- As noted in General, it's trivially easy to add a "baddest of the badass" new ship in any game or series based in space, particularly when there's such a potentially huge war zone where only relatively small slivers of it have been revealed, like in the Wing Commander or Star Wars game universes.
- Animal Crossing OCs aren't too uncommon, though most fans prefer to work with the range of characters already given. Just make a brightly-colored Funny Animal and give them a quirky personality.
- Assassin's Creed:
- Assassin's Creed defines itself by exploring the memories of an entire family line using Animus technology, something that anyone can do as long as they have access to one. It's fairly easy to write a character on either side of the Assassin-Templar war with a lengthy — and plot-relevant — family history, especially as, after Assassin's Creed II, both sides have their own Animus platforms. In fact, in the multiplayer for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood through Black Flag, the players are explicitly modern-era Templar initiates learning real-world assassination skills from the Bleeding Effect, the same way that series protagonist Desmond did.
- As the series is meant to take place in the real world, and primarily features two covert organizations with plentiful numbers of operatives from all walks of life, a writer could easily use their own ancestors as a real life O.C. Stand-in during the respective historical era they lived in.
- Bendy and the Ink Machine: The fandom has tons of cartoon Original Characters who are meant to be Bendy's co-stars. Often they are humanoid cartoons, Funny Animals, or angels (the latter being Hilarious in Hindsight as Chapter 2 introduces Alice Angel). Seeing as the only rule is "make them look like a toon from the 20s/30s," it's easy to come up with your own character.
- When it comes to suggestions for Bloons Tower Defense, the most common "new bloon rank" suggestion given is a new MOAB class bloon containing four of the current highest-ranked bloon. For reference, the BAD is the current strongest bloon.
- Borderlands:
- A Sailor Earth could simply be another vaulthunter like the four playable characters, complete with a new gadget, power or physical ability. Better yet, it could be an entire team of four new vaulthunters, as they always seem to travel in groups of four. Bonus points if one member is one of the 5-6 other "Sirens" like Lilith and Maya.
- Other possibilities involve creating new characters tied to the prolific weapon manufactures found in game, or creating new weapon manufacturers entirely (though this is a little more convoluted — the gear creation system on which Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! is based has a number of very specific rules to follow).
- Broforce lends itself to this easily: just take a character from any action-packed franchise, insert the word "Bro" somewhere in the original name and you get a new member of Broforce. Some popular examples include Lebronidas, Jack Spabrow, and One-Punch Bro.
- Bugsnax OCs come in two flavors; the Grumpuses and the Bugsnax themselves. Making a Grumpus OC is as simple as picking a fur color, a couple of identifying features like hair or accessories, and a few nonsese words for a name. As for Bugsnax, there are plenty of foods available to be made into faux-insects.
- Code Vein's character creator makes it easy to design your own OC. Each character has their own unique Blood Code that gives them special powers (even the player character, who has the unique power to copy other Revenants' Blood Codes, later gets a Blood Code, Queenslayer, that is specifically theirs), so it's easy to make up your own by choosing one or more weapon types the Code is specialized in, what types of Gifts it has, and naming it after either an RPG class or a deity that isn't already covered by the canon Blood Codes.
- Cookie Clicker has various suggestions fall under this.
- As of April 2014, element related building suggestions are common, despite the fact we have Antimatter Condensers and Prisms. Double if they are described as "condensers", "converters", or any word of the like. However, as of May 2014, they thankfully died out.
- There are many "new best building" ideas on the forums, but it is slightly justified because of the fact it's one of the more obvious suggestions to make.
- Cookie Run makes it easy — there's no shortage of foods, after all.
- Cuphead OCs mostly consist of nondescript humanoid characters whose head is a vessel that can contain liquid, like the two main characters. However, anything that would fit in a 30's cartoon is a viable OC, like Bendy and the Ink Machine.
- The Friday Night Funkin' Game Mod Dave and Bambi: Golden Apple Edition (itself a Recursive Adaptation of the Game Mod Vs. Dave and Bambi) introduces an entire race of empowered humanoids a few peas short of a pod modeled after hidden Dave and Bambi antagonist Expunged. The concept was an immediate hit, and fans quickly took to noticing the extreme ease of access to creating a character in the same vein, as it only requires three things: knowledge of the free software Paint 3D, a name that can be merged with "Bambi" (as Expunged's humanoid form initially came about by scanning a character of the same name), and the ability to include at least one distinctly off-the-wall trait. After checking in those boxes, anything is fair game, from a young boy living out the ultimate dream of food tourism to a lizard person that can transform into a steel giant of darkness and everything in between.
- Detroit: Become Human:
- Creating an original android model is fairly easy: pick 2 letters to begin, then a hundred number (100, 200, 300, etc.) to end. Give them a monochrome uniform, the triangle and armband, the LED, and an intended purpose, and that covers it. One could also just use a model that exists in-game — whether they look different than others of the same kind is up to the creator.
- Alternatively, it's common for original characters to serve in the DPD, as very few officers are seen or named.
- Disgaea:
- Disgaea fanfics that center on either generic units or original characters can be easily written, as there are stated to be a countless number of Netherworlds. For the generic units, they can also have personalities that wildly differ from the norm, as Reincarnation is a mechanic in the series.
- An in-game example: in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, Rozalin becomes outraged that the Prism Rangers only have five colors represented, not seven, and after beating them demands that they fill the missing positions (which does finally happen in a special map later on).
- Dissidia Final Fantasy is an Intercontinuity Crossover bringing together thirty Final Fantasy characters from all over the series to fight on behalf of the gods Cosmos and Chaos. Dissidia and its prequel Dissidia 012 explain these wars occur as a cycle — when one side loses they get their memories of the battle erased, and are revived to fight again. The two games cover the 12th and 13th cycles, with the 13th being one of the last. That leaves Cycles 1-11 unseen, with no real information on who was fighting in them, for which side, and what happened that they didn't make it to future cycles. (The most players do get to see is a glimpse of an unknown cycle wherein Prishe, a Warrior of Cosmos, first discovers an amnesiac Warrior of Light, gives him a name, and provides him with all sorts of life advice. Her whereabouts are unknown in the present* and her choice of name for WoL is unvoiced.) As a result, it's common for fanfiction to be set in one of those earlier cycles with new characters drawn into the war, and from there you can take the story anywhere you want it to go. NT put some restrictions on this idea (particularly as many of the new characters featured are either suggested or outright confirmed to be newcomers to the cycle of war), but the core concept remains viable.
