Tragic Villain / Video Games

Tragic Villain in Video Games.

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• The monsters in Among the Sleep turn out to be this. The female monster is actually how the toddler protagonist sees his mom when she's drinking; her alcoholism and the stress of going through a divorce causes her to lash out at her son, and she's clearly horrified by her own behavior. The trenchcoat monster, meanwhile, represents the protagonist's dad, who is trying to take his son away from his mom.
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey has Deimos, who functions as the primary antagonist of the main campaign. They are either Kassandra or Alexios, whoever wasn't chosen by the player during the beginning player select, and were the baby sibling of the protagonist who is thought to have died as an infant twenty plus years ago. In truth, they were stolen from their mother—who was told they'd died—and raised by the Cult of Kosmos instead. Subject to decades of Training from Hell, brainwashing and manipulation at the hands of one of the cult's most deranged members, they've been groomed into the perfect loyal warrior and made to hate their original family. While they partake in some genuinely horrific evil, it's pretty clear from early on that the cult doesn't really view them as a person and they don't really have a solid grasp on reality. They're frequently referred to as a "weapon", dehumanized, openly manipulated, left out of the loop, ordered around and condescended to. The cult only really humors their delusions of being worshipped because they're such an unstoppable Super-Soldier that their temper is dangerous to even the cult.
  • Fortunately, you can save them and convince them to leave the cult without having to kill them.
  • Unfortunately, that ending isn't canon in the greater Assassin's Creed canon. Canonically, Alexios is Deimos and he died in a Duel to the Death with his older sister, seeing himself as Beyond Redemption and purposely goading Kassandra into killing him by threatening their mother.
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • In Batman: Arkham City, Mr. Freeze doesn't have it much better in the game than he does in the comics. His wife is still frozen, and he's blackmailed by the Joker for the TITAN cure, leading to him getting captured by Strange and thrown to the Penguin, who proceeded to torture him, giving him woobie status until the Batman came around. Eventually he did reunite with her, but only if you're willing to endure that side quest. By Batman: Arkham Knight, Freeze has taken Batman's advice and quit villainy to work full-time in solving his wife's Huntington's Disease. Unfortunately, his new Wayne-Tech research team and laboratory don't get him any closer to a cure for a whole year, and everyone worries that what is left of Freeze's sanity will break... In the end, he and Nora are reunited, but his equipment is broken, so they'll both die soon.
  • Also in Batman: Arkham Knight, the Arkham Knight himself is a broken man. Joker tortured him over the course of a year in Arkham Asylum, meaning that Batman overlooked every trace of the missing teenager while he was branded, humiliated, forced to watch pictures of his family adopting a replacement within three months, etc. His motives for hating Batman are petty, "Why didn't you save me, you deserve to die too", but his mind is too broken and his lieutenants are too awed by his skill to think about getting their boss a psychologist.
• Bloodborne: Most Hunters took up the Hunt to stop beasts from killing their loved ones, but the nature of the Old Blood means that they'll eventually give into bloodlust and become beasts themselves, often far worse than the ones they hunt.
  • Father Gascoigne is a loving family man with a wife and two daughters, but he's been at the hunt so long that The Dark Side Will Make You Forget has kicked in, and his family need to play a music box to jog his memory. He begins the night as an ally (can be summoned for the Cleric Beast fight), but after Viola gets killed trying to find him, he loses himself completely and attacks you, turning into a beast partway through the fight.
  • Father Gascoigne's friend Henryk is pretty much the same as him, an old hunter whose mind is falling apart after too long spent on the Hunt.
  • The Hunter Mob enemies retain just enough sanity to occasionally scream out for help against the unnatural rage that has possessed them.
  • Ludwig the Holy Blade, the first boss of the DLC, was a noble warrior who genuinely wanted to protect Yharnam, but the Old Blood got him the same as it got everyone else, and now he's perhaps the most horrible beast in the game.
  • The DLC's Superboss, Laurence, the First Vicar, was the one who brought Old Blood to Yharnam, but, as indicated in his Ominous Latin Chanting theme, he did so with the best of intentions and only realized what he'd done too late for it to matter.
  • The inhabitants of the Fishing Hamlet placed the curse that led to the Hunter's Nightmare, but you really can't blame them after seeing what the first hunters did to them. That area's boss, the Orphan of Kos, also counts, as a baby Great One whose mother was killed before it could be born and then violated by Byrgenwerth.
• Breath of Fire IV gives us Fou-lu, an incomplete dragon god who ruled a prosperous empire after being summoned to put an end to the wars on the world at that time. He leaves the empire in his retainer's care, wanting to sleep till his other half arrives in the world. By the time it does his retainers have become more corrupt through the years including developing weapons not far off from modern-day Weapons of Mass Destruction that use humans with their souls broken as fuel. Fou-lu finds the current armies of the empire after him, wanting to seal him away so he cannot reclaim his throne, forced to flee in confusion at what is going on. Despite the disgusting state of affairs he maintains his desire to correct things till his pursuers force him to stay in a village being cared for by a kindly mortal woman called Mami whom he starts to develop feelings for and even considers foregoing the empire to remain with her. However the empire soon catches up to them and he is forced to flee again with Mami being captured trying to hold them off. Mami is later used as a sacrifice in the giant hex cannon which they fire on Fou-lu to attempt to kill him, he survives and his view of humanity reaches rock bottom which how destructive they have become.....then bells from Mami's hair fall nearby, leading to Fou-lu snapping, laughing in madness beginning his new mission, destroy humanity. What makes this jarring is you play as Fou-lu throughout segments of the game and see his slow turn to villain, so you know for certain you cannot blame him.
• In survival horror Camp Sunshine, the mass murderer wearing the Sunshine Bear mascot costume is actually a gentle and well meaning person who has been possessed by evil spirits because of occult rituals which were performed on him since he was a boy. He is implicitly deeply bothered and ashamed of what he has done under their influence, and actively fought against them earlier in his life.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Yuriko Omega, born Yuriko Matsui, was kidnapped by Mad Scientist Shinji Shimada and transformed into a Tetsuo-like psionic monster with no feeling of empathy toward anyone else, particularly because she was bullied by her schoolmates due to her natural psionic ability that caused her tragic fate. She even went through hell to find and save her sister, who turned out to just want to be at the top of the world, just like other people, including the Allies. After doing what has to be done, Yuriko still remained a lonely, unloved girl, vilified continuously by the news media of the major global powers (all Allies, the Soviet Union, and Japan).
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars has Killian Qatar. She was a loyal subordinate of Kane and assumed leadership of the Brotherhood of Nod when he was presumed killed and the Scrin invaded Earth. Kane returns, destroys her army and executes her for treachery. Kane's Wrath revealed that her downfall was engineered by an Unknown Rival. Killian's loyalty to Kane only brought her misfortune and death.
• More than a few in Dark Souls, mostly qualifying more as Tragic Monsters, though the best example is Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, former Big Good of the Age of Flame and (possibly) the greatest impediment to mankind's golden age. Gwyn screwed over humanity out of fear of their unknown dark magics. And now he's on fire. Forever.
• Whoever the traitor in Dawn of War II is. All have sympathetic motives.
  • Tarkus believes he is being Necessarily Evil, and can use the power of Chaos to save his brothers.
  • Thaddeus sold his soul in exchange for safe passage through the Warp for the Litany of Fury, so the Blood Ravens' recruiting worlds could be saved from the Tyranids.
  • Jonah has been possessed, and is desperately trying and failing to regain control of his own actions.
  • Cyrus has seen how utterly corrupt the upper echelons of the Blood Ravens have become, and how little the foot-sloggers mean to them, and has bartered for the power necessary to change leaders.
  • Avitus cracked when he found out that his justification for the destruction he caused was a lie, and that so much blood had been shed for no reason. In his mind, the best case scenario is Suicide by Cop, the worst case is that he'll continue doing what he apparently has done for years, but without the veneer of lies.
  • Martellus was just trying to survive.
• Dead Rising has Cliff Hudson, a Shell-Shocked Veteran of the Vietnam War who was a good loving family man until the outbreak and watching his granddaughter be killed by zombies made him snap and believe he was back in the war and that the zombies and survivors were the Vietcong. Notably he's the only psychopath in the game to get any sympathy from Frank, as he snaps back to normal as he lays dying.
• Dead Rising: Off The Record, a non-canon What If? scenario where Frank is the protagonist of the Fortune City outbreak, has the canon protagonist of Dead Rising 2, Chuck Greene, appear as a psychopath. Just knowing how genuinely good and heroic he is in the canon game and seeing what he's been reduced to after seeing his daughter die is quite the Tear Jerker, especially since even his psychotic self doesn't turn aggressive toward you until he thinks you've threatened his daughter. Even the developers felt so bad for him they refused to let him die: he escapes instead.
