Characters who believe that "Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!" in Video Games.
- The Knights Templar in Assassin's Creed scoff at the Assassins' idea of peace through freedom since they believe peace through force is the only way to make sure said peace is everlasting.
- Subverted in Backyard Sports with pretty much every character in there. They may have grown up, but, fortunately they're just as happy as they were when they were younger kids (maybe even more.)
- In Ban G Dream Girls Band Party, Poppin'Party's band story involves them "fighting" against the realistically minded town officials who are scrapping the town's annual festival for budget reasons. They're told multiple times by the adults that they're just kids who don't understand how the world works.
- Cyberpunk 2077: Subverted. Of the two protagonists, Johnny is the idealist, who has spent his entire life fighting against corporate heavy-handedness and for freedom for the common man. Johnny is also by far the more jaded and bitter, angry at the sheeple who support the status quo and at how little seems to change in spite of his best efforts. V, in contrast, is a cheerfully hedonistic materialist, who has little interest in anything beyond the next paycheck, job, or thrill, and whose general opinion on the Crapsack World they live in is "How can I make this work for me?".
- In Deus Ex, two semi-major supporting characters are idealistic teenage members of La Résistance helping you battle the Ancient Conspiracy. By Deus Ex: Invisible War, long after their first plans have failed, they have grown up and become the cold-blooded, manipulative dictators of Earth and the new leaders of the Ancient Conspiracy, claiming that they did what they had to do to preserve human society.
- Also worth noting is that Nicolette and Chad were really only fighting against Majestic-12, NOT The Illuminati as a whole, so they didn't go on to join the same group they were originally fighting (and their expressed goals didn't change as much as their methods did). If you speak to Nicolette enough in the original game, it becomes obvious that she's not entirely innocent even then (and that she sees her alliance with Chad and Silhouette through very cynical eyes - considering their value as a tool of the Illuminati just like her mother did). Chad, however, may have started out more idealistic and does give an "I can't believe I was that naive" speech in the second game.
- In Devil Survivor, Keisuke winds up playing reluctant mentor to Midori; she refuses to listen to his warnings partly because he feels this way. Over time, he grows more desperate to convince her and more cynical, until he snaps and goes Knight Templar. This doesn't help convince her that he's right, mind you.
- This exchange in Dragon Age: Origins.Protagonist: What could the teyrn hope to gain by betraying the king?
Alistair: The throne? He's the queen's father. Still, I can't see how he'll get away with murder.
Flemeth: You speak as if he would be the first king to gain his throne that way. Grow up, boy. - Fate/stay night's Archer is a very literal example. He is, literally, the grown-up version of the Wide-Eyed Idealist main character who followed his ideals and became a hero, gone extremely cynical over the fact that his path towards being a hero is littered with the corpses of those who had to die to keep that ideal. Ironically, in all the routes he ends up begrudgingly conceding that his past self's idealism isn't quite so bad and dies usually trusting that Shirou won't end up like him.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VI: when the heroes deliver their lines on what life is, and how love is so important to each of their lives, Kefka responds with "This is pathetic! You all sound like lines from a self-help booklet!" In fact, all his speeches near this scene convey the same message.
- Completely inverted in Final Fantasy VIII. Squall starts off believing that his own cynical, antisocial viewpoints are the correct ones, but as the game progresses and Rinoa and the friends he makes help him both emotionally mature and deals with his mental trauma, he becomes more idealistic.
- This little exchange in Dissidia Final Fantasy between Cloud and Cecil in regards to Firion's dream of an ideal world.Cecil: Did Firion give you his answer?
Cloud: Yeah. He says he has a dream...and that he'll keep fighting to make it come true.
Cecil: Sounds like Firion, sure enough.
Cloud: He told you?
Cecil: Yes, although he was embarrassed at first. He said he wants to create a world where flowers grow in perpetual peace.
Cloud: Sounds so...childlike.
Cecil: Honest men have honest dreams.
