OOC Is Serious Business / Video Games

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• A Hat in Time: Hat Kid seems to be generally level-headed and sassy, no matter the situation. However, in the "Vanessa's Mannor" mission, she's clearly terrified whenever she's close to Queen Vanessa, which just adds to the Surprisingly Creepy Moment of said mission.
• Terence from Angry Birds is normally cold, quiet, and unshakable, fitting for The Big Guy of the group. So when an early promotional poster◊ shows him cowering in fear before the Mighty Eagle, it's a clear sign that this new bird is not to be taken lightly.
• Baldur's Gate II:
  • Jan Jansen's reaction to virtually any situation is to regale the party with long, rambling and highly implausible stories about his supposed past adventures which have a (highly tenuous) connection to their current predicament. Except when everyone gets dragged down to The Abyss, where after much searching he admits to being stumped. Haer'Dalis immediately predicts the arrival of the apocalyse.
  • A more serious example shows up in his side-quest. Jan is approached by his cousin and the two chat merrily about the family and said cousin's life at the circus. Then said cousin mentions that Lissa is living in the Jansen home at the moment. Jan immediately drops his regular persona and states "did he hurt her". The ensuing quest, which is fairly dark by Baldur's Gate standards already, contains Jan making absolutely zero jokes and several death threats towards Lissa's abusive husband.
  • There's another one when the resident Boisterous Bruiser ranger Minsc, who will otherwise go Leeroy Jenkins on anything he sees as evil, advises the player character to "come back later with a bigger sword" when confronted by the red dragon. Even the most novel player should get the hint that dragons are Superbosses which you don't fight until you are very, very sure of your abilities and equipment.
• In Baten Kaitos Origins, Milly and Guillo are constantly Volleying Insults, even after they become friends. At the end of the game, Milly starts a fairly serious conversation with Guillo about her feelings for Sagi. Guillo quickly picks up that something's wrong, and it's right — she's about to make a Heroic Sacrifice. It also counts as one for Guillo, who is completely at a loss for words.
• Batman: Arkham Series: Batman is a major practitioner of Thou Shalt Not Kill... so if he ever does threaten to kill someone, it's a sure sign something's wrong. In Knight, after apprehending Penguin, he, suffering from Sanity Slippage as a result of a hallucination of the Joker constantly tormenting him and threatening to hijack his mind and body, threatens to send him to the morgue rather than GCPD if he doesn't shut up; Penguin tries to dismiss it as an empty threat... until Batman warns him he's "not feeling [himself] tonight"; Penguin wisely shuts up.
  • Should Batman ever resort to lethal tactics in a fight, it's a sign of how dangerous the enemy is, best displayed during two boss fights in City. He rips Solomon Grundy's heart out after subduing him, and attacks Clayface with cryogenic grenades, explosives, and a sword the second he realizes Clayface is about to engage him, and he doesn't stop until Clayface is wholly dead. This isn't a lapse of Batman's standards, or his Sanity Slippage kicking in, it's just that Clayface and Grundy are that dangerous and can't be stopped by anything less. To be fair Grundy is a zombie already.
  • The ending of the game features one for the Joker when he, after taking over Batman's mind, receives a concentrated dose of fear toxin and is confronted with a future where Gotham has forgotten him and moved on. Joker — no stranger to the most pitch black of Black Comedy, who even ended up laughing at his own Death by Irony in Arkham City — actually proclaims that "some jokes are in poor taste."
  • In one particular side-quest of Origins, Bruce's friends have been murdered by a sleazy stalker, and Batman hunts him down. Instead of a quick condemnation, Batman rants about all the things the stalker didn't murder them for, followed by a dehumanizing slurry of insults. It takes Alfred asking about his blood pressure to pull him back.
  • Nightwing and Robin have a "Well Done, Son" Guy attitude towards Batman and constantly push for at least a "Thank you." In Knight, when Bruce tells Dick he's proud of him, Dick is unnerved and asks him if he's feeling alright.
• The titular Bayonetta is a level-headed girl who's default mode is Deadpan Snarker and she generally has a nonchalant and carefree attitude towards everything. However, one of the few things that can get her to stop snarking is when her friends are in danger. And should you be the reason they're in danger, start running. Cause it means you have severely pissed her off and your death will be agonizing, as the few characters who manage to piss her off that much can attest.
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger: In Tager's Story mode, he spends all his time following the whims of his Insufferable Genius boss Kokonoe without really having much space to object. In his true ending, he reports back in to her and is shocked to hear Kokonoe not only thank him for all his effort but also say that she's sorry. His narration comments that this feels weird, but he doesn't know what might have caused it. He has no idea that he's about to be nuked from orbit, just before the time loop resets.
• Blood: During most of the game, Caleb spends most of his mission delivering quips full of Black Humor and laughing like a maniac as he blows monsters to kingdom come. Come the end of the first chapter, he finds his Love Interest, Ophelia, crucified and dead at an altar. He shouts a very pained Big "NO!" before yelling at the boss to show itself in a voice completely devoid of his usual snark, showing that he's both completely heartbroken and completely pissed.
• Bloodborne's dlc has a largely-implied one. The descriptions of Lady Maria's weapon, the Rakuyo, state that Maria hated using her Cainhurst heritage's Blood Magic and preferred to rely on pure skill (reflected by the Rakuyo scaling with the Skill stat, but not Bloodtinge). But in her actual boss fight, starting with the second phase she tosses around blood attacks like she's trying to give the arena a coat of red paint. Note that she's fighting to stop you from reaching the Fishing Hamlet, which tells you that something really bad must live there. She's not wrong. The Fishing Hamlet is populated almost entirely by Demonic Spiders (the Shark Giants in particular are considered tougher than several real bosses) and the Orphan of Kos.
• Red Bomber in Super Bomberman R is normally very eager to blow up anything that would threaten intergalactic peace, but when Magnet Bomber punches Aqua for butting in and trying to end the fight, Red immediately goes from raging at Magnet to begging him to apologize to Aqua. Before you think it's because of things like love or chivalry, it's actually because Aqua's even worse at controlling her violent urges when she gets mad.
• Borderlands:
  • Angel never cracks a joke, remains somewhat aloof, and is constantly flattering the Vault Hunters. In Borderlands 2, she takes a much snarkier, more conversational tact. This is because Handsome Jack was feeding her lines in the first game, while she's speaking naturally in the second. In fact, when she goes back to talking like she did in the first game during the battle with Wilhelm, it's a sign that Handsome Jack is ordering her to deceive the Vault Hunters.
  • Handsome Jack spends a large chunk of Borderlands 2 being the most taunting, petty asshole he can muster, mocking your efforts to defeat him every chance he gets. When he dispenses with the jokes and gets down to brass tacks, however, he becomes a very legitimate threat. When Angel enlists the Vault Hunters to kill her so that Jack's plans can be thwarted, he starts freaking out and will actually beg the player, quietly, to not kill his daughter. After Angel dies, he becomes much more quiet and much less taunting...shortly before killing Roland and kidnapping Lilith.
  • In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, after Moxxi and the Borderlands 1 Vault Hunters betray Jack and the Pre-Sequel Vault Hunters, Jack may tell Wilhelm (if he is in the party) that he can expect a huge bonus to his pay if he takes them out. Wilhelm, who refuses to do anything unless he gets paid, growls that after what they did, that he's willing to kill them for free. He comes very close to this earlier in the game as well, when he finds Tassiter so annoying that he'd be willing to kill him for only a quarter.
  • Tiny Tina is a hammy 13-year-old with an unhealthy love for explosives and talks like a pimp. There are a few times when she drops this to talk normally and with a quiet voice — right after murdering Fleshstick in revenge for the deaths of her parents and, in a deleted line of dialogue, when Handsome Jack murders Roland.
