Heroic BSOD / Video Games

Oh, Bentley... to be given such a Shell-Shocked heart.

Heroic BSoD - The one BSoD that's not Microsoft's fault. Usually.

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Examples

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy:

• In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years an interesting blend of this and Villainous BSoD happens to poor Cecil. First, the Maenad forces him be Brainwashed and Crazy, to the point that he, among other things, wreaks disaster on the world, attempts to have his friend Edward assassinated, and personally raises arms against his best friend, wife, and child. After this, her control over him is broken, and he realizes precisely what it is he has done. He goes completely catatonic as a result. Fortunately, he can be snapped out of that, too.
• Late in Final Fantasy V, the normally-optimistic and easygoing Bartz snaps and nearly destroys the airship when Exdeath apparently destroys his hometown with the Void.
• Terra has one of these in Final Fantasy VI when she realizes that she's half-Esper. The player (along with the rest of her party) doesn't find this out until significantly later in the game, so the fact that she transforms, flies away, and becomes completely incoherent seems completely random when it first happens.
  • Terra also has another the end of the world, though not for the reason you might think. After adopting a village of orphans, she starts feeling things she doesn't understand and it saps her ability to fight completely, so Celes and Sabin have to save her (and the kids) from the monster Humbaba. When Humbaba comes back for a rematch later, Terra realizes that she's feeling love for her new family and pulls a Big Damn Heroes for the party this time around.
  • Cyan, meanwhile, is introduced as a noble samurai... and then Kefka wipes out everyone in his home kingdom (including his wife and son). Cyan's first response? Charge into a nearby Imperial camp and challenge everyone present to battle. He manages to get a hold of himself, but if you revisit Doma in the World of Ruin, you'll have to engage in what amounts to hands-on psychotherapy.
  • If Cid dies, then Celes winds up losing herself to despair and hurls herself off a cliff. Her suicide attempt fails and she wakes up to discover Locke's bandana, which causes her to realize she isn't alone and leads her to search to reunite with the rest of the party.
• Final Fantasy VII:
  • Sephiroth convinces the hero Cloud that he (Cloud) is not who he thinks he is; that he is just one of Sephiroth's clones created by Hojo in the lab, modeled after the real Cloud, who had died several years earlier. The hero is so distraught at discovering he's the Tomato in the Mirror that he lets himself controlled by Sephiroth and consequently, gives up the Weapon of Mass Destruction to his enemy. As all hell breaks loose, Cloud disappears, only to be found nearly comatose by his teammates a week later.
  • The prequel Crisis Core gives poor Cloud yet another BSoD during Zack's traumatic death scene.
  • Surprisingly, Sephiroth's current nature was implied to be the direct result of this, having found out his actual origins.
  • Though his BSoDs may pale in comparison to Cloud's, Vincent Valentine convinced himself that it was his fault for not protecting his beloved one, Lucrecia. So he laid in a coffin. For three decades.
  • Speaking of Lucrecia, she is arguably stuck in an ongoing BSoD of her own - after putting herself through a physically punishing pregnancy and injecting JENOVA cells into herself and her child, witnessing Vincent get shot by Hojo and trying to save his life (to mixed success) in Dirge of Cerberus and having her child taken away from her by Hojo, she could no longer stand the guilt and despair over what happened to Sephiroth and Vincent and decided to lock herself away in a crystal cave because the JENOVA cells would not let her die. And she's still there by the end of the Compilation, beating Vincent's record of three decades with an additional three years of captivity.
  • In the original game, Barret has a good one in Midgar when one of the city's upper plates crashes into the slums below killing his friends and, seemingly, his adoptive daughter Marlene. All he could do is scream and shoot into the rubble, until Tifa recalled something Aerith had said and realized that Marlene was safe and alive elsewhere.
• Final Fantasy VIII has Squall suffer an interesting version of it beginning with the third disc. Up until then, he'd been the taciturn and reluctant hero, doing what he'd thought everyone wanted him to do as a good soldier. Then Rinoa ends up in a coma from which she might never wake up. Cue abandonment of his friends and his post to go on a long journey with a minimal chance of success just for her, something that would have been completely antithetical to his beliefs only a week or so before.
  • The end sequence of FFVIII also involves a more standard version when Squall tries and fails to make it out of Time Compression using The Power of Friendship, getting stranded alone outside of time and having an epic Heroic BSoD complete with hallucinations.
• Final Fantasy IX. After her mother's death (suffered whilst trying to kill her, after finding out that she never loved her and just wanted her powers) closely followed by her witnessing the epic destruction of her new kingdom on the eve of her coronation, Garnet/Dagger spends a good chunk of the later game completely catatonic, unable to talk and just dragged around by her comrades. Oddly enough, she could still join you in battle, though her hit chance went right down, and occasionally, she just gave up, with the notice "Garnet can't concentrate". Her depressed state also prevents her from using her Trance abilities, which is signified by having her Trance gauge removed from the interface.
  • And then she becomes catatonic after her homeland is nearly wiped off the map by an invasion of undead monsters and an incredibly destructive magical attack that had been stolen from Garnet herself. You can hardly blame Garnet for developing post-traumatic stress disorder after a trauma like that.
  • Also, during her death scene, Brahne apologizes for it and claims that she did it out of overwhelming (and recently realized) greed, not that she never loved Garnet in the first place.
  • Another prime case of Heroic BSoD occurs near the end of the game to Zidane. After finding out his true origins and the morbid purpose of his existence he goes temporarily insane, turning into a raging, foul-mouthed misanthrope who attacks everything in his path both verbally and physically.
    • He was having his soul sucked out by his creator. It'd put you in a foul mood. Before Garland did the soul drain, Zidane was shocked about his origins, but he immediately turned against his maker, on the grounds that his true place was with his friends; when the party finds him after the fact, he's slumped in a chair and when he walks, its at a slow stumbling gait.
  • Heck, most of the main cast suffers some form of the trope after experiencing a personal trauma. Steiner doesn't know what to do or feel after he finally sees and gets that the Queen is truly a monster bent on conquering other nations and was planning to kill her own daughter off. Freya has a minor breakdown after seeing that the love of her life lost his memories and has no idea who she is. Vivi goes into complete shock after seeing the Black Mages being mass produced in a factory and they look just like him. The only people that don't go into a meltdown are Quina (too simple minded to really care about many things), Amarant (has a personal score to settle and focuses on nothing else), and Eiko (already gone through some tragedies when she was younger, so she's mostly over it).
• In Final Fantasy X Auron has a rather spectacular one when he finds out that the religion he has devoted his life to is all false and Braska and Jecht died for nothing because Sin can never truly be vanquished. His BSoD leads him to his death as he gets so angry that he attacks a pseudo-God.
  • Tidus also has a major BSoD when Rikku and the Al Bhed tell him that Yuna will die if she finishes the pilgrimage., Valefor comforting him is probably one of the most touching scenes in the game.
  • Though not to the same degree as the other two, Tidus has another one earlier in the game when Auron reveals to him that Jecht, Tidus's father who he had believed to have died ten years earlier, is not only alive, but is the Big Bad that the party is on a mission to kill. This is made especially clear when you compare Tidus's extremely depressed mood during his interaction with Yuna in the subsequent cutscene to the much more cheerful mood he had shown during all his previous interactions with her up to that point.
  • Yuna gets a brief one of her own (combined with a very healthy dose of Oh, Crap! that she shares with the rest of the party and first time players) during the Operation Mi-ihen cutscene. She obviously knew well before this that Sin's destructive power was unmatched by anything else in Spira, but this was the first time that she had actually witnessed the full extent of it firsthand.
• In Final Fantasy XII, Larsa has a brief one when Al-Cid reveals that his father passed away.
• Final Fantasy XIII:
  • The Eidolon battles in general. Eidolons are known to appear to l'cie in moments of great emotional distress to force them to either succumb to their grief or push through and survive.
    These mystical entities reveal themselves before only to a select few l'Cie. It is said that they are saviors, come to rescue hopeless l'Cie who find themselves bound to a Focus against their will.
  • Resident Idiot Hero Snow goes through one as Hope is barraging him with rapid-fire Armor Piercing Questions. The questions force him to relive all his recent mistakes and render the optomist near catatonic. And when Snow learns that Hope is the son of the woman he couldn't save, he shuts down completely and accepts death as his punishment.
