Leeroy Jenkins / Video Games

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• This is sometimes a unit flaw in strategy games:
  • In Heroes of Might and Magic IV, the barbarian units (the berserkers, specifically) can't be controlled and will automatically use all their turns to charge at the enemy. This prevents the Might faction from using the "camping" tactic of staying back and letting fast enemy units get themselves slaughtered while wearing down more powerful and slow enemy troops with ranged attacks and spells.
  • The Tribes of the East stand-alone expansion for Heroes of Might and Magic V encourages this with the 'blood-rage' mechanic: barbarian troops are penalized if they take a wait or defend action, encouraging the player to use them aggressively.
  • "May charge without orders" is a unit trait in Medieval II: Total War. In addition to undisciplined and overzealous units (like certain crusade/jihad mercenaries and Highland Pikemen), the easily, commonly and quickly available Feudal Knights have it.
  • Any and all berserker units in Rome: Total War will go into a frenzy, become uncontrollable, and charge enemy units with complete disregard for their surroundings.
• Ninox 2 from Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception acts like this, charging ahead of the plane formation and getting shredded by the Meson Cannon for his trouble.
• The heroine, Freyja, of AeternoBlade is this at the start of the game when she rushes in to attack the one who destroyed her village. Had she not been taught a technique to reverse time to avoid a fatal attack, she'd have been dead two minutes into the game.
• Airforce Delta Strike has John Rundal. In the very first mission, he willfully disregards direct orders from his section leader and breaks off to take on more fighters. Meanwhile, the bombers he was ordered to shoot down were still flying towards their target with full payloads.
• A rare example of an RTS being vulnerable to this is AI War: Fleet Command. With the way the AI team works (openly ignoring resources and increasing in ferocity based on how much you piss it off) a player who mindlessly attacks system after system can end up getting everyone killed.
• Alien Swarm can be full of these guys. You will have one type of Leeroy who will not stop moving and keep blazing through the level, regardless of his teammates who are getting mauled by the aliens. It also gets worse when you have these type of players do this in order to get the achievements for speed running a level and not tell the rest of the team what they want to do. Then there are the Leeroys who will spam power weapons like the Flamethrower or the grenade attachments from certain guns, regardless of who is in front.
• Baldur's Gate
  • In Baldur's Gate II, the rather impulsive Minsc literally goes berserk if Aerie dies while in your party, starts attacking any enemy in sight and will not listen to orders.
  • Only after the banter where he's asked Aerie to be his witch. Mazzy and Keldorn also make Minsc go berserk if they die.
  • If you get Nalia he'll ask her to be his witch instead, but he'll always choose Aerie over her. He'll still go berserk if Nalia dies, though.
  • Sometimes it gets even more amusing when Aerie gets hurt: Minsc goes berserk and finishes off Aerie in his blind rage.
• Battlefield
  • Anyone who has completed the campaign in Battlefield: Bad Company will know that Haggard is a Leeroy Jenkins. While his squad was chasing a convoy of trucks filled the Legionares gold, they eventually came to an international border. If it was an enemy border, they would have kept going. It wasn't, though. The country the truck was entering was Neutral. That didn't stop Haggard. He ran in, waving his hands in the air, shotgun in one of them, screaming "THERE'S GOLD IN THEM TRUCKS!" while firing the pump-action into the air. Haggard's actions lead the squad leader to stay in the army for 1 year and 6 months (he was supposed to be leaving the next day), and their squad had to get out of the country themselves.
  • The multiplayer of these games is largely designed so that a Leeroy Jenkins-esque assault on an enemy group will never succeed. Seeing as professional Leeroys are either very bad at the game or actively trying to screw over their team, they will rarely get more than a handful of kills and stand no chance of getting an objective. Doesn't stop some people.
  • Also in the multiplayer, vehicles tend to be powerful enough to turn the tide of battle when used appropriately. When commandeered by a Leeroy, they essentially become very expensive taxis, which are usually abandoned as soon as they take a hit, even when cover is available, an engineer is actively repairing the vehicle, or when the hit is so weak as to cause minimal damage. Best example is the aircraft. Loaded with rockets, bombs or machine guns, you will have either A) someone using it to rack up kills on a Conquest map or B) hop in one of these strategic resources for the sole purpose of jumping out over what they think is a good sniping position. A lot of mods, such as Project Reality, take steps to avoid exactly this sort of behavior by removing universal parachutes, making aircraft useable only to a certain class, etc.
• In BattleTech: The Crescenthawk's Inception, as you hired pilots, you would have to watch each new one to see how good they were (abilities varied from game to game). The worst of the bunch invariably charged with their very expensive and difficult to repair 'Mechs right into enemy squads.
• Binary Domain:
  • The first outing with a three-man squad can play this straight or avert it. If Charlie, who outranks the player character, is with you, he orders you to take cover and wait for his signal to open fire on unsuspecting enemies. If Charlie isn't there and your best pal Big Bo is, he'll suggest rushing right at them and taking whatever they dish out. You don't have to actually follow either plan, but you'll lose trust with your team if you go off script.
  • One of the commands Dan can give the squad in combat is "Charge!", which involves getting out of cover and blitzing enemies. If a charge command goes sour and one of your teammates takes a lot of damage, they'll criticize you for giving kamikaze orders that put the whole team in danger.
  • On the other hand, later in the game Dan (who by this point practically defines Lightning Bruiser) can play the Leeroy to amazing effect. Your teammates have an unfortunate tendency to wander through your line of fire, so charging in and utterly demolishing a squad of robots is not only a good (and utterly awesome) way to avoid friendly fire, it also increases your teammates' loyalty ratings.
• In Black Mesa, the previously unnamed Half-Life security guard who rushes the Tentacles and immediately gets killed by them in the chapter "Blast Pit" is named Leeroy Jenkins.
• Call of Duty:
  • Call of Duty 2 has interesting variations where the player does this out of necessity:
    • There are two missions where the player pilots a Crusader, a British light tank used in the African campaign known for its short range and minimal armor. The German tanks were technically superior, including armor that the British tanks couldn't reliably penetrate except at close ranges. So really, their only choice was to charge straight into the enemy and use their Crusaders' high speed to their advantage. You see this firsthand when it leads to many of your allies being destroyed.
    • A later mission has the US Army Rangers pull the same stunt with infantry: with German artillery slowly zeroing in on their position at the bottom of a hill they need to take, and the commanding officer panicking too much to think of a solution, one of the privates stands up, screams "LET'S GO GET THE BASTARDS!", and leads the entire regiment in a suicide rush up the hill. Surprisingly, it works.
  • In Call of Duty: Zombies, this is a major problem, especially with pickup games. Even though this mode of the game is essentially a survival shooter, and doesn't require the most strategy, planning, foresight, and timing are beneficial to the mission, as opening the wrong door at the wrong time, failing to hold a position, or simply not being cognizant of where you are at in relation to your teammates, can make all the difference between a successful level, and a disastrous defeat. It's quite common to end up on teams with one or more Leeroy Jenkinses who will, without consulting the team or anything:
    • Open various doors as soon as they get the money. This increases the number of active zombie spawn points to deal with, making it harder for any one person to kill all zombies in their area. It also effectively shortens the amount of time that a player can spend in an area grinding for points that they could use later on in the stage: instead of having to guard only one window, each individual person now has to guard two or three windows. Average joe A may have been able to guard 1 window for X rounds, but when tasked with two or three windows, after a certain volume of zombies, they have no choice but to leave early, and thus forfeit points that would have come in handy later on.
    • Run into various windows that people are already occupying. The major problem with this being that two people holding one window means there are no people holding another window. Teams often get overrun by this, and by its variant, wherein said Leeroy runs into another window, you run into his, only to be killed by zombies that ran out of the window that you left to Leeroy: Leeroy more often than not plays as if he has ADHD, and won't stay in any window for any period of time.
