Fallen Hero / Video Games

Fallen Hero in Video Games.

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• In Abobo's Big Adventure, the true Big Bad is revealed to be Little Mac who went mad with power after winning the championship.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • Big Bad Jon Irenicus from Baldur's Gate II counts. Prior to his exile from Sulldanesselar, he was an upstanding citizen and powerful mage. Pride was his downfall; he was exiled and stripped of his soul for using his power to try and achieve godhood.
  • Arc Villain Ketheric Thorm from Baldur's Gate III was a paladin of the benevolent God of the Moon Selune, but after his wife and daughter died, he died right alongside them on the inside and pledged himself to the patron deity of Straw Nihilists, Selune's Evil Twin Shar. After being defeated by the elven druids Jaheira and Halsin a century prior to the events of the game, he made a Deal with the Devil with the God of the Dead Myrkul to become his chosen one and Take Over the World in exchange for his daughter's life back.
• Michael Jordan, of all people, in Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. The fact that Space Jam is canon to the game's storyline only amplifies this.
• Batman: Arkham Knight has the titular Arkham Knight, who is eventually revealed to be none other than Jason Todd, the former Robin who was horribly tortured by the Joker and presumed dead back then. And in top of that, when he learned that Batman got a new Robin, Jason didn't take it easily. He went from being the sidekick of Batman to the right hand of Scarecrow, aiding him in his attempt to destroy Gotham City. That being said, he eventually returns to the path of heroism, after Batman reaches out to him and Scarecrow gets defeated. As an Unscrupulous Hero though.
• Malin Keshar from Battle for Wesnoth attempted to use necromancy to defend his home village of Parthyn. However, after being rejected by his own people due to the bad reputation that necromancy has, he becomes the apprentice of Darken Volk, and begins to despise everyone more and more until he's a full-blown Villain Protagonist.
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, a interquel for the two main series games, reveals that Borderlands 2's Big Bad Handsome Jack was one of these. In The Pre-Sequel!, Jack is shown as a noble and good-hearted man (though still ambitious and bloodthirsty) who's willing to step up and fight and helped save Pandora's moon Elpis. However, a series of devastating events including several betrayals as well as having a repository of alien knowledge downloaded into his brain fractured his mind and turned him into the egotistical Dirty Coward and Comedic Sociopath seen in the second game. It also reveals the origin of his iconic mask and his "Handsome" nickname: his face was scarred by Lilith, which also explains why he's fixated on killing the Vault Hunters and everyone they ever cared about. Not to mention that he subjected his daughter, Angel, to her torturous imprisonment before he went insane. However, The Pre-Sequel!'s narrator, Athena, feels that Jack, the Hero of Elpis died and Handsome Jack is nothing but a grotesque mockery of everything he once stood for.
  • The whole point of the interquel is that Jack the Vault Hunter was always screwed up, but he had some redeeming traits until a combination of his own actions and the actions of OTHER mentally deranged individuals turned him into a monster. Jack AND Pandora made Handsome Jack. Just to hammer the point home, Lilith starts going down this route as well when she orders Athena's death by firing squad, to the chagrin of her teammates; it shows how the torture and the loss of her boyfriend is slowly eroding her already fractured conscience, much like Jack.
• Castlevania:
  • Mathias Cronqvist, friend to Leon Belmont, brilliant strategist, noble Crusader, and genius alchemist. The death of his wife Elizabetha shattered his faith in God and he became obsessed with obtaining immortality so that he could curse God forever. And thus Dracula was born.
  • Play your cards wrong in both Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and this is what Soma Cruz becomes.
  • Gabriel Belmont in the series reboot Lords of Shadow is shaping up to be this. Despite his valiant efforts in the first game to cleanse the world of dark beings, the DLC epilogue chapters and post-credits epilogue cutscene suggest that in his time fighting the darkness, it somehow inadvertently rubbed off on him — and his proximity to it ultimately resulted in his transformation into Dracula. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 has him barely come back from the brink, but not without doing a lot of really messed-up stuff first.
• Dante from Dante's Inferno was regarded as a noble Christian warrior who cared for his family. Until he indulged himself in numerous sins because he believed that a Sinister Minister absolved him of all sin. Once Dante enters hell, he learns why he is being punished for eternity and is given "The Reason You Suck" Speech by his loved ones for losing his good graces. However, a part of his quest in the game is for him to rise up from the abyss and live up to his noble heroics.
• Whether Abysswalker Artorias is this or a Defector from Decadence is the subject of much debate in Dark Souls. Artorias was one of Lord Gwyn's four great knights, making him one of his top lieutenants. An unknown number of years ago, the Darkwraiths (Humanity-devouring dark knights of the darkness) appeared. They were so dangerous that it eventually resulted in outright sacrificing a city. Artorias was charged with hunting the Darkwraiths, but instead joined them for reasons that are not known. The DLC elaborates on Artorias' story. He did not join the Darkwraiths, but rather was rewarded for stamping them out with a blessed pendant. However, in a unrelated event in Oolacile, Artorias is defeated by Manus, the Father of the Abyss, who also appears to have single-handedly destroyed most of the country in the process. As a result of this, Artorias is not only corrupted, but appears to have been driven irredeemably mad and needs to be put down at the player's hands.
• Chuck Greene, the protagonist of Dead Rising 2, is a loving father who goes to great lengths to care for his daughter who’s been infected with the zombie virus. Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, a non-canon retelling that sees Frank West return as the main protagonist, provides a glimpse of what would happen should Chuck ever lose his daughter: he becomes a crazed alcoholic who carries around a doll that he believes is her.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings:
  • Kiba and Kira were a pair of the best hunters, but to the surprize of others, have sided with Greed to find an exciting life.
  • Elen reveals himself to be in cahoots with demons for quite some time.
• Beldr from Devil Survivor is Baldr, god of light and beauty from Norse Mythology. After he became trapped in the underworld as a giantess refused to weep for him, he became determined to spread lament on the Earth until everything cries. For extra bonus points? It's implied that said giantess was actually Loki.
• Diablo:
  • The first Diablo has King Leoric, who was strong enough to resist being completely possessed by Diablo but was left an insane and murderous wreck by the ordeal.
  • Diablo II has all three of the original game's heroes: the Warrior Aidan (Leoric's eldest son) was manipulated into becoming Diablo's new host, the Rogue Moreina became Blood Raven, and the mage Jazreth became The Summoner.
  • Pre-release info for the Diablo III implied the same would happen to the heroes of the second game (except the Barbarian), but it was ultimately scrapped.
  • In Reaper of Souls, the Archangel Malthael led the High Heavens in their war against the Burning Hells, but abandoned his station after the theft of the Worldstone. After observing humanity, he became convinced that the existence of free will in regards to humanity was an abomination and decided to purge all demons from existence, starting with the demonic essence in human souls.
  • Reaper of Souls also ends with the Player Character becoming incredibly disillusioned with the High Heavens, realizing that Imperius' ineffectual defense of Sanctuary and hatred for humanity along with Malthael's active attempt at genociding humanity, is every bit as bad as the demons actively seeking to destroy everything. Tyrael's voice over in the ending notes that he's not sure how much longer the Nephalem can be called an ally, depending on how you see it. Ultimately, it would seem that the Nephalem's stance is that Angels and Demons need to leave humanity alone; if they keep hating and antagonizing them, then the Nephalem will strike at them, considering humanity in Sanctuary is something of a Woobie Species.