  • Sazh goes through a chilling one in Chapter 8, as the normally lighthearted, funny, friendly man is very nearly Driven to Suicide by the revelations of what happened to his son and having seemingly lost him forever.
• At the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning literally entombs herself after Serah's death, unable to process what just happened or how she feels responsible for it.
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates:
  • Chelinka goes actually catatonic for several years after Latov dies, which combines with the effect of using her power for the first time.
  • When you find Meeth after the Time Skip, she's slipped into extended one of these as a result of being The Aloner and unable to escape Rela Cyel to help the twins.
• Yunita in Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light falls into a self-pitying slump after Aire berates her, Brandt ditches her, the good people of Urbeth con her out of everything down to the clothes on her back, and she is absolutely nowhere close to saving Horne. When Jusqua turns up in town, she initially refuses to join him because she assumes she'll just drag him down. She snaps out of it after helping him save the town from monsters and getting up the Tower of the Sky on her own. (Because Jusqua ditched her.)
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Alphinaud Leveilleur crashes headlong into this in the second-to-final mission of the A Realm Reborn saga heading into the Heavensward expansion when his pet project company, the Crystal Braves, had been compromised since its inception, leading to the not-actually assassination of Ul'dah sultana Nanamo ul Namo, the false accusation to her assassination towards the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (which includes you, the Player Character) and the disappearance of the group save a handful, that handful being forced to escape into exile in Ishgard.
• In Final Fantasy XV, Noctis enters one for weeks after Ardyn kills Luna as he watched helplessly from the sidelines as he had been waiting to finally see Luna for 12 years, only to not quite make it in time.
• Final Fantasy XVI: Clive has one after learning that the second Eikon of Fire that had killed his younger brother was himself, which he doesn't get over fully until after returning to Phoenix's Gate.

Metal Gear

Metal Gear

• Solid Snake constantly wrestles against the BSoD throughout the series, suffering a literal barrage of conspiracies and mindbenders that could be named by the entire Gambit Index right to the bitter end. Yet somehow, Snake generally manages to keep it together and not crash (though he comes pretty damn close at times in four, when he's obviously reached his limit). A true blue soldier he is!
  • Although... between Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (second game) and Metal Gear Solid, it's said that a certain event shook him up a bit to the point he disappeared into Alaska for a while. This may be an off screen slight BSoD he suffered. Said incident was in fact learning that Big Boss was his father minutes before Snake killed him in a particularly horrific way. Evidently, this disillusioned him so heavily that he couldn't deal with people anymore.
  • Snake can have an on-screen BSoD in Guns of the Patriots; kill around fifty enemies (kill, not just knock out) and he'll have a flashback to his brother Liquid accusing him of enjoying all the killing he does before vomiting right then and there.
• In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Raiden quite understandably suffers one hell of a BSoD when Olga is shot by Solidus. Her death was merely the spark which was fueled by previous knowledge that his role as a rookie was a lie... and that he was actually a child soldier with years of experience (and trauma). Add that to one secret after another revealed beforehand, and not knowing of the unbelievable mess that awaited him in the next scene... it's a wonder Raiden even recovered enough to duel Solidus in the end.
  • Also happens to Otacon in MGS2, after his younger stepsister dies in his arms. Even after a motivational manly handshake/hug from Snake, he still ends up collapsing into a sobbing mess after his sister's parrot begins mimicking her and saying "Hal. I miss you." multiple times. He manages to recover from it and escort the hostages out of Big Shell.
  • At the end of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Big Boss turns his quiet little BSoD at the revelation of his master, the Boss' many sacrifices into one of the most remembered examples of Manly Tears to ever appear on a gaming console.
    • Big Boss's Heroic BSoD was also implied to have worsened quite a bit in Peace Walker, as he was starting to sweat profusely when hearing people or The Boss's AI refer to him as Jack, as well as experience flashbacks to Operation Snake Eater. It's likely that Gene's revelation in Portable Ops may have affected him a lot more than in Metal Gear Solid 3.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots relies heavily on this. With the Sons of the Patriot system, soldiers no longer experience fear or pain and are able to keep fighting effectively for much longer. But when the system is shut down, the emotion suppression immediately ends and everything comes crashing down on the soldiers, who never had to deal with their past or received any kind of counseling at all, sending every single one of them into a massive BSoD. When Ocelot does just that, the only unit that is still in any shape to fight are the fresh recruits on a training vessel. Also Johnny always managed to evade getting integrated with the system and while it seriously hampered him in combat, he never relied on the emotion suppression and was the only one unaffected when the system was gone, giving him the chance for several Big Damn Heroes moments.
  • Raiden experiences another BSoD in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance when his first encounter with Monsoon makes him realize that a large number of the Mooks he fights and kills aren't truly bad people. He shortly snaps out of it, but only after making a Face–Heel Turn and reawakening his "Jack the Ripper" persona, which he had suppressed since his days as a child soldier.

• In Advanced Variable Geo, after watching Miranda Jahana kill off K-1 and K-2, Yuka started having serious doubts about her Defeat Means Friendship philosophy, causing her to lose her powers until Tamao helps her find confidence again.
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin:
  • Will has one after Cpt. Brenner is destroyed by Caulder's new weapon. He snaps out of it when Isabella tells him that his happiness is her happiness. He then goes on to become the new commander of Brenner's Wolves.
  • Isabella has one when Caulder tells everyone his daughters are clones and Isabella is one of them. Being kicked out by the civilians doesn't exactly help her condition. But after the battle on the Great Owl, Will tells her it doesn't matter what she is.
• Alien Syndrome had an early case of the Heroic BSoD when Aileen was searching for survivors on the Kronos, despite finding the survivors, they have all turned mad and tried to kill her (without much success) and when she got back, she entered a stage of Heroic BSoD before getting the pieces together in order to find her boyfriend. Needless to say, she hears of the fateful log where her boyfriend suffers something akin to Prey's second boss later on. It only gets worse as she learns of her roots and how the alien queen is really an young girl who is the sole sentient survivor of her people and she wants to die so she can finally rest in piece.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • After devoting thirty years of his life to the Assassin/Templar conflict, William eventually discovers that Juno was manipulating both sides as part of her long range plan to bring herself Back from the Dead. And about a minute after he learns this, his son (who he had somewhat forcibly recruited into his cause) dies to carry out the next phase of said plan. To say that he takes this hard is a massive Understatement. When he recovers and returns from his sabbatical, he is more jaded and ruthless than he was before.
  • Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood:
    • During the ending, present-day protagonist Desmond Miles was possessed upon touching the Apple of Eden and forced to stab his friend Lucy Stillman, after which he BSoDs so hard that he went into shock, and despite being put back into the Animus in an attempt to keep his mind busy he ended up going into a coma, which he remains in as of Assassin's Creed: Revelations.
    • If one starts the da Vinci Disappearance DLC after after one has already cleared the game's memory Sequences as opposed to before that, the opening dialogue changes to reflect the above BSoD, although either way the ending dialogue is set after the BSoD.
  • In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, protagonist Edward Kenway suffers a mental and emotional breakdown after Mary Read's death, becoming a drunken mess for what appear to be several months.
  • Assassin's Creed Origins: Khemut goes into one after Shadya is killed. It's not until she sees a captain bullying a farmer right next to her (and right by the shrine she made) that she starts pulling herself back together.
• In Asura's Wrath, Asura experiences this in the aftermath of the unnamed girl being killed when Olga's fleet bombarded her village to try to take him out. Of course, this being Asura, when he hits his BSoD, he defaults to one state. And his wrath is awe-inspiring to behold.
• In Baldur's Gate, the largest dungeon by far is Durlag's Tower. Durlag was a good aligned dwarvish adventurer who lived many years before the game's events who spent some of his money making a tower and complex underneath it to be a place of peace and plenty for himself and the clan he gathered around him. Unfortuntely, a tribe of doppelgangers got wind of this and the large amount of remaining gold, and systematically took the place of Durlag's friends and family members in the tower. When they revealed themselves and attacked in the forms they had taken, Durlag managed to defeat them, but the experience of killing (it seemed) his loved ones drove him insane. Paranoid, he hired builders and converted the area below his tower to a massive, trap filled complex which no one has since breached the lower levels of. Naturally, the PCs have the opportunity to do this, and the atmosphere — and gradually revealed backstory — within the dungeon strongly emphasise Durlag's BSoD.
