History VideoGameCrueltyPotential / RolePlayingGame

* {{Franchise/Pokemon}}:

*** ''VideoGame/NewPokemonSnap'':

* ''VideoGame/Fallout2'':
** You can force a conman, at gunpoint, to dig-up a grave where he has buried loot. Halfway through, he sheepishly removes a booby-trapped landmine and hands it to you. A popular choice is to wait until he's finished digging, and...

** A mother living in the outskirts of Vault City asks you to enter the city and rescue her husband from being enslaved. If playing as a [[AllAbusersAreMale male]], you have the option to [[SexualExtortion pressure her for sex in exchange]], and she'll go close the curtain so their young son doesn't hear what comes next.
** In Modoc, you can persuade mayor Jo into [[{{Fingore}} cutting off his finger]] as a way of settling a deal. You can, of course, change your mind about taking part in the deal afterwards. "Now, take your finger and saute it in a light garlic sauce. Very tasty dish!" The guy in question doesn't react well to your prank and, after bandaging his hand, [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter attacks you]].
** Broken Hills, leading a midget down a well, and then leaving them down there with the... things.
** Just helping [[FantasticRacism the anti-mutant group]] in Broken Hills condemns their settlement and all its occupants. Turns out the humans can't survive so well on their own...
** Mr. Bishop hires you to assassinate the vice president of the NCR. You could just strap an explosive to his ''son'' and blow both of them up. You could possibly get the childkiller rank for this.
** You can destroy the nuclear reactor in a peaceful ghoul settlement, destroying the lives of dozens of peaceful mutants and poisoning the water of a nearby city, forcing them to become refugees.
** Annoyed by all those kids who pickpocket you? Get revenge by arming the explosives in your inventory, then reverse-stealing them into ''their'' inventory (or ''get them to steal the armed bombs from you'').
*** One must be careful with pickpockets and explosives. The pickpocketing children immediately try to fence anything they steal to nearby merchants, and explosive timers don't count down while in merchant inventories. The game, however, does remember the timer's state -- buying the explosives back from the merchant will lead to [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment a bit of a surprise]].
** The game specifically gives you the option to aim your weapon at the victim's crotch. In the very first village of ''Fallout 1'', within 5 minutes of starting a new game, you can smash a young child in the nuts ''with a sledgehammer''. Alternately, you could go back to that raider who used to kick your ass, and introduce his groin to your brand new powerfist.
** Seducing a hillbilly son or daughter results in a ShotgunMarriage, unless you're a smooth talker. This hillbilly husband/wife will be entirely useless, and cannot be removed from the party. You can get a quickie divorce in New Reno... or you can sell them into slavery instead for a quick buck. You can also rent them out to a porn studio as a "fluffer" for three bottlecaps, or feed them into a hacked organ extractor (it can remove ''bowels''), but this isn't quite so cruel. Then you can go back to Grisham and tell him that his son/daughter disappeared if you had a divorce or sold him/her to slavery. A heart attack will kill him.
** Selling party members to slavers not enough for you? Join the slavers yourself and help enslave tribal savages. The fact that you're a tribal yourself won't bother boss Metzger, though the other tribals will be... less than happy about your new career.
** Give Cassidy some Jet. Order him to shoot up. Watch him have a literal heart attack. When he told you his ticker wasn't so good, he wasn't kidding.
** Murder nearly every living creature in the game, be they man, woman, child, friendly, hostile, or unawares. There is ''nothing stopping you''.
*** In the first game, you actually ''can'' murder every single living thing in the game, including the usually-invincible Overseer if you finish the game with a low enough KarmaMeter.
** There are special ways you could sneakily assassinate the heads of the crime families in New Reno -- some rather sadistic. To whit: re-arm Bishop's safe with explosives, then change the combination. Give one of the youngest Wright kids a loaded gun, which results in him shooting his own dad. Give Big Jesus Mordino any kind of chem, even a Nuka-Cola, and watch him suffer a heart attack. Steal Mr. Salvatore's oxygen tank, then enjoy the floating text as he slowly, so slowly, chokes to death.