• Disgaea 3 has an example of its own in Super Hero Aurum. He was originally a hero who fought some of the greatest villains his world has ever known, but the more he fought, the further he fell towards obscurity, which he feared more than anything else. He needed to relish in being known as a hero, so he began doing worse things over the years, up to and including killing a nice guy Overlord and raising his son to be a general asshole Overlord just so he could be a hero again. As Sapphire put it, he eventually "ignored being the hero".
  • Which of course raises the question of what the hell he was doing when "The God of All Overlords" showed up in Disgaea 2, but then again the series isn't really known for its continuity.
• In Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, the Big Bad, Zara, is an ex-princess who refused to learn princess virtues and was banished from her kingdom as a result. She came back with evil powers and sought to ruin the worlds of other princesses and stop girls from becoming princesses.
• Divinity: Original Sin II:
  • Ifan Ben-Mezd was a respected Divine Order soldier until he failed to save his adoptive people from the Fantastic Nuke that destroyed their homeland. He starts the game as an outlaw and Professional Killer; if he's chosen as a Player Character or companion, several old acquaintances will voice their disgust at how he ended up, but he can be played as anything from a Villain Protagonist to an outright hero.
  • A group of honoured heroes abruptly rise from their graves as undead to try to murder the player characters. Like many undead, they pledged their souls to the Greater-Scope Villain in exchange for the hope of being brought Back from the Dead.
• Dragon Age:
  • Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir from Dragon Age: Origins. In the prequel novels, he slowly becomes a high-ranking officer for the rebels, and is later hailed as a noble and one of the greatest war heroes along with King Maric as they win and drive out the Orlesians. Sadly, he becomes so protective of the kingdom he's fought for that he gradually turns extremely paranoid, and goes as far as to leave Maric's son, the current king, to die in the battlefield when he suspects him of trying to sell Ferelden out and framing the Grey Wardens, triggering one of the game's two main plots.
  • Although many people forget this part of her backstory, Meredith from Dragon Age II was also this trope, as she became Knight-Commander after overthrowing the previous viscount of Kirkwall, Perrin Threnhold, when he tried to expel the templars from the city. While not everyone looks upon the templars fondly, Perrin Threnhold is generally regarded as a tyrant and robber baron who brought about his own demise. In the end, Meredith's paranoia over blood magic drives her utterly mad and she tries to use an Artifact of Doom to kill Hawke.
  • Anders, one of your party members who was once a heroic and kind-hearted Grey Warden, becomes a Well-Intentioned Extremist due to sharing a body with a spirit and the general stress of Kirkwall.
  • Solas, aka Fen'Harel, of Dragon Age: Inquisition, was once a revolutionary who fought against the false elven gods to free his people from slavery. Now that he's seen how badly things went for them after he erected the Veil, he plans to tear the entire thing down again — with the full knowledge that doing so might very well destroy the world.
• Sepulchre from DragonFable.
  • Vilmor, in the Dragon's Grasp arc, had been imprisoned for destroying the town of Bask and hurting the trust of great ice dragon Cryozen (which Vilmor had bonded with). Subverted big time. It turns out that SHE wasn't responsible for the destruction of Bask, Dragon Master Frostscythe was, and she was just looking for Cryozen before it died. Furthermore, Frostscythe was her childhood friend who felt that he was shortchanged by the Dragon Lord order because of his ice elf lineage; the whole Bask incident was an elaborate ploy to sever the bond of trust between dragon and Dragon Lord. Before you ask, yes.
• Lobelia used to be a good guy a thousand years ago in Duel Savior Destiny, but due to a combination of resentment, a persecution complex, envy and genuinely believing that a world built around the strong dominating the weak would be best, she eventually turned on her companions and nearly caused the end of the current world order. In the present, her importance towards this aim has declined, but she's still working towards it as bitterly as ever.
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: Zazz was the human hero, Zavoir Zzoldos, who made the last stand against the demons, but after extending his life with his robot body, he gained immortality and slowly lost his empathy for all other people. His goal is to revive humanity and have them exploit all other species on the planet.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind provides several examples:
  • Dagoth Ur, deranged Physical God Big Bad of the main quest, was once Voryn Dagoth, the trusted advisor of ancient Dunmeri hero Lord Indoril Nerevar. After the Dwemer disappeared, Nerevar entrusted Dagoth with protecting the Heart of Lorkhan and the Dwemeri crafted tools needed to tap into its power. Depending on the version of events that followed, Dagoth was either corrupted by the Heart's power into using the tools, or used them to try to prevent Nerevar's other advisors (who were quite likely responsible for Nerevar's death), the Tribunal, from tapping into its power themselves.
  • A much more clear example is Almalexia in the Tribunal expansion. She, like Dagoth, advised Nerevar (her husband), and used the divine powers she gained from tapping into the Heart to help the people of Morrowind time and again over the course of several millennia. However, as a result of the player's actions in the main quest of the main game, she (like the other members of the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur) are permanently cut off from the Heart's power. Almalexia does not take the loss of her godhood well and becomes the Big Bad of the expansion.
• Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Precisely where he stands on the sliding scale of anti-heroes/anti-villains is up for debate, but it's definitely lower than where he started out; a former student of the Greybeards and Imperial Legion officer, he used the training he received while studying to become a pacifist monk to commit regicide and ignite a Civil War against the very empire he once served. He has his reasons, though.
• Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code: The Final Boss, Anat, was once part of the first alliance between Idinites and Cainites, but when the Kosmokraters manipulated the Cainites into slaughtering the alliance, Anat became a vengeful misanthrope who seeks to kill the Kosmokraters at any cost.
• The Choose Your Own Adventure game Fallen Hero follows the protagonist as they emerge as a supervillain, leaving their past as the hero Sidestep behind.
• Tons of these in Final Fantasy games.
  • Wiegraf (and possibly Delita) in Final Fantasy Tactics.
  • Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. Especially evident during Crisis Core and its glimpses of Sephiroth's pre-fall personality — although cool and aloof, he was actually a pretty nice guy and hero-grade material before the Nibelheim Incident. His Dissidia opponents repeatedly mention this in their pre-fight quotes, especially in Duodecim. The crazy thing is that Sephiroth will alternate between calling himself one or declaring himself a general destroyer of life. "Taste the blade of a hero.", indeed.
    • It's funny: the heroes will either question how he could have turned or how he was ever a hero, and the villain quotes (particularly the Emperor) make it sound more like a Once Done, Never Forgotten moment.
    • Square Enix plays with this heavily in Dissidia. Many of his quotes are contradictory to his villainous nature, such as saying "Fear not." or "Do not despair."
    • Alternate Character Interpretation states that he would have come to his senses when he died... except the first person to kill him wasn't his genocidal former friends, or the punky, idealistic Chosen One, but Cloud. That's right. A pathetic, angsty, cowardly foot soldier, the lowest class of scum in Sephiroth's eyes, was the one to defeat a demigod through sheer force of will. That thought took the last vestiges of humanity in him, his pride as a First Class SOLDIER, and twisted it into something even worse than the Eldritch Abomination that he had become.
  • Seymour in Final Fantasy X. Subverted in that it turns out that he was never a "hero" in the first place.
