Paying evil unto evil in video games.
- Alice: Madness Returns: After Alice finds out that Dr. Angus Bumby has been trying to erase her memories of the housefire that killed her family because he caused it, as well as discovering that before he set the fire he crept into her sister's room and raped her, AND has been selling young children off into human trafficking with no remorse after wiping their mind of all memories, AND was trying to do the same thing to Alice, what does she do? Push him in front of a train, of course.
- Baldur's Gate:
- Defied when you find a xvart settlement west of Nashkel. They are Always Chaotic Evil humanoid blue creatures that you just accidentally meet while wandering in the wilderness. They spawn as hostile and you have no reason to not kill them, given the fantasy context and how gameplay works. However, one of them will protest and complain that they did nothing wrong, but you suddenly came and attacked their village without any reason that wasn't simply "going around killing everything that is evil by default because yes".
- On the villain's side, Sarevok arranges the murder of Rieltar, his foster father, with a garrote both for his personal gain and to frame the heroes, but also to avenge the murder of his foster mother whom he adored, and whom his foster father had garroted for infidelity. Right in front of Sarevok no less.
- Baten Kaitos Origins: About three-quarters through the game, when you finally get to fight Shanath, it comes right after he got Gena's wings torn off. Considering this, the player is left with the choice to stop Sagi from dealing the coup de grâce (allowing the malignant fragment of Malpercio within Shanath to kill him instead) or remain silent, upon which Sagi stabs him through the heart.
- Batman: Arkham City: The game spends quite a bit of time showing that The Penguin is a Sadistic Bad Boss who throws people in a shark tank and puts both living and dead people on display in a museum for shits and giggles. When Mr. Freeze, who was one such "exhibit," breaks free and gets his Powered Armor back with Batman's help, he gets his revenge by immediately crushing Penguin's hand, which Batman had earlier broken, underfoot until Batman forces him to back off, and then locking him in one of the display cases. It's quite satisfying, really.
- The Caligula Effect: This is the stance that Bully Hunter Shadow Knife takes in his dungeon. He takes bullies and forces them to eat spoiled food, shoves them into lockers and has people banging against it, and beats them, the same thing those bullies had done to him in the real world. He believes that they understand no other way of teaching, so he'll have them experience what they have done to others. His foil Kotaro, who also has a past of being bullied, points out that performing this trope won't help anyone.
- The main villain of Condemned: Criminal Origins is a serial killer who hunts down and kills other killers with their own methods.
- DOOM: The franchise embraces this idea wholeheartedly, portraying Doomguy as an undeniable force for good despite his violence and being driven by fury and hatred. As the demons he fights are portrayed as literal incarnations of pure evil, does anyone care what he does to them? The games often reward the player for being extra brutal and merciless.
- Dishonored lends itself to this very well. Main characters in the franchise are set upon by gangs, overzealous religious authorities, and amoral aristocrats. While murdering most of the corrupt hostiles will net a player the worst endingnote , the main targets of each level are open to both Laser-Guided Karma and a Fate Worse than Death; in fact, almost all targets are expected to suffer greatly.
- EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: This turns out to be Big Bad Zet's initial motivation and his Start of Darkness. Shortly after being thawed out from the glacial ice that preserved him, and after recovering with Miku's grandmother, he started wandering the Earth to find any remnants of his ancient civilization and in his naivete became abducted by modern humans. After inhumane torture and experiments performed upon his body, he slaughtered his way free and devoted the next several decades devoted to vengeance, becoming the guru of his own cult to lure humans to him and perform the same torturous experiments on them as he suffered. Upon his defeat, he is broken out of the control of the ancient bracelet that drives the game's plot, and in recognizing his granddaughter before him acknowledges that his decades of pursuing vengeance was a waste of his remaining life.
- Sly Cooper steals from other thieves and gives to himself and his friends. He doesn't seem to do anything with his money, though; it was mostly for bragging rights. It's also the ancestral family trade; the fourth game Thieves In Time shows that his family has been stealing from other criminals from at least the Ice Age onward.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Played straight throughout the series. A good portion of the games are spent slaughtering enemy NPCs and taking their stuff, leaving their cold and looted corpses behind. Doing so won't make you infamous in the slightest. This is even Lampshaded early in Morrowind. The local tavern owner in the First Town tells you that you're free to increase your skills on bandits, but if you try that on townsfolk it's called murder. He then points you in the direction of the closest bandit hideout. The guards will also tell you that outlaws legally have no rights, and you can deal with them as painfully as you want. Also lampshaded in Oblivion by the Countess of Leyawin: she says to go ahead and kill any outlaws you find and take their stuff: everybody on the right side of the law wins.
