Took A Level In Jerkass / Video Games

• Ace Attorney:
  • Ema Skye is introduced as an aspiring forensic investigator, full of useful investigation techniques and eager to meet people in the business. However, eight years later she finds herself in a job she didn't want (detective work) after doing poorly on her forensic investigation exam and her derailed dream definitely takes its toll on her personality. The Ema of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is a sour and jaded woman who doesn't offer much help (unless she can use some of her forensic investigation techniques, at which point some of her original personality leaks out). By Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Ema finally becomes the forensic investigator she always strived to be and is a much happier person.
  • Phoenix Wright, while a nervous wreck most of the time, is a big time First-Person Smartass. By the time Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney rolls around, Phoenix is falsely accused of using forged evidence in court and is barred from practicing law. The turn of events has Phoenix become a bit more open with his smartass remarks rather than keeping such thoughts to himself (such as comparing a mob boss's wife to a sherman whale) and is prone to acting very cryptic and aloof, which greatly annoys Apollo to no end. Phoenix returns to his old self in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies since the charges against him were dropped and he was allowed to practice law again.
  • In the DLC case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Miles Edgeworth is extremely callous and mean spirited towards Phoenix Wright during the trials, even though he went through Character Development several games ago where he grew out of that attitude. It's handwaved by him explaining that he's under a ton of stress from the prosecution office since no one wanted to take on the case, thus he had to do all the work himself and he'll feel better taking his frustration out on Phoenix. His attitude, as well as the supporting characters that are present, are a nod to the first game.
• Batman becomes more and more callous as the Batman: Arkham Series progresses, attempting to push the people in his life further and further away out of fear that if they keep getting involved with him they'll end up dead. His fear isn't entirely unfounded, as he's been led to believe that Jason Todd had been killed by Joker while under his tutelage (when the reality is even worse), his love interest Talia al Ghul is killed in Batman: Arkham City, and he's tricked into believing Oracle had been Driven to Suicide by Scarecrow's Fear Toxin in Batman: Arkham Knight.
• Nathan Spencer from Bionic Commando (1988) goes from a typical cocky action hero in Rearmed to a brooding anti-hero in the 2009 sequel.
• Between Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! and Borderlands 3, Aurelia Hammerlock. A downplayed example; in the first game, she's evil, and calls herself as much, but has enough Pet the Dog moments to make her less evil than Nisha, Wilhelm, or Jack. In 3, every one of her sympathetic traits is lost, and she's a simple, utterly evil villain.
• Case 03: True Cannibal Boy: After the events of Extra Case: My Girlfriend's Secrets, Marty becomes a toxic and controlling boyfriend towards Sally, to the point where he forces her to help cover up Shadow's evidence. After the Cannibal Boy of Mt. Candyhouse kills Sally, Marty loses whatever scruples he had left and kills women in order to find a new body for Sally, whether Sally likes it or not.
• In Condemned: Criminal Origins, Ethan Thomas is a nice enough guy, a gifted investigator, but personality-wise, he's never too impolite, despite clearly being under some major stress. Come Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Ethan's undergone about a year of alcoholism as well as some Jerkass power leveling. He curses all the time and is routinely impolite and distrustful towards everyone who tries to help him. This is in fact underlined by the change in his voice actor and character design (he goes from an Ambiguously Brown SCU agent wearing a nondescript police uniform, to a rather less ambiguously Caucasian bum in grunge clothes). The personality change is possibly justified by the year of vagrancy and the events of the first game.
• Crash Bandicoot briefly falls into this trope in Crash Tag Team Racing; numerous bonus cutscenes focus on his screwball antics inside Von Clutch's Motorworld, ranging from feeding Park Drones mouldy apples to disintegrating them in rocket engines. Granted this reversed back in the following game, where he goes back to being a Kindhearted Simpleton.
• Used as a game mechanic in Darkest Dungeon. If a hero gains a certain amount of stress, they have a chance to become afflicted. Afflicted heroes will be heavily affected both stat and personality wise, as they become paranoid, selfish, hopeless, or even abusive towards the other party members. This includes verbally abusing or proclaiming The End Is Nigh to increase others' stress, or to refuse to give heals or cures even if heavily needed, among other things. "Abusive" is particularly assholish, consisting as it does of a constant barrage of verbal artillery, although "Selfish" isn't far behind.
  Focused!Musketeer: See now? You have the heart of a hunter!
  Abusive!Musketeer: Has bumblebrains got themselves an owie?
