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Cynicism Catalyst / Video Games

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Some of the examples that follow also fall under one or more Death Tropes. Most spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Cynicism Catalysts in Video Games.

  • In Bioshock 2, the Alpha series Big Daddies were driven mad with grief by the deaths of their bonded little sister, as they saw the girls as their own daughters.
  • Ragna the Bloodedge, the protagonist of the BlazBlue series, has the event where he came home to the church where he and his two orphaned siblings lived only to find the building set on fire and the nun running it butchered. Then he finds his little sister barely breathing on the ground and his little brother who, in a fit of Mind Rape-induced madness, cuts off Ragna's right arm. And then Yuuki Terumi, the man behind this whole fucked up event shows up, spends a couple of minutes mocking and laughing at Ragna before kidnapping Ragna's siblings and leaving Ragna himself unconscious in a pool of his own blood.
    That was when I learned to hate everything.
  • Chrono Trigger: Prince Janus of the Kingdom of Zeal, better known as Magus, was a moody little boy until he got catapulted into the future and lost his older sister Schala in time. Everything he did since — ruling the Fiends, declaring war on Guardia, summoning Lavos, disguising himself as a prophet (complete with future knowledge) when he ended up back in Zeal as an adult, even joining the heroes (if you let him) — he did in hopes of getting her back. At the end of the game, he's still looking. In the sequel, it's Serge who eventually finds her and frees her from the darkness beyond time, causing her to apparently be reborn in our world, where Janus will likely never find her. In the DS Remake, Schala herself tells Magus to give up his quest to save her for his own good. She then promptly teleports the crew back into their own times and sends her brother off. Magus is left bewildered over his purpose, leaving his memories erased in the end.
  • In Dead Rising 2, Stacey mentions that she had a sister who was bitten by a zombie and had to rely on Zombrex to stay alive. She eventually willingly stopped taking Zombrex and turned into a zombie. This is why Stacey is so dedicated to her cause.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • Hawke. Depending on how Hawke is played, personality-wise, this can be played straight, averted or invoked, both from the beginning what with Bethany or Carver dying in the prologue, and the Deep Roads expedition leading to your other sibling dying, becoming a Grey Warden or joining the Circle/Templars and All That Remains in Act II where your mother dies. Even without taking into account the other things that can occur to Hawke and companions throughout the game, is it any wonder an otherwise helpful and heroic, or wisecracking and jovial Hawke can become an angry cynic over the course of the game.
    • Several of Hawke's companions have their own Cynicism Catalyst. Aveline has her husband Wesley, whom either she or Hawke kills in the prologue to save him from the darkspawn taint.
    • Anders has Karl, his ex-lover, who was made Tranquil by the Templars.
    • Sebastian has his entire family, who were murdered by hired thugs, and eventually his mentor Grand Cleric Elthina, whose murder reawakens his lust for vengeance.
    • Varric has his older brother Bartrand, who betrays him and whom he's eventually forced to kill or send to a sanitarium.
    • Merrill's mentor and clan leader, Keeper Marethari, dies to protect her from a demon that Merrill had been communing with to fix an ancient elven artifact. If the player can't make the right dialogue choices then they're forced to slaughter the entire clan as they seek revenge.
    • Fenris has spent his entire life as a slave but the kicker was when he was separated from his master and taken in by the fog warriors who were the first people to ever treat him as a person. But when his master found him and commanded him to slaughter his protectors he was still under such slave-conditioning that he did so. It was this that drove him to go on the run.
    • Isabela was sold into being a trophy wife by her own mother because she refused to convert to the Qun.
    • Knight-Commander Meredith, the closest thing the game has to a main villain, has a textbook dead sister as part of her backstory — her mage sister was possessed by a demon who killed their parents and wiped out their village, leading her to become the most fanatical Templar yet seen.
  • The big bad in Duel Savior Destiny has a dead little sister serving as his motivation, though you don't find out about it until the very last route. He believes the world is so unfair that even if he fails to remake the world as intended he would still be satisfied with its outright destruction.
  • Eliza has Damian's death, which served as one for Nora, since it caused her to leave the tech industry and become an anti-corporate musician (she's far from evil, but very much antagonistic to a lot of her colleagues). Evelyn, the main character, is a more downplayed example since she was left more burnt out and traumatised (likely because she basically came into the office one day, and found he'd died of a stress-induced heart attack overnight) than outright cynical.