• The creation of Sepulchure, an impossibly strong emperor of his own undead army, is one of the most heartbreaking stories in DragonFable and AdventureQuest Worlds, more so in the latter for being more fleshed out. Originally a heroic knight who had never known defeat, Valen grew jealous of his friend King Alteon for his position and marrying the woman Valen loved, Lynaria. When Lynaria was kidnapped by the Champion of Darkness, Dethrix, Valen jumped at the chance to save her, only to die horribly before reaching her. At death's door, he was offered as much dark power as he wanted to save her, if only he'd give up his humanity. Valen accepted without hesitation, donning the cursed armor and weapon of Doom Knights. With his new unholy strength, Valen killed Dethrix and rescued Lynaria, but he was no longer himself. Lynaria attempted to save him before he could completely succumb to the darkness, but Valen's armor killed her before she could. In his rage, Valen, now calling himself Sepulchure, vowed to use his dark power to bring her back to life, even if it ended up destroying the world.
• Dagoth Ur, the Big Bad of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, is seen as this in at least one version of his and the Tribunal's Multiple-Choice Past. Dagoth was originally a trusted friend and advisor to the Player Character in their past life as the hero king Nerevar, but after the disappearance of the Dwemer left the Chimer with the tools of Kagrenac and the Heart of Lorkhan, Dagoth was trusted to guard them. Allegedly he started using the power of the Heart in order to protect it from being abused by the Tribunal believing No Man Should Have This Power, but it corrupted him and he became worse than they ever were. Nerevar was then forced to put him down before being betrayed and murdered by the Tribunal who used the Heart to become gods like Dagoth, who was both rendered immortal and driven insane by the Heart. However, even in his corrupted state he was still a Well-Intentioned Extremist that simply wanted to secure a future for his people.
• Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code: The one who planted the infernos in Mount Sinai, Lamech, actually regrets his actions because he accidentally killed his brother Dorran with the infernos. However, he doesn't dare disobey the Kosmokraters out of fear of their retribution, and considering they had him and Balaam set up infernos all over Idin, he has a point in fearing them. As he dies, he regrets siding with the Kosmokraters and warns Joshwa of Nike/Anat's true ambitions.
• The Broken Lords of Endless Legend, once a society of honorable knights, nobles, and town builders, were forced to bind their souls to suits of Animated Armor to survive Auriga's collapsing climate as the winters grow longer and more brutal. Sustained by Dust, a rare material, they were a Dying Race until they discovered they could drain Dust from living creatures in a fatal process. Now widely considered soulless monsters, they must betray their vows and ideals in order to survive by consuming the weak while they try to cure their affliction.
• Vaas Montenegro from Far Cry 3. The real reason why he is a homicidal maniac is because Hoyt manipulated him with drugs, turning him Brainwashed and Crazy.
  • And it's revealed that his sister Citra was the first to break his mind by manipulating him since they were children.
  • And Hoyt himself had a Blood Diamond mogul for a father (who he murdered in self defense). No wonder he's totally psychopathic.
  • Far Cry 4: Subverted with Pagan Min, who admits that his 'excuse' (watching his baby daughter get murdered) is just that - an excuse. He just likes killing people.
  • Far Cry 5: Joseph Seed was driven insane by the hallucinations he had whenever he was (repeatedly) abused. The final straw was the death of his family in a car accident.
• All of the main antagonists in the Fatal Frame series were nice people when they were alive; it's only when they died and were corrupted by their respective Hell Gate that they started killing everyone.
• Fate/Grand Order has several arc villains that end up being tragic figures:
  • The Babylonia Singularity gives us Tiamat, the primordial mother of all life. Tiamat loved all her children, but was unable to accept that her children all would one day leave their nuturing mother behind. She attempted to force herself upon humanity and the gods, who responded by striking her down and sealing her in Imaginary Numbers space. But somehow the Big Bad of the first major story arc released her and set her upon Uruk, where she poses a mortal threat to all of humanity (whom she now fears because of what happened the first time around) and, unfortunately for the heroes, is immensely powerful and unkillable. The heroes make it clear that they harbor no ill will toward Tiamat herself, and that they only fight her because she presents a danger to their existence. The anime adaptation takes it one step further by having Fujimaru convince her that humanity still cares for her and to let herself go so that her children can live on, which gives Gilgamesh the opening he needs to kill her with Enuma Elish.
  • The Shimousa chapter of Epic of Remnant's villain is an alternate version of Amakusa Shirou, one who eluded capture after the Shimabara Rebellion collapsed and found a way to travel the multiverse. He tried in desperation to find a world where the Shimabara Rebellion succeeded (or at least didn't end in a massacre), and when he failed, snapped and decided to become the villain that the Tokugawa shogunate painted him as. This is also reflected in his class; while ordinarily Amakusa is a Ruler, this version is an Avenger.
  • The first two Lostbelts that Chaldea visits in the second major arc have Lostbelt Kings who fall squarely into this category; Ivan the Terrible in Russia and Scathach-Skadi in Scandinavia. Both were forced to terrible extremes in order to preserve what was left of humanity after a horrific event befell the Earth in their timelines — Ivan had to deal with a meteor striking Earth and plunging the planet into an Ice Age turned up to eleven, and Skadi was left with a Scandinavia without any other gods and half the world consumed by ceaseless flames due to Surtr completely derailing Ragnarok and trying to incinerate the whole world. Both Lostbelt Kings had to endure terrible hardships and sacrifices just to give their worlds a fighting chance. To make matters worse, Chaldea are the aggressors in each of their Lostbelts, as they have to destroy the Lostbelts in order to save Proper Human History. So, your actions are essentially forcing them into opposing you in a manner of self-defense.
  • The third Lostbelt gives us Akuta Hinako. It turns out that "Akuta Hinako" is a false identity — her real identity is Yu Mei-ren, the consort of Xiang Yu, the Chinese warlord who was prominent in the time between the Qin and Han dynasties. In the Nasuverse, Yu was not a human but a fairy elemental, a being similar to a True Ancestor. This meant she had Complete Immortality and was forced to live for over two millennia after her beloved's death. However, the Lostbelt located in China contained another version of Xiang Yu, and thus gave her a chance to reunite with him, even if he came from a history where he never met her. However, Xiang Yu was also absolutely loyal to Emperor Qin Shi Huang, and fearing his death on the battlefield at the emperor's command, Yu had to spend most of her time in the Lostbelt jockeying for the emperor's favor. Then Chaldea shows up to destroy the Lostbelt, and Xiang Yu refuses to let that happen. Their conflict results in Xiang Yu's death, and a distraught Yu, having lost her beloved for the second time, merges with the Tree of Emptiness in one last Roaring Rampage of Revenge, forcing the protagonists (and Qin Shi Huang himself) to put her down.
  • Then, in Olympus, we discover that this also applies to Kirschtaria Wodime. As we find out, Wodime isn't at all the elitist he seemed to be — he's an unwavering believer in humans' capacity to do good, and hatched a plan that would ultimately benefit humanity were he to succeed. He also valued his bonds with the rest of Team A, and his greatest regret was that he would never be able to save the world with them the way they had been expected to. In the end, he gets backstabbed by one of those very people he cherishes while protecting the protagonist from a surprise attack, and gives his life to stave off the Foreign God's descent to allow Chaldea to escape, all of his dreams denied to him.
  • Lostbelt Six: Avalon le Fae gave us not one, but FOUR tragic antagonists, one of whom may just take the cake.
    • First is Fairy Knight Gawain, AKA the Black Dog Barghest of Welsh myth. Barghest follows Morgan out of genuine belief that her reign is what’s best for her people, and is most of the time very respectful towards her opponents, not to mention she readily agrees to help Chaldea once she realizes Morgan does not care about the Fae and Chaldea will shelter them if given the chance. Sadly, Barghest was born one of the Six Calamities destined to destroy the Lostbelt, and her true nature compels her to consume those she deems strong even if she cares about them. Her earnest desire to fall in love with someone is repeatedly and horrifically undone when she’s compelled to consume her lovers, leaving her wracked with self-loathing. Finally, once she returns home, she is exposed to the true nature of the Fae, succumbs to her instincts as a Calamity and Chaldea has to put her down.
    • Second is Fairy Knight Lancelot AKA Mélusine of French myth. Another born as one of the Six Calamities, she is actually an offshoot born from the carcass of the Dragon of Albion, raised to be the favored child/servant of Aurora. She serves Morgan because she sees humans as weak and in need of her protection, which unfortunately leaves her at odds with her adoptive brother Percival. Not only does she lose Percival, she is forced to Mercy Kill Aurora to spare her a Fate Worse than Death of losing her purpose and becoming a Mors. With Aurora’s death she also reverts to her nature as a Calamity and is left to wander the skies alone as the last survivor of the Lostbelt until it’s destruction.
    • Third is Fairy Knight Tristan AKA Baobhan Sith. She is initially introduced as a petty, spoiled, classist brat whom everyone in the Lostbelt holds in contempt. Then we get to see her backstory: She was originally an incredibly sweet fairy who worked herself to the bone to help others, only to be betrayed and cast aside over and over because Fairies are naturally Ungrateful Bastards. Her current attitude is because Morgan raised her to be cruel and hate the fairies to keep her from being abused again. Sadly, she becomes an accomplice to Beryl Gut, who exploits her trust to have her use Fetch Magecraft which rots the user’s soul. She ends up taken hostage by the Fae, forced to watch her mother being murdered, and is thrown into the pit of Cernunnos left to curse her world in her final moments.
