My God What Have I Done / Video Games

The face of a woman who just accidentally killed a child in trying to "protect" them. Whoopsie.

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• Kastor in Age of Mythology, after blindly following Krios's hidden plan of releasing the Titans.
• In Alice: Madness Returns, this question plagues Alice throughout her Journey to the Center of the Mind when many characters in her subconscious ask her "What have you done?" The answer turns out to be nothing. Nothing to help save and protect the orphanage children being exploited around her, which she didn't realize was happening anyway due to her own abuse at the hands of Dr. Bumby exploiting her, too.
• ALTER EGO (2018): In the ID ending, Es briefly regains her senses and asks the player to forgive her before she breaks the world.
• In Andy's Apple Farm, after the scene of Thomas killing Arthur, a picture pops up of a blood-soaked Thomas reacting in horror and asking what he just did.
• In Assassin's Creed II, some of the lieutenants of Savonarola have this reaction after Ezio fatally wounds them.
• Charles Barkley's feelings toward the chaos dunk he performed that killed thousands if not millions and led to the genocide of b-ballers in Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.
• Batman: Arkham Knight: In an Even Evil Has Standards moment, members of the Arkham Militia may say this when the Cloudburst detonates:
  "Guys... what have we done?"
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night:
  • Richter Belmont utters this once he's freed from being Brainwashed and Crazy, since he's inadvertently helped resurrect Dracula once again.
  • Dracula has a mild one. Following his defeat at the hands of Alucard, he is unable to respond when his son accuses him of sacrificing all he held dear in a bid for power. Upon Alucard telling him what his wife's true last words were, all he can is quietly beg for her forgiveness, bid his son farewell, and finally succumb as he's banished yet again.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale: During one of the Wielder's Trials, Pizza meets a past manifestation of Blackberry, from right after Chicory succeeded her as wielder and cut ties with her. This past Blackberry is fought as a boss, switching between denying her fault in what transpired and lamenting what she's done and calling herself a monster. When talked to following the boss fight, it's clear Blackberry still has a guilty conscience about what happened despite her attempts to downplay it.
• Some of the heroes in Darkest Dungeon have had a moment like this as part of their Dark and Troubled Past. Of particular note is the Highwayman, when he found out he murdered a mother and child by accident. Darkest Dungeon 2 reveals that the Plague Doctor was traumatized by bringing her deceased professor back as an undead abomination before she opted to Mercy Kill him.
• Part of The Reveal in the Dark Tales installment The Bells. One character has been slowly going mad from guilt because his seemingly harmless prank with a friend — dressing up as ghosts and going around scaring people — directly led to the death of a teenage girl.
• In Destroy All Humans! 2, a minor antagonist, hippie guru and activist leader Coyote Bongwater, does this after realizing he's been manipulated by the Soviets into unknowingly aiding them with their plans to destroy America. His guilt is short-lived, though, as Crypto kills him shortly after.
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, by using the Social Enhancer augment on Hugh Darrow in Panchaea, you can get him to realize that the true reason why he wants to destroy the augmentation technology is jealousy: he is one of the few people genetically incompatible with it, so he can not use it to fix his crippled leg — the reason why he invented it in the first place. And then murdered 100,000 people (augmented or not) to get the spotlight about it.
  • To be fair, watching his "Human Augmentation" technology be twisted to the point that someone augments an A.I. by hooking up his own daughters to give her the emotion of pain (You are instructed to murder them as an act of goodness. They are in that much pain.) probably helped.
• At the end of Etna Mode in Disgaea: Afternoon Of Darkness, Etna recovers the memories that Maederas stole from her, and the very first one that returns is her promise to King Kricheveskoy, the only person she's ever trusted and looked up to, to protect his son Laharl. This being Etna Mode, Etna's already killed Laharl (or so she had thought until the end credits scene). A Not-So-Heroic BSoD ensues.
• Dragon Age:
  • The Paragon Caridin in Dragon Age: Origins sacrificed Dwarves to create Golems on the Anvil of the Void. He initially justified this with the increasingly desperate war against the Darkspawn and that he only used volunteers (who were unaware of the sheer agony involved). But when the King (the only one in Dwarven society whose opinion trumps a Paragon's) Jumped Off The Slippery Slope and sent casteless, criminals, and his political rivals to the Anvil and Caridin protested, the King had Caridin turned into a Golem by his own apprentices on the very Anvil he created. After experiencing the "hammer's blow" himself Caridin realized he had done something unforgivable and dedicated himself to ensuring that the Anvil could never be used again.
    • Can also happen with the Paragon Branka, who led everyone in her house to horrible deaths in the Deep Roads on her mad quest for the Anvil of the Void, and allowed the Darkspawn to rape some of the women and turn them into Broodmothers. If the Warden sides with her during the initial dialogue with Caridin, which leads to being forced to kill him, in the conversation with her after the fight she can be persuaded to see the Anvil for the abomination it is, and to see all of the pain, suffering, and damage her maniacal desire for it has caused. If successful, it will cause her to be so overcome with guilt that it drives her to commit suicide by leaping into the lava.
  • Anders has this reaction in Dragon Age II right after he blows up the Chantry and sparks open conflict between Mages and Templars if he is a full rival. After the most recent patch, he can even be convinced to side with the Templars after realizing that he has pretty much become a true abomination to help mitigate the damage to Kirkwall.
    • He also shows considerable guilt if Vengeance kills an innocent during "Dissent", planning to attend the funeral as a kind of apology gesture, although Aveline tells him to just leave the family alone.