    • Run into various parts of the map without proper backup or weapons, expecting you to save him. This will kill a team quickly as well: you'll find out that it doesn't really matter how much ammo you waste trying to save Leeroy, they'll just die again in 30 seconds. Unfortunately, due to the poor hosting system that Zombies has, this can lead to Leeroy attempting to hijack the game and putting everyone in a Morton's Fork situation: threatening to quit and end the game for everyone if they let said Leeroy die, only for the game to end anyway when it becomes impossible to keep both them and yourselves alive.
• In the Castlevania: Harmony of Despair multiplayer co-op mode, enemy HP scales with number of players and some bosses (Gergoth, Death, Lord of Flies, R. The Count) trigger hazards that go beyond the boss chamber, so it's generally a good idea to fight as a party, but Soma players who only need Boss souls will often just make a beeline for the boss whether or not they could handle the battle by themselve(s).
• City of Heroes:
  • City of Villains has a Shout-Out in the form of Jenkins, a recurring NPC ally who would have been surprisingly competent if he weren't saddled with the standard stupid critter A.I. He shows up in a City of Heroes mission as an enemy, quoting the video: "All right, chumps, let's do this!"
  • Of the "bad Escort Mission" variety we have Lady Jane, who not so much lacks survival instinct as has a deathwish. And until recently, you had to keep her alive. Much anger was had. To push the reference further, her initials are L.J.
  • There is also the recurring NPC hero in City of Heroes named Fusionette, who not only aggros mobs like mad, she's a Blaster.
  • Escorting people who could take damage was always risky in large teams, as the enemy damage scales while the escort's health doesn't.
  • On the playerside, there actually isn't nearly as much stigma in City of Heroes about this, as any decently built Scrapper or Brute has a good chance of surviving, if not winning. (Blasters on the other hand...)
    • The unofficial Defender motto was "never try to save a suicidal Scrapper". That being said, certain Defender sets (Traps and Time in particular) were somewhat notorious for taking the view that the best defense was a good offense and jumping into enemy groups in order to use their AoE debuffs.
  • One of the most common complaints among Mastermind players is this, especially in ranged pets. Sometimes, one robot charging in to brawl is enough to get the whole team destroyed.
• Cry of Fear: After the mod's launch the developers released a Scream trailer, a compilation of players such as PewDiePie, and Jack and Brad from 4Player Podcast getting scared by playing the game. A short segment stands out:
  "LEEEROY JEEENKINS!"
  [Swedish cop goes flying]
• In true style, the Dawn of War games feature attack modes called range, mixed, and melee. In melee mode, that unit will charge any nearby enemy as long as it's in sight. You can kite away enemies while firing on the run and flank them. It's really annoying if you stop paying attention because your units can do the same thing and get slaughtered.
• Devil May Cry series:
  • DmC: Devil May Cry: Upon making their move towards the Virility factory, Vergil advises Dante to stay low and avoid attracting attention. He immediately ruins the plan by knocking out a can of the soft drink from a citizen's hands, which draws him the attention of the demon forces.
  • Devil May Cry 5:
    • Not taking the job of defeating Urizen seriously at first, Lady and Trish rush ahead of Dante. They've both been defeated by the time he catches up.
    • As Dante wakes up from a coma, V and Griffon remind him to return to Urizen's chamber because they know that Nero would head straight there again by himself and lose as expected.
• Averted in Doom and Doom II, due to the sheer number of enemies especially in some third-party levels which can have thousands of demons. Often the only viable strategy is to take advantage of enemy fratricide by rushing in, stirring up as many demons as possible, and then either finding a place to hide or being incredibly good at dodging while a huge demon-on-demon melee commences.
• Dragon Quest IV: Ragnar McRyan. Upon learning of Psaro's plot, the first thing he does is rush straight into battling one of his top minions without seeking any sort of outside assistance whatsoever. It leads to him joining the party last of all of the chosen.
• Duke Nukem Forever likewise has Private Leeroy Jenkins, who is "the only other poor motherbleeper who is as crazy to go with you." Guess just what happens right after his CO expressively asks you not to get him killed.
  Duke: Dammit, Leeroy!
• A few creatures in Dungeon Keeper suffer from this. Hellhounds combine the role of explorer and fighter, and as a result will often seek out other dungeons to attack, aggro-ing rival keepers who usually respond by rallying their armies to exterminate them. Skeletons lack any sense of self-preservation and charge into combat with any hostile creature they find, and The Mistress is a Combat Sadomasochist whose love of pain causes her to fight with a reckless lack of regard for her own life.
  • In the sequel, the Horned Reaper has gone from being a regular minion to a unique monster that can only be summoned by collecting hidden talisman pieces. When summoned, he marches directly towards the enemy's base attacking everything he sees along the way. Although powerful, he'll usually be defeated before achieving anything much if not supported by a decent army.
• A quest in Dungeons & Dragons Online requires a party to protect an NPC, Coyle, for 15 minutes. Coyle attacks and provokes many enemies and dies all too easily, causing the quest to fail. Game developers eventually added an option to knock him out to protect him, yet players still have to keep Coyle from area-of-effect damage that will wake him up, again.
• Dwarven soldiers will do this in Dwarf Fortress — got one lone straggler, or a soldier who arrives to formation ahead of everyone else? He'll charge solo into a 10-goblin raiding party. Also companions in Adventurer mode — you could be walking through the forest and your buddy disappears to go racing after deer, sometimes never to be seen again.
• Lu Bu's strategy in any battle in the Dynasty Warriors series is simply to rush in and crush everything in his path with his overwhelming strength. This works when he's just another soldier on the battlefield, but when other characters start strategizing specifically to take him down he becomes quickly outmatched. Notably, his Hypothetical Route in 8 has him swallow his pride and actually start asking his strategist for advice for once, leading to him eventually crushing every single character in the game who wasn't already on his side.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In Morrowind, this is a major cause of some of the game's notorious Escort Missions. That withered old pilgrim who begged you to escort her to a shrine? She won't hesitate for a second to charge that Atronach made of fire with fists swinging. A One-Hit KO usually ensues in these situations. You'll be thankful when you can command an escortee to "Wait Here" while you go clear the path ahead to prevent any "Leeroy-ing", but this isn't always an option.
  • Oblivion:
    • Oblivion's NPCs invariably exhibit this trope, whether or not an amusing death has been scripted for them. As soon as the combat music starts playing, they'll yell "STICK TOGETHEEEEER!", and disregard their own advice by charging into the fray.
    • During a particular quest, a NPC blindly rushes into a dungeon trap after requesting your help to save his fallen comrades. With a spot of luck he can be saved, although the programmers never intended this to happen and he will just stand around doing nothing afterward.
    • Special mention must go to Berich Inian, who fights alongside you in The Battle for Castle Kvatch - or, rather, who runs off immediately in to the largest group of Daedra he can find the moment you're out in the open.
    • And an extra special mention (quite possibly the trophy of this trope) to Farwil Indarys, the foolhardy son of the Count of Cheydinhal, who rushed blindly into an Oblivion Gate with a group of "knights" and got all but one of his comrades killed. The player then has to babysit the two of them until the Gate has been shut. Farwill will bumrush every single enemy in sight, and will even follow them off cliffs and into the lava below. You can still complete the quest if he dies, but it makes some future quests more difficult. The easiest way to ensure his survival is to use the fact that the AI does not move if you transition to a different place without them, leave the poor sod outside the tower with the Stone in it, grab the Stone and watch as he and his friend are thrown out of the collapsing hole, safe and sound.