    • And last but certainly not least, we have Morgan. Or rather Aesc. Unlike her villainous counterpart from Proper Human History, Lostbelt Morgan used to be a hero who sought to save Fae Britain and bring peace to humans and fairies. Countless time loops of watching her friends and loved ones being killed, the Fae being Ungrateful Bastards of the HIGHEST order, and too much shit to count convinced her to subjugate the Fae so as to at least keep them from driving themselves to extinction out of sheer selfishness, and two thousand years of this have left her hollow inside and exhibiting signs of severe depression. She ends up betrayed by the Fae one last time when they hold her daughter hostage, dying miserably without saving anyone and her world ends up destroyed not long after, posthumously rendering everything she worked for All for Nothing.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV has Golbez, really Theodore Harvey, Cecil's brother, who may cross the Moral Event Horizon several times in the game, except that he was under the control of Zemus and takes full responsibility for his actions once freed from Zemus's control.
    • In the DS remake, it's much worse. The implication is that Golbez wasn't brainwashed, and that it was the darkness in his own heart that led to him being controlled. The remake makes a much bigger deal out of his Reformed, but Rejected status after the spell is broken.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 has Caius Ballad who wishes to destroy reality/time as he sees this as the only way to free his surrogate daughter from a cruel cycle of death and rebirth. To do this he would commit genocide on the civilization of Cocoon, which will unleash the chaos from Valhalla, the world between life and death. In the end Caius sacrifices his life and lets the hero Noel kill him which releases the chaos.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers has its chief villain: Emet-Selch, one of the three "unbroken" Ascians, along with Elidibus and the late Lahabrea. Whereas Lahabrea was a malevolent sociopath and Elidibus is a conniving schemer with an undying hatred towards Hydaelyn, Emet-Selch's motivation is much more personal: he is lonely. He is pursuing the Rejoining of the shard worlds to the Source, which would result in the end of the world of Hydaelyn as it is known, so that he could resurrect the ancient civilization from whence he hailed, a Utopia where the people were capable of creation magics on an scale unfathomable to modern mortals, a paradise of intellectual pursuit and societal advancement before a terrifying calamity resulted in the summoning of Zodiark and Hydaelyn and the world's subsequent "Sundering". Compared to the world he hailed from, Emet-Selch cannot see the post-sundered worlds as anything more than pale, ephemeral imitations, in spite of his efforts to adjust to the new reality. When he is dealt the finishing blow in the story, his Last Request to the Warrior of Light/Darkness is simply to remember that he, his people, and his civilization existed.
  • Final Fantasy XV has the Big Bad of the story Ardyn Izunia, who while he does some monstrous things to the world, Noctis and his crew, he has a damn good reason to hate the Kingdom of Lucis and want to see it destroyed and the line of Lucian Kings exterminated. Namely that he was once a benevolent healer who willingly absorbed daemons to protect others, but his life spent as a Cosmic Plaything shattered the goodness in him and turned him into The Sociopath we see in the game. What's worse, this was all started by his brother, who stole the throne from Ardyn, killed his fiancé Aera (the first prophet) and imprisoned him on Angelgard for 2000 years; when Ardyn gets freed, Somnus has undergone a Historical Hero Upgrade and is remembered as the Founder King who saved humanity from the Starscourge, while Ardyn has become an Unperson and had his name and role omitted from history. Episode Ardyn elevates this to the level of Greek tragedy by revealing that this was all set up by Bahamut from the very beginning so Ardyn would become the sacrificial villain necessary for the gods' hero, the King of Light, to ascend and fulfill the destiny the gods had planned out.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Mystery of the Emblem gives us Hardin, who had been an ally of Marth's in the previous game. As the brother of the King of Aurelis, he had been married to Princess Nyna of the Kingdom of Archanea per arrangement. However, while Hardin loved Nyna with all of his heart, Nyna couldn't reciprocate, because her love was only for Camus, a minor antagonist in the previous game who had once saved her life. This created an opening for Gharnef, who had barely survived the previous war, to corrupt Hardin using the Dark Orb and turn him into a tyrant bent on conquering the entire continent by force.
  • Genealogy of the Holy War gives us Arvis, Lord Velthomer and personal attendant to the king of Grannvale. As a child, he had to put up with his father's adulterous ways, only for him to kill himself when he found out his wife (and Arvis's mother) had an affair with another man. He was then tasked with taking care of his little brother and grew up vowing to change the world for the better. When the Lopt Sect began manipulating the lands of Jugdral into war, they placed Arvis in a position to benefit by becoming emperor of the entire continent. Playing along meant that he would have to murder a number of other prominent nobles, including Sigurd, the main protagonist, marry the prince's daughter (who, unbeknownst to him, was the product of the very same affair that drove his father to suicide AND was previously married to Sigurd before The Heavy wiped her memories), and, because they were both descended from the local equivalent of The Antichrist, produce an heir that would be a suitable vessel for said figure. During Arvis's rule, the new empire was legitimately peaceful and prosperous, but as Prince Julius grew he began to take power from his father, leaving him a mere Puppet King. In the end, he arranged his own death in combat to Seliph, Sigurd's son and the main character of the game's second half.
  • In The Binding Blade, we have King Zephiel of Bern. As we see in the prequel, Zephiel Used to Be a Sweet Kid, excelled in academics and in combat, and was well beloved by the people. However, his father, the previous king, had no particular talents, felt that he was trapped in a loveless Arranged Marriage with Zephiel's mother (preferring the mother of his daughter, Guinivere), and hated the poor boy for being everything he didn't have and representing the aspects of his life he hated. As a result, Zephiel's father attempted to kill his son via poison. Zephiel barely survived and managed to fake his death long enough to turn the tables on his father at his own funeral. The whole experience left Zephiel a jaded misanthrope who embarked on a quest to replace humans with dragons as the dominant species across Elibe.
  • In Blazing Blade, if you manage to do three sidequests on Hector's route, you learn that Nergal's desire to open the Dragon's Gate was originally because he wanted his children, Ninian and Nils, back. However, the dark magic he practiced corrupted him, to the point that he no longer even remembers his children or why he wanted to open the Gate in the first place.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones gives us Lyon. It all started with a premonition of a devastating earthquake, leading him to experiment with Grado's Sacred Stone. Then his father dies, and Lyon's attempts at necromancy leads to the demon king Fomortiis possessing him and wreaking havoc on the world. However, it should be noted that in Ephraim's route, Lyon is a bit more in control compared to Eirika's route, meaning some of the atrocities he committed were done on his own volition, even if Fomortiis gave him a little nudge.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn gives us Sephiran. Although he was the prime minister of Begnion, his true identity was Lehran, one of the heroes who saved Tellius from a rampaging goddess 800 years ago. Over the centuries, Lehran watched as the two races of people continued to engage in Fantastic Racism, while the one other hero who still lived, King Dheginsea of Goldoa, refused to act in an attempt to keep war from engulfing the continent. He was given a Hope Spot when he spoke to the last apostle, who was determined to end the bigotry in her land, but was soon after driven over the Despair Event Horizon when said apostle was assassinated and the heron clan, his own people, were wrongfully blamed for it and massacred by the despondent citizens of Begnion. After that he began to arrange to awaken the goddess Ashera early rather than wait the full thousand years, show her that mankind hadn't changed one iota in the past eight centuries, and get her to wipe out humanity and start anew.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • The Greater-Scope Villain Anankos. The world hasn't been kind to him, due to his dragon nature. This becomes more apparent once the player discovers his soul/original self, who's a genuinely good person, as well as his backstory. Knowing full well he was going insane slowly, Anankos did all that he could to prevent it, but did eventually end up going mad. Despite going crazy, his soul still managed to escape and gather warriors capable of killing dragons; but even this failed and had to change his plans. Anankos' soul was eventually killed and returned to the feral mad original body, but before he was fully lost he begged for the warriors and the Avatar to end him. Azura even thinks that the song Lost in Thoughts All Alone is actually Anankos' cry for help to end his suffering. Word of God says it actually is. Sadly enough the Heirs of Fate version of Anankos was desperately looking for a world where he hadn't gone insane and screwed things up for everyone. All Anankos ever wanted was to go back to how things were before he went insane; but in 22 worlds so far he failed to find any world where he didn't go crazy. The reason being that his insanity is a condition of being a dragon which means it's impossible to find a world where he isn't insane. Just to add the tragedy: Anankos, or at least his humanoid soul, is the Avatar's father, and in the Hidden Truths DLC its revealed that Anankos' soul wants nothing more than the Avatar to know of their father, and desperately wants to have a normal life with them and Mikoto.
    • King Garon, the Tin Tyrant who serves as the Big Bad of Birthright, part of the Big Bad Ensemble of Conquest, and The Dragon of Revelation. He was originally a good king and a loving father, but he had a problem with his womanizing and an inability to abandon someone he had a relationship with, turning Nohr into a Decadent Court. His concubines and their children slaughtered each other until only Xander, Camilla, Leo, and Elise were left, turning him into the bitter and hateful megalomaniac we know today. Anankos possessing him and turning him into a slime monster didn't help.