  • In Fable II, your older sister is killed in the prologue. Theresa uses this to motivate you to complete the plot of the game.
    • Before the game started, Lucien lost his wife and daughter to an unknown illness, and his sister died when he was young. In Fable: The Journey, Theresa admits she used this to manipulate him into rebuilding the Tattered Spire in the first place.
    • About 4 years before Fable III, Logan goes on an expedition in Aurora, where his squadron is attacked by the Crawler, leaving Logan the only survivor. This, coupled with manipulation by Theresa, makes him realize that he must prepare Albion to fight the Crawler at any cost, even if it means becoming a tyrant.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, Raul Tejada's little sister Rafaela was killed (and likely worse) by raiders while trying to scavenge for supplies for her brother (then undergoing radiation sickness/ghoulification) centuries ago. Later on in his life, he had a Replacement Goldfish that was also killed. However the player, through talking with him and taking him to see various other NPCs can encourage him to pick up his guns and become a Vaquero once again. Young female Couriers might possibly serve as another substitute for Rafaela, especially if they're Hispanic.
    • The sale of Cold Sniper Boone's wife into slavery, forcing him to Mercy Kill her, at first appears to be the catalyst. However, his descent began well before that, when his battalion was ordered to massacre the Great Khans at Bitter Springs.
  • Archer from Fate/stay night is a tragic case. He strove all his life as a crusader to save people but was only met with mistrust and betrayal. He even sold his afterlife to the World as a Heroic Spirit in exchange for the power to save perhaps a hundred people that he was unable to save otherwise. Yet even after he was executed for trying to spark a war he had really been trying to prevent, by one of the people he personally saved no less, he was still able to die without regret and never hated humanity. What turned him into the bitter and disillusioned figure we see in the games was finding out that the World only summons Heroic Spirits after a disaster has spiraled out of control and that instead of saving people, his role was to kill everyone in the area regardless of guilt or innocence.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy Tactics:
    • Final Fantasy VI does a bunch of this with Cyan, who was unable to save his wife and son in the siege of Doma. After an initial fit of berserker rage, he swears vengeance against Kefka for robbing him of his family. His latent guilt over the loss causes a Heroic BSoD later in the game when the heroes must journey into Cyan's subconscious to slay his psychological demons, who turn out to be the Three Stooges.
    • Compilation of Final Fantasy VII:
      • Cloud's guilt over failing to save Zack and then Aerith inspires him more than once to complete inaction. Only an encouraging farewell from the two deceased characters at the end of Advent Children seems to have lifted this off his shoulders.
      • Vincent Valentine suffers from a grim backstory with regards to Lucrecia, though his response is the melancholic Goth to Cloud's Emo, and there's an element of the 'critical of the main hero's inability' to the two of them.
      • Subverted in the online mode of Dirge of Cerberus. The main character is driven to sacrifice herself to destroy the Restrictor on the basis of memories of her little sister being cruelly murdered, only for Shelke to tell her corpse that she never had a sister; it was an implanted memory to get her to remove the Tsviets' captor so they could go on to try to bring about the end of the world.
      • Inverted by Shelke herself, for whom the sacrifice of her older sister is the inspiration for her to join the good guys and become Vincent's Mission Control.
    • Final Fantasy X
      • Wakka lost his parents when he was still a kid, resulting in him getting a Promotion to Parent for his little brother Chappu. Even as Chappu became The Ace, still Wakka felt responsible for him and that he had to be a protective big brother. Then Chappu broke with Church teachings to join the Crusaders, who use forbidden technology in their fight against the Eldritch Abomination Sin, and died in his first battle. Wakka responds by blaming Chappu's death on the Crusaders' use of forbidden weapons and becomes an almost fanatical follower of the religious laws who doesn't tolerate any challenges to the faith of Yevon.
      • Chappu's fiancee Lulu goes in the opposite direction by becoming deeply cold and cynical, and at one point she practically tells Tidus that Wakka is blaming "evil technology" for Chappu's death in part so Wakka won't have to acknowledge his own role or even Chappu's in the choices that Chappu made.
