I Hate Past Me / Video Games

• In Bayonetta, Bayonetta thinks Cereza is an annoying little brat, but gradually warms up to her. However, it isn't until later that she learns Cereza is her younger self. Since she has amnesia, she didn't remember meeting her future self. Meanwhile, Cereza meeting her future self was what inspired her to stop being a scaredy-cat and grow up to be a badass.
• BioShock Infinite has Father Comstock, the Big Bad of the game, who is also a version of the protagonist, Booker DeWitt from an alternate universe who underwent a baptism following the Massacre at Wounded Knee, got a new name, and found religion. Comstock has nothing but scorn for the Booker we play as, from a universe where he refused the baptism, believing him to be a godless, self-destructive "False Shepard".
• BlazBlue: Hakumen has renounced his old identity as Jin Kisaragi. He considers killing his "past incarnation" to be atonement for his/Jin's sins.
• In City of Villains, one villain "morality mission" has you meet three future versions of yourself, two of which think you're an idiotic weakling. The third is The Atoner, whose pleas for you to do the right thing you ignore.
• In the last set of levels of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, Cortex decides to use the quantum masks to keep himself from creating Crash. However, all efforts to warn his past self fall on deaf ears, with his past self calling him an imposter and ignoring everything he says.
  Cortex: Do you have any idea how stubborn I used to be?
  Aku Aku and Coco: Yes.
• In Devil May Cry 5, Vergil's human-side Soul Jar V expresses explicit regret and shame over his evil actions in the past when he was whole, citing his pride as appalling and hates how delusional and power-hungry his evil side Urizen is. Sadly, it's unclear how much of this Character Development has stuck after V fuses with Urizen back into Vergil, at most Vergil has mellowed out a little. Urizen, for his part, seems to regard his existence as Vergil as a weakness, as he was still weighed down by his pesky half-human nature. He even refuses to listen when Dante explains that their mother died searching for him rather than abandoning him, as Vergil believed.
• Fallout 4:
  • Robert Joseph MacCready was a little shit when he was a child and the self-proclaimed mayor of Little Lamplight, being confrontational, rude, and potty-mouthed to the extreme. Now, as a fully grown young man, he recognizes how much of a little shit he was and matured into a more level-headed professional gun-for-hire, who also has made a point of cutting the profanity out of his language whenever he can.
  • Hancock couldn't forgive himself when he allowed his brother, Mayor McDonough of Diamond City, to exile all of the city's ghoul citizens and leave them to the mercy of the wastes. This is part of the reason why he took the super-radioactive drug that led to his own ghoulification: he felt he had no right to maintain his humanity.
  • Deacon in one of the precious few times he tells the truth, expresses remorse for his involvement in a gang that made trouble for reformed synths, leaving the gang after they murdered an innocent synth in cold blood, then later exterminating the gang when they murdered the woman he fell in love with, herself a synth.
• In Fate/Samurai Remnant, Saber's legend remembers them as a great Japanese hero. But Saber sees it very differently. Under the orders of their father, Emperor Keiko, Takeru slaughtered innumerable people, including their own brother. They deceived the people of Kumaso before massacring its inhabitants. When Iori dives into Saber's memories, he sees them standing alone in a lifeless field with Dull Eyes of Unhappiness while the screams of men, women, and children ring in their ears.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, a big part of Cloud's character is how he dislikes and is ashamed of the apparent loser he was before joining SOLDIER and getting Fake Memories, thanks in part to getting wrongly blamed for Tifa injuring herself by her father — resulting in him lashing out at people and moreover for failing to become a first-class SOLDIER like he promised. It's inferred that Cloud accepted Zack's persona and memories because he genuinely believed he was nothing otherwise. It takes a Journey to the Center of the Mind with Tifa for Cloud to regain his original personality and some more development for Cloud finally realise his own worth as a hero.