  • Skyrim makes several improvements to NPC AI, as well as allowing you to give commands to your followers (Fallout: New Vegas style) which makes managing escortees and followers easier. While it's a tremendous improvement over previous installments in the series, it's still far from a perfect system. This is made even worse by the fact that towns can be attacked at any time by dragons (and, if Dawnguard is installed, vampires). When this happens, every adult NPC in the area, from town guardsmen to unarmed civilians, will charge into battle, often with nothing but a dagger and a cry of "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" Especially annoying in Riften, where it is easy for irreplaceable shopkeepers to get killed off permanently.
• Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City has Agata, a Highly-Visible Ninja of Guild Mumotsumi. Traveling through the Yggdrasil Labyrinth can be difficult enough with a full party of five; Agata, meanwhile, likes to go charging in and leave the rest of his guild behind, heedless of the FOEs and other dangers. Depending on how you handle him, this has grave consequences for either him or his partner Hypatia (potentially both if you Take a Third Option and disregard helping them altogether).
• Exit Fate: Any battle scenario where some of your troops are AI-controlled. The Battle at Grunthall is particularily grievous — the small force already in place will just charge the enemy and get slaughtered before you can reach them, even if you move as fast as you can, to say nothing about staying in formation. Even more frustrating, scoring an A on the battle allows you to get a particular war leader early (thus making later battles easier) but scoring an A is almost impossible when the AI screws up.
• Rose of Fable II gets a moment of this. When you're walking through an alleyway, a dog yelping is heard. Cue Rose rushing right up to its tormentor to challenge him... only to get promptly knocked out by a head butt, leaving you, her much smaller but thankfully also much tougher sibling to take the bully down. She gets up and, promptly says "Thanks! I could've taken him though..." in true Leeroy style. It does illustrate the fact that while Rose is trying to be a responsible adult figure, she's still just a kid herself.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3 has Initiate Reddin who Sarah Lyons refers to as a trigger-happy liability. Moments later said character is seen rushing towards a noise that is heard and is instantly killed as a super mutant behemoth smashes into the scene and attacks everyone present.
  • In Broken Steel, they altered a scene where the player takes on the Talon Company (a group of For the Evulz Mercenaries) at their main base. If the player decides to wait until after activating Project Purity to strike, you'll find out that Talon Company was attacking the caravans that the Brotherhood was using to hand out purified water. There's a tied-up Brotherhood Paladin inside the Talon base, if you free him you'll find out he rushed ahead of the rest of his unit and got captured. Said Paladin then charges back against the entire enemy army, and other BoS members show up, but due to their lack of numbers, would get slaughtered trying to help the Paladin, if you don't lend a hand.
  • In the first game, your companions tend to be this. When the most obvious strategy is to stay back and wait for your enemies to come into range so you can take them out before they get close too close, your allies are sure to run forward and get permanently killed, forcing you to either reload a save, or find someone else to carry all your stuff.
  • Same for the companions in Fallout: New Vegas, especially if playing with the hardcore option, which makes their deaths permanent like in previous games. E.G., ED-E bumrushes the enemy while playing the "Ralphie the Robot" theme. If Legionary Assassins are present in an area, NPC's will suicide charge them, resulting in failure of their quests.
    • In the Camp Guardian caves, if you tell Pvt. Halford that "the way up is clear", instead of heading for the nearest exit, he charges into the Lakelurk's nest, likely joining his squadmates in death.
  • Fallout 4 often has various NPC doing this. Raiders and other enemies just like to leave their fortified positions to chase you which works as well as you expect. Likewise, your settlers often do this though this is less of a worry because they are protected and won't die unless you accidentally hit them, and this can be useful as you can lure enemies to your settlement just to make the settlers help you attack some places with dangerous enemies.
• Final Fantasy:
  • A healthy percentage of the playable characters in Final Fantasy IV:
    • Tellah, for dashing into battle alone against Golbez. Golbez just stands there and taunts him, presumably amused at the feeble old man casting his feeble old man spells (albeit ones worth several thousand damage apiece). Then Tellah breaks out Meteor.
    • Then there's Edge charging Rubicante. Luckily for him, Rubicante is merciful.
    • The endgame probably also counts, when Golbez and FuSoYa decide that they can handle Zemus on their own, without the help of the player party. By the way, this is after the parties in question realized that they're all on the same side. To be fair, though, Golbez and FuSoYa make short work of Zemus, and weren't expecting Zeromus to emerge from the corpse.
  • Ashe from Final Fantasy XII wants to defeat the Empire. What's her plan of action? She has none... she just goes in and fights.
  • Snow Villers from Final Fantasy XIII and his "Heroes don't need plans" motto is deconstructed as the way he rushes in a battle and makes a false landing is an indirect cause of Nora Estheim's death. He gets better by at one point, as he's talking to Lightning about making a plan before attacking an enemy's base. He still (ineffectively) charges at the Big Bad every time he makes a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics:
    • In the very first battle of the game where you're fielding your own squad, your AI buddy Delita warns against reckless charges, then immediately ignores his own advice. (Guests tend to have this sort of behavior. In particular, Rafa on the Riovanne Rooftop castle where you're supposed to protect her. Stories abound of people having their Rafa charge in and promptly get killed, all before the player even gets a single turn in.)
    • Unless they're about to die or suffering from one or more status ailment, enemies are always aggressively charging towards the party, making it them easy prey.
    • You can also give your own party members this sort of behavior by doing so yourself or setting their Auto-battle command to "Fight for life".
  • Final Fantasy XIV uses the trope as plot point for some one time NPCs who are a group of adventurers looking for fame and fortune. Avare is the tank of the group, whose role is to protect his party and draw enemy attention to himself, and he had a real nasty habit of constantly running ahead and fighting before the healer, Edda, could catch up and heal him. The other party members blame Edda for being bad at her job and make fun of her for bringing potions as a precautionary measure while her confidence gets shaken as a result. Avare eventually is killed because he charged ahead into a group of monsters and was out of range for Edda's healing magic. The surviving members disband the group and blame Edda for her failings, despite the fact that Avare kept running ahead of them.
  • For most of the games, the Berserk status effect can turn any character into a Leeroy by forcing them to use the Attack command only and uncontrollably. In some games, Berserk also boosts the character's strength, so players can use the effect with strategy. If you use Berserk at the wrong time or the enemy uses it against you, then expect the character to do stupid things like attacking an enemy that is scripted to counterattack.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia
    • Krile arrives because she heard Galuf's voice through a Torsion, prompting her to jump right through into a dimensional distortion. Although several party members (the ones who are also of a reckless bent) are impressed with this devotion to her grandfather, Bartz just shakes his head and says she never changes.
    • Garland all but tells Lightning and the party straight-out that fighting an extended battle near a Torsion will make it worse. Their reaction to this is... to fight him, making the Torsion worse.
• Fire Emblem
  • The three paladins that protect Princess Lachesis in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War stupidly attack the enemy and get themselves killed or injured, derailing your strategies. The worst is that you need all of them alive to gain an unique item, prompting many player to leave Lachesis in the home castle and not use her for a full chapter, despite the fact that she is an example of Magikarp Power. (Others just keep her at the sidelines and use her solely to heal)
  • It doesn't get any better in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. The only neutral units (i.e. on your side but not controllable) with any sense of self-preservation are the ones you can recruit. Apparently green is the new red in the FE 'verse. Fortunately, unlike Genealogy, you can use the "Rescue" command to pick these units up with someone that you do control and move them both to safety, though it slows the rescuer down and can make them more vulnerable until the coast is clear.
  • In The Sacred Stones, Ephraim leads an attack on a large, heavily fortified enemy castle with all of three men backing him up. It almost works, but one of these men is The Mole so Ephraim and his other two companions have to release themselves again.