• In Dragon Quest VIII, Dominico is said to be a descendant of one of the seven sages that sealed Rhapthorne away, and indeed, he appears to be a target of the possessed Jessica. However, it turns out that the ACTUAL descendant is Dominico's assistant David (who was Rhapthorne's real target), whom Dominico had treated like absolute crap for no reason at all, and Dominico himself was a descendant of the sage's servant. When David is killed by Rhapthorne, who has now possessed Dominico's dog, Sir Leopold, Dominico discovered it had been his duty to protect David, and pulls this trope when he realized he failed that duty miserably.
• Subverted with another "What have YOU done" in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, when Lucien Lachance reveals that you've been killing the wrong people.
  • Played straight after you kill a bunch of "goblins" while under the influence of Hist Sap, only to discover soon after that they weren't goblins.
• Alexandra Roivas from Eternal Darkness, at the end of the game. After you defeat Pious Augustus, Alexandra finally realizes the ancient god she just released has the power to destroy all of humanity. Shocked, she kneels and says "What have I done!?". The Ancient God is then turned into Sealed Evil in a Can by Edward Roivas' spirit, after replacing two of the runes in the super-mega-huge spellcasting device. Except not really, because it's revealed through one hell of a Mind Screw that Mantorok has orchestrated events so that in three different iterations of reality a different Ancient was summoned each time, essentially meaning that all three were killed at the same time; not being subjected to the same rules of time and existence as us lowly mortals this could easily happen. Of course leaving Mantorok to fester for eternity, plotting his eventual escape.
• The Eternal Senia series: Magaleta has this when it affects her relationship with Senia, over multiple games:
  • The first game, Eternal Senia, she realizes just how badly Senia took to being a Replacement Goldfish and never quite accepted how much Magaleta loved her for being her, particularly in the second ending.
  • Eternal Senia: Hydrangea After The Rain, when Aphinor grants her wish, causing Senia to be possessed by Eternity. Magaleta claims that that wasn't what she wanted, before Aphinor replies that it is — it's the result of her imposing her own desires above what Senia truly wants.
• Happens in the very first event of Fahrenheit. The main character, after coming to his senses, realizes that he is holding a knife, blood dripping from his clothes, and a dead man lying right next to his feet, stabbed many wounds to the chest.
• Fallout:
  • In the original Fallout, you can invoke this from the Final Boss. If you present the Master with evidence that his modified FEV virus renders his super mutants infertile and incapable of procreating, he realizes that his plan to replace humanity with super mutants was doomed to fail, and that all of the atrocities he carried out in the hopes of restoring the world were for naught. He proceeds to self-destruct after you flee from his base.
  • In Fallout 2, with a powerful speech check, the Chosen One can convince an Enclave scientist (Lt Col DR Charles Curling) that his FEV Curling-13 is overreaching and biased; he's ignored data that seriously argues that all life in the wasteland is evolving and that the Forced Evolutionary Virus is no different than if someone plagued everyone who happened to evolve without the appendix. While having used the guaranteed cure on the supposed "pure" race. He'll admit this, saying that he was so busy engineering his master thesis in biological warfare that he ended up forgetting the moral debates and social responsibilities of doing something horrible on a large scale. He decides to help the player kill everyone in the Enclave oil rig.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • In the DLC Old World Blues, it's possible to get Evilutionary Biologist Dr. Borous to feel intense guilt over his brutal experimentation of his loyal dog Gabe after you bring him his food dish. Of course, he quickly forces himself to suppress the feeling and goes back to his obsession with Science! Unless you go and take his side during the first conversation, like Gabe would have. If so, in the latter conversation he'll have a much bigger guilt-trip, and vouch for you when the time comes, to give you "the life Gabe never had".
    • The DLC Lonesome Road essentially revolves around this trope — not only in the course of learning the cause of Ulysses's arguably justified hated of the courier and the world they live in (The player's ignorance of the courier's actions resulting from being shot in the head at the start of the game) but can also potentially occur at several points depending on the player's actions. Notable instances include the accidental launching of a nuclear missile into the center of your irradiated former home town. Nearly all of the endings result in some form of MGWHID? in the form of the nuking of the legion, the NCR, both, the death of ED-E the robot, and/or the death of Ulysses, the worst case scenario leaving the courier destroying everyone involved and then some. One ending in particular results from the player convincing Ulysses that nuking the NCR and Legion won't fix the world, at which point it is revealed in Ulysses's own My God What Have I Done moment that he has already started the launch sequence, which cannot be stopped — except by letting ED-E override the launch by overclocking and frying himself or ordering him to stop only one of the missiles dooming the other target to another nuclear holocaust... But then, of course, there's also the option of deciding Ulysses is right and simply letting it happen...
• Far Cry:
  • Similar to Shadow of the Colossus, Far Cry 2 seems to be designed to eat away at the player until they realise just how many people they're butchering and what a monster they are, resulting in a My God, What am I doing? moment. Doubly so if you live in Africa. You watch yourself do all that crap to people in YOUR country with languages YOU understand. It makes playing the game absolute hell.
  • A frighteningly effective one in Far Cry 3: protagonist Jason is undercover in the crew of pirates, murderers and mercenaries of the Big Bad, and he gets a mission to torture the crap out of a prisoner. He goes to do so and finds out that it's his brother Riley, whom he previously thought dead. After a very brief attempt at explanation, he then beats the crap out of the prisoner, and shoves his thumb into a gunshot wound, causing excruciating pain. After the fact, Jason looks at his hands, covered in his brother's blood, and says "What have I become?" After spending most of the game on a revenge-fueled murder spree, it's almost disturbingly sobering. The worst part? He did that to maintain his guise. He did that to gain the trust of the Big Bad. He did that for nothing, as said Big Bad knew about the infiltration long before, and just wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole you'd go to keep a supposed advantage over himself. Like other moments in the game, the whole thing served to show how dehumanized Jason Brody became.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Cecil and Kain, after unintentionally helping to destroy the village of Mist, in Final Fantasy IV.