  • If Mad Moxxi isn't making innuendos, something serious is going down. Most prominently, during the mission where she helps Jack retake Helios in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, she doesn't make a single innuendo after Jack spaces a group of helpful scientists in a fit of paranoia, and even gets irritated when Lilith makes a That's What She Said when she should be focusing on the mission.
• Borderlands 3
  • Zer0 is a perpetually stoic...something that constantly speaks in haikus. At one point in Borderlands 3, you find an ECHO Log where Zer0 awkwardly fails to do this after meeting Lorelei.
  • During "Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck," the Vault Hunter has to deal with Sane Krieg and Psycho Krieg, with Sane representing his calm, rational side and Psycho being his violent, bloodthirsty one. It's when you open the way to Benediction of Pain that Psycho has a moment of utter fear.
    Sane Krieg: What could you be afraid of?
    Psycho Krieg: The whiteness of his coat!
    Sane Krieg: Oh... yeah...
• Buckshot Roulette: The only time the Dealer's polite demeanor drops is when the player starts up another game after achieving the Pearly Gates ending. The Dealer doesn't welcome you to the table, instead giving a Death Glare, as if wondering how the hell you're back, and while he still allows you to replay the final round, he utters an ominous, "I better not see you again."
• Bug Fables:
  • Kabbu is normally very cautious when it comes to going on missions and positive when talking about a given area. Vi and Leif are immediately tipped off that something is wrong when they are assigned to go through the Far Grasslands and he suddenly leaps at the opportunity with more energy than he usually does. He also talks about the Far Grasslands in a much more bitter way than he does with almost any other location in the game, refusing to elaborate. It's revealed that the neighboring swamp houses a centipede that killed his friend and master on his way to the Ant Kingdom. Kabbu was trying to hunt it down for revenge, which nearly gets his team killed.
  • Leif normally refers to himself with the Royal "We". His dedicated side quest is one of the very few exceptions to this, and it's serious. When encountering the Zommoth in Upper Snakemouth, he starts referring to himself in the singular. It's revealed shortly after the fight that Leif originally died and he was brought back through a cordyceps fungus possessing him, taking on his memories and identity. He was using "we" to refer to his current state in general, but he uses "I" to refer to just the cordyceps.
• The normally adorable and cheerful Merrina of Bullet Girls Phantasia gets incredibly terrifying the moment she stops making constant cat puns.
• Crash Bandicoot almost never takes anything seriously, not matter how bad of a threat it is. However, should a villain threaten his little sister Coco, he will completely focus his normally very limited attention span on said villain.
• Every boss in Cuphead provides some kind of sassy quip upon defeating the player relating to their character and design. So it becomes pretty disturbing when the player dies against The Devil's final phase, and while holding Cuphead and Mugman's half-melted, eyeless heads, he simply proclaims "Anyone who opposes me will be destroyed!"
• In Dawn of War: Retribution, the Ancient is a character known for not talking at all after taking vow of silence. So when he finally had a line of dialogue, everyone knows that what he has to say will be important.
• In Chapter 2 of Deltarune, we get this across the board from all three main characters:
  • Susie's moments are less dire, amounting to her showing up early for class for once (though it's more because she wants to find out more about the Dark World than that she is now taking her classes seriously), and in the game's epilogue where she drops her brash demeanor entirely and speaks in an uncharacteristically polite tone to Toriel when going to stay over at Kris's house.
  • Ralsei is the epitome of a Nice Guy and is never shown getting genuinely upset or angry with anyone (not even Chapter 1's Big Bad). However, after the climax of Chapter 2, when Berdly and Noelle contemplate creating more Dark Fountains to have further fun adventures, Ralsei immediately tells them to stop and in a dead serious tone unlike his typical unfailingly chipper tone tells them at length what would happen if too many Dark Fountains were opened up (to make a long story short, the results would NOT be pretty). Everyone is completely shocked at this and calls it off, and even Queen immediately reneges on her own plans because unwittingly destroying the world is something she neither expected nor wanted.
  • Kris is typically shown to be a rather stoic kid who typically only expresses annoyance or frustration at most, but a few times in Chapter 2, Kris expresses actual fear and horror: During all encounters with Spamton, Kris seems scared the whole time and menu commands will read things like "Escape" or "Run Away" instead of a simple "Exit". After the Spamton NEO fight, Kris will scream that they're not okay if responding "No" to Susie when she asks them if they are alright afterward (and if you respond "Yes", Susie will be able to tell that Kris is lying). Then there's what happens should you decide to pursue the hidden "Weird Ending"; it's hinted that Kris hates the unfettered killing machine that they are turning Noelle into, and when you reach the point of no return and force Noelle to all but murder their own classmate Berdly, Kris is stated to be every bit as mortified as Noelle is afterward. Lastly, when you fight Spamton NEO on this route as its final boss with Kris by themselves, they frantically start calling for their friends for help...but when they get to Noelle, according to the narration, Kris doesn't call out to her...the player does, suggesting that Kris couldn't bear to see what would happen if they called out for Noelle at this point and was actively resisting the player.
• Ormus the Mad Mage in Diablo II is a Third-Person Person who speaks almost entirely in obtuse riddles, with no one being sure if he's genuinely insane or a lot smarter than he wants everyone to think he is. One of the few occasions when he speaks entirely seriously is when he implores the player character to kill the High Council of Travincal — a group of Zakarumite high priests who, through the corruption of the demon Mephisto, have been warped into demonic mockeries of what their religon once stood for.
• Dicey Dungeons: Most of the time, Lady Luck introduces contestants with a wicked smile and snide comment, but when she sees that The Jester is the one playing, she usually trades that for simple bitterness because she's upset about them siding with the heroes.
• In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Etna's final episode preview does not focus on her and is actually an accurate portrayal of the final chapter. The other characters promptly freak out.
• In Dragon Age, Varric is, while not necessarily always bright, usually unaffected by the horrors of the world around him. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, though, should Hawke be the one to sacrifice themselves when the group is in the Fade, Varric is completely unable to find anything to say, and eventually just walks away, completely broken.
• It's possible to invoke this in most modern choice-based RPGs, especially Bioware games like Dragon Age II, Star Wars: The Old Republic, or Mass Effect. Most games have several categories of choices, and Dragon Age 2 even goes so far as to have your standard dialog choice influence your Hawke's default reactions in cutscenes. So a humourous Hawke suddenly making an aggressive dialog choice can help drive home how emotional they are about something (for example; Blood Magic, most of the events of Act III, especially Anders' bombing of the chantry etc.) In certain circumstances, companions will even comment on the sudden jarring shift from the personality they've come to expect from you.
• In the Shivering Isles expansion for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, your biggest clue that things are about to go bad is when Sheogorath drops his usual rambling and irrelevant tangents to tell you that your time has run out, before simply lamenting about how he's going to have to pick up the pieces of a dead realm, again. No bizarre/confusing remarks, just a deep sadness. It's unsettling.
• Elite Beat Agents has the level "A Christmas Gift", near-universally recognized by fans as a massive gut-punch in what is otherwise a very lighthearted Rhythm Game. Usually, each level starts with the person in need of assistance screaming for help as Commander Kahn watches, and he then turns around to say "Agents are... Go!" to start the mission. Not this one. Here, Lucy is simply pleading for her father to come back, and Kahn is just... sitting there, watching her. It's almost as if he's just as heartbroken as the person playing the game. The Agents/Divas themselves don't dance normally like in the other stages, either.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Cloud's retelling of the events that happened in Nibelheim five years ago in Final Fantasy VII, his personality is usually weirdly hyperactive and dim. Much later on, it is revealed that Cloud has been recounting the actions performed by Zack, a very different person.
  • Final Fantasy VIII:
    • Fujin's sole line of dialogue that isn't Hulk Speak is pleading with Seifer to reconsider his loyalty to Ultimecia.
