Characters who are Sour Outside, Sad Inside in Video Games.
- Bug Fables: For the first half of the game, Queen Elizant II is stern, frigid, and harsh, and has alienated a great many of her kingdom's allies and banned ladybugs with very few exceptions. More than a few bugs openly despise her for her attitude, Leif included. But it's revealed in Chapter 5 that under her cold exterior lies a sad bug with an inferiority complex who's trying too hard to be a strong ruler. Once she opens her heart to Team Snakemouth, she truly becomes the kind and fair ruler the Ant Kingdom needs and repairs relations with the people she pushed away.
- Mandy from Bully is the quintessential Alpha Bitch, but it's eventually revealed that she just bullies people to compensate for her own insecurities.
- When Etna of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness interacts with anyone she's normally a huge, unpleasant bitch, but reading her diary reveals she's surprisingly melancholic. Laharl is also a huge jerk (though not to Etna's degree), but losing his mother left a deep scar that shows him as a miserable person whenever he's alone.
- Marcy Long, a survivor of the Quincy Massacre in Fallout 4 is an example. Her surly bitchy demeanor towards everyone is an armor to mask the grief of having lost her son Kyle. And unfortunately, she doesn't exactly get better.
- Final Fantasy:
- Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII puts an extraordinary amount of effort into being brusque, unsociable, and unsympathetic to others in order to keep anyone from getting too close to him. As the game progresses, it reveals that he does this because he's actually cripplingly insecure and desperately afraid of coming to care about and rely on others only to lose them, which he believes is inevitable.
- Lulu from Final Fantasy X is a milder example; she puts up a very cold, alienating front - being outright abrasive to Wakka, Tidus, and (very occasionally) Yuna - but is revealed to just be an exceptionally sad person inside as the game progresses, due to the loss of her fiancé, Chappu, Lady Ginnem, her first Summoner due to her own inability and the fact that Yuna will die too once they finish the pilgrimage.
- Lightning qualifies as this in Final Fantasy XIII, at least in the first few chapters of the game. She comes across as confrontational, aggressive, and outright cold with people she has just met. In reality, she's deeply concerned about her sister Serah and, considering that she herself was branded a L'Cie, had pretty firm justification for being under some heavy stress. She begins to open up to Hope and show more of her inner fragility as the plot advances.
- Goddess of Victory: NIKKE: Eunhwa's near constant put downs and harsh Jerkass attitude towards Team Counters are revealed to be her essentially lashing out at Rapi, still hurt and upset at the fact that her ex-teammate simply resigned without word or warning one day.
- Xigbar from Kingdom Hearts. He's a sarcastic, abrasive jerk who condescendingly trolls everyone he meets... and the secret reports in III reveal that underneath all the verbal barbs is a lonely old man who's tired of it all and just wants to see his friends again. Moreso in The Stinger where he's revealed to be Luxu, who had the unenviable position of having an as-of-yet-explained task placed upon him by the Master of Masters.
- Jack, from Mass Effect 2, as a result of her horrific past. She gets better by Mass Effect 3 if she survives.
- Adachi, the Serial Killer in Persona 4 displayed this. A Sour Prude and Straw Nihilist who's shown to have deep-rooted apathy and depression whenever he's alone. For all his claims that he finds fun in the bedlam caused by the murders he had committed, he can't even find satisfaction in his own sadism and depravity.
- In Rakuen, Tony is a Grumpy Old Man who snaps at everyone who enters his room, while his Morizora's Forest counterpart is a cranky old bear who tramples the Leebles' vegetable gardens whenever he goes on a rampage. Both complain that nobody from their family ever visits them. The process of getting his part of the "Mori no Kokoro" reveals that when his son Benny died in an accident while under the watch of his daughter Christina, Tony stopped talking to Christina out of grief. She grew up assuming he hated her, when in reality Tony blamed himself for Benny's death but had no idea how to deal with his emotions.
- Shane from Stardew Valley suffers from chronic depression and a Soul-Sucking Retail Job. His coping mechanisms are alcohol, more alcohol, and lashing out at anyone who so much as speaks to him. The more persistent you are trying to befriend him, the more abrasive he gets trying to push you away... until he snaps completely and tries to throw himself off a cliff.Why are you talking to me? Go away.
You're still trying to be friends with me? How rude do I have to be for you to take a hint? - This characterization is often given to Waluigi from the Super Mario franchise. On the outside, the guy is an unrepentant Jerkass who does things just to make people angry or because it's mean. On the inside, he knows he's never going to win, and that he's way out of his league.
- Kazuya from the Tekken series. Once, he was a kind and frail boy that was treated badly by his father, who actually was very, very wary of him having inherited his mother's Devil Gene, culminating in an attempt to kill him, causing Kazuya to turn to help from a demon to achieve revenge. Because of this, Kazuya becomes merciless and cold and after defeating his father, he turned even more evil to rule his company. One day, though, a girl named Jun meets Kazuya and the two are attracted instantly. Jun is able to get close to Kazuya and she realizes that Kazuya isn't actually evil, but has a demon inside him and that his true nature is kind and good, her powers suppress the demonic powers in Kazuya, causing his good side to come out and fight the demon to free him. This causes Kazuya to weaken, which gave his father, Heihachi, the chance to retake his company and throw Kazuya in a volcano. After he gets revived in the events of Tekken 4, he completely abandons the "depression" part and goes full villain in order to get revenge on his father. By the end of Tekken 7's story, he succeeds and becomes the next biggest threat to the world, forcing his half-brother Lars to convince Kazuya's son Jin (Who's currently not any better than his father by any stretch of imagination, mind you) to end this.
- Jack van Burace from Wild ARMs has shades of this. He's often abrasive and rude, especially to Cecilia. Beneath his exterior is a heavy dose of guilt due to him being the sole survivor of the demon attack on Arctica and being unable to protect those he cares about.
- Sylvanas Windrunner from World of Warcraft, so very much. Beneath all her cruelty she is mainly just filled with sorrow and loneliness, and always seems on the verge of a Despair Event Horizon.
