor's Great Seal" that she used by threatening the Six Ancestors and Alice I by destroying the world if they didn't agree. They agreed, but left a failsafe around in case the Goddess broke her promise in that, if she eradicated a massive amount of monsters, the dark energies emitted by said slaughtered monsters would accumulate around the world and eventually activate said failsafe, breaking the seal completely), and even caused the Slaughter of Remina. Ilias decides by the end of chapter 2 to eradicate not just monsters, but even humanity as well, replacing it with something else entirely (whom she "implies" to have created, but of course it's just another lie and in truth it was Promestein who created this new race called the "Replicants") as punishment for those who don't blindly follow her tenets. The Monster Lord Alice XVI, by contrast, only wanted monster-human coexistence to remain in peace. Oh, and she has such a truly wonderful smile as well once she initiates her genocidal campaign toward humans and monsters◊.
• Mystery Chronicles: One Way Heroics replaces its predecessor's Darkness with the Shine Raid, a wall of light that destroys everything it touches.
• Vigoor from Ninja Gaiden. His first form looks like a stone angel.
• The Big Bad of Noctropolis is revealed to have Light powers in contrast to the hero's Darkness powers and explains his diabolical plan of manipulating an everyday guy from another world into becoming his successor as the titular city's main superhero just so he would be exposed to Applied Phlebotinum so the Big Bad can use him as a catalyst for turning more Applied Phlebotinum into a Cosmic Keystone (or Power-Up) of Light. After this Evil Gloating the hero recovers from being an Unwitting Pawn by calling on forces of Darkness to save the day.
• Destroyman in No More Heroes appears to be a superhero and claims to fight with honour...but it's not hard to see that he's one of the most dirty fighting, Ax-Crazy assassins that Travis has to fight.
• From Octopath Traveler II:
  • Mindt/Arcanette pretends to be a Cleric (who have access to Light-based powers when playable) and wears the same white and light bue robes that other Clerics do. She's actually the leader of the Moonshade Order and a massive manipulator.
  • Claude has long white hair and wears a white coat. However, he's easily one of the most evil characters in the game, fathering hundreds of Blacksnakes and letting them kill each other off just so one of them can replace him as Vide's vessel. He's heavily implied to have raped many of his children's mothers as well.
• Fortinbras, the Big Bad from Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams comes to mind. All of his attacks are light-based, and he even walks onto the battlefield wearing all white. He specifically refers to himself as the 'God of Light'. Conversely, the main character is sometimes known as the 'Oni of the Ash'.
• Ori and the Blind Forest: The Reveal of the story's Grey-and-Grey Morality has an unintentional example. Around 3/4th of the game, you find out that the reason Kuro went on a rampage is because the light the Spirit Tree was using to find Ori charred her children alive without her being able to save them, part of it is revenge, but the other motivation is protecting her last surviving child. As mentioned in the Fridge page It took years for the Spirit Tree to find out the damage done by him setting the night sky ablaze. If Kuro hadn't forcibly halted him, there is no indication that he would not have continued to set the night sky ablaze until Ori came home. Which wouldn't work since he was being raised by Naru to whom the action was a threat. There is a reason for why the narration says Kuro was protecting her last remaining child, the Spirit Tree was an active threat, if again, a non malicious one.
• Emperor Solarius from Overlord II has a sun motif and he is dedicated to the extermination of magical beings.
• Taken literally in The Path, where a light at the edge of the forest means that you are approaching some infinitely creepy tableau if not your character's metaphoric psychosexual death.
• Phantasy Star IV has this as a major theme toward the end of the game. The Great Light, the creator god of Algo, is not shown to be good, just not straight-up evil. The main character, Chaz, has a moral objection to the expectation that he and his companions should do the Great Light's bidding, being that the Great Light itself abandoned the solar system ages ago, and that doing so would make them no different from Zio, the cult leader/evil wizard who killed his mentor figure. More directly, though, the elemental Light creatures are few in number, live in idyllic, magical crystal castles, are immortal figures made of glowing fire. De-Vars, Sa-Lews, and Re-Faze embody Strength, Courage, and Anger respectively, and while they're all pleased that that the heroes triumph over them, they do make a point of trying to crush them in order to make sure they're worthy of the task of saving the universe. Re-Faze in particular is willing to isolate, trick, traumatize, and insult Chaz in order to test his mettle. In the end, only good can truly triumph over evil, and good can only exist in the human heart.
  • All the Light elemental attacks are pretty hardcore. In PSIV, if it looks like a laser, you can expect it to do some pretty hefty damage. In a couple of boss fights, the wussy second-level Githu technique (it's basically a yellow laser that goes bzweeoon) does more damage than most melee attacks.
  • A similar theme occurs in Phantasy Star Universe, only taking the light from aloof to outright evil. The Ancients, who have represented the light element, and directly opposed to the darkness of SEED are eventually revealed to have been, with some exceptions, a race of tremendous jerkasses lead by a man so incredibly twisted it's implied he raped and killed one of his (many) wives who view current humans as nothing more than vessels for their resurrection. To illustrate the point further, this leader styles himself as "the Sun King."
