Universal Poison / Video Games

Universal Poison in Video Games.

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• This trope is very prominent in the Pokémon series:
  • Poison, associated with the color purple, is one of the 18 elemental types, and encompasses everything that could be construed as toxic, or acidic/corrosive, or just smelly or gross, ranging from industrial sludge, bees, mushrooms, snakes, skunks,putrid rafflesia flowers,^note Though despite being based on a "corpse flower," no reference is made to a foul smell, with the Pokédex entries instead justifying its connection to the poison type by stating that its pollen is super-allergenic, adding allergens to the list of things conflated into the Universal Poison element, garbage bags, pitcher plants and even disembodied stomachs, among many, many others.
  • While the poison status effect actually does recognize two kinds of poisoning, the difference is only one of degree, not of type: there's "poisoned" (saps HP at a constant rate) and "badly poisoned" (saps HP at an accelerating rate), both of which are cured by the same Antidote.
  • Another small exception is that Pokémon Sun and Moon introduces a Pokémon called Salandit with a "Corrosion" ability, which allows it to inflict poison status on otherwise-immune Steel and Poison types, thus sort-of-distinguishing between corrosive substances and other poisons (though this ability is not applied retroactively to other acidic Pokémon that would make sense to have it, such as Gulpin).
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus adds another exception with Sneaseler's "Dire Claw", which uses a venom that can induce drowsiness or paralysis in addition to poison.
• Final Fantasy VII gives poison its own "-ra -ga" classification for use with its Powers as Programs magic system (and the chaining of passive abilities tied to it.)
• Originally the elements in Tibia were Energy, Fire and Poison, with poison being the weaksauce one as a status ailment doing the least damage (though, it varied, Scorpion poison was pretty lethal, except...) and being the only ailement that was curable. A recent update added additional elements. Poison is still the weaksauce, though.
• Diablo II, along with lightning, fire and ice. There may be some sources that deal direct Poison damage, but for the most part it's always a damage-over-time effect that has the neat bonus of preventing monsters from regenerating their health till it wears off. Interestingly, poison damage by itself in this game can never kill a character; at worst, it will take their HP to One (though, anything capable of dealing significant poison damage will also have supplementary attacks to finish you off). This is not the case in Diablo III.
• In Kingdom of Loathing, generic poisons reduce your stats rather than deal damage, but are otherwise the same, right down to the anti-anti-antidote curing all of them.
  • The raffle familiars in Kingdom of Loathing play this one straight, as their poison attack does continual damage to your enemies every combat round.
  • Pufferfish venom can damage the player, but also be used by the player with the right item. The damage increases exponentially each combat round and is the only way to reliably kill the hardest (purely optional) bosses in the game. Cannot be cured but wears off outside of combat.
  • "Toad in the Hole" is a fourth kind of poison, that is also cured by the anti-anti-antidote - the toad venom cuts your Hit Points in half, then does steadily decreasing damage each turn thereafter. Technically this means the game has more than one kind of poison, but most do fit the trope.
  • Invoked by the green BRICKO brick, whose description explains that all poisonous things are green.
• In World of Warcraft poison is classed as 'nature damage' along with diseases (and some druid spells). Monsters such as snakes, tainted elementals, and enemy rogues will put Poison on you; the most common kind is a Damage-Over-Time effect that surrounds you with a green cloud or turns you green. Interestingly, although there are many types of poisons, the antidote is always universal — any cleansing spell that dispels poison will dispel all types of poison. The damage type of all poisons will be nature, but not all poisons do damage. Rogue classes have access to a variety of poisons with other effects, like reducing movement speed, dulling an enemy caster's mind to reduce cast speed, reduce healing taken, et cetera.
• Warcraft III has three types of Universal Poison: Envenomed Weapons (used by orcs and some neutral creeps) which does damage over time, Slow Poison (used by Night Elves) which slows the target without doing extra damage, and the Undead's Disease Cloud, which does piddling damage but stays for a very long time and spreads by contact. The expansion added the Warden's Shadow Strike ability, a poisoned dagger that deals massive damage on impact, high damage over time, and slows the target.
• Etrian Odyssey: The Alchemist has a poison ability which doesn't really fit into the general fire/ice/volt/physical attack pattern. It's no different from the enemy or player skills that inflict the standard poison ailment (which depletes part of the victim's HP once per turn while it's in effect). As a side note, some skills from players and enemies can cause paralysis, but that's treated as a separate ailment unrelated to poison.
