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  • Jess pulls this in Advance Wars: Black Hole Rising in Mission 27, where you're tasked with obliterating 9 ammo-less Battleships in 17 days. When you complete your mission Jess gives the order to evacuate and not engage the enemy any longer, as their mission is complete and there's no sense taking extra casualties. Lash is furious.
    Lash: Attack with all of our strength! They've made me mad, and now they're gonna pay big time!
    Black Hole Mook: Mistress Lash, that's... The enemy's gone. There's no sign of enemy units. It seems they've done what they set out to do and left.
    Lash: You've got to be joking! They just sank my boats and took off? I... am... so... angry!!!
  • In the fantasy/sci-fi RPG Albion, you can convince the spaceship's security chief and his men that the ship's goals are illegitimate; he and his men then retreat, allowing you to skip a very tough battle and go straight to the final fight against the Master Computer.
  • Conrad Marburg can be convinced to do this in the ending of Alpha Protocol if your approval with him is trusted or friendly. The look on Leland's face if you pull it off is hilarious.
  • At the start of Another Code R, Ashley decides she's had enough of her father's crap and decides to go home. However, she spent all her money on a new guitar beforehand and couldn't afford the bus fare, so she's stuck going through the game.
  • Assassin's Creed:
  • Comes up in one of the many bad endings in BAD END THEATER. If the Underling wakes up to find the Hero slaughtering his way through the demon castle, they have the option to either stay in the castle and fight the Hero... or run away, abandoning their fellow demons just to save their own skin. While they feel really bad about letting their friends die, the Underling reasons that they're still a demon, and being willing to betray their allies is expected of them.
  • Several examples in Baldur's Gate II:
    • If something happens to Imoen in the first dungeon that would normally result in her death, she will instead get back up, declare that she is "not going to die in this forsaken pit," and run away to the surface.
    • Played 100% straight by Brennan Risling, who wisely decides not to continue indulging his Jerkass boss's violent tendencies the instant the fight starts going badly for him. Of course, you can still kill him if you're quick enough.
    • At the resolution of her quest, the silver dragon Adalon states that she is sick and tired of "guarding a peace that does not exist" and leaves after taking vengeance on the drow who pissed her off.
  • In Banjo-Tooie, after being beaten by the two main characters for the third time, Klungo chooses this option, fearing retaliation from Grunty, and decides to be a game designer, befriending the good guys. He makes good on this in Nuts N' Bolts, where he makes the (intentionally) So Bad, It's Good buggy as all hell "Hero Klungo Sssavesss Teh World" minigame.
  • In Barbarous: Tavern of Emyr Emyr and O'rho infiltrate an orcish camp while disguised as orcs and Emyr starts insulting the condition of the camp bar.
    Bartender: Frag this, I'm out of here!
  • In The Bard's Tale, you can do this right before the final battle instead of taking a side, resulting in the Neutral Ending.
  • Batman: Arkham City:
    • Sometimes, if you attack a group of thugs on a rooftop, some of the thugs will run away and jump into the water below rather than stay and fight you.
    • Catwoman has the option to do this in her story mode after she steals back her loot from Strange's vault, rather than leaving it behind to go and rescue Batman. Doing this results in a Non-Standard Game Over in which we're informed that Protocol 10 failed, and the Joker was able to successfully take over, and rewinds back to the decision point anyway, as she canonically has to save him.
    • During Predator sections, the last remaining henchmen are prone to a breakdown in teamwork:
      Henchman 1: What are you doing?! I need help!
      Henchman 2: Screw you! It's every man for himself!
    • According to the Arkham City Stories, Carmine Falcone decided to get the hell out of dodge and move to Bludhaven because Quincy Sharp and Hugo Strange refused to be bribed and intimidated, and the latter's TYGER forces were on the prowl and hunting not just super villains, but Falcone's men, too.
  • Battle for Wesnoth: Instead of dying, when Ro'Sothian or Ro'Arthian's HP hits 0, they decide that they have enough and teleport away, abandoning Tallin's group. Since Tallin desperately needs their creatures in the war against the orcs, it still counts as defeat for the player.
  • In Bayonetta 2, the magic-wielding Mouthy Kid Loki is happy to follow Bayonetta around, helping her out with his powers in exchange for her protecting him from the angels out to kill him for reasons he can't recall. However, he rationally draws the line at literally following Bayonetta into Inferno. At least until an ambush by the Lumen Sage and Loptr manages to make Inferno look like a reasonable escape route.
  • The events of Bee Garden: The Lost Queen are kicked off by the queen bee getting fed up with her workers' complaints and deciding they can make honey without her.
  • Bendy and the Ink Machine:
    • Wally Franks's recordings always end with him threatening to quit if another bad incident occurs in the studio (eg. another pipe bursting).
    • Henry, to his credit, tries when he sees "Inked" Bendy. The problem is that he then falls through a secret room.
    • An audio log added to Chapter 1 after the release of Chapter 3 has a man named Thomas Connor having to fix Sillyvision's pipes to the Ink Machine, and he decides, partly because of how frustrating repairing the pipes are, but primarily in how he has a bad feeling about said machine, that he's never doing another repair job for the company again.
  • In Bendy in Nightmare Run, the bosses react this way during the first four acts of each episode to their health bar being emptied.
  • In Bombergirl, players can use the Recall button to quickly teleport away from the area they're in and respawn at their team's base with their HP restored. This takes less time to spawn back into the action compared to being defeated by the enemy (3 seconds via recall vs. 5 seconds for defeat), assuming the player doesn't get taken out during the teleporting process.
  • The Bassist of Kabbage Boy pulls this trope the moment he sees Ormagodden in the prologue of Brütal Legend. He's consequently the only member of the band who survives.
  • In Cave Story, the player is given the option to do this. At a point when all but a handful of your allies are either dead or captured by the Big Bad, one of those allies tells you that the fight is probably hopeless, and it would be better for the two of you to just run away. Agreeing to leave results in the game's bad ending.