  • And again in Phantasy Star Online 2, though the spectrum widens. The Photoners were an ancient civilization who utilized Xion's knowledge to expand across the universe and develop scientific wonders, and yet they were also the cause of everything wrong in the series with their rampant amoral experimentation, including the creation of the Falspawn, the Dark Falz and the Profound Darkness. Luther in particular was a colossal prick who continued his experimentation across multiple bodies and manipulated ARKS from the shadows in his mad pursuit of the omniscience granted to Xion by the Akashic Records. To say nothing of the Photoner remnants faction led by Shiva, the self-proclaimed Goddess of Annihilation who seeks to destroy all creation in a fit of pique; in a bizarre take on this trope mixed with Dark Is Evil, she is an artificial Photoner created as host to the Profound Darkness itself, and the nature of her creation grants her near-infinite photonic absorption capabilities, rendering all of ARKS' weaponry useless in direct confrontation against her.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has April May. A pink, cutesy lady who turns out to have a terrible temper and is an accomplice to murder, with a boss who equally counts for this trope - a pink-clad sparkly Corrupt Corporate Executive. Also, both Matt Engarde from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All and Dahlia Hawthorne from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, who dress in white and look adorable and delicate despite being both vicious masterminds without a shred of regret.
  • Simon Keyes from Investigations is an arguably milder example, wearing a bright jacket and, well, working as an animal tamer in the circus. He's also a Manipulative Bastard who orchestrated the events of the entire game behind the scenes.
• Pilgrim (RPG Maker): Master Alice is blonde and wears a bright blue dress and red bow, but is a Humanoid Abomination and the Big Bad who steals souls. Though the body is indicated to be not hers, but that of a girl she possessed.
• In Planescape: Torment, Trias the angelic deva, the final Arc Villain, desires nothing more than to aid the Heavens in recognizing and combating the threat posed by the fiendish Lower Planes… so he decided to get the Lower Planes to wage bloody war on them. In his opinion, a honest war against a hated enemy is better than the cowardice currently shown by the Upper Planes by avoiding the conflict or by selling weapons to different enemy fractions in fear they'd turn on them if they stopped fighting amongst themselves. Thus the evil fiends deserve what they get… and the Upper Planes deserve the pain they get for not treating evil as a true threat, and casting him out.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl give us Cyrus, a villain named after the sun (at least in most translations), who is a Knight Templar type. Depending on the version you play, he's either a straight-up Omnicidal Maniac or a good bit more sympathetic (but still evil). However, the PC's, Lucas and Dawn, also have names with light themes, so they largely avert the trope.
  • Subverted with Reshiram from Pokémon Black and White however. In Pokémon Black, it serves the hero. In Pokémon White, it serves N, leader of Team Plasma, but he's actually an Anti-Villain. By the time Pokémon White 2, N's made the transition to full-fledged hero.
    • Team Plasma is rather strongly based on Christianity, with their Templar-like uniforms, talk about "saving" Pokémon, and use of the Chi Rho, an ancient symbol used to represent Jesus, as a symbol. They're also a deranged hypocritical terrorist cult being manipulated by a fraudulent leader in his attempt to gain power.
  • The fifth Generation also introduces Litwick, Lampent and Chandelure, an evolutionary line based on artificial light sources (a candle, a lamp and a chandelier). Don't be fooled by their mesmerizing flames, or else these could get powered with your life energy.
  • The Fairy type introduced in Generation VI is mostly made up of stereotypically cute and girly Pokémon and most of their attacks involve light in some way (Dazzling Gleam and Moonblast for example). However, some of the Pokedex entries describe them as displaying traits that very much show their namesake. The Tapus are the defining example; they may be Alola's Legendary Guardians but they are also fickle and perfectly willing to mess with, attack or kill the people they are supposed to protect as much as help them.
  • The Aether Foundation in Pokémon Sun and Moon wear bright white uniforms and have an outward goal of caring for injured Pokémon; no one was surprised to learn they were the real villains. Their leader Lusamine might also be one of the most disturbing and evil villains in the entire franchise.
    • Introduced in the same game is the Ultra Beast Nihilego, who is a bright white and looks the most delicate and non-threatening of the group. In truth, it secretes a Psycho Serum that makes it incredibly dangerous, and it's thought to be non-sentient, making it an amoral parasite acting on little more than pure instinct. It is also the Greater-Scope Villain.
    • The sequel introduces another character that is light and bright but destructive: Necrozma, the black prism Pokemon which absorbs Solgaleo/Lunala and becomes Ultra Necrozma, a light dragon bent on devouring light from worlds, and has a Secret Art which is pretty much a Fantastic Nuke. To be fair for that character, it wasn't always so violent, not until it got broken by ancient humans in the story.
  • Zig-zagged with the Big Bad of Pokémon Legends: Arceus; Volo is an Ax-Crazy Godhood Seeker whose Evil Costume Switch puts him in a white outfit and makes his golden blond hair flow a bit, while his Signature Mon is Togekiss, an angelic Fairy-type associated with friendship and peace. However, the other Pokemon he's associated with is the Ghost-type Legendary Giratina, a shadowy Satanic Archetype primarily associated with darkness.