• In Baten Kaitos Origins, the Heart-to-Heart scene is Sagi going through a brief one after learning who and what his guardian spirit really is.
• Batman: Arkham Knight: Batman falls into one after witnessing Barbara commit suicide after being exposed to Scarecrow's fear gas. He recovers a little when he remembers Poison Ivy has the methods of counteracting Scarecrow's gas, but it's obviously clear he's deeply hurt. On the other hand, Robin will have one once Batman told him what happened... if the player decides to do so.
• Jade from Beyond Good & Evil has one of these. When she returns home to her lighthouse, she discovers that it's been destroyed, and all of her adoptive children have most likely been killed. She breaks down and delivers a heart-wrenching soliloquy (It was once the quote at the top of this page.) about her uselessness. Said soliloquy was so impressive that they even included it on the official OST album under the trackname "Enfants Disparus".
• In BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, Anonymous slips into one of these at the end of Chapter 7, after learning the truth about his identity as a fragment of Legion. He’s uncharacteristically quiet for the next few scenes, until Til snaps him out of it with just the right mixture of sympathy and snark.
• As a common trope in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, this is incorporated into games based on his works, such as the PC/console game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, and the iPhone game Necronomicon. Dark Corners of the Earth emphasizes this with a system that causes a player to lose physical control of a character whose sanity dips too low. Hallucinations are an early warning sign.
• Call of Duty: World at War, Sgt. Roebuck suffers this in the last American mission, when Pvt. Polonsky dies from a Japanese fake surrender ambush and they're forced to take on a massive wave of enemy forces. Alternatively Polonsky suffers this is it's Roebuck who dies in the ambush.
• Case 02: Paranormal Evil: After the second boss, Marty is defeated by the Grandmistress and Gla'aki again. The Grandmistress then breaks Sally's compact right in front of Marty, breaking his confidence now that he no longer has Sally's luck on his side. Brucie tells him to stop worrying about his abilities or backstory as a hero and just act according to his desires.
• Soma Cruz experiences a Heroic BSoD in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow when he witnesses a doppelganger of Mina Hakuba being executed by Celia Fortner, provided he's not holding Mina's Talisman when it occurs. This causes Soma to lose control of his identity as Dracula, and allows the Dark Lord to be fully resurrected through his body. With no other choice, Julius Belmont confronts him in the newly-freed Castlevania. This acts as one of the game's Multiple Endings.
• Princess Aurora from Child of Light suffers this after two unpleasant events happen to her in quick succession. First, she finds out that her father is dying, and then she finds out that her stepsister Norah was Evil All Along. The poor little girl breaks down in tears saying she just wants to go home, and Óengus has to give her a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man speech to remind her of the many lives that will suffer if she gives up.
• Creepy Castle
  • Due to the influence of Possessor, Moth goes through one and has to both fight his shadow and receive help from Butterfly to regain some composure.
  • Described as a virtuous hero by the game, Storm got lost to despair as he learned the message of the ruins he visited. It's implied that similarly Possessor had a hand in this and he too had to be helped by Butterfly to come back to normal.
• Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls: Just as Komaru is struggling with what to do with the detonator, she is shown her and Makoto's parents hanging from the ceiling on a monitor, she finally emotionally decomposes and falls into despair. She remains completely silent and dumbfounded after this, until Toko slaps her cheek so she regains consciousness, just before Big Bang Monokuma ambushes them.
• Frank gets one in the best ending of Dead Rising when he sees the helicopter that was supposed to get him and the survivors out of the mall go down and explode. He's so out of it that he doesn't notice and/or doesn't care about the zombie shambling up behind him. Thankfully, that isn't the true ending. Then he has another one after Isabella rescues him and he learns that he's infected.
• Chuck has one in the worst ending for Dead Rising 2: With his daughter dead due to his failure to give her Zombrex, he loses all will to live, so when zombies come busting into the security room, he puts up no resistance as they pull him down and devour him.
• Digital Devil Saga 2:
  • Sera gets one of these when she watches Heat kill Serph, in a scene that mimicks the scene where other Serph killed other Heat five years ago and threw her into her original BSoD that kinda started the destruction of the world. Unfortunately, watching this reiteration of the previous BSoD causing trauma caused God to decide to finish the job. Whoops.
  • Speaking of Serph, Serph didn't take the news well that his past-life was responsible for the world's problems in both Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2.
• Disgaea:
  • Laharl from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness suffers his after Seraph Lamington kills Flonne. His only response, after a few seconds of silence, are a series of guttural growls followed by murderous rage. Afterwards, depending on what ending the player got, either Laharl spares Lamington and it's revealed that it was all a test, and Flonne is revived, Laharl spares Lamington... in the sense that he's still BREATHING... and Flonne is revived, though Laharl is so apalled by his actions that he departs, never to be seen again or, finally, flat out KILLS Lamington, only to go completely insane when the truth is revealed and kill himself.
  • Also happens to Adell in the Bad Ending of Disgaea 2 after he is forced to kill a Rozalin who's fully under the influence of her Superpowered Evil Side. This being the Bad Ending, of course, things immediately go From Bad to Worse as it jumps right into a big bloody pool of horror.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, Alistair has one after the battle at Ostagar that lasts until you reach Lothering.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • There is a point where Hawke arrives home to discover that his/her mother has been abducted by a serial killer. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, there is no way to arrive in time to save her. The following two scenes with Gamlen and Hawke's love interest respectively depict Hawke completely shut off from reality.
    • If Bethany is still alive and Hawke sides with the Templars, after killing Orsino, she will, in despair, accept her fate as Meredith goes to execute her. Hawke can prevent her from doing this or allow it to happen.
    • At the conclusion of Merrill's final Companion Quest "A New Path", Merrill goes through one after she is forced to kill her mother figure Marethari who had made herself into an abomination to save Merrill. She collapses to her knees and begs her gods to let this all just be a terrible dream.
      Merrill: (falls to her knees) I didn't want this. I never wanted this! Please, Creators, let this all be a bad dream. I'll wake up, and she'll scold me for being an idiot...
    • Fenris's final Companion Quest has this as a potential outcome. If Hawke agrees to sell Fenris back to his old master, Fenris is so broken by Hawke's betrayal that he goes along with Danarius without even struggling.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Varric goes through one if Hawke sacrifices him/herself in the Fade to save the Inquisitor and the Grey Warden ally. After being told what happened, he is unable to even say anything, just walking away completely silently.
• The Hero of DragonFable suffers a BSoD after Breaking Speech from Jaania, leader of the enemy faction "The Rose" that wants to get rid of all magic. She reveals that if he/she hadn't saved Jaania, and therefore helped create The Rose, the Ax-Crazy pyromancer Xan would have set fire to the world. The normally joking and lighthearted hero takes a long time to think to him/herself about what the right thing to do is, even snapping at his/her allies in a brief fit of rage.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest: After disastrous battle where his realm was conquered by the Dracolord, King Lorik fell into a deep depression over everything. And after many warriors attempted and failed to slay the Dragonlord, he gave up hope to save Alefgard and his daughter.
  • Dragon Quest VI: If you take Milly to Felonia, where she was enslaved and jailed, she has a breakdown.
  • Dragon Quest VIII:
    • The Hero has a minor one in the new Golden Ending after King Clavius royally chews him out. Angelo even says he "looked ready to throw in the towel."
    • King Pavan's wife died and he keeps the country in a state of national mourning for two years! He finally snaps out of it when memories of his queen help him realize that not moving on is the worst thing he could ever do for her.
  • Dragon Quest IX: Doctor Phlegming struggles with people and he really only cares for his wife Catarrhina, which is because her death hits him so hard.
  • Dragon Quest XI: Implied to happen to the Luminary after Yggdrasil falls. Notably, the first thing he does after returning to his human form is start crying. Thankfully, his Heroic Resolve causes him to put his anguish aside and keep moving forward.