• Epic Battle Fantasy has the Poison element (renamed to Bio in Epic Battle Fantasy 5), representing all manner of toxic substances. It additionally features a status effect named Poison, which deals Damage Over Time. Epic Battle Fantasy 5 introduces an upgraded version called Virus, which deals twice as much damage, doesn't wear off and can spread to other characters, friend or foe.
• Mega Man Battle Network has poison panels, which inexplicably hurt you just by standing on them. Then there's Poison Pharaoh, a chip that summons a statue that continually poisons enemies and rapidly drains their HP... and the antidote is destroying the statue. The same effects can be granted by causing bugs in the Navi Customizer, which would imply that "poison" is actually just software glitches affecting the virtual characters of the game.
• In MapleStory, the magic system is separated into Fire, Poison, Ice, Lighting, and Holy.
• Poison was also considered an element in Magical Vacation, along with a whole bunch of other weird elements like Beauty, Sword, and Bug.
• Valkyrie Profile has six elements, of which one is Earth, which has a chance of randomly poisoning enemies.
• Retro Mud has Toxic magic on the balancing scale or magical energy. It balances with Illusion magic, and overuse of either strengthens the other.
• Toxic is also a (fairly rare) damage type in City of Heroes (along with Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, and Psionic
• The original Dragon Quest had poisonous swamp tiles which would cost the hero 1 HP per step. Erdrick's Armor would negate them. Later entries in the Dragon Quest series added the status effect.
• RuneScape has regular poison, stronger poison and a super poison, used on weapons. Also a special type of poison made of a fish called Karambwan. The Karambwam cannot be cured through normal anti-poison, but the first three are just stronger versions of eachother.
• Resident Evil has several different types of enemies to poison you, but the same magical Blue Herb cures them all. At least partially justified in that all the monsters were affected by the T-Virus and so the poisons would all presumably be similar.
  • However, there are some exceptions to the rule that appear from time to time where the poison is particularly powerful that not even the blue herbs can have any chance to heal them. Examples include poison inflicted from Yawn's bite (as in the giant snake slithering all over the mansion) which can only be treated by a serum found in another room (which you either have to use on a survivor or yourself) in the first game, or Nosferatu's toxic plume of gas in Code Veronica which was specifically designed by Alexia to be immune to the blue herbs and also requires its own special serum (which Chris must give to Claire if she's infected while fighting Nosferatu).
  • Yet another poison-like status occurs when Jill is infected by Nemesis in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Appropriately, this is called "Virus" and can't be cured with blue herbs – Carlos must travel to an Abandoned Hospital to find an antidote.
  • In Resident Evil 2 (Remake), poison works much the same but also makes it almost impossible to aim.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Daggerfall is very bizarre in this respect. There are many types of diseases with different carriers, regions, and effects throughout the game world that anyone who is not entirely immune will come down with at one point or another, but there is only one type of poison throughout the Illiac Bay. Somewhat confusingly, this means you could make a poison-based spell that caused paralysis, lost of magic points, or whatever, but this was in addition to the generic universal poison.
  • Morrowind plays this straight with poison, but subverts it with disease, of which there are three kinds. Curing a blight disease requires a separate potion/spell from common disease.
  • Oblivion:
    • Oblivion changes the poison system so that you can use alchemy to make your own poisons with varying effects. You can make poisons that simply damage health, poisons of fatigue, poisons that cause paralysis, etc. However, a universal antidote cures any of them and the reptilian Argonians are immune to all poisons.
    • There is, in vanilla Oblivion, one type of "poisoned apple" whose effect, though called Deadly Poison, isn't considered by the game mechanics to be a poison. This means that anyone who eats it, regardless of poison resistance or immunity (barring being able to heal really quick) is poisoned and will die—even the player.
  • Skyrim uses a system similar to that of Oblivion. For example, there are a few levels of basic poison, poisons which reduce your resistance to specific elements at varying amounts, and so on.
• Command & Conquer: Generals fits this trope perfectly with its toxin, called 'anthrax' in-game but acting wholly unlike real-world anthrax, poisoning everything almost immediately. In order of strength, the three forms are green, blue, and purple. Complete with Alpha, Beta, Gamma designations!
• In Wizardry series levels of poisoning differ, but it's the same Status Effect. Before Wizardry 8 there was also separate Poison resistance.
