Those who have been Conditioned to Accept Horror in Video Games.
- AI: The Somnium Files: The tremendous emotional shock Mizuki suffers after losing her parents in the first game (finding her mother's corpse in particular), followed by consequent trauma and eventual healing with enough positive input from people around her, made Mizuki into a seemingly mentally stable child but one who doesn't flinch at the sight of death anymore. In the early parts of nirvanA Initiative, a still young Mizuki outright tells Ryuki that seeing gruesome dead bodies doesn't bother her too much, and she, a 12-year-old, is the one comforting her older friends like Iris and Kizuna who react accordingly to witnessing such horrors.Kagami: [investigating a body] Wait, hey! This is no place for a kid!
Mizuki: What do you mean?...
Kagami: I mean, you're right next to the body!
Mizuki: So?
Kagami: 'So?!...'
[...]
Mizuki: I'm fine, I've seen worse... - Amnesia: The Dark Descent: The amnesia potion was explicitly created to avert this trope. The Big Bad needs to produce vitae (a source of cosmic lifeforce) in order to power his alchemy, and vitae can only be produced (at least on Earth) via prolonged torture and suffering of human beings. In order to keep them from growing numb to the torment, and thus producing less vitae, they would be exposed to the amnesia potion to ensure a fresh and steady supply of the substance until/unless they actually died.
- All the inhabitants of Vella's world in Broken Age (bar Vella herself and her grandfather) find the idea of sacrificing young maidens to a giant monster to be not only acceptable, but to be celebrated. Young girls will go out of their way to be chosen, the villages to dress them up in themed costumes and those not chosen are shamed and their family disgraced.
- Chrono Ark: Hundreds of years stuck in a of time loop consisting of psychological horror, brutal death, and domestic abuse have hardened Lucy's subconscious to be a stoic and eager fighter, capable of functioning no matter how badly the fight is going.
- It shouldn't surprise anybody that this is a goal in Dwarf Fortress, what with it being the veritable poster child for Videogame Cruelty Potential. Unhappy dwarves are prone to fits of violence, and nothing makes a dwarf unhappier than seeing loved ones and treasured pets die. The solution? Drip feed them a steady stream of deaths until they acquire the coveted "doesn't really care about anything anymore" trait. All in the name of progress of course!
- Fallout demonstrates how numb the people of the alternate USA were to violence and cruelty by showing a newsreel of two soldiers in annexed Canada executing a civilian. One of them notices and points to the "camera" and the other soldier, who just committed a war crime, jauntily waves to the unseen reporter. As far as he, the media and people at home are concerned, he hasn't done anything wrong.
- Fatal Frame II's Crimson Sacrifice ritual involves one twin strangling another to pacify the gate to Hell. All sets of twins in the village know of the ritual and accept it as necessary. Some, like Sae (though not her twin), even look forward to it.
- Final Fantasy:
- In Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, the Tsviets of Deepground are like this. Special mentions go to the team-killing Azul and bloodthirsty Rosso.
- In Final Fantasy VIII, most of the playable characters are Special Forces qualified teenaged mercenaries who've been in training since before they reached puberty. Rinoa, as their client, is shocked and upset to hear Squall tell her - with full agreement from Selphie and Zell - that they will follow her orders no matter how hopeless they think her plans are, even if it gets them killed. Squall, in turn, is confused and frustrated by her reaction; he thinks they're simply being professional.
- Summoners in Final Fantasy X are like this, raised from a young age to accept that someday, they'll march off to battle an Eldritch Abomination named Sin and die in battle to give their world a few years' off from its horrific bombardment and maybe a chance that this time Sin won't return (you know, if humanity has fully repented for ever using technology). (Everybody besides from the player and the protagonist are aware of this, to them there's no other option: either give the world temporary peace or no peace at all. Yuna, a daughter trying to live up to her father's legacy as a Summoner who defeated Sin, decides to find another way when she learns that not only is a second sacrifice is needed (always someone dear to the Summoner), but the whole Summoner vs. Sin system is an endless cycle which actually provides the means for Sin to return over and over while misleading the people of world with just enough hope to keep them in line).
- Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood has the territories occupied by the Garlean Empire: the fallen nations of Ala Mhigo and Doma. Over two decades of living under the oppressive bootheel of the Empire, combined with failed rebellions, have led to the average citizens accepting that their sad lot in life is all they have to aspire to. The very thought of rebellion is unfathomable; accepting Imperial rule means things can't get any worse, but taking up arms against their conquerors would mean harsh reprisals. The players are thus tasked with helping the Ala Mhigans and Domans build up the confidence needed to shake off the Empire's oppressive yoke and retake their freedom.
