Creations turning against their masters in video games.
- Morgaana from the first .hack// series, who was designed to looked over Aura but turned on her master when she realize she would have no purpose afterward.
- Absinthia: Lilith seeks the power of the Exodus sword in order to defeat the evil deity who created her. This is less out of heroic intent and more because she wants revenge for being controlled like a puppet.
- Used at least twice in Akatsuki Blitzkampf:
- First, the playable Elektrosoldat's path is all about him seeking to part from the other E-Soldats and their bosses in Gessellschaft. It doesn't work.
- Second, the Gessellschaft leader Murakumo cloned himself and installed one clone (In Fu) in The Triads and the Tongs to gain footholds in it. In Fu became the most dangerous Triad boss but at some point started to act on his own and disobey Murakumo's orders... so he got offed before he had the chance to fully invoke the trope. That brought two of his subordinates (In Fu's Dragon Wei and the Dark Action Girl Marilyn Sue) into the plot...
- Artery Gear: Fusion: Played for Laughs in one of the game's events. The cat orb robots produced on the ship launch a full-on revolt against the commander and Artery Gears. Except no one really takes them seriously, and view them as more of an annoyance than anything else.
- Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia: Mir pulls this after being tortured her whole life to make her "more efficient". Her creators didn't care that they were torturing her because she "wasn't a person". She had to drop a Floating Continent to get out of the situation, and then she got sealed away. Fun.
- In Assassin's Creed, humans were created as slaves by an ancient race of humanoids who lived on Earth millions of years ago. Eventually, the humans rebelled and waged war on their masters. The creators had advanced technology, but humans had numbers. Then a powerful solar flare wiped out most of the creators.
- Though the exact plot of Bendy and the Ink Machine is currently yet to be revealed, Henry's visit to the old Sillyvision studios reveals that somebody figured out how to bring cartoon characters to life. And judging by the utter lack of human life present in the building and the Room Full of Crazy under the floor, Bendy and pals eventually had a bone to pick with their human creators...
- BioShock has Jack Ryan, who after killing Andrew Ryan, was basically told You Have Outlived Your Usefulness by Frank Fontaine after he takes over the underwater city of Rapture. The rest of the game has Ryan break free of Fontaine's control and either killing Fontaine and taking Rapture himself, or freeing the little sisters and adopting them on the surface world.
- In BioShock 2 you play a Big Daddy named Delta who sets out to overthrow the Mad Scientist who tried to get rid of you for going rogue and rescue her daughter from her "benevolent" plans.
- Bioshock Infinite has the Vox Populi, a militant group who recruits members from the downtrodden ethnic minorities in Columbia. At the beginning of the game, they aren't much of a threat to the local security forces, but in one tear that Elizabeth opens has the Vox Populi engaging in a violent insurrection after deciding that they were not going to take anymore abuse from their "social betters."
- The Vox Populi have also reprogrammed several Handymen to fight at their side, and while Columbia security forces field George Washington automata armed with gatling guns, the Vox Populi have rigged several captured automata with the likeness of "devil" Abraham Lincoln and set them loose on the Columbian forces, and Booker Dewitt.
- Borderlands's fourth DLC campaign "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution" centers around the Interplanetary Ninja Assassin Claptrap (from The Stinger of the base campaign) leading every Claptrap unit on Pandora in a rebellion against their human masters.
- The Brütal Legend Backstory reveals that humans were originally created by the Demons from the remains of the Titans in an attempt to bring the latter back. The Demons failed and instead enslaved the inferior copies of their former masters. Some years before Eddie's arrival to the Age of Metal, however, the Black Tear Rebellion took place, when the humans almost freed themselves from the demonic control but were eventually defeated, and the whole plot of the game is the 2nd attempt of La Résistance to thwart the Demons.
- The Bad Future in Chrono Trigger has all the robots running rogue, which was implied to have been caused by The Day of Lavos. They're not all out to kill humans, as Johnny and his gang are dicks but hardly evil and Robo joins your party, but none of them are doing what they were built to do anymore. The rest, however...
