Used To Be A Sweet Kid / Video Games

Used to Be a Sweet Kid in Video Games.

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• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag ends with a scene of Edward Kenway helping his young son Haytham see the stage at a theatre performance, and also promises him to take him out for chocolate afterwards, both of which cause young Haytham to express childlike, genuine happiness and enthusiasm. Compared to the cold, ruthlessly pragmatic Templar grandmaster Haytham was in Assassin's Creed III, the difference is stark and troubling.
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: Fenrir starts off as an adorable little wolf cub. Unfortunately, Odin's paranoid fear of wolves leads him to treat Fenrir horribly. By the end of the Asgard visions, a now much larger Fenrir has had all the goodness in him thoroughly burnt out, and now eagerly dreams of starting Ragnarok and killing Odin.
• In Baten Kaitos, Geldoblame, the reviled leader of the Evil Empire, is shown in the prequel Origins as the assistant of the local Reasonable Authority Figure, and helps the heroes out on a number of occasions. Near the end, we see what caused his Start of Darkness, and it ain't pretty: said Reasonable Authority Figure turns out to be only acting as such and informs Geldoblame that You Have Outlived Your Usefulness. He doesn't take it well.
• An almost heroic example in Borderlands. During the intro, you can see a rather brawny but cheerful child playing around with his puppy. Would you believe that child grows up the be the surly, hulking Blood Knight berserker mercenary known as Brick? Or that the reason for this change is a Roaring Rampage of Revenge at the death of that puppy?
• Promotional material for Conker: Live & Reloaded (a remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day) reveal that the Conker seen in Conker's Pocket Tales and Twelve Tales: Conker 64 was him as a child. Conker went from being a sweet and innocent kid to a cynical, foul mouthed, and perverted adult.
• Dark Choco Cookie from the Cookie Run franchise was, if pre-canon pictures and his Young Prince costume are anything to go off, originally a happy and confident person.
• Ayane of Dead or Alive, according to Dimensions, used to cheerfully play with her sister Kasumi all the time, before circumstances related to Kasumi being favored, then leaving the village to get revenge for her brother caused her to become embittered and hostile toward her.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Elen was just a kindhearted elder brother to Perna until Greed has murdered their parents and Elen swore vengeance against him. Perna thinks that killing Greed would make Elen stop blaming himself.
• The Dept. Heaven series spends a game showing us firsthand what a sweet person Gulcasa, the Hero Antagonist of Yggdra Union, used to be before his life caved in on him just when it had started to go right. Granted, side materials and Yggdra Unison, the Gaiden Game where he's one of the main characters, go to show that he's still an incredibly nice guy off the battlefield, but given that the Sympathetic P.O.V. is kept away from him for most of the main game, you'd never know it.
• In the Devil May Cry series, Vergil was once a sweet and playful little Half-Human Hybrid Momma's Boy who loved reading poetry, saying "JACKPOT!" and dreamed of being as legendary as his father Sparda. His parents' death and false belief that his mother Eva had abandoned him to save his brother Dante, turned Vergil into an aloof, ruthless and power-hungry warrior as he grew into adulthood. Dante also counts to a lesser degree; as a kid, he was sweet and timid like Vergil, but as an adult, he's a thrill-seeking Blood Knight wildman, who's a jerkass at times. In the ending cutscene to the Special Edition of Devil May Cry 5, they both comment on how much they've changed while fighting in hell.
  Vergil: Don't you dare say it!
  Dante: JACKPOT!
  (both have a Ass-Kicking Pose while being Back-to-Back Badasses)
  Dante: Why you gotta leave me hanging? We used to love saying that.
  Vergil: I have no recollection. (slashes a demon coming at him)
  Dante: Let me jog your memory. A little Vergil (stabs two attacking demons) crying in the corner because mommy got mad. (kicks the second demon flying at Vergil])
  Vergil: (dicing the demon and rest around him) I seem to recall YOU crying every time father raised his voice. (bats several demons at Dante)
  Dante: (knocking them away) Hah! How would they feel if they saw us now?