- Fire Emblem Fates:
- Played with in regards to Camilla. Out of all the Nohrian siblings, she's widely seen as the most well-adjusted to death and violence, switching between battlefields and home-life with striking ease. However, Camilla actually seems a bit less well-adjusted to such things than Leo is, given that she expresses unease with Keaton's collection of human bones from a burial ground, whereas Leo seems to be very much at ease with graves, if his choosing one as a battlefield in Birthright is any indication. She also isn't entirely beyond being stunned, given the shock she expressed at how brutally Hans executed Scarlet off-screen in Conquest.
- Leo is even more of this trope; unlike Camilla, he has no qualms against executing his enemies in cold blood, rather than in the heat of battle. Also, while Camilla is creeped out by the fact that Keaton stole human bones from a burial ground for his collection, Leo is perfectly fine spending time in burial grounds, even choosing one as a battleground in Birthright.
- In Fire Emblem Engage, Alear, the main protagonist, is the child of Big Bad Sombron. Sombron is one of the most Abusive Parents imaginable - when you meet said child thanks to Time Travel, they tell you that they've seen him kill a lot of their siblings for being "defective" and failing to live up to his standards, or being disloyal. In the modern day, Sombron has two children left, and tries to kill them both at one point or another. This doesn't bother Past-Alear, who tells you all of this with a rather dead tone. With that said, it's clear that the conditioning wasn't complete - after Alear met Lumera, the Big Good Divine Dragon who later Happily Adopted them, they defected Because You Were Nice to Me.
- The Phone Guy in Five Nights at Freddy's (the worker who sends you messages every night) is unnaturally calm about his job, which is the same as yours: defending yourself from killer robots.
- Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire has the current state of the Elonian people. Their nations were enslaved centuries ago by the lich Palawa Joko who now rules them as a god-emperor. The humans are allowed to live mainly to provide a constant supply of fresh bodies for Joko's army, but they have been so heavily indoctrinated that they worship Joko as a god and consider being raised into undeath as a great honor.
- Halo: The Spartan Super-Soldier program created by Dr. Catherine Halsey involved kidnapping children under the age of 12, falsifying their deaths via flash clones, putting them through intense training and eventually surgical and chemical upgrades at the age of 14 that half of them ended up dying from. Those that survived basically became living military weapons for the UNSC. When the truth of the Spartan program became public knowledge Halsey was turned into The Scapegoat, but the truth was she kept the program focused on making intelligent, hyper-skilled soldiers with a comprehensive education rather than the disposable thugs the UNSC were hoping for. While she was jailed as a war criminal, the Spartans themselves had immense trust in her personally because being a Super-Soldier is all they know.
- Mass Effect:
- In Mass Effect 2, Jack is this trope, full stop. At first she seems to just enjoy killing, but it's not until you do her loyalty mission that you find out she was put into life-or-death combat matches with other biotics as a child. When she won, she got a dose of drugs. As she says, she "still gets a rush" when she kills someone.
- Javik in Mass Effect 3 is this as well, but for different reasons. Having been born when the Reaper War in his cycle had already been well underway has caused him to simply accept war and atrocities as a fact of life. This is explicitly called attention to while talking to him after Sanctuary, if you talk to him before talking to Tali, you hear them have a conversation about what happened at the Cerberus facility being pretty typical in his cycle.
- Metal Gear: Aside from the Training from Hell he received from The Boss, on top of what he went through to become a Green Beret, Big Boss's many painful experiences have made him cynical about his flirtation with horror. He's come to accept that he's destined to live in the heat of battle as long as he lives. In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, when Paz asks Big Boss about his thoughts on peace he says flat out that he doesn't know what peace looks like, and in an odd way the battlefield itself brings him a type of peace that "real peace" could never satisfy. By the time he fights Snake in Zanzibar Land, his stance has become progressively worse as he claims that it's his fate to die bitterly like a dog on the battlefield. He goes so far as to say that nothing else matters to him; not money, not power, not even lust — only war.
- No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: After Travis fights and defeats Matt Helms, Sylvia shows up and tells him that the 24th ranked assassin was originally a child abandoned by his parents in the very house he and Travis fought in. He made a Deal with the Devil with his dying breath and killed them afterwards, feeding on the suffering and hate in the forest. Travis remarks that "all assassins are fucked up somehow, or we wouldn't be in this profession", adding that nothing surprises him anymore.