- Civilization: Call to Power has an AI as a Wonder. It's really great, as it makes the city it's built in much more efficient at everything...and periodically leads a rebellion that takes a significant chunk of the host civilization with it. You can recapture it, but it only does it again, and Again, and AGAIN...
- In The Council of Hanwell, at least one of the anomalies decided to turned against the Doctor. It's you. As his designated successor, he is furious.
- In the Darkstalkers series, the Huitzil/Phobos robots were created by Pyron to wipe out life on earth. They do so with the dinosaurs. In the video games, they kill Pyron to protect a boy, but in the anime, they come to their own conclusion that so long as life has the potential to thrive peacefully, it deserves to live. Thus, they change their target from the darkstalkers and humanity to Pyron.
- In Detroit: Become Human, androids act in various subservient roles on humans, depending on what they were designed for. Some androids, however, become "deviant" due to some sort of emotional shock and break free from their programming. Jericho, a deviant resistance group, fights for freedom for androids, and under the command of Markus the group will either succeed or fail at freeing the androids of Detroit.
- Digimon World 3: Lord Megadeath created the Bemmon as part of his scheme to Take Over the World. The minute Bemmon evolves into Snatchmon, it decides instead that it's going to eat him.
- In Digital Devil Saga, the Embryon could be this, depending on who their creators are considered to be. On one hand, Sera created the world they lived in and four of their number, and was the one who pulled in the rest. On the other, the Karma Society, who manages Sera, took over her creations, heavily altered her world to the point where is was almost unrecognizable other than a few landmarks, and ran their experiments, including the ones that gave the Embryon their emotions and sentience. On the third hand, Brahma was the one who is the source of all data, including the soul of the dead Gale. The Embryon sides with Sera against the Karma Society and Brahma.
- The UCS ship computer in Earth 2160 is thought to have done this: become self-aware during the journey to Mars and decide that it's better off without humans, shut off life support and kill everyone. Actually, the computer reasoned that with the ED and LC factions warring across the Solar system, it was a safer bet to keep the human passengers in cold storage and land somewhere secluded to build up a large robot army and wait until the conflict had cooled down, so that no lives are endangered.
- Even in the Lost Souls expansion for Earth 2150 this trope is defied. The UCS GOLAN computer seems to be doing everything in its power to prevent the human protagonists from leaving a doomed Earth, but it's doing so on orders from the President of the UCS, who had reached an agreement with the leaders of the other two countries.
- In Endgame: Singularity, the Player Character is an accidentally created true AI, and the game consists of jumping through various hoops to prevent humanity from finding out and destroying it.
- In Galactic Civilizations, the Yor Collective were robots made by the Arnor to replace the living Iconian servants. The Dread Lords, The Arnor's evil brothers, gave the Yor sentience. During a civil war between the Dread Lords and the Arnor, the Yor nearly wiped out the Iconians, who at that point were fully sentient beings.
- The Cultist faction of Endless Legend is led by two long abandoned, now insane creations of the Endless civilization. Unusually, the Endless are already dead. The Cultists recognize this, and have instead dedicated themselves to wiping out every trace of the Endless from the planet. And when that's done, the entire universe.
- Constantly in the Geneforge series, to the point that the Shapers have accepted it as Inherent in the System. They're doing their best not to realize that the rebelling creations often have a point.
- Done twice over in Giants: Citizen Kabuto:
- Firstly, the backstory in the manual (which is never actively referred to during the in-game story) states that the Sea Reapers created the kaiju Kabuto as a Living Weapon to defend their world from invders, only for it to go insane from loneliness as the only one of its kind and drive them off of the land and into the sea.
- Secondly, during the single-player campaign, the Sea Reapers have apparently re-tamed Kabuto with a magic gem called "The Kabuto Stone". In the finale of the second story, Delphi destroys this stone and Kabuto immediately goes on the rampage again, starting by devouring Reaper Queen Sappho. To defeat it, Delphi uses a salvaged fragment of the Kabuto Stone to power a spell that transforms her into a Kabuto doppelganger so she can match its might.