• Dragon Age II:
  • Anders takes several levels before and during the game. Being possessed by an increasingly pissed-off spirit that had no idea of being nice to begin with and gradually succumbing to it does not help a bit. In Act I, he's a bit grimmer than before, but still kindhearted, snarky, and occasionally goofy. In Act II, he eventually attacks (and kills, unless you stop him) an innocent mage he just saved from templars during a bout of Unstoppable Rage, panics, and retreats into a Heroic BSoD. In Act III, he's become completely paranoid of the rest of the party (except for Hawke and Varric), quick to swing between manic determination and deep melancholy, is completely obsessed with his cause, and some of the party banter implies that he might be hallucinating.
  • The Spirit of Justice itself took a few levels in jerkass when it possessed Anders — it's explicitly stated in-game that it was overwhelmed and corrupted by Anders's anger at what was going on, and back in Dragon Age: Origins, it was actually much more reasonable and willing to listen than it is in the sequel.
  • Due to how the personality system works, The player character Hawke can slowly change their personality over time to go from a nice paragon hero type or a funny charming neutral type to an aggressive asshole.
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: Crow notes that when Kekkan ran the Church of the Vessel, the organization was more benevolent, but ever since Akari took over, Kekkan became more bitter and only focused on increasing her own standing in Zeta's hierarchy.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Deep in the series's backstory, the Dragon Cult originated in Atmora, homeland of the Atmorans (ancient proto-Nords). There, the men worshiped the dragons, and the priests demanded tribute, as well as set down laws so dragons and men could live together peacefully. When the dragons and their cult moved to Tamriel, they became far less benevolent. They ruled men with an iron fist, eventually enslaving them. No one really knows why the Cult changed, though it is implied that is was the result of Alduin's desire to rule the world instead of end it.
  • Two entire races take a level by the time of Skyrim:
    • The Nords, who for much of the series (and backstory) have been a Proud Warrior Race of Boisterous Bruiser Horny Vikings who would gladly swap battle stories over a tankard of mead even with non-Nords, have become bitter and disillusioned following the Great War. They have become prone to Fantastic Racism toward any non-Nords and believe that any Nord who doesn't share the mentality that "Skyrim belongs to the Nords" should be shunned as not a "true Nord". Largely justified, as Skyrim has been divided by Civil War in which Both Sides Have a Point, making it all the more devastating, which feeds the disillusionment of the Nords. (The Imperial-aligned Nords believe that Skyrim has always supported the Empire and that you shouldn't abandon an ally just because they have fallen on hard times, while the Stormcloaks believe that the Empire is old and weak, exemplified by them agreeing to the crippling White-Gold Concordant with the Aldmeri Dominion to end the Great War, and that Skyrim is better off being independent.)
    • The Altmer (High Elves), while they've always been haughty and snobbish, have taken an extreme level in Jerkass under the leadership of the extremist Thalmor. The Thalmor play the Altmer's (not entirely unjustified) racial stereotypes up to eleven. Their Fantastic Racism has hit all time high levels, especially toward the races of Men, and they've essentially been left unchecked as most Altmer who oppose the Thalmor have been exiled, arrested, or outright murdered. They also forcefully annexed the province of Valenwood (homeland of the Bosmer [Wood Elves]) and used Blatant Lies to appeal to the Khajiit, gaining Elsweyr as a client state.
• In Fallout 3, the Capital Wasteland branch of the Brotherhood of Steel is tied with the Commonwealth Minutemen as the most unambiguously heroic faction in the entire post-apocalyptic USA due to Elder Lyons abandoning his mission for searching the ruins of Washington DC for pre-war technology in favour of a We Help the Helpless attitude towards Wastelanders. By the events of Fallout 4, Elder Lyons has passed away and his (just as noble) daughter Sarah was killed in battle, leaving the Eastern Brotherhood under the control of Arthur Maxson. Under the guidance of Maxson, the Eastern Brotherhood has reverted back to the previous characterization of a conservative, borderline-xenophobic society of technology hunters, with their Fantastic Racism against ghouls, super mutants, and more recently Synths kicked up to eleven. It's also implied that the Capital Wasteland now exists in a form of Ordensstaat, where the people of the Capital Wasteland live as subjects in a restrictive neo-feudalist society.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Palom is an overeager, boastful, and sort of annoying character in the original Final Fantasy IV, but that's probably excusable on account of him being five years old. In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, though, he's kind of a dick for no readily apparent reason before softening up some.