  • The AI in almost every game has one cardinal rule: if a unit can attack, it will. There are exactly two exceptions to this: a small handful of units will fall back and heal instead if they're low on HP, and any enemy unit that can trigger your Instant Lose Condition (on those rare missions which have one) will do that if possible. Notably not on the exception list is having a 0% hit rate or 0 projected damage on all valid attack targets.
  • Played for Laughs during Fire Emblem: Three Houses. During the Chapter 1 mock battle, Lorenz (if you selected the Black Eagles or Blue Lions) or Ferdinand (if you selected the Golden Deer) will book it out of their house's formation on the first turn, to the annoyance of Claude and Edelgard/Hubert, respectively.
• Lilac's Fatal Flaw in Freedom Planet. She often charges recklessly into dangerous situations, which puts not only herself but her friends in danger. It's bad enough that Big Bad Lord Brevon recognizes and latches onto it when he tries to Break Her By Talking.
• Ally AI in Front Mission Evolved does this (enemy AI at least knows how to take cover every once in a while). Thankfully they're indestructible and can actually kill stuff on their own if you're not worried about a time limit.
• Guild Wars
  • The game has one also, a dwarf named Kilroy Stonekin. Missions with him typically involve trying to keep up with him and keep him alive while he charges from one mob of bad guys to the next.
  • Prince Rurik. "You are a pox on Ascalon, and I am the cure!"
    • It's hereditary. In the Prophecies endgame, there is a certain quest that involves helping King Adelbern fight off titans invading Ascalon. ...With only three soldiers. Cue the king not bothering to wait five seconds for the player's party to meet up with them and charging headlong at a wave of Eldritch Abominations.
  • Another dwarf very late into the Prophecies Campaign also Leeroys a bunch of Mursaat as a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Heroes and henchmen can easily Leeroy. If you set them to "Aggressive" then they will attack a mob that is too close and they will actually aggro the swarm of enemies. Especially annoying to Henchmen-hero players who try to avoid fighting everything.
  • And now we welcome Captain Fal—...erm, Courier Falken. Who randomly spawns in several areas and asks players to escort him across the map.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • In the sylvari personal story, you have the option to meet a NPC to plan a joint raid on a group of krait. When you start that instance, the NPC in question is charging ahead to take on all the krait single-handed, forcing you to jump in and save her.
  • If you're playing the Silverwastes meta-event, the four Pact officers in charge of the four ruined fortresses have a bad habit of taking on large groups of Mordrem solo.
• Halo:
  • Thanks to Artificial Stupidity, your NPC Marine, Trooper, Spartan, etc. allies will often charge into enemies that they should have probably kept their distance from.
  • Brutes in Halo 2 and Halo 3 are prone to this behaviour, which contrasts with their ability to also fight smartly. When they berserk though, they can be the most dangerous, especially when fighting non-berserking Brutes at the same time (the reckless berserker can flush you out to get you killed by the others).
  • Gameplay-wise, Jun from Halo: Reach qualifies. Especially in the third level. See that Jackal with its back on you? Those sleeping Grunts will never know what hit them- aaaand you see Jun yelling and firing at them.
  • Possibly averted by Halo: Combat Evolved's Wallace A. Jenkins, who despite the similar last name, predate Leeroy by three years. He undergoes a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after the Flood attacked and infested the rest of his squad.
• Henry Stickmin Series:
  • Henry Stickmin does this in the final episode during the Toppat King route. As Henry and the robotic Right Hand Man are surrounded by government soldiers, he attempts to make a run for the space shuttle while screaming his name in a similar manner to Leeroy. You can probably guess how well that turns out...
    Fail Screen: Oh my god, he just ran in.
  • Charles has a tendency to do this while piloting a helicopter.
    Charles: I've got the perfect plan. This is the greatest plaaaaaannnn...
• In Horizon Zero Dawn, Olin pulls this if he joins you in attacking an Eclipse outpost. Justified in that he's rescuing his wife and son. Also, he has Aloy for backup (who, depending on the player's approach, might find Olin a useful diversion).
• Hotline Miami actually encourages this sort of behavior as it nets the player a better score.
• In Improbable Island, one of the monsters you face is a parody of Leeroy Jenkins called "Bumbling Ally". He attacks you with "dangerous incompetence".
• Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja: this "legend" will be an easy one to pass down, because it's pretty much just Izuna charging into one maze after another to beat up whoever she last heard about. And these are gods.
• Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast:
  • There are too many players in the multiplayer mode whose strategies consist of holding the run forward and attack buttons at the same time until someone dies (invariably them, also invariably at the hands of someone who spams a certain unblockable lunge attack).
  • The campaign has one of the slowest variations ever seen in the maintenance droid in Cloud City. He's much slower than you'd expect, but once he's active nothing stops him from making a beeline towards where you need him to be - neither trip mines set all along the bridge between him and his destination, nor one side being open to a dozen snipers. All that makes this possible is that you can use the Force to pull him out of harm's way while you deal with all the problems.
• Justice League Heroes has an entire level in which Superman becomes the Leeroy. He's so anxious to get revenge on Darkseid (after an earlier bit of Cutscene Incompetence on the part of the Justice League) that he goes charging headlong into a fortress and not bothering to defend himself. This becomes an Escort Mission in which the player has to try to protect Superman until the end of the level. Since this is Superman we're talking about, sometimes it's less of an "escort mission" and more of a "just stay out of the way while Kal-El does his Unstoppable Rage" mission.
• In League of Legends it's possible to do this with any character though special mention goes to those with gap closers. However, Zac deserves a special mention here. He's normally played as a tank, the front line for his team, and as such needs to protect the softer targets behind him. But his entire kit revolves around doing this by flying at the enemy team and spamming his soft AoE crowd control effects and strong, steady damage. Essentially, Zac protects his carries by charging in and making a royal mess of things, thus making him stand out, not only as an intentional version of this trope, but oftentimes a successful one.
• Left 4 Dead is a Survival Horror game set in a Zombie Apocalypse, with serious emphasis on four-person Co-Op Multiplayer. As a result, there are a few times per level a player can do this. Some few examples:
  • The guy who runs ahead of the team and triggers the climax event before your team has even reloaded, let alone decided on a defensive position. Or runs ahead to get pounced on by a Hunter or snatched by a Smoker. At which point they scream at you to go help them or they'll blame you for not rushing in to save them. Very rarely does running ahead ever succeed. (As this video shows, the few times they do succeed is more a result of luck or surviving team members rallying together to snatch victory from the jaws of stupidity.)
  • Or the one who stays behind to take on a Tank when everyone else is fleeing, trying to save on health and ammo. Then again, most of these actions can be from a griefer.
  • And then there is the guy who tries to take on every Witch the party encounters. A Leeroy Jenkins will usually get owned by the Witch 9 times out of 10. A decent player will just screw up sometimes, or just leave the damned mutant alone. Leeroys will also attempt to use any weapon besides shotguns to kill the Witch (only headshots from a shotgun can instantly kill her).
    • Gets worse on Expert difficulty and Realism mode where the Witch can instantly kill you if she swipes at you. Leeroys will try to take her on anyway, die, then rage quit.
  • You'll also have the guy who thinks running ahead to the end of the map will somehow help him avoid all the infected when it is more likely that the AI director will either punish the normal players, causing them to scream at the runner, or the runner himself will get punished and then blame his team for not rushing in to save him (most players will let the guy die on his own).
  • And then there is the guy who thinks shooting all the car alarms is a good idea and think their team can handle the new horde while ignoring the fact that most players are trying to conserve health and ammo. Gets worse in The Parish when you have to go through a lot filled with car alarms and there's bound to be one guy who will try to trigger every single car, though he may be on his first play-through, or (much more likely) a griefer.
