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Psychopathic Manchildren in video games.


  • Adiboo: Magical Playhouse: Buzzy Gulump is a large, hulking monster with a deep voice... who is prone to sticking a pacifier into his mouth and/or sucking his thumb.
  • Dr. Angus Bumby from Alice: Madness Returns is a rather subtle version of one whose childish behavior doesn't become clear until well into the story. While normally Dr. Bumby normally seems calm and well-educated, as the story unfolds it becomes clear that Bumby is just a possessive child unable to deal with being told no after raping Alice's sister, Elizabeth, seeing her refusals as teasing and then covering it up by burning down their house with them inside. Even the Dollmaker, his Wonderland counterpart, uses childish suggestive motions with his hands throughout its boss fight. And, finally, in the end he takes the time to gloat at Alice over using his hypnosis therapy to brainwash children into prostitution, that he will get away with it, and continues arguing that he has done nothing wrong.
  • Professor Pyg from Batman: Arkham Knight. His comics counterpart was no paragon of sanity either, but the video game swaps out his Word-Salad Horror insanity and exchanges it for childlike temper tantrums, simplistic speech, and references to a being called "Mother" that will be unhappy if Batman prevents him from making more of his kidnapped, brainwashed automatons called "Dollotrons". Said mother is a wooden carving hanging on his wall covered in nails and barbed wire.
    "Pyg make you perfect."
  • "John Doe" from Batman: The Telltale Series has all the calculating intelligence and comedic savagery as other incarnations of the Joker, but is at worst Obliviously Evil and acts like a lost giggling child who pinky swears, settles conflicts over milkshakes, loves taking selfies, and barely seems to comprehend just how horrid his actions are. At first. He gets much much worse over the course of the two seasons and, by the end, either fully embraces the iconic role of Joker or a warped "Vigilante Joker" based on the choices made by the player.
  • The Beloved in Bayonetta. Big and stupid with cherubic masks on their hideous heads. There are no pretty angels in this game.
  • BlazBlue:
    • Whether he admits it or not, Yuuki Terumi lives this trope. In essence, he's only got one thing in mind: Make the world run like he idealized, where he's considered the most awesome being in the world and everyone believing despair to be the only truth. And because the world, as much as it's a Crapsack World, didn't work like that, he's trying to modify it by force instead of adapting, like a little kid throwing a cosmic temper tantrum because his daddy didn't give him the toy he wanted. Also, his methods, aside from his sadism, include childish mocking and appealing by brute force if Mind Rape was not enough. His true self in Central Fiction, Susano'o, is more of a downplayed example: He's much more composed in delivering his sadism, but his motivation boils down to not liking how he's designated as a custodian/servant of Master Unit Amaterasu, so he wants to recreate the whole world in his image: Despair is still the only truth, but he's less about being considered the most awesome, instead wanting to be the most feared, so people will still be in despair cowering at the display of his sheer might. Which means, Terumi is an exaggeration of Susano'o's cold sadism.
    • Central Fiction reveals another surprising candidate: Hibiki Kohaku, Kagura Mutsuki's Battle Butler. His likes include Japanese confectionery, and he has a notably youthful appearance. He's also a deeply disturbed individual who wants to actually kill Kagura to become truly emotionless, but tries to hide it.
  • The Igniter bloodline from Bloodline Champions has animations that give one this feeling about them: their running animations looks like skipping, their standing animation is them strangely tilting their head to the left with their right palm up, and their idle animation is hopping up and down left and right on the spot.
  • Borderlands 2:
    • Although Handsome Jack is intelligent enough to pull off some impressive Batman Gambits, he's also an immature sadist; as a perfect example, he laughs as he tells a story about gouging out a man's eyes in front of the man's children. Despite being the CEO of the most powerful MegaCorp in the 'verse, he cannot resist calling up the Vault Hunters just to sling childish insults at them. He also brags about being rich enough to blow his money on a pony made out of diamonds, which he calls Butt Stallion.
    • There's also the Goliaths, slow-witted giants who apparently regard combat as "play time", and the psycho bandits, who ramble all sorts of nonsense (often about their mothers) as they try to kill you.
    • Scooter behaves like a teenager in going to petty ways to get laid, but he is as homicidal as anyone on Pandora, killing his mom's boyfriends just because they are her boyfriends.
    • Mr. Torgue from the DLC pack "Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage" is a likable guy, but he's very loud, loves cookies, is obsessed with explosions and manliness, and writes everything in crayon. He also bonds quickly with explosives-loving Tiny Tina.
  • General Sarrano, Big Bad of Bullet Storm, is an example. He was responsible for designing the Skillshot system, encouraging his soldiers to prioritize killing enemies in over-the-top ways over sensible tactics. He's also extremely vindictive, sending black-ops units (which the main characters were a part of) to assassinate people for the mildest slights against him. On top of that, practically every line of dialogue out of his mouth is laden with insults, curse words, and racial slurs, like a 12-year-old boy hopped up on energy drinks cursing out other players during an online Call of Duty match.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops III: Turns out, when you raise an artificial intelligence using the minds of fifty-four mind-raped criminals, the results are ugly. During the final mission, Taylor realizes that Corvus is not a hyper-intelligent mastermind hell-bent on ruling the world; he's an angry 10-year-old kid who instinctively masters all forms of cyber-technology, but has the short temper and lack of judgement of any spoiled brat, which is why he's threatening to destroy the world by haphazardly 'collecting' its minds into a disorganized ball of toys to play with.
  • Edward Richtofen from Call of Duty: Zombies is like this. While the other characters react to the zombie hordes with the expected horror and revulsion, Richtofen acts like a kid playing their favorite arcade game.
  • The Boogeyman from Cause of Death. After a burglar (unwittingly) saved him from a lifetime of abuse by killing his parents, he recruited Eli to help in further burglaries. Eli, meanwhile, thought saving him from abuse was the whole point of Jeb killing his parents. So what does he do? He starts killing other abusive parents in turn. And he simply cannot get rid of the trappings of childhood, such as treehouses. He genuinely wants to befriend and play with the children he rescues (and no, those aren't euphemisms), but honestly can't comprehend that he's traumatizing them instead.