  • Cloud undergoes this twice, first in his childhood he becomes someone who picks fights with any people in his hometown after an accident in Mt. Nibel that leads to him taking the blame for Tifa's injury. Then years between his childhood and Crisis Core, he grew kinder as someone shy, brave, and supportive with really bad self-esteem, and later in Final Fantasy VII, under the influence of the Jenova cells after his Trauma Conga Line, he once again becomes someone rude (though he's relatively nicer to the girls), cocky, reckless, and obsessive person who deliberately antagonises his friends Barret and Wedge and does things like taking salary from a slum-dwelling little girl's school money, as if he regressed back into his childhood behavior. He gets a lot nicer after a few hours of play, but he remains vengeance-obsessed and arrogant until his false persona implodes halfway through the next disk.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Claude described himself as "shiftiness incarnate" and while the other house leaders are never able to completely trust him, he came across as genuinely wanting the best for the land and would do whatever was best for Leicester. In Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, he's much more conniving, overtly manipulating the situation for his own outright gain and more concerned about victory than safety. This comes down to a change of circumstance; in Houses he had little personal stake in the post-timeskip war and unless he spots the thread in Verdant Wind he's not afraid to let one of the larger powers take over peacefully and disappear. In Hopes, the Leicester Alliance is under invasion from Almyra in addition to being caught between the other major powers, meaning he has a horse in the race and desperately has to leverage what advantage he can to avoid being crushed from all sides, even if that costs people their lives — and his honest about a preference for other people's.
• Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a huge jerk compared to his occasional niceness in the movies. He and Dana are having relationship difficulties and are apart at the moment, causing him to be a little grumpy.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Lazlow, a recurring DJ and radio host, is first introduced as the put-upon host of the call-in radio show Chatterbox FM. Later games showcase the breadth of Lazlow's radio career (now spanning 25 years) and reveal him to be an alcoholic fame-seeker, rather than the Only Sane Man he appears to be in Grand Theft Auto III. By 2008, Lazlow is middle-aged, divorced, despised by his parents as well as his children, and now ekes out a living as an on-the-street "journalist" in Liberty City, decrying the state of America and insulting pedestrians. As Lazlow's dialogue is written and voiced by real-life radio host Lazlow Jones, this is a form of Adam Westing. By Grand Theft Auto V, he's even worse off, as his public sexual harassment of Michael's daughter (consensual, quite unfortunately) hits Michael's Berserk Button, humiliating Lazlow in exceptionally funny and degrading ways, such as tattooing a vulgar image on his chest. His radio career is also at his lowest, now working as the immature, unpopular co-host of Chattersphere who can't go a few minutes without making catty remarks at host Michelle Makes.
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV, Michelle, AKA, Karen, is a generally nice girl who seems to feel bad about leading Niko on and is implied to have been press-ganged into working for the IAA. Her sole appearance in Grand Theft Auto V has her ruthlessly interrogating Ferdinand Kerimov, at one point threatening to sodomize him with a flashlight.
• Hitman: Blood Money portrays the normally affable assassin as much more of a jerk. He's hostile towards just about everyone (Diana included) and is so greedy that he cares more about being paid for his services than the crisis his employers (as well as himself!) are facing. He even has an infamous Faux Affably Evil moment where he pretends to offer a postal worker a tip, only to murder him immediately afterwards.
• Ice Age 2: The Meltdown: Crash and Eddie are considerably more annoying here than in the film, at one point flat-out getting the walnut Scrat needs for passing to the next level and refusing to give it to him until he beats them in a rather hard digging mini-game.
• Jak takes one in Jak II: Renegade as a result of being tortured for two years straight at the start of the game. In Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak is a Heroic Mime, but in Jak II, he speaks for the very first time at the beginning of the game, his first words being "I'm gonna kill Praxis!", setting the tone for his attitude throughout the game. He mellows out by Jak 3, though.
• Ms. Applegate from Kindergarten is already a nasty piece of work in the first game, but she's at least Affably Evil when in a stable mood. In Kindergarten 2, she is incredibly unhinged and psychotic, and doesn't bother even pretending to care about the students. It's all but stated to be because she no longer has access to the principal's pills, and is going through withdrawal.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Saïx from Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days goes from being the emotionless bastard we all know and love to smack around in Kingdom Hearts II to his behavior in regards to Xion having borderline monster proportions. Many were happy to learn that you get to fight him again near the end of the game. His beat down is much deserved. That's what happens when you talk smack about Xion like that. That's right, Roxas kicks your ass. This is especially true because Isa is a pretty decent guy in Birth By Sleep. The rest of the Organization doesn't really suffer any drastic personality changes beyond losing the ability to truly care about others, yet Isa goes from a stoic but reasonably friendly boy to the cold-blooded Jerkass Saïx. This is in part because Saïx believes that Lea/Axel values his friendship with Roxas and Xion over his former friendship with Saïx and Subject X and is jealous, and in part because, at that point in time, Saïx already has a piece of Xehanort's heart within him. By the end of Kingdom Hearts III, Saïx gets over his resentment and makes amends with Lea, while atoning for his mistreatment of Xion.