** Some of the death animations when killing foes were pure {{Squee}} as well. How about turning the foe's insides into bloody gibbage with burst fire, blowing a football-sized hole in their gut with a single bullet, slicing them apart with a laser, melting them into a puddle of goo with plasma, or crisp them with electricity -- turn 'em into a neat pile of ash. And, of course, the flamer... set 'em on fire, watch them run around in flames before collapsing.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'':
** You can walk out of the Vault, and arm a nuclear bomb in the middle of a major quest hub within five minutes, and get paid for doing so.
** In a later mission, the leader of a [[spoiler:"Matrix"-style simulation of]] 1950's Americana has gone nuts and begun torturing the other residents. The player is given the choice to help torture them or MercyKill them.
** You can't kill children. The game won't stop you from, say, laughing at a kid you just orphaned, or sentencing another kid to certain death, abandoned and the only human in an entire town in the Wasteland. Unless you use [[http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=376 this mod]], which makes them killable.
** In early versions of the game, you could actually, with the help of a perk called "Mr. Sandman," ''slit the throats of sleeping children.'' And they'd live, due to being unkillable. This bug even led to a method of gaining infinite XP, until it was patched out. Children are now unkillable even with this perk... unless you use the mod above.
*** It can be done in ''Fallout 1'' and ''2'', and you'll even get a perk that makes people hate you for it.
*** Not only can you kill children in the first two games, but they have a full suite of death animations. Shooting a child with a flamethrower will cause the poor mite to run around screaming and burning until collapsing into a pile of ash. This was considered sufficiently gruesome that European versions of the game had to be patched to remove children entirely. Unfortunately, this was accomplished by simply rendering them invisible via deleting their graphics, breaking several quests and rendering the source of their floating dialogue inexplicable, as well as infuriatingly not stopping them from pickpocketing you. Ironically, these heard-but-not-seen children could still be killed by stray gunfire.
*** Worst of all, there's the Child at Heart perk, which makes children trust you more easily. If you ''don't'' want to be a horrid villain, this makes it easier to protect children, but if you do, it makes kidnapping children for slavers easier...
** You can find, and turn in to be enslaved or destroyed, a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots synthetic human]] who intentionally [[ForgotHeWasARobot had his mind wiped]]. If you do things right, he'll even beg. And you get a Perk for doing so.
*** Even better, you can get the perk AND a sweet, unique gun: Tell [[spoiler:Harkness]] that they are an android, then tell [[spoiler:him]] you'll kill Dr. Zimmer yourself, as otherwise you won't get the perk. You'll get [[spoiler:his]] unique gun, as well as Good Karma. Next, tell Dr. Zimmer that [[spoiler:Harkness]] is the android, and you'll get his perk and Bad Karma, neutralizing the Karma gain from earlier. Now laugh evilly as [[spoiler:they wipe his memory and take him away]]. You could also kill Zimmer and his Bodyguard, but that's not nearly as cruel.
*** If you hate Synths but hate the Institute even more, you can twist the blade further and screw both parties over while simultaneously justifying mind rape and first-degree murder to protect society: First, get permission from [[spoiler:Harkness]] to execute Dr. Zimmer and his bodyguard. Then, convince [[spoiler:Harkness]] to go back with Dr. Zimmer to the Institute. Wait until Dr. Zimmer recites the reset phrase to mind-wipe [[spoiler:Harkness]]. ''Now open fire before Dr. Zimmer can give [[spoiler:Harkness]] a single command''. End result: You just murdered a well-respected and sociable genius and left his robot slave a complete vegetable, constantly requesting that the now-dead Dr. Zimmer give him any command. And the rest of Rivet City will forgive you for eliminating all traces of the Institute on their ship. Legally.
** You can do the tutorial just beating the ever-living crap out of everyone. The funniest bit? After getting the BB gun, the Kid keeps shooting daddy, who passes out just when the celebratory picture is taken.
** There is ''an achievement for sticking a live grenade in someone's pocket'', and the game keeps track of how many times you do it with the "Pants Exploded" stat.
** You can use the fast travel system for some extreme sadism. Get the Experimental MIRV (a nuclear catapult that fires 8 mini nukes shotgun style), go to the center of Megaton, and fire straight up. Fast travel to Megaton and you'll be right outside the town. Wait a few seconds and walk in. The only living thing in that area is you.
** You can take a perk allowing you to become a cannibal. Enough said.
** In what may be the most despicable example, you can [[DrivenToSuicide make a distraught man kill himself]] by jumping off the Rivet City bridge tower or even push him off yourself. Fans will gladly post videos of them nuking Megaton, [[EvenEvilHasStandards but there are very few videos of said suicide occurring]].
** In Rivet City, you can give Psycho to Paulie Cantelli, [[DrugsAreBad causing him to fatally overdose]].
*** Or have Angela seduce Diego, then massacre the wedding party.
** Even worse than the above examples is using the Enclave's KillSat to blow up the Citadel, permanently betraying the Brotherhood and turning them hostile.
** Kidnapping an innocent [=NPC=] with the Mesmetron and a {{slave collar}} so you can sell her to the slavers not cruel enough for you? If you have Lingerie, give it to her, and [[GoGoEnslavement she'll change into it]].
** It's quite possible to threaten a child, [=MacCready=], with horrible torment so he hands over the secret of his friend's food source.
** And then there's Moira Brown in Megaton. She gives you a quest to help write a Wasteland Survival Guide, but if you want, you can tell her that it's a stupid idea and a waste of time, causing her to change from ThePollyanna to TheEeyore. You're even rewarded for doing this -- not only do you get a special "Dream Crusher" perk that lowers the enemy's chances of landing Critical Hits, but Moira's Repair skill will go up and she'll permanently sell goods to you at a 30% discount. And if destroying Moira's life-long dream still isn't enough for you, you can ''completely'' ruin her life by nuking Megaton. She'll survive but become a ghoul, and you can tell her in [[BrutalHonesty the most dickish way possible]], which practically sends the poor woman over the DespairEventHorizon.
* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas''