  • Tidus spends the first half of Final Fantasy X telling Yuna how he'll take her to see his home of Zanarkand and all the fun things they can do together once Yuna finishes her pilgrimage. Tidus eventually learns the Awful Truth of Yuna's pilgrimage where she will sacrifice herself to temporarily rid the world of the monster, Sin. Tidus realizes that all the things he'd promise to do with Yuna after her journey was incredibly insensitive and he feels massively guilty over it. He rightfully gets angry at his party for not telling him sooner.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning doesn't believe her sister Serah when she claims to be cursed with the brand of a Pulse l'Cie, assuming it's some lame excuse to justify her marrying Snow Villers (of whom Lightning had a LOW opinion). She responded with an angry reminder that she, as a Sanctum soldier, would be charged with hunting Pulse elements down. Later, when she hears new reports that there actually WAS a Pulse fal'Cie in Bodhum's neighborhood, she puts two and two together and proceeds to beat herself up over this particular screw-up.
    • In Final Fantasy XIII-2, when the Unseen Chaos bursts from Etro's Gate and begins twisting the mortal world into a screwed-up place of doom, Noel realizes a few things. One, the goddess Etro is no longer among the living, and this is how the Chaos was able to burst out. Two, Caius held the Heart of Chaos, a manifestation of Etro herself. Three, however unintentional, Noel's own weapon was what pierced that heart. By the time Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII rolls around, Noel has spent the last five centuries convinced that he destroyed the world.
  • Gaius in Final Fantasy XIV has this realization at the end of the 2.0 story where Lahabrea forces Ultima Weapon cast Ultima, which completely obliterates the castrum everyone was standing in. Gaius, seeing the raw destruction of Ultima firsthand, realizes that he shouldn't have unearthed the ancient weapon since it can easily destroy the very land he was trying to conquer. Lahabrea has Ultima Weapon ready Ultima a second time when its HP is low and if the players fail to stop him in time, the entire party is killed instantly.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Doned has this reaction after realizing that his brother Marche was neglected back in the real world because Doned required more attention due to his illness. Doned didn't recognize that every sacrifice his family made, namely the move to St. Ivalice, their parents' divorce, and Marche's ongoing neglect, was either for his sake or a negative consequence of his illness on the rest of the family, instead choosing to resent Marche for being healthy and having friends, and thinking that he himself had nothing to be thankful for while Marche had a perfect life. Marche then finally reveals his resentment towards Doned for the ongoing neglect and the divorce, which he couldn't express before because Marche is the older brother and Doned is just a sick little boy. This segues into Doned's realization that he's been extremely cruel and selfish to his brother in his attempts to stay in fantasy!Ivalice.
• In Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Alm says the trope almost verbatim when the fatally wounded Emperor Rudolf reveals that he's Alm's father, and his whole plan involved dying at his son's hands so that he would unite Rigel and Zofia. Needless to say, he doesn't take the revelation well.
• The Big Brother Bully of Five Nights at Freddy's 4 had one of these when his prank turned deadly and crushed his brother's frontal lobe.
• Ghost of Tsushima:
  • Ryuzo suffers remorse when they throw their lot with the Monguls and is forced as a show of loyalty to burn innocent civilians alive. They suffer a breakdown almost immediately after burning one, begging the defenders of the castle to open the gates before they have to immolate the others.
  • After Jin's scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Shimura turns around and slaps Jin in a moment of anger. It's clear they regretted their actions and attempts to apologize, but Jin decides that things were over between them.
• God of War:
  • Kratos, the protagonist of God of War, demonstrates this trope upon killing his wife and child while destroying a village; this motivates him to turn against his former master Ares. Whether or not he actually learns from the experience and becomes a better person for it is a matter of debate.
  • Happens twice in God of War II. Once when he erroneously kills The Last Spartan after being attacked by his last faithful follower, and again at the end when he's stabbing Zeus, he accidentally kills Athena. Kratos is distraught by this.
  • This is actually the point of God of War III when Kratos finally achieves his revenge against Zeus. The entire game makes it clear that Kratos is utterly blinded by hatred and doesn't really care that killing Olympians is destroying Greece. The second he sobers up he looks out onto the horizon and feels a whole new wave of self loathing come over him. He ultimately opts to kill himself both to atone and to release Hope to the survivors.
• King Volechek in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has this moment. When he realizes the ancient tower he got the heroes to reactivate was really going to cause an eclipse that summoned hoards of monsters on half of the globe. Did we mention his kingdom was in the middle of it?
  • And in the game before that, The Lost Age, The Final Boss the heroes killed turns out to be Isaac's father and Felix and Jenna's parents. This causes Jenna to have a complete emotional breakdown, knowing that not only her parents are going to die soon, but she was the one who did the horrible deed. To be fair, the Wise One did this trick to test the resolve of the heroes and the Golden Sun event winds up reviving the parents. Even then, Jenna is still shaken up by the whole ordeal.
• Halo: It's revealed in Halo: Silentium that many Forerunners felt this way about killing their own Precursors.