• All four of the floor bosses from Princess Peach: Showtime! are based on objects that emit (or in one case, reflect) light: Disco Wing is a disco ball, Light Fang is a bank of stage lights, Purrjector Cat is a film projector, and Spotlion is a spotlight.
• The little angelic boy named Emilio Michaelov in Psychic Force. At the first glance, he's a timid boy who just had tremendous power of light, but good hearted. Then he gets brainwashed and then turns into an Ax-Crazy psycho working for the bad guys. His good self still struggle to prevail over his evil self, but ultimately fails.
• Red Dead Redemption II has a downplayed example in the form of Micah Bell. While he's primarily associated with the colors red and black, he's rarely seen without a white hat, which is often worn by the "heroes" of classical Western stories. In addition, he wears a white suit during the Van der Linde gang's robbery of a bank in Saint Denis, a stark contrast to his fellow gang members who wear black and grey suits. But despite all this, he's a psychotic outlaw, an unapologetic bigot, and ultimately a rat who sells the gang out for his own selfish benefit.
• Reverse: 1999 has the St. Pavlov Foundation, a magical organization dedicated to sheltering, educating, and training young magical children, arcanists, to use their power for the good of the world instead of falling down the many dark paths they could be lured into. The campus is made of white granite often accented with gold, cleaned frequently to make them sparkle in the light, and the uniforms of their school children, instructors, staff, and field agents are oftentimes pure white accented with some darker greys. Their motto and speeches also oftentimes invoke the images of light and guidance from the "darkness" of the world. However, as the saying goes, the brighter the light, the darker the shadow, and the Foundation is willing to lie, cover up dire secrets like the apocalyptic "Storm" from the public, kidnap people that threaten to break their lies, and emotionally and psychologically manipulate and break their young wards into loyal puppets. They're not above killing them if they prove to be too much trouble, too.
• The guardian faction from Rift. They're the chosen of the world's gods, live well and faithfully, yet they're genocidally zealotic towards anything that shows a sign of heresy. They're also very, very quick to lose their minds; for example, in the Defiant version of the Bad Future instance "Fall of Lantern Hook", where the world is being assaulted by Maelforge, they completely lose it and start throwing everyone, innocent, guilty, believer and heretic alike into the fires.
• Gehn from Riven. He wears an immaculate white-and-gold militaristic uniform, with gold-colored buttons, and gold embroidered rank-like branch symbols. He keeps his book-writing desk in the same fashion, which is a gaudy, almost temple-like gold and white-marble structure in his office on Age 233. Did we mention he tried to kill Atrus, his own benevolent son? (Which he does in one of the bad endings.) As part of a Freudian Excuse, he is a Tragic Villain, who grew up ostracized from his fellow D'ni (because his mother was human, and his father a full-blooded D'ni), and watched his home empire fall. However, his knowledge of the Art of writing the D'ni's mystical Linking Books has given him a deity complex, where he sees the worlds that he writes as his own divine creations (rather than worlds that already exist), and the peoples of those worlds worth no more than insects.
• The Archangel, one of the Accursed in Riviera: The Promised Land, is 'an angel burdened with the sins of others', who tries to get revenge on the gods of Asgard.
• RosenkreuzStilette Iris Sepperin is blonde and has a golden castle, gold mechs, and a One-Winged Angel form with seraph wings, but is the most evil villain in the series who pitted RKS against The Empire, just for the fun of it.
• In Runescape:
  • Commander Zilyana, one of the bosses in the God Wars Dungeon, hands down stands out in a setting were many characters suffer from Belief Makes You Stupid with her utter fundamentalism. Her God, Saradomin, in spite of being the god of Order and Wisdom, is at his best an ambiguous Well-Intentioned Extremist and at his worst a tyrant who can be very cruel to those who offend his sense of pride. On the other hand most of the gods are prideful beings. Most of the negativity he gets in and out of universe is from people fed up with his Holier Than Thou attitude and well... Do Not Taunt Cthulhu.
  • The goddess Seren, embodiment of Light energy, draws direct parallels between her and her estranged Dark brother Zaros. While he inspires slavish loyalty, her nature forces people to love her, and:
    "Love is just as deadly as an emotion as it is a wondrous one. Just as it can bring people together, it can also lead to unbearable pain and a complete loss of self. I do not blame him for wanting to escape that."

S - Z

• The Big Bad of Sam And Max Season 1, Hugh Bliss, is a self-help guru who wears all-white, is a kindly old man/aging blissed-out hippy, and uses rainbow-colored magic. He's also building a giant mind-control beam on the moon designed to make everyone on Earth as happy as he is. Turns out, he's a sentient colony of space-faring bacteria that feeds on human happiness.
  • Best part about that? You get to stop the Big Bad, which necessarily means turning the world into a Crapsack World again. Defeating the Big Bad changes the mind-control beam. Instead of everyone acting oh-so-very happy and cheerful and kind, everyone on the planet is acting like Max. And the only way to "cure" the hypnotized happy-crazy people is by punching them in the face. Max gleefully spends the credits doing so. Of course, punching everyone in the face is definitely necessary.