    • Final Fantasy X-2 has Paine, who is extremely cynical and barely expresses anything positive unless she feels strongly about it. In the past, she was a sphere recorder for Nooj, Gippal, and Baralai during their missions and she was as energetic and happy as the guys were. The group were then thrown into an incident where Barali turned on the group (due to Shuyin possessing Barali's body) and attacked them, causing Nooj and Gippal to retaliate while Paine could do nothing but watch. The group never talked about the incident again, but there was distrust among them in the air and Paine was left with more questions than answers. The friendship among everyone was all but over, which was likely why Paine is always in a cynical mood. Right before the final battle, Paine watches a recording of herself with her friends in a time where she was happy and she wondered what happened to that side of her.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 has Malt Marzipan become increasingly jaded throughout the story in stark comparison to his idealistic nature in the first game, with the catalyst being the Taranis going on a rampage with his friends held hostage inside, one of them being his younger sister Mei. His cynicism becomes worse in Chapter 3, where Jihl kills Hanna right in front of him while trying to rescue her, and him wanting to kill Jihl in retribution at the expense of his friends' safety becomes one of the major conflicts in the plot.
  • In Injustice: Gods Among Us, the accidental death of Lois Lane and his unborn child at his hands and the destruction of Metropolis —all this orchestrated by the Joker— were the reasons why Superman first became a Well-Intentioned Extremist and Knight Templar and finally turned in a Misanthrope Supreme Straw Nihilist as well as an Evil Overlord and Omnicidal Maniac.
  • In Kindred Spirits on the Roof, Yuna starts the game as aloof, distant from most others and initialy reluctant to play "Yuri Cupid" for couples at the kindred spirits' request, but she wasn't always this way. In middle school, she was Club President of her cooking club and took her role very seriously, but her clubmates resented her. When she was on her way to thank her clubmates for all their hard work, she overheard them badmouthing her, traumatizing her and causing her to distance herself from everyone besides her Childhood Friend Hina.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Master Xehanort is implied to have undergone this in his youth. Before taking his Mark of Mastery exam, he embarked on a tour of the worlds and apparently saw numerous examples of supposedly virtuous hearts deceiving themselves. Whatever he specifically saw, it convinced him that the human heart was a false light destined to plague the world with a cancerous shadow. This, combined with his own ego, led him to decide that the world's destiny was best dictated by someone truly strong enough to control everything by first mastering the power of darkness, erasing the false lights in people so that the world's true light could shine unhindered.
    Master of Masters: Sounds like your little trip around the world opened your eyes, but you got a little more than you anticipated. You must have seen a lot of darkness.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic, Carth Onasi's mentor Saul Karath abruptly turned on the Republic and joined Revan and Malak, and his first act on their behalf was to bomb Telos IV (Carth's homeworld) so hard the surface became unlivable. The betrayal, combined with the loss of his wife and son as well the fact that Karath hinted at his own turn beforehand but Carth didn't believe him, are the direct cause of Carth's trust issues.
    • The Mandalorian Wars are implied to be this for Revan, Malak, and many of the Jedi that went to war with them: they either believed saving the Republic required greater sacrifice than devotion to the Jedi ideals allowed for, or they were swayed by the Dark Side power they encountered during their battles.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: Loewe lost his hometown of Hamel when it was attacked by rogue mercenaries, resulting in the death of his lover Karin and her brother Joshua ending up a traumatised Empty Shell. Then he learned it was actually his Erebonia's government that ordered his Hamel's destruction, which then swept the whole thing under the rug. All of this completely shattered his faith in humanity and resulted in him joining Ouroboros and seeking out the Aureole to see if people can no longer be complacent.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker features this trope. Link starts out on his adventure in order to rescue his sister, who's been kidnapped by a gigantic bird which ends up being Ganondorf's pet. It should be noted that this Link is a major case of a Knight Templar Big Brother, which causes him to react to the kidnapping of his sister nearly the same way a "regular person" would react to her death.
  • In Lusternia, the death of Amberle drives Meridian to spearhead the war against the Soulless Gods. Doubling the woe, Amberle is both his dead little sister and dead Love Interest as the Gods have no taboo against incest, being sterile. His reaction to his failure to protect her is gut-wrenching.
    Meridian was the most changed of us all, I think, with the loss of Amberle. He became hard and spent much of his time with the Second Circle, seeking battles wherever he could. The hamadhi said his spirit would heal in time. It was heartbreaking seeing him wandering the beaches and staring out into the oceans, whispering Amberle's name over and over.