- Doom gives plenty of wiggle room for new varieties of hellspawn from Doomworld, as well as loads of custom-made megawads. In the case of the former, though (possible via Dehacked or by using features of a certain few sourceports), it is possible to create recolored enemies, completely different versions (in most cases either more annoying or far more lethal) versions of weaker enemies. The Zombieman/Shotgunner in particular has been reskinned to carry just about every weapon the player can wield. Certain monsters, such as the Cacodemon or any of the UDoom endboss enemies have quite a few variants of them, to say the least. However, there are also a handful of actual original Doom monsters out there.
- Dragon Age:
- Very easy to do in Dragon Age: Origins. Despite the fact that the box says the main character is among the last Grey Wardens, Alistair mentions that this is only true in Ferelden, the game's setting. Speaking to him brings up the mention that there are Grey Wardens all over the world and in neighbouring countries — a Sailor Earth could simply be from another part of the world. Ridiculously easy to do for an Elsewhere Fic. Indeed, the expansion pack, Awakening, uses this very setup — if you choose to start a new character rather than import the hero from Origins, they will be a senior Warden from Orlais sent to help replenish the ranks of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden.
- A blink-and-you'll-miss-it In-Universe invocation occurs in Dragon Age: Inquisition. A major part of the setting's lore is seven Old Gods who take the form of High Dragons. A constellation seen early in the game mentions that it was depicted as a dragon even in Ancient Tevinter, which is very inconsistent with that period's iconography practices; why would Tevinter devote a constellation to dragons in general when they worshipped seven specific dragons? This led to a scholar suggesting that the Draconis constellation originally represented an eighth Old God that was stricken from the record. The implications of this is a subject of debate in the fandom.
- One of the races in the Land of Oz series are the phanfasms, creatures who have human bodies but the heads of various animals. In the flash game Emerald City Confidential, one of the characters is revealed to be a double agent for the phanfasms. The main character, Petra, is confused because he looks completely human. He points out that phanfasms have animal heads, and humans are animals, are they not? He was wrong, he was a human raised by the phanfasms. But he raised an interesting point that's similar to this trope.
- Ensemble Stars! Original Characters tend to fall under two categories:
- A new producer, usually female. Oddly, even though the producer course and co-ed aren't supposed to open up until next year, they're usually in the year the game takes place in. Just pick which unit you want them to produce for and you're good to go.
- An idol or an entire unit that has not been seen yet. Makes sense — at the time of writing, we've only seen about 30-40 Yumenosaki students and two Reimei students.
- Alex only reads chapters from the Tome of Eternal Darkness that her grandfather thought to hide away for her in preparation to fight Pious, and the book is still quite thick; given that the conflict has been going on for two millennia, involving people from any number of walks of life, it's quite easy to craft a chapter of your own, especially if you choose to weave it into historical events. And since Mantorok's goals upon his victory over all three Ancients are unknown, and there's at least one more Ancient out there, the story can definitely progress past Alex's time.
- Fallout:
- The RPG design of the series means it's very common to see the canon protagonist (the Vault Dweller, the Lone Wanderer, etc.) as OCs. Another common fic premise is to have someone's protag from another game in the series visit a different game's setting (such as Courier 6 deciding to relocate to the Commonwealth).
- Excluding canon protagonists, Couriers 1-3 and 5 are ripe for the picking (Courier 6 is the protagonist, and Courier 4 can be found dead outside a shop in Primm).
- If one wants to make a Vault Dweller (or even design a new vault), there are at least 118 (excluding test or display vaults) in canon and we only know the purpose of around 32 of them. Just pick a geographic location unclaimed by a main series game (New York, New Orleans, the PNW, Texas, and the Midwest are all viable candidates), choose a plausible experiment that isn't too deadly or psychosis-causing, and you've got a vault!
- Fire Emblem is naturally rife with this, as all of the games are war stories. If it doesn't involve adding an original character into the army, it's usually a prequel or sequel telling about barely-told events and histories, with Renault's past or anything regarding the Branded being very popular subjects. And since the 3DS installments and beyond (remakes notwithstanding) have character avatars and the Outrealm Gate, there's even more fertile ground, with Epileptic Trees abound.
- It's become quite popular to think up new animatronic characters for Five Nights at Freddy's. Basically you just need to think of an animal, give them a cute-sounding name, and make them into a creepy anthropomorphic robot. Optionally, they could also be given their own musical instrument to play in the band, or some other specialized role at the pizza place. Some people try to justify their characters' absence in the original game by giving them backstories involving being taken out of active use; others have gone so far as to make up an entirely new restaurant competing with Freddy's for their characters to inhabit. As later games in the series have introduced different variations on the existing characters ("toy", "withered", "phantom", "nightmare", "funtime", "scrap", "rockstar", and "glamrock"), fans have often given such variations to their own characters.
- FTL: Faster Than Light features several factions using spacecraft with characteristic aesthetics, giving aspiring game modders something to base their own spaceship classes on.
- Galaxy Angel:
- The setting is rife with possibilities, as four of the six universes with intact civilizations have their gatekeepers as their only known residents (largely thanks to their combined efforts to thwart the Big Crunch). Angels, ships, Emblem Frames, villains, planets; you name it, you can create it.
- It's not even limited to the four unexplored universes, as Khaos Omega and another author (who actually inspired Khaos in the first place) have both implemented new Emblem Frames that a male crewmember unexpectedly finds himself compatible with (and both even end up romantically involved with one of their team's female Angels — Khaos did it in NEUE (the second trilogy's main universe) and the other author did it in EDEN).