• In The Elder Scrolls backstory, during the 1st Era, the Nordic Empire, led by the Tongues (masters of the Thu'um), was expanding rapidly out of Skyrim. Their armies invaded deep into Morrowind, slaughtering both the Chimer (ancestors of the Dunmer) and Dwemer. The leaders of these long time enemy races, Lord Indoril Nerevar and Dumac Dwarfking, agreed to form an Enemy Mine. Their combined forces met at the base of Red Mountain, where the Chimer/Dwemer alliance "annihilated" the Nord army, a truly shocking defeat in this history of the Proud Warrior Race Nords. The most powerful of the Tongues, Jurgen Windcaller, survived but fell into despair. Despite the advantage conferred by the Thu'um, the Nord army was soundly crushed. For seven years, Windcaller meditated and reflected on the defeat, coming to the conclusion that it was a punishment from the gods for misusing the Thu'um. He would use the defeat as inspiration to discover the Way of the Voice and found the Greybeards, a monastic order who espouse nonintervention and pacifism, and only use the Voice to honor the gods. The aftereffects of this battle can still be felt in the plots of both Morrowind and Skyrim.
• In the Evolve companion story The Sword, we learn this was Parnell's reaction to losing his ship and crew in an attempt to save innocents, as well as the innocents themselves. It doesn't help that the media painted him as a ruthless pirate trying to loot a dying ship.
• Mio in Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, right at the end of the game in the Bittersweet Ending. After all, she just murdered her twin sister Mayu via strangling to complete a ritual to keep demons away, resulting in Mio turning into a blubbering, disbelieving mess. She follows after the spirit of her sister, crying out that she's sorry and begging her to come back. And this is the canon ending!
  • Yae suffered from two of them: one in the second game where she was a teenager and the other in the first game. The first one was after she discovers everyone in her village is dead and the second one was after her daughter Mikoto goes missing along with her friends. This causes her to blame herself for giving Mikoto the camera obscura and ultimately drives her to suicide.
  • Miku appears to have shut down after the events of Fatal Frame 1, when her brother Mafuyu decided to stay in the mansion and got crushed to death. To the point where she refuses to remember what happened.
  • Every tattoo curse victim and rope curse victim has suffered from a BSoD moment at some point or another notably Yoshino Takigawa and Tomoe Hirasaka.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, the half-human, half-Dragon bard Nils suffers a Heroic BSoD after his leader and protector, Eliwood, kills Nils' sister, the dancer Ninian, under the control of the powerful Durandal sword. He snaps out of it and returns two stages later.
  • Eliwood himself suffers one earlier on in the game, after seeing his father post-torture, and being powerless as he dies.
  • In Serra's B support with her prospect love interest Oswin, she suffers one when he harshly reprimands her and she mistakenly thinks he hates her. In the A support, she's still into it and cries as he asks her why she's avoiding him.
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance:
    • Averted. After his father's death, Ike seems afflicted with Heroic BSoD which manifests itself as insomnia. However, aside from appearing more tired than usual, the other characters do not notice. It doesn't affect his performance on the battlefield either. When he finally avenges Greil, the narration describes Ike as sleeping well past dawn the next day.
    • Ike went through something similar, but more severe, when he learned about his mother's death. At least, his insomnia that night was more obvious.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones:
    • Ephraim and Eirika both also suffer of this when Lyon, their childhood friend, takes the titular Sacred Stone of their country, destroys it, and basically tells them that they HAVE to kill him to stop him. Either L'Arachel or Tana, depending on which route has been take, manage to snap them out of it by the next chapter.
    • Arguably more so for Ephraim's story. In Eirika's, when the Demon King tricks her into handing over the stone, she realizes that there is nothing of Lyon left; Ephraim on the other hand discovers that the mastermind is Lyon himself and he isn't as possessed as he thought.
  • Chrom and Lissa are hit with this HARD in Fire Emblem: Awakening after Emmeryn's Heroic Suicide. It takes a You Are Not Alone speech from the Avatar and the rest of the Shepherds to make them snap out of it.
  • The Avatar from Fire Emblem Fates suffers several moments of Heroic BSoD in all three routes.
    • In Chapter 5, before the route split, they get a big, big one when their mother, Mikoto, dies in a Heroic Sacrifice to protect them. This causes him/her to go into their Dragon Form for the first time in the story, and it takes his/her new best friend, Azura, a LOT to bring them back.
    • In Birthright, it's when Lilith dies after sacrificing her life to prevent Hans from killing the Avatar in Chapter 23.
    • Also in Birthright, it's when both Elise and Xander die in Chapter 26.
    • In Conquest, the Avatar gets this after Ryoma commits Heroic Suicide to prevent the Avatar from killing him and to make it less likely for Garon to execute the Avatar for refusing in Chapter 25.
    • They also briefly suffer two moments of this in Revelation. The first is when Izana dies after doing a premonition that required his life to convince Takumi to believe in the Avatar at the end of Chapter 10. The second is when Scarlet is killed by an Anankos-possesed Gunter at the start of Chapter 18.
  • Also from Fates, Felicia, one of the Avatar's maids, gets this in Birthright after her sister, and co-maid, Flora, kills herself via Self-Immolation in Chapter 17. She comes to terms with it eventually, though.
  • Niles' backstory says that he got this, almost crossing the Despair Event Horizon, when the thieves that he had spent almost all his life with left him behind after their attempt to rob the Royal Palace of Nohr backfired on them. His mental state was so bad that when he was discovered by Prince Leo, he told him to execute him on the spot — ironically, that piqued Leo's interest and he decides to take Niles in as his subordinate, which let Niles recover and became the source of his Undying Loyalty to his lord.
• This occurs to Kratos from God of War after he unknowingly murdered his wife and child. He spends all of the first and second games in a constantly enraged state and on the brink of madness (although he may have had this personality even before his Heroic BSoD.
  • He has another one in II, during a Boss Battle, after accidentally killing the last surviving spartan (perhaps he should stop killing people in the dark...) He's so pissed off and distraught, shouting challenges to the gods and lamenting his fate that he completely ignores the giant monstrous Kraken climbing up the tower until it actually grabs him.
  • Even before that in Chains of Olympus when he discovers the harsh truth that if he helps the gods he will never be reunited with his family in death. Not being allowed even some redemption at the end of GOW1 (which takes place a few years later and he has nightmares every night ever since) drives him to attempt suicide. He is not even allowed that.
• Trevor from Grand Theft Auto V has two of these. One in the normal Single Player after realizing that all his hard work in one heist was for no profit at all, because the object the crew took would have gotten them all killed by the Government. The other is in Online, after the end of one of the Online Heists.
• In Grow Island, if the man is rejected by the woman, he will fall down, turn gray and stop moving until the end of the game.
• In Heavy Rain, many of the parents who lost children to the Origami Killer are suffering from this, in particular Lauren, who seems to have fallen into a pit of despair and remains genuinely stoic throughout the entire game.
  • In all of his worst endings, Ethan commits suicide after learning of Shaun's death.
  • Ethan is going through one for nearly the entire game due to the death of his son at the beginning.
  • Norman. He is addicted to a substance which can kill him if he takes too much and really struggles with it. Even worse is that he takes this likely because of ARI, the glasses he uses at crime scenes to find clues, which can make him bleed from the eyes and even kill him. Not to mention if he fails to save Shaun it results in an ending where he overdoses on the triptocaine due to his guilt
• In the course of fighting off an alien invasion, Iji is shaken by the death of her father and sister, and she suffers a Heroic BSoD if she fails to save her brother, which is particularly heartbreaking because she goes on talking to him as if he's still alive. Also note that failing is very probable in the first playthrough unless you've read about it in advance.
• This happens to two characters in I Miss the Sunrise.
  • Tezkhra, after discovering that the Black One wasn't just spouting nonsense — the work that he loved so passionately nearly caused all of reality to be destroyed. This is what leads him to running away and crash-landing on the PLSE surface of The Reconstruction.
  • Mahk, after learning that the Machinatorium has been destroyed, becomes unresponsive and uncharacteristically quiet, eventually culminating in him freaking out and running away to find Tezkhra. It is also potentially kicked up a notch by Ivoronus' Heroic Sacrifice.
• Capell from Infinite Undiscovery has one when he sees vermiforms killing Faina and Leif. He starts resenting lunaglyphs and the people who use them because he believes that the Unblessed would have been protected if they had lunaglyphs of their own.