  • In Centurion: Defender of Rome, panicked units make a 180 degree turn and leave the battlefield. A lot of units panic when their leader is killed so massive routs are common.
  • Chest: Capulet turned himself into a chest to lie low and avoid assassins until the war with the demons died down. Unfortunately, he forgot how to dispel the transformation.
  • Chrono Trigger:
    • While the Hero is escaping from the dungeon and kicking every ass in sight along the way, he's attacked by a mean-looking Omnicrone. Rather than die after the battle like everyone else, the Omnicrone stops, exclaims, "They don't pay me enough for this!", and leaves.
    • Later on, when you encounter Dalton in the Ocean Palace, he feels the palace shaking and believes Lavos is waking up, so he decides to escape rather than fight you.
  • You can have Jennifer do this, albeit with some hesitation, in Clock Tower: The First Fear. The moment you've ditched Scissorman you can head straight to the garage, grab the car key, and on your third examination of the car effectively say "screw Anne, Laura, and Lotte" and take off. Of course, your "reward" for being such a Dirty Coward is you miss out on most of the game and get saddled with Ending G or Ending H (depending on whether you saw one or two friends die), the two worst in the game.
  • In Crazy Taxi, if your current passenger's time limit expires, they will jump out of your taxi, even if you're weaving in and out of traffic at 90 miles per hour!
  • Cry of Fear gives the player the option to simply skip the Carcass boss fight, resulting in a cutscene where Simon escapes from it by crawling through a window into the building he was standing on the roof of. Doing this however will lead to a bad ending.
  • Def Jam: Fight for NY:
    • When one of Big Bad Crow's bodyguards sees the "army" the protagonist has gathered for storming their lair, he just walks away while saying, "Screw this, man, he's your problem." He even joins your character in a "2 vs 2" tournament after the end of the game.
    • Crow has been a dishonorable backstabber whose methods disgust even his own men. Just before the final fight, Crow's bodyguard refuses to kill the hero, and instead gives him his gun and leaves. The hero does an Ironic Echo of an earlier Crow quote and notes that Crow has "a little morale problem".
  • In Devil Survivor, at two points, the player can decide to simply break the Tokyo blockade and run away rather than fight the Bels. It leads to one of two Downer Endings; either the PC is killed by angels who proceed to remove humanity's free will, or the PC defeats the angels who are policing the Yamanote Loop, and demons escape to overrun the world. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
  • The enemies in Dig Dug will do this sometimes if there's only one or two left, opting to make a mad dash for the upper left corner of the screen rather than taking you on. If they escape you still win the level, but if you chase them down and kill them you get those delicious, delicious points.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Throughout the series, multiple companions may leave your team if their approval ratings fall low enough and/or you make specific decisions. For example, Aveline Vallen in Dragon Age II does this to Hawke near the end of the game if she's opposed to them. Instead of fighting, she delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, throws down her sword, and leaves. So do her guards.
    • In Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, the Warden can encounter a bunch of bandits who have kidnapped a noblelady for ransom. The bandits immediately panic when they realize the person sent after them is the Hero of Ferelden, the Warden who killed the Archdemon. In other words, they are totally screwed. One bandit jumps off a cliff, rightly believing that he has a better chance of surviving a several hundred foot fall on sharp rocks than a fight with the Warden.
  • Dragon Quest III remakes have one of the personality riddles where you have to convince a king that his wife has manipulated him into sending soldiers into a war. You can, however, jump out of the nearby window and leave without doing anything — resulting in the game calling you out as a "happy" and indifferent kind of person.
  • Dwarf Fortress:
    • Goblins tend to be all Attack! Attack! Attack!... until most of them have marched into the meat grinder of serrated metal disc traps in the entry to the base, at which point the survivors look at the gore dripping off the ceiling and decide, "Screw that fortress, I'm going home."
    • An attacking force of kobolds advanced on the settlement of Boatmurdered, took a good look at it, and promptly left. "Come on guys, we have a nice settlement, why didn't you stick around? Was it the ashen wasteland? The bloodstained gates? Was it the screams of madmen or the stench of death? We've got awful nice engravings of some fucking cheese here, come the fuck on in!"
  • Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: If the player beats the angel Y-phen, this edits a global file so that they can never be fought ever again, even if the player reloads the save file or starts a new game. The angel states that this is because they want to find another timeline where they can actually win, which means this is a conscious decision to avoid any player who is capable of beating them.
  • Elden Ring: In the battle against Starscourge Radahn, the fight's gimmick allows you to summon multiple NPC warriors to help you do battle (normally, if summons are available, the player is limited to one). One of these summons is recurring FromSoftware character Patches... who takes one look at the boss and immediately unsummons himself. To be fair to Patches, he didn't sign on to fight the boss (all the other summons can be seen in the Radahn Festival beforehand, and he's not there), and Radahn is a 20-foot-tall Magic Knight demigod. Can't really blame normal human Patches for deciding discretion was the better part of valor...
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • As part of the series' primary Creation Myth, Lorkhan, one of the et'Ada ("original spirits"), convinced/tricked some of his fellow et'Ada to use their power to create Mundus, the mortal realm. These et'Ada, who would become known as the Aedra ("our ancestors" in Old Aldmeris), sacrificed a large portion of their divine power to do so. Some, when they realized how much the creation of Mundus was taking out of them, attempted to flee and many died in the process. Only Magnus and his followers (the Magna-Ge or "star orphans") were actually successful in fleeing to Aetherius, the realm of magic, where they were more or less safe.
    • Eight of the Aedra, who would come to be worshiped as the Eight Divines, answered the prayers of St. Alessia when she prayed for aid against the Daedra-worshiping Ayleids who had enslaved and were torturing early mankind. The Divines sent her a divine champion, Pelinal Whitestrake, a berserker with an intense hatred of all elves. However, the Divines nearly abandoned Mundus in response to one of Whitestrake's genocidal campaigns. A fit of berserk fury saw him damage the very lands themselves, leading to the Divines almost leaving the world in disgust. Alessia was able to placate them into staying, however.