• The main threat in the Egypt arc of The Secret World is the cult of the Aten, an ancient sun god...and incidentally also an Eldritch Abomination with goals including burning the entire world to cinders. Atenists also tend to ramble about their god's divine light a lot in combat.
  • The Roman cult of Sol Invictus got corrupted by the Filth too. And then there's the Religion of Evil Church of Happyology expy, the Morninglight Cult. It seems like any time people worship the sun, the Filth shows up.
• Played straight by Mori Motonari in Sengoku Basara who refers to himself as "Child of the Sun," and is a Light-elemental character (which means he can break enemy defences). Except that he's The Chessmaster and a psycho-sadistic Jerkass who couldn't care less about his soldiers' welfare so long as they just do as he commands, treating them like disposable pawns to further his own ambitions. Exemplified with the fact that in-game, he can actually attack his own allies, a trait shared only with psychopath Akechi Mitsuhide. This is lampshaded by Oichi, the series' poster girl of Dark Is Not Evil, in the spin-off Sengoku Basara X who goes on to say that his "light is a lie" if they ever face each other.
  • Subverted with another Light-elemental character: Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He's cruel, ruthless, and willing to kill his own wife to achieve more power, but he is a Well-Intentioned Extremist (noble goal behind cruel action). And unlike Motonari, Hideyoshi actually shows his charisma to his soldiers and cares about them (especially Hanbe).
  • Imagawa Yoshimoto, though not evil, is a Dirty Coward whose only connection to Light is merely his love for Disco and as such summons light shows for attacks.
  • In general, Sengoku Basara seems prone to give the "Light" element to unsympathetic characters, like Otomo Sorin and Honganji Kennyo. There are still good examples, though (like Ieyasu and Nagamasa.)
• Shade: Wrath of Angels have the ethereal, benign-looking Angel of Faith, who's constantly shrouded in an aura of pure, angelic light... and is actually the Dark Angel who destroyed the rest of her kind, sparking a war in heaven several millennia ago. Even with the revelation of her true, sinister identity, she's still made entirely of shinning golden energy.
• In the Shadow Hearts series, the lead protagonist is often a Dark innate character, who naturally takes more damage from holy spells. Nicolai Conrad, a priest from the Vatican who uses holy magic, is The Dragon and, of all the characters in the game, successfully deals with Yuri via the Holy Mistletoe.
• In the Shin Megami Tensei games there are usually the alignment choices of Law (Light), Chaos (Dark), and Neutral (Whatever) (each having their own advantages and flaws). Law's flaws are that the rules are too strict and harsh, and that anybody who doesn't obey the rules must be eliminated. In fact the only reason the Chaos alignment exists is to stop the Law alignment's tyrannical reign.
  • In fact, most of the high law forces consisting of Judeo-Christian Angels are insane and almost make the Chaos or Neutral forces look like saints. You might as well as say "Light is Evil" in this case.
  • Some Shin Megami Tensei games additionally have a Light/Neutral/Dark alignment axis. This refers to the mythological reputation of the entity as something to be reviled or revered, and has no bearing on its actual morality — the below-mentioned YHWH and his higher-ranking Angels are as far along the Light axis as you can get, and are petty, self-centered megalomaniacs.
  • Especially seen in Shin Megami Tensei II and Nocturne where YHWH is the true ending's final boss in the former and a total douchebag in the latter.
  • Light as an elemental spell. In the Persona subseries, Light's main form of offense is insta-kill spells, identical to Dark except for their element. Sometimes seemingly Light-oriented personae will learn both Light and Dark spells. Whether or not these spells are effective, Light as an element can be pretty dang cruel.
    • Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos from Persona 2: Innocent Sin, has Light-based spells when he poses as both Hitler and his Persona, as well as when he takes over Jun's/Joker's body.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, there are a couple of incredibly malevolent Light spells. Amaterasu's Godly Light instantly destroys 80% HP of everyone in your party who does not null Light. Kagutsuchi's Vast Light and Infinite Light are both monstrously powerful Almighty moves, meaning you can't null them and they will hurt if they don't outright vaporize everyone. Radiance can obliterate entire parties with one casting. Thunderclap and Holy Wrath can mow everyone's HP to half. Metatron's Fire of Sinai not only deals random Almighty damage, but can also extend to insta-kills. So yes, pretty dang cruel.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey:
    • Mitra's Light of Order is a One-Hit Kill to a random demon in your active party. Ironically, Mitra's alignment is Dark-Chaos.
    • Metatron's Judgment Light insta-kills with 80% efficiency, for those not weak to Light.
    • Also plot-wise, Zelenin's transformation into an angel practically turns them into a walking demon-slaughtering human-brainwashing machine. Who enjoys the whole thing. It is creepy even if you're going for the Law ending...
  • Some shadows in the Persona series can cast incredibly dangerous Hama attacks that can instantly kill your party members.
  • In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth one of the boss battles takes place in a church against a shadow who's taken the form of four-armed monster preacher who rides a coffin and has a face like an evil scarecrow with his lips sewn shut. He uses a very powerful attack if you refuse to vow not to perform a certain action such as an attack or a special attack.