• Much of the entertainment value of the Let's Play videos of I Wanna Be the Guy comes from watching the LP'ers experiencing heroic BSoDs.
  • One particular epic heroic BSoD comes from a user who had a complete mental breakdown after MANY failed attempts to kill Mecha Birdo. In fact, he uploaded the attempted fights as a completely separate video in the LP he was doing of the game just to show how crazy he had went.
  • In the same vein, pokecapn has a major one during the five-part finale of the Sonic 2006 Let's Play. What follows is the most painful silence imaginable.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts II:
    • When Sora learns that his killing Heartless is exactly what the Organization wants him to do. He recovers really quickly, after a pep talk from Goofy, which basically boils down to "The Heartless still need to be stopped, because they hurt people."
    • And a less plot-relevant example is given to Hercules when he finds out that Olympus Coliseum was utterly demolished by the Hydra that he didn't quite kill in his hurry to save his girlfriend. You would think he suffered enough in the movie.
    • Mickey, Donald Duck, and Sora all slip into a shared one in when Goofy is seemingly killed. It only lasts a few seconds before all three of them quickly transition into Unstoppable Rage. After they finish ruthlessly slaughtering every last Heartless and Nobody in the immediate vicinity, Goofy catches up to them and reveals that he was not dead, only knocked unconscious.
  • Mickey Mouse has one in the ending of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep over his failure to save any of the protagonists from their fates worse than death. Master Yen Sid rouses him out of it fairly quickly, although there are some hints that it still haunted him years later in the original Kingdom Hearts, just not cripplingly.
  • Sora has another one in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] over his nature as a Mind Hive and who he, exactly, is, which gets so bad he actually gets corrupted by darkness for a bit and goes into a coma.
• The King of Fighters:
  • Lampshaded in The King of Fighters XIII. In their story mode, Maxima tells K' and Kula that he has trouble rebooting, K' asks "You're not gonna bluescreen on us, are ya?". Maxima says that he won't, but K' still asks him for a match to see what's going on. The one who ends up playing the trope straight, however, is Elisabeth Blanctorche. And with good reason, since it happens in her team's ending, when Ash Crimson explains his plans to her and basically gets himself erased from this world to eliminate his arch-enemy and ancestor Saiki, all to protect her because she's his Only Friend and among those destined to fight the group led by Saiki.
  • In the KOF: KYO manga and games, which describe Kyo Kusanagi's daily life, both Athena and Kyo suffer these. The first has one after catching a glimpse of Iori's Dark and Troubled Past by accident; the second goes through this when he starts doubting his powers and strength and is temporarily Brought Down to Normal.
• Ethan undergoes one in Last Scenario, in tandem with Castor's Villainous BSoD, due to the latter making him remember that the two of them are brothers and that Ethan was the one who killed Wolfram to save Castor's life.
• Link partially suffers one, collasping to his knees and breathing heavily, in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, after he learns how the Fused Shadows came into existence.
• Oersted (Orsted in the first translation patch) from Live A Live has one following The Reveal. It doesn't end well.
• Luna in Lunar: Silver Star Story graces us with an epic one (almost as if she's staring right at you), complete with a dramatic close up. This happens after she helplessly watched as Ghaleon sealed up the White Dragon in a tiny ball... and ends up becoming the Damsel in Distress for the rest of the game.
• Mass Effect:
  • Wrex's race, the krogan are dying out due to a specially designed bioweapon used on them during a Krogan Uprising. On Virmire, he learns that on the base you intend to blow up Saren is developing a cure. He storms off; you either have to convince him that extinction would be preferable to his race being the indoctrinated servants of Saren, or you have to kill him.
  • Shepard has one too, after the Council grounds them. Their love-interest (or Anderson if no-one romanced) turns up and pulls them out of it.
  • Mordin in Mass Effect 2. During his loyalty mission, learns that his student was conducting live experiments and torture trying to figure out a cure for the Genophage, Mordin's greatest work... Kills student for barbarity, if Paragon option is not taken. Clearly sad. Gets over it quickly. Salarians deal with emotions faster due to shorter life cycles.
  • Joker gets one of this after the Normandy Crew gets captured by Collectors and chews Shepard out for what happened there before quickly calming down.
  • Some of your squadmates in Mass Effect 2 if you fail their loyalty mission. Tali, Thane and Samara will be brooding for the rest of the mission if you for some reason fail to get their loyalty.
  • Shepard is on the edge of one for ALL of Mass Effect 3, as the decisions that they're forced to make in the Reaper War and all the people who have died in the fight against the Reapers takes it's physical and mental toll on them. This is most evident after the fall of Thessia, where they really go through a Heroic BSoD and is very near the edge of the Despair Event Horizon. It gets bad enough that Shepard's team, who usually look up to them as the ultimate legendary badass, start obviously worrying for their mental health.
    Shepard: There's only so much death... only so much loss you can take... before...
    Garrus: Before your best friend pulls you up, dusts you off, and tells you you're the best damn soldier they've ever known.
• Lan Hikari has one of these in Mega Man Battle Network 3. Lan has just helped Mr. Match place fire data throughout Sci Lab, resulting in his father's injury. Lan misses school for about three days, even lashing out at Mayl and Yai, and it takes Chaud asking for his help after an "I didn't hear anything" to bring him out.
• Mega Man Star Force: The protagonist Geo is the king of this trope, no kidding. In the first game he had a BSoD for 3 years or so when his dad went missing. Then he has ANOTHER one when Pat betrays him. And then ANOTHER one in the second game when he only manages to save just one of his friends from falling in a non-lethal hole of doom. Also, in the same game, ANOTHER one when Sonia / Harp Note, Geo's first person which who has formed a brotherband, betrays him and breaks their brotherband, due to a deal with the enemy to ensure Geo would be safe. Then in the third game, his best friend is seemingly murdered in front of him. Just to rub it in, the villain immediately goes on to the Evil Laugh.
• Zero from Mega Man X4 gets an exceedingly narmtastic heroic BSoD after being forced to kill his girlfriend Iris. See it in all its glory here. He continues to wangst about it even in his last breath in Mega Man X5.
  • His BSoD is portrayed much, much better and much more seriously with the original Japanese voice-acting, so it is not so "narmtastic" after all
  • In the crossover game Project × Zone, Vile triggers Zero to have another one by showing that Iris is alive causing Zero to lose the will to fight and X trying to snap him out of it, requiring you to save them under a time limit.
• In Metroid: Other M, Samus spends a good portion of the game struggling to come to terms with the brutal death of the Baby Metroid in Super Metroid, which takes place almost immediately before this game. At one point, she is attacked by Ridley, who killed Samus's mother right in front of her and used this history to torture her in the manga. Samus does not take well to suddenly encountering her mortal enemy whom she believes is dead, as she exploded the whole planet he was on in Super Metroid, with Adam in danger as well.
• Flint from Mother 3 gets one halfway through chapter one. The good news? The Drago tooth his friend found would be an awesome weapon! The bad news? The tooth was found after it went through Flint's wife's heart! Flint literally has to be knocked unconscious after hearing the news and breaking down. He gets another near the end of the game, when he finds out the Masked Man is Claus. He snaps out of it in time to take the PSI attack for Lucas.
• Bill Rizer from Neo Contra receives a brief one from Master Contra's Hannibal Lecture, until Mystery G does a Heroic Sacrifice that saves Bill and Jaguar and tells him that it doesn't matter that he's a clone or not, and that he still lives by the original Bill's ideals and that makes him the real Bill Rizer.
• In The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge if you do not succeed in the chapter Saving Sandy, Jack will limply fall to his hands and knees followed by the death screen. Meaning the shock killed him or Jack was too traumitized to defend himself and was killed by Oogie because of it.
• In The Night of the Rabbit the protagonist Jerry Hazelnut has one once he returns to his home world just to find out that he had been missing for years, his home is condemned, his mother is no longer there (possibly dead) and his father has disappeared and erased from everyone's memory. But this gives him strength to set things right.
• In Paper Mario: The Origami King, Olivia rushes into a corner and collapses into a crying heap after learning Bobby sacrificed himself to rescue her, unable to bring herself to move or summon the will to go any further. It takes Bobby's spirit prompting Mario to show her a Goomba paper mache head that made her laugh to get her willing to continue again.
