History NoOntologicalInertia / VideoGames

** The UsefulNotes/PlayStation version adds to the confusion with an additional ending cutscene which features a human Glenn, which plays whether or not you killed Magus.
** The UsefulNotes/NintendoDS version adds one more ending that may avert the issue of Magus dying of old age in 12000BC: [[spoiler: Instead, he's killed by the Time Devourer outside time.]]

* All minion attacks and a large number of hero abilities in ''Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign'' create countdown tiles that, when the specified amount of turns have elapsed, trigger the character pulling off a special ability. The countdown tiles can be destroyed like normal ones, or they can all be instantly wiped off the board by their owner being downed.

* In the Sega Saturn [=RPG=] ''Albert Odyssey'', the main character's adoptive caretaker is [[TakenForGranite turned to stone]] early on in the story. A search for a powerful healer eventually reveals that numerous other people have suffered the same fate, with the most powerful known healer unable to help them. Defeating the [[DiscOneFinalBoss megalomaniac wizard]] who cast the curse is speculated to be the only possible cure, and in fact the aforementioned caretaker is seen fully recovered soon after the wizard is taken down.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea 2|CursedMemories}}'': [[AllThereInTheManual According to the art book]], even with the death of [[spoiler:The fake Zenon]], Veldime will in fact remain a netherworld. The people will remain Demons, the monsters that were attracted to the world under Zenon's influence will not leave, And while the landscape's transformation ''has'' been halted, what had already been changed will remain so. The book does go on to say however, that since Zenon is no longer [[spoiler:draining the morality and consciences out of the people]], they will at least stop turning evil, and points out that many changes brought to Veldime as a Netherworld were in fact positive, so things still work out in the end.
** Invoked in ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea 4|A Promise Unforgotten}}'' : Valvatorez believes that eliminating the source of the A-Virus pandemic ([[spoiler:Namely, Axel]]), will reverse the virus's effects. [[spoiler: He's wrong (Though things still turn out A-OK when a cure ''is'' found)]].

* The world of ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'' has no ontological inertia. [[spoiler:The seals placed against the Seeds of Resurrection also hold back the "true world", in which [[CosmicHorror the Grotesqueries]] roam free and hold dominance over all things. The world the protagonists are trying to save is a protective illusion. Thus the world that the majority of ''Drakengard'' takes place in doesn't have any real permanence: the moment all the seals are broken, [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the world as we've known it disappears.]] The sky, for one, immediately [[AlienSky turns red.]]]] In the sequel, the change is even more violent, as the sky ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q_0pNlUBKs literally shatters]]''. The seals were set up in the first place by dragons. [[spoiler:They served the Grotesqueries in the true world, until the dragons wrote the seals to create a safe pocket of reality where they were the dominant species.]] Then humanity emerged and kind of mucked it all up.

* Many games rely on First Aid kits to heal the player. Picking one up tends to cause evidence of prior injuries to instantly disappear. This goes back at least as far as ''Wolfestein 3D'', in which the player could actually regain a lost eye.
* [[DemBones Clinkz]] from ''VideoGame/{{Dota2}}'' lampshades this aspect of healing items when picking up a regeneration rune.
-->'''Clinkz:''' Does this mean my flesh will grow back?

** Invoked in ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea 4|A Promise Unforgotten}}'' : Valvatorez believes that eliminating the source of the A-Virus pandemic ([[spoiler:Namely, Axel]]), will reverse the virus's effects. [[spoiler: He's wrong (Though things still turn out [[JustForPun A]]-OK when a cure ''is'' found)]].

** ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' also averts this trope when the heroes attack Magus's palace, [[spoiler: an assault which ends with the whole palace getting sucked into [[NegativeSpaceWedgie a massive time vortex]]]]. The disappearance of their ruler doesn't end the Mystics' war against the Kingdom of Guardia as his second-in-command picks up where Magus left off.
*** The big statue of Magus in the MonsterTown is replaced by a statue of his general. Once you kill HIM, then the statue goes away and all of the Mystics in the present become friendly to humans.