  • Sora (briefly) gains a level in jerkass in Chain of Memories thanks to Namine screwing around with his memories. He also has his selfish moments in Kingdom Hearts II, such as wanting to steal a pirate ship, usurp a dictator for his throne, or hack Tron into singing and dancing.
• Zoey in "The Passing" in Left 4 Dead 2. Compared to her nicer and more open nature in the first game, she becomes outright annoyed and angry with some of the survivors in both teams. The reason for her change of attitude is her trying to cope with the recent death of Bill.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Ingo from Ocarina of Time. While he's not the friendliest person in the game, he's nothing more than a disgruntled employee who complains about Talon's laziness when Link is a kid. After Ganondorf comes to power, he uses the Evil King's "good" graces to take the ranch for himself, exile Talon to Kakariko Village, and proceeds to generally make life miserable for Malon until Link returns and intervenes.
  • Maggie's father in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. When you first meet him, he's a pitiable pauper who is distraught over his daughter being kidnapped. But when Maggie comes back with a massive fortune in Skull Necklaces, he turns into a selfishly greedy bastard who won't even let Maggie get letters from her (sort of) love interest.
• Life Is Strange: Frank is a dour, skeevy drug dealer who threatens Max and Chloe with a knife on several occasions. Max is surprised to discover that he used to date Rachel Amber and looked pretty mellow in their old photographs. In the prequel game taking place three years before, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, Frank does prove to be much more peaceable and almost friendly for a criminal. Chloe thinks fondly of him, and he ultimately saves her life from his knife-wielding business partner, twice.
• Manafinder: While Frederick and Starkas are often at each other's throats, they are still willing to cooperate to some extent and both respect Lambda for her feats as a manafinder. When the Oracle announces that the gods are looking for a new person to bless at the top of Heavensreach, Frederick and Starkas see this as an opportunity to fulfill their own ambitions, and will fight each other to the death to decide who gets to climb to the top. Whoever Lambda didn't agree with will kill the other, and they're willing to kill Lambda too when she stands in their way.
• Mass Effect:
  • Liara acts cold and distant in Mass Effect 2, even if you were lovers by the end of the first game. She also has developed a ruthless streak, and both threatens people with violence and casually has her enemies murdered. If you persist, help her out, and make effort to get her come out of her shell, she eventually reveals that most of her current behavior is a mask, resulting from losing Shepard in the beginning of the game.
  • Whichever of your human comrades (Ashley or Kaidan) survived the first game will become Jerkasses in their cameo in 2, mainly because they've been getting very ugly reports about you working with Cerberus and because it never occurred to anyone else that maybe they should know the whole story. Though if it's your love interest that does the What the Hell, Hero? speech, they'll send you an apology letter, telling you to be careful because they can't lose you a second time.
  • The third game sees the Asari and Salarian Councilors take a few levels in Jerkass (in contrast to the Turian Councilor). They, however, are beaten out by Quarian Admiral Han'Gerrel, who power-levels in Jerkass to the point of doing positively insane things in his attempt to wipe out the Geth, including firing on a Geth Dreadnaught while Shepard and Tali are still inside it — and Tali is not just a fellow Admiral, she's also the daughter of one of his oldest friends. He also puts his ships and crews in serious danger to force other Admirals to support his reckless actions, because the alternative is losing the heart of the Quarian military. If you fail to broker peace between the Quarians and Geth, he has his ships bullrush the Geth fleet. Depending on what choices you made, they either get massacred or complete wipe out the Geth.
  • Renegade Shepard is a jerk from the beginning, and takes a level in 2, but in Mass Effect 3 it's taken to a whole new level unless you temper his/her personality with Paragon decisions at certain points. While their behavior is usually rude, condescending, racist, insulting, and does kill a number of people, it manages to have some funny moments in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. In 3 Renegade Shepard can become downright evil, causing cold-blooded murder of teammates without remorse, and isn't as funny he/she used to be in previous games.