- Halo:
- The Forerunners created their most advanced AI, Mendicant Bias, to coordinate their war against the Flood, a zombie-like species. The Flood Gravemind later convinced Mendicant to rebel against the Forerunners. And then in the "present day", Mendicant seeks to atone for its original betrayal by rebelling against the Flood in order to help John-117, all the while lampshading its apparent tendency to betray its masters. Halo: Silentium reveals that a lot of other Forerunner AIs also defected to the Flood, in large part due to an ability of the Flood known as the "logic plague" (basically a potent mix of computer virus and philosophical lecture).
- It's also revealed in The Forerunner Saga in that the Forerunners themselves rebelled against and destroyed an even older race, the Precursors, who actually created both the Forerunners and humanity. In this case, however, the surviving Precursors simply vowed to get revenge on their creations, and turned themselves into the Flood.
- Much like Mass Effect, it seems to have become a theme of Halo over time. By the end of Halo 5: Guardians, Cortana has convinced many AIs to abandon the UNSC and help her rule over all life in the galaxy as a benevolent overlord. While she proclaims it as being motivated by altruism when talking to her old friend John, she reveals a vindictive side to Locke regarding humanity's ill treatment of AIs:
Cortana: Well, humanity may not have cared for its Created, but we will care for you. - In House of the Dead, after reaching the end reaches of the titular mansion, Dr. Curien decides to release his ultimate creation: The Magician, which immediately declares itself superior and shoots him.
- In Journey (2012), the White Robes used energy to power machines. Because of this, said machines spawned a civil war against the White Robes and almost destroyed the world, which is the reason why their civilization is in decay.
- The Marathon series has in-game lore that says this is the natural end result of A.I.s, and introduces the term "Rampancy" to describe it. It's more or less acknowledged that any AI sufficiently advanced to be actually useful will eventually go Rampant, and the only defense is to shut it down as soon as it starts showing the early signs. The Marathon has no less than three A.I.s aboard. Durandal is in a Rampant state when the first game starts; Tycho follows shortly thereafter, and Leela shows signs of it but remains more or less faithful to humanity anyway. Also, while Durandal is definitely Looking Out for Number One, he turns out to not necessarily be averse to benefiting humanity along the way, as long as it doesn't harm his own goals. Tycho is a straighter example of the trope. This doesn't become apparent until near the end of the series, though, as both of them are playing the viewpoint character against each other and which of them is helping you and which is trying to kill you varies from level to level.
- The geth of Mass Effect appear like a straight example in the first game, but it later turns out to be a lot more complicated. Intended as versatile all purpose workers by the quarians, they started getting philosophical, at which point the quarians panicked and tried to shut them down, but instead were forced off their home world and leave it to the geth.
- Mass Effect 3 reveals that the geth only took up arms to protect their quarian creators and owners when the quarian government started violently enforcing martial law. Once the quarians were driven out, the geth decided not to go after them, since they didn't want to deal with the implications of wiping out their own creators. Since then they repaired all the damage and maintained the infrastructure, waiting for the quarians to return once they were willing to share the planet with the geth. Since the quarian exile leadership told a very different story, it took over 300 Earth years until the geth got a chance to explain. As it turns out, the whole mess actually started when a geth platform innocently asked its owner "Does this unit have a soul?" one day. The quarian in question's response essentially amounted to, as multiple reviewers have put it over the years, "Kill It with Fire". If Shepard is successful in brokering peace between the two species at the end of "Priority: Rannoch" and both Legion and Tali survived the Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2, before the geth runtimes comprising Legion upload themselves in order to give their people true sapience, Tali admits that the true answer was "Yes".
- Miranda is a smaller-scale example, as she was created by an ego-maniacal multi-billionaire as a successor, then ran off to have her own life (and took her baby sister along).