  • In Persona 5:
    • Goro Akechi caused a bunch of mental showdowns killing tons of people in the process. His first boss fight has him used light attacks with Robin Hood (aka one of his Personas).
    • When you get the true ending, you'll face off against Yaldabaoth, a god described as being the manifestation of humanity's subconscious desire for order, warped to the point where he no longer cares for the human cost or morality of said order; in his view, humans are little more than livestock and lemmings for him to rule over and command due to their stupidity. He initially takes the form of the Holy Grail, which starts off as black before the flow of wishes for him to dominate the world revitalize him and turn the cup gold. After the flow is cut off and the Grail defeated, the cup merges with his arena to become a giant version of his Shadows, a robotic, faceless angel who can manifest a golden gun, a church bell, a holy sword, and a bible book in each of his four arms. Satanael, the protagonists' ultimate Persona, finishes him with a Sinful Shell to his head.
    • The Royal expansion's third term scenario also adds Maruki, who wasn't exactly evil, per sec, but whose actions to save the world by fulfilling humanity's real greatest desires will inevitably degrade into Modern Stasis, because he just went straight into reviving dead parents of the Phantom Thieves, turning Morgana into a human, or basically undo every event that results in human suffering so humanity will forever live in happiness. And his Persona or power source is Azathoth, who uses numerous light-based attacks when you confront him, with one such attack being a Bless-type attack named "Eternal Radiance". And Azathoth evolves into Adam Kadmon, which is the personification of infinite light from the Sefirot.
  • In Persona 5 Strikers, the EMMA application evolves into a Physical God once consuming enough desires, creating a benevolent, but misguided Demiurge who believes that people desired her to think for humanity, because it can only process people asking her for advice when she was still a mere conceirge application. When fought, the application first appears as a bird-like angel in pure white, then a straight-out Angelic Abomination who also summons minions named after the ten circles of the Sefirot. Many of her attacks are light or laser-based as well.
  • In Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth The final boss is Enlil, an administrator of the collective unconsciousness who "protects" depressed people by heaping them with more depression in the form of documentary movies made of pure negativity. Although unlike Yaldabaoth she appears to be actually trying to protect people, she's just making them more of a depressed mess than they already are. And not only Enlil is actually a well-revered god of justice in actual Mesopotamian myth, her One-Winged Angel form appears as a giant, saintly-looking and muscular eagle god.
• The God from Silent Hill. She is depicted as a solar deity that will bring Paradise to humanity. Yet everything supernatural on Silent Hill, which most likely is her work, is twisted, evil and ugly, and her followers are at best insane. And, more directly, The Incubator, which has a radiant, divine appearence.
• In Skylanders, the Light element was introduced in the fourth game alongside Dark, and here, it is clearly demonstrated that both this trope and Dark Is Not Evil is in full effect. There are Light-elemental Skylanders and Dark-elemental villains, but at the same time, there are Dark-elemental Skylanders and Light-elemental villains. Of the Light-elemental villains, no one demonstrates this trope better than the Doom Raider of the Light element: Luminous. His skin is yellow and combined with his helmet, his head looks similar to a blazing sun (fitting, as the Light element is associated with stars to contrast the Dark element being associated with black holes), he wears a white outfit complete with a cape, his name comes from the Latin word for light, and his Leitmotif is a jazzy tune that wouldn't be out of place from The Incredibles or Persona 5. His powers are similarly light-based, able to fire beams of light, call down crystals from the sky, or summon a special crystal that fires a laser of its own. However, Luminous is a violent extremist who won't hesitate to destroy whatever or whoever stands in the way of his quest to extinguish all darkness in the world, and was willing to steal the light of Radiant City to do so. Fittingly, one of his quotes twists a commonly holy saying into a dangerous threat.
  Let there be light! PAINFUL light!
• In The Song of Saya, Fuminori sees almost everything and everyone around him as horrific Eldritch Abominations due to brain damage from a car accident that also killed his parents. The only exception is the titular Saya, who appears to him as a beautiful girl in white and becomes his main reason to keep on living. She's the true Eldritch Abomination that his warped senses see as perfectly normal.
• Solaris, the final boss of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), is a solar deity who is literally made of light energy. He fights by shooting white laser beams at the player. Ironically, according to Solaris' character backstory, he's actually a combination of two lesser beings of different elements; Iblis, a giant lava/fire creature, and Mephiles, a bizarre shadow being.
  • In fact, Solaris was the original being. Iblis was the embodiment of his pure unrestrained power and Mephiles was his consciousness, which was probably shadowy and dark due to how supremely pissed off Solaris was at being experimented on.
• Taki's, Siegfried's, and Cassandra's endings in Soul Calibur IV touch upon the fact that the titular spirit sword can easily be just as dangerous and manipulative as its darker counterpart and precursor, Soul Edge.
  • This is confirmed in Soul Calibur V with the appearance of Elysium, Soul Calibur's personification in the same vein as Soul Edge's Inferno. Soul Calibur wants order, and doesn't care how it gets it.
