Sunk Cost Fallacies in Video Games.
Video Games:
- Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG:
- Prime Minister Morgalia constantly tries to justify selling out Vulcanite to Zeta as necessary to provide for herself and her daughter Chase, and refuses to own up to her actions even after Chase leaves her, even though deep down she knows she's in the wrong. At the end of Chapter 2, if Chase is the one to sacrifice herself to save the party, Morgalia screams that all the crimes she committed for herself and Chase now mean nothing. Chase retorts that her actions will lead to Zeta and Vulcanite being freed from Zazz while only Morgalia's actions will amount to nothing.
- In the event that Rogue/Kael is recruited. Virgo will turn against the party because she believes it's better for them to abandon the revolution and flee than to risk humanity returning. Kael points out that the rebels already suffered too many losses to back down, but Virgo subtly implies that Kael is engaging in this fallacy. However, Kael retorts that running away wouldn't protect the party from Zeta for long anyways.
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, this is one of Edelgard's Fatal Flaws. She absolutely refuses to accept any outcome for the war for Fódlan other than her in complete control of the continent, even when she's cornered in her capital city, Byleth's forces are breathing right down her neck, and on Azure Moon, Dimitri is directly offering her a peaceful surrender. If she quits now, everything she sacrificed for her vision of a new Fódlan was for nothing. She also makes it clear that if it comes down to it, she would rather accept her own death than surrender: On Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, she outright tells Byleth to execute her in order to prevent the empire from trying to rally around her even in imprisonment, while on Azure Moon she implicitly commits a Suicide by Cop to make Dimitri finish her off.
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker actually warns the player about this. During a standard game, you have fifteen minutes per shift to salvage whatever you can from a vessel. While you can choose to continue salvaging from the same location on the following day, the game will warn you that it might not be an efficient use of your time. Depending on how much you'd salvaged the first day, it may be more profitable to abandon that ship and start on a new one — especially if you'd already met the available salvage goals, as that represents about 90% of the ship's overall value.
- Aresh, the Arc Villain of Jack's loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2, uses a version of this to explain why he wants to restart the Pragia facility — the people running it did such horrible things to everyone there, including him, that they must have been pursuing some greater purpose, and its near-destruction during a riot means that all the pain that happened there was for nothing. Jack, meanwhile, is understandably scornful of the idea that the suffering caused at Pragia meant anything more profound than "the people running this place need to die".
- Prayer of the Faithless: Vanessa justifies her draconian polices in the name of The Needs of the Many, insisting there are no other alternatives. In the Tired ending, it's revealed that she rejected an alternative proposal because she recognized just how evil her plans to save people through Infusion were, and didn't want to acknowledge that there were any other paths they might have taken.
- Right before the beginning of Red Dead Redemption 2, the van der Linde gang steals $150,000 (worth a little north of $4 million in today's dollar) off of a banking ferry. In their hasty retreat, the leader Dutch has to stash the take. The heist was supposed to their One Last Job as it was big enough for all two dozen of them to retire to normal lives. However, Dutch spends the rest of the main story of the game pouring more and more money into replacing the take which only further gets the law on their tail as well. Even though they have the money they need just sitting there, they just need to be patient. The more logical decision would have been to have the gang keep up operations as normal for a year or two and then have him go back to get the money or hire someone else to do it once the trail's gone cold, but Dutch is clearly suffering from ever increasing Sanity Slippage as the game goes on.
- This trope is what tragically amplifies the various misplaced Hero Complexes — specifically, Martin Walker and possibly John Konrad's — to catastrophic levels in Spec Ops: The Line. When the Damned 33rd failed in evacuating Dubai's civilians from encroaching sandstorms, trapping all of them together in the cut-off city, they somehow decided they had the moral authority to enforce martial law at gunpoint, resulting in various atrocities they felt compelled to continue, lest they invite further chaos and admit their actions were pointless. Martin Walker, when he arrives, falls into the same trap of thinking he has to "rescue everyone", is forced to kill in self defense, and by the end just winds up killing people left and right in the delusional hope that he can justify everything by killing some Final Boss. The game ultimately shows how easy good intentions cause bad results, and how people will keep persisting on a course of action rather than admit they are the problem making everything worse."None of this would have happened if you just stopped."
- Spider-Man: Miles Morales: Roxxon invested a lot of money into developing Nuform, so despite how it's turned out to toxic, they're intent upon claiming otherwise and going through with their plans to build a "clean energy" reactor in Harlem. Even after Spider-Man gets involved with the underground resistance moment, they refuse to cut their losses.
- Uncharted 4: A Thief's End:
- This comes up when Nate's team discusses simply leaving the island, as his older brother Sam doesn't want to go without having any treasure to show for their efforts.
- Rafe also brings this up to Nadine near the end, pointing out that if they walk away before reaching Avery's ship, then all the sacrifices made along the way will have been pointless. Nadine retorts that there's perfectly good treasure in the cavern they've already reached, and walking into another death trap which could kill all of them would also render all their efforts pointless.
- At the end of a "No Mercy" run (i.e. a "kill everyone in the game including and especially major characters" run) of Undertale, the Final Boss points out that you're pressing forward with your murdering spree not out of any sort of "good" or "evil" desire, but simply because you can, and because you can, you feel like you have to, even though there's no real benefit to persevering at this point. They also gladly point out that the best thing to do at this point is to seriously give up and do literally anything else. Because really, what do you personally have to gain from not only massacring the entire underground but then also destroying the entire world and selling your soul to reset the game at the cost of ruining all future good endings?i always thought the anomaly was doing this cause they were unhappy. and when they got what they wanted, they would stop all this. and maybe all they needed was... i dunno. some good food, some bad laughs, some nice friends. but that's ridiculous, right? yeah, you're the type of person who won't EVER be happy. you'll keep consuming timelines over and over, until... well. hey. take it from me, kid. someday... you gotta learn when to QUIT. and that day's TODAY.
Visual Novels
- In Kiss of Revenge, the protagonist's mother was killed by a medical error at Ebisu Hospital, which was then covered up. The protagonist has devoted twelve years of their life to pursuing revenge, namely by getting hired at Ebisu in order to take it down from within. While her misgivings grow over time, she repeatedly reminds herself that if she doesn't stick to her guns, then all of that effort will have been wasted... right?
- The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog: If the player tries out the slot machine nine times in a row (while failing to win a single time), Tails asks them if they've ever heard of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. The player promptly describes the concept while not realizing why Tails brought it up in the first place.Player: The Sunk Cost Fallacy? The phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial? Of course I've heard of it, why do you ask?