- Oblivion has an "Infamy" tracker which goes up when you perform "evil" acts. Becoming the leader of the Thieves' Guild or Dark Brotherhood naturally cause it to go up. However, slaughtering bandits, necromancers, and the like by the thousands won't increase your Infamy in the slightest, even when stealing a single key gives infamy points.
Justified in that the law in these games is as amoral and arbitrary as in real life. The setting renders questions of morality somewhat meaningless, since there is basically no way to not screw somebody over. Nobody cares if the bandits are evil (usually they aren't), or if you are being good. They just care if you're upholding the law.
- In Mount & Blade, attacking Travellers or Lords generally brings you in trouble with their government except if they're enemies to begin with, but all kinds of bandits, looters, and raiders are free to be killed or knocked unconscious and then sold into slavery. They provide a good source of money and experience and most adventurers that have not (yet) sworn allegiance to a kingdom will likely spend all day bandit-hunting. It also happens between kingdoms; raiding and killing travelling farmers and merchants is ok as long as they belong to the enemy side, while of course every Calradian kingdom believes themselves to be the only one with a justified claim to the throne, so the others are obviously evil impostors.
- Aribeth's actions in Neverwinter Nights are more of pay evil unto very questionable, but the idea is there.
- Tales of Vesperia - This is the source of all of Yuri's instances of awesome. Also, all the people he kills were cruel to begin with, and probably deserved worse.
- Also subject to a bit of What the Hell, Hero?.
- In Portal 2, Wheatley pulls this during his descent into villainy when he turns GLaDOS into a potato.
- In some games with a Karma Meter (Fable immediately comes to mind), killing Mooks gives Good points. Even unprovoked killings.
- You can kill bandits while they're asleep and it's considered "Good", but killing their leader is "Evil".
- Fable II solved the problem: killing bandits or anyone else in self-defense (if they're hostile, you're killing in self-defense) doesn't change your morality at all. Unprovoked killings (if you had to make them hostile by punching them in the face) are evil. Morality is much more static than fluid this time around.
- Lucian is such an evil and vile character that Rose is urging you to do this. Yes, you can, or if you wait too long, the series bastard Reaver does it for you. Pay evil unto evil indeed.
- You can kill bandits while they're asleep and it's considered "Good", but killing their leader is "Evil".
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: During his travels, Link can encounter Bokoblin camps, where they’ll happily dance about and chat among themselves. He can then slaughter them all, harvest their body parts, and raid their camp for their weapons, food, and loot before going on his merry way. Granted, the Bokoblins are also minions of Calamity Ganon who will immediately try to kill Link the moment they see him.
- In Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, Zelda kills her enemies without mercy. When she stabs Hektan and he exclaims "You've killed me!" she smiles smugly and says, "Good." She also happily says "Got him!" when killing Omfak.
- Mass Effect:
- Many of the Renegade options the player can take involve Shepard, the main character of the first trilogy, being a total bastard to other bastards. Several times, people are outright shot in the head or otherwise have their lives ruined, though they are usually very bad people to begin with. Or very annoying reporters.
- Mass Effect 2:
- This is how Garrus operated during his career on Omega. While he at least took pains to prevent civilian casualties, it's telling that most of his Shadow Broker dossier lists particularly ironic kills of assorted gang leaders, drug dealers, gunrunners, and serial killers.
- Two of your other squadmates present contrasting viewpoints on it. Mordin Solus, a black ops agent-turned-MD, comments in response to a helper criticizing him for his nonchalant killing of several gangsters that threatened his clinic on Omega with the comment, "Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps." Considering that Mordin is stationed at Omega prior to his recruitment by Shepard, he is not wrong to remind everyone that being Good Is Not Soft and Good Is Not Dumb. In contrast, assassin Thane Krios is known for praying for his own soul after assassinations, and remarks to Shepard that "Removing evil from the world is not the same as creating good."