    • Jecht, also in Final Fantasy X. Also subverted in that willingly turning himself into a monster is the only thing that allows the heroes to finally put the Vicious Cycle to an end.
  • Garland in Final Fantasy. He was the greatest of the king's knights, until Princess Sarah rejected him.
• Cody Travers from Final Fight and later the Street Fighter series. While it is not actually seen in the games, multiple games tell the story of his downfall, which occur after the ending of the original Final Fight. Cody and his friends go out to save his girlfriend from the Big Bad in Final Fight. On the way, he beats up a corrupt cop named Edi, who later arrests the hero for assault in battery. Next, his girlfriend dumps him, and leaves the country to study abroad. Afterwards, he is let out of jail and tries to get revenge by fighting criminals outside. He gets arrested again, and becomes addicted to fighting within prison. He then eventually breaks out, and joins the Street Fighting cast in their tournament(s). After all these events, he usually claims that he will never be the hero again, and often states that all he has left is fighting (which he often exclaims is pointless). As of Street Fighter V however, things seem to be improving for him, what with him going through a redemption arc leading him to become mayor of Metro City. Heck, even in (the admittedly non-canon) Street Fighter X Tekken, he admits that he wants to be a hero again in his ending and also expresses similar feelings in his Alpha 3 ending.
• In Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, due to the combination of the Avatar choosing Nohr over Hoshido, lingering jealousy, resentment, self-esteem issues and a little side helping of Demonic Possession, Prince Takumi goes from a kind, if abrasive young man, to a monster.
• Played With in Fire Emblem: Three Houses due to the Grey-and-Gray Morality of the game:
  • On the Crimson Flower route, Dedue hands out Crest Stones to random Kingdom soldiers, transforming them into Demonic Beasts, which would mean having to put them down even in a victory scenario. He later does it to himself, although if the player is fast enough, they can take him out before he transforms. If not recruited, Sylvain and possibly Mercedes(who arrives after the battle begins) are complicit in this plan, the former even voicing his approval of it for the sake of revenge when the first soldier turns if the player killed both of his Childhood Friends Felix and Ingrid on the previous map.
  • When Fhirdiad burns on the Crimson Flower route, Gilbert, plus Ashe and Annette if not recruited, don't try to save the civilians from the flames, instead focusing on killing the Black Eagle Strike Force.
  • This trope is, however, averted by Ingrid and Felix if not recruited on the Crimson Flower route, if only because they get killed off at least a chapter before.
  • If Ferdinand, Linhardt, Caspar, Bernadetta, Dorothea, and/or Petra are left unrecruited on the Azure Moon or Verdant Wind routes, they downplay this, as they harbor no ill will towards the Kingdom or Alliance and are more along the lines of Punch Clock Villains due to fighting for Edelgard and the Empire.
  • While Rhea was undeniably a great hero during the War of Heroes, several of her poor decisions in regards to politics, when given time to fester, end up driving her closer to the line. While in Silver Snow, Verdant Wind, and Azure Moon she's able to reflect on her actions and corrects her course, Crimson Flower sees her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
  • According to the official historical records, Nemesis, the King of Liberation, was a former king of humans who was gifted the Sword of the Creator by Sothis to protect the continent from evil, but was quickly corrupted by his power, forcing Seiros to kill him. In reality, he was always power-hungry, which allowed the Agarthans to manipulate him into murdering Sothis and crafting the Sword of the Creator from her remains. Seiros killed him in revenge because Sothis was her mother.
• Fire Emblem Heroes has an entire category of character alts based around this premise, with enough in the game that they can be separated by subcategory of reason for evil.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy examples include Tiki brainwashed by Gharnef, Hardin corrupted by the Darksphere, Delthea and Celica as Witches, Julia under Manfroy's control, and Ninian corrupted by Nergal.
  • Demonic Possession examples include Lyon from Eirika's route in The Sacred Stones where Fomortiis fully takes over him, both genders of Robin from the future where he/she was possessed by Grima, and Takumi from the above-mentioned instance in Fates: Conquest. The Robins are a bit of a special case, as the female version of Future Robin is classified as a Legendary Hero rather than being part of a Fallen Heroes banner, and both the male and female versions also have Harvest Festival alts where they dress up as a werewolf... while still being possessed by Grima.
  • Forced into Evil examples include both genders of Morgan from Awakening's Future Past DLC, Lilith from Fates's Hidden Truths DLC, and Gustav after he was slain by Hel and reanimated to serve her in Heroes Book III.
  • Jumping Off the Slippery Slope examples include Berkut after giving himself up to Duma, Orson after losing himself in his obsession with Monica, and Dimitri during the Azure Moon timeskip when he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Heroes who haven't become evil but can't hold themselves back include both genders of Corrin as a feral dragon from Fates chapter 5, Edelgard from the Azure Moon final battle where she unleashes the full power of both her Crests and transforms into a monster, and Rhea from the Silver Snow final battle where her injuries cause her to degenerate into a partly-decayed version of her true form. Notably, the latter two have new designs for their human forms which are never seen in the original games during their fall.
  • Superpowered Evil Side examples include Mareeta possessed by the Shadow Sword, Muarim after being forced to drink the Feral One potion, Ashnard carrying Lehran's medallion (even though he was never a hero, he's considered part of the fallen roster), and Ike carrying Lehran's medallion, the last of which was only depicted as a hypothetical scenario in Fire Emblem Cipher.
• Forever Home:
  • The Big Bad, General Barclyss, was once a street urchin who did his best to take care of himself and his childhood friend, Heindrovia. The two of them are then recruited into a resistance group against the tyrannical country of Tren, and became two of their strongest members. The resistance also provided them access to academic material, but Barclyss became a psychotic nihilist because he couldn't find the meaning of life through his studies. After Barclyss is expelled by the group for his murderous behavior, he joins Tren in order to rise through their ranks and use their resources to kill all life on the planet.
  • Heindrovia ends up falling from grace as well despite once having ideals for world peace, since she feels compelled to follow Barclyss despite his increasing insanity and lack of empathy towards her. She stays in denial of his evil nature until the final dungeon, where she allows the party to continue through the place before killing herself out of guilt for helping Barclyss.
• Happens a lot in a lot of FromSoftware games including the aforementioned Dark Souls:
  • In Demon's Souls quite a few of the bosses were once heroic champions of Boletaria. Then the Colorless Fog rolled in and turned them into Demonic parodies of their former selves.
  • In the Dark Souls series of games, just about everyone who could be considered heroic or legendary has, by the time you encounter them in the games, either died (if they're lucky), gone Hollow, or is a horrific monster that needs to be put down. Aside from Artorias, the one who fell the hardest was Gwyn. Though the third game lays bare his deceptions and his sins, he was still the Lord who ushered in an age of relative peace and prosperity after leading the war effort against the Dragons. But to preserve the Age of Fire, he made the ultimate sacrifice and Linked the Fire. This reduces him to a pitiful crazed Hollow shell of his former self whom the Chosen Undead must defeat.