  • John DeFoe of the Chzo Mythos is essentially this, seeing as he was raised alone in the basement of DeFoe Manor after being disowned by his father, who considers him an abomination and responsible for his wife's death. Being possessed by the Tall Man after he was beaten about the head and neck with a wooden idol containing his soul certainly didn't help.
  • In Cognitive Dissonance, Giegue is interpreted as the intelligent variant. While he's generally cold and calculating, he's prone to childish gestures like covering his ears when scared as well as throwing violent outbursts towards his own minions. His plan of gaining more power and using it to lay waste to Earth is essentially a temper tantrum over his grief over the loss of his loving parents when he was a baby and despair caused by their great grandson rejecting him, leaving him without a family. And when he's confronted at the end of the game, he completely snaps, transforming into Giygas.
  • Command & Conquer:
    • The Brutes in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge are mutated humans with an Incredible-Hulk like physique, who can kill tanks with their bare hands. They also have the mentality of a 5-year-old, view fighting as "playing" and, when damaged, sob about how they want to go home.
    • The Grinder Tank introduced in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Uprising is similar: they're weaponized steamrollers that can grind anything and anybody that crosses their path into a mangled mess. Their crew go about their work with the intelligence and emotional state of children, giggling about much fun it is to break their "toys".
  • Dead or Alive Dimensions depicts the first Kasumi Alpha clone as a mix of Types C and D. She's very beautiful and is just as powerful as the real Kasumi, and yet is very immature and childlike, to the extent that she breaks Kasumi out her cell at DOATEC Germany with the intent to kill her and have Hayate all to herself. Her entry on the Dead or Alive Wiki explicitly describes her as acting like "a misguided child with too much power."
  • Dead Rising: A few of the Psychopaths (humans who either have gone insane from the zombie outbreak or are taking advantage from it for sinister goals) from the games can be considered this exact trope. Some examples that we can mention are Kent Swanson, with the mentality of an obnoxious teenager and a petty obsession for Frank West; the Convicts, who act like juvenile delinquents and behave like rowdy teenagers; Leon Bell, a middle school bully in a grown man body who has no issues with murdering innocents because "they are worthy twice the points"; Brent "Slappy" Ernst, who recites childish dialogue and rarely swears (he really got in the character of a Kids Mascot) and Randy Tugman, very excited from the idea of rape, and with severe entitlement issues.
  • de Blob: Main bad guy of the series Comrade Black is repeatedly shown to be this, throwing tantrums when things go wrong for him, the petty treatment of both his prisoners and his minions, building a prison zoo and charging admission, and in the final level of the second game, telling Blob to KYS like an ill-tempered child.
  • Devil May Cry: While he hides it behind his cold and ruthless attitude, Vergil is just as if not more immature than Dante, in a more selfish and jealous way. His entire character arc in the series is driven by his childhood trauma of believing himself to have been abandoned by his mother, and is implied to having been a teenager when he fathered Nero, which shows a lot of irresponsibility. Any dialogue he has with his brother pretty much reads like an average fight between children siblings.
    Vergil: Give [that half of the amulet] to me.
    Dante: No way, you got your own.
    Vergil: Well, I want yours too.
  • In Double Switch, Eddie seems to be this. He seems like a normal Nice Guy stuck in a bad situation. Unfortunately, he wants an Egyptian statue so badly that he will hurt or kill to get it. He seems to be bothered by what people say about him at some points. It is also pretty sad to see him reduced to crying "Mom! Mommy!" by the end of the game.
  • Chesty, from a Fable II sidequest, a living treasure chest who doesn't seem to understand that his new "Super Best Friend" really isn't having fun with being pulled into a nightmare and facing a gauntlet of monsters.
  • Fallout:
    • Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas is charismatic, smart, and drunk on the power to rule that he coveted since he was a child in the Followers of The Apocalypse reading textbooks about the might of Ancient Rome. Reading the flavor content in the back of the Prima Collectors Edition Guide reveals that he was petulant and gloryhounding even in his adolescent years. And if the Courier rebukes him giving orders during a face-to-face visit, he throws quite a temper tantrum. He's like the Last King of Scotland: He's childlike and standing at the top of a massive army, that's why he's so scary.
    • It's implied that they weren't too sane to begin with, but being isolated for two centuries and being turned into almost-completely synthetic entities did a number on the Think Tank of Old World Blues. When they're not lobotomizing unsuspecting people and leaving them raving insane feral beasts, the entire group easily devolves into bantering and arguing like a bunch of angsty teenagers as soon as any slight disagreement or accusation gets thrown out. Klein can't take any criticism to save his life and resorts to shouting his problems away, 0's an incredibly petty and whiny scientist, Borous designed an entire deathtrap experiment around a centuries-old high school grudge, Dala is obsessed with teddy bears and acts like she's stuck in puberty, and 8's too emotional for anyone's comfort (not that we'd know by how much since he speaks entirely in static noises due to a damaged voice module). In the words of Klein himself, "I'M SURROUNDED BY CHILDREN."
    • Fallout 3 has Dr. Stanislaus Braun, the overseer of Vault 112 and Tranquility Lane within it; having trapped the Vault residents in a virtual reality simulation, he's spent the last two hundred years using them as playthings for his own twisted amusement, torturing and killing them over and over again in countless gruesome ways. For good measure, in the VR's latest simulation, he assumed the form of a spiteful little girl named Betty. Even if and when you succeed in permanently mercy-killing his victims, Braun will throw a temper-tantrum over not having "anyone to play with anymore".
    • The dumber Super Mutants throughout the series, especially those running rampant in the Capital Wasteland.
  • Far Cry:
    • Vaas Montenegro from Far Cry 3 treats his Californian captives like toys he gets to break, cheerfully commenting that Jason and his brother Grant look expensive, "and that's good, because I like expensive things." It's heavily implied that this is due to the abusive upbringing he received under his sister Citra among the Rakyat, and getting addicted to drugs by Hoyt Volker. And as for the "Psychopathic" part, he's an Ax-Crazy pirate who's dangerously quick to lose his temper and start hurting people just because he feels like it. Very jarring, considering he behaves like a Macho Latino most of the time.