• In Heroes of the Storm when Illidan Stormrage kills Tyrande Whisperwind, his sister-in-law and the love of his life, he pauses in disbelief and horror at his actions, before screaming "WHAT HAVE I DONE!?"
• In Jet Force Gemini, King Jeff heads to planet Tawfret to give some more of his people the good news that Mizar's defeat may be at hand... only to see them getting rounded up into slave ships by Mizar's soldiers. He lets his emotions run out of control, and the resulting magical asskicking becomes decidedly not awesome when it zombifies the entire planet and most of the soldiers on it. He mentions this trope almost word by word when talking to Juno about how Tawfret reached its dire state, knowing it was his fault.
• Terra from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has this reaction after trying to stop Master Eraqus killing Ven, and taking it too far. Eraqus does it too when he calms down. Then Xehanort finishes him off.
• Knights of the Old Republic. Zaalbar on the Star Forge, if Darth Revan forced him to kill Mission with Force Persuade earlier.
• L.A. Noire: In a flashback, Cole recalls his time fighting the Japanese on Okinawa. During a heated battle, his platoon found a cave and believing it to be filled with Japanese soldiers, orders it to be burned out with a flamethrower. It ends up being filled with wounded and civilians.
• The Sacrifice comic for the video game Left 4 Dead shows Zoey having this moment when she realizes what she did back home after the infection spread. While Zoey was visiting her parents at home, a common infected wanders into the room and attacks Zoey's mother, infecting her. Shortly after, her mother turns and attacks her father, forcing him to kill her. Believing that he is infected, Zoey's father asks her to kill him before he turns. It isn't until 2 weeks later after she and her other survivor friends get taken by the military that she learns that she and the other survivors are asymptomatic carriers of the infection, and that the carrier gene is passed down from the father...
• This can be made to happen to Hibiki Takane in The Last Blade 2, should the player decide to finish the opponent with a fatal attack. The first couple of times the player does this, Hibiki will drop her sword and shake her head in horror at what she has done while trying to convince herself that what has just happened isn't real. After the third time the player does this, Hibiki crosses the Despair Event Horizon and starts crying... After the sixth time, she breaks... and it's all your fault.
• The Last of Us provides a particularly heart wrenching example with brothers Henry and Sam. After escaping Pittsburgh, it is revealed that Sam was hiding a bite from the rest of the group. When Ellie is prompted by Henry to wake him, she is attacked, barely managing to hold him off before Henry puts him to rest. Henry proceeds to say to himself "Henry, what have you done?" On the verge of tears, he directs his handgun in Joel's direction before screaming "It's all your fault!" Rather than shoot Joel, however, he instead raises the handgun to his temple and pulls the trigger.
• The Last of Us 2: After Ellie kills Owen and Mel when they attempt to attack her, she suddenly begins muttering "no, no, no" and goes over to Mel's dead body. Pushing her over, she realizes she is pregnant and begins to have a panic attack, horrified by what she has done.
• Legacy of Kain:
  • A big one in Blood Omen when Kain travels back in time to kill William the just before he goes corrupt. The villain uses this in the present to start a genocide against vampire kind, sparking this trope.
  • Also in Soul Reaver 2 when Kain stops the reaver from absorbing Raziel's soul, which was exactly what the villains wanted.
• Several examples from the various The Legend of Zelda games:
  • Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He pulls the Master Sword out of its pedestal, not knowing Ganondorf was using him to get into the Sacred Realm. It especially hits home when you visit what used to be Hyrule Castle. Link's expression can only be translated as "Oh my goddesses, I did this." What makes this moment especially heartwrenching is that Link is technically still a ten-year-old boy.
  • Mido, the self-established leader of the Kokiri, comes to regret his mistreatment of Link later in life. If Link talks to Mido after defeating Phantom Ganon, he'll ask him to tell Link that he's sorry for the way he treated him, not realizing that he is talking to Link, grown up.
  • Princess Hilda, Zelda's alternate universe counterpart in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, when she is confronted with the fact that she started the exact same chaos that her ancestors were trying to prevent.
• Life Is Strange:
  • After Kate's suicide (no matter if it's successful or averted), Victoria can be seen silently weeping, as it was her actions that helped drive Kate to killing herself.
  • Chloe also has this reaction in the timeline where she kills Frank and Pompidou.
• Live A Live:
  • In the 2022 remake, a pretty big one of these is let out by Oersted after defeating the True Final Boss.
    Oersted: "Are these my hands, stained black with blood and sin? What wickedness I've wrought. And all for what?"
  • Also done in the case of Streibough and Princess Alethea, the two people who drove Oersted into committing all his actions in the first place. The former is in shock over how his jealousy drove his former friend into becoming a monster that threatens all of space and time, while the latter shows remorse over how her thoughtlessness nearly dooms everybody and begs the heroes to save his soul before warping them to the final battle.
• Love of Magic: Emily in the Alternate Timeline is distraught on realizing that what she has brought back isn't the cute, funny, somewhat lecherous Evoker she had dated for two months, but instead a battle-hardened war god who has fought and killed and watched loved ones die.
  Emily: I thought only of bringing back the Sword of Mankind. I did not stop to consider that swords are made only for war, and for killing. That they come with sharp edges. To save my Court I may well have doomed it.
• Mari and the Black Tower: On the final floor, Vera deals a fatal blow to Mari, but immediately regrets doing so and spends much of her boss fight freaking out.
• In Mass Effect 2, Mordin Solus was left guilt-ridden by his work in updating the Genophage to ensure that the Krogans maintain the same rate of reproduction. While he felt that what he did was necessary, it didn't mean he had to like it and forced himself to make annual trips to check on it since he felt that simply walking away would be wrong. In order to better atone, he became a doctor/borderline vigilante in the Omega space station.