* Invoked in ''VideoGame/MythTheFallenLords'': defeating the BigBad will make all of his [[TheDragon generals]] to be left powerless, as they are bound to him, and their armies will collapse. This is why the player's army for the last missions won't return to the homeland, deemed impossible to hold, attempting instead to strike the stronghold where the BigBad is located, to directly kill him.
->'''Narrator''': Back in Forest Heart, Alric convinced our officers that the west was lost. That our small force could contribute nothing to the hopeless battles that would soon be fought around Madrigal, Willow and Tandem. These cities would fall, he said, and all their people would die, whether we sacrificed ourselves or not. Then he told us what we could do instead. Alric was interrogated by Balor during his captivity, and he learned by chance that Balor had bound each of The Fallen to himself, to ensure their obedience to his will. The Fallen draw their power through these links, and were Balor to be killed they would all be powerless. The armies of the Dark would collapse. So Balor must fall.

* ''VideoGame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura'' has a few quest-based curses that expire on death. One example is found early on, and the other involves the CrystalBall quest. The Gypsy Blood curse, on the other hand, is caused by death.

* Averted in the Valley of Dying Things scenario of ''[[VideoGame/{{Avernum}} Blades Of Avernum]].'' The Vale is suffering a curse in which the rivers poison the vegetation and anything that drinks from the river or eat food grown with river water. After destroying the source of the toxins, [[spoiler: an abandoned magical waste treatment facility deep below the surface]] the poison already within the environment does not leach away or vanish, and the inhabitants of the Vale flee only to come back once the Vale has been magically cleansed. Even then, the land is still not as prosperous as it was before the curse.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Bloodrayne}} 2'', where killing the BigBad at the end of the game doesn't actually change anything; the world remains the same vampire-ruled hellhole the Big Bad turned it into halfway through the game. The protagonist even remarks how thinking everything would change back to normal after the Big Bad's death was "pretty stupid, huh?"

* At one point in the console RPG ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', the player is given the choice to fight and kill Magus, the villain for the first half of the game, or to spare his life since certain other characters have far surpassed him on the Villain Meter. If you choose to kill Magus, his curse on Glenn/Frog is lifted at the end of the game, whereas if you let Magus live, Glenn is still a frog at the end. This raises questions, because [[spoiler:if Magus is alive at the end of the game, he travels back to 12,000 BC to search for his sister, after which the time gate closes forever. So what exactly happens in a scenario when Magus dies of natural causes ''after'' laying the curse in his personal timeline, but thousands of years ''before'' the curse in objective time?]]

}* ''VideoGame/{{Miitopia}}'': [[spoiler:After the Dark Curse was defeated and its power was vanquished forever, all of the monsters disappear and the stolen faces go right back to their original owners.]]

* ''[[LightNovel/IsItWrongToTryToPickUpGirlsInADungeon DanMachi]]: VideoGame/MemoriaFreese'': In the ''Winter Reverie'' campaign, killing the Swamp King erases the pollution it spread across the country of Veltane.

** ''In VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', killing a summoned creature kills the summoner as well. Played for a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment in the village of Mist, when Cecil and Kain discover to their horror that not only did the [[FakeKing King of Baron's]] ring just burn the town to the ground, but they personally murdered Rydia's mother by killing her summoned dragon in the Cave of Mist. There is also another important plot moment with the Dark Elf who stole Troia's Earth Crystal -- he cast a spell on the cavern he hid in, magnetizing the entire cavern so strongly that equipping even a hint of something metallic will completely paralyze the character in-battle, making it [[HopelessBossFight impossible to defeat him]]. But when [[spoiler:Edward's music]] breaks the Dark Elf's concentration, the aforementioned magnetism immediately vanishes and the party can defeat him for real.