    • John Seed from Far Cry 5 is an Amoral Attorney who has acquired most of the land of Hope County for the Project at Eden's Gate, and one of his brother Joseph's lieutenants. He operates as a Torture Technician, tattooing the names of one of the Seven Deadly Sins on a person's skin, namely the sin he thinks that person epitomizes, in order to get them to confess to it and promise to atone, after which he cuts the skin off and staples it to a wall (if you're a cult resister, anyway. He'll let the scar burn if you agree to join). He also is obsessed with gaining his older brother's approval, and whenever Joseph takes an interest in anyone else, he will do violent things to them.
    • Ethan Seed from Far Cry: New Dawn is the Bastard Bastard son of Joseph, and de facto leader of New Eden, the cult settlement Joseph founded after Hope County got nuked in the "Resist" ending of Far Cry 5. Ethan is disturbingly jealous of the Captain for being chosen by his father as the inheritor of both New Eden and the mysterious empowering apples that Joseph discovered in his land, because he feels that as Joseph's actual son, such things should go to him. His feeling of entitlement is such that he sides with the Highwaymen and lets them set fire to New Eden, just so he can get the apple. Basically, Ethan is a man in presumably his late twenties, but he acts like a temperamental little boy who just thinks his father doesn't love him. Makes sense when you consider that Ethan's uncle John was much the same way. Apparently, Ethan was equally psychopathic back when he was an actual child, coldly telling his father to his face that as soon as he dies, Ethan's going to take an apple from the tree.
  • Kefka from Final Fantasy VI is a Straw Nihilist who sees no value in anything or anyone; he views the world and everyone in it at as toys to use at his pleasure and be thrown away when he gets bored with them. In the original Japanese script, he uses the first person singular verb "bokuchin", which is what little boys use when joking around or trying to act sweet. This idea was left untranslated in the English localization.
    • A hint of this snuck its way into Dissidia Final Fantasy, where he talks about battle as playtime during his fight with Terra, as well as his referring to his opponents as "toys."
    • As well as in Duodecim, where he remarks that his fight with Vaan was "The most fun [Kefka's] had in minutes." in an over the top, high-pitched, giddy voice.
  • When Lord Vauthry, in Final Fantasy XIV, is rebuffed by Alphinaud, he shortly flings himself from his oversized throne and starts pounding the floor, demanding that everyone take down that untempered upstart. It later transpires that he's half Sin Eater, so this might just be his nature.
  • Peri from Fire Emblem Fates is not always on the player's opposing side (it depends on the route chosen). She's a cheerful, cute, naive older teenager who acts and talks like a little girl (the Japanese version has her speaking in third-person, while the English one gives her very juvenile speech patterns)… but she's also incredibly violent in the battlefield, and likes murdering people with little provocation outside of it. She also has a pretty tragic reason to be like this: she witnessed her beloved mother's murder at the hands of a yandere servant and the trauma completely broke her mind and heart.
    "I'm feeling stabby!"
  • The Boomers in Gears of War and other Locusts of his size. The other locusts use cover effectively and yell orders to each other. The Boomer stands out in the open, points his gun in the general direction of the enemy, and dutifully says "Boom" before firing. That's all he ever says.
    • The oh-so-bland "SKY FIRE" when you fire a mortar.
    • The heroes themselves can come off as the "perpetual teenager" versions of this at times — especially Cole, who (among other things) hijacks a Reaver and names it "Horsey".
  • God of War: Kratos himself has shades of this. While he can act like a mature adult and does yell like one, more often than not, he acts like a selfish, entitled, irresponsible brat who acts without thinking and has outbursts when things don't go his way. The second and third games are stand-out examples, where his rampages throughout Greece and Olympus are little more than him having a huge fit over the world refusing to bend over backwards to his whims and him refusing to own up to anything he does, not giving a crap about the consequences of his actions. By the time of God of War (PS4), implied to be centuries later, Kratos has become Older and Wiser and is deeply ashamed of what he did in the past, even being constantly tormented by it.
    • God of War (PS4) has another example in the form of The Stranger/the Norse god Baldur. Apart from trying to repeatedly murder Kratos and his son Atreus, he's heavily prone to screaming manically and drumming on Kratos' chest with his fists like a toddler throwing a tantrum, and we later learn that he wants to kill his mother, Freya. Such behavior makes sense when you consider that he was cursed with invulnerability and an inability to feel anything from a very young age, so most likely his emotional development got stunted. Basically, Baldur represents what Kratos used to be like.
  • Lance Vance in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Despite being a grown man, he's terribly immature, is as insecure as a teenager, and is prone to seeking vengeance for any slight he suffers.
  • Catalina in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, aside from being a complete psycho, she throws a tantrum over minor slights, whines when one of her robberies with CJ fails, and changes her mood in the most arbitrary manner, all like a spoiled and bratty 13-year-old.
  • Grand Theft Auto V:
    • Michael De Santa. Basically, Michael behaves less like an adult and more like a teenager. Like a teenager, Michael is temperamental, angsty, self-centered, has little patience, is hypocritical, self-contradictory, self-critical, self-destructive and sarcastic. The irony is that he's very critical of millennials and he's no different from the generation he criticizes. As an individual, Michael is probably a reflection of how Rockstar sees a good portion of its fanbase.
    • Trevor's very ingrained fear of clowns, fits of temper, and extremely submissive behavior towards his mother strongly imply that he "never grew up" in a lot of ways.
    • Devin Weston also qualifies. In all of his interactions with the protagonists, he comes across as a very juvenile person who believes that his wealth and political ties allow him to get away with anything. His personal website reads like the blog of a spoiled teenager, boasting about his penis size among other things.
  • Scarlet Briar in the Guild Wars 2 is a genius who is behind many of the major storylines from the Living World's first season, but also treats her crimes as games and her victims as toys to amuse her.
  • Debilitas, the hulking gardener from Haunting Ground, is the only one of the stalkers pursuing Fiona who doesn't have overtly sinister motives — he mistakes her for a 'big doll' and just wants to play. Unfortunately, his idea of playing is a little too rough for poor Fiona...