- Mass Effect: Andromeda occasionally presents Ryder with similar options, such as a Quick Time Event to kill an already-disarmed kett boss mid-sentence during a cutscene. Also, after Sloane Kelly arrived on kett-occupied Kadara, she and the other Exiles butchered the kett on-planet; your first sight after docking in Kadara Port is of a kett head on a pike.
- The Fallout series:
- Ruthlessly subverted in Fallout. Attempt to kill the enterprising businessman Iguana Bob, and the entire town — including the heavily armed Police Force, the local Mob, and visiting caravan drivers — turn hostile and try to retaliate. Your karma meter is also penalized if you choose to spare Bob's life and instead blackmail him over his secret. The secret, I might add, that no one will believe, and over which they will try to kill you for acting directly!
- In Fallout 2, killing bandits raises your Karma meter, which is fair enough. It also goes up when you kill drug dealers and pimps, which still makes sensenote . But killing prostitutes also raises the Karma meter — not by much, but damn! It's kinda funny that a character is revered as a great hero for killing masses of whores. Jack the Ripper: Hero of the Wasteland!
- Fallout 3 provides good karma and good items for gunning down Evil characters, even if it's done in cold blood. Since the definition of evil is... rather loose... in the local universe, this can lead to some interesting interactions. Where stealing scrap material loses Karma Meter points, and taking a Ripper to a friendly NPC's head can provide points.
- It's especially odd that you gain karma from killing Mr. Tenpenny for two reasons: One, that you can do it with no provocation and completely in cold blood and two, near as one can tell, if you convince the residents to let the ghouls in, you find out that Tenpenny does not condone the morally reprehensible prejudices he allows, he's just oblivious to them, though this may apply less to Megaton. (Also, please note these "morally reprehensible prejudices" turn out in this specific case to be fully justified.) The problem with this quest is that while the resident's "morally reprehensible prejudices" do become justified, your killing of Roy Phillips is not due to him being flagged as a "Good Karma" character despite being an utter bastard when you learn the truthnote Thanks a lot Three Dog!
- You can also slaughter the entire town of Paradise Falls, a town of slavers. Not only will you not be penalized, you'll actually gain karma for some of the people you kill. Possibly justified in that almost nobody in the setting likes slavers.
- This trope is also played 100% straight, in Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Fallout 4 in the case of Raiders. The laundry list: Kidnapping, banditry, torturing people literally to death, desecrating corpses to the point they aren't always recognizable as human any more, and sexually assaulting the people they capture — just to name a few. Oh, and to even be considered for joining their ranks? You have to prove you're at least as bad as they are. No wonder waltzing in and methodically murdering every last resident of a Raider camp, then stealing everything that isn't bolted down, is never considered a bad thing.
- There are limits to what you can do to Raiders in Fallout 3 without accruing negative karma, though. Specifically, enslaving them with the Mesmetron.
- It should be noted that in Fallout 3, you can also get a perk that gives you a bonus for killing good characters. It's also one of the few games that punishes either side of the karma line. If you're evil, the Regulators come after you; if you're good, criminals start hiring the Talon Mercenaries to hunt you down. In a roundabout way, you are "rewarded" for being Good by having Talon hit squads to kill you with their mid-level gear of Combat Armor... which is much better than the Regulator's "Cowboy" gear of leather dusters.
- In Fallout: New Vegas, Vulpes Inculta butchers the town of Nipton for being a Wretched Hive filled with bastards willing to sell each other out after the citizens failed a Secret Test of Character he put on. In fact Vulpes is so much a believer of this trope, that if you tell him his acts are unforgiveable, he outright tells you to kill him if you truly think he's evil. (Which can be a Bullying The Dragon moment for him if you started with the Mercenary Pack with the overpowered grenade launcher and armor for that point of the game.)
- The Legion destroyed the NCR garrison at Searchlight by opening casks of radioactive waste being stored there, turning the soldiers into ghouls. The leader of the survivors asks the Courier to destroy the Legion slaver camp and ferry terminal at Cottonwood Cove in retaliation. If you chose to do this by dumping a truckload of radioactive barrels onto the camp, he will comment on the irony of it, even more so if you are a girl.