    • This is a series' standard Status Effect, variously referred to as "Demoralize" or "Fear". It comes as a spell, an enchantment, and a poison effect, each of which will make an afflicted enemy flee in combat.
    • Skyrim:
      • Enemies may panic, flee, and/or beg for mercy if their health drops low enough. If you do show mercy, they'll regain their courage shortly and attack you again.
      • There's a bug that sometimes affects dragons when you hit them with the Dragonrend shout: instead of falling to the ground like they should, they keep flying... away from you.
  • Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes: In the "Contradict" ending, Lili gets fed up with everyone constantly interrupting her and ordering her around, gives both Edna and Dr. Marcel a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, and just walks away from the final confrontation in a huff. She even tells off the narrator for trying to give a moral to the story.
  • In Evil Genius, minions actually say this in their status box when their loyalty drops to zero and they defect. Of course, this can be quickly remedied by beating up the guy and throwing him into a cell. They'll be quick to reconsider, unless they've been charmed by Mariana Mamba, in which case you have to either let them leave or kill them.
  • In the "Crash Landing" level in The Fairly OddParents: Breakin' da Rules, Yugopotamian mooks will beam down to fire bubble gum at Timmy. You get rid of them by simply approaching them, and eventually they will beam back up to their ship.
  • Fallout:
    • Fallout 2:
      • When you reach Vault 15, the woman guarding the back door will let you past if you explain that you are trying to rescue a young girl; she leaves the area (although she turns up later in Vault 13).
      • A squad of Enclave soldiers decides to desert after you engineer the oil rig's destruction. You can talk them into taking on Frank Horrigan for you, but they're likely to die horribly without some help.
    • Fallout 3:
      • You can skip the final battle by convincing The Dragon and his men that his goals are illegitimate and he should just walk away. If you have neutral karma, your companion remarks that the retreating enemies are likely to simply be gunned down by allied forces as soon as they step outside. If you have good karma, your companion remarks that they're probably just going to pop up a few years later to cause more trouble.
      • Hurting ordinary enemies enough without actually killing them has a decent chance of causing them to shout something along the lines of the trope title and run away. Unfortunately, they have a high chance of changing their minds and attacking you some more after fleeing for a minute or so.
    • In Fallout: New Vegas, there was another courier who was going to carry the Platinum Chip. However, he saw the Player Character's name next on the list of available couriers. When he confirmed that the name was genuine, he said, "Let Courier Six carry the package," and left without another word. The final story DLC, Lonesome Road, elaborates on the background between this courier and Six.
  • At the end of Far Cry 4, provided that you don't kill him when he decides to stand down after helping Ajay lay his mother's ashes and declaring him the new ruler of Kyrat, Pagan Min flies off in a helicopter. However, provided that you're quick/well-armed enough you can shoot down the helicopter.
  • In Far Cry 6 after completing the tutorial missions Dani is given a dinghy by the leader of La Résistance for them to make a break to America. Doing so leads to an alternate ending where Dani is shown relaxing on the beaches of Miami while the radio announces that the resistance in Yara has been crushed.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy VII:
      • Near the end of the game, you can talk the Turks out of fighting you and into just walking away, seeing as how the Shinra Corporation has just been blown to pieces. Only works if you've established the rudiments of an Odd Friendship with them by playing the Wutai side plot earlier, though.
      • Occurs in the "Weapon Raid" FMV where the Weapon is attacking Junon. After the initial barrage by the Shinra fails and the monster keeps on getting closer, troops on the waterfront are seen hightailing it out of there as the Weapon closes in.
    • Near the end of Final Fantasy VIII, Biggs and Wedge — who've been playing mid-boss to you for most of the game — decide to drop their current assignment (guarding the door leading to the Boss) and just walk away to look for gainful employment elsewhere.
    • In Final Fantasy X, Maester Mika decides to send himself (effectively committing suicide) rather than face a world where Sin cannot be defeated.
    • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, all of the secret characters will do this in a Jagd if left unconscious (you can recruit them again). Unfortunately, the main character doesn't have such immunity.
  • Fire Emblem: The series in general does this a lot of the time, especially with the bosses. If the player faces a Recurring Boss, then the villain will most likely retreat if you defeat them until the last battle against them, in which they're usually Killed Off for Real. Ever since Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem gave players the option to turn off the Permadeath mechanic, if a unit loses all of their HP with it turned off, then they will retreat instead (unless it's one of the protagonists, which results in a Game Over).
    • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
      • This is the M.O. of Kishuna. On his first two appearances, he will bail out if you attack him or unlock the room he's hiding in, respectively. Justified on account of him being a frail Non-Action Guy who requires Mooks to defend himself and that you're technically not supposed to kill him until the last gaiden chapter.
      • In Chapter 14, a fortune-teller joins your party. In Chapter 17, she starts complaining about the dangerous places you're bringing her to, and by Chapter 23note , she pulls this trope, leading Nils to replace her.
    • In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Septimus, the first boss in Part III, becomes overwhelmed by fear of the Laguz and flees his post, leaving his less-than-well-equipped subordinate to get curb stomped. When said boss is encountered again later, he will try to do this again on the map when you get close, but the poor sap's got nowhere to run.
    • A side chapter in Fire Emblem: Awakening features a bandit who impersonates Prince Chrom to con villages out of their valuables and deceive Sumia's very naive daughter Cynthia, so either Chrom or Sumia will have to talk to her to recruit her. He spends the battle convincing neutral mercenaries at the top of the map to protect him, then turns around and flees as the Shepherds close in. He'll even get away with it if the group fails to catch up!
    • In Fire Emblem Fates, the player must make the Avatar pull this (alongside Azura, Lilith, and either Jakob or Felicia) to reach for the Invisible Kingdom of Valla and unlock the Golden Path. Basically, the Avatar must reply to both of the Royal Families' demand to side with them with this trope.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
      • Three Houses marks the first time in the series the formerly implied mook soldiers are seen on the battlefield alongside the main enemy units, and when an enemy unit is defeated in battle, their mook backup flees and disappears into the distance during the player unit's victory pose.