• In Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Mysterio uses the power of light in the first phase of the final battle.
• The Khalai Protoss of StarCraft certainly qualify. In contrast to the more kind, individualistic Dark Templar, the light-aligned Khalai/High Templar are blind, arrogant religious zealots. The Khalai are also the war-mongers among the Protoss, in contrast to the peaceful Dark Templars. During the course of the series so far, the Khalai Protoss have declared war on the Dark Templar three times, while the Dark Templar have yet to declare war on the Khalai, just wanting to be left alone. The Khalai Protoss do get better, though, most likely because nearly all of the Judicators and Conclave leaders were killed during the Zerg invasion of Aiur. Aldaris was the last of the "old order", and he gets killed by Kerrigan after starting another war among the Protoss. All of the Lawful Stupid fundamentalists were killed off, and only the ones more willing to change their ways and work with the Dark Templar survived.
• The Big Bad of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Sith Emperor, shows his face for the first time in the game's lead-in webcomic (he'd been nothing but a hologram in previous promotional material) and he's... a serene, clean-shaven young man, almost monk-like, dressed in a brilliant white cloak. Certainly he won't be a problem, right? Of course, that's simply a body that he's possessing at the time.
  • Just as it is possible for Imperial and Sith characters to be Light-sided, it is possible for Republic and Jedi to be Dark-sided. A Dark-sided Trooper is a Knight Templar who follows all orders no matter how ruthless while a Dark-sided Smuggler is a vicious crimelord in the making. In Imperial storylines, Jedi antagonists have a tendency of being either preachy whiners or self-righteous hypocrites who are just barely avoiding falling to the Dark Side (and in the case of Nomen Karr of the Sith Warrior storyline, you get to fully push him into embracing the Dark Side in your final confrontation with him).
  • This also extends to the Eternal Empire from the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion onward. Their architecture is magnificent, their colors blue, gold, and white, but they are unquestionably the villains, and the Sith Emperor is leading them in disguise.
• Gill from Street Fighter III is the brightly colored leader of The Illuminati who can attack using a large flash of light with a rainbow. He also has aspirations of being a All-Loving Hero.
• Combining "value-neutral elements" with "too much of a good thing" gives us the Sun Rune in Suikoden V. Properly sealed away, it provided light and perpetual fertility for the Queendom of Felena. Like all True Runes, it has a will of its own, however, and if taken into someone's body, it seems to slowly twist them into an imperial tyrant. Ultimately, it may be one more case of that universe's take on Order Versus Chaos. To be fair, the Sun Rune, Dawn rune, and Dusk Rune come as a set, and it is explained in the course of the game that the Sun Rune will not corrupt its bearer if said bearer also possesses the other two runes. Since a major plot point is that one of the runes has been stolen, we never actually see this...
• Sunless Sea: The Dawn Machine most certainly qualifies, being a gigantic clockwork device that illuminates a huge part of the underground cavern that is the Neath, bringing some manner of sun back to the British Empire. This does not mean this is a good thing; watching it emulate a sunrise in the horizon is good reason to duck and cover before the light starts chipping away at your sanity, and if you dare sail close to it your diary entries will be replaced with THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN ad infinitum. Fittingly, it was built when an offshoot of the Navy found out the Stars (as in actual stars, our sun included) imposed their laws upon the universe through their light, and thought "we should get in on that." This thing is a theoretical Reality Warper engine. A sentient and malevolent Reality Warper engine.
  • This is carried over in Sunless Skies' Clockwork Sun (which is strongly implied to be built from the Dawn Machine). The light it pours over Albion not only brings as much insanity and addiction as sunlight and the Dawn Machine (eliciting the very same Madness Mantra), but also has the gruesome effect of turning things and people into jagged glass. Lastly, the Clockwork Sun is described by many as a terrifyingly hateful entity.
  • Real sunlight is itself shockingly dangerous. A Neath-dweller like yourself can be instantly killed by exposure to sunlight; even precautions like staying indoors and under cover won't keep you safe for long. It also reduces your terror, which can lead to sunlight addiction.
    The memory of the light is always with you. Go on. Open a box.
  • The Chapel of Lights, on the outside, seems to be an ordinary church that offers free meals to visitors. Trying the food and attending a service will rapidly reveal that the god they worship is The Drowned Man.
  • The entities the Dawn Machine was built to emulate aren't that nice themselves. The light of the Judgements, including the Sun, enforces the laws of reality, and they're really, really keen on enforcing a very rigid cosmic hierarchy — with themselves at the top, naturally.
    • The power of light can be readily discovered in Sunless Skies by Attacking The Sapphir'd King. You can do almost no damage before he changes the laws so that you don't exist. As the light washes over you, you are simply excised from reality with no ability to fight back.