- Taken up to eleven by a bug in New Vegas' Karma system: you were intended to get a fairly small amount of Karma for killing the garden-variety "Good" or "Evil" characters, and a very large amount for killing the rare "Very Good" or "Very Evil" characters. But the Karma bounties for "Evil" and "Very Evil" kills were accidentally switched. So clearing out an encampment or two of the dirt-common raiders (most of whom flag as "Evil") would send your Karma skyrocketing to Very Good status, even if you'd spent the entire game up to that point doing everything possible to play as a puppy-punting monster. Even eating the bodies of the slain raiders wouldn't do much to counteract this, as the amount of Evil Karma gained for the cannibalism was so small compared to the Good Karma for the kills. This made getting your character's Karma to Very Evil status (and keeping it that way) a surprisingly difficult challenge.
- In Fallout: New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts, this is Joshua Graham's plan for dealing with the invading White Legs tribe in Zion. Towards the people of New Canaan and the tribes they help, he's a man trying to atone for his past sins and prove that he is no longer the Malpais Legate. To the White Legs, he might as well still be, as evidenced by his general policy, executing them on their knees, and stabbing their heads on pikes as examples.
- Annoyingly, the gameplay in New Vegas still gives you positive karma for killing evil people but stealing loses you karma proportional to the in-game value of the object unless the entire faction you're stealing from is evil (which is pretty much just the Powder Gangers, Fiends, and assorted raiders—but not the Legion).
- Not a part of the gameplay of Fallout 4 due to the absence of Karma Meter, but still present in various storylines and NPCs:
- Pickman has a lovely art gallery in downtown Boston. An art gallery full of paintings done in blood, dismembered body parts, and corpses. It turns out Pickman is a serial killer; however, his target of choice are the murderous and bloodthirsty raiders, a faction known for laying waste to anything they come across. If you save Pickman from the raiders and let him go free, not only will he give you a knife as a thank you present, but raider corpses will turn up at random in the Commonwealth with his signature notes on them.
- In Wasteland Workshop DLC, you can use cages to capture the Gunners and Raiders and then shove a pet Deathclaw to let them duel each other.
- The demon Marduk from Sacrifice takes this trope to spectacular extremes. He was created as the embodiment of evil by an (unknown) higher power, and charged with punishing anyone evil enough to summon him by destroying their entire world. He describes his task as destroying "all that is a reflection of myself".
- Happened in Saints Row 2, although it's not so much as pay evil onto evil as pay evil onto greyness. Maero gets his revenge for unintentionally getting tattooed with nuclear acid set up by the main character by torturing Carlos and having the player Mercy Kill him. The main character gets him back by kidnapping his girlfriend, Jessica, stuffing her into the trunk of a car, and using it as fodder in a monster truck rally that Maero is in, with Jessica still in the trunk. She doesn't survive.
- Additionally, near the end of the storyline dealing with the Ronin, Johnny Gat takes revenge for the murder of his girlfriend, Aisha, by beating, humiliating, and locking the man who ordered her murder in the coffin and burying him alive. This game loves this trope. Let's put that into clearer perspective: Johnny is a kill-crazy psycho who would've killed Shougo without being given a reason, but at that moment was in mourning at Aisha's funeral in progress, and even gave Shougo a chance to leave. Shougo insisted on disrupting the service to scoff at and provoke Johnny, so it's doubtful anyone had any pity for him when he got put into the ground right then and there.
- Normally, killing in cold blood in Red Dead Redemption II gives a hit to your honor, but there are a few times when it will actually give you a boost. There are three encounters with the Klan where you can kill them for a gain in honor each time (though they kill themselves by accident if left to their own devices). A stranger mission involves helping a man who Arthur thinks got his house foreclosed on because he got screwed over by the railroad company, he's actually an old slave catcher who gives you an honor boost for killing at the end of the mission. There's a eugenics supporter in the Hub City of Saint Denis whom you can kill in broad daylight for an honor boost with absolutely no consequences, even with police officers standing on every corner. If you decide to put him on the back of your horse for a more creative death outside his street corner (such as feeding him to an alligator or dropping him into a canyon), no one will stop you either and you get an honor boost when he dies.
- Agent 47 of Hitman is paid almost always to kill evil criminals of some sorts. The reason stated is that The Agency finds more profit in global stability than just being paid by random criminals to whack philanthropists.
- At other times, though, it gets a little dicey: at the conclusion of Contracts he assassinates a French police officer, as he believes that the man in question knows too much about him. Similarly, at the end of Blood Money, Agent 47 is revived from apparent death during his funeral, and kills everyone present at the funeral, including an innocent priest and a journalist (although in fairness, the journalist had been provided with a great deal of information about him).