** A child may ask you to look for their lost teddy bear, Mr. Cuddles. You can find the toy, sell it to a trader for a few caps, and then go back to the child and tell them that Mr. Cuddles is dead. Evil in its most basic form.
** For more teddy bear fun times, there's a child slave at the Legion encampment who also asks for help getting her bear back. You can tear Sergeant Teddy in half in front of her. This even increases your Caesar's Legion reputation!
** You can give children Psycho (a dangerous drug that causes extreme anger and aggression) or irradiated bubble gum (both of which understandably reduce your reputation with the community), and "donate" a radioactive supply cache to a refugee camp.
** Help a grieving widow by retrieving her husband's body. Who is wearing great armor. Wear it and talk to her for the laughs.
** In Boulder City, you could convince the Khans to let go of the NCR hostages by promising that there will be no retaliation. Once the negotiation is finished, you can have them all executed anyway.
** Boone wants you to find whoever sold his wife to slavers so that he could kill them. You can do detective work and find out who the real culprit is, or you can have Boone assassinate anyone you feel deserves getting a bullet in the face, and just hope that your speech skill is high enough to keep him from going after you next.
** That's just the tip of the iceberg. You can kill a man and cook him into a meal before feeding his remains to his former colleagues, crucify a man, reprogram HELIOS One resulting in the slaughter of everyone there, blow up the Brotherhood of Steel bunker before Veronica's eyes, and much more.
** ''New Vegas'' is the only one that offers you the chance to ''sell your companion to cannibals because they were short a main course.''
** Joanna is a prostitute in Gomorrah, who's slowly dying from her chem addiction and her life is in danger because of the Omertas. She just wants to escape her life and live free with her lover, but the only way she can even do that is if you intervene. Naturally, you don't have to do it for free. You could take what little she has, or force her to fuck you in exchange.
** You can sell Arcade Gannon into slavery to Caesar, someone he hates with a burning passion. Even better is that you have to choice to ''mock'' him for it.
** One of the quests involves a woman who wants to run away from her family, but needs caps. You can typically talk her out of it, but she'll kill her mother if you choose to stay out of it. She has a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment, and you could further twist the knife by ''congratulating'' her.
** You can exact revenge on the Legion for releasing a dirty bomb in an NCR held town by doing the same thing to their encampment nearby, killing everyone there including a family of slaves.
** For consequence-free cruelty, you can attack Yes Man, whose submissive nature means that all he's able to do in response is to beg for mercy and talk about how much he deserves it. Of course, since he's an A.I., he can freely upload himself to any Securitron. Rinse and repeat.
** There's one Legion quest that involves blowing up the NCR's monorail into New Vegas, then framing an innocent soldier so the Legion DoubleAgent can continue to operate in secret. One of the methods of killing the soldier, after planting evidence in his room? Distracting him with talk of a great prank you've cooked up, as you [[GallowsHumor pull the pin out of one of his grenades]].
** The ''Dead Money'' add-on allows you the option of talking Dog into killing himself by breaking his own neck with a length of chain.
** Also from ''Dead Money'', you can trick Christine (who has developed claustrophobia from being lobotomized within an Auto-Doc) into taking the elevator and sending her to a cramped room. With the Terrifying Presence perk, you can outright ''force'' her to do so. [[spoiler:Doing this makes her try to kill you later, however.]]
** ''Lonesome Road'' has a bunch. Whenever ED-E plays his recordings for you, you have the option to tell him that you don't give a damn about his problems, that he is only a tool for you, insult Dr. Whitley (who is basically his father), and threaten to kill him. There is no punishment for this. At the end of the DLC, you can [[spoiler:nuke the Legion and NCR]].
* ''VideoGame/Fallout4:''
** A mild example: There are 13 potential companions, and if you max out their RelationshipValues, you get a permanent perk. Some can also be romanced. So what do you do with your new BFF? Immediately drop them in favour of someone else, of course, so you can get ''their'' perk. For extra "fun", keep all your exes hanging around your home base, so that they will keep on seeing each other, and see you with your new squeeze. And you can have sex in front of your exes.
** Similar to ''Fallout 3'', you're able to sell a ghoul child into slavery or murder his parents in front of him.
** You're able to withhold the cure for a deadly disease from a dying child simply because you don't want to deal with the small health penalty.
** You can give Mama Murphy increasingly stronger [[FantasticDrug Chems]] until [[DrugsAreBad she dies of a heart attack upon using Psycho]].
** A stronghold of Super Mutants is near Diamond City and their guards. It's easy to start a fight between them, then pick up the cool armor of the guards.
** Angry at [[TheScrappy Marcy Long]] for reasons? Find her dead child's toys and make her carry them. Or just shoot her in the face now that they've patched out her immortality.
** The ''Contraptions Workshop'' DLC allows you to place settlers in pillories and pelt them with various objects. You get an achievement for first putting someone in a pillory.
*** One mod adds additional manufacturing machines to the DLC. These include machines that let you break down human bodies into [[ImAHumanitarian flesh]], blood, and bone. What's more, another machine lets you ''[[HumanResources process the bones into Wonderglue.]]''
** The ''Wasteland Workshop'' DLC allows you to construct gladiator arenas and force [=NPCs=] to fight for your amusement. You can also catch dangerous wasteland creatures and stick them in the arenas. So you can give an NPC you don't like a few scraps of cloth for armor and a rolling pin as a weapon and force them to fight against a [[DemonicSpiders Savage Deathclaw]] until you get bored.
** The ''Nuka-World'' DLC, however, takes the cake. For the first time in the series, the player can become a [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Raider boss]] and [[MoralEventHorizon terrorize the Wasteland]]. You can take over settlements for your {{Mooks}} by threatening settlers off of their land, dooming them (and maybe even their children) to [[WalkingTheEarth wander the wastes]] in search of a new home and possibly being devoured by [[NuclearMutant mutants]], or simply killing them all. You can also use radio transmitters to intimidate settlements close to your Raider camps into supplying them with food and supplies, and kill them off even if they agree. [[invoked]]Preston Garvey will [[WhatTheHellHero call the player out on this]] and refuse to follow them any further, but will still recognize them as the General of the Minutemen for plot reasons (even if you've murdered hundreds of Minutemen defending the settlements you took over by force in the process).