  • Subverted, however: he says repeatedly that he would choose to do the same thing, and that he doesn't regret what he did. He felt it was necessary; however, he chooses to always remind himself of the price paid. But it's played straight in Mass Effect 3, where he comes to fully regret working on the genophage and decides to help cure it.
  • Two other Salarians involved in the project, Maelon Heplorn from the second game and Padok Wiks from the third, both eventually come to the conclusion that their work was unethical. Unfortunately, the former ends up falling even further down the slippery slope when he tries to reverse his handiwork.
  • Gavin Archer from the "Project Overlord" Downloadable Content eventually has this reaction to the experiments he did on his brother, to the point where he ends up quitting Cerberus because of it.
  • In Mass Effect 3, if you can make the Illusive Man realize that he's been indoctrinated by the Reapers, he'll shoot himself in the head. Actually a Continuity Nod to the first game, where you can invoke the same on Saren.
  • Should the player really foul up with the Virmire Survivor in 3, it ends with their death. If the player doesn't take the interrupt, one of Shepard's squad will shoot them in Shepard's place. Afterward, onboard the Normandy, they'll regret it. Liara, for example, can be found staring out into space wondering if there was some way of preventing what happened.
  • Miranda Lawson is an interesting variation as hers is more, "My god, what did I ALMOST do?" Her hatred of her father comes from the fact that he tried to control her and her sister, make them slaves to do whatever he wanted them to do. She almost did this to Shepard, when she attempted to plant a control chip into his/her brain while bringing him/her back to life. By Mass Effect 3, she realizes this and feels unbearable guilt, telling Shepard how sorry she is for even considering it.
• Zero's epic meltdown in Mega Man X4 after his defeat of Iris. "WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOOOOOOOOR?!?!?!"
  • The Mega Man 4 ROM hack Rockman 4 Minus ∞ implies this — it is possible to suck up Eddie for an item, but in the End-Game Results Screen Proto Man laments his demise, then notes "Are you trembling?"
• In Metal Gear Solid, Hal "Otacon" Emmerich was initially led to believe that Metal Gear REX, the mecha he was working on with ArmsTech, was a mobile defense platform with no nuclear capability. When Snake explains that he had been duped into developing a walking nuclear tank, he takes it very poorly; his grandfather was part of the Manhattan Project, his father participated in the Peace Walker project (which itself almost caused a nuclear war), and now he himself (however indirectly) has given a terrorist group the capability to start one too.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • In Mortal Kombat: Deception, this is Shujinko's default personality and motivation upon realizing that he have lived a mass majority of his life being manipulated by Onaga, the Dragon King, into bringing him back to power, and thereby setting up the entire plot of the game.
  • Raiden has a massive moment in Mortal Kombat 9, after he accidentally fries Liu Kang to death in self defense during their climactic Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure battle.
  • Scorpion in Mortal Kombat X, now restored to his human form, has this moment after learning that he (and Sub-Zero) were tricked by Quan Chi into pitting their respective clans against one another. In Scorpion's case, it hits harder since Raiden gave him an opportunity to have his family and clan revived in the previous game, but squandered it when Quan Chi fooled him into killing Bi Han (and thus, turning him into Noob Saibot).
  • This is present Jax's reaction in Mortal Kombat 11 upon learning the truth from past Raiden about Kronika's true intentions. Prior to this, Jax made a deal with Kronika to serve her forces in exchange for Jacqui's protection, unaware that Kronika only wishes to erase the current timeline (and everyone with it) in order to revive Shinnok and restore the balance of and life and death to the universe.
• In a more humorous example, in The Nameless Mod, Despot says this when he tells the player that he left Ghandaiah in charge instead of the far more competent King Kashue.
• Tyrann in NieR goes through this in Endings C & D over his possession and corruption of Kaine. It motivates him to do a Heroic Sacrifice for her.
• In Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, this happens with the not-really evil Mausinger. When they realize that they were manipulated and lied to in order to make them murder King Leonhard, and they are confronted by no less than King Leonhard's spirit about it, they break down sobbing in unmitigated remorse, realizing that they murdered their dearest and closest friend on false pretenses.
• Odin Sphere: One of the bad endings in the final book of the game pits Gwendolyn against Onyx. Onyx ends up killing Gwendolyn, and upon realizing, he lets loose a horrified expression of this trope.
• The ending of Ori and the Blind Forest. So close to achieving their goal, Ori and Sein are snatched out of the sky by Kuro, who prepares to snuff out Sein while letting Ori burn alive. Naru, Ori's mother, comes climbing out of the burning woods and takes the unconscious Ori in her hands, looking solemnly up at Kuro. With that, Kuro realizes that she has been hurting someone else's child in an attempt to save her own, and she sacrifices herself to return Sein to the spirit tree.
• Adrienne in Phantasmagoria didn't actually say the line, but her "What have I done?" moment happened when she realized that Don's possession was the direct result of her opening Carno's Magic Book and releasing the Demon at the beginning of the game. Oops.
• In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and Emerald, Maxie and/or Archie (depending on your version) come(s) to realize what he's brought upon the land when they use the Blue or Red Orb to awaken Groudon or Kyogre, respectively, as their intense sunlight or rain begins to spread throughout Hoenn (storywise, anyway, as weather effects were not seen in the overworld of places such as Littleroot Town during the Weather Trio crisis).