    • There are several scenes where Squall, normally keeping himself completely under tight emotional control, will suddenly flip out with little warning when something happens that deeply upsets him. Early on it is after he's told Seifer was killed and he starts wondering what others would think about him if he died. Later on, he flips out when NORG tells him that Garden and the SeeDs were nothing but expendable troops, and he finally starts jumping violently at anything that threatens Rinoa after he admits his feelings for her.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Auron is the perpetually stoic Cool Old Guy par excellence. He loses his cool three times: when Seymour kills Kinoc, when he sees the sphere image of himself failing to save Jecht and Braska, and when the group confronts Yunalesca. Two are bad, one is awesome, all three are very significant.
  • Final Fantasy X-2:
    • Whenever Rikku and Brother agree on something, the general reaction is "take cover."
    • This trope is why "I don't like your plan. It sucks." became one of Yuna's most famous lines. In-game, the camera cuts to the other characters suddenly looking to her in shock.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, after Sazh's son enters crystal stasis and Jihl Nabaat reveals that it's technically Vanille's fault, Vanille breaks down and literally begs Sazh to kill her, and is visibly angry when he refuses. Though this is not the first time Vanille's cheerful persona has slipped, this marks the first time her true personality is fully revealed.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, Noctis' train is boarded by an Ardyn who hums the Chocobo theme and calls Noctis 'dude', as well as seeming somewhat confused by what is going on. Due to the actor's sleazy performance and Ardyn's normal personality, it's actually quite easy to miss this at first, but once it's revealed that Ardyn has used time magic to temporarily switch his appearance with Prompto, the content of 'Ardyn's' words are a giveaway.
• In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Hector mentions that his older brother Uther is a man of action by nature. The news of Nergal's plan to open the Dragon's Gate is so troubling that Uther wishes he could have more time to think over what to do next, something Hector comments on.
  • Nino is one of the sweetest characters in the game. She only gets angry at three people, all of whom definitely deserve it: a neglectful father who left his young son at home to be used, her abusive adoptive mother who tries to have her killed and ruins what little family she's found, and the main villain, who happened to create said abusive mother and orchestrate said family-ruining.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • Owain is a boisterous, loud, Large Ham of a character, who spends his time parodying a number of anime and JRPG tropes and generally being hard to take seriously. In his support conversations with his father, he breaks down crying when it's revealed that in the Bad Future, his dad died protecting him from an enemy ambush when a similar event occurs. This happens again in the Harvest Scramble DLC map, when Owain suddenly and very seriously asks Inigo how many people he's killed, with both revealing how horrible they felt killing for the first time. Being a Turn-Based Strategy game, the player will almost certainly have cut down innumerable foes by this point with no consequence, making the conversation incredibly jarring.
    Inigo: Wha—?! Owain! What kind of a question is that? If this is more of your usual fun and games, it hardly seems appropriate.
    Owain: Do I sound like I'm playing?
    (...)
    Owain: In our time, human life was the most precious thing imaginable. But the moment we arrived here, that all changed... We began claiming it. You can't just flip a switch, like magic, and be able to kill the very next day.
  • In the Future Past 2 DLC:
    • An alternate version of Owain speaks normally almost the entire time, when he, Inigo, Yarne, and Brady are faced with a life-or-death crisis. He only goes back to his usual, boisterous self at the end of the mission if everyone made it out safely.
    • Yarne will actually embrace his death if it will save his friends! A far cry from the timid bunny that fears extinction in the main game.
    • Every Kid from the Future will cry if they're reunited with their (in their timeline) deceased parents. This includes serious-minded and non-emotional characters like Gerome and Laurent. Owain in particular is so affected when talking to his mother that he can't even attempt his usual theatrics and just breaks down crying and is practically inconsolable for most of the conversation.
• Fire Emblem Fates:
  • When All-Loving Hero Corrin actually wants to kill someone, then that person is one of the worst people in the planet. And for all we know Iago, Hans and Garon fit the bill.
  • Another example, always with Corrin, is that if someone ever try to hurt their child, Kana, then they'll threaten to soak the fields with their blood and go through with it.
  • Azama is snarky and laid-back to the point of seemingly not caring about anything, so when he drops it, it's rathr meaningful.
    • Like Setsuna, one of the few instances of him getting serious is in Conquest after Hinoka is defeated, where he expresses sincere desperation for her safety after she accepts her execution by Corrin's hand. Even before that point, he is shockingly vindictive in both his opening battle quote and his defeat quote, the deaths Nohr has caused to this point likely burning out any sympathies he might have had. Lampshaded when Hinoka notes that this is unlike him.
    • He does do this one other time in his and Setsuna's supports. However, it's more for comedic effect, dropping his sarcastic nature out of fear and revulsion for Setsuna's culinary abomination.
    • In Felicia's B Support, he outright drops his sarcasm upon being appalled at seeing how awfully clumsy the latter is at her job as a maid.
    • In his and Effie's A support, Effie points out that he pretty much rushed to her side when he was told that she was seriously injured. He's caught so off-guard that he pulls a mix of Suddenly Shouting and Suspiciously Specific Denial.
    • His A-Support with Hinoka, he drops the the snark and sarcasm entirely and calls her out for ordering him to heal a dying soldier he already told her was too injured to be saved, and his death ended up being longer and more painful than if he had just been left alone, as he predicted. He even admits to feeling that criticizing her so harshly is crossing a line and apologizes, both the direct criticism and apology being things he outright admits he would never do normally.
  • Sakura is one of the nicest and most timid characters in the cast, but after Azama pushes her too far with his trolling, she screams at him to shut up and snaps her staff in half with her bare hands.
  • Odin is usually a Large Ham, but if Corrin gifts the "Grima Feather" to Odin, he will drop his act completely to tell them that he wants nothing to do with the particular item. Considering that he's Owain, his hatred of anything Grima-related is understandable.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
  • The gatekeeper who stands outside the entrance to Garreg Mach usually begins his monthly reports with a smile and a catchphrase of "Nothing to report!" Later on in the game, he gets so broken up over Jeralt's Plotline Death that he really doesn't have anything to report when he sees you. And during Chapter 11 of all routes besides Crimson Flower, he says "Something to report! Unexpected, isn't it?" Which is quite the Understatement, given that Edelgard just declared war on the Church and is marching on the Monastery with an army.
  • Archbishop Rhea spends much of her time during the player's exploration phases in the monastery's audience chamber. The only time she doesn't is when the Death Knight kidnaps Flayn (who, like Rhea, is secretly one of Sothis' descendants).
  • The Death Knight is normally a Blood Knight. So you know something's up when, on the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes, he retreats when your army approaches him at Fort Merceus. It's because he knows the fort is about to be blown to kingdom come by missiles launched by Those Who Slither in the Dark.
• In Five Nights at Freddy's 2, the Phone Guy normally displays Dissonant Serenity as he calmly explains how to avoid the animatronics terrorizing them both. On the game's final night however, he sounds genuinely panicked and distraught while explaining that someone stole one of their spare suits (and used it to murder several children).
• FTL: Faster Than Light typically presents all of the choices you can make in a polite, informative tone. So when you encounter a mantis ship adorned with Rock body parts and your ship has the Rock Plating augment, what is one of the options the game presents to you? Ram the bastards.
• Gears of War: The only time Baird and Cole ever act completely contrary to their respective personalities is when they learn of Dom's Heroic Sacrifice. Cole flies into a homicidal fury, and Baird offers no smartass remark, being simply stunned into silence.
• God of War (PS4):
  • The Witch of the Woods is very kind and friendly, acting like a surrogate aunt to Atreus. Except for the one moment where she notices that Atreus has mistletoe arrows and immediately demands that he gives it to her and makes him promise to destroy any more that he sees.