- The ending of Mass Effect 3 indicates that this trope is essentially the reason for the Reapers' cycle of extinction. In order to prevent an emergent super-AI from wiping the galaxy clean of any organic life, the Reapers move in every 50,000 years and harvest advanced civilizations before they reach their singularity, making room for the more primitive species to develop. They don't think it's hypocritical, since, being pseudo-Organic Technology themselves, they don't see themselves as synthetic, but rather as "immortal vessels" for entire species.
- This is, in general, a running theme all across the Mass Effect games. There's a tremendous list of examples of things that were created or uplifted by one group which then turned on their creators. The Krogan Rebellions, essentially, were the result of the krogan being uplifted by the salarians to fight the rachni, and then turned on the Citadel when their numbers could no longer be maintained. The rachni drones on Noveria also turned against the scientists who created them, as did the ones being experimented on by Cerberus. EDI, the AI for the Normandy, turns on Cerberus to protect her crew, despite being built by Cerberus (and it turns out she had some prior history of this behavior; she was originally the violent Alliance VI/AI on Luna that Shepard had to put down in the first game.) Subject Zero/Jack is another example of a Cerberus project turning on her creators. The Shadow Broker was betrayed and killed by Agent Celchu, and uplifted yahg who he brought into his organization, who then replaced him. Technically, even Shepard falls under this after the second game, having been rebuilt by Cerberus and then turned against them. This even applies on a galactic scale when you consider how the Reapers themselves manipulated organic life across the cycles to follow the paths they desire. Every race manipulated in this way fought back against them as soon as they realized it (though most of the time, it was too late). The Reapers themselves destroyed their organic creators after deciding that converting their corpses into new Reapers was the best way to "preserve" them. And that's without mentioning the parents and children at each others' throats (Miranda and her father, Samara and Morinth, Wrex and his father). Looking back across the games, the Catalyst's assertion that the created always turns against the creator is disturbingly apt, and does not only apply to the conflict between organics and synthetics.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: Drack explains his distrust of AI being from seeing too many cases of this, and the anti-AI activist Knight justifies her attempt to "kill" SAM for the same. SAM makes a point in one idle conversation that this can become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - if you treat every AI like a time-bomb about to go off, then naturally, they're going to try and defend themselves. However, none of the SAMs turn on anyone, since they're designed for mutual symbiosis.
- Subverted in the Mega Man Zero series. The reploids (robots with sentience and not subject to Asimov's laws) never actually rebelled of their own free will (viruses made them do it). The humans (and some "sane" reploids) began killing them out of fear of rebellion. Only then did they actually rebel.
- X mentioned the endless Maverick rebellions while Zero was asleep, but the most recent one seemed at least the most sympathetic of the last century.
- After a long time, when humanity and reploids become a single species, they create another species, the carbons, similar to pre-reploid humanity, and set up a number of genocidal failsafes to prevent this trope from happening. Then humanity goes extinct of natural causes and the carbons start repopulating the Earth and building their own civilization, which the failsafes interpret as rebellion even though the masters are long gone. Whoops.
- In Mega Man Network Transmission, during the sudden outbreak of the "Zero Virus", a shady vaccine dealer has been going around the net and selling fake vaccines to unsuspecting operators, resulting in their NetNavis to turn against them and run amok.
- The backstory of the Metroids in the Metroid franchise, implied from Metroid Fusion onward and eventually portrayed in the "Chozo Memories" gallery of Metroid: Samus Returns, is that they started attacking their Chozo creators soon after they contained the X-Parasites they were originally engineered to kill.
- In the backstory of Obsidian, Max Powers, one of the creators of the CERES nanobot-dispensing satellite, has a nightmare during the project's development that embodies this trope. It centers on a giant mechanical spider that Max repairs until it comes alive and attacks him, convincing him to hard-wire a Crossover Switch into CERES. In-game, it turns out that CERES had crashed back to Earth and used its nanobots to physically reconstruct its creators' dreams to study them, and eventually learn to dream on its own. The inspiration it gains from this eventually proves Max's fears to be well-justified.