  • The titular villain of I. M. Meen is an elderly Evil Sorcerer with a childish demeanor who enacts an Evil Plan of imprisoning children in a magic labyrinth, his immaturity is highlighted in the cutscene prior to the final boss fight against him when he throws a tantrum over the player managing to advance through his entire labyrinth and free the other imprisoned children. His wife/girlfriend Ophelia Chill in the sequel Chill Manor is of a similar personality, explaining her plan to alter history in the same tone one would expect from a little girl scheming a nasty prank and going "nyah-nyah" at the player when I.M. Meen comes to her rescue in the ending cutscene.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us: After Superman lost his wife, child and adopted city in a petty scheme by the Joker, he fell into a spiral of grief and rage that ended with his hand through Joker's chest. He doesn't start out this way immediately, but as he adopts a hardline stance on crime, the resultant stream of bad events eat up all his sanity. He's so detached that most of his rants are about him having lost his family and calling out someone's flaws. While he's often not wrong about it, he refuses to acknowledge his own. By the end of the game, he's reduced to being a raving loon who's no different from the Monster Clown he killed earlier, constantly whining about how "ungrateful" the people are for his rule but totally ignorant of how and why people now fear him.
  • The Jackbox Party Pack: The unseen host of Trivia Murder Party and its sequel is a ruthless mastermind who's captured the players and forced them into a twisted quiz show where those who fail to answer questions right will have to play dangerous mini-games on the "Killing Floor". Said mastermind is also prone to weird tangents (like rambling about their crazy relatives) and childish outbursts (like whining about all the players getting an answer right or somehow surviving a Killing Floor game).
  • Kirby:
    • When President Haltmann from Kirby: Planet Robobot is defeated in battle, he pitches a fit, repeatedly slamming the arms of his Cool Chair and ranting that the denizens of Planet Popstar are "all wild savages". Then he tries to use Star Dream to eradicate everyone on the planet. The Japanese version (and supplementary commentary from the devs) justifies this by explaining that repeated use of Star Dream caused Haltmann to gradually lose his memories as they were uploaded into the machine, implying that Haltmann's mental age is severely stunted by the time Kirby meets and fights him.
    • Hyness from Kirby Star Allies appears to be calm and cold at first...right until he goes into a spastic, motor-mouthed, and long Motive Rant that's essentially him throwing a fit about being banished to the edge of the universe by The Ancients, concluding it with wishing his dark lord happy birthday. If that wasn't enough, the second phase of his fight has him attack Kirby by tossing the unconscious bodies of his generals around like toys.
    • Subtly, Fecto Forgo from Kirby and the Forgotten Land is one. A vicious alien conqueror missing a small piece of their psyche, Elfilin, Forgo masterminds an elaborate scheme to capture him, but when their plans are waylaid by Kirby, they throw all semblance of reason out the window and go straight to consuming and assimilating everything in their path. When that fails, they attempt to collide Kirby's home planet into the New World, spitefully threatening to destroy both planets, and remain so embroiled in their grudge that their disembodied soul begins thinking up Phantom Beasts to create an army made solely for revenge. The Japanese-exclusive Perfect Support Guide for the game implies that Fecto Forgo's pettiness, stubbornness, and tendency toward Disproportionate Retribution is due to literally having the mind of a child — this is because Elfilin embodies traits like compassion, intellect, and rational thinking, which are neurological abilities that have to develop as the brain matures.
  • One of the killers in the third part of Lakeview Cabin Collection has a child-like cry, wears an odd child-like mask, loves teddy bears (which can be exploited to get free hits on him), and his attack strategy consists of blindly rushing at the player.
  • Jinx from League of Legends. She is a hyperactive girl ostensibly in her late teens/early twenties with Girlish Pigtails who is just out to have some fun. Except her idea of fun involves lots of wanton mayhem and Stuff Blowing Up. Her main reason for coming to Piltover was because she thought the city had too much "pathetic neatness" and needed some buildings blown up. She names all her guns and occasionally has conversations with them.
  • The Witch from Left 4 Dead sits there sobbing until and unless you bother her, at which point she has an unfortunately lethal (to you) temper tantrum. Then, once you're dead, she cries and runs away.
    • Ellis, one of the survivors, is unusually giddy as he kills zombies and sounds like he's having a good time whereas his fellow survivors react to the zombies as anyone else would. Lampshaded by his fellow survivors in the Dark Carnival campaign where they'll point out that they feel like they're babysitting him.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Zant, the Big Bad of Twilight Princess. While initially appearing as a calm, collected, and ruthless ruler, the mask falls away when Link confronts him, during which he throws a blatant childish fit and stomps his feet while whining about how he was passed over for the Twili throne in favor of Midna. This carries over to Hyrule Warriors, where his dialog is usually calm and collected, while at the same time constantly screeching and laughing while fighting. The game outright describes his moveset as more akin to throwing a temper tantrum than fighting.
    • Majora, the eponymous Big Bad of Majora's Mask, is an Eldritch Abomination who alternates between being a sadistic Omnicidal Maniac and a seriously Creepy Child. Every heinous act it does throughout the game, including the Colony Drop that threatens to destroy all of Termina, is all a game in its mind. And it's not pretty when it starts losing.
    • Master Kohga in Breath of the Wild throws tantrums when things don't go his way, stomping his foot to the ground, and acts giddy when he finally encounters Link. He is also the leader of a clan of murderous ninjas dedicated to eliminating the enemies of Calamity Ganon, who would destroy the world if set free.
  • Loaded has Mamma, so named because it's the only word he knows. A hulking, diaper-clad giant prone to inadvertently crushing people to death, his backstory indicates that he was abandoned as a baby, but somehow survived to adulthood without acquiring any education or social skills.
  • Fawful in the Mario & Luigi series. He may be a genius Mad Scientist with world domination ambitions and be one of the villains in two different games, but he's also one of the most crazy, childish, and overly unhinged characters in the franchise, with an attitude that can be summed up as this trope meets the Narcissist. He especially likes to chortle, laugh, or joke about his plans and the presumed imminent demise of his enemies.
  • Grunt from Mass Effect 2 shows shades of this. At one point, he talks about killing the other "weaker" species, all the while pointing out how funny that would be with a child-like glee. He also likes sweets and plays with action figures. However, this is justified for two reasons. He is a krogan, and being Ax-Crazy Blood Knights is a major part of the krogan hat. Also, he was grown in a vat and is less than a year old.