** ''In VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', killing a summoned creature kills the summoner as well. Played for a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment in the village of Mist, when Cecil and Kain discover to their horror that not only did the [[FakeKing King of Baron's]] package just nuke the town, but they personally murdered Rydia's mother by killing her summoned dragon in the Mist Cave. There is also another important plot moment with the Dark Elf who stole Troia's Earth Crystal -- he cast a spell on the cavern he hid in, magnetizing the entire cavern so strongly that equipping even a hint of something metallic will completely paralyze the character in-battle, making it [[HopelessBossFight impossible to defeat him]]. But when [[spoiler:Edward's music]] breaks the Dark Elf's concentration, the aforementioned magnetism immediately vanishes and the party can defeat him for real.
** Played very straight in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', with good reason. [[spoiler:During the game's grand finale, after you've defeated Kefka, the player is shown that life is springing back all over the world. Sometimes through obvious elements like flowers and grass regaining color, other times through more symbolic touches like one of the [=NPC=]s giving birth to her baby. Justified because with [[NietzscheWannabe Kefka]] altering reality-- existence was unraveling. With him defeated, the world slips triumphantly back into place.]]
** Played heartbreakingly straight in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX''. After the Fayth are released from their state of constant dream summoning, everything they summoned starts to fade away such as the Aeons and [[spoiler:the people of Dream Zanarkand, including Tidus]].
** Teased with in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII''. [[spoiler: Amidst an intense aerial battle with the Vayne's forces and the resistance, Vaan and Co slip into Vanye's fortress. After defeating Vayne, the heroes gather together and stare triumphantly at the sky, their faces proud at their accomplishment at defeating the Big Bad. A few seconds later, a burning ship flies by, reminding them that yes, a battle is still going on.]]

* The BigBad of ''Franchise/BlazBlue'' is Yuuki Terumi, a ghost separated from his body long before the plot began. This means he doesn't have a stable existence. He solves this by deliberately acting as an in-universe HateSink - the hatred he receives from characters like Ragna and Kokonoe validates and sustains his life. A DiscussedTrope in later games is that ''everything'' in the ''Blaz Blue'' universe has no ontological inertia - [[QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything they only exist because they are being Observed]]. Most things are Observed by [[DeusEstMachina Master Unit Amaterasu]], but Terumi takes a more direct route for his sustenance by deliberately antagonising everyone. The more you hate him, the stronger he gets.

** [[DemBones Clinkz]] from ''VideoGame/{{Dota2}}'' lampshades this aspect of healing items when picking up a regeneration rune.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' is all over this trope. In any battle, as soon as you kill the last enemy, you're invincible; all onscreen attacks will either disappear or pass right through you. This is true even in ''Network Transmission'', a sidescrolling homage to the classic series. Examples abound in the plot of the games too: when you beat an enemy [=NetNavi=], whatever havoc it's created in the real world is harmlessly defused.
** Averted by the bosses of the first ''Mega Man'', where boss attacks did in fact survive their user's destruction and could do damage to Mega Man. Made worse by the fact that you couldn't move for a split second after defeating the boss, meaning if the timing was just right (or wrong, as the case may be), you were a sitting duck for a stray shot or one of Fire Man's ground plumes. Especially problematic against Elec Man or Ice Man, whose projectiles could take off roughly a third of your health.
* In ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'', the final boss is a [[LoadBearingBoss load bearer of galactic proportions]] -- upon defeat, not only is the boss's planet destroyed, but so is ''all Phazon throughout the entire galaxy,'' instantaneously, and in suitably explodey fashion. This is due to the fact that Phazon is [[SentientPhlebotinum alive]] and the planet in question was the [[EldritchAbomination very source of it]]. The final boss had essentially hijacked into the planet's "brain" to control all the galaxy's Phazon and with their death caused the death of the planet, which killed off all the Phazon.