• In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Briar from the DLC is very focused on getting into Area Zero so she can prove that her ancestor Heath was telling the truth when he wrote the Scarlet/Violet Book. Her wish is finally granted in The Indigo Disk, and she's so focused on finding Terapagos that she blindly ignores most of Kieran's current drama with the player charcter and Carmine. This results in Briar ignoring Kieran's Motive Rant and pushing him to Terastallize Terapagos when he catches it from under the player's nose. In turn, Terapagos's Stellar form is so hard to control that it goes berserk in the process. Fortunately, the player manages to resolve everything, but Briar feels horrible about being so focused on her research that she ended up putting three students in danger, and she apologizes to everyone afterwards.
• In The Stinger of Portal 2, Wheatley expresses remorse for his actions and wishes he could see Chell again so he could apologize. Unfortunately, he's stuck in space, pretty much forever.
• Randal's Monday: Randal has a realistic one the first time Matt dies. He has two other significant ones later when he gets drunk and sleeps with Sally and agrees to feed Matt to the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
• Red Dead Redemption II: Dutch van der Linde's implied reaction to seeing Arthur Morgan, his adopted son, dying at his feet and telling him "I gave you all I had", and realizing that he doomed himself and the people in the gang that genuinely cared for him by trusting Micah Bell.
• Resident Evil 5 has this for Jill Valentine, who is brainwashed by Wesker via a device attached to her chest. After Chris and Sheva remove the device, Jill regains her senses and tells the duo that she was fully aware of what she was doing, but she had no control over herself, realizing that she could have killed them and was also responsible for everything she did under Wesker's control. Jill asks for forgiveness, to which Chris and Sheva happily agree.
• Oichi from Sengoku Basara, after being driven insane by her husband's death and her brother Nobunaga's evil ways, goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, killing her brother and all his subordinates. Afterwards, she briefly comes to her senses, realizes what she has done and bursts into tears... only to die when the roof caves in on her.
• This is a subtext of the game Shadow of the Colossus. Any time the protagonist kills one of the Colossi the death scene is dramatic and sad to drive home the fact that you are the one invading and killing, and the Colossi were living their lives peacefully, bothering no one. Many people felt exactly My God, What Have I Done? after they killed the thirteenth Colossus, specifically: a majestic creature that doesn't attack, can barely defend itself, and doesn't even approach the player in any way.
• In Shadowverse, when Rowen finds out that he has a curse where he can turn into a black dragon, he realizes that he was the one that killed Kyle.
• Persona:
  • Ryoji does this while explaining the Fall to S.E.E.S. in Persona 3, although in his case it's less "My God What Have I Done" than "My God What Am I Going To Do?"
  • Taro Namatame in Persona 4 goes through this after being told that he was endangering lives by throwing people into the TVs rather than saving them as he thought. Of course that is if you didn't choose to throw HIM into the TV as an unfair version of the Karmic Death.
    • The Golden version of the game adds a new bad ending, where you can perform a Face–Heel Turn by siding with Adachi after discovering he's the true killer, thus betraying the efforts and trust of the entire Investigation Team without them ever realizing it. Go through with it, and the new ending FMV will have Yu clutch his phone in frustration over his decision.
  • Persona 5: After seeing the Starter Villain, following their Heel–Face Brainwashing, confess to all his crimes in front of their entire school, announce his intent to kill himself for what he has done before Ann had to call him out on it, and then beg to be arrested, the protagonists are actually somewhat terrified of the implications of their actions, and wonder for several days if what they've done can really be called "right".
    • The goal of the Phantom Thieves as a whole is to invoke this trope on the scum of society by stealing their desires and forcing a change of heart, at which point the villain's heart won't be able to handle the weight of their sins and confess.
• This happens for Master Asia in Shin Super Robot Wars. Master Asia first met Domon when he was building the Devil Gundam with Professor Kasshu, and immediately felt an overwhelming sense of warrior kinship. To test Domon's potential, he began the enjoyable process of training him, realizing too late that Domon proved that not all humans were dangerous. But it was too late to prevent the completion of the Devil Gundam, which sadly took Kyouji prisoner and even survived its plunge to Earth. Then the Balmar arrived, and Master Asia saw little chance of escape or of mankind surviving. But then he realized he could use the Devil Gundam to blow away one or two of the enemy ships, and has been working hard at that ever since. But he realized another mistake: Earthlings are far more resilient than he expected. For this grave error and all the trouble stemming from it, he would normally offer his life as an apology to Domon on the spot.
• The Reveal of Silent Hill 2 has James reacting this way to the video of him smothering Mary.
  • Similarly, Alex has the same response after remembering that he caused his younger brother's death.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: In Sonic Adventure 2, Tails responds with jaw-dropping, wide-eyed shock after he accidentally tells Eggman that the chaos emerald Sonic gave him is a fake. Sonic is blast into space shortly after, and it's obvious that the fox feels somewhat responsible for it.
• In the 'good' ending of the demon path in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, Gig gets the evil slapped out of him and reverts to his prior personality... With the first thing that strikes him is all the gruesome things he has been doing in the meantime.
• Siegfried of the Soul Series was a knight who sought Soul Edge and his father's murderer. He succeeded in finding it and the sword possessed him, turning him into Nightmare. In truth, Siegfried murdered his own father and went insane hunting a man who didn't exist in denial of what he did. When he is freed from the cursed sword's control in III, all the memories come flooding back and he is summarily horrified and becomes The Atoner.