• Super Mario Bros.: In Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, the Dream Stone is light and colorful, and the "good counterpart" to the Dark Stone. This does not stop its Spirit from being a massive jerkass who refuses to tell Mario, Luigi, and Dreambert where the Stone is and tries killing them with a giant drill machine.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Tabuu, the Big Bad of The Subspace Emissary mode, resembles an angel.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Galeem, the Big Bad of the Adventure Mode in Ultimate called World of Light, is a... thing that seems to be made of a bright orb surrounded by bright angelic-looking wings that attacks with light beams capable of vaporizing anything they hit. Then we are introduced to Dharkon, his dark counterpart, who is still as evil. For the True Final Boss, you have to make sure NEITHER of them succeeds in their mutual fight.
• Sword of Paladin: In the Aggressor side story, the aliens have access to the Laser skill, which deals light damage. They're also waging war against humanity for refusing to submit to them as lab rats.
• Tales Series
  • In Tales of Destiny 2, Elraine is a holy priestess who frequently goes out to heal the common people in exchange for little Lens donations, but resurrected Barbatos and Judas and offered them the chance to be seen as heroes and get everything they desired in exchange for killing any hero who might challenge her plan to revive Fortuna and turn the world into a Terminally Dependent Society. Fortuna herself also qualifies, as she goes completely insane once she's told humanity doesn't need her.
  • Tales of Graces at first seems to avert this trope, seeing how the Sophie, the heroine, has powers related to light, and the Big Bad prefers Casting a Shadow. But later it turns out Sophie was more or less a Lawful Neutral before her amnesia and tried to kill the Big Bad. The villain at first acted in self-defense and then became a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. In the end, he does a Heel–Face Turn and befriends the heroes.
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • The major villain, Mithos, is a Fallen Hero, and his main form of attack carries over into his villainous style. Appearing as a Bishōnen angel with wings of multifaceted crystal, he uses mainly Light based attacks, and has a very specific vulnerability. What is it? Why, darkness! In fact, all the angels except Kratos and Yuan have that weakness.
    • Only two of the Summon Spirit boss fights result in a Game Over when you lose, one being the humanity-hating Volt, and the other is the Luna and Aska battle, and Luna and Aska are the Summon Spirits of Light. They're the last Summon Spirits to form a pact with, and since Kratos is on the previous floor, there's no opportunity to leave and level up. So a Game Over is the only logical end to a lost battle.
  • The final form of Duke, the last boss of Tales of Vesperia, has a mystic arte that ends with a move that looks like Estelle's Sacred Penance, called Brave Vesperia, a compilation of your seven party members' Mystic Artes. Shame the PS3 version of the game doesn't add Flynn's and Patty's Mystic Artes. However, despite his shining appearance, Duke is not actually light-elemental. And despite being the Final Boss, he really is good in the end.
  • The grand majority of antagonists in Tales of Berseria are associated with light and wear white clothes with gold lineaments. They're also high-ranking members of the Corrupt Church that started to rule the world with an iron fist. Unfortunately, they're also Villains With Good Publicity. Of particular note of this trend are Artorius and Innominat, the Fifth Empyrean and the one associated the most with light...and is also tasked with resetting the world whenever there is too much Malevolence.
• Zigzagged with Kazumi Mishima from Tekken. Compared to her son and grandson, her Devil form is downright angelic, as it turns her skin and hair white, and gives her phoenix wings. She was sent to assassinate Heihachi Mishima to purge evil from his family, but she was pretty ruthless about it, and this revelation, combined with him being forced to kill her in self-defense, actually led him to become the evil man he is today.
• Umber Gnawbone of Telepath Tactics is a photokineticist. He's also a ruthless crime boss.
• Tenchu 2 had the Burning Dawn ninjas who want to leave their life of darkness behind and embrace the light. Special mention goes to the psychopath Suzaku. He is the Phoenix and symbolizes light, flame, and rebirth. He gets reborn as Onikage.
• Terraria:
  • In the game, you have the Hallow biome, which is a polar opposite to The Corruption and Crimson, with multicolored trees and a permanent rainbow, but infects other biomes exactly the same way, and its inhabitants (which include pixies and unicorns) are just as nasty as their Corrupt counterparts. Despite this, the non-playable characters do not seem to mind it that much (they are willing to live in houses set up in the Hallow, but not the Corruption or Crimson; the Dryad treats the world having a high Hallow percentage as a good thing) and it cannot replace mud like the Corruption can. It's a downplayed example — not considered as bad as the evil biomes, but still a spreading world-infection with powerful enemies.
  • Played straight with the Hallow's Empress of Light Optional Boss, a colorful fairy-like humanoid that uses rainbow attacks and easily one of the least monstrous-looking bosses in the game. She is still described in the Bestiary as being a tyrant that wants to get rid of anything "impure," which is implied to be anything non-Hallow.
  • The Paladin is a miniboss that can be found in the dungeon post-Plantera. Despite its bright color scheme, it's just as willing to kill the player as all the other skeletal mobs infesting the dungeon.
• Tenshi of the Touhou Project series is the Big Bad of Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. She's a Celestial, essentially the series' version of an angel. She also caused the various incidents in that game, from causing tons of weather disturbances to threatening to unleash a massive earthquake. Why? Because she found heaven boring and so she decided to endanger all of Gensokyo For the Evulz. Light is a Jerkass.