- Aya in Parasite Eve is understandably freaked out in the start of the game; first she witnesses Eve set an audience on fire. When she goes to confront Eve, Aya's mitochondrial powers awaken to counter Eve's powers, which has Aya worried that Eve did something to her. Aya then encounters a rat that horribly mutates into a monster right before her eyes, which has her worried and wonder how the hell Eve possess the power to change the rat. Aya eventually gets used to the horrors and her own powers, which instills enough confidence in her to take Eve head on and putting a stop to her plans for world domination. By the sequel, Aya isn't even phased when she sees new monsters have appeared.
- Resident Evil has the protagonists with their first encounter with zombies and other monsters made by the Umbrella corporation. They freak out a bit over what they're up against, but they press on in order to survive and escape from the mansion. In the sequels, Jill and Chris face many more monstrosities, but now they are no longer phased by them and are willing to face them head on. Likewise, Leon and Claire from Resident Evil 2 try to hold it together with their first encounters of Umbrella's creations and are more or less used to it by the sequels.
- Shin Megami Tensei:
- In the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado Shin Megami Tensei IV, there are two classes of individuals: Casualries and Luxurors. Between both, there are brutal forms of classism and discrimination (pretty much locking both into their lot in life), and generally a massive gap of influence, wealth, and power. But they believe God decrees the station everyone's meant to hold and can change it anyway with the Gauntlet Rite. However, a certain woman in black called the Black Samurai starts popping up, distributing mysterious books containing political commentary and social theories. These have the effect of breaking the illusion that the gap is necessary or even desirable, maddening the Casualries reading them, and leaving them prime targets for Demonic Possession...
- One of the major themes of Persona 5 is just how endemic this trope is to contemporary Japanese society, as people would rather keep their heads down and ignore corruption and abuse from those in power. As such, the game has quite a few examples:
- The Shujin Academy volleyball teams (and honestly, the entire school) are so used to Kamoshida owning the place that they're in complete denial about his physical abuse of the students. They call it "training". While not everyone was in the know, the principal and enough of the parents were more than willing to hush everything up so that Kamoshida could keep bringing glory to the school.
- Madarame also conditioned his pupils - particularly Yusuke, who he'd taken in as a foster son - to accept his plagiarism of their work, framing it as them "lending him their ideas". Yusuke had put up with the plagiarism and implied neglect for so many years that, despite secretly wanting to leave Madarame's care (while feeling that he couldn't), he denies all of the abuse when confronted by the party about it and emphasizes that he owes Madarame for taking him in. Finally accepting that Madarame is a criminal is what pushes Yusuke to awaken his Persona and become a phantom thief. Lampshaded later, as Haru wonders how the workers at Okumura Foods could accept their treatment, with Yusuke describing how people, when oppressed, can welcome said oppression after a while.
- In an example approaching Gallows Humor, if you let the deadline for Kaneshiro's Palace get too close, Makoto will remind you to get it done ASAP, mentioning that Kaneshiro has been sending her his own "friendly reminders" via texts. When asked if she's okay, she will reply that she's gotten used to it.
- Yaldabaoth, can be seen as an embodiment of this trope. As a manifestation of humanity's subconscious desire for order, he has secretly been manipulating everyone to create a version of reality where nobody thinks for themselves, instead blindly following the status quo without any regard for the individuals that get ground up or tossed aside to maintain it. This gets taken further at the end of the game, when he manages to merge the twisted labyrinth of Mementos with the real world; only the protagonist and the allies he's made along the way notice that anything's off until Yaldabaoth's minions start falling.
- Fitting as a Persona 5 spinoff, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth plays with this as well. Nagi, or more accurately Enlil, curates a complex of theaters in the collective unconscious that draw hapless souls of people being torn and denied by the very fabric of society into them and only display negative memories of people turning into emotional wrecks with all positive things from them cut out, portraying them as failures and living garbage, with the main OC Hikari being one of those wards that are convinced that being unique is worthless and ended up with Trauma-Induced Amnesia as a result.
- Heather in Silent Hill 3 becomes increasingly inured to the blood and gore all around her as time goes on, but even at the beginning she's surprisingly blase about, for example, finding a roasted dog in in a cafe. Some speculate being raised by the Properly Paranoid Harry Mason or having the memories of torture-magnet Alessa had something to do with it. However, at the end of the game, she finally gives in to everything she's experienced, most notably finally being able to grieve the death of her father. She collapses after the final boss and allows herself to cry it all out. Examine Heather's knife in her inventory and she'll comment that she started carrying it for self defense, but now feels comforted and excited by having it.