- Officially he is sent to take down bad people, but anyone who compromises his identity to said underworld connections is also fair game.
- Absolution definitely cements 47 as one who personally embraces this philosophy: sure, he gunned down Diana Burnwood (except, not really) at the start of the game, but the rest of the game has him going rogue to save Victoria from both the ICA and Blake Industries, while still willing to murder their key figures to protect her.
- This trope is the central premise of Bully, where Jimmy Hopkins, the new student at the worst school in the country, strives to stop the rampant bullying and create order between the cliques.
- Nazis, bloodsuckers, and murdering thugs are the stock enemies of Bloodrayne, and Rayne often expresses her satisfaction with slaughtering them in the most graphically gory ways possible.
- In Escape Velocity, blowing up ships and conquering planets doesn't make you very well liked by the surrounding systems (unless it's by an opposing faction). Meanwhile, conquering Space Pirate worlds and bases then demanding they pay you tribute; nobody cares (pirates attack you regardless), and one of the few 100% reliable ways to boost your Karma Meter with every faction is to shoot pirates and take their stuff. Curiously, nobody demands that the System Lord try to shut down said pirates.
- Still, dominating entire worlds is such a notoriously evil act in EV that no matter who the planet once belonged to and where you are now, you'll always have to fend off Bounty Hunters.
- The third game features a story example. The Auroran preamble discusses a disgraced Heraani warrior named Turo'mar, also known as "The Claimer" or the Tharakoodesh, who kills those who attack the innocent. He leaves the headless corpse behind with the message,Thus die those who attack the innocent. Death's harvest is rich with the blood of cowards, and the virtuous have the strength to reap it. The claimer is here. Take heed...
- It also features the so-called Pirate storyline. It centres around you leading a renewed Association of Free Traders, who only pirate actual pirates (they do, however, smuggle things).
- Super Mario 64 has a mission called "Bully the Bullies" in Lethal Lava Land. You bully them by pushing them into the lava, which is essentially the only way to kill them. Perhaps a literal example, since this is exactly what they're trying to do to you (their shoves don't cause damage — just a little knockback and stun — but the true danger is the lava).
- In Civilization IV, if an area remains in the shroud long enough, there is a chance that a barbarian civilization will form there. This will have cities, farms, etc. There's absolutely no way to make peace or trade with these groups, the only solution to the hostile raids is to wipe them off the Earth. Although occasionally if the city is large enough you can merely conquer them instead.
- Some of the more extensive and complex mods allow these barbarian civilizations to eventually mature into "minor" civilizations, and then into full-on civilizations, enabling trade and diplomacy with them. However, they still need to be left alone long enough to reach that stage, and not everyone is willing to let new empires spring up on their doorstep...
- God of War is this trope, thanks to some extreme characterization of the Greek gods.
- Skies of Arcadia: The Blue Rogues fit the "noble pirate" archetype, and steal from two rigidly defined categories: 1) people who are extremely rich, with varying amounts of consideration for the potential for financial ruin and bodily harm given based on how moral the rich person is; and 2) Black Pirates. Category 2 fits under this trope as Black Pirates are sky pirates like Blue Rogues, but rob indiscriminately and tend to leave a trail of pain and suffering in their wake.
- World of Warcraft: the Knights of the Ebon Blade certainly qualify.
- To elaborate and clarify, the Knights Of The Ebon Blade are Death Knights, soulless quasi-undead killing machines that the Lich King so well designed that they literally feel pain unless they are killing something. Once they freed themselves from the Lich King's control, they didn't regain their souls and become moral warriors again. They just turned all of their power and malice back towards the Lich King.
- Demon hunters certainly fall into this trope as well. They fight demons by using their own demonic magic against them, even to the point of having physical traits like horns. The difference between the demons and the demon hunters is that the former wouldn't stop at nothing to destroy all creation, while the latter would sacrifice everything to save it, even if it means to be tormented by the demons they hate for eternity while borrowing their power to slay other demons.
- Warlocks also fall into this. They wield corrupting fel magic, but they wield it in defense of Azeroth (especially against demons and the Burning Legion) and try their best to not become corrupted by it.