  • Mass Effect:
    • In Mass Effect Wrex reveals that as a young krogan he believed his race needed to give up on war after the genophage and focus on rebuilding as a people, gathering a large following of like-minded clans. His father, Jarrod, opposed him and invited Wrex to a meeting on holy ground where no violence is allowed. Jarrod violated this, ordering his men to kill Wrex's companions while Wrex himself escaped after killing Jarrod. Believing his people had abandoned all forms of honor and integrity in favor of blind violence, Wrex gave up any hope of reforming the krogans and left to become a mercensary.
    • Shepard's temporary death is apparently this for Garrus in Mass Effect 2. He's always been a Cowboy Cop, but it's the attack on the Normandy that drives him to quit C-Sec and become an Unscrupulous Hero as the bounty hunter, Archangel.
    • Same for Liara. She goes through hell to retrieve Shepard's corpse, only for them to be nabbed by Cerberus. By the time of the sequel, she's an information broker with a cruelty streak.
    • In Mass Effect 3, the war finally starts to take its toll on Shepard, though they do try to get through, but after they lose Thessia to an asshole, a Paragon Shepard will not be in the mood for Joker's black humor while a Renegade Shepard will start getting tired of never giving up for once.
  • The heavy amount of angst that the title character of Max Payne carries with him is a direct result of the murder of his wife and baby girl three years ago by junkies hopped up on the designer drug Valkyr and was the reason that he joined the DEA in order to root out the source of the drug. And it only piles up with the rising body count. Some of the later plot points rely on it.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Solid Snake used to be quite optimistic during the events of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. He was also a huge fan of Gustava's performance in ice skating at the Winter Olympics and he even promises Holly to take her out to dinner once the mission was over. Due to several people betraying him (notably Gray Fox, Dr. Mandar, and Kyle Schneider) and seeing Gustava dying right in front of him, Snake becomes quite embittered, cynical and distant in Metal Gear Solid and doesn't open himself up to anyone. While he still flirts with the women on his support team, he never goes beyond that and prefers to keep his distance.
    • Hal Emmerich's motive for infiltrating the Big Shell in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is to rescue his stepsister Emma, who is one of the hostages. Naturally, her death at the hands of Vamp is the cause of Hal's grudge towards Vamp in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
    • Big Boss slipping into Anti Villainy started out when he found out the extent of The Boss "betrayal" come the end of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
    • In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Raiden already has his fair share of angst and cynicism due to his experiences as a Child Soldier and his Unwilling Roboticization, but finding out rival PMCs deal in putting children through both of these experiences at the same time and his own company's unwillingness to put a stop to it due to their ties to a powerful senator serve to make him more disillusioned and make it easier for him to regress back to "Jack the Ripper".
  • Ogen, an apothecary and one of the supporting characters in Octopath Traveler, used to be a Wide-Eyed Idealist who would treat anyone without question, until one of his patients, after receiving his life-saving medical treatment, murdered his late wife, causing him to become The Cynic he's now known in-game. Seeing his late wife's murderer with a family of his own when Ogen tracked him down only served to exacerbate Ogen further, to the point that he snapped and killed the man using the same method said man murdered Ogen's wife. His cynicism has stayed with him — in fact, he outright states "Some lives are not worth saving."
  • Persona:
    • Persona 2 has a bit of this around Joker, who accuses Tatsuya of killing their 'big sis'. The 'big sis' is actually Maya Amano, who's been with them the whole since she actually escaped the fire. Oh, and Tatsuya was the one who wanted to save her. Hell, it has a lot of this with Tatsuya. When Maya does die, Tatsuya fucks up an entire world because of it. And then he has to remember everything to keep her from dying again.
    • Persona 3:
      • Inverted with Akihiko Sanada. Instead of causing him to sink into despair, the death of his sister Miki spurred him on to fight harder to protect others — or, in his own words, to "become strong enough to do what is right".
      • Persona 3 Portable puts a very different spin on this if you play as a female main character. Akihiko is motivated to become stronger not simply to save others, but to avoid feeling the pain of being powerless to save someone who is precious to him. His social link halts when he senses the heroine is becoming too important to him because as he later explains after some character development, it was easier to not let things become too important than to risk losing them. But after said character development, his motivation shifts from pain avoidance to a true desire to protect the people he cares about.
    • Played with in Persona 4. Nanako's death inspires the party to attempt to get revenge on Taro Nametame, turning their backs on their normally cheery, happy-go-lucky attitude towards the investigation. If the party lets Nanako's death get the better of them, she stays dead and the player gets the bad ending.
