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The act of being a video game character is a bit of an odd one. You spend all day killing things, all night healing from wounds that should have killed you, and there's a better than eighty percent chance that your tomboy female friend is a lost princess. But what's a guy to do, eh?


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    Playable character types 
Protagonists that are controlled by the players themselves.

    Fighting game characters 
Characters found in Fighting Games (who may or may not be playable).

    Non-playable characters 
Neutral (sometimes friendly) characters that cannot be controlled by the players.

    Enemy character types 
Another kind of non-playable characters, except they're hostile to the player characters.
  • Boss Battle: A special fight against a Boss, which is an unusually tougher enemy. They have enough sub-tropes for their own index.
  • Goddamned Bats: Enemies that don't pose much of a threat on their own, but can frustrate, annoy, and get in your way when working together.
    • Demonic Spiders: Enemies that frustrate you by killing you in unfair ways, which make them innately more dangerous than other normal enemies.
    • Ledge Bats: Enemies that knock you back in the middle of jumps, often to your death.
    • Ambushing Enemy: Monsters that lurk within the environment and never fully appear until you walk close to them, at which point they suddenly lunge out and try to grab you.
  • Mooks: A slang term for the hordes of standard-issue, disposable bad guys whom the hero regularly fights and defeats.
  • Standard FPS Enemies: Those generic baddies seen in nearly every First/Third-Person Shooter you've ever played.
  • Stock Monsters: Those generic baddies seen in nearly every Role-Playing Game you've ever played.
  • Asteroids Monster: A creature of significant size that, when killed, splits into several miniature versions of itself.
  • Border Patrol: A monster or other hazard introduced specifically to prevent the player from wandering too far without resorting to the immersion-breaking Invisible Wall.
  • Chest Monster: An enemy or hazard that has disguised itself to look like something positive, like a treasure chest.
  • Clairvoyant Security Force: Manages to always appear the second you try to steal something.
  • Cumulonemesis: An enemy in the shape of an animated cloud that attacks with wind and lightning.
  • Drop-In Nemesis: Where an enemy or obstacle comes out of nowhere and kills you, generally in a cutscene.
  • Elemental Embodiment: When the elements that are the basic building blocks of the universe get up and come for you.
  • Enemy Chatter: Enemies (or other NPCs) can be very talkative in some games.
  • Enemy Summoner: An enemy who can summon additional enemies to join them in combat, while also causing some damage themselves.
    • Mook Maker: An enemy or object that can produce more enemies to fight you, although they don't usually attack the player directly.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Almost everything in the world is out for your blood.
  • Evil Chancellor: The helpful and suspiciously toadying assistant to the monarchy whose morality is usually inverse to the head of state.
  • Flying Seafood Special: Fish that float in the air. And generally try to kill you.
  • Giant Hands of Doom: A character who fights only with giant hands.
  • The Goomba: The most basic enemy in the game, has a simple movement pattern, and is reassuringly easy to beat.
  • Half-Hearted Henchman: A normal henchman who's lazy, unmotivated, or otherwise unwilling to do his job.
  • Harmless Enemy: An enemy that can't directly damage you.
  • Incredibly Durable Enemies: When the basic mook is an unstoppable killing machine, you know you're in a difficult game.
  • Increasingly Lethal Enemy: When an enemy gets harder to beat if the fight goes on for too long.
  • Invincible Boogeymen: Powerful enemies that cannot be killed, defeated, or even fought; you can only run and hide from them.
  • Invisible Monsters: You can't see them, but they can probably hurt you.
  • Killer Rabbit: Any monster that's far more dangerous than it looks.
  • Mole Monster: An enemy that hides in the ground, attacking only when the Player Character's close.
  • Money Spider: An enemy creature that drops money or other rewards when defeated.
    • Metal Slime: An enemy that appears and runs away very quickly, is hard to hit, but gives very good rewards.
    • Piñata Enemy: An enemy target sought out by the player, because they are (relatively) easy to kill, and have a very high cash payout.
  • Personal Space Invader: A monster who grabs onto you and must be shaken off.
  • Puppet Fighter: A character who can control one or more entities separate from itself.
  • Rat Stomp: Finally, you get to the adventuring part! But first, fight some rats.
  • Respawning Enemies: Enemies which can be defeated or killed indefinitely, but under certain circumstances they'll somehow reappear again or be replaced by more enemies.
  • Reviving Enemy: An enemy which can be temporarily defeated or "killed", only to rise back up to full health soon afterwards.
  • Roaming Enemy: An enemy which appears randomly under various circumstances.
  • Savage Setpiece: A character that is peaceful to your character unless he attacks it. Then it demolishes you.
  • Segmented Serpent: An enemy which is made up of lots of mostly identical segments, and moves like a worm or snake.
  • The Spiny: A Platform Game enemy that will damage or kill you if you try to jump on it.
  • Teleporting Keycard Squad: Whenever you take something important, a slough of new enemies suddenly rushes in.
  • Undead Counterpart: Zombie-version Mooks.
  • Underground Monkey: Exactly the same as a regular monkey - but underground, and therefore has better stats.
  • Underrated and Overleveled: A character whom the plot provides no reason to be particularly strong turns out to be quite powerful in statistical terms when they join your party.
  • The Unfought: A major antagonist who you don't fight in the actual game.
  • Unique Enemy: An enemy that only shows up once in the whole game, but is otherwise fairly unremarkable.
  • Waddling Head: A stock monster that resembles a colored oval with eyes and feet.
  • Weaponized Offspring: A creature gives birth to Cannon Fodder as a defense mechanism.
  • Whack-a-Monster: You see lots of holes in the ground: you know you're going to have to fight a bunch of monsters that pop up, attack, and pop back in.

    Other/unclassified characters 
Miscellaneous video game character tropes.


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