- This, along with Disproportionate Retribution, are the tropes that keep the Alliance/Horde conflict going. While the Alliance is somewhat less likely than the Horde to invoke the trope, they frequently use it as a casus belli once the Horde has acted. While the Horde is more likely to engage in Disproportionate Retribution, the Alliance is more likely to just do bad things because it's in their interest (which the Horde sometimes uses as a casus belli).
- For example: During the Cataclysm, the Alliance sneakily tried to grab land in Kalimdor in violation of a standing treaty with the Horde, with help from the supposedly neutral city of Theramore. Warchief Garrosh Hellscream decided to answer this by bombing Theramore after tricking leaders of the Alliance into setting up a defense against a ground attack on the city. He used a magical bomb that not only destroyed buildings and killed many people, but also made the area uninhabitable: sort of equivalent to a nuke. During this attack, the leader of Dalaran was killed and Jaina Proudmoore — the erstwhile leader of Theramore — filled his position. After finding out that the Sunreaver mages from Dalaran were partially responsible for the bomb, Jaina turned on them. She killed many of them and imprisoned many more. Jaina and the leader of the Sunreavers come face to face later, and almost come to blows. They are only stopped by the arrival of a very fed-up Taran Zhu, who tells them both to stop invoking this trope and go home.
- Blood Omen features an odd play on this; the main character is the evil being paid unto evil; he was created and turned into a monster to be set on the Circle of Nine, a group of insane wizards that were slowly destroying the world.
- In Overlord, you beat up seven alleged heroes who have fallen to the seven deadly sins thanks to the Big Bad, who was a hero before.
- Lightning Warrior Raidy features an erotic version of this with the boss battles in both games. Raidy always encounters level bosses in the middle of sexually tormenting a kidnapped NPC in a variety of ways; if she loses the ensuing boss battle, the game over sequence features the boss subjecting Raidy to this treatment, but if Raidy wins, she gives them a taste of their own medicine.
- In Might and Magic 2, characters who entered certain valleys could discover peaceful goblin villages. They could then choose to attack them and slaughter them all, likely leaving any surviving children who hid from your murderous rampage orphans who will vow vengeance upon humanity for your actions; but since they're monsters and you're heroes, it's okay!
- In Palworld, Rayne Syndicate thugs are often seen attacking humans or Pals unprovoked and are shown holding Pals in cages for unknown nefarious purposes; Free Pal Alliance members are members of a Pal worship cult who attack those who they feel don't treat the Pals properly (read:everyone else), the Brothers Of the Eternal Pyre are a group of bloodthirsty pyromaniacs who run around with flamethrowers, setting fire to everything for the hell of it; the Palpagos Island Defense Force are led by a Dirty Cop drug dealer and it's implied that the nature reserves they protect are really fronts for their leader's drug trafficking operation; the Pal Genetic Research Unit are a group of mad scientists who conduct cruel experiments on the Pals in order to make the perfect Bioweapon Beast. You are free to capture the mooks of any faction in Pal Spheres and then enslave them, sell them to merchants or just butcher them. Of note is that capturing mooks of the Rayne Syndicate, Free Pal Alliance, Brothers of the Eternal Pyre and Pal Genetic Research Unit will not increase your Wanted Meter, suggesting that the police are perfectly fine with you doing terrible things to them.
- Alec Mason in Red Faction Guerrilla spends most of the game causing property damage in the hundreds of millions, bombing industrial centers and troop barracks, and breaking many, many people in half through sledgehammer-induced blunt force trauma. There's no disguising the fact that he's functionally a terrorist… except that he's facing off the oppressive, thuggish, and violent EDF, who harass and abuse workers, shoot miners with little provocation, who finally pushed the initially reluctant Alec to join the Red Faction after an EDF gunship killed his younger brother. The entire game really boils down to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge led by Alec Mason against the EDF to avenge Daniel.
- Many sidequests in The Godfather 2 involve you dealing injury to the person or property of those who have done injustice against the quest-givers.
- While the Suikoden series is famous for the Grey-and-Gray Morality of most of its villains, Suikoden V gives us Salum Barows, who is a corrupt and self-serving politician who incited riots, stole a national treasure, and tried to coerce the Prince into making his own nation just to assassinate him later. While he's left humiliated during the game, he's still around and could cause problems in the future. There is great catharsis when Sialeeds blasts him with the Twilight Rune.