  • Kratos has mellowed out into being The Stoic who isn't really fazed by anything he encounters. So when he has to visibly psyche himself into taking up the Blades of Chaos with his hands shaking, it says a lot about how he feels about his actions during the original trilogy, and the reminder that the Blades of Chaos provide.
  • Dwarves like Sindri and Brok have the magical ability to utilize Behind the Black and Offscreen Teleportation to move around and hide from sight, to the bemusement of other characters. This means that in Ragnarok, Sindri being willing to teleport in plain view of others is a sign of his severe emotional distress.
• The House of the Dead: OVERKILL brings us Isaac Washington, a foul-mouthed agent who laces his zombie exterminations with shameless uses of the word "motherfucker". If he stops swearing, it means something really bad has happened, as demonstrated when he confronts Clement Warden, who among other things "loves" his mother — i.e., a literal motherfucker — and not once does Isaac drop the MF-bomb in Warden's presence.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: One time when they talk to her, the protagonist notes that the normally focused Anemone is unusually withdrawn when she's dating Vace. She says that she got in trouble with him, but denies the fact that she's being abused by him and tells herself that she'll just apologize to him.
• Jurassic Park: The Game: John Hammond in the films is a kindly old man, who deeply respects the dinosaurs and desires for them to be able to live and flourish in the world he gave them. Which means you know he's not joking around when he says that the Troodon are far too dangerous to be kept at the Park and orders them euthanised. To add an additional comparison, the Velociraptors were considered too intelligent and dangerous to be public park attractions and yet despite Muldoon's insistence, he kept them alive.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising:
  • Pit is, by default, an all-around Nice Guy and Boisterous Bruiser who loves to banter, snark, and break the fourth wall. But then comes Chapters 18-21, where Palutena is brainwashed by the Chaos Kin into attacking the humans. Throughout the majority of the chapters, Pit is coldly serious and unusually quiet. Best exemplified immediately before the possessed Palutena fight, where Hades jokes about 'crushing' Palutena.
    Pit: Go home, Hades. Just go home.
  • Hades is a villainous example. For most of the game, he is a likeable, flirtatious, and eccentric. However, there are three moments in the game where he drops the constant jokes and perpetual ham to remind everyone why he's the God of the Underworld.
  • Doubling as a Pet the Dog moment, Viridi gets one in Chapter 19. After the Chariot Master is defeated and Pit is visibly distraught that he had to kill him, Viridi, in a rare display of emotion, comforts Pit by telling him that the master was an honorable warrior and that he should not let his death be in vain. It's the nicest you will ever see Viridi.
• Kingdom Hearts has a few examples.
  • Demyx is a notorious under-achiever with an overly casual demeanor who runs away from his first battle against the player. Next time the player sees him, he drops the shockingly cold line "silence, traitor" before engaging in one of the game's most challenging battles.
  • Mickey Mouse loses his cool and becomes enraged after Goofy's apparent death in Kingdom Hearts II
  • Sora is normally indignant toward his enemies, but in Kingdom Hearts II he begs Saïx, on his hands and knees, to let him see Kairi.
  • Xehanort and all of his selves are prime cuts of Large Ham, and are generally determined that nothing the heroes do will completely prevent their objectives from taking place. So when they start freaking out, the heroes are doing something right.
    • At the climax of Birth by Sleep, Master Xehanort successfully performs a Grand Theft Me on Terra, tosses Ends of the Earth to the ground, sheds Terra's Keyblade Armour, draws his BFK, and marches off to see the χ-blade. Then Will's Cage appears, and Xehanort turns around to find the Lingering Will kneeling there with its hands-on Ends of the Earth. Xehanort, who now has no real reason to stick around and several ways to depart the Keyblade Graveyard, proceeds to yell at him and go in for a fight.
      Xehanort: Your body submits, your heart succumbs... So why does your mind resist?
    • Ansem (the Seeker of Darkness) tends to have these just before his boss fights. Sora and Riku have both given him a firm "Shut Up, Hannibal!" at the ends of Kingdom Hearts and Dream Drop Distance, and both times he has roared at them, summoned his Guardian, and proceeded to fight them.
  • Sora is normally a highly optimistic individual. So much so that absolutely everything possible would have to be going horribly, horribly wrong for him to come even close to crossing the Despair Event Horizon. In Kingdom Hearts III, that is exactly what happens at the Keyblade Graveyard. Terra-Xehanort cuts down Ventus and Lea, and then the biggest storm of Heartless ever consumes all his friends, one by one, ending with a Futile Hand Reach when they take Kairi. Sora drops to his knees and screams, proclaiming that everything is over. He helps them all get better (well, most of them; Kairi was serving as the lifeline), but it takes a brief dip into the Final World to even get him to try. Then, at the conclusion of the Skein of Severance, Xehanort puts Kairi in the same situation with a swing of his Key. Even after Xion confirms that Kairi can still be saved, Sora barely even cracks a smile for the rest of the game.
  • Sora also gets a few out of character moments in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, occasionally harshly snapping at Donald and Goofy and even at one point telling them to just go home. This is a side-effect of Naminé altering his memories.
  • In Kingdom Hearts χ, the Player themselves gets a moment like this. Normally, the Player is a Heroic Mime, aside from one or two very rare, short, simple lines. Then, in quest 555, the Player, Skuld and Chirithy learn from Master Ira that Ephemer, whom the Player had befriended previously, was defeated and possibly even killed by Ira. This revelation causes the Player to step forward and deliver an entire speech to Ira, ending with drawing their Keyblade and preparing to fight. It turns out to have been a Secret Test of Character in the end, but it's still a very shocking moment.
    Player: This whole thing was my idea. I was the one who wanted to look for Ephemer, and for good reason. You see, I've gone to different worlds to gather Lux; a lot of effort has gone into the contributions to my Union. I've even had to fight those I consider my friends. I've done everything that was expected of me without a second thought. And then I met Ephemer. We didn't know each other for very long, but he left a lasting impression. Not all of our memories are good ones; in fact, he even broke one of our promises. No matter what happened, I knew we were still friends. But you took him away from me. I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel hurt. Maybe that means I have darkness in my heart; I don't care. But I can't let you get away with what you did to my friend. Even if I have to fight you, even if I don't stand a chance, even if I may disappear... I will because I know in my heart that Ephemer would do the same if he were here. Master Ira, I mean no disrespect, but this is something I must do.
• In the Kirby series, Meta Knight will typically hand Kirby a sword before their battle so they can fight on even terms. The only time he doesn't do this is in Kirby: Squeak Squad, because Kirby is about to unleash Dark Nebula by mistake, and he doesn't want to take any chances. In Kirby Super Star, he'll also eventually grow impatient and attack if you don't pick up the sword, because they're standing on top of the Halberd, which is crashing.
  • There's also King Dedede being brainwashed in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. He surprisingly takes his role as The Heavy very seriously, and to show how he's more evil than before, he's actively caging his own Waddle Dees despite his love and care for them. He even manages to sneak up on Elfilin and capture him during the results screen. Then, later on, he begins Running on All Fours and begins furiously punching the ground to create fiery tornadoes as the bloodthirsty Forgo Dedede. It's a big sign that Dedede has finally snapped.
• It's generally a bad sign whenever a member or former member of the Omega Team in Last Scenario changes expressions. Helios really takes the cake, though — no matter what you do to him, he never stops smirking, right up until the sequence in which he sacrifices his life to let Castor escape.
• Mirania of The Last Story is normally a calm, polite and soft-spoken healer whose main personality quirk is her large appetite. So when you confront a late game boss and she snarls, "Let's kick its arse!" the camera pans to the rest of the party, who are staring at her in shock.