• Mitsuru Kirijo, in Persona 3 gets this when the Chairman betrays the party and murders her father in cold blood, and then, wounded himself, falls off the edge of the tower. During the Kyoto trip, it's Yukari that brings her to her senses. After Mitsuru gains her resolution, her persona ascends from Penthesilea to Artemisia.
  • Everybody in the party kind of emotionally checks out for a couple of weeks in December after the revelation that their efforts to defeat the twelve shadows have brought about The End of the World as We Know It, there's no way to stop it, and the only options they have are to wait for it to happen or have their memories of the whole thing erased so that they can go about their lives in peace for the few months or so that they have left. They manage to rally themselves out of it in time for Christmas.
  • Yukari herself also suffers one when she learns that her Disappeared Dad, whom she adored and idolized, was apparently involved in the creation of the Shadows that the group is fighting against.
• Happens to everyone in Persona 4 if Nanako dies after the fight with Namatame. Dojima has a major one, too, once he finally joins them. Teddie also gets hit particularly hard, getting a one-two punch from Nanako's death and finally remembering his true nature.
• Haru in Persona 5 has one when after the Phantom Thieves manage to take her father's heart, only to witness him be murdered in the middle of his live confession. The fact they were framed matters very little in the moment.
  • Futaba is also shaken when her father discovers her calling card and confronts her about it, enough to not quite be focused during most of the next Palace.
  • Every Phantom Thief (minus Akechi) appears to have one upon seeing their leader's apparent suicide in police custody on the news. Subverted, as it was actually an elaborate gambit to expose Akechi as Shido's minion, and it was All According to Plan.
    Ryuji: You're shittin' me... (grins) We got 'em.
  • Played for Laughs in Futaba's Confidant chain. If romanced, Futaba will briefly become unresponsive, as she attempts to process the fact that she and Joker are now dating.
• Adrienne Delaney of Phantasmagoria is a shining example of this trope at game's end, walking away from her former home with an utterly blank expression on her face. Of course, by that point she had personally witnessed visions of Zoltan Carnovash brutally murdering his wives, been raped by her husband Don while he was possessed, lost her cat Spazz and her two new vagrant friends, murdered Don in order to keep him from killing her, and had successfully faced off against the demon who had possessed him, trapping it in a talisman. So yeah, it's easy to see why she'd be so messed up...
• By Episode 3 of Phantasy Star Universe, Laia Martinez has gone through one after a series of events near the end of Episode 2. First she failed to save the virus-infected young Beast boy who turned into a SEED form, thus having to be purified. Then during an Illuminus attack on the GUARDIANS colony by SEED-infected CASTs, President Dallgun, her adopted father, is forced to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save the residential area, leaving the rest of the colony (w/Dallgun still inside) to crash into Parum, destroying a city along with thousands of people. The fact that the GUARDIANS have lost the trust of the people for failing to prevent it from happening doesn't help. In the first chapter of Episode 3, it's revealed that Laia had unceremoniously left the GUARDIANS and has no intention on returning. She gets better.
• In Planescape: Torment, a good-aligned Nameless One will, throughout his journey, hear and learn of the actions of one of his past selves, the Practical Incarnation. As he learns more and more of the Incarnation's various atrocities, he is clearly disturbed. This ultimately reaches a head when he recalls how the Practical Incarnation played Dionarra's feelings for him like a fiddle, emotionally manipulated/tortured her, and ultimately deliberately sent her to her death, all without the slightest hint of feeling or remorse. Even worse, it turns out that Practical never actually loved her, and regarded her as nothing but a tool for him to use, just like everyone else. The sheer horror at what he once was and what he did causes the Nameless One to break down, complete with Tears of Blood. It's worth noting that a Nameless One of any alignment - even Chaotic Evil - breaks down on seeing the spoilered event.
• Pokémon
  • In the main entries, losing a battle against a wild Pokemon or trainer will prompt a text message reading "[Player] blacked/whited out", implying the player character is emotionally distraught and overwhelmed by their defeat to the point of fainting. ^note  In Japanese versions, the text translates to "lose hope" (lit. "plunge into darkness), further confirming this Starting from Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! onwards, this was replaced with another message outright stating "You were overwhelmed by your defeat!"
  • The PC for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness has one when they find out they have to die to save the world. Just when they're starting to snap out of it they have another one over Grovyle taking the hit from Dusknoir for them.
  • The rival in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (and Platinum) has one after he failed to defeat Commander Jupiter at Lake Acuity and Uxie got taken by Team Galactic.
  • In Pokémon Black and White, Motor Mouth N Harmonia goes from grudgingly admitting your victory and that his goals were faulty, to utter, broken silence, when Ghetsis storms in and reveals that N was supposed to be a Tyke Bomb for his conquest of Unova through outlawing Pokemon husbandry for everyone but himself. He recovers a little after the player defeats Ghetsis, but then flees because he can't stand to face you after that.
• Prayer of the Faithless: After the events of Lavingard, Amalie gets this as a passive ability, which randomly causes her to be afflicted with the Despair ailment in battle. This is because Vanessa was the only person she could depend on after her exile, but Vanessa decided to label her a fugitive to prevent the party from revealing the Infused experiments to the public.
• Midway through Prince of Persia: Warrior Within the eponymous Prince learns his attempts to Set Right What Once Went Wrong were actually just making the wrong happen in the first place, collapses to his knees in utter defeat, and when he sees the Dahaka trying to get to him he surrenders and waits for death. Then he learns of an actual means of changing the past and goes for it, even taunting the Dahaka as he starts running again!
  Prince: You should have killed me when you had the chance!
• In Rakuen, The Boy suffers this after Sue dies, despite his efforts in trying to help her. Yami, revealed to be his cynical alter ego, takes his place and speaks for him for the rest of the game, and the Boy doesn't return until Mom is able to bring him back using the completed "Mori no Kokori".
• Ratchet gets one during the first Ratchet and Clank game after Qwark's betrayal, leading to him spending the next act as a vengeful Villain Protagonist determined to get payback on Qwark. At this point, the only thing keeping him from dumping Clank and packing it all in is a need for mutual cooperation.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil (Remake): For as much as Rebecca tries to keep a stiff upper lip, learning of Richard's death is what ultimately causes her breakdown. Should Chris follow her into the chemical room and ask for treatment after breaking the news to her, she'll tend his wounds, then lose her composure and break down crying.
  • Resident Evil 2: In both his A and B scenarios, when Leon thought Ada was dead, he breaks down, blaming it on the G-Virus in the process in the A scenario.
  • Steve Burnside in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica gets a short one when he discovers that his father has been zombified, and he becomes unable to "kill" it. Only when Claire is threatened by the zombie does he finally turn his submachine guns on it, proceeding to drain his entire supply of bullets into the corpse, and his fingers remain locked into the triggers despite the clicking from the drained guns.
  • Resident Evil 6:
    • Chris Redfield, after his entire unit is killed. He runs off to Europe and forces himself to forget it, until Piers comes and kicks his ass into gear and forces him to confront what happened.
    • Leon S. Kennedy just shuts down after Chris tells him Ada is dead, not knowing it was actually her Evil Doppelgänger that died. It takes a long moment for him to start functioning again and he doesn't really recover until he sees Ada alive, piloting a helicopter.
  • Resident Evil 2 (Remake):
    • Leon becomes stunned after he fails to save Elliot from the zombies and sees him get severed in half. He was forced to come to his senses by the surrounding infected, lest he end up like the officer.
    • Near the end of the game, after Ada slips from his grasp and falls, Leon's just left lying there on the collapsing bridge, crying. He doesn't move until the section he's lying on starts to collapse, so that he doesn't also fall.
      Nick Apostolides: (BTS commentating) [Leon's] crushed. His soul went down with [Ada].
• In Robopon, Prince Tail has one after he loses to both Dr. Zero and Cody, and Princess Darcy is trapped in a mirror as a result.