    • Conquest gives us the Final Boss Takumi. Anankos takes advantage of his lingering self-esteem issues and resentment of the Avatar for their betrayal and corrupts him the same way he did Garon, eventually turning him into an insane monster only capable of ranting and screaming about how much he hates the Avatar and Nohr. The Avatar is forced to put him down like a rabid dog.
  • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia gives us the newly-introduced recurring antagonist Berkut. Berkut is the nephew of Emperor Rudolf and the crown prince of Rigel, who was raised by his parents and uncle to believe only the strong are worth anything. Throughout the game, Berkut seeks to prove his worth as heir to the throne. As he continuously fails to defeat Alm, he begins resorting to desperate measures such as invoking the Mad God Duma's power to kill him. When even this fails, his insecurity and desperation to prove himself come to the forefront and only his beloved fiance Rinea sees his hidden vulnerabilities. Everything comes to a head when Rudolf is killed in battle by Alm, and it comes to light that Alm is Rudolf's son and the true heir to Rigel, meaning everything Berkut ever fought for and believed in was a lie. The utterly broken Berkut proceeds to make a Deal with the Devil and ends up dragging Rinea down with him, selling her soul and turning her into a Witch. In the end, despite his genuine desire to get to know his cousin as a person, Alm is forced to cut him down, and the only consolation prize Berkut receives is that Rinea doesn't hold anything against him.
  • Fittingly for the Gray-and-Gray Morality of the game, Three Houses has two examples, depending on which route you play. Ironically, you don't find out either characters' Dark and Troubled Past on the route(s) where you fight them, though.
    • On the default routes, this role is taken up by Edelgard. When she was a child, she and her siblings were forced into cruel experiments by those who slither in the dark, who wished to use her to exact revenge on the Children of the Goddess, the descendants of the progenitor god. Edelgard was the sole survivor of eleven siblings of the experiments, which left her with two Crests and a reduced lifespan. Believing these actions to be the result of a society where Crests and nobility determined a person's value, she declared war on the Church of Seiros, holding them responsible for keeping society in such a state. And while both of the other house leaders have their own ideas about reforming Fódlan, Edelgard's ambition and stubbornness leads her to believe that only she can truly transform the continent, and she will never surrender, forcing you to kill her on every route where you oppose her.
    • The secret route pits you against Archbishop Rhea by siding with Edelgard. Rhea is actually Saint Seiros, the church's founder, and one of the Children of the Goddess. She was one of the few survivors of her clan when an army of humans who had been given weapons created by "those who slither in the dark" attacked their home and butchered those living there, including Rhea's mother, the dormant progenitor god. Seiros sought revenge, helped found the Adrestian Empire to that end, and killed Nemesis, the leader of the humans who had killed her people. She then set up the church as a means to bring her mother back to life. However, the church would contribute to the twisted state of society in Fodlan, and brought about a significant amount of needless death and suffering. In order for Fódlan to transform, she must lose her power (except if the protagonist achieves an S support with her, which is only possible on the Silver Snow route), with you directly coming to blows with her on the Crimson Flower route.
• In Five Nights at Freddy's 3, the animatronics are confirmed to have been haunted by the ghosts of the children murdered in the pizzeria.
• Both of the villains in the first two Gabriel Knight games.
  • Malia Gedde was the great-great-etc. granddaughter of Tetelo, a voodoo priestess whose tribe's traditions included such things as cabrit sans cor. Malia herself had no ill will toward Gabriel and even seemed to be in love with him, but Tetelo's influence forced her to attack him and abduct his friend.
  • Friedrich von Glower was the son of a baron who raped a young Gypsy girl and became cursed to lycanthropy as a result, and the curse was passed down to Friedrich himself as well, transforming him into "The Black Wolf." Despite living for centuries as a werewolf and committing countless slaughters, von Glower seemed to believe that the werewolf curse could be controlled, and he seriously wanted to control it.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Niko Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV. Despite his flaws, Niko is the most tragic GTA protagonist. He is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who is involved with a life of crime because it's all he feels he's good at. He comes to Liberty City looking for a better life and to escape his past, which includes being chased by a Russian mobster who believes Niko owes him money. He's also looking for a man who got twelve of his childhood friends killed, hoping for revenge. Whether he remains this way depends on several situations in the game that force the player to choose between Niko's personal beliefs or money. Years later, several Easter Eggs in GTA V seem to suggest that he has grown tired of having this lifestyle and abandoned it.
  • Johnny Klebitz from Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, was a man who met his big brother's friend, the horrible Billy Grey at a young age, who turned out to be a bad role model for Johnny. Billy got him into crime, and later introduced him to other Lost MC Members. Johnny became apart of The Lost MC, and though he actually wanted out after the years, he stayed because of his loyalty to his "brothers". Literally everything he does in the game is out of loyalty to the people he cares about. What makes is worse was, that the people he cared about turned out to be evil, selfish traitors, with only a few friends who stood by him at the end.
  • Chan Jiao Ming and Zhou Ming, Those Two Co-Dragons from The Triads and the Tongs in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. To start, Huang Lee's former friends had some severe issues, with Chan being a hedonistic son of Hsin, the triad boss. In an unusual variant, both Chan and Zhou were Jerkasses to begin with, but they were suspected in FIB's fIles for something they didn't do, leading to them being killed by Huang, which was under Kenny's commands. Due to this, Huang exacted his revenge on his uncle, for these among all reasons.
    • Huang Lee might also count, although he's more of Tragic Hero variety. To begin with, he is among The Triads and the Tongs who wanted to avenge his father for reasons, but encountering some troubled friends and associates dying during his adventure made him found out his Evil Uncle, Kenny, is the true mastermind behind the events. After he exacted revenge on his uncle with FIB interrogation, and became the leader of Liberty City Triads, Huang is still not happy with his lifestyles.
  • Trevor Phillips from Grand Theft Auto V is an Ax-Crazy meth-head with a Dark and Troubled Past. Besides, he suffered numerous social problems and grew up with an emotionally abusive mother. His relationship with Patricia clearly demonstrates that he still has sanity and humanity. Despite this, he knows that he can't fit into society.
• Grapple Dog has Nul, surprisingly. The reason Nul was sealed in the first place was because he tried to warn his people of the Inventor's treachery, and his entire motivation is simply wanting to go back home. However, doing so would require a portal that would tear down Pablo's homeworld.
• Shiro Tagachi from Guild Wars would fall under this catagory, but only after you learn his complete backstory. He was a skilled soldier who defended a local village from bandits and robbers. He was well liked and was quite the hometown hero, until the Emperor took notice and hired him as a royal bodyguard. The dark god Abbadon took advantage of this and began planting the seeds of doubt and paranoia into Shiro through the use of demonic agents disguised as fortune tellers and members of the royal court. It got Shiro so flustered that he decided the only way he could safeguard his own life was to kill the emperor and acquire ultimate power so that nobody could ever betray him. What he didn't realize was that by now, the general public viewed him as a monster. By the time you meet him in Factions, he's so far gone and filled with Abbadon's corruption that he seems incapable of listening to reason.
• A Hat in Time: Mustache Girl literally lost everything when the Mafia took over her island. Her family, her home and any stable life she had, with her only safe spot on what was once her home being a small cave. And once she realizes that her plan would result in her being the only one left alive on the planet, she is driven into a Villainous Breakdown, suggesting that some layer of her plans was driven by her becoming lonely.
• Hello Neighbor: The Neighbor lost his wife in a car accident, lost his daughter after his son accidentally pushed her off the roof, and was forced to keep him hidden in his basement so he doesn't face manslaughter charges, kidnapping the protagonist when they discover this.
• In Iji, the final boss of the game, General Tor, is the leader of the fleet invading earth to eradicate the last of the Tasen. However, he only does this because he's a Slave to PR. There were many generals including Tor himself that wanted to end the war without committing genocide, but the rest of the Komato insisted on doing so because they hated the Tasen and wanted them dead. He gives in to finally attacking the remaining Tasen, and is about to completely destroy the Earth to make sure no Tasen are left alive, at least until the protagonist arrives to prevent Tor from doing so. Once he's defeated, he sees the error of his ways, calls off the attack, and saves whatever life is left on Earth in the process. Unfortunately, the guilt of killing so many people in the past weighs heavily on him, and he kills himself so he doesn't have to live with it anymore.
• In inFAMOUS, Kessler, reveals to be Cole from the future who has turned Empire City into Hell just so that he could turn his past self into the savior of the world from The Beast.
• Most of the members of Organization XIII, from Kingdom Hearts save Xemnas and Xigbar. After losing their hearts to the Heartless and waking up as Nobodies, they were found by Xemnas, who manipulated them into working for him under very false pretenses. What were these false pretenses? That being a Nobody left them empty, made them literally nothing. In reality? Anything can have a heart if it has friends, even Nobodies, the heart will naturally grow back, in time. Xemnas's lies were crafted to suppress their hearts from growing back, so he could use the power of Kingdom Hearts to fill them with copies of Xehanort's heart. Sora is horrified to learn the extent of Xemnas's lies.