- Cody Travers from Final Fight and later the Street Fighter series. While it is not actually seen in the games, multiple games tell the story of his downfall, which occurs after the ending of the original Final Fight. Cody and his friends go out to save his girlfriend from the Big Bad in Final Fight. On the way, he beats up a corrupt cop named Edi, who later arrests the hero for assault and battery. Next, his girlfriend dumps him, and leaves the country to study abroad. Afterwards, he is let out of jail and tries to get revenge by fighting criminals outside. He gets arrested again, and becomes addicted to fighting within prison. He then eventually breaks out and joins the Street Fighting cast in their tournament(s). He usually fights alongside his best friend Guy (who also comes from the Final Fight series), who is always telling Cody that he is a good person. Cody, however, usually claims that he will never be the hero again, and often states that all he has left is fighting (which he often exclaims is pointless).
- In God of War III, Kratos has such an exchange with Pandora, telling her hope is for fools. She responds with a plea that hope gives people strength. Eventually, she proves to be right as Kratos is actually empowered by hope from Pandora's Box.
- A variant of this trope appears in the final act of Grim Fandango:Hector: Oh Manny, so cynical. What happened to you, Manny, that caused to lose your sense of hope, your love of life?
Manny: I died. - In the Injustice: Gods Among Us franchise, not only does Superman and the rest of his Regime believe this thanks to The Joker succeeding in creating a perfect "one bad day" for him, but people who try to convince them otherwise tend to get brutalized at best in response.
- From Jak X: Combat Racing:
- In L.A. Noire, veteran Vice Detective Roy Earle says this to Cole Phelps when they discuss the crackdown (or lack thereof) on illegal narcotics in the city.Roy: Drugs are prohibited. Doesn't mean people don't want to take them. Limiting supply doesn't mean that we have limited demand.
Cole: I understand that. I know that the average Joe needs to unwind a little, let his hair down at the end of the week. But morphine? Heroin?
Roy: It's important to demonize hop, Phelps. Looks good in the papers. But when all's said and done, it's just another chemical like booze. A lot of people in high places think we are doing the city a favor by keeping the dope rolling into Central Avenue. Donelly certainly believes we need to keep them anesthetized.
Cole: Better jobs and opportunities would go a lot further.
Roy: Will you listen to yourself? - In The Last of Us Part II Abby gives Owen the standard "I Grew Up" line when he brought up looking for regrouping Fireflies.
- This article
claims that, since 
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess went with a realistic art style, Nintendo ought to have made Link more "realistic", namely, by turning him into an antihero. The author's argument hinges in large part on his assertion that people were "very disappointed" with Twilight Princess because the realistic art style supposedly ought to have been paired with a non-idealistic hero. The article became Hilarious in Hindsight because, a mere three days later, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was revealed with an art style that was decidedly less realistic than the one in Twilight Princess, with a Link who is just as much of a normal hero as both the one in Twilight Princess and every other Link. - * Like a Dragon: Takumi Someya from the sixth game in the series represents the newer yakuza of his time, of criminals only interested in the profit margin. To him, to be a Yakuza is less an oath or lifestyle and more a career in business. He disdains the Honor Before Reason ethos and their traditions, even abstaining from getting an irezumi under the belief that if it messes with your ability to make money, then it's better that he doesn't have onenote .
- In the Medieval Chapter of Live A Live, the former hero Hasshe has this attitude; he despises people in general for forgetting him after he saved the day, and considers idealistic heroes like Oersted to be stupid. He recants his position at the end, though, and tells Oersted to keep fighting so long as any one person believes in him. But when the world curbstomps Oersted's idealism too, Oersted decides to get revenge and takes up the mantle of The Lord of Dark, Odio. In the Final Chapter after Odio brings together all the other heroes to confront him, Odio tears down their heroic motivations as selfishness.