  Vergil: What does it matter? (thrusting past each other wrecking more demons) We're still here aren't we?
  Dante: (back to back again) Yeah, you're probably right.
• Wirt, the unfortunate peg-legged boy from Diablo. He wasn't always the Jerkass he is in the game: he was a normal kid from the city of Tristam until he was abducted by demons and pulled inside the Cathedral. Griswold managed to save him, but not before he lost both his leg and a big part of his sanity.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: A former friend of Dallis says sadly that she used to be a kind, quiet, loving girl before she ended up overseeing the Final Solution against Sourcerers. The endgame reveals that Dallis was actually killed and replaced by an Eternal, making it a Subverted Trope.
  Nebora: People... do change, don't they?
• Konnan of DragonFable, who used to be Yulgar's apprentice and used to look up to heroes. Then Akriloth happened.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Inverted in Dragon Quest V; Harry is a vile, abusive Spoiled Brat as a boy, but years of hardship and suffering turn him into a kind, honorable and selfless young man.
  • Played straight with Terry in Dragon Quest Monsters and Dragon Quest VI. Life turned out rather harsh between the two games (highlights include an evil king forcing his beloved sister into prostitution), turning him from an adorable Kid Hero into a darker antihero.
• Porky Minch of EarthBound (1994) may not have ever been a "sweet kid" by any stretch of the imagination, but he was certainly a normal one. Throughout the course of the story, events slowly dragged him in and corrupted him, to the point where he became The Dragon to Giygas, and may actually have been pulling Giygas's strings by that point. When that fell through, he disappeared into time, later resurfacing to invade and corrupt the Nowhere Islands, dismember and reassemble its wildlife, and slowly suck the soul out of Tazmily Village until everyone left for his city. All of this was done out of sheer boredom and shows absolutely no remorse for anything, believing himself to be victimized and in the right.
  • In the end, it's shown that Giygas and/or the Mani Mani Statue were playing on his desire to be liked, when he states one of his main motivations for destroying the world to be so that "...everyone who won't like me is gone."
  • There's also Giygas himself in the first game, according to Maria. Ultimately it's the lullaby Maria sang to him as a child that forces him to retreat.
• Back in Fallout 3, Arthur Maxson was a dorky and cute young boy who very clearly had a crush on his Action Girl mentor, Sarah Lyons. By the events of Fallout 4, Arthur is the Elder of the Eastern Brotherhood and has strayed far from the humanitarian policies Owyn and Sarah instilled into the Brotherhood while they were in charge - Arthur wants to destroy all feral Ghouls, Super Mutants, Synths and the Institute with extreme prejudice, and enforce the Brotherhood's control over the Commonwealth through military might.
  • Inverted by MacCready. In 3, he was the infamously mean and foul-mouthed brat who was in charge of Little Lamplight. By 4, MacCready has become a deeply flawed but likeable young man who's cut down on the swearing, deeply regrets being such a Jerkass in the past, and even got married and had a kid, though that ended tragically.
  • Shaun, if his Synth replacement is anything to go off of, was a clever and intelligent boy who liked to work with his hands and invent things. Sixty years later and he's the head of the Institute and will willingly trade in morality For Science! He shows courtesy to you, his father/mother, not out of any lost love for you but because he thinks that it's what a child should do for their parent.
• Fate/Grand Order has an odd case of this with Jeanne Alter. Her grown-up self is hot-tempered, crude, violent, dimwitted, Laughably Evil, and tried to steal Christmas. Her child self, Lily, is kind, pure-hearted, reasonably intelligent, heroic, and tried to save Christmas. (She's also none too happy about her older self.) What makes this an odd case is that Jeanne Alter never had a childhood, having been created by magic as an adult. Lily is just her under the effects of a youth potion.