  • The games fluxuate on whether Xemnas is one or not. On the one hand, his previously mentioned manipulation of the Organization is unforgivable, while on the other hand it's implied that Xemnas had no memories from Xehanort to show him the good side of having a heart (hence his obsession with hate and rage), while the side of him that takes after Terra screams for connections with others. III also implies part of the reason he doesn't want a heart again is because he has always been afraid of the pain and misery that comes with having one and the weight of his own emotions is too much for him to bear. By the end of III it's apparent that he does have a heart after all and like the others grew one back because of his connections with the other members of Organization XIII. Sora reaches out to him upon his final moments and Xemnas finally confesses his true feelings. The ultimate tragedy of his character is that the nothingness he was always obsessed with has left him completely abandoned and empty, which he realizes too late was a colossal mistake.
  Sora: I know that you have a heart! What do you feel? Was it worth it?
  Xemnas: I feel... the emptiness where my companions once stood. I took them for granted. And now I have... nothing. My first surge of emotion in years, for as long as I can remember... and it's loneliness. Do you see? A heart is just pain.
• The Kirby series has quite a few of these.
  • Magolor was heavily implied to be brainwashed by the Master Crown and he even builds a theme park for Kirby to apologize for betraying him.
  • Queen Sectonia used to be a kind ruler to the people of the sky, only to end up being corrupted by Dark Meta Knight and the Amazing Mirror and in the Japanese version, begs Kirby to kill her as she can't recognize herself anymore.
    • Taranza, Queen Sectonia's right hand man, is this too. He was the only gave her the gift that ended up corrupting her, and in spite in all of the abuse she shows towards her subjects, he is completely loyal to her. He finally realized how cruel his former friend has become when he gets blasted across the sky after he screws up her plan. He ends up making a Heel–Face Turn at the cost of being forced to help Kirby kill his former friend.
  • Haltmann lost his daughter to an accident that killed her (really trapped her in another dimension) and was driven mad by his grief and repeatedly wishing on Star Dream, to the point that when said daughter did come back, he doesn't remember her and ultimately ends up being taken over by Star Dream and then destroyed with it.
    • Said daughter Susie counts as well. While not to the extreme as her father, Star Dream also screwed her over. Beyond trapping her in another dimension, Star Dream also removed her father's memories of her, meaning that her quest to get home was All for Nothing. After one too many defeats from Kirby, she decides to try stealing Star Dream, only for it to blast her, take over her father, and try to destroy all organic life in the universe. In the end, she leaves Popstar with nothing.
  • The Three Mage-Sisters, Francisca, Flamberge and Zan Partizanne are completely loyal to their boss, Hyness. However, Hyness only sees them as tools and weapons, which is best shown when he kicks a badly beaten Zan Par out of his way, right before his own fight. Later during his fight, he sucks the life out of the mages, uses them as a club and a shield and sacrifices them to release Void Termina. Heroes in Another Dimension reveals they survived and went looking for Hyness who fell into Another Dimension. Their bios in The Ultimate Choice Soul Melter EX reveals why they are loyal to Hyness despite his mistreatment of them. All three of them were at death's door before Hyness found and rescued them, implying that he used to be a kind person before going insane.
• Legacy of Kain
  • Nupraptor was driven mad by the death of his beloved Ariel and his madness spread to the other guardians. Ariel's spirit sends Kain to Mercy Kill him.
  • Malek's soul was bound to his armor as punishment for failing to protect the previous guardians. Turns out the massacre was orchestrated by Mobius, one of Malek's charges and the one who cursed him.
  • King William The Just the Unwitting Pawn of Moebius the Time Streamer. He was corrupted by the Blood Reaver and became The Nemesis. He is murdered by Kain and instead becomes an Inspirational Martyr for the humans who then slaughter the vampire race in revenge.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds features Hilda. Her plan to have Yuga steal Hyrule's Triforce stems from her desire to replace Lorule's Triforce after it was destroyed to keep anyone from using it, only to cause Lorule to rapidly fall apart. It's not until Ravio convinces her that doing this would simply leave Hyrule to the same fate as Lorule that Hilda realizes the folly of her scheme.
  • Ganondorf has a whole lot of fun as a Card-Carrying Villain, and you get a sense he doesn't spend much time thinking about the motives for his actions; but in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, his conscience is bothering him (presumably seeing Hyrule drowned beneath an ocean was a little much, even by his standards), and he's wondering about what makes him tick...
    "My country lay within a vast desert. When the sun rose into the sky, a burning wind punished my lands, searing the world. And when the moon climbed into the dark of night, a frigid gale pierced our homes. No matter when it came, the wind carried the same thing... Death. But the winds that blew across the green fields of Hyrule brought something other than suffering and ruin. I coveted that wind, I suppose."
• Lies of P: The second boss, the Scrapped Watchman, was a puppet created as a mascot for Krat's police department. Although it was rejected when its design flaws started to cause problems, discarded behind the City Hall, the children of the city adored it and would continually go to play with it, even naming it "Murphy" and giving it a wooden doll they carved in its likeness. Eventually it Grew Beyond Their Programming, developing an ego and sapience. When the Puppet Frenzy began, the Scrapped Watchman went mad as its fellow puppets slaughtered the children it loved, eventually developing a seething rage at the adults who abandoned their children at the first sign of danger and killing them out of vengeance for the lost children. It fights P not out of hatred, but out of a crazed devotion and desire to protect Krat's children.
• Like a Dragon: While a number of villains are primarily characterized as ambitious powermongers, certain villains are given a lot more nuance.
  • Akira Nishikiyama was once Kazuma Kiryu's best friend and the person he declared to be his "brother". Then he killed Sohei Dojima to save their friend Yumi, upon which Kiryu decided to take the fall and go to prison for their sake. Nishikiyama was eventually given his own gang but was never properly respected by his subordinates (who saw him as Kiryu's hanger-on). This, coupled with the loss of his sister turned him into the murderously ambitious crime lord that would stop at nothing to attain personal power, including killing his former friend Kiryu.
  • Goro Majima is eventually revealed to be this. After a lifetime of being jerked around, betrayed and manipulated by nearly everyone he knows, he decides to embrace his inner demons and become the Ax-Crazy and unpredictable Mad Dog of Shimano to regain some semblance of control over his life. Noticably, the more of his tragic backstory is revealed, the less of an outright villain he becomes, until he's merely a friendly rival to Kiryu.
  • If a Yakuza villain isn't scum of the earth, they're usually have some dramatic reason for their actions. Yoshitaka Mine from Yakuza 3, for example, reveals just before his boss fight that he was a lonely orphan like Kiryu until Daigo befriended him, and his actions throughout the game are a drawn out case of him lashing out at others to satiate his own brokenness. When he realizes just what his actions have done, Mine chooses to kill himself and the Big Bad to perhaps earn some redemption in Kiryu and Daigo's eyes.
• Live A Live has Odio, the Lord of Dark, the game's Big Bad. His backstory is revealed over the course of the game's eighth chapter, set in the Middle Ages: he was once a knight named Oersted, a gifted Knight in Shining Armor who had won the right to marry his king's daughter, Princess Alethea. But then an evil fiend kidnapped Alethea, leading him to set out with a small group of companions to slay the villain and rescue her. But the attempt costs two of them their lives, including Oersted's best friend. Then Oersted is tricked into slaying his own king via an illusion of the Lord of Dark, leading the people of the kingdom to brand him the Lord of Dark. It's only the dying words of his last friend, the assurances that there is still one soul who believes in him, and he can rescue the princess and clear his name. Upon returning to the villain's lair, he discovers that the same best friend he had thought dead had conspired against him to ruin his life out of envy of always being second-best to him. The two former friends dueled to the death, and when Oersted emerged triumphant, he finally found the princess...who berated him for not caring about her, killing the only man who DID care about her, and finally, to top it all off, killed herself to be with said man. With that, he snapped, and he decided to embrace the title the people of the kingdom had given him. It's only through the efforts of the heroes of the previous chapters that he manages to realize the error he made, and in the end, either sees them off with an urge to remain vigilant against hate (original) or manages to redeem himself shortly before he dies (remake).
• Mass Effect has most of the decoy Big Bad throughout both games, via varying forms of Mind Control and Mind Rape. Matriarch Benezia, the Collector General (the whole Collector race), Shiala, even Saren gets a few sympathetic moments, despite being established as a Knight Templar long before Sovereign got his tentacles into him. The Collector General especially gets quite a few fan-tears shed over its death.
  • David Archer from the Overlord DLC. He's an autistic savant whose talent in mathematics allowed him to communicate with the Geth, albeit crudely. His own brother, Gavin Archer, and Cerebus transformed him into a god-machine to control the Geth, but the experience is torturous for him as he is constantly suffering from Sensory Overload from hearing constant voices. His actions in the DLC were done purely in desperation to find some way to escape the noise, and the incomprehensible screaming turns out to be him begging for the noise to stop.