      • The player's battalions, hired mooks that give stat bonuses and allow for a special Gambit attacks to be performed, flee if their lead unit takes enough damage to reduce the battalion health to zero, removing bonuses gained from them and making Gambit attacks unusable.
      • In Chapter 13 (Crimson Flower), the boss tries to pull one off should you defeat all the reinforcements. Failing to defeat this boss before they run away will give the player a Game Over.
  • In Fredbear and Friends, when Thomas realizes that there are murderous animatronics about, his first instinct is to get as far away as he possibly can. Unfortunately, by then he's already in the Closed Circle, so he doesn't even make it past the front door.
  • Friday Night Funkin' mod Happy Tree Funkers (which, as the title implies, is a crossover with Happy Tree Friends) has the Boyfriend squaring off against Flippy, while Flaky and Russell spectate. During the second song of the mod, the sound of fireworks causes Flippy to turn into Fliqpy. Flaky, knowing trouble when she sees it, runs for the hills as soon as the song's over.
  • Friday the 13th: The Game:
    • The best way for counselors to win the game is to escape from the camp. This can be achieved either by repairing an escape vehicle (which can save 1-4 players depending on the number of available seats and the player's willingness to help others) to get away with, or by calling the police and running out the exit once they arrive.
    • Counselors can also elect to dive through windows if they need to make a quick escape. Be careful, though: if the window is still closed when you dive through, it will hurt quite a bit. Same thing if the window is on the second floor.
  • In From Next Door, Namie realizes the previous owner of her house, Daisuke Sen, must've left in a big hurry, to the point he left most of his belongings behind, including personal items like his ID card. Namie discovers Sen fled the house after his live-in girlfriend was taken by the creature from next door, terrified that he would be next and unable to persuade anyone of the truth.
  • Geneforge 3 has a heroic example acting similarly to a Non-Lethal K.O. if your sidekicks reach 0 HP. Mehken in Geneforge 5 does the same. Sadly, every other party member in the series just gets Killed Off for Real.
  • Ghost of Tsushima: If you use stealth and subterfuge to mow down a large group of enemy mooks, it can sometimes result in surviving mooks running for their lives.
  • In God of War: Ascension, Castor orders two scrawny slave guards to remove Kratos from the premises after he demands an audience with the Oracle without any offerings. After one Death Glare from Kratos, the guards immediately drop their spears and flee for their lives, making them by far two of the smartest characters in the franchise.
  • On one of the soundtrack CDs for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Adam First, the DJ for Wave 103, ends the post-commercial stinger by saying "Screw this, I'm going hang-gliding!".
    • The entire Grand Theft Auto franchise has random non-player characters walking and driving around. Fire off any weapon that doesn't have a suppressor and they'll invoke this trope en masse, much like people would in real life.
  • In Guild Wars 2, when entering the Twilight armor dungeon in the story mode, three members of the legendary guild "Destiny's Edge" show up to help, but upon having a dispute, first Rytlock Brimstone, then later Logan Thackery turn and walk away, leaving the players and one story-driven character (Caithe) to defeat the Nightmare Court.
  • Half-Life:
    • Half-Life: Blue Shift: Contrary to his Lambda Team counterparts in the main game, Dr. Rosenberg states that he has no intention of fighting their losing battle to reverse the resonance cascade, and instead just wants to get out as soon as possible.
    • Half-Life 2: A major part of the story of Episode One is this. Both sides of the conflict know City 17 is going to be completely destroyed, and are desperately trying to get out.
  • Haunting Ground:
    • Ending "C" allows Fiona to invoke this, but only with a New Game+ file. If she spares Debilitas and follows him afterward, he'll give her the key to the castle's main gate, which allows her to circumvent 2/3 of the game by leaving the castle early. It manages to be one of the most amusing and satisfying moments in the game as you get to watch the Big Bad helplessly beg you to stay.
    • And the worst ending has Hewie pull this on you if you manage to have the most negative possible relationship with him. At one point in the game where he is supposed to pull a Big Damn Heroes moment and save you from the Big Bad after the two of you get separated, he instead doesn't bother to show up and leaves you to your fate.
  • Hotline Miami has a few characters do this.
    • The second game reveals that, after the first game ended, the Biker abandoned everything that he had and rode off into the desert, living a life of sweltering isolation.
    • On Jacket's penultimate visit to the dilapidated apartment in his nightmares, Rasmus (the Russian mobster wearing a red owl mask) angrily declares that he's fed up with Jacket and intends to leave. This is the last time he is ever seen in either game.
    • Also in the second game, it is revealed that, after his life was canonically spared by Jacket, Richter fled from a Miami prison during a violent riot and moved to Hawaii with his sickly mother.
  • Iji:
    • It's possible (if you don't kill them) for three of the Tasen to just up and leave. They're probably the only survivors if the Tasen bunker was raided by Iosa.
    • This is what Ansaksie and a bunch of other Assassins do when Asha loses it.
  • In Infernax, you can clobber the first zombie enemy you find and then return back to the boat and tell the boatsman that you saw a monster and you both should get out of dodge. The credits roll as the boat sails away, leaving the cursed land of Upel to its fate. You unlock the "Book of the Coward", depicting the hardened crusader character crying pathetically in fear.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle: Johnny and Gyro both ride horses in battle, but can switch between mounted and unmounted. If they insult Part 4 Josuke's hair while mounted, they're automatically switched to unmounted. Or to put it another way, their horses make a run for it.
  • Kindergarten:
    • When Ms. Applegate finds out at the end of the final mission that the principal is dead and thus can no longer sign her cheques, she decides that she no longer has a reason to keep teaching and promptly leaves without even seeing the kids off.