• In Age of Wonders, Poison is both damage type flag and stats-weakening (but not life-sapping) Status Effect, so unit can be hit by Poison-only type attack and suffer Hit Points damage, but then becomes "Poisoned" only if it was also hit on second resistance check.
• Battle for Wesnoth plays this completely straight. Regardless of source, all poison will affect living units in the exact same way — by draining hit points (always the same amount, too, unless the unit specifically has the "healthy" trait, in which case it takes a bit less) at the beginning of each of their turns until only one point remains; poison in this game can't in and of itself finish off a unit, though it can leave it extremely fragile and susceptible to any followup damage. All forms of poison are also cured by the same universal countermeasures (ending the turn in a village or adjacent to a unit with the "cures" ability, having regeneration).
• The poison = acid thing is justified in MS Saga: A New Dawn, in which corrosives are the only source of the "poison" status effect, as it affects the Humongous Mecha rather than the pilot.
• In Shadow Keep, spider and scorpion venom require different antidotes to cure, and you can have different amounts of both flowing through your veins.
• Guild Wars has poison as a "condition", a Status Effect, which drains 8 HP per second. It turns your health bar green, produces a sickly cloud of green gas around your character, and is functionally identical to another condition known as "disease", except that disease can also spread to other creatures of the same species. Both conditions can affect any "fleshy" creature in the game, and both can be cured by any skill which removes conditions.
  • The sequel also has poison as a "condition", similar to Burn but tending to deal lower damage over a long duration. However, poisoned characters receive 33% reduced healing. Also notably, the game no longer discerns "fleshy" targets, meaning poison can affect golems, undead... basically anything that isn't a stationary object (immune to condition) or the froglike Hylek (immune to poison).
• Lampshaded by Tales of Hearts in a Victory Pose, if Kunzite is poisoned in combat and Hisui is present.
  Hisui: So uh, just how does a Mechanoid get poisoned, anyway?
  Kunzite: It cannot be helped. I am constructed to be very similar to a human being.
  Hisui: Don't brag about it!
• Poison in Dokapon Kingdom does your level in damage each round. Z Plague, which is transmitted by chimpies, does double that.
• The gradual damage effect is inverted in Half-Life 2 "Poison Headcrab" bites are an HP to 1 attack which immediately begins to heal back (to what you were at before being poisoned minus the 5 damage of the crab's bite), representing your HEV suit "administering antivenom". It's essentially harmless - unless they manage to get you in the middle of a battle, as any enemy except the poison headcrabs themselves can bring that little health down to a stark, dead zero. The crabs aren't capable of killing you on their own outside of mods, even multiple ones, but that doesn't make them any less Demonic Spiders than they are.
• Being poisoned in Hellgate: London prevents an character (including enemies) from regenerating its HP. It occurs as a randomly generated effect when a character takes damage from a Toxic weapon or spell.
• Metal Gear is the perfect example. There's one thing that can poison you (getting stung by a scorpion in the desert) and one item that can cure you (the Antidote, and that's exactly what it's called), which thankfully has unlimited doses.
• Curous example is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. There is only one type of enemy which can poison you, and you meet them only twice in the game (and the first time, you don't have any weapons, so you should just run from them like hell). However, the antidotes, which are the only item that can cure poison damage, are very abundant.
• In Dota 2 there are a number of poison abilities, all of which do varying degrees of damage over time and most of which reduce the target's move speed. At least one of these, Venomancer's Poison Nova ultimate, is unable to reduce HP below one, but most other poison effects lack this restriction. Venomancer and Viper, the two most prominent poison-using heroes, are each capable of stacking multiple poison effects on a target at once, which can put a healthy hero into a You Are Already Dead situation very quickly.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, there is just one type of poison damage, regardless of whether the attack comes from weaponized chemicals, ancient blades, venomous beasts, or force powers.
• Pikmin 2: White Pikmin are not only immune to poison, but they can also release toxins and damage enemies when consumed.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • The 2010 version introduces "syndromes" which replace and... enhance the previous Universal Poison and vastly avert the trope. They are defined as one or more different effects, including nausea, dizziness, bleeding, paralysis, necrosis and many others, any of which can affect one or more specific body parts or systems. They can be given an intensity of effect, chance of resistance, given lengths of time for onset, peak and recovery time. The method of contagion can be defined as via injection (bite), inhalation or on contact and creatures can breathe, spit, ooze, bleed or release a constant cloud of their poison. Unless a recovery time is specified, once a creature contracts a syndrome, it's not curable. Forgotten Beasts each get a random syndrome with one or more effects. This usually results in much Fun.