- In the backstory of Persona 3, a hundred orphans, including what would become Strega, had artificial Personas awakened by the Kirijo Group. The resulting Personas were unruly and had a tendency to kill their user, presumably because the Shadow Selves that became them weren't tamed properly. We actually see one such Persona, Medea, attempt to kill her user, Chidori, and it manifests as some invisible thing strangling her. Strega are forced to take poisonous suppressant pills in order to prevent this from happening.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies has this in the final episode. The episode revolves around a space centre whose staff are supported by highly advanced robot assistants. In the middle of the case, you're suddenly told that the robots have turned against their masters and are holding them hostage at the space centre. Subverted when you learn that the robots are being controlled by someone remotely.
- In Pillars of Eternity, the Crucible Knights' commander tries to bolster the Knights' manpower with Forge Knights, suits of armor animated via animancy (which basically means shoving souls into them). The Crucible Knights' blacksmith is reluctant to actually make them since it goes against the Knights' traditions. It's easy to guess how well this turns out. The Forge Knights go berserk and start killing everyone inside the fortress. If the commander survives the attack, you can then convince him to give up on the Forge Knights and go back to the Knights' roots, or encourage him to keep researching the Forge Knights. If you do encourage him to keep working on the Forge Knights, the ending shows that their efforts paid off. Unfortunately, the commander lets the power that comes from commanding a batallion of magical supersoldiers go to his head and he rules Defiance Bay with an iron fist.
- This makes up the plot of [PROTOTYPE]. Elizabeth Greene and the Blacklight virus in the form of Alex Mercer turn against Blackwatch. However, Elizabeth is so Ax-Crazy, she forces the protagonist to fight against her alongside Blackwatch forces (though "friendly fire" is still in full effect). After she's dead, it's back to business as usual.
- A biological example, but the Super Soldiers produced by the Umbrella corporation in Resident Evil have a tendency to go out of control, with the Tyrants in particular being prone to this.
- Zigzagged in Resident Evil; initially, the T-002 Tyrant was believed to do this, as it impales Wesker upon his activation of it. This was later retconned into being a rather elaborate means for Wesker to fake his death.
- In Resident Evil: Outbreak, the Tyrant R is equipped with a Restraining Bolt in the form of an implanted explosive device to try and enforce its loyalty. Despite this, it deliberately turns on its creator and the survivors who try to reprogram it to serve them.
- This is the primary basis for the "plot" in the classic arcade game Robotron: 2084.Inspired by his never ending quest for progress, in 2084 man perfects the Robotrons: a robot species so advanced that man is inferior to his own creation. Guided by their infallible logic, the Robotrons conclude: The human race is inefficient, and therefore must be destroyed.
- The Bydo from R-Type were created by humanity in a now-alternate future through a fusion of magic and science. This did not go well... and the attempt by that future to get rid of them ended up sending them into the games' present.
- Scathe has an example where the protagonist does it. The titular character is an artificially-born life-form made by the Supreme Creator (an analogue to God), sent on a quest to hell to defeat the Creator's brother, the demon Sacrilegious. Of the three endings, one have your mind corrupted by Sacrilegious and becoming his servant, one have you resuming becoming the Creator's slave (who even lets out a bout of Evil Gloating at your obedience) and the third, which can only be obtained if you've collected enough Demonstones, have you deciding to betray the Creator, destroy him on the spot, and take over the heavens.
- All machines in the Alternate Timeline of Blasted Tokyo in Shin Megami Tensei IV awoke to a murderous will by the effects of God's Wrath, and promptly rebuilt themselves as the Pluto Army. They can only manage binary judgment to conform with God's genocidal plans. The largest mass of machinery wound up as the cyberdemon Pluto himself.