• Francis and Nick in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 respectively are cynical jerks that won't hesitate to make fun of their fellow survivors whenever they can (Francis to Louis and Bill and Nick towards Coach and Ellis). If a survivor goes down twice without healing, Francis and Nick will drop their tough guy act and calmly remind their fellow survivor that they need to get healed up or they will die.
• Legacy of Kain: The only time in the franchise that Kain looks completely lost, without any of his usual composure, is when he sees the Elder God in Defiance and realizes this is the reason he's suffered all of the rather-ridiculously-long list of tribulations he's gone through over the series.
  Kain (voiceover): And it was then... I saw.
  The Elder God: So... I am revealed to you at last.
  Kain: What in the hell?!?
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, while Rean Schwarzer can be be prone to anger, he's usually calm about it. At least until he sees Osborne alive despite all of Crow's efforts to kill him. He then runs toward him and grabs his collar, demanding from Osborne why he's still alive. He later gets another moment in Cold Steel IV. After discovering the truth behind Osborne's fall to darkness and as well as finding out the true culprit behind the Curse of Erebonia, Rean nearly succumbs to the curse himself out of pure rage.
• Princess Mipha in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild long had a reputation as The Quiet One with a gentle, demure personality among her Zora subjects. But according to one stone tablet in Zora's Domain, when the Divine Beast Vah Ruta was unearthed in the Kingdom of Hyrule's search for ancient Sheikah technology that could help them fight Ganon, she excitedly rushed to it and had an uncharacteristically fiery look in her eyes upon seeing it. This was taken as a sign by the Zora that she would have a crucial role to fill in the near future involving Vah Ruta.
• Sheik in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is usually calm and gives Link clues through their poetry. When Kakariko Village is attacked, Sheik drops their stoic act and outright begs Link to save Impa since she had gone to the Shadow Temple alone to deal with the monster that attacked the village. Considering that Sheik is actually Zelda, this makes her outburst justified due to her relationship with Impa.
• Lie of Caelum: Lunari normally doesn't speak without telepathy because she claims that doing so could cause the future to change in a bad way. After Elysion sacrifices herself to save the party from Gigarths, Lunari openly expresses her grief towards Elysion's death and her gratitude towards the party for comforting her.
• Love & Pies: After Amelia catches Edwina helping the former's daughter Kate find her lost toy, she notices that Edwina called her by her real name instead of deliberately misnaming her and didn't flirt with Joe, hinting that Edwina is more than just her rival who wants to put her down.
• When Prince Leon and Princess Thea are kidnapped in Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, the normally jovial and goofy Dekar becomes completely serious. Tia even comments on this, before noting that it's probably not the best time to tease Dekar about it.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny
  • Kyrie Florian is a flirty, coy, and playful character with a manipulative streak who doesn't seem to take things too seriously... unless if something she really cares about is brought up, such as her dying planet or her dying father-creator, then that personality drops, showing The Unfettered Determinator underneath.
  • Levi the Slasher acts like a hyperactive Cheerful Child practically all the time, save for near the climax of the game when she decides to join Stern in her Suicide Mission to stop the growth of the Unbreakable Darkness. Here, she expresses a rare moment of seriousness and thoughtfulness that surprises Stern and ultimately convinces her to allow her fellow Material to help her with her plan.
• Marvel's Avengers: After seeing the test logs of A.I.M. experimenting on Inhumans, Banner realizes that something must be bothering Kamala because she hasn't been especially quiet or subdued before in the time he's known her.
  Banner: You good? I'm not used to you... being this quiet.
• Mass Effect
  • The Motor Mouth salarian doctor Mordin Solus never uses personal pronouns. It is part of his general personality, which focuses on conveying the most information possible in the shortest amount of time, but is also his way of depersonalizing what he is talking about to deal with the guilt of the things he has done. Except once, in the third game, if, when trying to talk him out of curing the genophage, you point out he was the one who previously helped strengthen it.
    Mordin: I MADE A MISTAKE!
  • This is a double OoC moment, as Mordin normally never shouts. Makes the moment all the more poignant. On a lesser scale, he says "My mistake" on his loyalty mission when he finds out that Maelon was not kidnapped and instead was voluntarily helping to cure the genophage. The key word in both of these examples is "mistake." Mordin is never insensitive to the consequences of his actions, but his tremendous intelligence and pride make it difficult for him to acknowledge when he's made a bad decision, which means he'll defend the genophage modification as distasteful but necessary every time you confront him about it up until you reach the Shroud.
    • He does also use a personal pronoun on at least two other occasions, one time being a callback to the previous time.
      Mordin: Had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong.
  • In the second game, he gets a line if you're romancing someone where he talks quickly about the medical consequences of a one-night stand, such as suggesting biotic suppressors for a romance with Jack or cautioning that oral contact with Thane could cause hallucinations. These are usually lighthearted and semi-comedic, unless you're romancing Tali, who is of a species with an extremely weak immune system and has to spend most of her time in an environment suit, in which case he sounds a lot more sober because, well, if she lets you into her suit without extreme preparation, she could die.
  • Shepard themselves has one after the fall of Thessia. Normally, when Shepard responds to someone saying something inappropriate, they will have at least one option to say something that's at worst, mildly chiding, or ignoring it. After Joker makes a very unfunny crack, Shepard's Paragon response is snapping at him, indicating just how near the Despair Event Horizon s/he's come. An earlier Shepard moment occurred in the Project Overlord DLC. You know Shepard's pissed off when the usually noble Paragon interrupt is to pistol-whip someone. In the same vein, Zaeed's loyalty mission involves him setting a refinery on fire while there are still innocents inside it, at which point Paragon Shepard punches him in the face and yells at him.
  • These can happen if you play a mostly paragon Shepard, but act "Out of Character" by taking a Renegade response later in the game.
  • There's a popular saying that goes, "You will only see a turian's back when he's dead," which makes their retreat from Palaven near the end of the game show just how serious and hopeless the situation against the Reapers is.
  • The usually calm, if eager for a fight, Wrex will snap completely if you sabotage the genophage cure in the third game. It's actually scary seeing him shouting at the top of his lungs and firing a shotgun at Shepard — but then again, his unborn son just died as a result of you stabbing him in the back.
  • Female!Shepard gets one herself near the end of the if you speak to Garrus. When saying their goodbyes before the final push, the conversation starts out light-hearted enough, but near the end, Shepard, yes, the same Shepard who kept her cool as she sacrificed a teammate on Virmire, ran a suicide run on the Collector base, and watched helplessly as Earth fell to the Reapers, actually begins to break down into tears if you take the Paragon interrupt. Bonus points to the fact that this isn't just Shepard's reaction; Jennifer Hale stated that this line was one the most emotional moments for her in the game. It really helps to drive the point home about just how much pressure is mounting on Shepard and her team, not to mention the fact that she knows that she's likely not going to come out of this alive.
  • Aria T'Loak is normally very cold and calculating when going about her affairs. However, in the attempt to retake her beloved Omega from Cerberus, she slips numerous times into an impressive Unstoppable Rage that would have gotten her killed had Shepard not been there to intervene.
  • Elcor normally state their emotions outright, since they express emotions through pheromones and micro-expressions that are too subtle for other species to detect. In Mass Effect 3, when Shepherd asks an elcor how many people managed to escape their homeworld in a war, he simply says "Not enough." His voice is thick with enough emotion that his translator doesn't need to clarify.
  • Before the Final Battle, Sarcastic Devotee Joker gets out of his chair, something that could be very painful for him due to his fragile bones, and salutes Shepard one last time, telling them with the utmost seriousness and sincerity to be careful.
  • At the climax of Mass Effect: Andromeda, team Motormouth Peebee even acknowledges her own OOC-ness when a sight renders her momentarily speechless.