  • There is also that one guy who will split off from the group during Scavenge mode or the finales in Dead Center/The Passing to get gas cans on their own while everyone else sticks together to get the cans. You can bet your pills that the loner will be attacked, killed, then Rage Quit.
  • Veteran Versus players tend to use a glitch on the 4th misson of Dead Air at the main horde event. You activate the van, run for the fence and tell everybody to wait right in the car's way (the car just pushes the players through the fence giving a good ahead advantage for rushing the rest of the mission and leaving the infected team behind). When you are on the run you realize that Louis just thought it was better to stand behind the counter and now he is being eaten by a horde. Not to mention when you are near the end of that mission and Louis again thinks that it would be fun to pass through the metal detector.
  • And on the Infected side, you have Hunter-users who insist on pouncing when the survivors other than the victim are nearby and not distracted by a mob of normal zombies. Or the Boomers who absolutely must suicide when they very well can hang back and recharge their puke.
  • Similarly, there will be Hunter players who insist on getting to the highest rooftop possible for the sake of making a 25 point damage pounce when they could have worked with the rest of the team to set up an ambush. Then there are Boomer and Spitter players who will charge at the survivors in the open and either get killed or hit one survivor and then be killed when they could have sniped at the survivors through a window or on a rooftop. On top of this, Tank players who have a case of the Leeroy will blindly run into the survivors' line of fire while trying to chase and attack them instead of taking cover so the rest of the zombie team can slow the survivors down.
  • Charger players will do a similar action where instead of separating the survivors as the Chargers was designed for, the player will always attempt to Leeory with the charger by attempting to plow a survivor off a cliff or rooftop (if the map has one) for an instant kill, which they usually fail at 90% of the time and are met with scorn by the other players as they are now down one player.
  • Depending on the situation, this might also apply in reverse — anyone's whos ever played a round of Left 4 Dead has at least once encountered another trigger-happy killer who will happily fall behind (or worse, charge in reverse) the rest of the group to shoot (although the behaviour is more common with melee users) stray zombies and rack up "kills". While it's fine to help defend the rear of your party, not learning to stick to the party/run and gun will very likely lead to incapacitation, and the annoyance of your team mates as they run back to help you.
  • Similarly, there are guys who will shoot a car that is near the safe house and will stay outside to kill the incoming horde or during the finale when the rescue has arrived, they will stay behind and keep killing zombies until they run out of ammo or get pounced.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 introduces the Grenade Launcher and Chainsaw. Both are powerful weapons but can also cause lots of friendly fire damage if not handled properly. A good player will usually have minimal friendly fire with these weapons. A leeroy will most likely take someone's health from the green to the red or incapacitate them with the said weapons.
  • The Molotov is a valuable bomb item that sets zombies on fire, but in the hands of a leeroy, they will most likely botch their throw often and wind up burning the survivors instead or block their path with the fire, delaying their progress and giving the infected time to attack.
  • Bile Bombs fall under the same situation: using one attracts a horde to the spot you threw the bomb at and they will also attack any zombies that gets splashed by it. A Leeroy will always throw a bile bomb on a Tank and insist that the horde will do enough damage and slow it down. This is helpful if there are already zombies present. Most of the time, the Tank that's spawned is usually alone and doesn't have common infected near it and it takes time to generate zombies if there's none in the area and a bile bomb is used to call them. By the time the zombies come out, the bile bomb has worn off and now you got an angry Tank and a horde to deal with.
  • The Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank! mutation actually can encourage this. Since all the Special Infected are Tanks, you don't run the risk of being snagged and choked/crushed/ripped to shreds by a special if you charge ahead. Also, since the Tanks will likely spawn behind the survivors if the survivors can get far enough in the level before the Tanks spawn, most games are just a mad dash to the saferoom.
  • Put simply, one of the best plans for making it through campaigns on Expert involves the entire team doing this.
• Mass Effect
  • A soldier with the name "Richard L. Jenkins" appears in the first stage. He's the archetypal "chomping at the bit" newbie soldier, itching for battle and glory. Less than a minute into the first mission, before firing his gun even once, he is gunned down in a cutscene with no chance for the player to save him. However, this is actually something of a subversion. Although he does go in ahead of everyone else, this is because Commander Shepard ordered him to take point. Seeing as how he was in a three-man squad composed of a Space Marine (Jenkins), a commissioned technical expert (Kaidan), and the officer in command (Shepard), it can't even be argued that it was illogical to put him on point.
    Comment: He was so wet behind the ears he wouldn't look out of place at a waterfall convention. I felt kind of bad for talking to him though, because as soon as he told me how great he thought I was and he couldn't wait to see some action, I knew the next time I saw him it would be with his guts all over the floor.
  • In Mass Effect 2, you run into a young man named Jonn Whitson, eagerly signing up to take down Archangel. Not only is his fate similar to Jenkins (if you don't intervene, which requires grabbing his shiny new ten-credit pistol and breaking it), but he also looks like him and has the exact same voice.
  • Also in Mass Effect 2, Prazza on Freedom's Progress. When Tali tells him that he's working with Shepard, like it or not, he ignores her and instead goes forward with a small squad to find Veetor. He and most of his squad are then eviscerated by the giant mech Veetor reprogrammed to attack on sight.
  • Mass Effect 2 has this as a gameplay mechanic. Vanguards are given a move called the Biotic Charge, where they can phase through obstacles and slam into enemies before shooting them. If they have shields, then they only stumble back rather than go flying.
  • The third game does the same with the inclusion of Nova: the character drops their shields to do a powerful ground slam. In multiplayer, this can be a problem: target the wrong enemy or one that biotic charge/nove won't work on or don't finish the job and you're hosed. Your teammates might rightly be reluctant to help you here. However, a skilled Vanguard is a Lightning Bruiser easily capable of dishing out more damage than the rest of his/her team combined.
    • While that last bit is debatable, there is no debating their Lightning Bruiser qualities, just as there is no debating their infuriating knack of screwing up head-shots for Infiltrators on the team by staggering everything in sight.
  • Grunt also goes on a Leeroy Jenkins charge if he survived the second game, holding off an army of Ravagers by himself and ultimately falling off a cliff, followed by even more Ravagers. And if you completed his loyalty mission, he shows up alive, only complaining about being hungry.
  • Krogan are built to do this in multiplayer, especially the Krogan Vanguard released in the Resurgence Pack. Instead of Fitness, the melee/shield boosting passive skill everyone else has, Krogan have Rage, which gives them increased damage reduction and melee damage if they kill three opponents with melee in under 30 seconds. Add the Vanguard's biotic charge, and a Krogan vanguard can be one of the most successful Leeroys ever.
  • Wrex pulls this in the Citadel DLC, cementing this as the proudest of krogan traditions. Given that Wrex is tough enough to give old boots and armour plating a run for their money, he can make it work.
• MediEvil started out with this, Dan, the hero, charged in way out of formation at the start of the fight against Zarok, only to be promptly killed by an arrow sniping him in the eye.
• Zero pulls one of these in Mega Man X.
• An interesting variation of this occurs in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: near the endgame, Snake escorts Raiden, the player character, through a particularly tenacious bunch of enemies. You're supposed to run ahead while he provides cover fire, but once you get to the end of the corridor, he runs out and stands still, in the open, to "cover" you. The enemies are smart enough to attack him, and if he dies, you do.
• Monster Hunter: Rise has, in its Sunbreak expansion, Dame Luchika. Of all the followers you can bring to quests, Luchika is by far the most aggressive, attacking monsters nonstop with no regard for her own safety and being the only follower to never heal herself. As such, it's very common to see her get knocked out and you have to bail her out. At least she mostly specializes in ranged weapons, so she usually stays out of a monster's reach, but god help you if you give her a gunlance.