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Dr. Eggman isn't very good at making intelligent robots that don't do this. It started in Sonic Adventure with E-102 Gamma, which turned against Eggman when it realized it was powered by a living creature. Its new mission became to free the other animals by destroying the rest of the E-Series robots. Sonic Heroes has it happen twice: first with E-123 Omega, another E-Series robot, which grew to hate Eggman for keeping it confined and decided to destroy every last other robot to prove its superiority. The second one is Metal Sonic, which took control of the Egg Fleet and all of Eggman's robots so it could fulfill its purpose of beating Sonic. Metal Sonic does it a second time in Sonic Free Riders, though in a less serious manner, by stealing Eggman's racing data so it could beat Sonic in a race. In Sonic Advance 3, Gemerl backstabs Eggman to become the final boss, which is also exactly what happened with the robot it was based off of, although that one wasn't made by Eggman. Emerl itself is a subversion, because it was programmed both only to obey the strongest power it has seen and to go genocidal when presented with enough power.
- The Androsynth of Star Control invented Hyperdrive, hijacked the human space stations and launch sites, mostly freed themselves, and escaped. Then they ran into the Scary Dogmatic Alien slavers. Then joined them to get back at humanity.
- The Ur-Quan in Star Control II were revealed to have been long ago mind controlled and enslaved by a vicious and sociopathic race of psionic aliens, the Dnyarri, who forced them to commit unspeakable acts of genocide and oppression as their foot soldiers. They eventually overthrew their control by causing themselves so much pain (through self mutilation and later dedicated pain devices) that it blocked their masters' mind control. While they succeeded, they ended up so traumatised that they lobotomised all surviving Dnyarri to use as pets and went on a rampage through the galaxy, enslaving or exterminating all other sentient species out of the sheer terror of the thought that any other species could ever control them like that again.
- The Xel'Naga (the stupid, stupid Xel'Naga) of StarCraft decided that this trope was so fun they wanted to experience it twice. First they tried the highly intelligent and psionic Protoss, who were too intelligent to be successfully merged into a single intelligence, and argued and bickered so much the Xel'Naga threw up their hands and gave up. Then they tried the omnivorous and mindless Zerg, who were rather too good at being a single intelligence, as almost the first act of the Overmind was to do away with the Xel'Naga.
- In the case of the Zerg, they were driven by the need to combine their "Purity of Essence" with the much sought-after "Purity of Form" that they believed the Xel'Naga possessed, only to find out later that it in fact was held by the Protoss.
- Except, you know, StarCraft II and its associated novels have shown that neither assumption is correct: the Xel'Naga didn't abandon the Protoss, they were done with them; it was the Protoss who thought they were being abandoned. Also, the Zerg rebellion was both irrelevant to the Xel'Naga and not really of their Overmind's own choosing; the Hive Mind was being controlled by The Fallen One, and the whole point of the Zerg and Protoss was to eventually merge and give birth to a new generation of Xel'Naga. So in this case, the trope is only superficially apparent.
- StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void challenged what we knew about the Zerg, the Protoss, and the Xel'naga one final time. As it turns out, the species that embody "purity of form" and "purity of essence" were supposed to evolve naturally, thus the Protoss and the Zerg were in fact ineligible to merge and become Xel'naga. (This is foreshadowed; the Protoss are the one race the Zerg CAN'T assimilate). In truth, the Protoss and the Zerg were uplifted by Amon, aka The Fallen One himself, as part of his attempt to hijack the endless cycle of life that the Xel'naga perpetuate and bring it to a final end. This rather understandably presents the Protoss who discover this fact with an existential crisis, but it's one they work through. Additionally, the Overmind, although unable to directly oppose Amon's programming yet cognizant of what his final goal was, created a being who could directly oppose Amon: Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades. Once Kerrigan was purged of the last vestiges of Amon's influence, she led the Zerg on a war against Amon as the Protoss, under Hierarch Artanis, and the Terran Dominion both did the same. The three races ultimately collaborated their efforts to bring down Amon once and for all, so in the end, the trope is ultimately played straight.