    • In Kindergarten 2, making the protagonist microwave a cat despite his objections will cause him to forcibly end the day early and go home out of pure disgust over what a terrible thing that is to do.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Kingdom Hearts II:
      • While Sora, Donald, and Goofy are on their way to talk to Hades, they see Demyx of Organization XIII running away from the Lord of the Dead's base. The implication is that Hades and/or Cerberus scared Demyx so badly that he just decided to bail on his mission to make contact with the god.
      • Maleficent gets so annoyed by Oogie Boogie's short-term memory loss and disrespect that she ditches him just before Sora and company show up, abandoning her plan to turn Santa Claus into a Heartless.
      • On the second trip to Port Royal, the Aztec medallions are stolen and the cursed pirates return. Jack Sparrow's reaction to finding out is to turn the ship around and take everybody back to town, though circumstances force him to help.
    • Roxas in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days ends his second to last diary entry with "I am DONE WITH THIS" (no punctuation mark).
  • Kingdom of Loathing: After beating the boss of the Crimbo 2014 event and saving Uncle Crimbo from a robot revolution, Uncle Crimbo announces he's done with technology and goes to live in the mountains and eat berries.
  • The King of Fighters:
  • In King of the Castle, if the Kingdom's Stability drops to zero, triggering the "All is Lost!" event, the Spymaster tells the King that the Treasurer has fled the popular uprising against the King - and taken most of the contents of the Treasury with her.
  • In Kirby Super Star: Revenge of Meta Knight, Kirby manages to destroy the engine of Meta Knight's flying battleship, the Halberd. This causes it to start to fall from the sky. When Meta Knight orders his men to abandon ship, almost all of them refuse and want to make a last-ditch effort to stop Kirby. The only one to jump ship is the captain, Captain Vul, who wastes no time doing so.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
    • Atton Rand's backstory pulls this trope out twice. He first tells the Republic "screw it" and joins those who were only loyal to Revan, then after a rather impressive career as a Sith torturer and Jedi-killer, a female Jedi he tortured and brought to the brink of death showed him he was Force Sensitive, and a prime candidate for ending up on the other side of the torture rack. Whether you interpret this as a Heel–Face Turn, or just saving his own ass depends on your own (and your Exile's) interpretation.
    • In the game proper, there is a deeply satisfying moment on Onderon where, after waves of suicidal morons have thrown their lives away in a vain attempt to stop you, one group will run for their freaking lives. Your character can even say what every player is surely thinking.
  • In L.A. Noire there's a side mission with a robbery in bowling alley. As your successfully proceed through the mission thwarting the robbery, a robber says "Fuck the money, I'm gone!" and proceeds to take a hostage at gunpoint. To proceed you have to shoot the robber to save the hostage.
  • From the The Legend of Zelda series:
  • LEGO Legends of Chima Online: In the "A World of Adventure Awaits You" trailer, a Lion whose forte is managing troop numbers narrowly manages to avoid being sent into battle to help Prince Laval. After he's passed over for the task, he promptly runs off before Longtooth can reconsider his decision.
  • In LISA: The Pointless - Scholar of the Wilbur Sin, Wily Knight will flee the battle if you kill all his companions without taking him out first.
  • Love & Pies: When Raj wants to get out of an awkward situation, he makes an excuse to tend to one of his children, but when Amelia tells him that she felt creeped out by Sam massaging her while pretending to be his twin brother Joe, Raj uses the same excuse, but changes his mind halfway through and just says he wants to leave, and then gets out of the café.
  • Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 2 does this with Launch Man and Shuttle Man. If Launch Man is killed before Shuttle Man, Shuttle will panic and fly away, ending the fight early; however, the reverse is not true, and Launch will remain after you kill Shuttle.
  • In Maglam Lord, the protagonist, Killizerk the Bladelord, has one of their partners, Charme the Smiling Hero, try to cook them a meal. Charme is a Lethal Chef, and with Token Evil Teammate and The Gadfly Acklao cheerfully commentating at how badly she messes up cooking thanks to her super strength and extreme incompetence, Killizerk ultimately decides to just bolt when Charme tries to feed the horrifying inedible mess to her.
  • If you are fortunate enough to land on the "100 Star/10,000 Coin present" spot during a Bowser event in Mario Party, then Bowser will bail on you without saying a word.
  • Mass Effect:
    • During the fight to reach Fist, you can convince a couple of Mooks in Chora's Den to depart instead of killing them (you've massacred all the other Mooks in the bar at this point). Wrex mentions that it would've been faster to just shoot them.
      Shepard: [Renegade option] I just killed my way through 50 bodyguards back there. What do you think I'm going to do to you?
      Warehouse Worker: Aw, screw this. Fist doesn't pay us enough for this.
    • Something similar happens on Noveria, where, if you take the optional mission to investigate a closed-off office for incriminating data, you can "convince" a few ERCS goons to leave, after the guard realizes Shepard is a Spectre, essentially the elite mooks of the Citadel).
      ERCS Guard: He ain't paying me enough to take on Spectres, or Alliance troops, or whatever. [begins to leave] How about this: you pretend you didn't see us, we pretend we didn't see you.
    • A LOKI Mech in the "Project Overlord" DLC tries this after you shoot both its arms off. It doesn't get very far.
    • If you talk to Wrex enough in Mass Effect, you learn that he worked for Saren as a mercenary in a mission, but had second thoughts after completing it when he actually saw Saren in person and got a very bad feeling about this guy. He promptly got outta there, not even waiting for the promised payment (which was a lot of money, actually). Then he explains that his hunch was right; within a week after the mission was completed, every other mercenary that participated was dead.
    • After The Illusive Man jumps off the slippery slope in Mass Effect 3, his organization, Cerberus, starts to crumble as its members break away to throw their lot in with the Alliance; some because they want to help fight The Reapers, others in fear for their lives. Even TIM's longtime Right Hand Miranda has cut ties. By about mid-game, the defection rate is so high that you start to wonder where the hell Cerberus is getting all those Shock Troops they keep throwing at Shepard. The answer turns out to be horrific. They set up a camp for people fleeing the Reaper attacks, then forcibly converted the refugees into husks (for research) or the brainwashed cyborgs you've been fighting all game.