• At the end of Mega Man 7, the titular hero actually threatens to kill Dr. Wily, even though he had never harmed a human up to that point, and Wily notes that the First Law of Robotics should prevent him from doing so. He doesn't make good on the threat, but he clearly wanted to.^*His specific reaction differs depending on the region. In the western release, he counters that he's more than a robot, while in the Japanese release, he reacts with Visible Silence instead. This is probably because the game starts with Wily escaping from prison (proving that he is too dangerous to keep alive). It likely does not help either that the Wily Capsule in this game is widely considered as the hardest, most infuriating, most unfair fight in a Mega Man game ever, so the player would probably have about the same reaction as Mega Man did.
• Alicetroemeria in Monster Girl Quest! Paradox RPG normally has a carefree attitude towards everything. But if you have her in your party when encountering Angel Killer, she has a completely serious expression◊:

  Alicetroemeria: In this state where you only exist to kill angels, I can't bear to look at you. Let's start the show here, where you will fall by my hand...''

  • And when you win the battle◊:
    Alicetroemeria: ...This is the curtain call. Rest peacefully.''
• For the entirety of My Friendly Neighborhood, Ricky the Sock is only slightly less loopy than the other puppets, typically having an aloof and irreverent attitude toward everything, being chummy-chummy with Gordon, and acting very much like he's still in his show. Toward the end, when Gordon has made it to the antenna and is removing the cover to disable it, Ricky completely drops the act and gives a somber and depressing take on why he believes the show was cancelled and practically begs Gordon to give friendship a try. Gordon, who up until know has treated Ricky as a pest at absolute best and at worst outright shot at him, is so visibly affected by it he actually briefly considers not disabling the antenna. While the other puppets have slipped into outright mania from being cancelled, Ricky was driven to existential depression by it.
  Ricky: You know why I think we got cancelled? Because people like darkness more than light. Maybe it makes them uncomfy because it shows how messed up they are. We show them how to be friendly, and they hate that because they're not friendly! Do you really think the city network suits care about anything except their bank account? Do you really think people won't take any excuse to ignore their own issues? C'mon, Gordon. We both know, deep down, you want to be friendly.
• No Straight Roads: Zuke is the more calm and laidback one between him and Mayday; however, his calmness goes out the window whenever he confronts his estranged older brother. You know how bad the relationship between them is when you hear Mayday telling Zuke to calm down.
• Octopath Traveler II: No matter what Throné experiences throughout the story, she always tries to make an effort to stay cold and composed so as to not let her emotions get the best of her. In her final chapter, when she learns of the circumstances behind her birth and the origin of the Blacksnakes, she screams in horror and anguish over the Awful Truth.
• Overwatch: Reinhardt is a big-hearted Large Ham with No Indoor Voice, so it is all the more poignant when he drops his bravado and speaks in a quiet tone. This is best demonstrated at the end of the short Honor and Glory, when Reinhardt pays his respects to his late commanding officer in the Crusaders who had originally been chosen to serve in Overwatch, but passed the honor to Reinhardt before making his last stand before answering Winston's call. Extra poignant, as the cinematic reveals that in his younger days, Reinhardt was a Boisterous Bruser, who frequently abandoned his squad to seek glory for himself, and that his commanding officer was mortally wounded saving Reinhardt after his hubris and arrogance got him in over his head.
  Reinhardt: "...I have been called...I must answer...always..."
• In Paper Mario: The Origami King, Mario freaks out when he sees Bobby light his friend's fuse in order to blow himself up to destroy the boulder that crushed Olivia. Both Mario and Olivia are noticeably upset, with Olivia temporarily suffering a Heroic BSoD and running away to cry for a while.
• Persona:
  • In Persona 3, Junpei usually takes Yukari's insults in stride. However, late in the game, when the group has a tense discussion about whether to kill Ryoji and let the world end, or let him live and face an impossible battle with Nyx, Yukari teasingly asks him if he's scared. Junpei then blows up at her for making light of a serious situation, saying that he is scared and blaming the protagonist for his/her role in all this.
  • Persona 4:
    • The protagonist, Yu Narukami, is normally calm and very level-headed...but in early December, when the rest of the Investigation Team is discussing tossing alleged TV murder perpetrator Namatame into the TV, he gets so irritated by the team's anger-clouded judgement that, in his only fit of anger in the game, he tells everyone to "Calm the hell down!"
    • Naoto is generally a calm headed, stoic ace detective. However, once Namatame's execution is involved...she's one of those Investigation Team members who support the private execution!
    • Yumi, a drama club member who is one of two possible options for the Sun Social Link, has a relatively gradual and subtle example. Before Rank 4, if you refuse to spend time with her on club days, she'll chide you for being lazy, and if you come up to her on days when club isn't in session, she'll proudly tell you that she spends her days off studying acting. As the link goes on and her dying father's condition worsens (causing a great deal of stress on the entire family, and forcing Yumi to reconsider whether she truly hates him), Yumi, who takes time off from club to visit her father in the hospital, barely seems to remember what days have club activities, and if you refuse to spend time with her, she can't really bring herself to scold you.
  • In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth: Rei is generally a shy but cheerful girl who wants to eat a lot. But when her memories are fully restored and she has to face the fact that she was indeed dead without any purpose and was in a Lotus-Eater Machine version of Yasogami High, she just goes berserk in distress; at one point, you can even see her Shadow Self melding into her.
  • Persona 5 and spinoffs:
    • Futaba Sakura is a suicidally depressed girl who spends all her time locked away in her room surfing the internet, keeping even her adoptive father Sojiro at arms' length. After the Phantom Thieves help her overcome her depression Sojiro is shocked to see her out of the house and interacting with people. The change causes him to become suspicious since there's no way she could improve so miraculously without help, eventually leading him to discover the group's secret when he finds the calling card in her room and questions her and the protagonist about it.
    • When a mysterious voice in the Okinawa Jail starts calling Sophie worthless, it prompts three unusual reactions from the Phantom Thieves. The protagonist's responses are almost always calm, collected and at times highly playful, meaning that he doesn't get angry easily, but here his answers can either be 'That's bullshit!' or 'Shut up', signifying that he's seriously angry. Ryuji normally avoids saying the whole f-word and says effing instead, but he outright yells at the voice to "SHUT THE FUCK UP, IDIOT!" Immediately afterward, Morgana notes that while he would normally chastise Ryuji for his classless attitude, here he's fully willing to back him up.
  • Hikari from Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth double Inverts this. She values her father a lot more than other people since he's the only person who even cared about her, but at the end of her Trauma Conga Line, she simply collapsed in a fit of depression and self-hatred and can't even talk to her father at all; This should tell you that her depression has been degraded to terrifying, borderline-suicidal levels. During the epilogue of the game, she wakes up and meets her father, who was surprised that how his daughter can be suddenly so worked up while she was previously distant and withdrawn.
• Pokémon
  • Colosseum's Cipher syndicate seems to be run by Nascour, a guy who looks like a Sephiroth/Riku hybrid who spends most of his screentime in commanding Cold Ham mode, giving orders to the Cipher Admins and speaking in the Royal "We". When he finally loses his battle with the player, he breaks down, and starts asking someone off-screen for forgiveness. Enter Evice, the real (acting) leader of Cipher.
  • In Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, Barry is an excitable boy who runs everywhere, to the point of running into the player every time they meet until Canalave City. When Professor Rowan sends the player, their counterpart, and Barry to the three lakes of Sinnoh to observe the Olympus Mons who reside there, they end up tangling with Team Galactic's admins, with Barry being handed a Curb-Stomp Battle before the player gets there. After the requisite conversation with the player, Barry walks away from the lake shore.
  • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, there are only three times in the game where Wigglytuff doesn't act childish or cheerful.
    • The one time Wigglytuff acts like the Guildmaster he is, it's when they have to catch Grovyle, who was considered an extremely dangerous criminal.
    • Wigglytuff also acts serious when Chatot has been seriously wounded by Kabutops and Omastar and when explaining how he met Lapras to the other Guild members.