  • An example of this trope played much more straight appears in the sixth Lostbelt, Avalon Le Fae. Upon arrival, they learn about Morgan, the queen of Faerie Britain and king of the British Lostbelt. She's a cruel tyrant who demands a yearly tax of mana from every faerie in Britain, kills those who are unable to pay, has knights who are able and willing (and, in one case, eager) to do her dirty work, keeps the faerie clans at odds with one another, is willing to ignore calamities that will kill a great many of her subjects if it serves her endgoals, is willing to implement a plan that will destroy the entire planet, and severely restricts methods of transporation. Then, at the end of Act I, Mash gets sent back in time to before Morgan's reign began, and meets and befriends Aesc the Savior, a bright, kind, caring, and overall adorable girl. Despite her nature and her heroic actions, including ending two separate wars, every time Aesc helped the faeries, they turned around and betrayed her, often attempting to murder her outright. Eventually, at the end of the Autumn War, when faeries destroyed the peace Aesc had worked so hard to attain and poisoned the new human king, Aesc broke down, resolving to save only Britain, faeries be damned. She then reveals to Mash shortly before bidding her farewell that she, in fact, is Morgan herself. Morgan's tyranny in Faerie Britain is due to the faeries' capricious nature causing her to abandon any and all sympathy she used to have for them, and opt to preserve Britain itself, to the point that she would sacrifice her subjects to do so.
  • This applies just as painfully to the aforementioned eager Fairy Knight: Tristan, AKA Baobhan Sith. Sith used to be an incredibly sweet Fairy who worked tirelessly to help everyone around her, only to be tossed aside again and again by the capricious Fae. Her current merciless attitude is because Morgan found her, took her in and taught her to be cruel and vengeful towards the Fae so as to avoid being further exploited.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Prince Julius from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, is hinted to have been a nice, perfectly normal boy in a Childhood Friend Romance with Princess Ishtar, instead of The Antichrist Manfroy was hoping for. So, to resolve that, Manfroy gave him the Loptyr tome... In fact, if his sister Julia attacks him during the last battle, Julia lampshades the trope via a heartbreaking speech where she tells Julius that she remembers his former kindness, and angrily screams at Loptyr for changing him.
  • King Zephiel, of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, was a Well-Intentioned Extremist whose dealings with his father had destroyed his faith in humanity. In the prequel, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, he's The Wise Prince who just wants his father's love. This is well-shown in his two Fire Emblem Cipher cards: the first one has a young Zephiel happily playing with his younger sister, the second one has his older and embittered self-attacking his enemies.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, flashbacks on the Azure Moon route show Edelgard was once an adorable, kindhearted girl who liked to dance and was good friends with Dimitri. Unfortunately, the Trauma Conga Line that occurred between the end of Dimitri's acquaintance with her and the start of the game, which included inhumane experimentation and the deaths of everyone she ever loved, turned her into a warlord bent on conquering the continent in order to trigger societal upheaval. She is the primary antagonist on the Azure Moon route and the secondary antagonist on the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind routes, and even on Crimson Flower she's an Anti-Hero who has to have the crap beaten out of her before you turn to her side.
• In Final Fantasy VII there was a shy boy from Nibelheim who optimistically dreamed of being an adored hero like his idol the 1st Class SOLDIER Sephiroth as well as winning the heart of his crush Tifa whom he was too nervous to talk or hang out with. Unfortunately the boy became anti-social and lashed out at people after Tifa's injury when crossing a bridge on Mt. Nibel, which her father blamed him for. But after leaving his village to become a SOLDIER while making The Promise with Tifa, said boy grew up to become someone shy, upbeat, brave, and supportive seen in Crisis Core, though he had really bad self-esteem due to failing to achieve his dream, as he couldn't make it any further than being a simple infantryman, and upon returning to Nibelheim he didn't dare show his face out of embarrassment. Then his hero Sephiroth went crazy and set fire to Nibelheim, killing his mother and cutting up Tifa and his best friend Zack. If that wasn't enough he and Zack got experimented on by a Mad Scientist and infused with mako and Jenova cells, the latter of which proves way worse further down the line... He attained False Memories as a result. Even after escaping, Zack was then shot down leaving the boy as a cynical and headstrong shell of his former self. Said boy being Cloud Strife The Hero, it takes Tifa going on a Journey to the Center of the Mind to restore his former self.