  • Bloodborne has Ludwig the Holy Blade. The first Hunter of the Healing Church, he dedicated himself to fighting Beasts. He founded an order of Hunters to protect the populace of Yharnam from the scourge. Sadly, like many clerics, he succumbed and became a Beast himself. When the Hunter encounters Ludwig, he is one of the most grotesque monsters in the game (which is saying a lot) and is now known as "Ludwig the Accursed". In the middle of the fight he regains a measure of his sanity thanks to his sword the Holy Moonlight Sword and fights more like the Hunter he was rather than a Beast. To the point that he is no longer even considered a Beast in terms of gameplay (meaning serrated weapons no longer do more damage to him).
• Game Master (RPG Maker): Eloire was once the heroine who cleared the Game in an attempt to wish for her sister's revival. However, the wizard Shin refused, so she killed him, took his power, and went insane. She tried to take over her friend Vaile's body, but failed and got sealed into the Hexagon Tower.
• Green in Gunstar Heroes, was the strongest of the Heroes, but betrays Red, Blue, and his sister Yellow by deciding to join the villains plan to revive the evil god Gold. He does a Heel–Face Turn in the end and sacrifices himself to stop Gold.
• In the Halo Universe, Mendicant Bias was created by the Forerunner to be their most advanced AI ever, with its purpose being to help defeat the Flood. However, it ended up defecting to the Flood after being convinced to do so by the Primordial, which also happened to be a Flood Gravemind. Then the Forerunners build Offensive Bias, who lacked Mendicant's degree of free will, to help defeat Mendicant and the Flood, which they do (though not without also killing off all life left in the galaxy). Afterwards, Offensive and its masters lock Mendicant on the Ark and sentence it to think of only one thing: atonement. 100,000 years later, Mendicant Bias seeks to redeem itself by helping those its masters had deemed "Reclaimers" to their legacy: humans. When Master Chief and Cortana make it to the Ark, it decides to help them in order to show its master that it had atoned for its sins, and it's implied that Mendicant is the one who sends the two towards Requiem.
• Gelu from Heroes of Might and Magic. He's a heroic champion in the third game who valiantly aids Queen Catherine and Roland in their efforts to prevent the Kreegans from destroying Enroth with Armageddon's Blade. In the prequel The Shadow of Death he is also one of the four heroes who thwarts Sandro's schemes of world conquest. Things take a turn for the worse after Catherine makes the mistake of trusting Gelu with Armageddon's Blade after the Kreegans' defeat. Gelu slowly becomes more enamored with his new sword's immense power and begins to dream of conquering the world with it to fix its problems. When he hears a prophecy that Enroth will be destroyed if Armageddon's Blade ever clashes with the Sword of Frost, Gelu refuses to do the logical thing by destroying the Blade — instead, he seeks out the Sword of Frost in an effort to avert the prophecy despite Tarnum's warnings that doing so will merely hasten it. When the mad barbarian king Kilgor acquires the Sword of Frost and starts a war with it, Gelu (again ignoring Tarnum's warnings) faces him with the Blade. The resulting clash triggers the Reckoning which destroys Enroth. In the end, Gelu's ambition and refusal to let go of power doomed everything he once defended. Even more ironic since Gelu ultimately did what he prevented the Kreegans from doing: setting the world ablaze with Armageddon's Blade.
  • Gavin Magnus was the immortal ruler of the wizard's nation of Bracada, a well-respected lord with no apparent ambitions of conquest who allied himself with Catherine in the Restoration Wars (although he did not appear in person), to throw out the warlocks, Kreegans and undead invading Erathia, and was the co-Big Good of Might & Magic VII, working with Resurrectra to reconnect Enroth to the Ancients' portal network and stop Kastore, Resurrectra's counterpart, from conquering the world. Then the Reckoning happened, and Gavin quickly slid down the slippery slope, becoming the Big Bad of Heroes IV's Order/Academy campaign, seeking to unite the new world he's found himself in with mind control so that nothing like the Reckoning could ever happen again.
• The Injustice-verse version of Superman is this in Injustice: Gods Among Us and its sequel Injustice 2. The Joker tricks him into killing Lois Lane and their unborn child by dosing him with a Kryptonite-induced variant of Scarecrow's infamous fear toxin that made him hallucinate Lois as Doomsday, setting off a nuke on a Dead Man's Switch that the Joker had rigged that devastates Metropolis and kills millions, and leading to Superman killing the Clown Prince of Crime in a fit of rage. And then it just goes downhill from there as he basically takes over the world in order to make it a better place, killing criminals and even a few heroes as he falls deeper and deeper into the abyss. Several other heroes join his crusade including Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Shazam, and even some villains join such as Sinestro, Killer Frost and Black Adam. He ends up doing some truly despicable things such as killing Shazam in a slow and painful fashion when he dares bring up that Supes has gone too far.
• More than a few in Kingdom Hearts.
  • Riku at the start of the first game; fortunately, he got better. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep reveals Master Xehanort used to be as good as a brother to Master Eraqus. Terra is a subversion, as he didn't so much fall as he was taken over by the aforementioned character. Trailers and news for Kingdom Hearts III has revealed that both Baymax and Aqua have been corrupted by the darkness, too. Both however end up being rescued by Sora and Xehanort himself has a Heel Realization over what he had done after his defeat at the end.
• The cast of Last Scenario is littered with heroes and wannabe-heroes who are used, deceived and broken in various ways, so naturally one of these ( Castor, the game's Big Bad) would come out of it, while the game details his descent down the slippery slope, until even his most loyal allies join the other side in an attempt to bring him back.
• The Darkin of League of Legends. Once honored Ascended warriors of Shurima, they were left without purpose or guidance when the empire fell. Combine that with their near godly powers and mental trauma from the war with The Void, they became a bigger threat than those they once fought. So the Targonion Aspects sealed them inside their weapons. Those that have escaped confinement (Aatrox, Rhaast and Varus) are murderous mockeries of their former glory.
• Malefor, the Big Bad of The Legend of Spyro trilogy was implied to be one. Statues of him dot the Dragon Realms, including the training area of the Dragon Temple. Prowlus also claims that Spyro is just like Malefor at his age...
• Squaresoft's Live A Live:
  • A major plot-point. A classic Knight in Shining Armor is tricked into slaying the king, finding out that his best friend has betrayed him, and finally realizing that the princess he's been trying to save is actually in love with said friend. He becomes the "Lord of Dark", Odio, who has been a recurring Big Bad for the heroes of our world to fight, from the Stone Age to the far future. The Aesop, which somehow manages to avoid being Anvilicious, is that anyone can be a Big Bad as long as they hold enough hatred. During the remake's True Final Boss, Oersted manages to redeem himself by forcibly ripping himself free of the "Sin of Odio" and dealing the finishing blow to the literal incarnation of his hatred, which shortly afterwards causes him to expire after a final set of conversations with the other heroes.
  • Also, Hasshe in the medieval chapter, who is a mild case of this. He was a hero who defeated the Lord of Dark, but lost faith in humanity and chose to live as a hermit on a mountain. He subverts it by helping Oersted defeat the false Lord of Dark.
• In Loop Hero each of the bosses is revealed to be this, even the Big Bad.
  • Omicron was the most brilliant archmage to have ever lived and was obsessed with stopping the heat death of the universe. However when faced with Omega, he came to the conclusion the best solution was to destroy everything quickly in hopes Omega would become Alpha again and make a new universe.