• Spec Ops: The Line has both John Konrad and Captain Walker haunted by their actions. In the case of Konrad, he killed himself long before Walker even arrived in Dubai. Walker is driven insane from the realization that he killed 47 civilians with white phosphorus. The ending drives the point home, where it's revealed that Walker has been hallucinating every conversation with the dead Konrad, because he cannot accept what he has done. In one of the endings, Walker kills himself, or is driven so insane that he slaughters the U.S. squad sent to rescue him.
• The Spectrum Retreat: in one of the endings, Coopers mutters this word for word upon realizing she might've just helped release a would-be serial killer.
• Admiral DuGalle in StarCraft, after he is tricked by Lt. Duran into killing his old friend Vice-Admiral Stukov, who reveals that Duran is a traitor with his dying words. DuGalle's guilt over this later leads him to commit suicide after the Zerg have obliterated the UED forces.
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope: In the past Earth, Edge hands an energy source equal in power to a doomsday device to Earth military so they can prevent the future disaster which befalls Earth. This backfires.
• Sela in Star Trek Online suffers this when she ultimately realizes that by turning against the Iconians in their time of need, she lead them to the Hobus supernova and the destruction of Romulus and Remus.
• Stellaris: this features prominently in the stories of two of the Precursor civilizations:
  • The Zroni were the ones to discover the Shroud and how to channel its energies. They were on the cusp of using the Shroud's power to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and become gods, when they learned that doing so would annihilate the entire galaxy as a side effect. Their civilization split into two factions: the Saviors decided this couldn't be allowed to happen, while the Divine didn't care and wanted to go through with it anyway. The resulting war ended in the destruction of their entire species... but the Savior faction managed to prevent the galaxy's destruction.
  • The Cybrex were a machine race that attempted to purge the galaxy of all sentient life. Partway through their efforts to do so, however, they had an attack of conscience and, horrified at what they were doing, recalled their fleets and retreated to their home systems. The rest of the galaxy didn't forgive them, and hunted them down into extinction. Or so it seems. If the Contingency crisis manages to conquer enough of the galaxy, a hidden refuge of Cybrex may reveal themselves and join the fight against the Contingency, hoping to make amends for their past crimes.
• In the Hell levels of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, you visit an "Island of Lost Souls" filled with celebrities who died and went to Hell. One of the people you meet is J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and one of the leading figures in the Manhattan Project, who tells you bluntly that "if inventing the atomic bomb doesn't land you down here, what possibly could?"
• Super Metroid: After fighting a big Metroid, it runs off in shame once it realizes Samus is its adoptive mother from the start of the game.
• Super Robot Wars X: If Iori's the protagonist, Celric would explain his actions and apologize to Iori upon defeat, and wished he could've been a better Big Brother Mentor for Iori.
• Tactics Ogre:
  • Some of the leaders' death quotes might invoke this to the player. You kill a person who seems to just be a named Mook... then an optional battle (If you wanna recruit one of the characters) has a woman who wants revenge because you killed her husband. After you beat her, she reveals she's pregnant. Another person laments that he won't be able to get medicine for his sick daughter.
  • The PSP version also has a wizard, who fights you in chapter two, who wants revenge on Denam. What for? A boss you fought in chapter one was his twin brother.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Yggdrasil has a BSOD of the non-heroic variety when Martel asks him this very question.
• Also, in Tales of the Abyss, when Luke realizes he's been tricked into murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Pretty much the rest of the game is affected by this moment.
• Tales of Vesperia:
  • A pretty common tradition in the Tales series it seems, as the game has Estelle do this after driving Belius mad by healing her. It takes another character's self-mutilation to drive her back into reality.
  • Sodia also has this reaction after she stabs Yuri at Zaude.
• Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World:
  • Emil has one in a skit after The Reveal that he's really an amnesiac Ratatosk and that he's been using Marta as bait the entire time. Tenebrae talks him out of it though.
  • In the game's worst ending, Emile has another after believing he accidentally killed Marta by getting too serious in the fight against the two of them that he intended to throw. This sorrow results in him killing himself, just in time for Marta to wake up and hold her dying lover in her arms.
• In Tales of Xillia 2, an alternate version of Milla has this reaction when she puts two and two together and realizes that she killed her dimension's version of Jude when he was an infant.
• Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: Anniversary has this moment when she is forced to kill Larson, who held her at gunpoint. It was Lara's first human kill in her whole life.
• Tomb Raider (2013): Lara's first human kill occurs when defending herself against what's very strongly implied to be a rape attempt by a Mook.
• In Town of Salem, if the Vigilante had killed a fellow town member, they will be horrified and be Driven to Suicide the following night. This includes if they were targeted by a Witch.
• Derek Stiles in Trauma Center is very shaken up over his mistake and carelessness that caused his previous patient to suffer complications and needing to have an emergency surgery, something that could had been prevented if he took his job more seriously.
  Derek: I really screwed up... I... ignored a patient... I was trying my best... I didn't think it was anything serious... But, a patient almost died—and it was all my fault... Being called "Dr. Stiles" doesn't make me a good doctor... What was I thinking? I'm no doctor... not if I keep making mistakes like that.
• Comes up several times, though not always with those exact words, in Twisted Metal: Black.
  • Agent Stone tells his backstory about how he was once a SWAT cop, tasked with sniping a terrorist who is holding a mother and daughter hostage. As he contemplates the ineffectiveness of the legal system, his "rage gets the better of him" as he fires upon the terrorist. He wants to "send him to hell where he belongs!" Due to his anger, he loses focus and accidentally shoots the mother and child in the process. He recites this trope word for word.
    Agent Stone: Oh, my God! What had I done? Those people were dead, and it was all my fault!