    • In some ways, Gavin Archer from the same DLC. He did such terrible things to his own autistic brother, but by the end even he's got a taste of how horrible his experiments were. He then pleads for the chance to take care of his brother, claiming that what he did to David was unethical — but if he dies, it's unforgivable. However, it's somewhat lessened in the Paragon route, where he apparently changes his mind on having David be rescued from his situation and pulls a gun on Shepard, only to be pistol-whipped in the face and threatened by Shepard with a bullet to the head if he tries anything with David again.
  • The Batarians from Arrival. They have a long history of hating humans, slavery and terrorism, but Arrival ends with a planet full of Batarian civilians, who are at the mercy of an oppressive and paranoid government straight out of an Orwellian novel, getting destroyed because there's no way to get an early warning through to them about the destruction of a Mass Relay. Then in Mass Effect 3, they've suffered the worst of the initial blows from the Reaper invasion and have suffered a species-wide Break the Haughty.
  • The Illusive Man. Despite mostly coming across as a cold Magnificent Bastard who leads an entire organisation of Absolute Xenophobes and authorises some questionable scientific experiments in the name of advancing humanity, he was once an ordinary man with a family who lost everything; in 2 he actually does some good for the galaxy by bringing Shepard Back from the Dead and giving them a new, improved Normandy to fight the Reapors with; in 3, he's back on the far side, but he and Shepard clearly respect each other greatly. Finally, during the Grand Finale Paragon Shepard can convince him he's indoctrinated and he should break free of their control by killing himself. If they do, his last words are a mournful "I tried, Shepard..."
  • Harbinger of all people is one; the Extended Cut reveals that the Catalyst destroyed its creators and used their genetic material to create him...meaning he's the last of that first race, and is stuck serving the guy who destroyed them forever.
  • The Catalyst itself, after the Leviathan DLC and Extended Cut; the Reapers' overmind is little more than a broken tool, unable to fix itself or even realise that it's broken, built by ancient aliens with a massive god complex to ensure their organic slaves weren't killed off by synthetics they built, but whose arrogance prevented them from realising that it could view them as part of the problem and turn on them. It can't fix itself; that's what the Crucible is for, but since that Crucible also offers the possibility of destroying it and bringing an end to its great work, it also strives to eradicate the Crucible designs whenever possible.
  • Clone Shepard - brought into being solely as a reserve set of internal organs, awakened by a particularly vicious racist even by Cerberus standards to serve as a figurehead and a tool to replace the real Shepard, and then confronted with an endless chain of reminders that they just weren't up to the level of the original Shepard and never would be. Finally, the one person the clone actually seems to care for abandons them in a scene heavily inspired by The Mummy Returns, leaving them with nothing. Even if you try to save them, the clone will simply let go of the Normandy's ramp, hundreds of feet above the Citadel streets.
• Many of the bosses of Metal Gear are tragic in some form or fashion.
  • The greatest example is the series's original Greater-Scope Villain, Big Boss, whose stint as the protagonist in the prequel games (Snake Eater, Peace Walker, and Metal Gear Solid V) recasts a Generic Doomsday Villain as a soldier who realized how governments abuse the loyalty of their troops for their own ends, and creates the world's first Private Military Contractors as a way for soldiers to have a choice in the battles they fight. But when that explosively falls through due to perceived betrayals from people he trusted, he finally decides that if the world won't accept the people who fights their wars, he'll just plunge the planet in eternal warfare, so that soldiers will always have a place to belong.
  • Sniper Wolf from the first Metal Gear Solid is defined by her tragedy—she's a Kurd whose childhood consisted of being a fugitive and refugee who lost her friends and family to an Iraqi gas attack, who was taken under the wing of Big Boss, who truly regrets her part in the Shadow Moses incident in her last moments.
  • Even Psycho Mantis and Liquid Snake are tragic in their own ways, the former driven insane by his psychic powers imprinting on the world's angriest men, while the latter is driven by a massive inferiority complex due to what he (incorrectly) believes are genetic defects which are so broken that he doesn't even test positive as Big Boss' biological son despite being a clone of the guy^note Liquid failed biology and the DNA test was inadvertently with Big Boss' body double, who is definitely not a biological clone, for which he blames his (blameless) father.
  • Fortune of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was an ordinary woman until a conspiracy to steal Metal Gear RAY took place. She lost her father during the Tanker Incident, her mother to suicide following the event, her husband to death in jail due to a federal fraud case, and her unborn child to miscarriage due to the stress. It's no surprise that a woman who lost everything would want revenge, and at the same become a Death Seeker as well.
  • The End of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a grandfatherly figure who spends most of his time barely conscious, only really 'coming to life' to snipe. He bears no ill will whatsoever towards Naked Snake, and challenges him solely to find a Worthy Opponent before he dies. He won't even kill Naked Snake, as he only ever shoots tranquilizer rounds. The most tragic figure in the game, however, is The Boss herself. She was a true patriot, and willingly took on the role of villain to prevent World War III from breaking out, after the real Big Bad went off script and nuked a Soviet research facility to frame the U.S.
  • The Beauty and the Beast Unit from Metal Gear Solid 4, each of which has a "childhood's end" story to tell. Screaming Mantis in particular was forcefully mentored by Psycho Mantis, ensuring she'd be psychicly molested throughout her training.
• Mortal Kombat
  • Scorpion is so blinded by revenge against the Lin Kuei for killing his clan that he ends up becoming an Unwitting Pawn to just about everyone, including Quan Chi, the bastard who was actually responsible for his family's murder.
  • Reptile just wants to save his people from extinction so he latches on to the most powerful bad guy who only sees him as a tool. Reptile never survives in every game except in Mortal Kombat X where his new superior, Kotal Kahn, was actually a Noble Demon that gave him full respect.
  • Smoke is a fundamentally good person who can't avoid his inevitable fate. In MK9, he doesn't become a cyborg but he is killed and resurrected as a demon.
  • Mileena is this in both timelines:
    • In the original timeline, most characters think she's a crazed, insane and twisted freak of nature, so she's a little sensitive about her looks. She has a case of this towards Kitana, at the very least desiring her beauty and at most, wanting her entire life. Nearly all of Mileena's arcade endings before the reboot have her assuming Kitana's identity and seizing Edenia for herself.
    • In the new timeline, though she became Outworld's Kahnum after Shao Kahn's death, she proves to be an even worse ruler than him, going as far as being dubbed "The Mad Empress" by the Outworld inhabitants (partly because she was designed to be an Ax-Crazy clone of Kitana). Kotal Kahn takes advantage of the situation, deposing her and becoming Outworld's new ruler, but she then instigates a rebellion, slowly tearing Outworld apart. But despite being a Psychopathic Woman Child, there's something sadly pathetic about the fact that she has no genuine supporters in her faction during the civil war in MKX. Of those that did support her, Baraka is dead, Rain was purposely driving her to destroy herself with Shinnok's amulet, and Tanya only supported her for Edenia's sake. As it turns out, due to her relative naïveté and weak claim to the throne, nearly every single person under her (barring Baraka) past and present are this to her, with all of them wanting to use her instead to further their own ambitions. And even the ones supposedly aiding her rebellion are plotting to off her right afterwards, and she's the only one unable to see it. Despite her instabilities, she still seems devoted to serving out her 'father's' will, and it seems at times she only wants to rule because she was explicitly created as Shao Kahn's heir. The fact she's so completely obsessed with pursuing a hopeless cause, with no support, for the approval of a dead man, who likely saw her as nothing more than a tool, seems rather pitiable. Then she gets her head devoured by insects.
• Mother:
  • Giygas/Giegue is a powerful psychic alien who tried to destroy Earth in EarthBound Beginnings. He was adopted by a human couple, George and Maria, but then George stole valuable secrets from his alien race that could be used against them. He attempts a full-scale invasion of Earth, but in the process, he pushed away Maria, his adoptive mother who still loved him. He is defeated by Ninten and his friends, not with PSI or physical force, but by singing the Eight Melodies that Maria used to sing to him as a child. Unable to go through with his invasion, he leaves Earth temporarily, swearing to return. He eventually does in EarthBound (1994), but in trying to make himself more powerful and get rid of any emotional ties to his adoptive parents, he ends up becoming a completely insane Eldritch Abomination and Almighty Idiot who constantly screams and babbles incomprehensible nonsense. When Ness and his friends defeat him, it's more a Mercy Kill than anything else.
  • Porky/Pokey too, believe it or not. He grew up in an abusive household, with Ness being his only "friend" as a kid. And while the English Translation makes him out to seem like he's just a plain asshole who assisted Mr. Carpenter in trying to make Paula a Human Sacrfice of his own volition, the original Japanese version shows that he actually was mind-controlled just like everyone else, and truly does ask Ness for Forgiveness afterwards. But because Ness doesn't respond to this due to being very angry at him, Porky storms off very hurt and angry at Ness, and more or less sends Porky to join Giygas as a result, and things escalate to the point where he constantly tries to make Ness's journey harder and ruin his life at every turn he can, and eventually escapes to a different time period at the end of Earthbound. After thousands of years of time traveling and being locked out of every time period except for one (as well as aging unnaturally into a very old man), he ends up on the Nowhere Islands of Mother 3, and begins a Pig Dictatorship upon the islands, and it only gets worse from there.