  • The trope is also subverted with the new medical system. A doctor can sometimes "cure" a dwarf of a syndrome by removing the infected body part before it causes any further side effects. A story in the forums told of a military squad getting a syndrome that caused their skin and eyes to rot away, but after surgery to remove the rotten tissue (preventing further rot or death by infection) and some presumably liberal use of bandages, his dwarves went back on duty. The syndrome also paralyzed parts of their nervous system, which left them unable to feel pain, so the fact they no longer had any skin didn't bother them.
• Sword of Vermilion uses this trope straight most of the time, except in one event where the main character is affected by a poison that is much stronger than usual and resists all the standard cures, leading to a Find the Cure! scenario.
• Spiral Knights includes a standard poison effect that can be inflicted by anything from zombies to robots to rabid wolvers and affects all players and monster types the same, but the actual effects are a bit off standard. It deals no damage, but it makes the victim take more damage, deal out less, and prevents them from receiving healing sources.
• Legend of Legaia has two varieties of poison: Venom and Toxic, with Toxic being twice as strong.
  • The sequel also has two types of poisons: the first one being a regular poison that does damage per turn based on percentage, while the second and more dangerous one has a secondary effect that nullifies all healing done to the affected character until the poison is cured.
• Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen has the Evil Ring which either drains your HP or kills you instantly, depending on the version, unless you equip the Blue Necklace first. Darm Tower later has the "Devil's Corridor" where evil music drains your HP. Starting with Ys IV: Mask of the Sun the series featured poison as a Status Effect.
• The Eggplant that drains your vitality in Wonder Boy and Adventure Island.
• In NetHack poison isn't a status effect, but deals a certain amount of damage once and immediately, with a chance of reducing the victim's strength attribute. Additionally, poisoned weapons and pit traps with poisoned spikes have a chance of instantly killing anything that doesn't have poison immunity. Lost strength can be recovered by several different magical means.
• Pathways into Darkness has a poison status effect, and an alien MacGuffin that drains your vitality unless kept in a lead box.
• In the Find Mii mode of StreetPass Mii Plaza, characters with purple shirts use poison magic on enemies. It does 1 damage per turn.
• In Chrono Trigger, Poison is used in much the same way as it is in games like Final Fantasy. The interesting thing about it is that Robo can be poisoned as easily as any of the characters that actually have organic systems to poison.
  • In Chrono Cross, poison takes off 1 HP for every stamina point an ally or enemy uses. Similarly to Robo in Chrono Trigger, Mojo (a voodoo doll), Grobyc (a cyborg), Skelly (a skeleton), and several plant people can be poisoned as easily as everyone else. Also, early in the game one of your characters gets affected by special Hydra poison. Curing it requires you to complete a certain sidequest (or you can skip it and someone else cures her, which is the preferred route as it allows you to recruit another very powerful character).
• Athena has a HP-draining poison effect which can be inflicted by spiders, scorpions or poison potions.
• Global Agenda's medic has poison that's both a debuff and a DoT, and targets anything. Robots? Check. Consoles you have to destroy? Check. Even better, it appears to deploy as a spray that makes its way through armor that selectively targets enemies. There are also pools of this stuff in the open world, "explained" as irradiated water...
• Along with radiation poisoning that lowers your stats, the Fallout games have health-draining poison inflicted by certain enemies. Fallout: New Vegas has two types of poison, the standard type delivered by Radscorpions, Nightstalkers, and a few other creatures, and the stronger poison of Bark Scorpions and Cazadores, which lasts longer and causes dizziness. Both can be remedied with the universal Antivenom. The player themselves can apply poison to melee and throwing weapons. Honest Hearts introduces Datura poison (either from ingesting Sacred Datura Root or being hit by enemy Poisoned Weapons), which can only remedied by Datura Antivenom.
• Inverted in Drakensang: there are many different kind of poisons with different effects (for example emerald spider's poison would make you stunned, firefly poison would lower certain stats for a while and gangrene would weaken you), but the antidotes (either potions, golmoon tea or Clarum Purum spell) works with every kind of poison.
• Averted in Long Live the Queen, when you take classes in poison you learn about the various types of poison in the world and their specific antidotes. When you encounter a particular poison during the story, Elodie will have to actually know what the antidote is in order to save herself.