  • Sigma is the physical incarnation of faith itself who has fought on the behalf of her god in many different bodies. Now believing that her god wishes the destruction of the universe, she obeys without question as is her nature.
  • Tau was a mortal who ascended to become the physical embodiment of a black hole, but he never stopped acting as his homeworld's greatest defender. That is until he met Omega and, faced with a foe he could not beat, mercy killed his people and bowed to his new master.
  • Alpha the Creator was a benevolent being who traveled the cosmos until the hero's ancestor, confused at the sight of a god, attacked. Alpha allowed the attack to hit to comfort the ancestor and died, being reborn as Omega the Destroyer.
• Ghaleon from the Lunar series qualifies quite well for this trope. He has a glowing reputation at the start of Lunar: The Silver Star (and the remakes) for heroism alongside the famed Dragonmaster, Dyne. His Face–Heel Turn sends the world into a panic. In the remakes, he is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who sees the Goddess Althena's decision to leave humans to their own devices as abandonment. So, Ghaleon starts plotting a way to restore divine leadership to the world. And who is the new divine leader? Ghaleon! His purpose in Lunar: Eternal Blue turns out to be redemption for this, though the player doesn't learn this until right at the end of the game.
• Fain, of the Red Masque from Lusternia. A brilliant and popular leader amongst the Elder Gods, he resorted to increasingly extreme measures to combat the Soulless Ones. Ultimately, he and his co-conspirators began devouring other Elders to imbibe their essence and power, and were banished to the Void. Driven insane by thousands of years of isolation, he is profoundly unhappy by the time he returns to the real world.
• Manafinder:
  • King Vikar was once a benevolent leader to humanity, but after receiving the blessings of the gods, he created the Kingdom of Manahill and eventually let the power go to his head. He ends up creating a lopsided legal system where he and his inner circle exile anyone they don't like.
  • Azain was once a manafinder who helped the Settlement look for manastones to maintain their barrier. After his lover, Liria, died on the job, he attempted to research a way to bring her back. Eventually, the Goddess of the Night, Illia, contacted him and convinced him that humanity's dependence on manastones is to blame for this tragedy, and that he should help her destroy all manastones.
• In the MMORPG MapleStory, Empress Cygnus in the future. Because they were weaker than the regular adventurers of the Maple World (shown by the fact that they can only go up to level 120 instead of the regular 200), Cygnus wanted to increase the power of her knights so they could match up with the rest of the world. To do so, she looked for the Tree of Life, which she found. However, it was a trap laid by the Black Mage, and combined with their crippling insecurity, the Empress and her knights were corrupted by the Black Mage, and began to destroy the Maple World.
• Mari and the Black Tower:
  • A bargoer reveals that Strife, a Recurring Boss of the series, was once a knight of Halonia. It's implied that Zamas corrupted him somehow.
  • Morgoth was once a wizard who wanted to use his powers to heal people, but due to the influence of Lilith's master, his desire to do good is twisted into ending humanity for generating chaos energy.
• Mass Effect seems fond of this trope.
  • Matriarch Benezia from Mass Effect, having unwittingly lost herself to the very madness that she sought to stop, the ultimate tragedy being that she can't be saved.
  • As of the second game, Liara seems to be the anti-hero variant of this trope in the making. She gets better.
  • Depending on your choice of background and alignment, especially if you change alignments between games, Shepard can be played as a fallen hero.
  • A few characters see Shepard as a fallen hero in Mass Effect 2, no matter how you play, given that they're forced to work with a terrorist group.
  • The second game also gives us Rael'Zorah. Tali specifically fears her father being seen as this by the quarian people after he chooses to run weapons tests on active geth prisoners in order to advance the cause of retaking the homeworld.
  • And Shepard is definitely seen as this at the beginning of Mass Effect 3 given the terrorist connection and that they was forced to kill over 300,000 people to slow down the Reaper invasion. One news report early in the game even refers to them as "the disgraced Commander Shepard".
  • The Illusive Man plays the Anti-Hero Mission Control in Mass Effect 2, seeing as how he brought Shepard back to life and gave them enough resources to take on the Collectors, albeit for his own machinations. By Mass Effect 3, he's lost his mind to the Reapers' technology. Literally.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code: The Big Bad of the game is a perfect homunculus of Number One of the WDO after a Face–Heel Turn, named Makoto Kagutsuchi, having turned into a Well-Intentioned Extremist for Kanai Ward's sake, and becoming the CEO of Amaterasu Corporation, the enemy organization that causes everything in the game in the first place, in the process of doing so.
• In Mega Man X, series Big Bad Sigma was once the heroic commander of the Maverick Hunters, but eventually turned Maverick himself and decided to lead a revolution against the very humans he was sworn to protect. Mega Man X4 reveals that the root of this took place while Sigma was fighting Zero, when he was still an Ax-Crazy Maverick: Sigma inadvertently released and thus became infected by the Zero Virus he carried (while Zero himself was simultaneously purged of it).
• Big Boss of Metal Gear was originally a quirky, cheerful, affectionate, paternal sort of man (though he still was a supreme badass not to be trifled with), who ends up going through a major Break the Badass routine in Snake Eater, Portable Ops, Peace Walker, Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain. He then ends up creating The Patriots with other "fallen heroes", Major Zero, Sigint (a.k.a. DARPA Chief, Donald Anderson), and Para-Medic (aka Dr. Clark, the head of the Les Enfants Terribles project and the one who turned Grey Fox into the Cyborg Ninja), as well as with Ocelot and EVA and creating Outer Heaven and Zanzibarland to plunge the world into eternal war and seek revenge against those that crushed his dreams and ruined his life, before meeting his end at the hands of his "son"/clone, Solid Snake, which was prophesized by The Sorrow, Elisa and hinted at by Paz.
  • On the other hand, the kind of 'peace' that his enemies sought was one ruled by a global totalitarian shadow state, and the eternal war that he sought was the opposite of their attempts to control and regulate the dangers of individual human will. Big Boss may have become a threat to world peace and security, but both were inextricably tied to imposed obedience, which is ultimately slavery.
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance brings us the Brazilian samurai Jetstream Sam. After his father was murdered, Sam took up the sword and became ridiculously good with it. He attained his revenge, and went on to reap a swath of justice across South America, just him and his little sword. Eventually he decided to take on the game's Big Bad, World Marshal, because they were the bad guys. Expecting another test of mettle, he instead was forced to confront his empty ideals and was cowed and broken before his enemy. After this, he resigned himself to work under World Marshal, committing acts of evil he would have once condemned, knowing he wasn't strong enough to defeat Armstrong... but then along came Raiden...
  • Major Zero as mentioned above. To elaborate, he was directly (albeit, unintentionally) responsible for many of the things that happened in the series by creating the Patriot AIs, but he genuinely meant well before things went horribly wrong. And by the time the AIs went rogue, it was too late for him to realize and fix his mistake. And when Guns of the Patriots rolls around, he's fallen from grace in more ways than one, being revealed to be reduced to a very old man confined to a wheelchair, on life support and suffering from severe dementia. Big Boss pulls the plug on him, and as he dies, the audience is treated to flashbacks of the Major in his younger days, emphasizing that he was a good man who went about things the absolute wrong way. Alas, Poor Villain indeed.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • The original timeline saw Raiden become one after he Came Back Wrong, following dying to stop Onaga.