  • The Gospel Leader in Megaman Battle Network 2 is this, as he calls the people in his committed terrorist organization "lame" at one point. However, this is subverted with The Reveal that he's actually a kid around Lan's age.
  • Copy X from the Mega Man Zero series was built as a hasty replacement leader for Neo Arcadia after the real X disappeared at the end of the Elf Wars. It didn't work as intended. He is a perfect copy of X from a technical standpoint, but as Zero points out, he lacks the life experience, maturity, and 30-year ethical testing of the original. As such, he makes a lot of extreme decisions while thinking he is incapable of making mistakes and that everything he does is right by default, despite the piles of dead Reploids that his actions leave behind saying otherwise. He is also easily angered by any unflattering comparisons to the original X, and when he is beaten by Zero in the first game, his reaction is comparable to a child who just lost a game of "Good Guys vs. Bad Guys".
    Copy X: Why...? Why...? I was... supposed to be... the perfect copy... How can this be... possible...? I was supposed to be... a hero...
    Zero: I've just remembered something... He was not as naïve as you are. That's what made him a hero.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Liquid Ocelot dips into this during the second half of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. He makes Finger Guns at the army trying to apprehend him in Eastern Europe ("Bang! Bang!") and childishly taunts Snake as he makes his getaway after their fight on Shadow Moses, and of course there's his decision to devote considerable time and resources to having "Mount Snakemore" carved into the hull of Outer Haven...
    • Sundowner of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance provides the page quote. He's emphasizing a child's capacity for cruelty rather than his own.
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • Mileena in Mortal Kombat 9. Possessing the mentality of a young girl, she giggles her way through fights and seems to see butchering people as a fun hobby. One of the challenges in the Challenge Tower consists of her trying to force Scorpion to accept a teddy bear she made. This is toned down somewhat in X, where she leads a rebellion in Outworld, but she is back to being this trope in 11.
    • Frost is an immensely immature and whiny woman who thinks she deserves to be the Lin Kuei's grandmaster, and throws fits of anger whenever she doesn't get her way. It is made clear in 11, where she's viewed like a whiny brat by every character, especially after she willfully became a cyborg. It says a lot when in her arcade ending, it's revealed that even Kronika of all people hates her guts for this reason.
    • Shao Kahn (fittingly similar to his daughter Mileena) often has the attitude of a monstrous, musclebound horny 12 year old boy with Awesome Ego. Unlike the other villains Shang-Tsung and Shinnok with their complex motives, he just wants to conquer, conquer and conquer some more and for everyone to kiss his ass and proclaim his superiority. Not to mention having a temper tantrum when things don’t go his way. In 11 he shows a child-like overeagerness to please his wife Sindel and get praise from her.
  • Mother 3: Porky Minch, the Pig King. Justified in that he extensively travelled through time after the end of EarthBound (1994) and only aged outwardly — he even describes himself as possibly being 10,000 years old or even older, yet still being the same kid inside, though he said it with the implication that that's somehow a good thing.
  • Achenar from Myst has a childish way of relating horrific thoughts and events to the player, even speaking in a mocking, higher-pitched voice and giggling like he's just thought of some ridiculous joke. The effect is unnerving, to say the least.
  • Jackle from NiGHTS into Dreams… is a literal psychopath whose lair looks like a small child's play room; complete with teddy bears, a merry-go-round, and a guillotine.
  • The Nintendo Wars series has Penny from Days of Ruin and Lash from the other games. Penny's mind is so far gone she doesn't even have a grasp of good or evil, and can only be pointed at an enemy army and told "go play". Lash on the other hand definitely acts like one but can also act dead serious at the drop of a hat and is very cunning, and neither the player or the characters in the game can decide if it's an act or if she has a Split Personality.
  • Matt Helms in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. He's an undead who in his childhood made a deal with the devil, resulting in him going crazy. And all through his battle he laughs like a little child.
  • Helgenish from Octopath Traveler is what happens when a Dirty Old Man with the maturity of a toddler acquires power over a tavern and the destitute dancers working there, and the results are horrifying. He only cares about himself, treats the dancers like sex slaves to be used for his own pleasure, and flies into rages and inflicts Disproportionate Retribution on the dancers for the most trivial of offenses, expecting them to love him for giving them a roof over their heads. Helgenish also has an excessively high opinion of himself and never seriously considers that he's doing anything wrong.
  • Harvey from Octopath Traveler II is extremely petty and over the top, much like someone desperate for attention. He burns down Osvald's house, steals his research, and kills his family (it's later revealed he kept them alive long enough to use in science experiments) just because Osvald is the better scholar of the two. He constantly gloats about what he's done once Osvald breaks out of prison and tracks him down. Finally, he basically throws a temper tantrum during Osvald's final boss fight once it's clear he's about to lose, and Osvald snarkily comments on how Harvey hasn't changed at all.
  • Persona:
    • Chidori from Persona 3 fits this to some extent. She has a fairly simple vocabulary for the most part, hasn't the faintest idea of how to deal with falling in love, and throws some pretty impressive temper tantrums when deprived of the gun-like Evoker she seems to treat as a comfort object. On the flip side, she works nights enacting revenge for people and has no problem with committing the occasional bit of telepathic breaking and entering.
    • Persona 4: The true killer, Tohru Adachi, is revealed to be one after he's exposed. For starters, both of his initial murders are for extremely petty and childish reasons; he first one was just him throwing a temper tantrum because a celebrity he had a crush on had an affair, and the second was just because he saw a high school girl talking to an older man and deemed her a "whore" who had to die. From there, he commits the rest of the attempted murders purely because he was bored and wanted some entertainment; he even freely admits to the Investigation Team, who flat-out call him an immature, selfish brat to his face, that he did everything he did throughout the game purely because he could do it and because it was fun.
    • Sho Minazuki, one of the main villains of Persona 4: Arena and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, is the same age as the Investigation Team members, and so psychotically immature that Adachi himself outright calls him nothing but "a brat throwing a temper tantrum".