- Halo:
- In the franchise's early days, less than half of the original 30 or so Spartan-IIs were named. This made creating a new Spartan character as easy as picking a first name and a three-digit number, as long as you didn't expect people to accept your Spartan surviving the Fall of Reach — virtually every survivor of that battle is canonically accounted for. Eventually, most of the Spartan-IIs were given names, which you'd think would mean the end of this trope. However, this has been balanced out by the reveal that some of the 45 or so Spartan-II trainees who had allegedly "washed out" did actually later become full Spartan-IIs themselves; when combined with media also revealing that not every Spartan-II was even at Reach when it fell (those who were include John (Master Chief, number 117), who escaped successfully in cryosleep on the Pillar of Autumn, and Jorge (Noble Five, number 052), who sacrificed himself to take out a Covenant supercarrier by manually detonating a makeshift slipspace bomb), this still leaves plenty of room for Spartan-II OCs.
- An even more fruitful source of fan-made Spartans is the Spartan-IIIs, hundreds of which were produced; Gamma Company is a particularly popular source, as there seems to have been at least 300 of them left when the war ended. Halo: Evolutions and Halo: Reach added to this by revealing that a number of Alpha and Beta Company Spartan-IIIs were secretly transferred to more elite units like Noble Team, which meant that they weren't killed on suicide missions by their early teens like all but two of the other Alpha and Beta IIIs (Tom and Lucy, both Beta, though Lucy lost her voice after the mission). In fact, nowadays you're more likely to come across a Spartan-III OC rather than a Spartan-II one. It could even be argued that Halo: Ghosts of Onyx introduced the IIIs specifically with the intention of allowing more canon Spartan-centric stories to be written.
- And now we have the Spartan-IVs; not only are there hundreds of them, but they're all adult volunteers who come from virtually every branch of the UNSC military. The creative potential is endless.
- There's also a surprising aversion; while I Love Bees claimed that there were multiple classes of Spartan-IIs, subsequent canon has mostly ignored this, and the fans have mostly followed suit (though there are a few exceptions).
- Hollow Knight: Vessels, such as both the player character and the Hollow Knight, are know to exist in large numbers, but only two (or three, depending on whether one counts Hornet) living ones are encountered, alongside a small number of deceased individuals. As a result, it's fairly easy to make your own Vessel OC. Just create a unique mask shape, give a color for the cloak, and come up with a brief backstory on how they managed to escape the Abyss. Most fanfictions involving OC Vessels have them either being a hero of another story, interacting with the other NPCs around Hallownest, or even appearing in other kingdoms.
- KanColle: The initial cast featured girls who were the spirits of warships that were part of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Naturally, fan works tended to take advantage of this by adding shipgirls from other countries' naval forces, particularly the U.S. Navy (Pacific: World War II U.S. Navy Shipgirls being one such). The game's gradually started adding its own foreign shipgirls, but even so, there's still a huge number of potential shipgirls available for fans.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- New Keyblades get handed out like lollipops in the KH fanfic 'verse, so Sora and Company start running into new worlds and new Keyblade masters with such alarming frequency that you have to wonder how the original worlds were even lost in the first place. However, the series states that once there were thousands of Keyblade wielders, and more do keep popping up, so there's precedence for this.
- Some fanfics of Kingdom Hearts may actually show an entirely new Organization surfacing from all that was ever left of the old one. Considering the "Twenty Years later, a new disaster causes a group of people to lose their hearts and create Nobodies" situation is, in theory, highly possible. This is entirely canon. Dream Drop Distance states Master Xehanort is reviving Organization XIII using himself as the leader and various incarnations of himself and other beings corrupted by him as the members, with this new Organization serving as the main villains of Kingdom Hearts III.
- It used to be fairly common in fics to see a character being introduced as the fourteenth member of Organization XIII. Such characters became fairly easy to name as well, as members of the Organization's names are anagrams of their original names with an "X" thrown in somewhere. Such fics were often mocked, considering they're called Organization Thirteen. But then Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days came out, a midquel which revealed the Organization had actually had a fourteenth member, and deconstructed the entire concept.
- Chances are you'll find new types of Heartless and Nobodies in fanfics. Given that most of the Nobodies are based on a Final Fantasy job class in name and abilities, creating new types is fairly simple. Besides, it is strongly suggested that there were five more classes of Nobodies that were never seen. Discounting the Twilight Thorn and Gummi Ship enemies, ten types of Nobodies were in Kingdom Hearts II: two common types (Dusks and Creepers) and one type of minion for each of the eight Organization members still alive at the beginning of the game. There is no logical reason why the five who were killed at Castle Oblivion wouldn't have had their own minions. Kingdom Hearts III would eventually reveal two of the "missing" types: Reaper (belonging to Marluxia) and Ninja (belonging to Larxene). The other three remain unaccounted for, even with Vexen (sort of) showing up as a reserve member for the True Organization.
- A widely underused example in The King of Fighters comes from the moderately obscure EX titles, which branch off from KOF '97 in place of the NESTS Chronicles that began in '99. Over the course of the two games, players are introduced to the members of the Ten Sacred Treasures (based on the debatably historical artifacts of the same name reportedly housed in Isonokami Shrine). EX marks the debut of Moe Habana, with the sequel bringing in Reiji Oogami, Jun Kagami, Miu Kurosaki, and Sinobu Amou, but only Moe, Reiji, and Sinobu have their treasures revealed. Strangely, the members of the Three Sacred Treasures (Kyo Kusanagi, Iori Yagami, and Chizuru Kagura) are counted among the Ten's ranks despite possessing the Imperial Regalia of Japan/Treasures of Amaterasu, which are theorized by some to be the inspiration for the Ten Sacred Treasures due to overall similarities between the two legends. Presumably, if the EX story wasn't Left Hanging, the remaining two members would have made an appearance, and the oddity mentioned above means there actually should be five unseen characters.
- Kirby:
- It's extremely easy to make new Copy Abilities for Kirby, given how each canon installment adds new Copy Abilities that either become staples of the franchise or become one-shot abilities. This extends to Copy Abilities based on hypothetical Super Smash Bros. fighters.
- Similarly, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards allowed Kirby to mix Copy Abilities together for a total of 28 different Mix Abilities (or Power Combos as Kirby's Dream Collection calls them). This mechanic, despite its popularity, has seen sporadic use since 64 (only reappearing in Squeak Squad and Star Allies so far), and with the number of Copy Abilities steadily increasing with nearly every new installment, so too does the number of possible combinations.