• In RosenkreuzStilette, Tia gets this when Iris kills her father for having outlived his usefulness to her and then attacks and fatally injures her. Tia desperately demands to know WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON and Iris happily complies telling her a long story about the whole truth behind the war — the fact that she arranged for her father to have Karl imprisoned because He Knows Too Much, the fact that she started the war just for kicks, why she was at the training hall when the war started, why she killed her own father, the fact that she used her so-called innocent demeanor as a mask to fool and manipulate everyone, and the fact that she observed her every move through her pendant that Tia picked up and pitted everyone from RKS against her ideals, and not to mention the fact that she decided to make Zorne suffer by destroying he who she constantly yearned to someday accept her as his real daughter because she always hated her. Tia receives such a big shock from finding out the monster within Iris that she snaps in disbelief that Iris is the kind of kid who would cross the Moral Event Horizon, and is even more shocked and grief-stricken when she realizes that she was suckered by the mask Iris wore. Iris, no longer having a need for Tia, tries to finish her off and kill her with one last attack but Freu stops the attack with a room-freezing attack of her own that freezes the attack dead in its tracks to Tia's joy. After Iris leaves, Freu reveals to Tia's surprise that she overused the attack but would be fine, and tells her to go after Iris. At first, Tia refuses to abandon Freu and Karl while Freu's wounded and Karl's imprisoned, but Freu convinces her that she will be alright and will release Karl for her and take care of every problem left behind by Iris, and lets her know that she can rest assured. Knowing that only Tia has a chance of defeating Iris, Freu provides her with a special pick-me-up item she made for her and Tia, calming down and therefore ending her own Heroic BSoD, takes it and leaves to settle the score with Iris once and for all.
• Happens to the main character in Shadow Hearts 3, when he's killed by The Dragon. Effectively, it unleashes a Superpowered Evil Side, and he nearly ends up killing his friends before being brought to his senses.
• Isabelle in Shadowverse. She went into despair when she found out that her fiance was killed by a dragon, hence her drive to revive him through alchemy.
• Happens to Holmes himself in Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper, when he sees Mary Jane Kelly's dead body. He doesn't actually pass out, but is so shaken that Watson has to shepherd him home. Justified, as the last of the Whitechapel murders was by far the most gruesome of the killings.
• Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon has the Player-Cheracter go through one extremely late-game when his brother Kane dies. The PC is so shocked by this that he is unable to speak for the rest of the game, and as a result the player can no longer use the escape-spell Egress.
• Silent Hill 2 has James do at least 3 (maybe 4) of these: when Maria is killed by Pyramid Head, when Maria is killed by Pyramid Head again, when he remembers that he killed his wife, and (arguably) a brief one when the Pyramid Heads kill Maria YET AGAIN. The entirety of the game is basically James having one massive BSoD. From getting out of the car...to the bitter end, it's all the awful truth catching up to a man in deep denial.
• When confronting Hikawa at the Diet Building in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Yuko is lined up for an extremely cruel one — the man just laughs at her and reveals how easily Aradia has been pulling her strings with honeyed lies and false hopes. Confronted with the fact the goddess she'd chosen to trust was nothing but a Manipulative Bastard spirit with little actual power, she collapses in despair. When the Dirty Coward spirit tries to get her to leave the Vortex World into whatever world is born of Kagutsuchi's power, Yuko brushes her off and chooses to remain to oppose Hikawa, fully knowing she has no way of surviving.
• Sly Cooper:
  • Murray suffers this at the end of Sly 2: Band of Thieves after Bentley is crippled following the gang's takedown of Clock-La which leads to him resigning from the Cooper Gang. This carries all the way to the beginning of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, which sees Sly and Bentley trying to get Murray back into the gang during the first chapter.
  • After spending most of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time as a jolly optimistic turtle, Bentley gets hit with one when he realizes that his girlfriend Penelope, whom he loves and thought to return his love, turns out to be a treacherous warmonger who only uses him for her own gains and is plotting against Sly and Murray because they're of no use to her. It drove him into tucking into his shell out of despair (shown in this page's image), but eventually uses his newfound hatred of Penelope to get over his heartbreak and save his best friends from her.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):
  • Princess Elise having a breakdown is an actual plot point. If the princess should ever cry, the fire spirit, Iblis (who is one half of the godly being, Solaris), who is sealed within the princess' soul, would be freed and destroy the world. Mephiles, the other half of Solaris, knows of the seal and aims to get Elise to be consumed with despair that she'd cry by having Sonic die in front of her. After failing to get Silver to do the job, Mephiles does the job himself by attacking Sonic from behind. Elise witnesses Sonic dying before her eyes and lets out a Big "NO!", which breaks the seal on Iblis. Despite the world around her and everyone else teetering on the brink of destruction, Elise can't do anything but hold Sonic's lifeless body in her arms. It isn't until she feel Sonic's presence in the wind, which is then followed by Sonic's friends giving Elise a Rousing Speech that snaps her out of her despair, which has her become strong with resolve and uses the Chaos Emeralds to bring Sonic back to life.
  • Sonic himself has one after Elise is killed aboard Eggman’s crashing airship, being at a loss for words and slamming the ground with his fist.
• Toward the end of Spirits of Anglerwood Forest, Cyrus breaks down crying, blaming himself for getting his friends involved when he sees Daniel turning into a tree. A reassuring glance from Edgar lifts his spirits enough to prevent him from giving up altogether.
• StarCraft II:
  • Judging by this cinematic, Kerrigan's last act as a human is to have one, after realising that her allies have abandoned her and she has no ammo or energy. Then she sees a swarm of Zerg coming towards her.
  • The nameless marine in the Brood War opening cinematic has one as he sees the UED Battlecruiser pull away, leaving him to die at the hands of the zerg.
• Edge Maverick from Star Ocean: The Last Hope gets a major case of BSoD after he introduced futuristic technology to a 1950's Earth that will bypass that of the nuclear age, therefore avoiding the nuclear war that would eventually nearly cause massive destruction to Earth in the future. However, the scientist he gives it to immediately puts it into a technologically inept reactor, causing the destruction of the entire Earth. Reimi, his Second-In-Command, is forced to take over as captain because Edge has become unfit for duty. For a while, Edge says very little in cutscenes and says nothing at all after a victory in battle or leveling up. It isn't until Reimi is afflicted with a sickness that turns people into stone that he finally starts to snap out of it.
• Suikoden likes to invoke this trope, usually when plotline death occurs. Examples below:
  • Suikoden suggests this as the hero's reaction to Gremio's horrific death by spores.
  • Suikoden II
    • The little girl Pilika, whom after watching her parents Polk get murdered in front of her by Luca Blight, is emotionally scarred and mute for the majority of the game. She eventually regains her speech when she's reunited with Jowy.
    • Nanami's death shuts down the war temporarily so the hero can recover.
  • Suikoden III:
    • This happens with assumed antagonist, Sasarai, when Luc reveals that the two of them are nothing but clones that only exist to hold their True Runes.
    • Hugo when Lulu gets a sword through the belly.
• Kyosuke Nanbu in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Gaiden suffers this. Just when he thought he saved his Robot Girl companion Lamia Loveless, he got a bit distracted and that caused a cheap shot to get fired at him and promptly lose her, leading him to think that it's his fault she's dead. Heroic BSoD occurs for about 10 minutes, after the said killer was taken care of, and he vanished from the player's control for several missions. Shortly after he came back in action (or get controlled by the player again), he found out that Lamia is Not Quite Dead and Brainwashed and Crazy. Another Heroic BSoD occurs in Kyosuke for about 10 minutes again after the battle concludes. And in their next encounter, Kyosuke was about to suffer another Heroic BSoD recalling his failure to protect her, until his rival turned good Axel Almer proved otherwise and completely saved her. From thereafter, Kyosuke no longer suffers casual Heroic BSoDs, but it's kinda worth noting that in one game he suffers this trope THREE TIMES.
  • Calvina Coulange from Super Robot Wars Judgment suffers this in the early portion of the game, though this is justified that she hasn't been piloting for years and fears her skills have deteriorated so it doesn't ensure survival for the imminent battle.
  • Ryusei in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 takes it very literally when Hazal destroyed his SRX and seemingly killed Aya. Took about a Time Skip (just several months) and several missions to get him back to fighting state. And since this hasn't happened in the OG Universe... He may get one later.
  • Kazuma Ardygun in Super Robot Wars W has one when Blessfield is apparently killed in a Boson Jump accident at the Bloody Valentine. A six-month timeskip later, his family finds him working with the Serpent Tail, seemingly amnesiac under the name of Kite.