    • The raloi are a race of Bird People never seen in-game, as they just recently made First Contact with the rest of the galaxy (with the exception of the elcor, who made contact with them generations ago and never bothered to tell anyone) a year before the start of Mass Effect 3. Once the Reapers invade, they destroy all their satellites and go dark in the hopes of being passed over.
    • Mass Effect: Andromeda:
      • The Arc Villain of Drack's Loyalty Mission runs away when he and Ryder get near the man's secret hideout, leaving his goons behind to be killed.
      • The Jardaan, four hundred years before Andromeda begins, had to flee the entire Heleus Cluster because an unidentified enemy set off a Negative Space Wedgie to get at them. The last note Ryder finds on them has one of them saying they'll come back eventually.
  • In Mega Man X7, after the Red Alert Syndicate jumped off the slippery slope, one of its key members, Axl, defected from them and was captured by the Maverick Hunters (later becoming a legitimate member of the latter group).
  • Near the end of Minecraft Dungeons' opening cinematic, as the narrator asks on who would stand against the terror caused by the Arch-Illager, a man is shown to draw his sword and preparing to fight off the invading Illagers, only to flee right as a Redstone Monstrosity towers over him.
    Narrator: Well, not that one.
  • Monster Hunter:
    • Monsters will frequently flee a battle with the player after being damaged enough, explained as the animal deciding that it is not worth it to fight with you and retreating to live another day. When this happens you'll either have to find some way to stop it from leaving or track it down again someplace else on the map.
    • If an Elder Dragon is present on the map, all other monsters will go to ground and hide, refusing to come out. There are only three known exceptions: Odogaron, which is too stupid to realize it's outclassed, and Savage Deviljho and Rajang, which are both just too mindlessly aggressive (and are actually strong enough to challenge Elder Dragons and get away with it). This does not really apply to the monsters in the Kamura region, as they are present wherever Chameleos, Kushala Daora, Teostra and Valstrax happen to be.
    • Monster Hunter: Rise:
      • The Rampage in Rise happens because every monster (a) happens to pick up the vibrations that occur when Ibushi seeks out Narwa to mate and (b) want absolutely nothing to do with it. Even Apex monsters show up in a rampage either to feed or to get away; Magnamalo in particular uses the Rampage to feed.
      • Any one of Kushala Daora, Teostra or Magnamalo will show at the halfway point against Narwa the Allmother, as the former two seek a challenge and the last finds that Narwa threatens its food supply.
    • If Fatalis shows up, every other monster and Elder Dragon will hightail it to the next postal code. The reason the enormous Lao Shan-Lung was fleeing its natural habitat in the first game? A Fatalis was spotted in the area. Not even the strongest Elder Dragons dare to mess with Fatalis.
  • Monster Loves You!: One possible ending. Rather than choosing to Ascend (move to the second half of the game) or Dissolve (end your game at the halfway point), you can simply make a run for it when nobody's looking.
  • Mother:
    • At one point in EarthBound, Ness faces off against Captain Strong and five of his fellow police officers. After taking out the first four cops, the fifth freaks out and high tails it out of there, leaving Strong to deal with you.
    • Some of the Pigmasks in Mother 3 do this randomly during a battle. "The Pigmask Major ran away while tossing DP!" "The Navy SQUEAL decided it's time to go on a paid vacation!" They're also rather prone to it outside of battle as well, usually because you just got through with totaling one of their creations.
  • In one stage of NES Remix, you play as Luigi in a mirrored version of Donkey Kong. The first segment has you rescuing Mario. The next segment is called "On second thought...back to the start!" and has you ditching Mario to go back to the beginning of the stage.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, just before the final battle, your Token Evil Teammate refuses to help you fight the Big Bad on principle. He normally then sides with the Big Bad against you, but you can instead convince him to simply not take any side at all and just walk away.
  • In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Henry leaves you to take on the final boss alone because the Big Bad is too stupid for him to be associated with.
  • In No One Lives Forever, an Indian henchman of H.A.R.M. does this near the end of the game, about the fifth time UNITY agent Cate Archer gets knocked out. Interestingly, this becomes a minor plot point in the sequel, as he helps Archer get into the Calcutta branch of H.A.R.M..
  • In Operation Darkness, German tank ace Michael Wittmann voluntarily leaves a battle with the Wolf Pack in disgust over the SS's use of reanimated German soldiers, which in his opinion is defiling the corpses of brave men.
  • During the School Festival in Persona 4, the MC, his friends, and his classmates are stuck putting together a date cafe, which bombs completely. When Rise walks in to see how it's going, she quickly says, "Well, bye!" before hightailing it out of there.
  • In Persona 5, dating one too many girls will cause both Morgana and Sojiro Sakura to ditch the MC and leave him to his well-deserved beating.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies:
    • In Case 1, after the culprit threatens to detonate a bomb in the courtroom, Gaspen Payne panics and flees. Even after Phoenix calls the suspect's bluff and the trial ends, Payne is still gone.
    • In Case 3, after Hugh O'Conner makes a completely unbelievable false confession in order to protect his friend Juniper Woods, prosecutor Simon Blackquill is revealed to have found the whole thing so ridiculous he went for a walk with his handler, Bobby Fulbright. Blackquill returns just after Athena manages to pick apart Hugh's testimony.
    • In Case 5, Fulbright, after Phoenix is close to pinning him as the Phantom, attempts to escape with a grappling hook in his watch. Phoenix stops him before he can make his escape, though.
  • Pillars of Dust: The mercenaries refuse to follow either protagonist into the portal at the end of Chapter 3, forcing them to survive the final chapter without any hired help.