- Overwatch: Once, the organization was led by a certain soldier named Jack Morrison, who's pretty much an Ideal Hero, charismatic, compassionate, and also something of a babyface, always believing in the best of people. Because of this idealism, he ended up oblivious of many darker things running beneath his organization, his friends' issues that cannot be solved with mere 'friendship and heroism is awesome', all causing people to lose faith at his organization and the goodness he radiated, and one of these friends, Gabriel Reyes, ended up launching a betrayal in their headquarter at Swiss that seemingly claimed both lives. Jack survived, but afterwards he realized that idealism got him nowhere in trying to bring peace. Now he wanders the world as a mercenary/vigilante who, while fighting the good fight, is extremely pragmatic, cynical, and borderline ruthless, nothing like the Ideal Hero he was in the past, now he's Soldier: 76.
- In Persona 5, Sae Niijima is having dinner with her younger sister and ward Makoto when Makoto wonders whether their father would have supported the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. Sae then launches into a tirade against Makoto, saying that she blames her father's sense of justice for him getting himself killed and leaving her to raise Makoto, whom she regards as a burden, and believes that Makoto only has the luxury of thinking about such things because she doesn't have to work for a living. Sae immediately regrets saying this and tries to apologize, but Makoto is reduced to tears.
- Cyrus tells the hero/ine of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl that things like friendship, compassion, and love are just illusions people use to block out the horrible reality of their suffering. He then comments on the hero/ine drawing strength from their compassion.
- Sailor Moon: Another Story: When a Crystal Tokyo couple praises the Silver Crystal because it brought peace to the world, Marduk immediately chastises them and remarks that a lot of people died fighting over the Silver Crystal, so it is plenty bloodstained. Nabu also seems to have this to an extent, as while she acknowledges that the Silver Crystal brought peace, she doubts that it can last forever.
- Skullgirls: A major theme in Annie's story mode. She actually is a centuries-old Skullgirl-fighting Magical Girl Warrior and plays herself on the kids' show Annie, Girl of the Stars to hopefully instill better ideals to the next generation (such as 'don't wish on the Skull Heart, it never works'), but she's continually frustrated about how all her viewers grow up and dismiss her messages as childish despite her efforts, as seen when she has to fight Ms. Fortune and talk her out of her desire to wish for her friends back despite Ms. Fortune having been a fan of her as a kid. This has made Annie herself turn cynical, and her story is about her both defeating the skullgirl and regaining her idealism with the help of a young fan.
- In Starcraft II this comes up in the cinematic A Better Tomorrow, after the heroes have broken open a prison. Matt Horner claims that the victory was breaking out all the political prisoners. They are fighting to expose Mengsk as a war criminal, build a better tomorrow, and not act of vengeance. Tosh calls this naive saying that tyranny is only ever succeeded by tyranny, and all you can do is fight against the current enemy. Raynor comments that the better future will come, but those fighting out of hate (like him and Tosh) will have no place in it.
- Keeper, the boss of the Imperial Agent class in Star Wars: The Old Republic takes this attitude to Agents who make too many Light Side choices. Not so much that he disapproves in principle, but that he fears that idealism will cause the agent to burn out.
- Tactics Ogre has this all over the place in the Chaos route:
- The core of the conflict between Cerya and Cistina in the Valerian Liberation Front is over this. Cerya is willing to do what she and others believe must be done to make a better future for Valeria; while Cistina and her fellow members Folcort and Byan, are much more idealistic and believe a nation made out of bloodshed will only cause more bloodshed to happen to maintain this peace. This is ultimately why she decides to travel with Denam&Co.
- Denam in the Chaotic route gets routinely called out on this. Denam refuses to compromise his principles, and his enemies tell him that while he's not a bad person, he's not really doing anything. It's not until late in Chapter 3 that he finally starts doing something besides stick to his principles and flee from those who want him dead for act(s) he didn't commit.
- Blood Knight Arngrim from Valkyrie Profile creates a first impression by talking down his crippled brother Roland for doing nothing by drawing art and dreaming. Roland lashes back, since he cannot understand why Arngrim takes pleasure in killing either.