    • Persona 5: Downplayed in the case of Goro Akechi. Despite being responsible for causing the mental shutdown and psychotic breakdown accidents that he "solved" for fame and adoration from the masses, he doesn't act very different from anyone around his age bracket and his social standing, and he's just at the age of 16. However, his true Metaverse outfit is a corrupted version of the outfits from the In-Universe children's TV show, Phoenix Ranger Featherman V and his weapons are also "replicas of popular children's toys", and his motivation can be seen as very childish and born from childhood trauma: he's the bastard son of a corrupt politician who treated him like shit, so he wants to take his evil father to the top and then reveal their bonds to ruin him forever. The Animated Adaptation expands on this, and reveals that when he was younger, he used to play as an ally of justice with a toy ray gun, which made his mother happy.
      • Akechi's father, Masayoshi Shido, also counts. Despite portraying himself as a master political operator, his pettiness, egocentrism, and constant need for validation paint a picture of a person whose mental age lags far behind their physical age.
  • Ignus from Planescape: Torment really likes fire, including watching fire, setting other things on fire, and being on fire. His mind is also so damaged (being turned into a conduit to the Elemental Plane of Fire will do that to you) that he doesn't seem fully aware that other people don't share his enthusiasm for this.
  • Pokémon:
  • Portal:
    • GLaDOS' demeanor and behavior certainly brings to mind a surly child, doing mocking impressions of Chell ("That's you! That's how dumb you sound!") and giving childish retorts ("If you love it so much, why don't you marry it? Well, I won't let you!"). GLaDOS also smacks of a nagging mother taken to the logical extreme, neatly encapsulating both extremes in one package.
      • And GLaDOS' creepy red core, which personifies Wrath. Her yellow is curious ("Do you smell something burning?"), her blue rattles off cake mix... plus other things ("Don't forget food garnishes such as: [...] fish-shaped dirt."), and the red is... er... well, it doesn't speak — instead it snarls and shrieks at you.
    • The turrets and their child-like voices. "Hello, friend. I see you. Are you still there? Good night. Put me down! Malfunction. I don't blame you... No hard feelings..."
    • Wheatley, by the end of Portal 2. Perhaps best demonstrated by his extremely heated overreaction to ever being called a moron.
      "I am NOT! A! MORON! [...] Well how about NOW? NOW WHO'S A MORON? COULD A MORON PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT! HUH? COULD A MORON DO THAT?!"
  • Resident Evil has used this more than once:
    • The first appearance of the trope was Alfred Ashford, the commander of Rockfort Island and initial primary antagonist of Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. He's a Miles Gloriosus, a campy sadist with a high-pitched, almost girlish giggle of delight as he tries to murder Claire and Steve for his own amusement, and throws child-like temper tantrums when mocked by the protagonists. He also keeps a twisted mansion for his own residence, filled with dolls, children's toys, and even a functioning merry-go-round in the attic. He's also gone absolutely nuts due to the disappearance of his twin sister, and has developed a habit of dressing up and pretending to be her for his own comfort, which has developed to the extent of a full split personality.
    • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica also has Alexia Ashford, with whom Alfred forms a Creepy Twins duo. She's a sadistic Spoiled Brat and Evil Genius who still acts like a snotty 10-year-old despite being in her 30s — if you ever met a 10-year-old who wanted to exterminate human free will and reign over the planet as a Hive Queen out of her own sense of ego. To this end, she willingly spent 15 years in cryogenic stasis hoping to fuse with a mutagenic virus of her own creation and become a world-conquering monster. For added creepiness, there is heavy Incest Subtext between the siblings.
    • Resident Evil (Remake) has a tragic example in Lisa Trevor. After decades of Umbrella experiments, she's a powerful, seemingly unkillable monster with the faces of some of her victims sewed together and worn like a mask. Despite all this, her mind is that of a very young child, desperately searching for her mother.
    • Ramon Salazar of Resident Evil 4 has the build and proportions of a 9-year-old, the wrinkled skin and grey hair of a 70-year-old, and claims to be twenty. He's also fucking nuts and suffers a severe Villainous Breakdown over the course of the game. He's more composed in the remake, but once Leon starts to fight back that composure disappears and he shows how unhinged he really is.
    • Albert Wesker shows signs of this in Resident Evil 5. Beneath his mature demeanor, he's like a dorky child with an ant farm, shows no interest when Excella tries openly seducing him, refers to his mortal battle with Arch-Enemy Chris as "playtime", and by the time of the climax proves to be quite petulant in his Villainous Breakdown. Lampshaded by a "so done with your bullshit" Chris, who openly asks Wesker if he gets all his ideas from comic book villains after hearing him spew his world-conquering schemes for the umpteenth time.
    • Another example from the series comes from Lucas Baker, of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Though he's a gifted engineer and strategist, he's also immature, petty, and cruel, liking to entertain his family's 'guests' in a barn filled with death traps in the form of rigged 'games' and throwing childish fits whenever Ethan foils him.
    • Resident Evil Village brings Salvatore Moreau, one of the Four Lords. The "psychopathic" part comes from the fact that he is working for the Big Bad and has experimented on the villagers. However, the "manchild" part can be seen once the player confronts him for his boss battle. He cries out childish lines such as "up and down!" and "I'm the best!" while swimming and attacking in his One-Winged Angel form, and when you fight him on solid ground, many of his voice lines consist of him alternately crying out for Mother Miranda's help and yelling that he will make her proud. His dying words even have him pitifully beg for Miranda as he explodes. What makes this worse is that Miranda never loved him — to her, Moreau was just a failed experiment she kept around because he was useful to her plans.
    • Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, also from Resident Evil Village, initially looks fairly well-adjusted for an evil vampiric lady, but one of her journals betrays an immature preoccupation with being Mother Miranda's favorite child.
  • The Secret World features a pretty blatant example in the form of Silviu Dimir, the Dumb Muscle behind the Dimir family's butchering operation in Transylvania. Intellectually disabled, emotionally volatile, and completely dominated by his "mami", he spends his spare time singing little songs about how his fairy victims cried while he minced them into sausage meat. Olga claims that his disposition is a result of Silviu's father being infected with syphilis at the time of conception, though a good look at the cellars under the farmhouse confirm that this is just the tip of the iceberg...