  • Lampshaded in the remake when Cloud acts the part of a cold-blooded merc i.e trying to kill Loose Lips Johnny. Tifa is terrified and upset at how much Cloud has changed from the sweet boy whom she knew and fell for as a teenager. He does get better over the course of the story though.
• Genshin Impact: Back when he was younger, Diluc was very energetic and passionate about being a Knight of Favonius, more befitting his Vision (which he got at a young age). But the death of his father changed everything, no less due to the circumstances around it, that made him grow cynical and bitter.
• A brief conversation in Grand Theft Auto IV has Derrick wondering what happened to his much younger brother Patrick, who was a sweet kid years before when Derrick left Liberty City to go to Ireland, and now is a rude, drug and alcohol addicted thug. It can probably be attributed to deep family dysfunction and Packie having been molested by his and Derrick's father.
• Grand Theft Auto V has Tonya, a girl that Franklin grew up within their childhood and had feelings for. When Tonya got older, she started abusing drugs and got a boyfriend that can't even show up for work and is under constant threat of losing his home because of how much crack he abuses. Franklin is completely turned off by her and even outright says that she used to be a sweet girl before she started doing drugs. Tonya implies she's going to quit using drugs, but it never takes and Franklin stops believing her.
• In Holy Umbrella, the Emperor Dondera is said to have been a "quiet, hard-working man" prior to opening the first seal. At this point, he underwent a grotesque transformation, as shown through a retrospective Character Portrait.
• Both of the titular characters in the Jak and Daxter games hardened as a result of being suddenly thrown 500 years into a Bad Future after a mostly peaceful childhood. Jak got the worst of it, in that being captured moments after entering the future and used as a test subject for a Dark Warrior project that created his Superpowered Evil Side and revoked his Incorruptible Pure Pureness as a Prince of Haven City caused his first priority upon escaping to kill Praxis for ruining his life. His life doesn't get any better, especially when Veger comes into the picture.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep includes glimpses into the lives of several Organization members before they became Nobodies. Ienzo (Zexion's original self) was a cute Child Prodigy who followed his elders around in an oversized lab coat, while Axel and Saïx's human identities, Lea and Isa, were best friends with them having the dynamic of a Keet and Sugar-and-Ice Personality flavored Red Oni, Blue Oni. Isa is probably the worst, given how Saïx is one of the most cruel Organization members.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] has Lea and Ienzo regain a little of their childhood sweetness upon the return of their hearts... Isa however? The game reveals that he's been slowly turning into another Xehanort vessel, which makes it unclear how much control he's had of his own actions. Kingdom Hearts III does eventually bring him back though.
  • Kingdom Hearts χ introduces Marluxia and Larxene's original forms, Lauriam and Elrena. Lauriam was a gentlemanly and caring Big Brother Mentor both to his actual younger sibling and Ventus while Elrena was somewhat withdrawn and had a far less mean-spirited sense of sarcasm than the one she develop upon losing her heart.
• Here's a fun one for you. In Kingdom of Loathing, once you Ascend, you can gain access to a Temporal Rift and visit the past version of several Nearby Plains areas. One of them is Fernsworthy's Hut, the past version of Fernsworthy's Tower. Fernsworthy himself is still alive at this point and is teaching an Ethics of Magic class. You know that cute schoolgirl who winks at you as you're leaving that scene? If only the Naughty Sorceress had paid attention in that class...