  • In the Continuity Reboot the events of Mortal Kombat 9 and Mortal Kombat X see Liu Kang, Kitana, Jade, and Kung Lao turn against Raiden after his attempts to prevent the events of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and those leading up to it from coming to pass got them all killed. The events of X sees Raiden once again become Dark Raiden too.
• The World Corp storyline in The Nameless Mod allows you to be this.
• Aribeth de Tylmarande from Neverwinter Nights and Bastila Shan, Darth Revan, Darth Malak, and the entire Revanchist movement from Knights of the Old Republic. How you play both games determines whether the spoilered characters stay evil or not.
  • Also, Yuthura Ban on Korriban, who was a fallen Jedi padawan with similar motivations to Anakin when he started out (i.e. go back home and free all the slaves), who then suffered from Motive Decay and became just another power-hungry Sith.
    • You can point this out. It helps.
  • The frequent tendency of Jedi towards this trope is lampshaded by the Disciple in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, who questions whether there's something fundamentally wrong with Jedi teachings because it keeps happening.
• Akachi the Betrayer and a third of his Crusade from Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer are all Fallen Heroes, the dragon and the army of undead having been evil to begin with. Arraman might also qualify, depending on your character interpretation.
  • And the King of Shadows from the original campaign, whose mission to defend the Illefarn Empire suffered severe Motive Decay when he escaped from his extradimensional prison and found that the Empire crumbled to dust millennia past.
• No Straight Roads: A big deal is made of Kul Fyra, lead guitarist of a former in-universe rock band who happens to be an inspiration for Mayday who seemingly disappeared after her band fell apart. Sure enough, she turns up again as the game's main antagonist Tatiana, who holds her past self in disdain due to seeing herself as a weak leader whose inability to make decisions contributed to her group's demise. Thankfully, after teaming up with Bunk Bed Junction to stop a Colony Drop, she learns to make peace with her past and let go of her bias towards rock, even going as far as to hand down her old guitar to Mayday after she wrecked hers doing the final Showstopper.
• OFF: While each of the Guardians can be considered this (Enoch is a Well-Intentioned Extremist and Dedan was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who became a miserable Bad Boss), Japhet embodies this trope the most. He used to be The Good King over his Zone, giving the inhabitants there anything he thought would make them happy. But the lack of recognition got the better of him, and he became an Ax-Crazy tyrant who started to murder them out of spite and misanthropy. He has a Heel Realization over this, and resigns himself to fighting the Batter, knowing how far he's fallen.
• In Overlord, your enemies are seven Fallen Heroes who represent the Seven Deadly Sins: Melvin Underbelly the halfing (gluttony), Oberon the elf (sloth), Goldo the dwarf (greed), Sir William the paladin (lust), Jewel the thief (envy), Kahn the warrior (wrath), and the Wizard (pride).
  • A more literal example would be the titular character, who was originally a hero who fought alongside the other heroes, but fell from a great distance and was left for dead by his companions. The Evil Plan of the old Overlord sees the main character eventually revived by his minions and given the position of the Overlord as well as command over the minions.
  • In the sequel, Queen Fay becomes a Fallen Hero after her Heroic Sacrifice. Florian may also be one, although it's unclear if he was ever truly a hero.
    Rose: Power, it always corrupts.
    Gnarl: Hah, that's half the fun!
  • The first game also contains enemies known as Fallen Knights, once rightful champions of justice that followed the church. By the time of the game they are just Tin Tyrants that terrorise the common folk.
• Once again proving that Blizzard Entertainment loves this trope, Overwatch has a few of its own. The Overwatch organization was once led by idealistic hero Jack Morrison and his buddy Gabriel Reyes. Unfortunately, Reyes became a little too jealous of Morrison and staged a series of events that dismantled Overwatch, seemingly killing him and Morrison. Reyes came Back from the Dead as the terrorist Reaper, feeding off the souls of his victims to stay alive. Meanwhile, Morrison survived as well, but seeing that his heroism didn't exactly make the world a better place, he became a ruthless Anti-Hero to find out what led to Overwatch's shutdown as Soldier: 76.
• Physical Exorcism Series: Marty was a genuine hero in Case 02: Paranormal Evil by defeating Gla'aki's cult, but the time loop of Extra Case: My Girlfriend's Secrets turns him into a Yandere for Sally. In Case 03: True Cannibal Boy, he really goes off the deep end after the Cannibal boy kills Sally, and he uses Gla'aki's extract to turn her head into a zombie. He then beheads at least two women to use their bodies to graft to Sally's head, and ends the game by beheading Lily. In the end, he has become no better than Shadow as a Serial Killer.
• The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment might qualify, with some of The Atoner thrown in. Apparently, he did something that was so bad in his first life, that he thought he'd be damned even if he did nothing but good for the rest of his life, and thus sought immortality in order to have more time to atone.
  • In a more immediate sense, the Practical Incarnation was... not a nice person. He was also the previous incarnation with the most impact on your current situation.
• Ratchet & Clank
  • Ace Hardlight from Ratchet: Deadlocked. Ace was once a great hero before being kidnapped and forced to participate in Gleeman Vox's deadly gameshow, Dreadzone. Ace eventually became seduced by the thrills and infamy of the tournament, and became the deadliest contestant on the show — and The Dragon to Big Bad Vox. He has a Heel Realisation after his defeat and encourages Ratchet not to go down the same path, at least.
    Clank: I do not understand. What sort of hero would kill other heroes for money?
    Hardlight: Not money, tin man. Fun.
  • Also, Captain Qwark...for a given definition of 'hero'. In the first two games he's a fame-hungry showboater willing to endanger innocents for his own glory, the third game reveals that he did once, however incidentally, save the galaxy from Dr. Nefarious. He gets better in later games, as in he's less willing to endanger innocents on purpose and prefers to take credit for Ratchet and Clank's adventures, kiss up to passing villains and/or hide behind the least sturdy object he can find.
• While not the main character of Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion, Livia Cassianus is, nonetheless, an important character, being the protagonist's Love Interest and a member of the Court of Shadows, the Imperial House's highly-trained spies and assassins (all Heroic Bastards of said House). Livia is a good-hearted, noble person. This is why the late Emperor Sergius Corvius has been secretly grooming her as his successor over his own legitimate children (his eldest daughter doesn't want the job anyway). After Grecian, Sergius's son, is overthrown by La Résistance, Livia is crowned Empress Livia Corvius and personally leads the Imperial Mark against the invading Kaysani hordes. But when the Big Bad Alejo de Porres chooses to suicide-bomb himself to kill Livia, her lover Calius Septim, the main character, sacrifices himself to keep her safe. Livia becomes determined to punish all responsible. Ravenmark: Mercenaries takes place 6 years later. By this time, Livia is known as the Scarlet Empress for her brutal policies and unwavering desire to crush all enemies of the Empire, both domestic and foreign. In large part, she is responsible for Estellion becoming a Vestigial Empire, barely strong enough to fight the newly-arisen Varishah Federation and the formerly-allied Commonwealth of Esotre in a three-way stalemate. Additionally, one of the most important cities in the Empire has seceded and remains a haven for mercenaries.
• RealityMinds: Kvena used to have a grand goal of finding a way to balance positive and negative essences, but years as a ghost wore away at her sanity and made her willing to do anything to get someone to exorcise her.