  • Professor Rowan's identical grandpa Commander Kamado in Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the Big Good of the game, and a Reasonable Authority Figure who's known for being composed, trustworthy, and reliable. In the climax of the game, after the spacetime rift turns the sky red he snaps and in a fit of paranoia lays the blame on the Trapped in Another World Player Character, exiling them before marching on Mt. Coronet in an attempt to kill their god or die trying. Everyone close to him is absolutely floored by this turn of events, and it's explained that he watched wild Pokémon burn down his village when he was younger and is desperately trying to avoid a repeat of it. When a frenzied Dialga/Palkia emerges through the rift, he shouts for everyone to retreat with an informal Accent Slip-Up.
• Excitable Idiot Ball Wheatley from Portal 2 is extremely upbeat, manages to keep a conversation going with Chell, the Heroic Mime, and while he does get annoyed by some things, he never really gets angry. But then the Core Transfer scene happens, and while Wheatley seems fine at first, something about the way he keeps mentioning how small and insignificant Chell is compared to him is quite unnerving. And then, when it seems like he's finally letting you out of the facility through the escape lift, he starts laughing uncontrollably as the lights in the room turn red. He calls the lift back down and angrily rants to Chell how she's selfish and how he's done nothing but sacrifice for her. When GLaDOS antagonizes him further, he suddenly and dramatically reaches his Rage Breaking Point, punching GLaDOS and Chell down the elevator shaft, and hereby permanently cementing his Face–Heel Turn.
• Potion Permit:
  • Olive normally eats whatever Cassandra cooks without comment, so when she asks her to make her sausage rolls, Cassandra find it suspicious. Olive then lies that it's either "her time of the month" or she's got a bad headache and can't cook the sausages herself, when she actually wants them to prepare Osman's surprise anniversary date for Cassandra.
  • In Martha's third Friendship Event, she gets uncharacteristically mad at you and storms out of Lazy Bowl Tavern. It's because she believes that you're leaving Moonbury the following day and didn't bother to try her latest batch of cookies. It then turns out that she fell for Russo's prank, and she profusely apologizes for the misunderstanding.
  • According to Myer, Matheo is a stubborn and proud Witch Doctor who sees you as his rival for curing people faster with your potions. He's also normally punctual, but in his third Friendship Event, he turns up late for his own meeting with you and the mayor because he had been compiling his notes about the new disease infecting the plants of Moonbury, which is too strong for his natural medicine to cure. So, he reluctantly turns to you to find the cure for it.
• When the portrait of Psychopomp 's protagonist loses her constant smile, that's your cue to find and use a health syringe before you die.
• In Resident Evil 6 Sherry spends all of her first chapter with Jake being calm, collected, and dorky. So when Ustanak shows up and she loses her nerve and screams "RUN!!!" you know he's a serious threat.
• In Sabres of Infinity Elson, a friendly Perpetual Smiler, gets EXTREMELY angry at you if you break the rules of engagement, particularly if you disobeyed his direct orders in order to do so.
  Elson: I shall write to Grenadier Square of this. Next time, if there is a next time, you will follow orders, or I will see your sword broken, your career in tatters and what's left of you on a ship southwards so that you may live the rest of your life in infamy. Am I understood?
• Saints Row 2: Johnny Gat normally never backs down from a fight, and isn't one for drawing his kills out either. It reflects the gravity of the situation when he offers Shogo Akuji a chance to walk away when the latter crashes Aisha's funeral, and then buries Shogo alive after the resulting fight, rather than simply killing him. The Boss, normally a Talkative Loon with no filter, is also dead-silent for the entirety of the mission. For someone who normally takes every opportunity to run their mouth at their enemies, not responding to taunts is extremely unusual, and shows just how seriously they're taking this.
• Senran Kagura:
  • Hibari is friendly and a Perpetual Smiler, althought insecure at times, but with great determination, and it's like this in every game. However, when Yagyu and Haruka argue on who should take care of (more like own) Hibari, she gets truly enraged. Yagyu even states that she never saw Hibari so angry. It happens only one time in the entire franchise that she gets like this...and it's fucking awesome.
  • Ryona, the most masochist and perverted character of the franchise, has a constant cat-like grin that never disappears and always joke around even when fighting someone. So when her grin disappears, she knows that she can't joke around and the situation is serious.
  • Ryobi is always confident, cruel and a Deadpan Snarker all the time, not to mention an incredible sadist. But when she's with her deceased older sister Ryoki, she acts distraught. When she's brought up in a conversation, Ryona notes that Ryobi's insults are weaker than her normal ones (and it's Ryona that notices). Turns out Ryobi shouted at Ryoki that she should die...right before she was killed for real making those her last words to her, and she's guilt-ridden.
• Shadowverse: The illusory Kyle offers to leave the army to get married to Isabelle, despite Isabelle knowing he treasures his comrades. This is what tips her off to the fact that the dream world's Kyle is not the one she knows.
• Shovel Knight: In King Knight's campaign, his mother always calls him by some Affectionate Nickname. She only calls him 'King Knight' when basically disowning him after he hands the kingdom over to the Enchantress.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Dr. Eggman is normally a Large Ham by default, but it's the very few moments he stops being a Large Ham that lets both characters and players alike know he is seriously upset.
    • In Sonic Adventure, when Tails manages to disarm Eggman's missile and completely ruin his desperate attempt to salvage something from his plans having completely fallen apart in the last few hours, Eggman, in the most threatening voice he can make, simply tells Tails he will make him suffer before summoning his Egg Walker followed by one of the single most chilling lines he's ever said in the entire series.
      Eggman: You fool. Away! Before I make mincemeat out of you.
    • In Sonic Lost World, when Zavok and Zazz taunt Eggman about how their world will soon be destroyed by Eggman's energy draining machine, Eggman coldly threatens to destroy everything they love and make them watch before cutting the connection by punching the ice wall the Zeti used to communicate with them. Both Sonic and Tails are visibly freaked out by this.
    • In Sonic Frontiers, Eggman drops to a quiet, concerned tone when he allows Sage to go with Sonic in order to stop The End, since he loves Sage as a daughter figure and knows that she may not be coming back.
  • In the climax of Sonic Unleashed Sonic ends up being painfully cured of his Werehog affliction at the absolute worst moment and ends up crumpled in a heap at the feet of Dark Gaia. All he can manage is to beg Chip to flee and save himself. Chip in turn decides to stop playing around and provide the heavy lifting to help Sonic get back on his feet.
• The Radioman in Spec Ops: The Line is a perpetually stoned wisecracking asshole, who taunts your team throughout the game. After Walker and co. destroy the last of the water supplies in Dubai, the Radioman doesn't even try to sugarcoat what happened, and reassures the listeners that everything will be just fine. ^note It won't. It will get even worse. In fact, by the end of the next level, the Radioman will be dead, too.
• Star Control II: there is one thing that will break the Ur-Quan's demeanor of self-assured superiority and authority: telling them that a fully sentient Dnyarri has emerged. If you know their backstory, you know exactly why this makes the Ur-Quan practically soil themselves with apprehension and fear. This is also the only way in the game to talk to an Ur-Quan and avoid battle with them afterwards: as thanks for informing them of the threat, they will let you go free (once).
• In StarCraft: Brood War, protoss campaign, when Raszagal orders the extermination of a dissenting group of Aiur survivors, Zeratul remarks that she would never act so malevolently, and was able to figure out that she was under the sway of Kerrigan.
• In the Super Mario Bros. franchise, the Boos are usually Perpetual Smilers, and they stop and cover their faces whenever the player approaches them. This extends to their leader, King Boo, with his shyness being part of his Tactical Suicide Boss fight in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. In Luigi's Mansion 3, however, King Boo not only stops covering his face, but also stops smiling and instead scowls angrily at Luigi. This shows that his hatred for Luigi has grown exceptionally deep, and that he's become completely fed up with his plans being foiled.