  • Pokémon:
    • In all Pokémon games, a wild Abra will flee immediately via Teleport if you encounter it. Justified, as Teleport is its only move until it evolves into Kadabra. Catching one usually requires a move like Mean Look or Block to prevent that avenue of escape, or just trying to get lucky with Pokeballs
    • In the April Fools hack of Pokémon Gold and Silver titled Pokémon Dark Graystone, at the end, there is a guy next to a fence that blocks off the rest of the game after you defeat Ray, who has a level 9 Moltres. He talks about the beta, and then gets angry.
      Man: This is the end of beta... I not move until next version. PLEASE DON'T NOT ASK FOR NEXT BETA RELEASE I GET TIRE OF WORKING ON IT ALL TIME. NOBODY LETS PLAY LAST VERSION!!!. SO FUCK THIS. I'MM NOT FNINNISH IT BCECAUSE NOBODY CARE!!!! YOU ALL ARE MOTHERFUCK AND I TAKE SHIT ON YOURE HACKING FORUM FUCK. YOU.
      [Cue edited credits]
    • In the very first battle of the Gen III Pokémon games, if you don't put in any effort whatsoever to defeat your opponent, he'll eventually get tired of it and flee.
    • In Pokémon XD, after a rearmed Michael takes him to school (and likely Snags his Zangoose in the process), Zook decides to eff everything and leave Cipher — the reason being that he's "had enough of you to last a lifetime".
    • In Pokémon Platinum, Mars and Jupiter decide to drop out of Team Galactic and live normal lives once you defeat them for the final time.
    • As it takes its Pokemon-catching style after the Safari Zones, Pokémon GO gives any species the player attempts to catch a random chance (usually around 20%) to Smoke Out and flee from the player on sight should they break out of a Pokéball they were enclosed in. And there are plenty of species (especially those that are evolved) that have low to abysmal catch rates, which means they're more likely to break out of balls the player tosses at them and given more chances to escape as a result.
    • Pokémon Sun and Moon has Wimpod, a cowardly Water/Bug type with an ability (called Wimp Out) that describes this type. If its health is lowered in a trainer battle, it flees and drags out another Pokémon to fight in its place. If it fights a wild Pokémon and its health goes low, it flees, and the battle ends. Its much stronger evolved form, Golisopod, is really no better, even though the PokeDex suggests it's braver. Its Ability is called Emergency Exit, but does the same thing as Wimp Out in all but name.
  • Inverted at the end of Portal 2 when GLaDOS pulls a Screw This YOU'RE Outta Here: after all her attempts at killing Chell she eventually reasons that the easiest way to get rid of her would be to give Chell what she wants and let her go, knowing she'll leave Aperture Science and never come back.
  • [PROTOTYPE]:
    • Agent Cross does this after you get his health low enough. You catch up to him, though.
    • Same with Colonel Taggart, who does this after you've defeated Mother. Once again, you catch up to him.
  • Sig, the absent-minded Beetle Maniac, attempts this twice in his Waku-Waku course in Puyo Puyo Fever 2. Then he succeeds after the match.
  • An escape option in Rides With Strangers. If your sketch meter is high or if the driver seems dangerous, you can jump out of the car. If you do this twice, though, you'll have to start all over again.
  • Near the end of RoboCop: Rogue City, the New Guy gets abandoned by his mercenaries after he's unable to pay them due to him being cut off from OCP. This, coupled with Robocop having decimated their troops at their point causes their leader to order his remaining forces to stand down and leave, even telling Robo that it's nothing personal.
  • In Saints Row: The Third, Matt Miller does this after the final Deckers mission. In response, Killbane repeatedly subverts You Have Failed Me before affably letting him go.
  • Shadow Complex has an ending in which, rather than go into the Elaborate Underground Base to save his girlfriend, the protagonist simply gets back into his car and drives off, noting to himself how there's plenty of fish in the sea.
  • In the RPG Shadow Madness, at one point, your characters tell some Mooks they'd better run away because they've killed so many already. Amazingly enough, they actually do. In the next room, your characters try it again, but it doesn't work. "So much for sensible enemies..."
  • Shin Megami Tensei:
    • When confronting Hikawa at the Diet Building in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Aradia, her plans ruined, tries to convince Yuko to leave for whatever world comes out of the Conception. Yuko refuses the invitation, leaving Aradia to high-tail out of the Vortex World alone.
    • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, after defeating the angelic Zelenin in the Neutral path, Mastema appears. The player expects another boss battle, but he instead leaves the player with a warning before disappearing for the rest of the game.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog CD, if you leave the controller alone for three minutes with the game unpaused, Sonic gets bored enough to shout "I'm outta here!" and jump off the screen, promptly ending the game with no option to continue.
  • Soundtrack Attack: Having gotten sick of chasing them across the planet, the player character's superior simply calls it and leaves, believing there's no use to keep trying since Homeworld will deal with the planet soon anyway.
  • In South Park: The Stick of Truth, the iconic line at the top of the main page comes up at the end, spoken by the New Kid, who breaks his silence to tell the others that he's had enough of their weird game.
  • Spelunky: The intro to the (nearly) last level shows the giant stone head of Olmec coming to life and squashing one of his caveman worshippers. The other two run for it and disappear from the level.
  • In Star Control II, the Melnorme will abandon the local region of space once the Death March begins. More of an aversion, since they tell the date when they leave right from the start, and they've been running from both branches of Ur-Quan for millennia. And after leaving, they can still be summoned with a hyperwave caster.
  • In StarCraft, the final mission involves Raynor and the player character Magistrate breaking away from the Sons of Korhal after the fall of New Gettysberg.
  • Suikoden II:
    • You have the option to do this shortly before Neclord attacks Tinto. Nanami talks the main character into fleeing with her, and they make a run for it just as zombies invade the city. Shu catches up with them shortly after and chews both of them out for their cowardice, revealing that their actions indirectly led to the death of Ridley. From there, the player has the choice of sticking to their guns and abandoning the army for good, or returning with everyone's trust in them having taken a serious blow.