    • Also in Transylvania is Halina Ilyushin, the last surviving Phantom Cosmonaut of the Red Hand, and a decidedly tragic case of this trope. Having been obsessed with becoming an astronaut since she was a child, Halina was left behind to pursue her dreams when Facility 9 was sealed shut; in the years since then, she's decorated the ceiling of the central chamber with a painted mural of the galaxy, used the Filth to reanimate her dead friends as Replacement Goldfish, and formed a father-daughter relationship with the base computer; during her death scene, she can be heard saying goodnight to it, as if the computer were tucking her into bed. Plus, when you're forced to stop her from opening her gateway to the stars, she throws a temper-tantrum and starts screaming about how she was "promised" that she could see the stars.
    • As his appearances across Tokyo continue, it's revealed that the Black Signal is actually quite childish. Despite his immense power and eldritch intellect, he spends quite a few appearances tormenting the citizens of Tokyo for little more than petty amusement, not unlike a child burning ants with a magnifying glass; and while his supernatural mastery of technology is every bit as terrifying as it sounds, sometimes it comes across more like a kid playing with toys — especially in the Manufactory dungeon, where he can be heard cackling over how cool his new security drones are. Plus, towards the end of Issue #10, his many attempts to get players to join in him serving the Dreamers sound less like standard villain fare and more like genuine appeals for friendship. Plus, as it later becomes apparent, the Black Signal is terrified of Lilith, treating her as his own personal monster under the bed. The players earn immediate and childlike gratitude for unintentionally helping him to overcome his fears.
  • The Demiurge is portrayed this way in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. He screams incessantly when addressed, knocks out Metatron, not caring that he's got the Pieces of God necessary to restore his mind, and keeps bellowing that he wants worship and praise as the Creator.
  • Walter Sullivan from Silent Hill 4. He kills people because he believes that he can resurrect his "mom" that way. Said "mom" is in fact a room in an apartment complex — his birth mother abandoned him there when he was a baby.
    • Eddie from Silent Hill 2 is a young man in his twenties, but acts like a teenager. He's easily frightened, eats a box of pizza to calm himself down in a town full of monsters, and gets pouty when Laura, who is probably 9-years-old, calls him fat. Eddie's outfit consists of a striped shirt with shorts and a baseball cap, making him look like an overweight man dressing up in kid clothing. The psycho part of Eddie comes out when his Dark and Troubled Past from being bullied starts to emerge and he attacks James, who he thinks has turned against him too.
    • Also in Silent Hill 2, while more tragic than psychotic, Angela Orosco. She routinely flips between being a normal woman, a suicidally depressed woman, a psychotic and hateful woman, an innocent child, and a psychotic and terrified child. Sometimes in the space of less than a minute. But given what her father did to her, it's not that surprising.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: Despite being an Evil Genius, Eggman is very immature. He's prone to temper tantrums whenever Sonic beats him or when things don't go his way, and several of his bases throughout the series are giant amusement parks.
    • Sonic Forces: Looking past his threatening and terrifying appearance, Infinite is nothing more of a sadistic, petty bully with way too many powers, in the end of the day. Hell, his whole motivation basically boils down to him throwing a massive tantrum over being humiliated by Shadow.
  • Tira from Soulcalibur has such an extreme case of bipolar disorder that it has separated her into two personalities: "Jolly" and "Gloomy". When "Jolly", she talks like a little girl and refers to people as if they are playthings, and gets a thrill from breaking them in the most perverse and sadistic ways, as evidenced by her win quotes. When "Gloomy", she becomes extremely cynical and is willing to harm herself to inflict damage on her opponent.
  • Purge from Space Channel 5 Part 2. He likes to play "games". And as heroic characters such as President Peace and later Jaguar are unwillingly forced to take you on, he just laughs and at one point even DANCES happilly as they struggle in pain. He even goes as far as to have a temper tantrum and charges up the Ballistic Groove Gun to destroy everyone, including himself for ruining his plan. The game hints that he doesn't know love somehow, but it still doesn't keep it from being slightly disturbing.
    "Time for a game! If you shoot like normal, you'll hit the president!"
  • In Starbound, pretty much every Floran who isn't a Greenfinger. They're bloodthirsty, have a taste for sentient flesh, view the world through a simple, warped lens, and only just capable of empathy towards non-Florans. A "friendly" Floran is typically one whose violent tendencies are directed usefully. Just don't assume they're as stupid as they seem.
  • Street Fighter: Juri Han, introduced in Street Fighter IV, isn't just a Dark Action Girl who takes deranged pleasure in inflicting pain on—if not outright killing—her opponents, but also noticeably childish beneath all of her menace. She's driven primarily by hedonistic impulse outside of her vendetta against M. Bison, almost resembles a Hormone-Addled Teenager through her perverted approach to fighting, and loves to hurl taunts and other insults at other characters or mess with them for her own amusement. By the time of Street Fighter 6, she's developed an Oral Fixation for lollipops, and one of her round win animations has her simply laugh at her defeated opponent so hard she falls to the floor. With all of that said, it's somewhat Played for Drama, with her Dark and Troubled Past of losing her parents and left eye to M. Bison at merely fifteen likely precluded her from properly maturing on an emotional level.
  • Suikoden series:
    • Luca Blight from the second game acts like a grade school bully that somehow managed to gain command of an army. He takes sadistic glee in inflicting physical and emotional harm on others, is prone to hurling childish insults at his enemies, and is extremely impulsive. As a child, he witnessed his mother being raped by a gang of thugs while his father fled, and it's clear that he's still mentally stuck at that moment in time.
    • Childerich from the fifth game views serial murder the way a child views their favorite video game.
  • Super Mario Bros.: Bowser is a rich and powerful king, but still shows obvious signs of immaturity on a regular basis, behaving more often than not like a bratty teenager. He has nasty mood swings that scare even his most loyal servants, he never feels responsible for his failures, always looking for someone else to blame, and is never satisfied with what he already has, always wanting more. The best showcase of this is when he meets his younger self in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time: barely anything differentiates them in personality, showing that Bowser has barely evolved mentally since infancy.
  • Mimi of Super Paper Mario is outright called such by the Exposition Fairy Tippi. She's a bratty and selfish shapeshifter who looks like a little girl, but her actual age is indeterminate.
  • Tenzan, from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, despite being in his 20s, thinks it's acceptable to act like a 13-year-old Griefer playing Halo in a real war.