  • Natasha from Rusty Hearts is in the fight against Vlad because her brother was lost in an attack.
  • In Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair, this is zig-zagged with Raiko when it comes to her sister's death, a tragedy she believes is her fault. On the one hand, Raiko became more gloomy after the event in question, as her parents and Kamen, who met Raiko shortly before the incident, can attest to. On the other hand, Raiko resolved to become a better person to make up for the guilt of letting such a thing happen.
  • Silent Hill 3 has Heather avenging Harry's death after he is killed off halfway through the game.
  • Suikoden II: One of the reasons for Luca Blight's constant sociopathic Unstoppable Rage is due to the fact that when he was a child, he and his mother were kidnapped by mercenaries, who forced him to watch as his mother was raped repeatedly in front of him and later died giving birth to his half-sister Jillia. When he found out that said mercenaries were hired by Muse, he developed a profound, murderous hatred towards them and to his father, Agares, who cowardly fled when his family was attacked.
  • Suikoden V: The Barows have their own example in Hiram, Euram and Luserina's older brother, who also got assassinated by Nether Gate during the same civil war. Their mother was bedridden afterwards, and it's implied that Euram's loutish behavior grew far worse following his brother's death, as he became heir apparent in his place.
  • Super Paper Mario: Blumiere became the Big Bad Count Bleck to avenge the loss of his love, who was in truth banished by his cruel father to another dimension.
  • In Super Robot Wars V, Soji and Chitose lost their families to Gamilas bombardments. While this left a mark on their psyches, they are also quick to point out that there are a lot of people in the world with the same problem.
  • In Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 3: Lair of the Leviathan, we learn from Coronado De Cava that Morgan LeFlay was recently devastated by the death of her Uncle Jugbender, and was probably seeking revenge on someone who killed him, as described by her mumble in her sleep: "THIS is for JUGBENDER!"
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • Martel's younger sibling turned evil following her death' variety. Intriguingly, her fiancée eventually went the other way (though he went along to start with) and started opposing her brother following her death, realizing fully well that the insanity that resulted was definitively not what she would have wanted. Regardless, both of them became much more bitter and cynical after her death than before it.
    • The death of Alicia, Regal's fiancée, who he killed after she was mutated into a monster and begged him to kill her caused Regal to become The Atoner to the nth degree. He eventually makes peace with her ghost, who is in a position to tell him that she didn't want him to torture himself in that manner personally. He keeps torturing himself, though. At least until the Big Bad is taken down, in which he's fulfilled his promise to atone for his crime.
    • Kratos being forced to kill his wife Anna, along with the assumed death of his son Lloyd, caused him to lose all hope in creating a better world on his own and return to Mithos and Cruxis.
  • Tekken 6, Miguel's reason to join the King of Iron Fist Tournament is to avenge his sister, who's killed by Jin Kazama's bombers in the intro.
  • Valkyria Chronicles:
    • Welkin's little sister Isara is shot down completely out of nowhere, just as she was about to befriend Rosie, who had been racist towards her the entire game. In fact, oddly enough, he seems to be the least affected by it all. If anything, it's Rosie who was the most devastated, considering her tear-jerking funeral song, not to mention that she visits her grave yearly, unlike a certain brother. At least he named his daughter after her.
    • Cynicism Catalyst is Inverted for Rosie, as Isara's death is what finally gets her to stop being a cynical racist and become a much more likable character.
  • In The World Ends with You, the player is introduced to a pair of players named Beat (the older and slower one) and Rhyme (his younger female partner, who does all the thinking). Rhyme gets erased by Uzuki's Noise, and Beat briefly joins The Dark Side. It gets worse — Rhyme is actually Beat's kid sister, and it's his fault they were in the Reaper's Game to begin with — one day, she ran out of the house after they got in a fight, and ended up in front of an oncoming car. Beat dove into the street to protect her... and both of them were killed. In other words, Beat has doubled the guilt.
    • It is somewhat implied in the main game and Another Day that this also happened to Neku with the death of his best friend who died in a car accident being this for him, causing Neku to develop massive amounts of Survivor's Guilt and blame himself for what happened, thus getting him to shut himself off from the rest of the world.
  • The destruction of Theramore ends up as this for Jaina Proudmore in World of Warcraft. Previously the most diplomatic and peaceful alliance leader, Jaina loses all her previous idealism and comes to believe that the Horde can only be dealt with through war.

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