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'' and ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIIThroneOfBhaal'' have better-developed party members than the [[FlatCharacter first game did]], and of ''course'' this lets you be personally cruel on a level the first game never allowed. A few modest examples:
** When Jaheira finds her dead husband, you can be extremely callous about it, to the point where she'll up and leave.
** You can completely wreck Anomen's [[IWantToBeARealMan dreams of becoming a knight]] by encouraging [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge a certain decision]] in his personal sidequest, and if you're romancing him, you can kick him to the curb immediately after he fails his Test of knighthood.
** Viconia's romance also allows the player to take her to bed when it's clear she'd rather not. Thankfully, this ends the romance.
** If you prefer cruelty by neglect, you can let the daughter of Jan Jansen's beloved die of disease, or allow Keldorn to kill his wife's (emotional) affair partner (she leaves, and takes their kids with her), or allow Mazzy's sister to die of poison, or leave Jaheira and Minsc imprisoned in Irenicus's lab.
** In the expansion, if you're romancing Aerie, you can tell her to take a hike when she tells you she's pregnant with your child.
** If you're responsible for others as part of maintaining your stronghold, you can screw up your duties in ways that cause a body count. Most of the time, this also costs you your job… unless you're a priest in the [[ReligionOfEvil temple of Talos]], which actually encourages this kind of behavior, and in cahoots with a DirtyCop.
* The distant sequel ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'' is perhaps the absolute crowner for cruel VillainProtagonist choices:
** If you save Auntie Ethel from the two men accosting her, you can later tell the young woman that Ethel is "babysitting" that [[spoiler:nobody is coming to save her because you killed the only men who knew where she was. She tearfully reveals to you those two men were her ''brothers''.]]
** You can also tell this young woman that you have a magic wand that will [[spoiler:resurrect her dead husband]] and then just break the thing in half right in front of her, before leaving the woman to weep alone in the swamp.
** You can egg a power-mad ''de facto'' druid leader into murdering a tiefling child for no good reason.
** It's entirely possible to kill [[spoiler:ArchDruid Halsin]] at the goblin camp, for no other reason than you thought it would be funny teaching the goblin children the ''right'' kind of stones to throw at the poor, caged bear.
** You can help a bunch of cultists and marauding goblins massacre a caravan of tiefling refugees, [[HarmfulToMinors including small children]]. You can also engage in ColdBloodedTorture of a captive prisoner described in lavish detail.
** You can stand by and watch, or even ''help'' an UngratefulBastard drow throw a bunch of enslaved gnomes into a lava flow because they took too long in burying him out of some rubble.
** Every companion has a couple of moments where you can suddenly betray them and leave them to be KilledOffForReal or even face a FateWorseThanDeath, and having high RelationshipValues with these characters (so they consider you a good friend) or even ''currently romancing them'' doesn't remove these choices. For instance, you can turn over Astarion to [[spoiler:the Gur bounty hunters and send him right back to a monstrous vampire master who will continue to torture and sexually violate him]].
** You can adopt [[TeamPet Scratch the dog]] and then turn him back over to his [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals abusive]] owner in Baldur's Gate, who promptly locks the dog up in a cage. Even people who play evil run-throughs [[EveryoneHasStandards tend to shy away from this one.]]