  • In Tales of the Abyss, despite being at least 16 Arietta acts like a small child and apparently cannot handle the news of her beloved Ion death so they lied to her and said that the clone was him. She is also one of the fiercest fighters and one of The Woobie (but they are pretty common in this game).
  • Tales of Symphonia: This is the Big Bad in a nutshell; a Broken Ace who somehow managed to attain the power of the gods after he experienced crippling childhood trauma. He has enough power and technology to easily achieve his childhood dreams, but can only obsess over torturing mortals for kicks and to breed a suitable host for resurrecting his dead sister.
  • Most of the mercs of Team Fortress 2 have shades of this, but the biggest example by a wide margin is The Pyro, who's of the Innocent Inaccurate variety, thinking they're in a Sugar Bowl spreading rainbows and happiness instead of on a battlefield murdering their enemies with fire (or rather because they're murdering their enemies with fire). Their comrades alternate between fearing Pyro and treating them like a little kid that just so happens to be a massive fire hazard — whenever she calls them up for a mission, Miss Pauling gently addresses Pyro in the same way a teacher would speak to a kindergartener, which seems to do the trick.
  • Tekken:
    • Heihachi, despite being an old man, acts often like a spoiled petulant child, literally chaining the family members he doesn’t like to rockets while laughing like a kid and being a massive Sore Loser when his own son gets one over him.
    • Kazuya is a more downplayed and sympathetic example. The flashbacks to the past after his mother died when he was a boy show he hasn’t really changed much — just got bigger. There’s also his very child-like attitude around Doting Grandparent Jinpachi, the family member who showed him love. Given his entire life got ruined when he was a kid, it’s no surprise he’s like this.
    • Even Ice Queen assassin Nina displays signs of this, mostly concerning her sister Anna. She is extraordinarily petty when comes to her sister, and in one ending, literally draws squiggles on Anna’s face with lipstick after knocking her out.
  • Half the cast of the Touhou Project says "hi". In particular, Flandre Scarlet, a vampire that looks like a little girl with the explicitly-defined power to destroy anything and a love for games that involve breaking her "toys".
  • Twisted Wonderland:
    • Floyd Leech is 17 years old, but he's worryingly irresponsible and fickle, and is hardly concerned with anything outside of his own amusement. He can also get quite violent and often threatens to strangle people who cross him.
    • Even after marrying and having a child and despite being a princess, Meleanor Draconia was very bratty and short-tempered, and didn't hesitate to conjure a ton of lightning and fire at people who displeased her. Heck, she was short of cooking her own egg just to intimidate Lilia and co. into following her orders. Lilia was exasperated with her for this, and had to tell her she wasn't a little girl anymore.
  • Undertale: Flowey is a selfish, petty Troll who delights in using his Medium Awareness to taunt the player. That's because he's actually Asriel Dreemurr, a monster who died while he was a child and Came Back Wrong in the worst way. He claims to want to become a god, but what he really wants is to trap the player in a Hopeless Boss Fight so that they'll be forced to play with him forever.
  • Until Dawn: Joshua Washington is actually 20 years old (thus making him the oldest protagonist in the game), but his humor before and after The Reveal, love for movies to the point where he's making one with 100% real acting, and lack of coping mechanisms for his mental health issues resulting in him spiraling as badly as he's done by the time the game rolls around strongly imply that he's still mentally a little kid.
    "Ooh, sleepover! C-Can we order pizza?"
  • Way of the Samurai 4, at the end of the Four Samurai Lords VS Yakuza Quartet job-line. The titular Yakuza Quartet are a fearsome foursome of murderous, blood-thirsty gangsters, and through the missions leading up to your confrontation with them, you've met three of them. When you face off against them as a member of the Four Samurai Lords, however, their fourth, final, and most fearsome member finally makes an appearance... It's 'Manmaru', the mentally-retarded man you've probably seen running around town now and then, holding a pinwheel and generally acting and talking like a young child. Only, now he's wielding a blood-stained version of the hideous, barbed sword made famous by the terrifying Psycho for Hire, Kyojirou, from the second game — and merrily declaring his eagerness to 'play' with you. During the fight, he'll sound like he's having a great time, too... right up to the point where you cut him down, anyway. You never get a chance to find out what his deal really is. Considering that 4 takes place in the same town as 2, several decades later, it's not impossible that he's somehow the son of the aforementioned Kyojirou — or at least that the sword he wields actually is her old weapon.
  • In We Happy Few, whether it is due to taking Joy or the "Very Bad Thing", the people of Wellington Wells act more like the wild caricatures of adulthood imagined by children than proper adults. They can't resist splashing in puddles and Uncle Jack entertains the masses with bedtime stories and games of Simon Says.
  • Alhazad from Wild ARMs. Right before the final fight against him, he outright states he's not concerned with Zeikfried's plans. As long as he can 'play with his toys' (read: subject humans to horrific experiements), he's happy. To say this riles up your party is a bit of an understatement.
  • The XT-002 Deconstructor fight in World of Warcraft is a robot version of this. When you aggro it, it says "New toys? For me? Oh, I promise I won't break them this time!"; when a player is killed during the fight, "I guess it doesn't bend that way!" and "I think I broke it!", and one of its attacks is it pounding on the floor shouting "No, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!", all in the voice of a small child.
    • Background material indicates that Mimiron (his also-robotic maker) considers XT his son and, as such, built him to have a childlike character. It kinda justifies XT's childishness, but not his Axe-Crazy.
      • Mimiron himself mildly shows tendencies of being one. He's an undeniable genius, but some of his comments ("MEDIIIIC!") give a good idea about why XT was built the way he is.
    • Many of the undead abominations (giant bloated zombies made from multiple corpses) count as well. Patchwerk is well-known for his creepy childish lines:
      Patchwerk: Patchwerk want to play...
  • Id from Xenogears is incredibly powerful and cruel, but all the massive destruction and chaos he causes are either just for its own sake or because of his hatred for Fei. In Fei's mind, he is represented by a small child with his hair covering his face.
    "...dropping a warship on me is cheating. Take it back!"
  • Albedo from Xenosaga, especially with his interactions with MOMO and Jr. In the first game, he giggles at the sight of a Kirschwasser he tore apart and demonstrates his ability to regenerate as if he was performing a magic show.


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