• In Love & Pies, Edwina used to be a Nice Girl in her childhood, playing with Freya and Sven and giving them flowers and presents, respectively. She was best friends with Freya growing up, but had a falling out as adults, which is why she's antagonistic towards Freya's daughter, Amelia.
• Metal Gear:
  • Would you believe that the quirky, dorky, naive rookie soldier Naked Snake who you play as in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater eventually becomes Big Boss, the Big Bad of the entire series? It turns out that being forced to kill your hero mentor and seeing firsthand how governments callously use, abuse, and then toss aside soldiers will make a bitter shell of a man quite quickly.
  • Jack aka Raiden was once a innocent little boy born in Liberia who could’ve had a normal childhood. If not for the First Liberian Civil War and George Sears aka Solidus Snake the Big Bad of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty killing his parents, adopting him, turning him into a Child Soldier and setting on him on the path of being the jaded Blood Knight Cyborg with Ax-Crazy streak he is by the time of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. It’s made quite clear, without the influence and care of his allies as well as the love of wife and son, Raiden would be a global terrorist by now.
  • Inverted for Liquid Snake aka Eli, as a child seen in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain he’s a Enfant Terrible brat with his own militia who’s willingly to kill anyone who so much as looked at him wrong or even just showed him affection. Very different from the Affably Evil and surprisingly merciful adult antagonist seen in Metal Gear Solid.
• In NieR Replicant, the eponymous protagonist is initially a kind, optimistic, and selfless 16-year-old (though even then he was hiding severe issues, like the fact that he went into prostitution to pay for his sister's medicine and developed a fear of people touching his hair as a result of the sexual encounters with a rough customer). After his sister is kidnapped by the Big Bad, his entire world falls apart. Cue the 5-year timeskip into the second half of the game, and you see he's become an irreparably damaged, murderous, and bitter young adult.
• Persona 5: Subverted with Delinquent Ryuji Sakamoto. He was once the star athlete on the running team and pride of the school. Unfortunately, the school's volleyball coach saw Ryuji and the rest of the track team as a threat and began running them into the ground. He proceeded to goad Ryuji into a fight by talking about his abusive father, which he used to injure Ryuji's knee bad enough to possibly permanently ruin his track chances and then disband the track team. He became labeled a delinquent, an image he ended up embracing when he dyed his hair. However, while he is the most vocal about his disdain toward crooked adults, he is actually a total sweetheart and an outgoing great guy who wants to help people. He quickly bonds with the protagonist and becomes his Best Friend (though unlike the past protagonist's Bromantic Foil, he's the Chariot rather than the Magician.)
  • Discussed with Akechi in an unused Mementos line in Royal, where he talks about how his use of laser guns as Crow was inspired by his innocent dream of being a hero when he was a child.
    Akechi: There was a long time ago where I wanted to be a hero. This laser gun is a memento from that period.
    Ryuji: YOU used to be an innocent lil kid!? Dude, I can NOT picture that.
• Cyrus of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, according to an elderly couple in his hometown of Sunyshore City. Even they, however, had to admit that even from the beginning he was a little bit funny...
• Psychonauts: Coach Morceau Oleander is a Drill Sergeant Nasty and the Big Bad, plotting to take over the world with tanks piloted by the brains of psychic children. When Raz steps into his mindscape at the end of the game, he discovers that the coach used to be a sweet little boy with a love for rabbits, but his butcher father traumatized him at a young age by killing a rabbit he was playing with right in front of him. Luckily, Oleander pulls a Heel–Face Turn when Raz defeats the mental embodiment of Oleander's daddy issues.
• Jack Marston in Red Dead Redemption. As a kid, he is very kind and polite, and even dreams of becoming a writer. How does he end up? The government betrays his father - both his father and his father figure die in the assault, and his dog and mother are shown to be deceased within 3 years. He becomes a depressed gunslinger, kills the (now-retired) corrupt federal agent that ordered the assault, and ends up becoming a morose drifter wandering a world that has no place for people like him. There's a possibility that he eventually did become a successful writer, but only if an Easter egg in Grand Theft Auto V counts as canon.