- This turns out to have been the Big Bad's motivation in Ace Attorney Investigations 2. No player really mourned Di-Jun Huang's double after finding out what he did. You even kinda admire the Big Bad for helping put Blaise Debeste behind bars. On the other hand, the assassin Sirhan considers threatening Patricia Roland's family as a case of this, but to the player, it comes off as applying it to an Asshole Victim, since at the time they don't know she was involved in a presidential assassination and falls into the Deconstruction category as Patricia is driven flat-out insane from being Properly Paranoid to the point where it's hard not to feel sorry for her.
- In Gone Home, the reason the house has been ransacked turns out to be that Sam pawned everything of value she could get her hands on to finance her elopement with her girlfriend, which she feels completely justified in doing thanks to her parents' passive-aggressive reaction to her coming out as a lesbian (though the years of implied Parental Favoritism toward her older sister Katie may have also had something to do with it).
- Homeworld's Fleet Intelligence very calmly states that the captain of a captured vessel was apparently tortured to death, with good reason: He was part of the fleet responsible for devastating Kharak.Fleet Intelligence: The subject did not survive interrogation.
- Heavily implied, though never confirmed in Hotel Dusk: Room 215, in regards to Robert Evans. Dunning is told that he'll never have to deal with Robert again at one point six months prior to the game. Kyle theorizes that his ex-partner Bradley, who knew Robert was a member of the organization that killed Bradley's sister Mila and kidnapped Dunning's daughter Jenny, killed him in retribution.
- Borderlands is basically this: you go out, you slaughter an entire town, grab the loot. Repeat. And you are the good(-ish?) guy, but you're only ever put up against psycho bandits or amoral corporations who've both done significantly worse.
- In StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, basically the entire plot is motivated by Kerrigan's desire to personally end the life of Manipulative Bastard Arcturus Mengsk for a shocking variety of crimes against her in particular and the sector in general. (Short list: he fed her homeworld and four billion citizens to the zerg invasion, betrayed her in the same battle, leading to her being infested, tried to kill her multiple times, tried to capture her for experimentation when she was de-infested, and claimed to have executed her lover.) Even the composer can't argue with the necessity; the track for the final battle is fittingly titled "He Had It Coming".
- In one of the Orks' after-action epilogues in Dawn of War: Soulstorm, the Orks deliver some measure of karma on the captured Dark Eldar by inventing a new sport which involves trapping the Dark Eldar warriors in their own slave cages and seeing how far they can throw them in the moon's reduced gravity.
- Leliana of the Dragon Age series subscribes hard to this. Torture and rape leads to her executing the guard captain responsible, and her personal quest involves hunting down the woman who betrayed her and even if let go Leliana does not let this drop. She tries to kill The Warden if The Urn of Sacred Ashes is defiled, and that's just the first game. In the second, she can be seen eliminating threats to Thedas and her reputation for this trope has her both revered and feared. The third game can begin with her threatening assassination of the Inquisitor's family and murdering the son of a magister maddened with grief, and it gets better when she tries to go behind Josephine's back and plot murder on those who threaten her, or should the Duchess die, take up the offer of her remains performing community service by warning off other threats.
- Dr. Luis, the antagonist of South of Real, spent the entirety of the main character's childhood experimenting on his own adopted children. Sure, Luis was trying to weaponize the kids and use them to stop The End of the World as We Know It. And sure, he's become a Death Seeker by the time the game rolls around. But there's no reason to forgive him, whatever his reasons. And there are no consequences for taking him out, either.
- In Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, Trish has this adoptive father named Hawthorne that she looks out for. At one point, the bandit queen Shauna kidnaps him, and when Trish finds them again, Shauna proceeds to grill him on his past before slitting his throat in full view of Trish. While one can't help to feel for the girl, it'd be easier to sympathize with Hawthorne if Shauna hadn't revealed via said interrogation that he was a serial rapist of the worst kind, of whom Trish would have been the latest victim. And this is in the Normal path; she's too late to stop the rape in the Demon Path.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim features a vampire assassin first met while she is retelling a story about how she used a man's apparent sexual attraction and desire for her to lure him in before killing him. With the context being that she has the body of a ten year-old girl.
- Haunting Starring Polterguy: Poltergeist Polterguy thinks the best thing is to haunt the Sardini Family's houses to teach them a lesson.