  • After a scuffle with Lu Cain and his Demon Death Platoon and a duel with Master Asia in an Earth Route Scenario in Shin Super Robot Wars, the cave fell apart as a result of the fighting. Prof. Eri Anzai nearly faints, totally unable to comprehend how the hotheaded Domon Kasshu and Ryusei could ignore the cultural value of whatever was in that cave.
• Velvet Crowe from Tales of Berseria nosedives into despair when she learns the truth behind what happened during the Scarlet Night that killed her younger brother and caused him to come back as Innominat. Her younger brother had volunteered to be sacrificed so that he could be reincarnated and purge the world of Malevolence. Up to this point, she had spent the entire game becoming the enemy of the world to avenge him. He tears her down further and she almost gives up on living until she's snapped out of it.
• Tales of Symphonia:
  • Lloyd Irving does this when he discovers that Colette is giving up her life to save the world and then gets a front row seat to watch her "die", the angel Remiel who had previously acted as a guardian angel for the group is actually evil, and Kratos, who had previously been traveling with them to protect Colette, turns out to be Remiel's boss. Poor boy practically needed a kernel reinstall to get over that, which hidden pseudo-ally Yuan neatly provides.
  • In the sequel Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Emil has one when he realizes that he's actually Ratatosk, he murdered Aster, he was getting ready to destroy the entire human race, and to put the icing on the guilt cake, he used Marta as bait for his enemies.
• Fellow Idiot Hero and Tales Series protagonist, Luke fon Fabre of Tales of the Abyss, also has an epic one when, after the first part of the game, he begins to realize the gravity of what he's done: killed thousands of people all at once, sunk a huge portion of the world, and refused to accept responsibility for it all until the entire party turns their backs and give up on him. Even his best friend and the love interest. Oh, and by the way, he's a clone, and the party seems to like the original better. He comes out of the BSoD with wide eyes and new resolution, deciding that he'll do whatever it takes to become a better person. Indeed, throughout the rest of the game he completes his transformation from Jerkass to All-Loving Hero.
• Much of the challenge of the video game adaptation of The Thing (2002) is in keeping NPCs from falling into this, in the face of both horrifying events and rampant paranoia. If they snap, they may start firing on friendly characters (including the player); and it may trigger a transformation if they are already infected.
• In the Trails Series:
  • In Trails in the Sky SC, Estelle falls into one briefly at the early start of the prologue after realizing Joshua has left after all, but gains reconfidance to help him. Joshua nearly falls into one in the last chapter after Loewe dies, but Estelle quickly snaps him out of it.
  • Lloyd in Trails to Azure doesn't have a BSoD, but only gives himself a My God, What Have I Done? after learning how neglectful he was for not noticing KeA being troubled by something and determines to save her.
  • Trails of Cold Steel IV: Everyone in Class VII loses spirit after the fallout in Cold Steel III where Millium was killed and Rean gets consumed by his Superpowered Evil Side and unleashed The Great Twilight, leaving Juna to give them a motivation talk. Rean in Cold Steel IV is left fatalistic after being captured, blaming himself and stuck in a rage-fueled state for what happened at the end of the previous game until he's able to recover.
• Sans from Undertale is by default super-chill, friendly, and encouraging (if passive), but if the second boss, his younger brother Papyrus, is killed on any playthrough, he'll only appear in mentions that he's either retreating from his day-to-day life or quietly watching the player until his final scenes, in which he'll comment on their stats and tell them not to come back respectively.
• Cosette from Valkyria Chronicles II suffers a heroic BSoD when she gets her first true taste of warplace casualties as she could not tend to the dying due to her hematophobia in effect. She basically is frozen in complete terror when she saw the wounded and dying.
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm. The entire Tau faction has a Heroic BSoD when their Ethereal is slain at the finale of their stronghold mission, and retreat from the Kaurava system thoroughly shamed by their inability to protect them. The Tau Commander even exclaims something along the lines of "NOOOOOO! Noble Ethereal! We have lost you! We have lost all!"
  • It happens in any situation an Ethereal dies. And the commander didn't live, he joined the Ethereal in death.
  • Another case is from the earlier Dark Crusade, when the objective in the Tau stronghold is to kill the Ethereal Aun'El. As Aun'El falls whispering "All is lost... all is lost...", a crisis commander begins to freak out before Shas'O Kais, barely keeping things together, announces "Fall back, now! All forces, fall back. Evacuate the city. We will return Aun'El to T'au for burial. There is nothing left for us here...". Worth noting that about half the planet's population consists of Tau when they evacuate...
• Wild ARMs series:
  • Clive in Wild ARMs 3 has one when Beatrice awakens the Demondor Pillar — Rear near his hometown of Humphrey's Peak and he becomes convinced he needs to stop adventuring and protect his family. He is soon reminded by his daughter that his family is the reason why he must continue to fight for them and the planet.
  • Jude from Wild ARMs 4 has one after witnessing the deaths of his mother and several of his former neighbors while escaping from the military's base. He snaps out of it after his teammates convince him to keep going and fulfill his mother's wish of seeing the Divine Weapon destroyed.
• The World Ends with You:
  • Higashizawa drives Shiki into one. The next day, she is quite silent, not even saying her usual run-away-from-battle quips.
  • The games end, where Neku realizes that Joshua actually DID kill him and is about to do it again and, subsequently, erase Shibuya. Seriously, to say it with Neku's words: WHAT THE HELL?!
• World of Warcraft:
  • Jaina Proudmoore at Icecrown Citadel. Realizing that your ex-fiancé really is pure evil and really does need to die is quite traumatic.
  • Varok Saurfang is going through one of these — or perhaps a villainous one, from the Alliance's point of view — during the run-up to the release of the seventh expansion, Battle For Azeroth. With the ending of Legion now having revealed the existence of "Azerite", a powerful mineral literally consisting of the "life-blood" of the planet (hence its name), the Horde and Alliance both attempted to stake a claim to it. This led to the Horde — helmed by current Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner^note For those who haven't played in a while, Garrosh Hellscream was ousted from the seat at the end of Mists Of Pandaria, leaving Vol'jin to take up the mantle until his own death at the beginning of Legion. On his deathbed, he named Sylvanas his successor. — taking measures to hamstring their rivals' efforts. This culminated in the controversial move — both in-universe and out of it — for her to firebomb the Night Elven city of Darnassus and the World Tree it was standing on with artillery. Being an orc — and a long-serving, well-respected war hero at that — Varok greatly prides himself on the concept of honour. He instantly regretted impulsively leaping to Sylvanas' aid in Darkshore by hurling his axe at Malfurion Stormrage from behind and, when the firebombing occurred, his first instinct was to protest to Sylvanas' face that there was no honour in what she'd done and the only outcome would be an unprecedented Alliance reprisal. This leads him — as shown in the Old Soldier cinematic — to spend the moments before the battle at Lordaeron contemplating not the prospect of finding honour in the combat to come, but simply the hope that he can still die with it.
  Zekhan: This be my first battle. W-.. What should I do?
  Varok Saurfang: Hmph. Don't die.
  Zekhan: Yes, of course. But, if I do fall, may it be with honour in glorious battle!
  Saurfang lets out an irritated roar and throws his pauldron to the floor
  Varok Saurfang: There will be no glory today. Only pain.
• In Word Realms, this happens to the player if they get either the bad or the Nightmare Fuel bad ending. In the bad ending the player realizes that the rematch with Lord Nightmare didn't happen, they instead just attacked and destroyed the towns clock tower, causing it to blow up and damage the town and the player gets called crazy by the scribe's daughter. The player quits their quest and hopes that they can atone for their crime in the future. In the Nightmare Fuel bad ending it's the same as the bad ending except the nightmare monster versions of the townsfolk were the actual townsfolk and the player brutally murders each of them while under the effect of Lord Nightmare's illusions. The scribe's daughter is horrified and calls the player a monster and the player suddenly realizes that the "monsters" were the townsfolk while cut scenes of each member's brutal murder play and then the screen cuts to black and opens on the opening shot of the village with the silhouette of the player's body hanging from the tree.
• Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 almost gives up on his quest entirely after failing to prevent Pyra from falling into Torna's hands at the end of Chapter 6. It takes half of the remaining party members to get him back on the proverbial horse; Nia and Brighid with the application of force and anger, and Poppi with tenderness and an emotional plea.

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