  • Reimu, the amazing flying miko and main heroine of the series, is also an unrepentant jerkass at times (see the "Reimu is a bitch" meme), and the newer miko player character, Sanae, has wandered into She Who Fights Monsters territory.
  • Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object had at least two holy characters (Shou Toramaru, avatar of the god Bishamonten, and Byakuren Hijiri, a Bhuddist nun turned magician youkai who was responsible for Shou becoming Bishamonten's avatar) who favor youkai over humans and oppose the heroines.
    • Well, more like is opposed by the heroines. She just gets out of an eternity of imprisonment for no reason and suddenly lasers and amulets everywhere!
  • Also, any Touhou with laser attacks sort of invokes this.
• Trials of Mana:
  • The game features eight elemental beings called Benevodons that caused destruction and had to be banished before the world could be created. During the course of the game, they all get revived and it's your job to bury them again. Light, like any other element, has its own Benevodon: Lightgazer, an eternally staring floating eye occupying a ruined "City of Light."
  • For a Dark Is Not Evil counterpart to the Benevodons, the game also features eight elemental spirits who help you out. Shade, the slightly scary-looking spirit of darkness, is just as friendly and helpful as any of the others.
• Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider:
  • Photondrifter is a Guardian with the power of light and he's a Glory Hound who kills the Commission's enemies for the glory and honor. From the giant missile he's transporting, it seems like he wants to nuke Iwondonilo City. Moonrider outright calls him a murderer before the fight starts.
  • In contrast to Moonrider, Sunseeker is a golden-coloured Guardian with sun-based powers, who wishes to replace the current dystopian regime with his own reign of terror by having the powerful biomechanical Guardians rule over the humans.
• The Orokin Empire from Warframe enthusiastically embraced Gold and White Are Divine in their design aesthetic. They were also Abusive Precursors who indirectly caused pretty much everything bad that's happening in the solar system: their cloned race of slave laborers rebelled and became the totalitarian Grineer Empire, their terraforming drones rebelled and fought the Empire in the Old War, and their attempts to fight said drones led them to experiment with Child Soldiers who rebelled and killed the Orokin off for good. About the only thing that can't be pinned on them is the creation of the Technocyte virus, responsible for the Infestation, but they were still dumb enough to try to weaponize the virus during the Old War.
• In World of Warcraft, the Light is worshipped by adherents of many races who believe it to represent all that is good. However it is not itself good but rather an amoral force of nature. To channel the Light, practitioners must believe they are doing the right thing. This allows for evil Light users to exist, as long as they think they are good. Even genuinely benevolent users can fall into dangerous fanaticism. Many story points show this:
  • During Legion, Xe'ra, the Prime Naaru and perhaps greatest representative of the Light, tries to forcibly "redeem" Illidan despite his protests. Even Velen's faith is shaken by this questionable action.
  • The Scarlet Crusade is comprised of paladins, priests and others who follow the Light, but they are fanatics who exterminate anyone they believe to be tainted by the plague of undeath. Some of their torturers will heal their victims back to full health only to torture them again.
  • The blood elven paladin (the Blood Knights) once derived their powers from a kidnapped being made of pure light. At the end of Burning Crusade, their leader renounced Prince Kael'thas and his evil ways and obtained the blessing of another naaru.
  • In Battle For Azeroth, the Mag'har Orc recruitment mission shows that in the Alternate Draenor of the Iron Horde, the Naaru came to Draenor and radicalized the Draenei, making them into an evil reflection of the Lightforged that fought the Burning Legion. When Draenor fell on hard times, they blamed the Orcs, and started a program of Join or Die that began overrunning the planet, much like the Iron Horde themselves had done.
  • This trope is literally the case for Forsaken (and all other undead) — the Light is not only excruciatingly painful for them to be exposed to but prolonged use will degrade the necromantic magics keeping dead men walking. This causes them to regain their senses — which means tasting their rotting flesh, smelling their purile stench and feeling the maggots burrowing inside them.
  • Wrath of the Lich King introduced the Val'kyr, who look like classical angels, but are described in-game as "fearsome creatures made of pure nightmare" and help the Lich King to raise undead minions. Legion redeemed them in part, revealing that many still served their original role of guiding the spirits of the dead to the god Odyn.
  • Rukhmar the Sun Goddess's powers are associated with the rays of the sun, though her appearance is much darker.
• Zanza from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is positively angelic in appearance. Upon exiting Shulk's body, he appears bathed in golden light and dressed in elaborate white-and-gold clothing. Not to mention the floating golden halos that accompany him everywhere. He is also a malicious, tyrannical Demiurge Archetype and the true villain of the game.
• The Evil Empire of Xenogears is the Sacred Empire of Solaris. Despite being populated mostly by slave labor and an upper-class of unrepentant douchebags, native Solarians are mostly light-haired, most wear white clothing, their military Gears and vehicles tend to be white. Solaris itself is white. White is also a major motif of Deus, the Demiurge Archetype who the empire worships as their god, and his component parts.
• ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal:
  • Wild Light fairies will attack you on sight, just like fairies of any other element.
  • The White Druid, the supposed Big Good of the land, turns out to be the Big Bad.

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