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land introduces evolved Copy Abilities, but only twelve such Abilities are included in the game, prompting many fans to come up with own their ideas for evolved Copy Abilities not featured in-game.
- This is very common in Left 4 Dead fanfic, as many writers create a new Special Infected which makes the Tank look like a Muscular Chipmunk, or adding a "survivor" who caught the Green Flu only to gain all the superpowers and none of the flesh-hungering side effects (the only precedent for this sort of thing in-canon is that the playable Survivors can take absurd amounts of damage — at least below Expert difficulty — and are themselves carrying The Virus, of which there has been no official correlation). Alternatives include fleshing out the unseen characters of "Chicago Ted" or Ellis' buddy "Keith", since there is literally nothing canon revealed about either of them, other than that the former is apparently "king of the zombies" and the latter has already survived several absurd predicaments before said virus was introduced.
- The Legend of Zelda fanfic writers frequently invoke this trope:
- Remember the Urban Legend of Zelda that there's actually a fourth Triforce, which balances and completes the other three? This (very unlikely) theory is often taken as premise for fanfiction and along comes a fourth Golden Goddess and a fourth Triforce-bearer, usually female, So Beautiful, It's a Curse and related to Link in some way. Or the fourth Triforce goes to an Author Avatar, who was "sucked into the game", another very popular premise in the world of Zelda fanfiction. For a "good" example of this, see My Inner Life.
- On the subject of the fourth goddess bit, it turns out in Skyward Sword that there is a fourth goddess. Of sorts, anyway. When the Golden Goddesses of old departed from the world they created, they entrusted the Triforce to a goddess named Hylia for safekeeping. However, while Hylia is a revered and powerful deity, she is depicted as being of a lesser status compared to the likes of Din, Nayru, and Farore (save for Breath of the Wild, where Hylia is widely worshipped but the Golden Goddesses go completely unmentioned).
- There's also "Kasuto" in Ocarina of Time. To elaborate, every town in Zelda II had a character in Ocarina named after it, with the exception of Kasuto. This has occasionally overlapped with the fourth Triforce bit.
- Strangely, very few authors take the most obvious path for introducing a new Triforce holder. Canonically, Ganon is not the person meant to get the Triforce of Power in the event that it is split by an unbalanced heart; he keeps getting Power because he's nearly always responsible for the Triforce splitting in the first place and that piece is the one that embodies his desires. Canon implicitly includes a third chosen one who would complete a Power Trio with Link and Zelda, but is prevented from doing so by Ganon's repeated thefts of his or her intended Triforce piece. Since this individual has never been identified in the games themselves, they are perfect Original Character fodder, but very few fan authors take advantage of it.
- Remember the Urban Legend of Zelda that there's actually a fourth Triforce, which balances and completes the other three? This (very unlikely) theory is often taken as premise for fanfiction and along comes a fourth Golden Goddess and a fourth Triforce-bearer, usually female, So Beautiful, It's a Curse and related to Link in some way. Or the fourth Triforce goes to an Author Avatar, who was "sucked into the game", another very popular premise in the world of Zelda fanfiction. For a "good" example of this, see My Inner Life.
- Mary Skelter: Nightmares:
- Even though it being forgotten makes OC Blood Maidens pretty unlikely, it's actually quite easy to make one. They're all based on characters from fairytales. It's not just Brothers Grimm fairytales either thanks to Kaguya (based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter), and they aren't limited by being female either, as Hameln is based on the male titular character of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The only thing that's difficult is using a character from an already used fable, as Red Riding Hood's Blood Skelter references the Big Bad Wolf and Alice's bow in both Massacre AND Blood Skelter looks like rabbit ears (possibly like the White Rabbit). We also already know that others before the game existed, so just make them one of those... though that would mean they died before the game's events.
- That is no longer an issue due to Mary Skelter Finale, which introduces Charlotte and Mary, two Blood Maidens that were always at Dawn... but somehow managed to escape being noticed by Professor Tohjima.
- Blood Youths like Jack are also possible, and the limitations are the same minus Blood Skelter extra references, but there's also how Jack is the ONLY Blood Youth in the entire franchise.
- Once again, Finale makes that a non-issue by introducing Juu.
- There are multiple Jails too, as teased in the original and used in the sequel, so it would also be possible to make other Blood Teams. Whether they're an 2-style Family of Choice or another group that was brought together by some follower of Snark is all the writer's decision to make.
- Mary Skelter Finale also introduces a new faction of Blood Maidens known as Genocide Pink. Just give them an 2-style white-on-black outfit, use blue instead of the Blood Team's pink, and change the Fairy Tale name to one themed after a Cruel and Unusual Death, and voila! New member! ... Though once again, you may need to kill them off before the events of the game.
- Even though it being forgotten makes OC Blood Maidens pretty unlikely, it's actually quite easy to make one. They're all based on characters from fairytales. It's not just Brothers Grimm fairytales either thanks to Kaguya (based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter), and they aren't limited by being female either, as Hameln is based on the male titular character of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The only thing that's difficult is using a character from an already used fable, as Red Riding Hood's Blood Skelter references the Big Bad Wolf and Alice's bow in both Massacre AND Blood Skelter looks like rabbit ears (possibly like the White Rabbit). We also already know that others before the game existed, so just make them one of those... though that would mean they died before the game's events.
- Mass Effect:
- The general concept of Council Spectres alone is ripe for fan-made characters. Outside of Shepard, Nihlus, Saren, Tela Vasir, Jondum Bao, and either Kaidan Alenko or Ashley Williams, depending on who you let live in the first game, the Spectres in general have been barely given any attention in games or in the Expanded Universe, with the exception of Blasto, the first Hanar Spectre.
- The various merc groups and even C-Sec employees offer more options for this trope, too.