- You can do some truly brutal things to the bad guys in Wolfenstein: The New Order, but you're doing it to the magitech Nazis who took over the world. And trust us, they haven't made it a nice world, either.
- After the halfway point of the campaign, Anya will read excerpts from her cousin Ramona's diary, which states that soon after her boyfriend was summarily executed by Nazi soldiers, she started picking up random Nazis and leading them to their deaths, and at one point she becomes pregnant, and promptly aborts the "Nazi" baby and continues her killing spree like nothing happened.
- This is an alternate version of Superman's philosophy after he was tricked by The Joker into nuking Metropolis and killing his own wife Lois Lane in Injustice: Gods Among Us. He vowed to no longer stand by and watch, and except for Batman, most of the Justice League supported this policy of abandoning the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule, transforming them into the Regime. But as time went by, this policy slowly made them no different from the criminals and villains they fought for so long. By the end of the game, the Flash begins to realize how far Superman has fallen after noticing the corrupt Man of Steel kill Shazam in cold blood just for questioning his policies post-Metropolis. In the sequel, the Regime's Well-Intentioned Extremist stance on crime hasn't changed despite most of its members defecting to other factions, on the run, or being incarcerated, and they plan to restore their tyrannical order once Brainiac is dealt with.
- During the ending of Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic forces Erazor Djinn — a sadistic and psychotic Jackass Genie who abused his companion Shahra and planned to destroy the Arabian Nights to remake it in his own image — to grant his three wishes (which were the antithesis to what Erazor wanted, and it's implied that it physically hurt Erazor when Sonic used Erazor's lamp to force the genie to grant said wishes), with Sonic's third wish being for Erazor to be sealed away in his lamp forever. To go one step further, Sonic then throws said lamp into a pit of lava to ensure Erazor never returns.
- Hell is bad, but the Doom Slayer is worse, as Doom (2016) demonstrates. The game's backstory outright states the Doom Slayer has been brutalizing and butchering the demons for such an ungodly length of time that they are collectively, pants-shittingly terrified of him. Being demons of the classic 'corrupt mortals, scourge worlds, spread suffering' variety, they deserve every bit of violence they receive at the hands of one spectacularly furious man."They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and tear, until it is done."
- In Famous Second Son: While the Kick Them While They Are Down option normally nets players Evil Karma, during the first boss fight against Brooke Augustine, doing so actually nets the player Good Karma. It makes sense when one considers the fact that Augustine just killed Delsin's brother Reggie right in front of him.
- These are extremely common occurrences in Criminal Case, due to the fact that the number of murder victims in that game who aren't Asshole Victims could be counted on one hand. Murder is still almost always treated as a prison-worthy offence in-game, though.
- Subverted in Planescape: Torment. One of the minor characters is a cornugon (a type of devil) who was tricked into making a deal that now forces him to perform acts of charity and kindness. He's not required to like this, and continually complains about it. You can take advantage of this deal to force him to give you all of his possessions before slaughtering him (and that same deal means he can't fight back)... but the subversion is that this is considered an evil act and moves your
Character Alignment more towards evil with each time you do it. Sure, he's an unrepentant monster, but you're still taking advantage of a circumstance he has no control over to make him do things against his will. Regardless of the target, that is not considered "good". - The New Order Last Days Of Europe: The Black League of Omsk intends to do this to Nazi Germany with the Great Trial, their plan to develop nuclear and chemical "revenge" weapons and use them to wipe Germany and her people from the face of the earth. Ultimately, it's a Deconstruction because their efforts turn Russia into a brutally totalitarian Ultranationalist state built on tenets that are just the same as (or arguably even worse than) Nazism, and their revenge unleashes nuclear Armageddon on the world.
- Xenogears: The end of disc one destruction of Etrenank by Id.
- Cooking Companions: One ending involves Mariah stabbing someone to death with a Slasher Smile on her face. Said someone was the Villain Protagonist, a cannibalistic Serial Killer, and therefore won't be missed.
- In the backstory of The Great Ace Attorney, Klint van Zieks, a highly regarded prosecutor, became the Serial Killer known as "The Professor" in order to bring corrupt nobles who were otherwise above the law to justice.
- Reincarnation (2008) is based around you killing Reincarnies — after discovering evidence of them committing some grave sin such as murder, domestic abuse, human trafficking, pedophilia, terrorism, et cetera.