    • Rowd. Despite everything he did, he ultimately ends up running away after the Highland army is defeated, and never faces any punishment for all of his crimes.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario RPG:
      • If Mario decides to skip the Justified Tutorial in the beginning of the game, Toad will boast He Knows About Timed Hits and The Goomba training dummy will respond with this trope.
      • A lot of Mooks in Bowser's castle will flee from your party instead of fighting you if Bowser is currently one of the three fighting members. Seeing as they turned coat on him, it makes sense. This is actually a good way to avoid fights that would otherwise cost you health and resources.
      • After the party defeats Exor, Bowser tries to pull this trope on Mario, saying that because he has his castle back now, there's no reason for him to keep helping the heroes. Geno coolly reminds Bowser that if they don't stop the source of the evil, more monsters will come and attack Bowser's castle again. Bowser begrudgingly returns to the party.
    • Occasionally, if you die in a Super Mario Maker level, instead of playing the standard death sound, you will instead hear Mario hit the ground, get up, get in a car, start it up, and drive away. This goes on for a good 20 seconds.
    • Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle: Whenever Rabbid Peach is in the defeated party, she storms off from the group, and from off-screen, she throws her wig, crown, and earrings to the party.
  • Said word for word in Tales of Vesperia by a commentator in the Colosseum.
  • In Terraria, while the child Angler has HP and takes damage just like all the other NPCs, when he runs out he won't die in a shower of blood like the others, but vanish in a puff of smoke, with the game reporting that "[Angler name] has left!" Same thing applies with the Princess.
  • Trials of Mana has Goremand pull this off, if your chosen main character is not Kevin or Charlotte. He'll stick around long enough to tell the party that the Big Bad and his goons are waiting for them, says how his own master was killed, and then teleports away to get out of there before he's the next.
  • Uncharted:
    • In general, Nate himself will often throw one of these out when he realizes that the treasure he's chasing isn't worth dying over. However, Chronic Hero Syndrome then kicks in and, with a bit of prodding from others and a moment of pause, he comes to realize that he's in the best position to stop the Big Bad from misusing the treasure for their own evil ends and he dives back in to ensure that doesn't happen.
    • Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: After having had enough of Rafe's obsession with treasure and seeing the disaster it has led to, Nadine, The Dragon to Rafe, abandons him and leaves him to die along with the Drake brothers in a burning ship.
  • Undertale:
    • In Mad Dummy's fight, as he rants that he and you will be fighting forever due to not being able to damage each other, he suddenly gets hit with Napstablook's tears, which he assumes to be acid rain, and decides to bail.
    • This is how you befriend Undyne on a Pacifist run; she won't accept you trying to spare her, so the only non-lethal option is to just leave through the cave she was guarding when the option becomes available, then keep leaving again every time she rechallenges you until you make it to Hotland, where her armor causes her to pass out from the heat, followed by you resuscitating her with water from a nearby cooler.
  • In The Urinal Game, you can choose to leave without peeing. This is the wrong choice for all levels except the last.
  • In Valkyria Chronicles, Jaeger walks out after being defeated, as he believes that Gallia will not be easily conquered. Partially redeeming since he's serving under a Deal with the Devil in exchange for his homeland's independence.
  • Vector Thrust's AI won't hesitate to leg it for a variety of reasons ranging from being a wimp, running out of missiles and shells, facing a technologically or numerically superior foe, or the situation turning awry. On the other hand, they become more aggressive when they think they have the upper hand.
  • This is a potential scenario for The Wolf Among Us, where if Bigby killed The Crooked Man and dragged his corpse to the Witching Well, he will have to listen to everyone attending the trial criticizing him for what he has done, even if he is played like a good guy. One of the ways you can respond to them is you can leave the trial and criticize everyone for criticizing him while throwing the Crooked Man's body down the Well. Everyone watching will be shocked and speechless after watching him yell at them and leave. This quote really says it all:
    Bigby: You know what? Fuck this. We've been through Hell trying to keep you all safe, trying to make you all fucking happy! But all you do is complain! So FUCK THIS!
  • The Legion expansion to World of Warcraft starts with the Horde doing this, after realizing that the demonic invasion force is ridiculously huge and they simply do not have enough people to keep fighting. Unfortunately, although making this decision saves the Horde: it leads to the death of the Alliance's beloved leader, King Varian Wrynn. This ruins the treaties that had temporarily ended hostilities between the factions, and leads to an all out world war in the next expansion.
    • There was apparently also some divine shenanigans going on here, but how much this meddling affected the situation is hotly contested.
  • In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, if a Council nation's panic levels reach critical, the nation will end up withdrawing from the XCOM project, cutting off funding and resources to try and deal with the alien invasion on their own.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles:
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Upon realising how strong the team has become , Dickson promptly announces that he has no desire to be a martyr for his cause, and turns to leave. Subverted in that he's actually mortally wounded, and doesn't want to let the party see him die.
    • While not a plot point in Xenoblade Chronicles X, the boss theme "Uncontrollable" references this trope in its lyrics.
      "Can we find the key to life? I don't want to be a part. There's a spaceship we can ride, now it's time to ride..."
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: When the Kevesi and Agnian trios first meet, and are attacked by Consul D, Noah thinks that he needs to grab Mio and run. Then he does a Double Take and wonders why his first instinct is to grab the girl who was trying to kill him just moments ago and run away from the fight. It is eventually revealed that Noah and Mio have been in a Reincarnation Romance for quite a long time; Noah got so tired of watching her die in the endless rebellion against the Consuls that he just escaped with her. In fact, one incarnation eventually became one of the immortal Consuls, bringing himself and his version of Mio out of the cycle of reincarnation entirely.
  • Yes, Your Grace: The Invading Refugees turn out to be fleeing a brutal civil war in their home country.
  • In Yggdra Union, Mizer is one of the few enemies to survive clashing with your army because he eventually does this.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum, defeating Yami Bakura will make him run off and complain that the tournament wasn't important anyway.


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