- Oddly enough, MechWarrior 4 Mercenaries is predicated on this entire trope; the player takes on the role of Spectre, a smart-assed mercenary captain, whose player-created independent unit is sponsored by (and effectively part of) one of the four most popular mercenary units in the Inner Sphere: the Kell Hounds, Wolf's Dragoons, the Gray Death Legion, and the Northwind Highlanders. Not only does this collectively make their company Sixth Rangers to these famous units, they also get to participate the Fed-Com Civil War and can even be involved in some of the more dramatic/climactic moments of the war.
- Mega Man:
- The original Mega Man series easily allows for new Robot Masters or other new robot characters, the latter of whom have musical pun names. The Mega Man X series simply uses animal (and, less commonly, plant) names to get the same result.
- New Mutos Reploids and Pseudoroids, by comparison, are considerably rarer, despite the implication that the former are quite abundant as protectors of the humans living in Neo Arcadia and/or elite soldiers of the Four Guardians. While an assortment of animal- and plant-based characters like their predecessors, several Mutos Reploids have more of mythological slant to their designs than the majority of the non-humanoid Reploids in X (for example...) though with much looser naming conventions as well; compare Blizzack Staggroff or Panter Flauclaws to Glacier Le Cactank. Meanwhile, Pseudoroids are more simply named (Name the Descriptionroid), with the caveat that the first letter of the Pseudoroid's name in ZX matches the Biometal fragment they carry (e.g. Hivolt the Raptoroid has half of Model H, Lurerre the Abysroid has half of Model L). The Pseudoroids of ZX Advent, who instead possess pieces of Model W, have no such restrictions (e.g. Chronoforce the Xiphosuroid, Vulturon the Condoroid, Queenbee the Hymenopteroid).
- In a similar vein, new scientists tend to come up, thanks to the series having so few of them (Drs. Light, Wily and Cossack). Occasionally, some of them do follow Cossack's musical naming theme or even Light and Wily's famous intellectual first name theme. This is made fairly easy as many Robot Masters (such as in 6, Mega Man & Bass, 10, and 11) were built by other, unnamed creators before Wily reprogrammed them, intentionally or, as in 10, inadvertently.
- There's also characters who are either the "real" last creations of Light or Wily, or prototypes of X or Zero, and were also sealed away in a capsule until discovered, some of which tend to have caused the "Cataclysm," the by-now Jossed Fanon theory that got rid of the Classic series characters. The "prototypes of X or Zero" bit was turned Ascended Fanon with χ -kai-, one of the What If? characters in Mega Man X DiVE who is an Evil Knockoff of X made by Wily using X's stolen blueprints but left unfinished due to Wily's difficulties in creating a logic circuit for him until Serges — who's implied to be a future incarnation of Wily — uncovered him in 21XX and completed χ with that era's technology. note
- It's also popular in the Classic series to do this with Proto Man, whose infrequent appearances in the canon mean there's plenty of spaces for fanfic writers to fill in for him.
- In Mega Man X fan works, new characters are most often created as Maverick Hunters, like the canon protagonists. And since X is part of the 17th Unit, that frees up at least 16 other units of indeterminate size for fan usage — or at least it would have if the first four games, their instruction manuals, and supplemental materials didn't name seven of those units note along with a 0th Special Unit Zero commands after the events of X2. The exact number of Hunters that comprised each unit prior to their post-Eurasia disbandment is still unknown, as the only members seen outside of X and Zero defect and join Sigma's Maverick rebellion.
- Since X and Zero are the leaders of the 17th and 00th units respectively, it's also common to create new characters to make up these units and show them functioning as teams. And ever since Command Mission showed that the Maverick Hunters have multiple headquarters, like the Far East HQ shown in the game, even more opportunities for other units have opened up.
- Battle Network isn't hard to do this with either, being as there are several Classic Robot Masters and other robots that went unused by the end of the series, while Network Transmission, 5, and 6 bring in Zero, Colonel, and Iris — opening up possibilities for more X series-based Expies. That's not even counting the possibility of random officials and/or other NetBattlers and their Navis made up wholesale, or giving an operator to Bass. This can also work in reverse, as both Battle Network (NT Warrior included) and Star Force have introduced NetNavis who do not have a canon Robot Master counterpart in the original series. On top of this, one Navi (Ring.EXE from Battle Chip Challenge) is the opposite gender of the Robot Master they're based on (Ring Man of MM4), opening up yet another door. As the Legends series demonstrates, it doesn't stop there either: at least one Navi is influenced by a Legends character note and no less than four other characters have cross-series counterparts between Battle Network and Legends. note
- In a variant of the above, the fact that the Battle Network series exists in an Alternate Timeline to the Classic games where the development of internet technology was prioritized over robotics leads to certain characters from one series being reimagined in the other, similar to how Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, and Dr. Cossack have Tadashi Hikari, Lord Wily, and Cossak as counterparts. Examples include introducing Kalinka as Cossak's daughter (it helps that there's concept art of her
◊ for BN3 as the series' character designer assumed a version of Kalinka would also appear) and having a Classic version of Dr. Regal show up, owing to the fact that he's Wily's son. - Most Mega Man ZX OCs tend to be a character with a Doomed Hometown discovering a Biometal that's based on other Mega Man characters, if not Model O. As the Zero series doesn't offer too many candidates to base a Biometal on beyond Elpizo and Craft, fans tend to turn to the original and X series for inspiration.
- Mega Man Star Force uses Stellar Names for nearly all of its Energy Beings and even some of its humans. The FM-ians in particular are named after the Western Zodiac, but not all of the constellation names were used.
- The original Mega Man series easily allows for new Robot Masters or other new robot characters, the latter of whom have musical pun names. The Mega Man X series simply uses animal (and, less commonly, plant) names to get the same result.
- Metal Gear has the three Snakes: Solid, Liquid, and Solidus. The absence of the most obvious third entry in the matter-based naming cycle, Gas Snake, makes him an easy choice for this. Plasma Snake would be a somewhat close second. However, Solidus Snake fills the theme roll of Gas Snake. note Bose-Einstein Condensate Snake, however, has not had much support.
- A very easy way to make a Mortal Kombat fan kharakter would be to take a kolor that hasn't been used by a ninja yet, and make your very own Highly-Visible Ninja for that kolor.