  • It's very easy to forget that Councilor Sparatus isn't actually that bad at first. Harsh yes, but he's reasonable and actually makes some good points. It's only after Shepard becomes a Spectre that he becomes the unrepentant asshole everyone remembers.
  • The Illusive Man was always kind of a prick, but in the third game he moves from being a morally inconvenient supporter, who can be extremely ruthless but is also one of the few to believe you about the whole "Space!Cthulhu is coming to kill us all" thing, to being an active enemy to the survival of galactic civilization whose forces brainwash new recruits, attempt to murder and/or brainwash your old friends, launch raids on human colonies to abduct new troops, attack Grissom Academy to abduct a multitude of young biotics, and run a cross between a concentration camp and a Husk factory beneath a refugee camp, out of a plan to control the Reapers that even a number of his former employees think is flagrantly insane. Eventually, it turns out that he's been indoctrinated, so his more heinous actions are the result of the Reapers screwing with his head, and a fair chunk of his former seeming friendliness was a pose put on to manipulate you, which Ashley/Kaidan had warned you about during their own moment.
• The titular Mercenaries take a page from this in the sequel. What was once a Power Trio of balanced personalities (Chris the cool customer, Jennifer the conniving money-grubber, and Matthias the pyromaniac) tips into all three of them behaving like Matthias... who is incidentally featured on the cover. Though with the game this time around being less about the pay day from a job well done and more about the "payback" for being betrayed by their employer and Shot in the Ass, it's pretty understandable that they're pissed. These are not very nice people.
• In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor the wraith/Celebrimbor is cold and pragmatic, and a jot manipulative, but has clearly heroic aspirations. Come Middle-earth: Shadow of War, going full-tilt Can't Argue with Elves is him at his nicest. Talion summarizes the reason for the change (which ties into the wider lore):
  "How much of your soul was lost in that Ring?"

  Ultimately, Talion finds out that Celebrimbor, corrupted by his ring of power, no longer cares about killing Sauron and taking revenge for his murder -- along with his wife and daughter's -- at Sauron's hands. Now he just wants to take over Middle-Earth and replace Sauron instead. When Talion hears this, he declares it Not What I Signed Up For and refuses to work for Celebrimbor any longer. Celebrimbor then decides that You Have Outlived Your Usefulness and takes his ring from Talion to give it to fellow Elf Eltariel, knowing that Talion will die without it.

• Guybrush Threepwood of the Monkey Island series fluctuates between varying degrees of jerkassery and kindness between games, but is at his jerkassiest in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, where he's gained a noticeable ego after defeating LeChuck in the previous game, and has no problem screwing people over to achieve his goals (including getting a cook fired so he can take his job, get advance payment, and then sneak out the window; stealing the monocle off a cartographer and leaving him blindly searching for it for a lengthy period of time before returning it; and nailing Stan the used ship de-er, coffin salesman inside one of his own coffins to steal from him). Even his love interest Elaine dumped him between games because she couldn't stand him, and when he returns to her it's only for his own self-interest. Fortunately, he's still the Butt-Monkey of the series, so he gets plenty of comeuppance, and future games dial back on the whole "screwing people over" thing to have him act a little more like a good-natured if bumbling Guile Hero.
• ObsCure:
  • In the first game, Shannon Matthews is a cute, brainy Girl Next Door who's driven to find her missing brother Kenny. Fast-forward two years later to the second game, and she's barely the same girl. She's gotten substantially darker in both her attitude and her fashion sense, and now she berates Kenny for his "weakness" in being unable to suppress his mortifilia infection without medicine the way that she does.
  • Kenny himself undergoes an even more extreme example, though his shift has a very specific trigger. When he runs out of medicine to treat his infection, he mutates into a beast the size of a Buick. He becomes a major villain from that point forward, murdering Mei, kidnapping and raping Amy (and impregnating her with a monster offspring in doing so), and driving Corey to suicide before Shannon and Stan finally kill him.
• Hoxton from PAYDAY: The Heist is a crude British robber with a mean wit, but he generally enjoys the company of his companions. After being caught by the police and being sent to jail, Hoxton's crew break him out two years later in PAYDAY 2 and he has become a bigger asshole; not only does Hoxton constantly bitch at and belittle the crew (sometimes jokingly and sometimes not) for not saving him faster, he also constantly curses out and antagonizes Houston, who was Hoxton's replacement for a while. If the player has Hoxton call out to Houston, Hoxton will only call Houston by some form of vulgarity, and he still does this to him if he is incapacitated.