- In Suikoden III, Yun of Alma Kinan is fully aware she's going to be sacrificed as part of a ritual to continue hiding the sealed True Water Rune. Though the party that meets her protests this and tries to stop the ceremony, she calmly insists on its necessity, and the ritual goes as planned.
- The initial protagonist of Theresia: Dear Emile was raised by a Torture Technician, and displays a lot of sadomasochistic tendencies (sometimes at the same time as more normal reactions.) In particular, she's comforted by the smell of blood.
- In Tales of Symphonia, The Chosen One is raised to believe that they are responsible for sacrificing their life to save the world. Some accept this better than others, although it leaves both the ones we see with serious self-esteem issues. Colette believes that her life only has value as long as she can have the strength to become a sacrifice, and is all right with the idea because it will allow her friends to live long and happy lives in a carefree world. Zelos, although he hides it, is far more bitter about the entire system.
- Tales of the Abyss not only has Ion go to his death with a smile because he can't grasp that his individual life has any meaning besides what he can do with it, like trying to stop a war, find a way for Luke to win and save Tear's life and instead of resenting it, he is honestly happy that betraying him and causing his death helped The Mole. While he's an extreme example, the entire population of Auldrant qualifies.
- Nephry breaks up with Peony because the scorer said she'd marry someone else, and not only does neither of them fight it, they don't try to renew the relationship even after the Score is rejected and they have the option.
- Luke's own father and uncle are willing to send him to die both to set off a war they'll win and because the Score says so: it's not until fairly late in the game that they seem to realize that this was a cruel thing to do to Luke and Natalia and it would have been not just ok, but good for them to not want to do it.
- Grand Maestro Mohs sees nothing wrong with a genocidal war, since the Score was made to bring prosperity to Auldrant, so it's obviously for the best. While Mohs is hated by fans because of Ion's death, he actually doesn't even qualify as a Well-Intentioned Extremist on Auldrant. His is the moderate faction, containing the normal, sensible members of the Order who just want the best for Auldrant, like Tear. In a different era of Auldrant's history, he'd probably be a good guy, just not when the Score is currently counting down to Auldrant's demise and he's dealing with replicas. Since the Score, written for the benefit of everyone, doesn't regard replicas as worth a mention he's actually fully justified in considering them not people, given the Order's doctrine about Lorelei. He's actually completely right that Lorelei cares about everyone, he just overestimated Lorelei's ability to make the Score turn out that way.
- Almost everyone reacts with shock and horror to the idea of revealing a Score of death, even when, or especially because, doing so would save someone's life and go against the Score, and since the Score was written to create the most prosperity and happiness for Auldrant's people, obviously Lorelei wouldn't have had them die then if it wasn't for the best.
- The best example, even more than Luke, is the Big Bad. When Luke asks him if he cares about Luke at all other than as a living weapon he honestly doesn't understand the question, mistaking it for an existential one. The Big Bad was brought into the world as a Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb, in accordance with the Score with parents who were aware of this the entire time and only thought about him in terms of that function, just like how he regards Luke. Oh, and as a babysitter for their 'real' child. The people who used him to destroy his homeland and as an excuse for performing deadly experiments on civilians who were going to die anyway considered themselves fully justified, between the Score and using him as a scapegoat. When that's the ethical framework in which he was raised, is it that odd that he doesn't see anything wrong with creating replicas, disposing replicas, or destroying Auldrant? After all, it was ok to hook him into a machine and destroy Hod for the greater good, and he's doing this to allow humanity to survive the Scored end of the world. In the context of Van's childhood, his interactions with Luke in the early game become a massive Pet the Dog. He gives Luke the childhood he wishes he could have had: a comfortable life with parental figures who at least seem to love him instead of being constantly told thousands will die because he's a monster and subjecting him to brutal experiments. He just can't grasp that Luke feels he has a right to resent what was done to him because Van himself was repeatedly told that he didn't and internalized the idea.
- The Start of Darkness for most of the loyal god-generals was when they ran into a horror that they could not accept. Largo's daughter was kidnapped by his own government, causing his wife to kill herself, and he could not have justice without committing high treason. Legretta suddenly fell in love with someone she went after in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and the knowledge that this was likely Scored makes her skin crawl. Sync, like Ion believes that he can't have value other than as a tool and hates this.