- A good number of Nintendo Wars fanfics involve a new Commanding Officer joining one of the nations to help them in battle, with his or her own day-to-day ability(s) and CO Powers. Some fanfics may also put their OCs in a brand new nation, with a name following the usual nation naming trend of a colour, followed by a celestial object.
- The premise of Neptunia makes it fairly easy to make OCs, since every character is supposed to represent some aspect of the game industry. All you have to do is come up with something that the franchise hasn't already covered and make a character out of it with some quirks as Historical In Jokes. This is also true for any series about Moe Anthropomorphisms, but Neptunia makes it especially easy because outside Lawyer Friendly Cameos the series is limited to niche Japanese companies and individual franchises, as Idea Factory is a small company that needs to obtain the rights. Combine that with the fact that the series focuses mostly on the Japanese game industry, and that Compile Heart didn't try to make recognizable parodies of anything big outside the Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo and Sega consoles until the fourth main series game, and it's obvious that there's a lot of unexplored territory compared to something like Azur Lane that doesn't need to worry about copyright infringement.
- Persona fanfics will probably involve someone else learning to use a Persona. Original stories are pretty common, especially ones that aren't set in Japan. note Or another member of SEES. Or an employee of SEBEC. Or another member of the Masked Circle or who survived the fight in the TV. Heck, even an extra member for The Phantom Thieves of Hearts. As for new Personas, just pick a card from the major arcana, a mythological/historical figure, and an assortment of powers. Bonus points for a bizarre appearance.
- The Phantasy Star series (prior to the Online games, anyway) has the Espers, and the Hunters: Espers are a race of magical, reclusive people with magical abilities who all come from the same Mansion, Hunters are monster-slaying bounty hunters who operate out of a Guild. There's also the Lutz lineage; Rune is the Fifth Generation Lutz, which means there were three others before him, and presumably, whoever comes after him will be Sixth. All original characters for the series fall into one of those three camps.
- Pikmin: Since Pikmin varieties are based on a fairly modular template, it's remarkably easy to create your own. Just pick a color that hasn't been made official yet, give it some unique body feature no other Pikmin has, give it any power or immunity you want, and you're all set.
- It's rather easy to make your own Plants vs. Zombies plant. All you have to do is take a preexisting plant or mushroom species, then give them a Badass Adorable or Botanical Abomination design, humorous Almanac entry, and sun cost.
- Pokémon:
- Fanfics involve aspiring Trainers just starting out on their journeys... and written in a way that makes the canon human characters look like incompetent chumps. On the other hand, that isn't difficult to achieve, as writing characters with sense puts them miles above the canon cast, or at least Ash. With the introduction of Trainer customization in Generation VI (thus meaning the Player Characters can now resemble the actual player), these types of stories have only become more prevalent. Bonus points if the Trainer begins his/her journey with a Pokémon that's not a regional starter, usually an Eevee (three video games actually require an Eevee-related starter, one of which gives the player two of its evolutions) or Pseudo-Legendary.
- There's also an infinite number of newly introduced Team Rocket members. Those with a little more creativity just invent their own "Team Whatever" instead. Given that a new "Team Whatever" (or more than one, in some cases such as Hoenn) is created in canon for every new region, this isn't surprising.
- Pokémon themselves are very easy for people to create. A few of them are creative enough, while most of them are not. A fan favourite would be made-up Eeveelutions.
- The existence of Plusle and Minun has encouraged people to create counterparts to them that represent multiplication and division, and sometimes the "equals" symbol.
- In one notable case, fans came up with Leafeon, right down to the name, far before it was introduced in canon. One site somehow managed to come up with not only the name Team Plasma, but nearly the same goal they had... in 2008.
- As of Gen VI, numerous Pokémon have been given Mega Evolutions. There are literally hundreds of possible Mega Evolutions for existing Pokémon that don't already exist outside of fandom.
- Generation VII introduced the concept of regional species variations with different appearances and types, which opened the floodgates for an effectively limitless amount of fan creations. Take an existing Pokémon, add a type or change its typing entirely, alter the design to match, and presto! note Generation VIII amplified this by introducing evolutions exclusive to regional variants (i.e. Galarian Meowth evolves into Perrserker instead of Persian), letting fans run wild with alternative evolutions.
- Even before regional variants were introduced, making breed variations of Pokémon based on different habitats or real life-species was common; for example, Bulbasaur with different species of flowers on their backs, or Houndoom based on different breeds of dogs.
- Of all the Pokémon to give fan-made regional variants and evolutions to, Yamask stands out as one of the most popular, with fake variants of the Spirit Pokémon seeing a sharp rise in popularity with the introduction of the Galarian Yamask line. This is likely due to its concept, a Living Shadow that holds a piece of a larger item that eventually evolves into a spirit possessing said item. This essentially allows for endless possibilities for Yamask variant concepts, from a pillow-holding Yamask evolving into a possessed bed to one that holds a flashlight that eventually becomes a whole lighthouse.
- Before Yamask, Rotom occupied a similar spot due to its concept, a ghostly Energy Being that changes form based on the electrical appliance it possesses. Fans took it from there, with later generations adding official variants like the Rotom Pokédex (wherein Rotom are capable of speaking human language and conversing with the player), Rotom Information Service (aka Rotomi), Rotom Bike, and Drone Rotom.
- Another idea introduced in Gen VII is Partner Pokémon. These are individual members of a cute mascot species who have been given unique attacks and enhanced stats to make up for their refusal to evolve into their stronger but less popular forms. Pikachu and Eevee are the only canon examples, but popular fan subjects are the various regional pikaclones, Clefairy, Jigglypuff, Marril, and Togepi.
- Another popular fan art topic is variations where a Pokémon whose father was a different species than the mother would take on different physical characteristics, ranging from different color palettes to changed physical characteristics.
- Creating a new region isn't entirely difficult. All one needs to do to create a convincing region is to take an existing country, or just a particular area of one, and add arbitrary routes and towns whose names follow a particular theme.
- Generation VIII introduces Dracozolt, Dracovish, Arctozolt and Arctovish, all prehistoric Pokémon restored from incorrectly mishmashed fossils. Creating more fossil mishmashes, or what the proper forms of these Pokémon should look like, is incredibly popular among Fakemon artists.