• No More Heroes: Bad Girl is extremely unhinged and loves bashing peoples' brains in, but in between her fleeting moments of glee through violence, she spells it out that there's nothing in her life beyond it, and that motivating her is deep-seated misanthropy and a desire to claim revenge on the world. We don't get any hints on what led her down this path in her debut, but Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes reveals that she indeed Used to Be a Sweet Kid before she was tortured and brainwashed to become a sadistic killer. The plot of Travis Strikes Again is driven by her father attempting to avenge and resurrect her, and it's a tad unsettling to process that the psycho with a baseball bat that Travis kills in the first game (from a mixture of admitted self-defense but also partially selfish reasons) is someone who had a family that unashamedly loved her.
• Khaos, the Big Bad of Nocturne: Rebirth, is a vampire who tried to befriend humans by helping a rebel faction overthrow their tyrannical government. Unfortunately, they end up discovering his vampirism and attempt to kill him for it, only for his closest friend (and implied lover) to sacrifice herself for him. He tries to revive her by using her corpse as a basis for a familiar, only to create Shylphiel, a completely different person. By the start of the game, Khaos enacts a plan to deconstruct the world to its base elements, reverse time to before his friend died, and reconstruct the world. He would have succeeded too if it weren't for his sense of guilt over potentially screwing up the process and erasing his familiar from existence, causing him to deliberately provoke the party into stopping him.
• In the world of Overwatch, a recurring trend with its villains is that evil does not exist in a vacuum, and that many of them started as decent, if not outright heroic people before tragedy befell them and made them villains, though to what degree and how sympathetic they presently remain highly varies.
  • Widowmaker was once a perfectly normal woman who was abducted by Talon, who twisted her into a Living Weapon strictly because she happened to be married to a powerful Overwatch agent, who they made her first kill. She's since become one of the game's most deadly villains who seemingly revels in the death she causes (except for her late husband), but the sheer cruelty of her situation remains a major component of her character.
  • Sigma similarly was an unassuming and brilliant astrophysicist who by sheer bad luck was caught in a Freak Lab Accident, simultaneously making him a Person of Mass Destruction and fracturing his mind, leaving him helplessly unable to comprehend his surroundings. Talon exploits this in order to use him as their unknowing weapon, a tragedy made worse by his brief lucid moments showing how terrified he is of his state and being unable to fight back.
  • Roadhog was originally a freedom fighter who sought to liberate his homeland after it was sold out to the Omnics. Unfortunately, the war spiraled out catastrophically and turned his country into an irradiated wasteland, with the resulting combination of horror, failure, and regret turning him into a cruel, nihilistic terrorist leading a rampage across the world.
  • Ramattra was one of the many robot foot soldiers churned out during the Omnic Crisis, and came out after the war desiring to seek peace and spirituality, joining the quasi-Buddhist Shambali order as he wanted nothing more but to protect his brethren and live in harmony with the universe. Unfortunately, his faith was broken down as Omnics continued to suffer from the distrust and hate of humans, and after determining that humans are fundamentally incapable of sharing their world with omnickind, he took hold of Null Sector, an international terrorist cell resuming even more mass destruction against humanity, believing it's the only path to ensure the survival of his people.
• Persona 5 has the Traitor, Goro Akechi. He was the bastard son of politician Masayoshi Shido and an unnamed woman who committed suicide when he was a child. He spent the next several years in the foster care system suffering all of the stigma associated with bastard children in Japan before finally being granted the power of Persona by Yaldabaoth, the God of Control. With it, he became Shido's personal hitman at the tender young age of fifteen, hoping to rise through the ranks and get Shido elected as Prime Minister so he could rip the rug out from under him at the last minute. During the game, he befriends the Phantom Thieves, but ultimately turns against them in order to exact his revenge. He completely flips his shit when the realization hits that every atrocity he committed for his revenge was completely avoidable, and ultimately dies alone, with nobody aware of his fate other than the Phantom Thieves. Between his horrific childhood, his lack of emotional maturity to handle it, the two villains actively trying to corrupt him, and the lack of an alternative until it is far too late, he never had a chance.
  • Persona 5 Royal adds one more: the main antagonist of the all-new Third Semester, Takuto Maruki. Not long after obtaining his doctorate in psychology, burglars broke into his fiancée's home and murdered her parents, which sent her into an Angst Coma. He coped by doubling down on his research into an experimental field of psychology that could alter people's cognitions. Then, during one visit to his fiancée in the hospital, his efforts accidentally led to him awakening his Persona, which altered her cognition by changing her memories of her parents' death — but at the cost of all her memories of him. Heartbroken, he let her go to be happy on her own, and finished his thesis on cognitive psience, only for it to end up being shut down by Masayoshi Shido and his research notes stolen. He ended up taking a job as a counselor at the Phantom Thieves' high school, in part because he figured out who the Phantom Thieves were and how they were changing hearts. Over the school year, he forged such a strong bond of trust with them that, when the Big Bad attempted to merge Mementos with the real world, they subconsciously wished for him to become the new master of Mementos, basically turning him into a god. He would use his newfound power to create a world where everyone would be happy. Unfortunately, his methods of doing this amounted to a Lotus-Eater Machine and would rob people of their ability to grow in the face of adversity, and so his goals clashed with the Phantom Thieves, who made him their final target. And despite all of this, Maruki comes off as an Anti-Villain throughout the entire third semester; he only wants to help the Phantom Thieves, and repeatedly begs them to accept his new world. On top of that, the Phantom Thieves feel bad about fighting him as well, and wish he would give up — but he proves to be too much of a Determinator for that.
• The Transcendent One from Planescape: Torment. All he wants is to live and preferably to never again meet the Nameless One, whose very presence reminds him of the times when he was a part of tNO's soul rather than an individual sentient being, and he cannot stand it. Unfortunately, tNO's quest to regain his memory and mortality means that confrontation is imminent, and to prevent it tTO is prepared to murder anyone who could possibly aid or lead tNO to him.
  • The Paranoid Incarnation also qualifies. The Paranoid Incarnation was a madman, who littered his entire existence with traps. However, it turns out that his motivations were... he was afraid. He woke up without memories, in a place where both people and gods hated him for crimes he had no idea he was capable of committing, yet alone having committed. He also lived in terror of the Transcendent One. If you manage to talk him down and re-integrate him into your consciousness, he actually breaks down and weeps from relief and gratitude.
• The Final Battle against AI Sada/AI Turo in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is one where the final boss and villain of the story outright states s/he doesn't want to fight you, however they have no choice. They are aware that they are made up of two distinct entities: the robotic replica of Sada/Turo, and the Paradise Protection protocol, and the moment you attempt to deactivate the system (which the replica wants you to do and will save the continent from potential destruction, the second AI overtakes the robotic body and violently rebels against you. To make matters even worse, the original professor built a failsafe into the defense system, reviving it after shutdown, and enacting a specialized function that deactivates Pokéballs not belonging to the original Sada/Turo. During the activation of the Paradise Protection Protocol, the AI replica desperately pleads for the player and friends to flee as quickly as possible before it activates, as it wasn't aware this protocol existed and is powerless to deactivate it. Once the Protocol is defeated, the AI replica reclaims the body and shoots itself into the Past/Future in order to safeproof the shutdown of the system, and apologizes to Arven for his parents being absentee.
• Vendra Prog is this from Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus because her parents sent her and her brother away from their home to escape Mr.Eye. They were found by galatic authorities and put into a bad orphanage where they were constantly picked on. Vendra discovered Mr. Eye and was tricked into thinking he was her friend so she wanted to go back home and harmed a lot of people to do so.
• Sonic The Hedgehog:
  • Gerald Robotnik. A champion of humanity and science, he inspired Dr. Eggman (his grandson Ivo Robotnik) into becoming a scientist while he devoted his research to cure his granddaughter Maria of her illness and caring for his creation, Shadow. However, after a massive miscommunication with GUN (and possibly involving Emerl from Sonic Battle), they stormed the ARK and the ambush led to Maria dying, taking the bullet for Shadow. With her death, Gerald became obsessed with revenge, and could not even stop himself from creating his plan to destroy Earth, even acknowledging his spiral into insanity.
  • His creation, Shadow The Hedgehog is also an iconic example. Maria was the only friend he ever had, and would basically do anything for her. Gerald knew this, and therefore he re-installed Shadow's mind to remember it as if she asked him for revenge. For that, he almost destroyed earth, until Amy convinced him that while humans can be selfish and cruel, they are trying their best to get a better world, and then he remembers what Maria truly asked him for: To help the humans of earth. That's where he does a Heel–Face Turn and sacrificed himself.
  • Chaos. He did everything out of protection for the Chao, and sought vengeance on all echidnas after their leader, Pachachamac, ordered them to kill Tikal, which truly hurt him.