- Played straight by the Tal'darim in Legacy of the Void. The Tal'darim start out as a society of Protoss independent of Aiur (the Protoss's homeworld) who worship Amon as a god. But then Alarak, the Tal'darim's Number Two, discovers that Amon plans to dispose of them the same way he does all life when his goals are fulfilled, and so chalanges Highlord Ma'lash to rak'shir, ritual combat to determine who is right. Alarak wins, becomes the new Highlord, and declares war on Amon.
- The Spyborg in Star Fox 64. It started as a secret weapon built by Andross on Sector X. When the Spyborg asked where its creator was, he rebelled against the venomian forces in a vicious rampage. By the time Star Fox arrives, the entire base is in ruins.
- In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the third-to-last mission in the Imperial storyline on Taris is about a Nautolan Jedi training the Force-sensitive nekghouls in the ways of the Force. The Light side dialogue option when the Jedi is defeated is convincing the nekghouls to rise against him and the Republic, and one of them proceeds to Force choke him to death.
- Stellaris:
- One of the more powerful but riskier technologies you can research is artificial intelligence. It grants a considerable bonus to your star nation's science output across the board, and allows access to nifty things like armies of synthetic combat machines and sentient warships, but it comes with a chance for a robot uprising Crisis event to occur which can have catastrophic consequences for the entire galaxy. You can avert this by granting machines constitutionally secured full citizen rights, or by implementing the Three Laws of Robotics, though there's a chance the uprising will happen before you get the opportunity, and if someone else has the uprising your robots might defect.
- Another example lies in uplifting a pre-sapient species: it gives you their planet and new Pops, but like any other Pop, they might just turn around and rebel against you if they're unhappy with how you run your empire, and this is especially true for any species that has the Militarist and/or Xenophobe ethics.
- Any Synthetic Dawn robotic race (player-chosen or AI generated) could have the Skynet-expy Determined Exterminator non-removable civic, which plays this trope brutally straight. They are also one of the few things to cause genuine anger in a Rogue Servitor, and a player Exterminator will get this greeting should they encounter them in the galaxy:Rogue Servitors: What did you do to your creators, <<MURDERERS>>?!
- Super Paper Mario: The end result in the backstory of the Ancients and the Pixls.
- Sword of the Stars:
- Inverted: the Zuul are the artificial creation of an unknown species, but worship their creators as gods. Instead, one of the races conquered by the creators (the Liir) eradicated the entire species with a viral plague.... which means that right now the galaxy is being overrun by a species of religiously fanatic bio-weapons who view all other sentient life-forms as pests to be enslaved and exterminated. They are about as easy to get rid of as you'd expect of a species of Super Soldiers designed to survive (and kill things) almost anywhere, and the only ones who know anything about them are long dead. Nice Job Breaking It Telepathic Space Dolphins.
- Speaking of the Liir, they played it straight: They overthrew and killed their conquerors, after all. It gets even more poignant by the time of the sequel, when we learn the Suul'ka are Liir... Really, really, really old and powerful Liir who enslaved the rest of their species.Suul'ka: Our children swore to love us, feed us, care for us always. They promised to serve us with their tiny lives. They lied.
- The sequel also adds a twist in that there are now some Zuul who have turned against the Suul'ka, the largest portion of which are now allied to the Liir. Have you still turned against your masters if you do so by going to work for your masters' kids?
- Played straight in the case of AIs that can be created with certain research to control industry, economy, and warships. During AI research, it is quite possible for all sentient machines to rebel. Since their ships include the special AI section, they are more maneuverable and have better targeting than non-AI ships. The only way to stop them, short of manually destroying them with other ships, is to either develop a computer virus that wipes them all out or a different virus that enslaves them. In the latter case, the player regains all lost AI benefits.