• PAYDAY: The Heist tends to have a lot of leeroy players that charge against an army of SWAT units, blindly run out in the open where a sniper can take them down, or go on a killing spree on the innocent civilians, which will impose a steep cash penalty at the end of the mission for the offender and reduces the chances of having a hostage to trade off should a player be arrested. This is most likely due to people who are used to playing Halo or Call of Duty where you can take out enemies quickly with minimal damage if you got decent aim. Even people who played Left 4 Dead tend to try and play PAYDAY with the Left 4 Dead mindset, only to quickly get their asses handed to them. Leeroy players that do the above actions and then get arrested tend to rage quit, especially on Hard or higher where you need a hostage to get a player out of custody or that player is out of the game until then.
• If one were to press the triangle button in battle, while playing Persona 3/FES or Persona 4; or the start/options button for Persona 5, one would see a perfect example of a Leeroy Jenkins. Unless you have been Level Grinding nonstop, or are on your New Game+ . Even more so if you waited for The Reaper to appear and initiate a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • Story-wise, in Persona 3, Junpei pulls one of these during one mission, which prompts Yukari to start calling him "Stupei". Yukari and the main character manage to catch up before anything bad happens, though.
  • In Junpei's case, it's due to his own frustration at either feeling inferior to male main or having his male ego hurt by having the female main and Yukari prove more reliable than he is that causes him to pull this off in an attempt to show off and prove himself capable. Naturally he fails and they need to work as a team to complete the mission and Junpei realizes how stupid he was being.
  • Persona 4's Chie pulls this during the Investigation Team's first foray into Yukiko's dungeon, mainly due to her being worried sick about Yukiko. The protagonist and Yosuke have to save her because at this point, she is not a Persona user, which you have to be to fight the Shadows of the TV World. She ends up running into her own Shadow, which they have to defeat in order to save her and supply her with a Persona of her own.
  • Way back in Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Eikichi Mishina pulls this at Club Zodiac by charging in without waiting for the others. It's slightly mitigated by the fact that he absolutely could have laid waste to the goons in there... if they hadn't been threatening his love interest, thus causing him to not fight back against the beating of a lifetime. (Hilariously, allowing Eikichi to deal with this on his own instead of helping him is the only way to get his Ultimate Persona. You have to let him be Leeroy!)
  • In Persona 5, Makoto, shortly before joining the party, is so fed up with her feelings of powerlessness and desperate to prove herself useful that she charges into Kaneshiro's club with absolutely no regards to the consequences, forcing the Phantom Thieves to follow her, causing them to be stuck with a three million yen blackmail. She quickly realises how stupid she was being, and the Thieves call her out for this lapse in judgement. Fortunately, this mistake indirectly makes her genuinely useful, as it grants the Thieves access to Kaneshiro's Palace and leads to her joining them.
• In Pocket Arcade Story, several player AI will do this during tournaments, especially if they hadn't been trained in mixer events. This makes the tournament much harder.
• In Pokémon there are several moves that attack for multiple turns like Rollout, Outrage, and Thrash that force your pokemon to use them the following turn even if you don't want to and also prevents it from switching out.
  • The move No Retreat, signature move of the Pokemon Falinks, invokes this by giving the pokemon a massive buff to all of it's stats at the cost of no longer being able to withdraw from battle until it wins, is ejected with a forced switching move like Roar or Whirlwind, or gets knocked out.
• In the first level of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 your squad is given orders not to fire on terrorists till another set of people arrive. Your overzealous teammate decides to say "Screw it" and get the negotiator killed.
• Sheva of Resident Evil 5 will often run towards large targets and fire her pistol at them, wasting her ammo and constantly costing her her life. This will eat up precious healing items and time, and sometimes she'll be far too distracted halfway across a stage with shooting at an unnecessary enemy to come and heal you if you're dying or she may get herself stuck or killed on her way over. This is fully remedied if you're playing with a human character, and this can cause Fake Difficulty in certain areas.
• Zaid in Rune Factory 3 is nearly impossible to keep alive as a battle partner due to his tendency to Attack! Attack! Attack! and rush at the strongest enemies.
• Samurai Warriors
  • Enforced in Samurai Warriors 3, in Yukimura Sanada's final campaign mission. After Hideyori Toyotomi is assasinated by Hanzô Hattori, Yukimura himself declares the battle lost, and the victory conditions are changed to only Yukimura (the player)'s survival. Yukimura must then charge alone to Ieyasu Tokugawa's camp and kill him by himself. This was also done in the first game. Wondering why a game about massive armies clashing against each other even have an actual objective for going Leeroy? It's because Yukimura Sanada actually did this in real life for the same reasons. He almost killed Ieyasu Tokugawa before dying from exhaustion because of this, and it's the biggest thing he's known for today.
  • If you side with the ill-fated Western Army during the Battle of Sekigahara in Samurai Warriors Chronicles, your side quickly becomes overwhelmed by the enemy. In a bid to help commander Mitsunari Ishida escape, Sakon Shima must charge the enemy's main camp to provide a distraction. To make it worse, Sakon is gravely injured and he must make it there before he succumbs to his wounds. If you choose to not have Sakon as one of the player characters in this mission, then his charge becomes Escorting Leeroy Jenkins (albeit somewhat justified).
  • Fukushima Masanori has a tendency to make reckless charges, necessitating the player character to rescue him.
• Maxwell in Scribblenauts becomes a Leeroy Jenkins of sorts (mainly due to finicky controls), where one mis-click while building an elaborate solution to a puzzle can often send Maxwell flying into a room filled with sleeping enemies, a tank of sharks, pit of lava, etc. causing you to fail the mission.
• In Skylanders: Trap Team, the Skylanders need to steal the trolls' "secret" rocket to get further in their quest. The trolls, led by Professor Nilbog, aren't obviously just gonna hand it over to them, so they send wave after wave of enemies to defeat the Skylanders. When that goes nowhere, Nilbog decides that he should be the one to defeat them, so he dons his new Jetpack, switches his name to Threatpack, and jumps onto the battlefield. He goes down, and the Skylanders take the rocket.
• Sir Galleth in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time has this as his Fatal Flaw. As if trying to fling himself out of a treehouse wasn't enough, his first attempt to liberate his town from the Black Knight gets his entire army killed, and Galleth himself the feature of a Circus of Fear. He then pulls the plug on the Moat Monster despite Bentley's objections, causing it to activate and eat him. His biggest mistake is charging at Penelope in her Black Knight mecha while calling her a monster, which costs him his cane and triggers Penelope's Moral Event Horizon.
• In the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Smite, tanks are often expected to do this to initiate team fights, enduring the enemy team's abilities so their squishy members don't have to. However, Kali seems to have been built around suicidal Leeroy Jenkins-style kamikaze rushes. Kali's ultimate skill makes her unable to die for a few seconds as she rushes an enemy player. If she gets the kill, and that enemy was her designated target, she'll get almost a full heal, making it completely worth it.
• Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. Levin has the tendency to, as Gig put it, "find tornadoes of crap to jump into", and goes charging off without a second thought in many cases, whether it's to find his sister or pursue an enemy. The bad news is that he always attracts trouble doing this, and you have to clean up after him. It turns out he led all of these guys back to you on purpose. When Gig says it's man-cow's fault, it really is. And you will hate him for it.
• Discussed in Splatoon 2 in a "current stages" announcement, in which Pearl discusses the joy of a well-coordinated team while Marina remarks that her teammates frequently charge one by one into the fray without much success.
• Version One of Splinter Cell: Double Agent has John Hodge, the Splinter Cell who accompanies you in Iceland. He rushes into the front of a terrorist base when the way is clear, thinking it will be much faster. He gets riddled with bullets for his trouble.