• In Red Dead Redemption, Dutch Van Der Linde was, according to John Marston, an idealistic romantic who was essentially the western Robin Hood. However, at some point, he went insane, likely due to the realization that all of his efforts won't bring any true change in the end. Now, he's gone absolutely Ax-Crazy. Red Dead Redemption 2, a prequel, depicts this fall into insanity while also raising the question as to how noble Dutch really was.
• Jack Krauser from the Resident Evil series qualifies as such, especially when Darkside Chronicles paints him with an initially heroic light, but after his arm was heavily injured (which resulted in him being fired from SOCOM due to it never recovering), as well as becoming increasing envious towards Leon, he eventually fell to the depiction of him in Resident Evil 4.
• The 7 Heroes of Romancing SaGa 2. Warriors who saved the world, but were betrayed by the people they saved and cast into Hell through dimensional magic.
• Runescape has several, most the direct result of Sliske's magic which converts living targets into wights under his control. In addition to the several prominent characters struck down during quests, Sliske's segment of the Heart of Geilinor is swarming with Fallen Champions, once-heroic adventurers with endgame equipment reduced to mooks.
• Wander from Shadow of the Colossus becomes one of these. Assuming that you think that he was heroic to begin with/villainous in the end...
• Shin Megami Tensei: It's heavily implied YHVH is one of these. The developers have consistently stated that the main reason YHVH is such a monster is because something has gone hideously wrong with the SMT universe, twisting and warping the Abrahamic god in the process. Supporting this is that there are some pockets of reality (such as the Devil Survivor games) where God Is Good, presumably ones isolated from the flaw.
• In Sinjid, Warlord Izumi, the second warlord you're tasked with killing, was once a noble war hero who led the Imperial Army to victory. After war broke out with the Shogun, however, he turned against his allies out of fear of losing the war, and they forced him into hiding before sending you in to finish the job. Kasumi, the strongest Shinobi unit in the Imperial Army also falls into this category, abandoning her allies after being convinced by Kazuro to switch sides.
• Skies of Arcadia features Ramirez, The Dragon to Lord Galcian. He's described as having once been pretty similar to Vyse — artistic, kind-hearted, and loyal. Unfortunately, he was raised in near-isolation by the most arrogant culture in the game and coming into contact with the meaner parts of Arcadia proved a little much for him. The Updated Re-release Skies of Arcadia Legends elaborates on how Ramirez changed from a hero to a supporter of Galcian's tyrannical world order where the weak are crushed by the strong: after discovering that his surrogate father Admiral Mendosa was actually a Villain with Good Publicity, a brutal slaver and war profiteer, and then nearly being murdered by Mendosa to keep this all a secret, Ramirez was completely broken and concluded that the world deserved to be crushed under Galcian's boot.
• Sly Cooper:
  • In Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Sly refers to Jean Bison as one who became this way due to being displaced by time rather than actually becoming evil; Sly remarks (and even pities) that in his own time of the mid 19th century Jean would have been hailed as a pioneer and a hero for wanting to tame and develop the west, but in the modern era where protecting the environment is much more prevalent, he's a villain instead.
  • Penelope in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. She joined Le Paradox because she believes she and Bentley were being held back from their true potential by 'working for chump change'. Bentley doesn't take it well.
• Soma Spirits: Dissonance, the Great Spirit of Sorrow, once joined Form, the Great Spirit of Joy, in fighting against the tyrannical Sun King to stop his warmongering and saved Soma, only to later turn against his sister and become the Big Bad who intends on stealing all the happiness from the world. It is then subverted as it is revealed he and Form started the war that they blamed on the Sun King, but then double subverted when we learn that, as a human, he left his estate in order to travel the world and help his family during an unspecified crisis, only to grow into his cynical and hateful self.
• Thorndyke in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, a Knight in Shining Armor goes this route in the Demon Path, initially submitting to The Main Character in order to save his son. As time goes on, he is forced to do worse and worse things until he is tricked into believing that he killed his own son, turning him into an Ax-Crazy Berserker. When he later sees that his son is alive, Kanan convinces him that he never went mad and killed because he truly enjoyed it, finally breaking him.
• Captain Walker in Spec Ops: The Line. He originally came to Dubai to help the stranded American regiment there. By the end of the game, however, his obsession with being a hero has caused him to massacre the very people he was supposed to save, horrifically slaughter dozens of refugees by accident with white phosphorus, condemned the remaining refugees to a slow, agonizing doom via dehydration, and lead his comrades to their entirely preventable deaths.
• Spider-Man himself becomes one if you obtain the Bad (but admittedly awesome) Ending for Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. Should the player refuse to resist the Symbiote's temptation at every instance it comes up (not easy, by the way) Spidey becomes a villain more evil than any he ever fought, rejecting all his friends and allies, murdering Venom, and ruling a New York overrun with Symbiotes, the infected Black Cat as his queen.
• Sarah Kerrigan in Starcraft. Though she didn't "fall" so much as "was thrown and had her sense of morality suppressed", once she got her free will back, she decided that she liked being evil.
  • It was more like her sense of morality and compassion were suppressed, allowing the darkness within to become dominant. Blizzard confirmed that Heart of the Swarm's arc will be about whether she will fall to darkness forever or transcend it and achieve redemption for her sins.
  • The Overmind itself, which was long ago taken over by the Dark Voice.
• In the Suikoden series, you'll usually recruit a couple of these per game. The most prominent is probably Geddoe from the third installment, who, in an interesting twist, in addition to being a Fallen Hero (retired/disinterested variety), is also one of the three main protagonists.
  • In the backstory of the first installment, Emperor Barbarossa took the throne by staging a revolution against a tyrannical usurper, his uncle Geil Rugner, and is implied to have initially been a good and just ruler. Fan interpretation is that he was likely a previous Tenkai Star, and indeed one of the early concepts for Suikoden II was a prequel starring him as the hero.
• According to the instructions manual for Super Mario Bros., as well as some merchandise, Goombas were said to be former residents of the Mushroom Kingdom who betrayed Princess Peach and the Toads and sided with Bowser. Not so much in later games, where some Goombas are instead portrayed as allies, such as Goombario and Goombella.
• Tempest Hawker from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation was once a member of The Federation Aggressor unit. After losing his wife and daughter in the Hope incident, he will do anything to get revenge on the Earth Federation.
• Sword of Paladin: Lancelot was once a loyal Einherjar of Asgard, but when he failed to protect Asgard from Berienstahl and failed the Paladin trial, he become obsessed with taking over the world in order to become a hero.
• Tales of Symphonia has Mithos, Kratos and Yuan, one in service of Mithos and the other one opposing him .
• Though it's at first ambigious, the Wham Episode and The Reveal that Artorius Colbrande of Tales of Berseria was definitely a genuine Ideal Hero before events put him on the wrong path.
• Izbel from Tears to Tiara 2 is an interesting case. She does a Face–Heel Turn but she was ordered to do so as the final order of her commander and the man she loves. And the entire string of events, and really her entire life, has caused her to loose faith in people.
• Tatsumaru from Tenchu 2 only turned to evil after a case of amnesia. He got his memory back but chose to fight for the bad guys out of guilt (and he's in love).