• Final Fantasy X: Bio is learnt as part of Lulu's Sphere Grid path. What makes this version interesting is that it literally never misses or fails, unless the target is already poisoned or 100% immune to it, making it a very reliable skill to used in boss battles. It also deals ludicrous amounts of damage to the party if they're inflicted (1/4 of their maximum HP).
• In Persona 3, Poison works the same way on all characters, even on Aigis, who's a robot. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth actually explains this though: if Aigis is poisoned, she says she's taking damage because it's corroding her parts.
• Averted in X-COM: Apocalypse: The first poison deployed by X-COM, "Toxin A", is little effective on aliens and possibly more dangerous to mankind. As research progresses, X-COM develops more specialized toxins that hurt aliens more and humans less.
  • In addition, the fact that Toxin C (the best one) hurts all aliens is justified by the fact that they are all part of the same species, despite their vastly different appearances.
• Zig-Zagged Trope in Tales of Maj'Eyal. There are several types of poison, and while they all inflict Nature damage over time and are all cured by the same (explicitly magical) means, each poison has a different secondary effect. For example, Insidious Poison reduces the amount of healing the victim receives, while Spydric Poison prevents the victim from moving.
• Ancient Empires: The poison of Spiders and Dire Wolves works on everything, even the undead Skeletons and spiritual Wisps.
• Averted by BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, which has two separate poison status effects – Virus and Awful Virus. A common item called Antivirus Berries can cure the former status, but not the latter, which needs a different (and much rarer) item.
• Justified in Code Vein. The description for the Antivenom item mentions that there are multiple types of venom, but they all work the same way so one item can prevent and cure all of them.
• Downplayed in Monster Hunter, as most poisonous and venomous monsters and weapons made from said monsters use a purple poison that deals damage over time, but some alternate types and variations exist.
  • Certain monsters give hunters the Noxious Poison status effect, instead of the normal "Poison" effect. In Monster Hunter Generations and Generations Ultimate, certain deviants use the red Deadly Poison, which is even more potent than Noxious Poison. In Monster Hunter: Rise, Chameleos and Apex Rathian use Venom, which replaces both Noxious Poison and Deadly Poison. All variations of the standard poison can be cured via the same antidote.
  • Certain Monsters like Gendrome and Great Girros and weapons made from said monsters can inflict Paralysis, which paralyzes the victim in place. It is represented with either yellow electric sparks or a yellow substance.
  • Other Monsters like Nerscylla and Somnacanth can use a white or bluish substance that puts the victim to sleep. It can be cured by taking an energy drink or being hit.
• FromSoftware games have a tradition of having a standard poison and some form of upgraded poison that is much more harmful and hard to cure:
  • Dark Souls and its sequels have "Poison" and "Toxic", with the latter lasting a lot longer before naturally wearing off. Also, since they are technically two different statuses, you can be inflicted with both at the same time. Purple moss will cure the former, but the latter requires much rarer blooming purple moss. Curiously, even different sources of Poison or Toxic will harm the player at different rates: using the Dung Pie item will inflict Toxic on the player, but a weaker version than most, while at the same time rendering them immune to any other Toxic infections until it wears off.
  • Bloodborne has the unimaginatively named "Slow Poison" and "Rapid Poison". Both are cured by the same Antidote item, though. Bizarrely, Rapid Poison is not an equivalent to Toxic from the previous games, but to Blood Loss instead.
  • Elden Ring has "Poison" and "Scarlet Rot". This one is a bit more varied than most, as the Scarlet Rot is eventually revealed to be an explicitly supernatural phenomenon, being the creation of an Outer God. In-game, though, it's functionally equivalent to Toxic.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory has the Poisoned status effect, inflicted if a player uses SCP-207 and SCP-1853 simultaneously. The effect deals damage every 5 seconds (starting from 2 HP and maxing at 20) and lasts until they die or consume SCP-500.
• Spore: In the "Cell" stage, poison is excreted from glands on the creature's body. It kills any other cell, unless that creature also has poison glands. This carries over into the "Creature" stage.
• Lorwolf: Some enemies that are encountered on campaigns can poison your wolves. The effect deals damage over time and can stack. The more counts of poison your wolf has, the more damage they take per turn.
• Averted in The Sapling. Plants can evolve fruit which carry one of three different types of poison, and animal in turn can evolve resistance to two of the three different poisons at once. And both sides can have varying levels of potency/resistance.

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