• Resident Evil:
  • Claire Redfield in RE2 starts off the series as a 19 year old outgoing, tomboyish motorcycling college girl full of optimism. By the time of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 she’s a 34 year old adult mature and somber woman whose terrible life experiences have taken some toll on her personality and compassion.
  • Chris Redfield similarly was (as background material shows) once a rebellious and jovial Maverick-esque hotshot in his youth. A certain instance involving a mansion full monsters and a Mad Scientist whom killed most of his S.T.A.R.S teammates and many more years fighting bioterroism and losing allies has turned Chris into the jaded, stoic, brooding as Batman figure he is today. Comparing how he is in RE1 - a bright eyed special rescue cop, to how he is in Resident Evil Village - a grizzled, bearded Dark Is Not Evil rogue military officer and Anti-Hero. The difference is night and day.
  • Leon Kennedy began his career in RE2 as a 21-year-old optimistic Eager Rookie cop who strongly believed in justice and even after the city he was going to serve got overrun by zombies, he still stated boldly and excitedly to his fellow survivors that those responsible will get what’s coming. By the time of Resident Evil: Vendetta however Leon is a 40-something year old depressed and pessimistic drunk who’s been hit in the head with the anvil of life so many times that he’s come to believe his heroics against bio terrors are worthless since The World Is Always Doomed. It takes the efforts of Chris and Rebecca to bring Leon out of his funk and help him regain some of his former optimism.
  • Downplayed with Sherry Birkin compared to the previous examples. She’s still pretty sweet and compassionate but compared to how she is in RE2: a shy, non-violent 12 year old Cheerful Child who in the remake wants a puppy and a parrot, to how she is in RE6: a mature 27 year old Action Girl willingly to blow foes away with More Dakka, it’s clear she has changed quite a lot.
  • Judging by family pictures and notes Zoe Baker from RE7 used be a sweet and normal Louisiana girl, not at all the jaded Broken Bird Ethan meets in the present. Although getting trapped with your family after a Walking Wasteland has turned them into Ax-Crazy mutants for multiple years will do that to you.
  • Averted with Lucas Baker from the same game. Going into his bedroom and seeing his childhood toys and trophies might make you think he was once a normal kid before becoming a Saw death trap making creep, but notes reveal he kept a school bully holed up in his attic until he starved to death. So even before Eveline showed up he was a mentally unstable psychopath and all becoming becoming Molded did to him was make him even worse.
  • Also averted for Ashford siblings Alexia and Albert in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. As seen by a video Claire watches, their Creepy Twins behaviour i.e ripping the wings off a dragonfly and dropping it in an ant farm to be devoured-shows they were bad news from start, long before they turned their own father into a monster.
• In Shadowrun Returns you're investigating your friend Sam's murder. You can find a photo of him and his twin sister Jessica as children. In the present, he was a drunken loser (who, in his own words, probably deserved whatever killed him) and his sister's become a cold, Corrupt Corporate Executive who had Sam and several other innocents murdered because she wanted to bury their mother with the organs they'd had transplanted from her.
• In Skullgirls, Peacock was a friendly, cartoon-loving child before being captured by slave traders and horribly mutilated by them. While Dr. Avian and the Anti-Skullgirls Labs were able to repair her body, her mind remained scarred, leaving her an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight using her love of cartoons as the basis for her attacks. Her friend, Marie, is also an example of this trope: she was captured by the same group of slave traders, sending her on a quest for revenge by tracking down and using the Skull Heart.
  • Meanwhile, Carol was an innocent, kindly teenager before being captured by Valentine and Lab 0, who transformed her into the horrific Painwheel. She's Brainwashed into tracking down the Skull Heart for Lab 0.