- In Pokémon Sword and Shield, it's established that the eight Gym Leaders you battle in the game are the "Major League" Gyms; there are ten "Minor League" Gyms representing the other types that you don't encounter, though you can obtain their uniforms at shops located at or near the Gyms. Two of these Gyms are led by Gym Leaders that are Major League Gym Leaders in the other versionnote , while the DLC introduced characters affiliated with two more of the Minor Gyms, one in each version who eventually become their Leaders note , as well as a former Leader of another Gym (Peony, former Steel-type Gym Leader). That still leaves plenty of room for fans to come up with their own designs and teams for the remaining Gym Leaders.
- Generation IX introduced the concept of Paradox Pokémon: versions of modern-day Pokémon that are either their distant prehistoric ancestors or their equally distant cyborg descendants. All you need to make one of your own is to take a pre-existing Pokémon, change one of its types and either add elements of prehistoric megafauna or make it a robot (and in that case add "Iron" to its name).
- In Portal fics, there's no effort needed to come up with a background for an OC, what with the thousands of test subjects, scientists, and robots who work at Aperture. Having them survive the events of the second game is a bit trickier, but still manageable. It's not hard to imagine someone other than Doug Rattman escaping and laying low in that facility or staying asleep in some forgotten cryogenic chamber (it's completely like Aperture to lose someone like this). It was also popular for OCs to come from those humans you find in the Cooperative campaign, until the DLC revealed that GLaDOS killed them all. Then there are all those other alternate dimensions from the Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC...
- Ratchet & Clank is so loosely written in canon with any number of worlds and characters that he can encounter in any given game that it's a given that you'll have to invent a couple characters. But any OC that pops up as a Lombax is an automatic Sailor Earth!
- Making a Shovel Knight character is as simple as making a human(oid) character, putting them in a face-concealing protective gear and naming them "<theme> Knight".
- It's easy to add anyone into the Silent Hill universe without major canon issues, so you can expect that a lot of those people are going to be self-insert/wish fulfillment characters.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Countless numbers of new Freedom Fighters in Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction, even though it isn't in a concept in the games. This is easier in fanfic concerning the Archie comic series, as there are any number of unnamed Freedom Fighter groups to work with.
- Boy, when they played Sonic Chronicles, they'd probably have been shaking with rage or thinking "Oh, s/he came from this dimension where all the echidnas are." (Remember Shade?)
- Heck, many Sonic fan characters have nothing to do with the series at all.
- There are plenty of never-before-seen hedgehogs who carry around an eighth Chaos Emerald running around.
- More than a few fan characters were created by Professor Robotnik on the ARK as "backup ultimate life forms."
- The official Sonic Twitter even posted a chart to let you make your own Sonic name.
- With the announcement that Sonic Forces would allow players to create their own character, the possibilities for fan character artists and fanfiction writers has multiplied a million fold.
- Soul Edge, the first entry of the Soul Series, introduced series mainstay Sophitia Alexandra, one of 24 holy warriors tasked with destroying the titular Evil Weapon by Hephaestus. Only one other holy warrior has been seen since, with the following game, Soulcalibur, bringing in Aeon Calcos aka Lizardman. note This leaves a whopping 22 characters unaccounted for, though few fans have ever touched upon the subject — possibly because of Aeon's pitiable fate and the fact that Sophitia mostly succeeds in her mission during her first journey, either making the remaining holy warriors Doomed by Canon or rendering their quests pointless. Then along came Soulcalibur V, where it's revealed (via supplemental materials) that Hephaestus has sent out another group of holy warriors, whose objectives are destroying Soul Edge (again) and slaying a certain Lizardman himself on account on Aeon being bestowed with Cannibalism Superpower by Ares (who Hephaestus most certainly does not want to obtain Soul Edge). The identity of these new holy warriors? The custom characters who face Aeon in a Destined Battle during Arcade Mode.
- Star Flight The Lost Colony: The protagonist civilization was colonized by the surviving members of Noah 3. In the original games, we only know of Noah 2 (Arth), Noah 9 (The Mechans' original masters), and Noah 6 (the ancestors of those would eventually become the the Umanu.)
- Splatoon OCs mostly follow a basic pattern: A new Inkling/Octoling is in town, they start out messing around in the turf battles, then they do the events of Hero Mode (or Octo Expansion, or Return of the Mammalians, or Side Order) and save the day. Falling in love with one of the Squid Sisters, Off the Hook (mainly Marina), or Deep Cut members is optional, but it still happens a lot.
- Fan characters in both Spyro the Dragon canons are popular, ranging from simply other dragons to another survivor of Spyro and Cynder's Year of the Dragon. Other popular topics are a Wind Guardian or a replacement for Ignitus, as well as Purple Dragons between Malefor and Spyro.
- Super Mario Bros. is subject to this, due to how little several settings or groups are featured or elaborated upon, mostly Bowser's troops. Specific examples include:
- Sarasaland. The Mushroom King. Beanbean Kingdom. The Shroomers. More plumbers. Worlds 1 through 8. The Yoshis. Subcon. It's really too easy. The world building is there, we're just not given all of it.
- It's common for someone to create a whole team of Paper Mario partners. Simply dress up some of the series signature mooks (Goombas, Koopas, Boos, maybe throw in a Toad or Yoshi or original creature in there), make sure they have the ability to explode, jump gaps, disappear, etc., and a new team is set.
- It is given some elaboration in Yoshi's Island DS, which states that there are a total of seven people as powerful as Mario and Luigi, and they're all named. That doesn't stop anyone.
- Creating a Sixth Ranger for the Axem Ranger to follow the pattern they are a parody of is also common. Usually Blue; Purple isn't unheard of, though. In one example, the Axem Blue turned out to be Geno.
- Minor compared to others on this page, but it's not unheard of for Super Smash Bros. fans to create new mysterious, eldritch Crossover-Exclusive Villains for the Smashers to fight in the vein of Tabuu, Master Core, and Galeem & Dharkon.