• The Suikoden series might be king of this trope. In literally every one of the primary five games, one or more of the primary antagonists are this.
  • Suikoden: Emperor Barbarossa's apparent lapse into psychotic madness is actually a desperate gambit on his part to redeem his new wife, the insane Windy, who reminds him of his first wife, who'd died tragically. He ultimately pisses away his legacy, his friends, his kingdom, and his life trying to help the woman he loved… who didn't want his help.
    • Most of Barbarossa's underlings count as this (with the notable exceptions of Yuber and Neclord). All his generals, including the protagonist's father, are fighting for Barbarossa out of loyalty and honor, not because they don't think he's crazy.
  • Suikoden II: All the major villains except Luca Blight and Yuber (again). Jowy, the main antagonist and the protagonist's lifelong friend, is trying to do the exact same thing the protagonist is doing (trying to stop the war and unify the land for the sake of everyone), but he's doing it from the opposite side. Leon Silverburg, his genius strategist, is trying to end things as quickly as possible for the same reason, but the protagonist's side's competence ends up dragging everything out.
    • All of the Blight family's underlings, like the generals of the previous game, serve the empire because they loved Luca's father, not because they don't think Luca is a total shit (and he is).
    • Generally, even Luca is a downplayed version. He may be a total shit, but he ended up that way not by his own choice. It certainly wasn't by his own choice that suddenly, ruffians hired by Muse ambushed his royal entourage, forced him to watch his mother repeatedly raped and dying from it and shattered his psyche. Beforehand, he even used to be a normal kind prince, but afterwards, he began a downward spiral into madness that he's no different than other Omnicidal Maniac (and a particularly nightmarish one), which is what's displayed in-game. And it's because some City-State Mayor was feeling spiteful that he didn't get what he wanted.
  • Suikoden III: The main villain is one of the heroes of the previous two games, trying to stave off universal entropy. His second in command loves him too much to understand the cost of what he's trying to do. Yuber is also there, and remains as non-tragically evil as ever.
  • Suikoden IV: The Man Behind the Man is arguably one of these, but the main general you spend most of the game building towards a confrontation with, Troy, just loves his country and wants to protect it.
  • Suikoden V: The first major villain, Queen Arshtat, is the hero's mother and is being driven insane by the rune she bears, which she only agreed to bear to protect her country. Her sister, Sialeeds, later performs an apparent Face–Heel Turn in order to go full Villainous Rescue from the inside, but it costs her big and turns her into one of these. The main villain, Gizel, is a racist jerk, but he's a racist jerk who legitimately thinks he's doing the right thing for Falena because he listens to his much jerkier father.
  • Gizel is given a much more tragic bent in the manga, where it's implied the true reason for his villainy is because the Succession Crisis of the royal family killed his mother and destroyed his Perfectly Arranged Marriage with the only person he ever loved.
• The remake of Super Mario RPG makes Dodo this, at least a bit. According to the Journal Valentina hatched and raised him, and while she was a terrible "mother" who treats him horribly, to the point the residents of Nimbus Land pity him and he utterly despises her, he never-the-less sticks with her thick and thin because he feels he owes her for being the closest thing to a mom he ever had.
• Super Paper Mario: Count Bleck. His motives were entirely the result of grief over his father throwing his girlfriend Timpani ''into a random wormhole'', but even when she returns to him, he still tries to destroy everything because he feels that it is too late for him to stop.
• R.O.B., a character that was previously nothing more than an NES peripheral, spends most of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's story mode as one of these. His homeland was invaded and turned into a bomb-making facility, and he was forced to deploy the bombs and pull the world into Subspace. He switches sides after one of his bosses forces all of his comrades to pull a mass Taking You with Me and detonate every bomb in the facility, but this sadly results in him becoming the Last of His Kind.
• Kazuya Mishima from Tekken. Right now, he's basically the host of the Devil that shares all his evil ambitions for world domination and crushing the weak beneath his heel. However, he Used to Be a Sweet Kid and had a lot of loving embrace from his grandfather Jinpachi and his mother Kazumi, and he truly loves both of them. His father Heihachi, on the other hand, is a complete bastard and once he took over Kazuya's training, he became disgusted at Kazuya's softness from the previous training by Jinpachi and tossed him to a cliff for a test of strength. The only way for Kazuya to survive was to latch onto his hatred to his father and make a Deal with the Devil. And from that point on, he became Drunk with Power and becomes the unrepentant villain we know of, but his first descent to villainy was something that was really out of his control.
• Tatsumaru from Tenchu was leader of the Azuma ninja until he was presumed dead in battle. Turned out he suffered amnesia and defected to the Burning Dawn and he helped massacre his own clan. He recovered his memory but it was too late so he killed himself (because Ayame couldn't) to atone.
• Undertale:
  • Undertale has this in the form of Asgore Dreemurr. After the death of his son at the hands of humans, he becomes overcome with rage that declares that he will gather the seven human souls needed to break the barrier sealing the monsters away in the Underground and declare war on humanity. Said declaration made his wife leave him in disgust and exile herself to the Ruins, and it's clear that he regrets his decision now, but his declaration gave monsters hope of finally being able to see the surface, so now he has to go through with it, and he's absolutely tortured by it (especially since it's implied that the player character won't be the first human child who died because of his plans.)
  • His son, Asriel, is also one. He clung desperately to the memory of his Only Friend, the First Child. Even sadder, it's likely that they never loved him back at all and only used Asriel to initiate their plans. After their death, Asriel absorbed their soul out of grief and went through the barrier just to place them on a bed of flowers in their village. Thinking that Asriel killed the Child, the villagers attacked him until he was fatally wounded and died back home, only for his "dust" to spread all over a garden. Eventually, due to experiments with determination, he wakes up unable to feel not only his limbs, but any form of compassion whatsoever. Over time, due to boredom, he uses the power to SAVE to kill everyone over and over until the protagonist comes along. We know him now as Flowey.
• World of Warcraft is full of villains with tragic back stories. One of the most infamous villains is Arthas, a paladin prince who was desperate enough to save his people against the undead scourge that he committed many terrible acts to stop the onslaught, up to taking the cursed blade Frostmorne and losing his soul.
  • Illidan wanted only for the woman he loved to return the affection and practice his beloved magic. Every action he took saw him rebuffed by those closest to him, but he still clung to the belief that he could do some good. After being exiled for using demonic magic to fight the Burning Legion, he tried and failed to destroy the Lich King. By the time of Burning Crusade, his constant failures and rejections had managed to drive him more than a little mad and instilled in him a desire to destroy the Burning Legion by any means necessary, becoming a tyrant that ultimately is put down through no small amount of manipulation by the Legion itself. Luckily for him, he gets a second chance of sorts by Legion where he's resurrected and ultimately manages to help stop the threat of the Burning Legion once and for all...though his methods still leave plenty sore and there are just as many that still see him as a villain as much as a hero, however tragic.
• This is a series tradition in Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Egil never wanted to be the bad guy. He was once a kind Machina, but one day, Zanza ended up destroying everything, and killing countless lives. Egil immediately wanted revenge, and to prevent anyone else from getting hurt from Zanza’s hands. He eventually found at that Zanza is immortal, and the only way to kill him is to take away organic energy that he needs to survive. In other words, Zanza feeds on human corpses for survival. That is why Egil started the Mechon invasion against Bionis (with the Bionis itself actually being Zanza). He thought that the only way to kill Zanza was to destroy most organic life so that it would weaken him and eventually starve him to death. When Shulk and friends find out his backstory, they decide to try to convince him that there may be another way after all.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
    • Malos is revealed to be this in the final chapter. Both him and Pneuma were originally AI that were eventually turned into the Aegises, meaning that he has no free will of his own and that his actions, thoughts, and personality are all influenced by the person who awakened and bonded with him. Said person is Amalthus, the other Big Bad of the game. Sometime between the events of the game and the events of Torna - The Golden Country, Malos came to the realization that all of the hurt, pain, and suffering he has caused never stemmed from his own personal desires, causing him to go from a gleeful Card-Carrying Villain to a self-loathing Death Seeker who believes that Being Evil Sucks.
    • As the prequel reveals, Jin was not always evil. He was once a heroic blade who would always do the right thing, especially for Lora. This would come to an end when Mythra accidentally destroyed the entire Torna country. Shortly after, Lora died in a war. Out of desperation, Jin ate part of her body, making him a Flesh Eater. Without a driver, and most of the friends he once knew to be dead, he had no reason to live. One day, Malos approached him, and together, they decided to form Torna, with Jin desperately trying to find a way to revive Lora.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: N, being an alternative version of Noah, was once just as kind and optimistic as him, but that eventually changed. Just like with the present day Noah and Mio, N was once in love with M. However, due to the restrictions put onto them with their shortened lifespans, they could never be together for very long. N eventually realized this, and decided to try to just quit fighting and start a relationship with M then and there. Although he was happy for a short time, again, it wasn’t able to last. Being completely fed up with not being able to be with M, he, along with M, became Moebius. N was willing to do just about anything to be with the love of his life, so he became subservient to Z, and commit the countless atrocities that he does.

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