** On the other hand, it appears that the consequences of the opening of the portals to the Elemental Planes remains even after the portals are destroyed -- the ending only gives short glimpses, but the island on which the Earth Portal is situated doesn't appear to sink after the portal is destroyed, nor does the lake in which the Water Portal is situated drain away as soon as the portal is destroyed. The post-ending gameplay would seem to corroborate that, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation except the elemental portals remain open despite the ending explicitly showing all of them being destroyed]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Miitopia}}'': [[spoiler:After the Dark Curse was defeated and its power was vanquished forever, all of the monsters disappear and the stolen faces go right back to their original owners.]]

* In ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' (and all spinoffs), any enemies in boss battles will immediately vanish once the boss is defeated. In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' this extends to sprites in general, if you're riding a Yoshi in a battle, the Yoshi vanishes once the boss is defeated as well.

* Killing a Demoman in ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' will cause all the explosive traps he's laid to disappear. There's even an achievement for removing a certain amount of traps by killing the Demomen that made them.
** Similarly, killing an Engineer during Sudden Death (and possibly Arena) will make all his buildings explode. Note that this does not happen in any other game mode, where the Engineer can then respawn and go back to his hopefully still standing buildings.
*** Also if an Engineer switches to another class, all their buildings will disappear. This is probably an AcceptableBreakFromReality because otherwise someone could build a sentry, switch to a more deadly class, and still get sentry kills.
*** A now fixed bug made so that any missiles fired from a sentry that got destroyed after they were fired became neutral entities, allowing potential griefing Engineers to kill allies.
*** Engineers who switch between the Gunslinger (a mechanical hand that gives him 25 extra HP and replaces his normal sentry with a combat mini-sentry) and any wrench will have their sentry destroyed, presumably to keep him from having the Gunslinger's benefits and a level 3 sentry gun at the same time. Previously, switching melee weapons at all destroyed ''all'' his buildings, forcing him to have to start again from scratch.

* The world of ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'' has no ontological inertia. You ready for this one? [[spoiler:The seals placed against the Seeds of Resurrection also hold back the "true world", in which [[CosmicHorror the Grotesqueries]] roam free and hold dominance over all things. The world the protagonists are trying to save is a protective illusion. Thus the world that the majority of ''Drakengard'' takes place in doesn't have any real permanence: the moment all the seals are broken, [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the world as we've known it disappears.]] The sky, for one, immediately [[AlienSky turns red.]]]] In the sequel, the change is even more violent, as the sky ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q_0pNlUBKs literally shatters]]''. This leads to a bit of FridgeLogic when one wonders how those seals came to be in the first place.
** [[AWizardDidIt Dragons did it.]] [[spoiler:They served the Grotesqueries in the true world, until the dragons wrote the seals to create a safe pocket of reality where they were the dominant species.]] Then humanity emerged and kind of mucked it all up.

* Takes on another form in online games that utilize "lag compensation," notably [[{{FPS}} first-person shooters]]. Suppose two combatants fire upon each other, one with a plasma gun, another with a rocket launcher. From each player's perspective, the other hasn't yet fired; meanwhile, on the server, the rounds pass each other by mid-flight. The plasma bolts, having faster velocity, hit their target first for lethal damage. Should the rocket launch and plasma death occur within the lag compensation window (usually around 1/10th of a second), the rocket "was never fired," and the plasma gunner gets an easy kill. Outside the window, the plasma gunner still has to dodge the rocket. This phenomenon also causes hastily-flung grenades to disappear, and assault rifle victims to apparently die from one or two bullets rather than the five to nine they have to hit anyone else with for a kill. On a related theme, some weapons "charge up" by holding fire, and launch when their button is released. Killing players during the charge up sequence often causes the super-attack to instantly dissipate rather than either launching at that instant (or wildly). Lag compensation in many of these games lead to the phenomenon of the high-ping sniper, a player whose bullets seem to curve around corners or otherwise kill enemies that are out of their effective range.