  • The normally stoic Auron in Final Fantasy X actually attacks his past self when confronted with a phantom echo of his past in the ruins of Zanarkand. Since it's only an echo, he ends up fruitlessly shouting and swinging his sword to no effect.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, this trope occurs sometimes in the timeskip:
  • In his A-Support with Byleth, Lorenz confesses that he is ashamed of his previous personality and that he has since been striving toward a much more ideal version of how a noble should act.
  • Marianne is shocked and horrified at how arrogant and foolish her younger self was; even in spite of her nonexistent ego. She was ashamed to act as if death meant nothing to her, never caring whether she lived or died. After seeing many people die around her, she begins to realize how precious life truly was.
• God of War:
  • In God of War (PS4), Kratos is deeply ashamed of his past as the Ghost of Sparta. He can never truly erase his past either since he still bears the scars of his past life such as the ashes of his dead family grafted on his skin and the burn marks on his arms from the Blades of Chaos. When he settled in Midgard he tried his best to start anew, quietly starting a new family and burying the Blades of Chaos beneath his house. Throughout the game, he reacts to reminders of his bloody past with disgust and shame. In one scene he comes across a jar decorated with an image of the Ghost of Sparta standing atop a pile of bodies screaming at the heavens. Kratos stares at the jar for a moment in horror before hurling it at the ground to keep Atreus from seeing it (though it ultimately doesn't work, as Atreus still sees the image of his father as the Ghost of Sparta on a large piece of the jar). One of the reasons Kratos' relationship with his son is so strained is because he doesn't want his son to know his past. It's only at the end of the game that he realizes he shouldn't keep hiding the truth from Atreus anymore.
  • In God of War Ragnarök, Atreus sees visions of himself in the previous game, around the time the revelation of his divine parentage went to his head. He disgustedly predicts part of his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Sindri, and is clearly not very proud of how he acted back then.
• Jak II: Renegade:
  • Young Samos and Old Samos do not get along, to the point that Daxter has to mediate.
  • Averted with Young Jak, as he's one of the few people who angry Older Jak gets along with.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven, Time Travel means that several characters get to meet themselves from previous parts. When Old Joseph meets his Battle Tendency self, they immediately start throwing shade at each other, with Young Joseph considering his future self an old fart and Old Joseph considering his past self a brat. Old Joseph also makes sure to step in during the argument between his past self and Caesar that ended up getting Caesar killed to scold himself for being too overconfident. On a lighter note, if Old Joseph ever fights with Young Joseph in his Tequila Joseph skin (based on his ill-conceived attempt to infiltrate a Nazi base), his quotes will have him horrified to be reminded of his past shenanigans.
• Legacy of Kain:
  • Raziel, one of the series' protagonists, has a long, complicated backstory with a heaping helping of Amnesiac Dissonance. At one point, he learns that before he was turned into a vampire, he was a vampire-hunting warrior priest, and begins to aspire to that calling again. Traveling through time and discovering that he was actually a Jerkass Knight Templar changes his mind — violently. In fact, he is his own murderer, along with those who would become his vampire brothers.
  • One of his vampire brothers, Rahab, seemed to have similar thoughts in the brief time he talks to Raziel before they fight to the death. Raziel, fresh off learning of his and his brothers' origins as said vampire-hunting warrior priests, tries to use this revelation to shock Rahab at Kain's (the other series' protagonist) "blasphemous" actions in raising them as vampire servants, but Rahab is indifferent to even disgusted, explicitly stating that Kain saved them from themselves. Considering that Rahab not only was the only one of Kain's sons who explicitly still had contact with him at this time, but his territory is very close to their original tombs' resting place, it's possible he already knew the truth.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II, if you get Machias' dorm event, he considers his attitude when he first arrived at Thors (loudmouthed, bigoted hater of all nobles and everything nobility) "embarrassing", saying that even Millium was more dignified than he was and describes it as a time of his life he'd rather forget. Worse, he feels that on the inside he still hasn't changed. He chooses to continue to try his best to change.
• Fate's final battle in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces has Fate confronting a copy of herself based on her memories of her Dark and Troubled Past. The match revolves around her trying to convince her angst-filled past copy that, eventually, everything will become all right.