• The Mission "Engine of Destruction" in Starcraft II has you attempting to protect Humongous Mecha whose driver is doing this (and his failure to realize the mech's communication system was stuck on broadcast means he cannot hear orders to stop.) Subverted by the fact that the mecha is a Super Prototype and, with judicious use of Worker Units to repair it, can basically solo the mission. Except on Hard Mode...
• Star Fox 64
  • At the very start of the game, Slippy charges ahead and ends up with an enemy on his tail. This is the first line of mid-stage dialogue in the game:
    Peppy: Slippy, get back here!
  • If you take too long to defeat the Sector X boss, Slippy will try to attack it only to be swatted aside and sent hurling off to Titania, forcing you to go rescue him in the next mission and ruining your chances of entering Venom the good way.
  • Falco is a pretty hotshot pilot, earning more kills than any of the rest of your wingmates — if you can keep him from being shot down as he charges ahead.
• In the Star Trek Online mission "House Pegh", Emperor Kahless sees an Iconian, T'Ket, on a security camera during a covert infiltration mission and goes charging after it in search of "glorious battle". For reference, two story arcs earlier an Iconian vaporized the entire Klingon High Council with a wave of its hand. This ends the way you'd expect, despite a Klingon engineer on the team using technobabble to strip away T'Ket's Nigh-Invulnerability.
• Suikoden III
  • Lulu fits this exactly, charging with a dagger at Chris Lightfellow, a fully armored, mounted knight.
  • To a much lesser extent, Hugo initially falls into this category and has to be stopped by Sgt. Joe. Not quite the same level as Lulu, but when compared to Chris or Geddoe or even Thomas, he is extremely reckless.
• Supreme Commander features a variation of this, wherein the character himself is not a Leeroy Jenkins per se (the ACU is the primary builder and thus doesn't leave the base), but his tactics have every hallmark of the trope. In the fifth mission, you are joined by a fellow commander named Fletcher. This blatantly racist jackass should already be grating on your nerves, having been spouting his nonsense in every mission thus far, and his appearance on the battlefield doesn't help. The first thing he does is get enough mass extractors and energy generators running to let him build Fatboys. Then he'll do that. And nothing else. This guy will do absolutely nothing to defend himself (no defense towers, no shield towers, nothing) short of giving his ACU a shield, and your opponent will exploit this. You are expected to keep this bastard alive. To make things even more insulting (but also very satisfying), you have to kill him in the next mission when he finally goes nuts. And yes, he does send Fatboys at you if you let him.
• Syphon Filter has an Agency operative named Jenkins who was killed along with the rest of his squad in Washington Park.
• Team Fortress 2
  • Despite the Pyro's intention as a class for ambushes, flanking and hit-and-run skirmishes, many players of Pyro (when they aren't spy-checking) seem to think that the class is for Leeroy Jenkins-style assaults on the enemy defences. Which, unless you're being Ubercharged, it isn't.
    • This type of Pyro is called the "W+M1 Pyro", W being the key to run forward and M1 being the key to fire respectively. The term is rather derisive, and is usually used to suggest that the person playing the Pyro that way is a Noob with that class for not yet picking up that there are more effective ways to play them.
  • Spies occasionally fall under this, when they will run straight up to an enemy sentry gun and sap it even when the Engineer or other enemies are standing right there. Other times a Spy will back stab the first enemy they come across even if it will drop their disguise in the middle of the enemy team and there are better targets available. It gets worse if said spy has the Your Eternal Reward
  • Other classes also tend to get more reckless than usual when being healed by a Medic (getting an HP cap boost AND a continual stream of healing does make you tougher to kill, but not invincible until the ubercharge pops).
• In Tropico 2: Pirate Cove, one of the flaws you can give the pirate governor during character creation is "Ships attack recklessly", increasing the chance that your raiding vessels will attack ships that are out of their league and be sunk.
• Valkyria Chronicles
  • Edy Nelson's embodiment of this is what kicks off the Edy Detachment DLC, where she chased after Imperial soldiers "screaming like a banshee" and gets herself and a few squadmates stuck behind enemy lines. They stumble upon a village under attack by more Imperial forces, so Edy rallies the group with her to go defend it. Towards the end of the mission, she hears that Rosie's been shot, so she runs across the battlefield to get to her, because she can't die until Edy surpasses her on the stage.
  • General Damon, the epically incompetent standard bearer for The Neidermeyer, kept repeatedly trying this idiocy, especially in the anime even when an utter fool would call it suicide. For example, he once attempts to charge an Imperial held supply base in the middle of a forest across a stretch of open ground that is basically an Imperial advantaged free fire zone, which the enemy commander, Berthold Gregor, takes shameless advantage off as Damon's troops are killed en masse by a wall of artillery and infantry teams shooting the crap out of Damon's troops behind very good cover. What makes this even more suicidal is that the Imperials were not that numerous and quite vulnerable to a flank attack through the forest, a very simple strategy that Welkin Gunther and his handful of troops from Squad 7 use to their advantage and wind up pwning the whole base where Damon fails, all because they decided to spot a better opening and wait for the right time to use it.
  • Julianna Everheart from Valkyria Chronicles II is this, despite all the mentions of her being a tactical genius. Her idea of tactics is to rush your base alone, which might make some sense as she's a Fencer and Fencers have the best frontal assaults, but she's unsupported and can easily be flanked. Her reasoning is that she figured victory for her team was inevitable as long as she herself was perfect.
    • Even then, she has some questionable tactics in the first place. Her personal Order, Forced Charge, gives her the ability to vault across the battlefield, but requires her to slash at anything in her way... including tanks and APCs, neither of which she can really so much as dent from the front. Forced Charge is always her first move when her phase starts.
  • Raz from Valkyria Chronicles 4 would often recklessly charge into a large horde of enemies all by himself. One of his negative potential lowers his evasion when he charges into them. Ironically, you are encouraged to let him charge into the fight as his potential "Invincible" gives him bonus stats when he is under half his health and his reckless charging into the enemy lines help the Centurion pass through a blockade by shutting down the generator generating power into a net, succeeding the mission at the cost of his life.
• Warcraft III: Leeroy might've popularized the term, but in Azerothian history, he was preceded by none other than Grom Hellscream of the Warsong Clan. In the third mission of the Orc Campaign, Warchief Thrall is trying to reach a reputed oracle on Stonetalon Peak, and while there are human camps nearby blocking the pass, Thrall has no reason to pick a fight with them, and is happy to hire some goblin zepplins to circumvent the blockade. Then Grom Hellscream, leading an allied orcish camp, declares "I can wait no longer... the humans must be slaughtered!" and defies Thrall's orders to launch a reckless attack on the nearest human settlement, so that the humans begin actively attacking both Grom and Thrall. This is very much Played for Drama, as in the outro, Thrall berates Grom for his "bloodlust," and Hellscream ominously explains it's "like the old days. Like the demons are near." This leads Thrall to go on to Stonetalon Peak without Grom, who he tasks with building a settlement in the nearby forest... which in turn leads to Grom antagonizing the native night elves in a subsequent mission, forcing him to taint himself and his army with demonic power (again) to survive.
• The Warriors:
  • Ajax, of course. The most hotheaded individual in the whole gang can be very effective at getting himself into major trouble, although in the game's most blatant case (barring the park incident that was also in the movie, of course) it wasn't entirely his fault. In the level that depicts his and Snow's first night as members of the gang, they intrude on Destroyers turf at Ajax's insistence (albeit not to fight, at least at first), get pelted with rocks in an ambush, have their trademark jackets stolen, and wind up having to take on the Destroyers' entire roster to get their "colors" back. It's initially a subversion, as Ajax and Snow manage to decimate the Destroyers' main leadership; Ajax even gets to hook up with their gang moll. But then, as they're heading back to West Coney the next morning, the moll appears on the fire escape above the street — in her underwear — and loudly bids goodbye to Ajax, attracting the attention of a very large and very angry contingent of Destroyers who chase Ajax and Snow down the entire length of the boardwalk. The Destroyers only break off the attack when confronted by all the other Warriors, and a stern Cleon lets Ajax know just how much of an idiot he is.