• The trope is almost said word-for-word by one of the characters in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters's New Game Plus, right before Revya stabs her. In this case, it's ambiguous whether Revya was corrupted by the Onyx Blade or just snapped after finding she had been raised since childhood to be nothing more than a tool and that even her soul had been groomed for that purpose.
• Soul Series:
  • Siegfried Schtauffen was a kind child and the son of a proud esteemed Knight of the Holy Empire until his father went away on a mission and started hanging with the wrong crowd and formed a gang of bandits. One night, Siegfried and his gang raided a tired group of knights and murdered them all. To his horror, Siegfried realized that one of the knights he killed was his father and was driven insane. He eventually convinced himself that someone else had killed his father and heard of Soul Edge, the esteemed "Sword Of Salvation" seeking it out hoping to take down his father's killer. Soon after gaining Soul Edge, he becomes the new host for it, becoming the demon knight known as Nightmare.
  • Ivy Valentine appears to fit the trope; the family portrait◊ hanging in the Valentine Mansion on her SCIII stage seems to suggest it, as she looks to be about 11-12 years old, sports a cute (platinum) bob and has a hand placed lovingly on Earl Valentine's shoulder.
  • Cervantes de Leon idolized his kindhearted privateer father, who was killed by an English warship disguised as a merchant vessel, during his childhood days. Devastated, Cervantes took the old man's hat, repudiated his ideology, and became a notoriously ruthless pirate long before he got his hands on Soul Edge.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, Vaylin used to be a sweet child until the day when she could not control her powers in a sparring match. She was sent to a facility on a dead world by her father to have her powers controlled and was left in isolation and in the care of a mad scientist who tortured her. When she is finally released from the facility, she emerges as a completely different person.
• Juri from Street Fighter is a sadistic hedonist who revels in bloodshed, but even if she doesn't make a big deal out of Shadoloo having killed her parents when she was younger, it obviously played some part in the twisted person she became. The OVA mentions that she was once a promising taekwondo fighter, and the UDON comics portray her as a somewhat reserved, innocent girl who is eager to please her parents; five months later, after her father has been executed on live TV, her own feelings of weakness transform into an obsession with becoming a pure embodiment of death.
• In the Tales Series:
  • Tales of the Abyss:
    • Utterly inverted by Jade Curtiss, who, when you get to know him, is actually a pretty nice guy. Then we learn about him as a child...
    • Alternatively, played straight by Van Grants, as Guy Cecil mentions remembering Van serving him on Hod and how he was like a big brother to him.
    • Asch the Bloody also plays it straight as when he was Luke fon Fabre he was definitely The Wise Prince and genuinely kind. But his experiences under Van and being replaced by a replica have left him a bitter, angry mess.
  • At the beginning of Tales of Berseria, protagonist Velvet Crowe is an ordinary sixteen-year-old who enjoys hunting and spending time with her younger brother. Then her brother-in-law ritually sacrifices said younger brother, turns her into a daemon, beats the tar out of her, and throws her into a literal hole in the ground to subsist on nothing but other daemons for 3 years. When she finally gets out, she's become an embittered Broken Bird fueled by The Power of Hate and obsessed with getting revenge on him.
• Tekken:
  • Jin Kazama was a kind, sweet boy who has lived a rather happy life with his mother Jun Kazama until he was told by his mother at the age of 15 that his father was Kazuya Mishima (who was dead at the time) and that something bad might happen to her and should anything go wrong, that he should go to his grandfather Heihachi, the head of the Mishima Zaibatsu. One night, an entity known as Ogre attacks their home and in the aftermath, Jun is missing. Respecting his mother's wishes, Jin goes to his grandfather Heihachi and asks him to train him to avenge his mother. At the age of 19, Jin enters the 3rd King of Iron Fist Tournament and makes it all the way to the final contestant, Ogre. After he defeats Ogre, he is then gunned down by Heihachi and his soldiers. Jin reawakens and becomes Devil Jin (thanks to the Devil Gene he inherited from his father) and smashes Heihachi through a wall and flies off into the night. Since then, he has nothing but hatred for his paternal side of the family and will do anything to be rid of them and his curse, even if it means putting the world in danger.