• Yukari in Persona 3. She's a mostly nice person in "The Journey"(i.e. the main game) if a bit temperamental around Junpei, whom she regards as a good friend and rather critical of Mitsuru's secretiveness, although they become rather close. Then, during "The Answer," an epilogue taking place after the good ending, in which the protagonist dies, she spends much of the story resenting Aigis for being present for the protagonist's last moments and getting his Wild Card powers. Toward the end, as the group is divided over whether to return to the present or go back to the past, Yukari, the only one who wants the latter, proposes the group settle things by fighting each other. After being defeated, Yukari comes to her senses after Mitsuru comforts her.
• Akechi in Persona 5 Royal subverts this during the third semester, by taking his level in jerkass not during a Face–Heel Turn but a Heel–Face Turn, as he jettisons his Stepford Smiler ways.
• After spending God knows how long reliving the moment of her death at Chell's hands again and again and again, GLaDoS is understandably a bit... cranky in Portal 2 when she's finally reactivated, and acts far more passive aggressive and mean-spirited towards her.
• The Prince in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a charming, likable Guile Hero. In the sequel, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, he's became the very embodiment of a Jerkass. Needless to say, the fans were not pleased. In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones his level in Jerkass manifests itself as a Superpowered Evil Side. At this point the Prince realizes how bad he's gotten and Character Development ensues.
• Ratchet from Ratchet & Clank becomes this about halfway through the first game to the point of being a Villain Protagonist, where he starts blaming Clank for everything and cutscenes rarely pass by without Clank getting insulted. By the end of the first game however, he has a Heel Realization and they're inseparable best friends which carries on in the following sequels. Ratchet reverts to a more jerkass personality in the non-canon Size Matters.
• Saints Row:
  • Saints Row 2: The Boss has taken on a much harsher personality after the boat explosion at the end of the first game left him in a coma for five years.
  • Saints Row: The Third: Shaundi is a spacey hippie and druggie in Saints Row 2 that's very chill (likely from all the weed she smokes). In The Third, she cleans herself up and takes on a much more serious attitude and then couples it with anger and rage after Johnny Gat dies. From then on, she's always complaining about others and wants to kill anyone that even looks at her funny. She'll also get angry at Pierce for having a party instead of mourning over Gat. By Saints Row 4, it's explained that Shaundi had Survivor's Guilt and she didn't want to feel like she was being The Load to her team. After Shaundi reconciles with her younger/more fun self, she becomes a lot nicer.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Lucifer is far, far more cruel and insulting than he's ever been in previous installments. Even Merkabah expresses pity and sympathy for Flynn when he's forced to kill Isabeau in the Law route. In the Chaos route, Lucifer coldly brushes off Isabeau's death as if it was nothing. Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse reveals why: This Lucifer isn't the Lucifer we know. He's actually one half of Satan, who serves YHVH with the goal of perpetuating the Forever War.
• Penelope in Sly Cooper is a Nice Girl in the third game. In the fourth, she's a sociopathic bully who's cruel to Bentley, and wants Sly and Murray out of her life out of hatred. And that's just the surface.
• Sonic The Hedgehog:
  • Amy starts off as sweet and helpful in her earlier appearances, but in the later games due to flanderization, she has become more aggressive, bad-tempered, and is prone to hitting people with her hammer with little provocation. This can be Depending on the Writer, however.
  • Knuckles is usually humble and easy-going, even if he is slightly blunt and hot-headed, but in games like Sonic Battle and in the Sonic Rivals series, he's more hot-headed and a bit hostile towards others compared to his usual self.
  • In the Sonic Rivals series, Silver acts much ruder and more hostile to everyone than in his debut in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). He seems to have gotten better in his cameo in Sonic Colors DS.
  • While both Team Dark members Shadow and Rouge aren't the most pleasant people to talk to, Sonic Free Riders takes their antagonistic tendencies up to eleven. Shadow's ego and Rouge's greed are inflated to the point of Flanderization and they basically treat everyone around them like dirt. And that's not even going into the horribly apathetic way they treat E-10000B, working the poor robot to the point where his circuits are overheating from exhaustion. The other teams are outright disgusted at their behavior and Cream in particular practically begs them to get E-10000B fixed.
  • Tails, inexplicably, does this in Sonic Lost World. The childlike naivete and humility that defined him in previous titles was spontaneously replaced with a smug, self-centered, obnoxious, whiny, and snarky attitude. He had a falling-out with Sonic because he was interested in teaming up with Dr. Eggman to corral the Deadly Six, even though he was perfectly fine with it before. The worst part is that he never owns up to it at the end of the game.