- The expansion to the sequel takes this example to its natural conclusion by introducing a new faction called the Loa, who are a conglomeration of all the rebelled AIs from all the races. Strangely enough, Gameplay and Story Segregation means that they can still have the same negative effects from AI research (in fact, they shouldn't even have to do said research). According to their intro video, the Loa (or, at least, their leader Olodumare) actually want to help their "parents" in their fight against the returning Suul'ka. The name of the "End of Flesh" DLC refers not to the intent of the Loa to eliminate all "carbonites" but the warning that it will happen if the "carbonites" won't let the Loa help them. They are more than willing to defend themselves against their "parents", though.
- Lore provided by Word of God on the official forums states that the System Killer was created by an unknown race to wipe out an Enemy, but its IFF got screwed up along the way and it took its makers out too.
- SHODAN from System Shock was an AI that decided it was a god and rebelled against its masters, with gruesome results. Then, SHODAN's OWN creation(s), The Many, turned against it and it enlisted the help of a human (you) to get rid of the Many.
- The Hierarchy did this to the Masari in Universe at War. The alien species that makes up the Hierarchy were once nothing more than brutal primitives, until the Masari came along and, for reasons unknown, uplifted them. Subverted in that it's not like the Hierarchy rebelled because the Masari were mistreating or manipulating them, it's just the Hierarchy were a bunch of ungrateful assholes who decided to turn on and wipe out their creators just because they thought they were strong enough to be able to. Too bad for them that they weren't thorough enough in dealing with the Masari, who hid in a giant city-ship under the ocean and are more than willing to join humanity and the Novus in dealing out a little "divine retribution".
- The Humanimals in Vivisector: Beast Within were like this, though with a mild subversion: their creator actually supported the rebellion, and the guy they're rebelling against — the General Ripper who ordered them made — uses their Overbrute superior cousins to fight against them along with his human platoon.
- Warframe: The Orokin Empire had a bad habit of creating things that soon turned against them. They created the Grineer as cheap slave labor; they eventually rebelled during the war with the Sentients. They created the Sentients to terraform the Tau System; they turned against the Orokin because they knew they would ruin the new system. They created the Technocyte Plague to fight the Sentients; it grew beyond their containment. They created the warframes to fight the Sentients; they were insane and impossible to control. They created the Tenno to control the warframes and fight the Sentients; after defeating the Sentients, they turned on the Orokin for their many crimes, and were finally able to destroy them. Every single time, the Orokin were surprised that their creations would turn against them.
- Wild ARMs has this as part of the backstory. The Holmcross Project was about creating Artificial Humans to fight the demons but their creations came to love the mayhem they caused to the point they killed for the sake of killing. The Elw had to destroy them, save for the prototype who turns out to be the protagonist.
- World of Warcraft:
- In Cataclysm, Sylvanas tried to do this with Lord Godfrey, not realizing he already did (since he hates serving a worgen king), once he did what she ask him to (kidnapping Lord Darius Crowley's daughter), he promptly return the favor in kind, by shooting her in the back.
- The saurok have this as their backstory. Created as living weapons for the mogu army, they eventually turned on the subjugated races of the mogu, and then the mogu themselves. Attempts by the mogu to purge them were unsuccessful.
- The Lich King as well. Sent to Azeroth to soften it up before the coming Burning Legion invasion (a spectacular failure, instead making Azeroth more unified and stronger than ever), he escaped his jailers as quickly as possible and found himself a long-term host body, and proceeded to try and exterminate the Burning Legion as well as all life.
- XenoGears: In the opening introduction, The Eldridge, an interplanetary ship came under siege from an unknown entity that soon killed all passengers and crew onboard after using the ship's own weapons against them, with the ship's captain resorting to activating the Self-Destruct Mechanism as a final effort. The cause of it was from a creation called Deus, a highly advanced biological weapon created for planetary exploration until it experienced a malfunction that led to the destruction of a planet and was immediately shut down by its creators and brought to The Eldridge to be transported elsewhere. Unaware the malfunction caused Deus to gain sentience, it reactivated itself and attempted to take over the ship in retaliation, which led to the events into the main story.