• In Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, it's revealed that the Dragon Lord, the BBEG of Tina's campaign was once the Dragon Knight, Tina's player character in the first B&B game she ever played (with Roland as her DM). However, since she's a feral child with no restraint her first action was to have the character cause a massive explosion that led to Roland declaring an in-game alignment shift. In the present day, the Dragon Lord is somehow self-aware as a TRPG character and is deeply spiteful towards Tina for turning him into a recycled BBEG, with his goal being to break out of Tina's control.
• Subverted in Touhou Project with Byakuren's back story. She was a revered nun in ages past, but realizing her own mortality after the death of her brother Myouren, she dabbled with witchcraft and began seeking immortality. At the same time, she began empathizing with the youkai she was sworn to hunt and destroy/seal. She quietly started to wonder if she couldn't make a peaceful coexistence work, but the people were angered by both her immortality research and her growing empathy and had her sealed for a millennium in Makai. Thankfully, even after being released, she's one of the kindest characters in the setting and keeps fighting for coexistence. In other words, losing her status and starting from the bottom only served to make her a better person, if still flawed.
• In Transformers: War for Cybertron, Starscream was once a heroic autobot before becoming fascinated with Megatron's dark, unnatural powers. So he chose to follow him as his second-in-command and annihilate other autobots standing in their way.
• Dirk from Valkyria Chronicles II. Ready for a whopper of a spoiler? He is actually Leon Hardins, older brother and idol of the protagonist. An exceptional militiaman, he was selected for a "special mission" — being subjected to human experimentation that stripped him of his humanity. And so he ends up fighting for a genocidal band of insurrectionists.
• Boy, does Viewtiful Joe have these...
  • In the first game, Captain Blue is the one masterminding to escape from Movieland to take over the real world, having lost his stride twice. In the real world, he was hailed as revolutionary director, having created several good movies, but then he lost all of that. He just wanted to create more heroes. He was then somehow sucked into one of his films, and he lived all of the great adventures he wanted, but then he figured something out: the world was too good to last, he started to want revenge against the people of the human world. Thankfully, he got some sense knocked into him.
  • The second game gives us Jet Black, who wanted to become a film maker to show his son what a true hero was. He then found the Black Film, which started to eat at his desires, eventually twisting his desire to make a film about heroes to actually wanting to be the hero, and was going to take over the world. Again, he got some sense knocked into him.
• William Carver spends most of Episode 3 of The Walking Dead: Season Two goading Clem, claiming she'll eventually become this. In the Jane ending where she turns away the family and threatens them, he's proven right. New Frontier shows her to have become cold and cynical, but not above helping others. In The Final Season, she's fiercely protective of AJ but can also be brutally antagonistic towards everyone else. Ultimately however, this is dependent on the player's choice on how much this cruel world has affected Clementine's morality.
• Warcraft is very fond of this trope.
  • Sargeras in Warcraft originally fought demons for millennia, but eventually fell into thinking that it was no use and chaos was actually the only real solution to everything. Just to signify what this meant, his bronze skin split apart, revealing a new body of fire and brimstone.
  • Archimonde and Kil'jaeden, the leaders of the eredar who sold their souls to Sargeras and became the leaders of the Burning Legion.
  • Similarly, the human prince and paladin Arthas eventually resorted to the cursed blade Frostmourne to slay the demon that was (apparently) behind the plague that turned people into the undead. As a result, it took his soul and turned him into a death knight loyal to the Lich King (who had all that planned from the start).
  • Then there's the death knights that followed him, which constitute Orders of Fallen Heroes. A force of them in Wrath of the Lich King are sent to wreak havoc in Northern Lordaeron... All of which seems to be little more than a ploy to lure out Tirion Fordring, one the few living beings that could even be considered anything close to a threat to the Lich King. They were just a diversion and, eventually, as a result of a climactic battle in which Tirion reveals the truth of their betrayal and ultimate expendability, pull a Heel–Face Turn. The player plays through this entire sequence, including all the irredeemable evil goodness inherent therein.
    • Sylvanas Windrunner was originally a good hearted, if rather vain defender of her homeland, not that unlike Arthas orginally was, she ended up being killed and turned undead when he invaded her homeland, and while turning undead didn't make her evil immediately like with him, by this point she is little better than the Lich King himself.
  • And the night elf Illidan, trying to fight fire with fire (or demons with demon magic), eventually became a semi-demon himself.
  • The Frozen Throne shows how the arrogant-but-decent high elves turned into the evil, demon-following blood elves they are in World of Warcraft.
    • In a desperate attempt to save his people, Kael'thas turned to demons, and let himself be consumed by their fel magic.
  • Neltharion the Earth-Warder, one of the Five Dragon Aspects, charged by the Titans to protect the lands of Azeroth, Dug Too Deep. After a little Mind Rape by the resident Eldritch Abominations, he's calling himself Deathwing.
    • Neltharion took every one of the black breed of dragons with him. They are hunted and mindlessly killed, sometimes just for sport. The truth is that they have all been driven completely insane and/or have lost every last one of their morals. The breed has almost been wiped out or forced under ground. It didn't help that Deathwing is dead, which probably just made things worse for the breed.
    • By that same token, Malygos the Spell-weaver, the Aspect of the Blue dragonflight. Best remembered from the pre-Sundering days for his playfulness and good humor, being the protector of magic. After Deathwing wipes out most of the blue dragons and seriously wounds Malygos, the latter spends 10,000 years in isolation, going mad from loneliness and betrayal. Despite snapping out of his madness in Day of the Dragon to help fight Deathwing and free Alexstrasza and the rebirth of the Blue dragonflight, Malygos never goes back to his cheery old self. Instead, he declares war against all non-dragon magic users, forcing Alexstrasza to assist heroes in killing a fellow Aspect.
  • The Scarlet Crusade, which started out fighting to protect humans from the Scourge in Lordaeron, and gradually became increasingly paranoid to the point that anyone not a Crusader was deemed tainted. Then their leader was outright corrupted by the undead.
• The Dark Savant trilogy of Wizardry (VI, VII, and VIII) has one, very important, case revealed only towards the end of the last game. The Dark Savant is none other than the deified Phoonzang, gradually corrupted by bitterness at the Circle of Cosmic Lords for throwing him out and turning him mortal over his efforts to help sophonts ascend towards the heavens, and the measures he took to prolong his life beyond mortal limits. So twisted has he become that if the player characters undo the exile, the Dark Savant fights to preserve his own existence above that of a Phoonzang that remained a Cosmic Lord out of disdain for who he used to be.
• In XCOM: Chimera Squad, the Big Bad Sovereign was a former XCOM operative who fought to liberate humanity from ADVENT, but was The Social Darwinist and sought to Take Over the World himself in order to forcibly prepare it for potential retribution by the Galactic Conquerer Ethereals. The Gunslinger Blueblood knew him personally during the war, although he deemed him crazy even then and avoided him.
• Consul N from Xenoblade Chronicles 3 spent his past lives as Noah trying to free the world from Moebius' shackles, and even shortly after he turned, he still retained some form of standards that allowed him to ally with the Founders to fight against Alpha. But by the time of 3, N is one of their most dangerous and feared enforcers, now overseeing the Keves faction that he once served in prior to becoming Moebius and condemning everyone else to an endless cycle of life, war, death, and rebirth so as long as his needs and desires only are met.

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