  • Jebediah, driver of Preacher, was a traveling evangelist who was one day called upon to perform an exorcism on a possessed infant. The demon leapt into his body, forcing him to slaughter everyone in the church. When the police arrived, it went dormant, forcing Jebediah to confront what he had just done. It only gets worse if he wins - Calypso informs him that there was never a demon. The exorcism was a baptism, and Jebediah had just had a psychotic break when he killed all of them. He hurls himself off a building in despair after finding out.
    Jebediah: The truth had been delivered, but not by God - by Calypso! He was right! I was, as they say, insane. My whole life I had been trying to silence that voice. I even performed rituals to show my loyalty to God in hopes that he would save me! But nothing worked. A man cannot hide from himself. There is only one path before me...
  • Billy Ray Stillwell was a normal farmer before ending up in the asylum. One day, as he was working in the fields, a cropduster passed overhead and doused him with a massive amount of pesticides. He survived, but was horribly deformed. Billy Ray staggered back to his farmhouse, hoping his wife could help him, only to find her kissing the pilot of that plane and talking about what they'd do with his life insurance. In a rage, he beat his wife to death with a hoe. Now, years later, he hates himself for going after her and not the pilot.
    Billy Ray: Oh, my poor sweet Annie! I don't blame her no more. It was that damn pilot that done steered her wrong!
• In Cousin Eddy's ending in Twisted Metal: Head-On, Calypso is not happy that Eddy, an uninvited guest, made a mess of his sport simply because it looked fun, and plans to do something about it. When threatened, he is forced to comply with granting Eddy's wish: make the RV he used newer and shinier. Following this, Calypso says this word for word.
• Two examples in Uncommon Time:
  • At the end of Movement 2, Alto unleashes all of the anger and resentment towards Teagan's Jerkass behavior that she's kept bottled up for years. Teagan is stunned to speechlessness, and has a near-breakdown when she realizes just how badly she's screwed up. She spends of the rest of the game in constant self-flagellating apology mode.
  • It's more minor, but when Teagan comes out as asexual to Meirin, the latter immediately realizes that her extreme promiscuity and flirtatiousness must have made Teagan immensely uncomfortable throughout their journey and apologizes profusely.
• In Undertale, you get this if Toriel kills you. During her boss fight, her attacks deliberately become easy to dodge if you are at low health. However, it is possible to leave yourself with enough HP to kill yourself during her attack phase, and doing so will have Toriel's expression change to a look of horror◊ for a split-second before the Game Over screen appears.
  • Conversely, the player will invoke this trope on themselves if they attempt to beat down Toriel until she surrenders: although many monsters can be spared if you deal enough damage without killing them, making this seem like a valid tactic, Toriel will suddenly take massively fatal damage once her HP drops low enough. And the worst part? If you reset the game and spare Toriel after doing this, Flowey will mock you about it when you meet him at the end of the Ruins.
  • This is also a reaction a lot of players have upon attempting or completing the No Mercy run.
• Seen using body language in The Walking Dead: Season One if, during the first episode, you saved Doug over Carley. Come episode three, Lily is consumed with suspicion over which member of the group was secretly giving the bandits outside of the motor inn supplies, which led to them eventually storming the inn and causing everyone to flee and Duck to get bit by a walker. The group's RV stops by the road for a second, and in the middle of an argument, while his back is turned, Lily raises her pistol to Ben's head, but Doug notices in the nick of time and pushes Ben out of the way, Taking the Bullet and dying in his place. After the shot, Lily completely freezes, eyes wide, and can only stare at Doug's body and slowly shake her head.
• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader: P out the absurdity of the Chaos doctrine to an old man swayed by cultists ends up with him having a quiet version of this, due to him having previously blinded members of his family while holding more as hostages at gunpoint.
• A moment like this played an important part in the backstory to We Happy Few. At one point during the German occupation, the citizens of Wellington Wells committed the "very bad thing", which was so traumatic that the entire town now takes drugs to forget it. What they did was giving up their children to the German military, sending them of to die in a war to save their own skins. To make things worse, they later realized that they could have fended of the german invasion on their own, but never tried.
• Neku Sakuraba from The World Ends with You, when he realizes that not only was Megumi Kitaniji trying to redeem Shibuya from the fate of Sodom and Gemorrah, defeating him has effectively doomed everyone to die.
• In the Ulduar raid of World of Warcraft, Algalon the Observer is sent by the Titans to "re-originate" the planet (read: destroy all organic life) in the event the corruption from the Old Gods got too severe — actually triggered by your earlier murder of one of the Titans' corrupted overseers. However, if your raid manages to defeat him, he has one of these moments, in which he laments just coldly following his orders without considering the lives of the people he was destroying.
  • The PLAYER has many of these moments. Highlights include helping Garrosh free the heart of Y'shaarj, corrupting Pandaria's holy land, and almost killing a young man. It almost makes you wish you could choose to NOT participate in some of the quests.
  • Thrall has a few of these throughout his life, despite being The Messiah and an Author Avatar, such as leaving Garrosh in charge and realizing that this indirectly led to Cairne's death, and eventually the death of thousands of others, including the extermination of an entire city.
  • Sylvanas ALMOST has one of these after dying and seeing what the afterlife is like, but it quickly becomes an Ignored Epiphany and she becomes just as bad as Arthas, the only difference being that she "serves the Horde" and not just herself. Of course, it was all a big lie.
• In World of Warcraft Cataclysm, Garrosh Hellscream has this reaction after realizing that Magatha Grimtotem had poisoned his blade, and that by killing Cairne, he played right into her plans.

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