  • Before Jin was his father, Kazuya, who used to be gentle in nature. After having endured his father Heihachi's abuse for years, he finally snaps when the old man kills his mother Kazumi without explanation before tossing him down a ravine in case he had inherited his mother’s Devil Gene. That event both drove him to hatred and awakened the Devil Gene inside him, allowing him to survive to get revenge and try to take over the world.
  • The Williams sisters Nina and Anna were once normal young girls with loving parents, albeit with a Professional Killer father Richard who wanted them to become assassins. When Richard died, both Nina and Anna took it hard since they competed for his affection. Nina in particular, since Richard was the only man she ever trusted, his death transformed her into the cold hearted Dark Action Girl (who spites and rejects her own sister and son) she is today. Anna in comparison kept some of her nicer qualities from her childhood, but is still a bitter and violent woman thanks partly to her late father preferring her sister to her and more due to said sister generally making her life hell including killing her husband in Tekken 7.
• In Undertale, Toriel and Asgore's kids, the two main antagonists of the game, are revealed to have been more-or-less innocent kids before their Start of Darkness:
  • Their biological son Asriel was a cowardly but Cheerful Child who, after having been manipulated by his adoptive sibling to kill humans, rather chose to let himself hurt and died in the process. After his ressurection as a flower, he couldn't feel anything and traumatized by his previous experience, embraced the idea that the world is "kill or be killed".
  • Their adoptive child, the Fallen Human, is a more ambiguous case: while they found comfort in the Underground, they already had issues due their past alongside humanity and neither Asgore nor Toriel knew how to deal with them. However, they were more tame than the Humanoid Abomination they become at the end of a No Mercy run.
• By the time The Walking Dead Season 3 rolls around Clementine has ended up like this, going from being the sweet little girl who just wanted to find her mom and dad to a Little Miss Badass who robs people at gunpoint and coldly agrees to "help" someone in exchange for their car. Considering what Seasons 1 and 2 were for her it's hard to blame her for it (though she does soften up quite a bit as the protagonist gets to know her). She's also one of the few examples who's still a child: her getting her first time of the month, and subsequently freaking out because she's "bleeding for no reason", is actually a plot point.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: The von Everec brothers were always hellraisers, though their youthful escapades were basically the pseudo-medieval version of Wacky Fratboy Hijinx. Then Vlodimir died, and Olgierd met Gaunter O'Dimm...
• Bloody Mary from The Wolf Among Us according to her game file. Her biography states that she was once a shy, timid young girl who wanted to find her true love. Unfortunately, Mary married an abusive husband who she ended up killing, simultaneously triggering her taste for causing death. She would eventually grow up to become the sadistic Professional Killer encountered in the game.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Darion Mograine, as a child, loved his father and hoped to become a paladin. After sacrificing himself to save his father's soul, he became a Death Knight agent of the Lich King's will, and later, a ruthless Anti-Hero willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat the Lich King.
  • For that matter, the Lich King himself. The child we see early in his novel is something of an idealist, loves animals, and is kind even to commoners to a point he's said to spend more time with them than is appropriate for royalty, including being best friends with one. One dead horse, zombie plague, and a few questionable war decisions later, and Arthas has become first the champion and then ruler of death itself. Special attention is even brought to this with the five-year perpetual dream he had during his long sleep after taking up the crown, in which he finds two figures battling to influence him: Ner'zhul (the previous Lich King) and his own innocent child-self. Eventually, he kills them both.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Inverted by Ichiban. As an adult, he is a goofy, overly excitable Manchild who thinks of the world in terms of Dragon Quest. As a teenager, Ichiban was a sullen, irritable thug who beat innocent people up for the sheer unbridled hell of it.