  Cleon: Your first night with us and you're already stirring shit up?!
  • Vermin also threatens to become this after the Destroyers finally declare all-out war on their West Coney rivals and murder Vermin's best friend, Ash. As Cleon is laying out the gang's attack strategy, the impulsive Vermin completely loses his temper: "Bullshit! I'll kill 'em all [myself]!" He has to be physically restrained by the other Warriors.
• From the Wing Commander series:
  • Maniac, whose callsign is well-earned, will frequently Leeroy his way around, rashly jumping straight into the action at all times being a consistent character trait throughout the series. He never listens to you and attacks at the first sign of the Kilrathi. As time goes on he's shown to be one of the most skilled human pilots around...but still never listens to a word you say. The only place he always obeys orders is on the final mission set in Wing Commander III. Anywhere else, anything but "break and attack" often gets ignored.
    
    He's bad enough in the original that, at one point, your CO authorizes you to fire at him if his recklessness ends up jeopardizing the mission.
    Blair: Should I use missiles, sir, or ship's guns?
    Col. Halcyon: Guns, [callsign]. Save your missiles for important targets.
  • The manual for the third game suggests that Maniac is best utilized like a hand grenade. Throw him into a mass of enemies, then follow a safe distance behind to clean up.
  • In Wing Commander II, Blair once flies off on his own in order to save Stingray after he ejects, and gets reprimanded for it. In the game's final mission (on both paths), he flies off on his own to destroy the Kilrathi starbase, and when he succeeds, gets a McCloud Speech from Tolwyn.
  • From Wing Commander III:
    • Blair can choose to chase after the fleeing Mole after the pilot Cobra is killed, but if he does, Vaquero dies, and Blair is admonished.
    • Likewise, after Thrakhath transmits a video of Blair's Love Interest being Stuffed in the Fridge, you can rush in and fight him... despite your carrier reminding you that they are preparing to abandon the system, and that you had better land if you don't want to be Trapped Behind Enemy Lines. (A design oversight that let you Take a Third Option was later patched.)
• World in Conflict
  • Bannon at one point is ordered to keep his troops in a guard position around allied forces. When he sees that nothing is happening in his sector however, he decides to send his forces to join Parker (the player characteR) in battle. Just as he does this however, the Soviets attack the sector Bannon was supposed to be guarding and a fairly high-ranking French commander is killed as a result of him abandoning his post.
  • In multiplayer, this can apply to players who charge off without anti-air cover and get demolished as a result.
• The commonly-used World of Tanks mod XVM tracks this as a stat: "Kamikazes" are the number of times a player (or more generally, players using a specific tank) rush out, spot an enemy, and die within the first minute of the game. This tends to happen a lot with light tanks or the faster tank destroyers. This is unrelated to the in-game achievement Kamikaze, which just asks you to kill a higher-tier enemy with a ramming attack.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The creators of World of Warcraft crafted an homage to Leeroy in this achievement, where if you succeeded got to put "Jenkins" after your name for all to see. In Warlords of Draenor Upper Blackrock Spire was upgraded to a level 100 dungeon, so both the level 60 version and the original achievement have been retired, but the title — and Leeroy Jenkins becoming one of your Garrison Followers — are awarded by a new challenge: You'll find an incapacitated Leeroy in the corner of the room where you fight the second boss, and on Heroic difficulty the party's healer can resurrect him. After a short monologue, Leeroy will start a 15-minute timer (while he cooks chicken, of course), at the end of which he makes a beeline to the dungeon's bonus boss to claim the epic loot that he came for. In those 15 minutes^note plus up to some seventy-odd seconds if your party started advancing as soon as Leeroy Jenkins was resurrected, i.e., during the monologue you need to clear out everything — and we do mean everything^note Leeroy is level 60, so any monster in the dungeon will kill him in one shot, and he will aggro anything you leave alive that's even remotely near his path — between Leeroy and the bonus boss, including the third main boss of the dungeon and the bonus boss itself. Additionally, you can't cheat with this. If you kill anything along the way before reviving Leeroy, the whole achievement fails.
    • Attempting this achievement can actually push unprepared players into the trope, particularly if the DPS players' damage/item level isn't high enough^note this is, after all, a "DPS race" type challenge or if someone causes a bad pull^note likely resulting in a party wipe and forcing them to pick up from further back...
  • One quest has you escort a group of soldiers. Their commander charges into battle shouting, "Okay guys, let's do this!", a line from the original video.
  • Saurfang the Younger tries this tactic against The Lich King: "Enough talk! Let it be finished!" It doesn't work.
  • In a player example, there is a significant abundance of Leeroy Jenkins behavior in the Alterac Valley. This is especially bothersome on the Horde side, who have an advantage in defending compared to the Alliance's offensive edge.^note The Alliance has a few cliff shortcuts they can take to bypass some travel and harder to cap points, while the Horde has a tiny choke point entrance to their base and easier time back-capping their towers Thanks to this, Zerg rushing Van is virtually impossible. These players also get quite annoying in that they will attempt the same tactics over and over again, on multiple battlegrounds. They also consider a game won due to a hastily-formed ragtag defense that manages to compensate for the pathetic Zerging attempts an assurance that Zerging is the best way to win. This usually remains an issue up to the 90 bracket.
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft lets you summon the Leeroy, complete with battlecry by the original man himself. Pulling an actual Leeroy with him is a mixed idea, because the whelps he summons on the enemy's board will be enough to kill him once the player's turn is over. But on the other hand, Leeroy is a 5/2 unit with Charge and is rather efficient for his cost (by Charge minion standards), so he found himself in nearly every aggro deck as a finisher, and sometimes in some combo decks that aim to buff Leeroy to absurd levels to One-Hit Kill the opponent, since the Whelps won't matter if the opponent's dead, making him a Lethal Joke Character of sorts. He proved to be too effective throughout the game's meta, and was eventually retired into the Hall of Fame set.
  • Deconstructed when Ji Firepaw gets the idea to use dynamite to blow up the boat lodged into Shen-zin Su's side. It turns out to be a bad idea, for the giant turtle gets even more wounded, and Aysa Cloudsinger turns against Ji as a result.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown:
  • Assault troopers can fall prey to this. Their starting skill is "Run N' Gun," which allows them to fire after a dash move — perfect for getting the most out of their Short-Range Shotgun by rushing in to flank an enemy. But if you aren't careful (or if they miss that 95% chance to hit), this can leave your Assault surrounded by enemies with no backup from the rest of the squad.
  • Muton Berserkers are Smash Mooks that are devastating in melee (and in fact lack any ranged weapons), but they're incapble of taking cover, and their "Bloodlust" trait means they'll mindlessly charge after the last enemy to injure them. This means a clever commander can bait Berserkers into Overwatch fire, or an Assault soldier's Close Combat Specialist killzone, putting the brutes down before they can land a hit.
• XCOM 2 has Rangers and, with the War of the Chosen expansion, Templars, who can fall into the same trap as Assaults from the previous game. Both classes can make a melee attack at the end of a dash move, which is great for letting them charge in and deal with an enemy, but might reveal and activate another group of foes who proceed to give them a beatdown. The Templar, at least, can make another move after their melee attack, allowing them to retreat into cover, and with the right skill they can take a Defend Command to negate the next attack against them.

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