• In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Bowser ends up fighting with his past self over a volcano that both of them think would make a great evil lair. They eventually decide to team up, but neither one ever figures out the other's identity.
• In Mortal Kombat 11, with the Goddess of Time being involved, this happens a few times:
  • Hanzo Hasashi (aka Scorpion) hates how much his younger self was focused on getting revenge, and attempts to convince him to let go of the past a few times.
  • Younger Johnny Cage is disliked by everyone, but most of all by his Older and Wiser future self, who fully realizes how much of an egotistical, arrogant, lecherous jerk he used to be.
  • Erron Black recognizes that he was "a bit much" when he was younger, and even admits it to Kotal in one introduction. His interactions with his past self come across as prickly at best.
  • The revenants, especially Liu Kang and Kung Lao, especially hated their past selves for being too 'naive' and trusting with Raiden, who ended up responsible for their revenant status. Their heroic selves, however, are not amused at how fragile their evil selves' faith and conviction are and completely resisted the revenants' attempts to sway their trust from Raiden.
• In No Straight Roads, Tatiana does not have any fond memories of her time as Kul Fyra, the face of the in-universe band the Goolings due to her inability to keep them from falling into infighting and breaking apart. Such is her dislike of her past that she ended up becoming a Control Freak as the CEO of NSR, rejecting Bunk Bed Junction at the audition simply because of her anti-rock bias as well as banning rock from Vinyl City in favour of EDM as a result of Mayday's outburst towards her. In the end, she eventually learns to get over her past after teaming up with B2J to stop a falling satellite from destroying the city.
• In Prey (2017), if you kill Alex Yu during the simulation of the Talos I outbreak that constitutes most of the game, the real Alex doesn't hold it against you when you meet him at the end. The simulation of him was only a minor exaggeration of what he used to be like before his Heel Realization, so he completely understands why you distrusted and attacked him.
• RealityMinds: Kvena was isolated from others and developed a pessimistic outlook on life. She secretly hates Silvana for reminding her of her past shut-in self.
• Saints Row IV sees present-day Shaundi come face-to-face with the Shaundi from Saints Row 2. The two don't get along: present-day Shaundi thinks past-Shaundi is a useless, drug-addled, promiscuous load, while past-Shaundi thinks present-day Shaundi is a joyless, angry killjoy who really needs to light a bowl.
  Present-day Shaundi: My problem? My problem is that I used to be you.
• The Sam & Max: Freelance Police episode "Chariots of the Dogs" has several differently aged versions of Sam and Max, including a young, nerdy Sam who loves computers and disgusts his older self.
  Young Sam: Wow, I've never seen anything that advanced. It must have at least 640 kilobytes of RAM!
  Sam: Ew. Whatever, kid.
• In Spellforce: The Order of Dawn, the Big Bad is the past version of the Big Good. Naturally this relationship applies. At the end of the game, the Big Bad undergoes a Heel–Face Turn and goes back in time to stop his past self from causing The End of the World as We Know It. This leads to a Stable Time Loop, wherein he becomes the Big Good.
• During the Coda of Tactics Ogre, should you take Ozma with you and have her fight herself, the present Ozma will not have very many nice things to say about herself back then. Because Ozma had learned the truth of what was going on with Valeria and what really happened with Hobyrim and Balxephon, she didn't like what she once was.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The "Mystery of the Infinite" quest has you fighting along your future self to defend an object from the Infinite Dragonflight. Throughout the fight, your future self mocks you with tidbits such as:
    Future You: Look at you fight; no wonder I turned to drinking.
  • When you do the sequel quest "Mystery of the Infinite, Redeux", you're mocked just as much by Past You:
    Past You: I just want you to know that if we get through this alive, I'm making sure we turn out better than you. No offense.
  • In the War of Thorns, Sylvanas Windrunner is questioned about how she had fallen so far. A dying Night Elf recalls that she had been a defender of her people, not a wanton destroyer. Sylvanas, who had suffered greatly at the hands of Arthas and the Scourge, who was shunned by the only loved ones she had left, became so jaded that she retorts that the person she remembers was a fool.

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