- Tattletail fan characters have become pretty popular. Given that the Tattletails are apparently a highly successful toyline that already comes in multiple colors, including some not encountered in the game, it's easy to justify coming up with new varieties and color schemes for them.
- Team Fortress 2 OCs tend to come in the following flavors:
- Each [class] is simply one of many who serve in that role, and while their general appearance and personality tends to fit the archetype of that class, they have their unique quirks. (The most famous of this type is Cuanta Vida, though in that comic the occasional character has an "inappropriate" personality that is either Played for Laughs or Played for Drama.)
- A female version of the class, either as part of an all-female squad rival to Red/Blue or on the squad as the first female whatever (or one of the occasional female whatever), with the 1960s sensibilities of their potential teammates are either entirely ignored or exaggerated to the point of He-Man Woman Hater.
- The (currently nonexistent) tenth class or some other type of RED/BLU/Mann Co. staff not present in the game but implied to exist as a vast network of operatives in the supplementary comics. (Notably, the Administrator started life as such a character before she became Ascended Fanon, and Gray and Olivia Mann can be seen as parodies of such character types.)
- Upon taking Classic Heavy's last words into account, there are apparently several other teams under the Administrator, such as Team Echelon, Team Citadel, and Team Vanguard. Who knows how many more were out there?
- Them's Fightin' Herds makes it easy to come up with your own Key Seeker: just choose an ungulate species. You can even create entire tribes of OCs by picking a species that hasn't been represented yet (which includes mythical creatures) and giving them a defining trait based off Animal Stereotypes.
- Touhou Project:
- In canon, youkai apparently outnumber humans by a fair margin. If the sheer diversity of those in Japanese mythology isn't enough fodder for the fans, races like the Celestials, the Yama and the Kappa only have one named representative each, allowing fans free rein to make their own. Of course, the franchise has the unique distinction of being largely Fanon anyway.
- Why limit Touhou OCs to Japanese mythology? Canonically, the vampires, psychically-produced poltergeists, resident Cute Witch, and fairies all have strong Western influences, and there may or may not be a Chinese dragon in the mix as well.
- This isn't even limited to youkai. Aside from Keine, Akyuu and Kosuzu none of the residents of the Human Village are known (and the first two of those aren't exactly human anyway), and it's canon that humans from the Outside find themselves in Gensoukyou on a semi-regular basis. The latter in particular is incredibly fertile ground for Self-Insert Fics.
- It's also notable that Touhou characters often have absolutely absurd powers, making it paradise for someone who wants to create a superpowerful character without abusing canon too much. "Destruction of anything and everything" and "manipulation of boundaries" are legit powers. Honestly, the more ridiculous your character's power is, the better. Bonus points if it sounds innocuous at first but turns out to have ludicrous applications.
- Some of the fan-produced characters have acquired such a popularity that they might as well be canon. Notably Mitori Kawashiro, the sister of the Kappa girl Nitori, whose power is to prohibit anything (in good Touhou fashion, this is difficult to wrap your head around and potentially absurdly broken). Mitori has her own fanmade theme and appears in a fanmade game.
- Another relatively popular fan character is the Sendai Hakurei no Miko ("The Previous Generation Hakurei Shrine Maiden"). Originally a M.U.G.E.N Touhou character who was notable for being a pure close-range physical fighter (even when compared to Hong Meiling) among the cast of long range projectile fighters, artists and writers picked her up and fleshed her out as a no-nonsense shrine maiden who prefered to beat her opponents to a pulp with her own fists, as a result sporting a modified Miko outfit with a Leotard of Power that shows off her scar-covered body. Her relation to Reimu varies, from mother to a distant ancestor, or just an unrelated woman who previously held the position of the Hakurei Shrine Maiden.
- Touken Ranbu fans often do come up with their own fan designs for sword boys of swords that haven't been introduced yet, and there are even people who have made sword boy designs for famous European swords such as Excalibur or fictional swords such as Kenshin Himura's unnamed Sakabatou.
- Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron have this in their multiplayer modes, where players are encouraged to assemble their own character from a variety of premade parts within a given class (so tank parts for warriors, car parts for scouts, etc) and go into large-scale battles with this new Transformer. As a lot of existing character model parts from the single-player campaign were reused, you could assemble an existing character such as Optimus Prime or Megatron and go into battle using their look and color scheme, but High Moon Studios understood that fans of this franchise would want to make their own characters and therefore made it an option in their games.
- Twisted Wonderland: The blank slate nature of the player character makes it ridiculously easy to put one's OC in their place. It's also easy to make some new students at either Night Raven College or another school (like the never-seen Royal Sword Academy): just take a Disney villain or an item associated with them and turn them into a Bishōnen with a fancy name.
- Undertale:
- While Undertale OCs can theoretically look like anything, given the diversity shown by the game's own NPCs, the Theme Naming displayed by Sans and Papyrus (and supposedly Gaster) has led many people to specifically make new skeleton characters named after the fonts in which they speak, with personalities usually based on the appearance of said fonts.
- The fact that you're only introduced to a fraction of the Royal Guards had to the creation of OCs that happens to be part of said royal guard, such as "Red," the star of a certain fan game.
- Another trend is to make OCs based on the other humans Asgore killed, or humans with their own original virtues.
- It's common in some Valkyrie Profile fan circles to introduce other Valkyries, usually taken directly from Norse Mythology. Brunhilde is particularly popular. This is in spite of the fact that there are canonically only three due to being combined with the Norns and being a very literal Freudian Trio. Despite this, Silmeria did introduce a possible mechanism for other Valkyries to be introduced, not that fans take advantage of it.
- Warframe saw new warframes being added over the years of its development, so it should be no surprise fans keep making up their own warframes. Some of them (such as Chroma) actually ended up added to the game itself!
- Yo-kai Watch:
- New Yo-kai characters are easy to make. Just look up a youkai that hasn't been used, make it Lighter and Softer, and you have a new character. Heck, you don't even have to use a youkai. Supernatural and mythological creatures in general, no matter the country of origin, work.
- Original Yo-kai Watch owners appear in quite a few fan works. Have an average Joe come across a mysterious watch, have them try it on, and suddenly they can see Yo-kai.
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