*** You can use a Gigantamax Meowth with Amulet Coin to get a lot of money out of multiple encounters during the Champion tournaments or the Galarian Star Tournaments, [[https://twitter.com/PokemonGems/status/1767649106095177728?t=SGI1tmNl6LbW_Q270ISXvA&s=19 and best of all, whenever you beat someone like this, it looks like they're having a crisis over the fact you just stole their entire bank account.]]

** Generation 4:

*** As with other ''Pokémon'' games, ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' allows you to revive fossils. Unfortunately, Dr. [[MeaningfulName Cara Liss]] is a paleontologist in the Victorian vein, and the fossils she revives at your request are nightmarish mish-mashes of two species, three out of four of which have an existence comprised primarily of pain and suffering purely from the BodyHorror that is their very being. Just obtaining a [[GameBreaker Dracovish]], for instance, counts as horrific cruelty, given that it involves creating something that ''can't swim but can only breathe water''. Ultimately subverted considering that you're not the one who revives them and that they seem to be able to stay outside the Poké Ball without any problem… and possibly the only reason they can live is that they have a trainer to take care of them. On a side note, the anime further subverts this as Dracovish is shown to be able to both swim and breathe outside water.
*** In ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' you can use a Dynamax Meowth with Amulet Coin to get a lot of money out of multiple encounters, [[https://twitter.com/PokemonGems/status/1767649106095177728?t=SGI1tmNl6LbW_Q270ISXvA&s=19 and best of all, whenever you beat someone like this, it looks like they're having a crisis over the fact you just stole their entire bank account.]]

*** The mechanic of hitting Pokémon with fruit to annoy and stun them returns.
*** There's a spot in the seafloor level where you can stun Alomamola with a fruit long enough for a Frillish to carry it away presumably to eat it.
*** You can throw fruit to a Squirtle and a Wingull will knock it into a whirlpool.
*** Several times exist where you can lure bird Pokémon into zooming in to scoop up Magikarp or Finneon.
*** Bonk Trubbish at the lab and it’ll use poison gas on the Eevee in front of it.
*** You can splash water on Sudowoodo in the same level, and it really doesn’t like that.
*** Bonk Pancham or Bulbasaur in the forest level to make Drampa mad.
*** You can lure a couple of different Pokémon into punching other Pokémon and then the punched Pokémon will retaliate against the puncher.