• Soul Series:
  • Taki takes one between Soul Calibur III and IV. She goes from hunting demons and fighting those like Cervantes who want the power of Soul Edge to hunting demons and fighting those affiliated with Soul Edge, fighting ex-villains and people affiliated with Soul Calibur, and fighting good guys or neutral parties who might become affiliated with one of the swords. Nearly every character's story path involves Taki trying to kill them at one point. It's certainly not helped that while she does this she accuses everyone but herself of being evil and delusional and makes some verbal low blows against Siegfried and Ivy.
  • Within Soul Calibur III's Chronicles of the Sword mode, Abelia, your friendly rival at the start of the story and, slightly later, useful ally turns full tilt into a Knight Templar halfway through, complete with a costume change and deeper, more aggressive voice bank.
• While in real life Dudley from Street Fighter Took a Level in Kindness between III and IV, IV takes place before III, meaning that in the game's chronology Dudley went from being exceedingly polite to acting more snooty and calling opponents "gutter trash" (though he zig-zags back slightly by 3rd Strike).
• Sunrider: Veniczar Fontana is presented as a noble and scrupulous foe in the first few games of the series, stopping a fellow admiral from molesting a captive, withdrawing from a battle to spare the lives of innocent civilians when the opposing commander threatens to nuke a planet unless he does so, and even shooting his boss dead once he gets sick of her megalomania and her willingness to throw away the lives of her men. These sympathetic qualities are nowhere to be seen in Sunrider 4: The Captain's Return. Now that he's the unquestioned dictator of PACT, Fontana uses the state's Propaganda Machine to smear his enemies, has former allies thrown in prison while denying any association with them, and tries to convert Kayto Shields to PACT's cause by gaslighting him and having him tortured, doing all of this with obvious relish.
• Tales Series:
  • Grune from Tales of Legendia pulls this after she regains her memories of being a goddess to battle with Schwartz. Whereas before, she's a constantly forgetful and very flirtatious Mysterious Waif, she becomes rather mean and spiteful, even to the rest of the party afterwards. Even her in-battle quotes go from flighty to mocking and insulting her enemies. She notably stays this way for the rest of the game.
  • Luke from Tales of the Abyss. While a Jerkass from the very beginning, he does try to get along with the party until Van gave him the role of Ambassador and lets it get to his head. Right after that, he's fed a huge slice of Humble Pie in a Trauma Conga Line filled with egregious amounts of Mind Rape, where he's forced to listen to venomous insults from Asch. It's not until he gets his Important Haircut that he pulls a complete 180 and starts getting a lot better.
  • Hubert Oswell from Tales of Graces. He starts off as a weak, and easily-terrified little boy, but seven years down the line he grows the hell up due to being adopted into the military-based Oswell family of Strahta. When he reunites with his older brother Asbel, Hubert reveals that part of the alliance his new nation has with Windor is that they get Lhant, the brothers' homeland. When Asbel argues, Hubert promptly knocks him down a peg, Mystic Artes him senseless, exiles him from Lhant, rejects his own mother when she tries to intervene (as he feels she did absolutely nothing to help him), and then sets himself up as the one true leader of Lhant. The reason for his vitriol is less that he's a military man, and more that he felt he was abandoned by his family in Lhant because they wanted him out of the way. Turns out, Hubert's father wanted to spare him from what was going to happen in Lhant as well as to avoid potential strife between the brothers, although giving Hubert up more or less ended up causing that outcome anyway. Throughout the game, Hubert also grows out of it and takes a level in kindness, too.
• Tomb Raider: Lara Croft, a few times. First, between the second and third games, she goes from killing members of an evil cult who want to destroy the world to killing Military Police, museum guards, and homeless all for the sake of finding artefacts. The "saving the world" part only comes in for the last few levels, and by then the only humans left are on her side. The fourth and fifth games see her infamous snark taken up to eleven, making her even less civil in conversation with other people... and then the sixth game sees her running around two European cities, contaminating crime scenes, breaking into the Louvre, killing police and security personnel, and being rude to prostitutes. All to clear her name of one murder. It isn't until the reboot from Crystal Dynamics that Lara's personality dials back the jerk side of her.
• Eric Sparrow from Tony Hawk's Underground goes from the Player's friend to the game's antagonist who is taking credit for everything you did. It seems that by the end, even the game itself is tired of him, considering that regardless of whether you beat him in the final level or not, you still win in the end. If you lose the final level, while Eric is taunting you, you simply knock his lights out and take the demo tape anyways. Ironically, between THUG and THUG 2 he Took a Level in Dumbass and is treated as an incompetent loser and general Butt-Monkey in the latter.
• In Touhou Project, Kawashiro Nitori goes from supposedly shy, eccentric, and helpful gadgeteer to racist Alpha Bitch Hollywood Atheist who openly gloats about swindling humans out of cash — all in the span of three games.
• The Walking Dead:
  • Entirely optional in Season 2, but also entirely possible if you consistently choose to be as mean and manipulative as the game allows you to be. Justified by the previously sweet and innocent Clem undergoing now around two years of barely surviving and losing everyone she knows and loves. By the time of Season 3, living by herself and losing everyone she loves have hardened Clem into a cynical and callous Ice Queen — though interacting with the Garcia family and learning that AJ is still alive can help defrost her. Season 4 also gives the option of being aggressive and rude towards everyone.
    Eleanor: [to Javier] That girl... Clementine... there's something cold behind her eyes.
  • Kenny's a lot more aggressive and assertive in Episode 2 of Season 1. Also, depending on how you interpret his actions should you side with Lilly after Larry's heart attack in Episode 2, it could be Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and maybe even crossing the Moral Event Horizon. The level of jerkass increases if you side against him often in the later episodes. It's mostly subverted when Clem finds him again in Season 2, but there are a few moments that show that his temper is getting even more out of control. Double Subverted in "No Going Back", where Kenny's outbursts are the last nail in the destruction of the group and lead to him trying to kill Jane on suspicion that she killed Alvin Jr.
  • In Season 1, while she can be a bit of a jerkass, Lilly ultimately has the group's best interests at heart and her most villainous action in Season 1, the murder of Carley/Doug, is at the very least the result of an episode's worth of Sanity Slippage and she at least seems shocked and ashamed of herself. By her return in Season 4 however, she has become a cold bandit leader who is more than willing to kidnap/kill a bunch of kids and turn them into Child Soldiers in order to recruit them to her group war, which includes the little girl she helped look out for in Season 1.
  • After Omid's death, Christa goes back to being cold and distant. She still cares for Clementine though, despite her attitude.
• Before the FMV games, Admiral Tolwyn from the Wing Commander games and novels is a gruff but overall fair person. Starting with WC3, though, he's become Admiral Asshole (possibly due to typecasting of Malcolm McDowell, the actor that played him), and continues on to Space Nazi in WC4. William R. Forstchen's novelizations of those two games tried to lessen that a bit, but was limited by the game scripts he was writing from.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Garrosh Hellscream is first introduced in The Burning Crusade as a minor character who is crippled by his angst from his late father's actions prior to the story. In spite of this angst, he's not discriminating and is even friendly with the player when he's first introduced. Then in the sequel, Wrath of the Lich King, he becomes the disrespectful, belligerent, loudmouthed Jerkass he is well known for. He suffers it again in Cataclysm, and randomly becomes racist.
    
    Garrosh takes yet another level in Mists of Pandaria, where his jerkassery reaches its logical conclusion. The final raid dungeon is a siege on Orgrimmar itself by both Alliance and Horde, because at this point, everyone is sick of him for his increasingly heinous actions, such as dropping the magical equivalent of a WMD on Theramore, killing many known characters, including Rhonin, after killing several Blue Dragons to get the necessary power source for the bomb. Many of the Horde factions are not happy about Hellscream's rule but stay out of fear (trolls, tauren) or greed (goblins). In his speech in Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War, he doesn't even pretend that the other leaders are his equals and expects them to obey him or die. He wants the Alliance gone and to take the lands he believes are rightfully his (even though orcs are not native to this world). Jaina begs Thrall to take leadership back from Garrosh, knowing that many would support him, but Thrall refuses.
  • Garrosh's jerkassery, in turn, has an after effect of Jaina taking one herself. She loses her all-loving part and her rage against the Horde goes to extreme Fantastic Racism levels as she tries to flood Orgrimmar with her magic, only to be called out of it by Thrall and Kalegcos. Then when she tries to wind down, she's betrayed again and then initiates the Purge of Dalaran with glee. She goes as far as suggesting the assassination of the new Horde after Garrosh is defeated, which would mean the death of Thrall... something that even Varian refuses. In other words, while Varian Took a Level in Kindness, Jaina ended up doing the reverse. By Legion, the two have essentially become the other's prior characterization. Thankfully, in Battle For Azeroth, Jaina ends up having this reversed and goes back to wanting peace with the Horde again.

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