  • Mario has always been characterized as a very brave yet at times stubborn and impulsive hero, and he's generally resolute, rarely getting genuinely scared. At most, he has moments in the RPG games where he gets startled like Luigi, but this isn't much. However, in Luigi's Mansion, during his exploration of Area 3, Luigi can get to a passage that leads to the Secret Altar (though he can't get inside the room because the gap is too small), where Mario is taken prisoner by King Boo and trapped in a painting. This time, he's not doing so good. Not only he's stuck and unable to get out, but he's really, really scared, beating on the canvas with his fists, and when Luigi sees him from the passage inside the well, he's crying out for help to his brother, terrified like never before. At times, he can also get impatient if you are around the area.
• Given the tragic ending of Super Metroid, this appears to have been the intended trope for Samus Aran throughout much of Metroid: Other M. However, no previous personality had been properly established for her outside of an obscure manga, so most people interpreted it as the norm for her, and were not pleased. She does display some Not So Stoic moments in the game though.
• Super Sized Family: The only time Virginia isn't holding her hands up to her sides is if she's sick.
• In Tales of the Abyss, Jade says, after weighing the possible benefits of Luke sacrificing himself, tells Luke that "as (his) friend" he feels compelled to stop him, prompting Luke to point out that he never called him his friend before. Jade then apologizes, something that's equally uncharacteristic of him. Much earlier in the game, Jade gets visibly angry when he realizes that the villains are using fomicry.
• In Tales of Berseria, when the party is placed in an illusion of Velvet's life before everything went wrong. Everyone is either quite eager to see Velvet's hometown or confused at how everything is so similar to it was back then... except for Magilou, who is oddly quiet. When Velvet points out that something is wrong, Magilou is the first to chime in.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Colette is a Picky Eater who hates green peppers. When she starts eating them, remarking that they don't taste as bad anymore, the characters think she's maturing... but it turns out it's the first sign she's losing her humanity due to her angel transformation, and that she can no longer taste anything at all.
• Team Fortress 2: The Heavy is a loud, boisterous fellow and one of the most bloodthirsty of the nine mercenaries. However, when asked about the Pyro in Meet the Pyro, the Heavy is noticeably hushed and apprehensive, outright admitting that the Pyro scares him. His admission establishes just how horrifying the Pyro is to their teammates, and it's supported when the trailer shows off the various atrocities that the Pyro (obliviously) commits on a single night.
  Heavy: I fear no man. But that... thing. It scares me.
• Them's Fightin' Herds: Pom, the champion of the sheep people is a nervous wreck during fights and most of the fighting is done by her sheep dogs, while she mostly flails or tries to get away... except on her Level 3 attack. It starts with her companion puppy barking at the enemy, if hit during this time, the puppy will be knocked away, at which point Pom will enter into an Unstoppable Rage and beat up her oponent in a shout out to Akuma's Raging Demon Fist.
• In Undertale:
  • Sans the skeleton normally talks in all lowercase letters and doesn't even bother to capitalize. When he actually capitalizes properly, you know he's serious. He'll also speak slower, and he'll lose his Voice Grunting and the Glowing Eyelights of Undeath in his eye sockets, forming a subtle Nightmare Face. Doubly so when he finally stops being lazy... and starts being the hardest boss fight in the game.
  • Nominally, Undyne is always Hot-Blooded in her demeanor. Especially on the No Mercy route, when she becomes Undyne the Undying. But if you're on the Neutral Route, and kill Papyrus, all her hot-blooded antics go right out the window, and she takes the fight absolutely seriously.
  • Played for Laughs with the Tem Shop keeper in Temmie Village, who normally talks in the same strange way all the other Temmies do. But if they offer you extra money for an item and you refuse, they'll scowl at you and say "You will regret this" in plain English. If you helped them pay for college, they'll have an even more elaborate line if you refuse to sell them an item they really want.
    Temmie: Is this a joke? Are you having a chuckle? Ha ha, very funny. I'm the one with a degree.
  • If you do a Genocide run all the way through, but spare Mettaton NEO, Alphys is put in charge of the kingdom. While earlier in the game she clearly tried her very best to be kind and helpful to you, this Alphys straight up tells you she hates you, and closes her phone call with the line, "I really should have killed you when I had the chance."
  • On the Genocide route, when Flowey realizes your murder of everyone is probably going to include him, he displays genuine fear for the only time in the whole game. He starts begging for his life later on, even morphing his face into Asriel's, before you beat him down until there is literally nothing left of him.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines you meet Nines Rodriguez, a Brujah who leads the Anarchs in Los Angeles and is about as tough and fearless as someone can be. Close to the end of the game, both he and the PC get caught in a fire at Griffith Park, which instantly causes Nines to get visibly nervous for probably the first and only time in the game. When pressed, he explains that they're in the middle of werewolf territory and that they need to leave immediately because they'll get ripped apart by the pissed-off locals, who will assume the two nearest vampires (you and him) are responsible for the fire. If you take the option to sarcastically ask if he's afraid of werewolves, he'll bluntly tell you "Hell yeah I'm afraid of werewolves!" Needless to say, it's chilling to see such a normally unshakable character act so unnerved, and downright panic-inducing when his assertion is proven correct soon after and he's bowled off a cliff by a werewolf. You'll learn just how justified his fear is when you face one yourself; it's invincible to all weapons and disciplines, it hits hard, it moves faster than you, and it will smash through windows and doors just to get to you. Even console command cheats don't work against this thing!
  • A Malkavian player character gets one in their first conversation with Gary. The Malkavian character usually speaks in vivid, half-crazed analogies and Purple Prose, but Gary managed to get them seethingly angry enough to drop that and ask a simple, straightforward question. The effect is bone-chilling.
• Vermintide II: Every character has a few pithy phrases for when they are the last hero standing against the endlessly legion foe that is the Vermintide. That is, except for the normally very hammy Saltzpyre. He doesn't say anything, and opts to fight on in grim silence against the desperate odds facing him. He's got nobody else to inspire, seemingly no hope left, so his priority just becomes Taking You with Me.
• In Warframe the normally calm and collected Lotus shouts for you to Don't Ask, Just Run when the Grustrag Three approach.
• The Bard, Wandersong's main character, is a happy-go-lucky Actual Pacifist who tries to befriend even the most heinous monsters, and will perform physics-defying leaps to avoid stepping on bugs. That makes it all the more shocking when, after being trapped under a rockslide with Audrey, they outright threaten to leave her there to starve if she doesn't promise to give up her quest to end the world.
• We Happy Few is arguably based around this: since everyone acts happy and cheerful thanks to the use of Joy (and you're supposed to be like that and adapt to this society's rules), whenever someone notices you're afraid, sad or otherwise not happy, they will notice you're off your meds and act accordingly. Likewise, if the normally friendly and happy citizens stop being like that to you...things may get ugly fast.
  • Also, when Uncle Jack stops being his usual kind and funny persona after a mention of the Very Bad Thing, you know it's not something to take lightly.
• In The World Ends with You, Beat's typically Hot-Blooded, reckless and short-tempered. As such, it says a lot when he's nervous about the prospect of fighting Kariya, a highly skilled Reaper who only remains a grunt to stay with Uzuki. On the same day, Neku finds Beat at a loss for words near the place where Beat and Rhyme were hit by a car and killed. Neku lampshades this both times.
  "Who are you and what have you done with Beat?"
• In World of Warcraft, Thrall's teacher Drek'thar has been gradually becoming senile, so whenever he becomes lucid, it's a sign that he feels strongly about something. He does so in The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm when he hears about Cairne Bloodhoof dying, demanding to know how he could have been killed. He does so again in a quest in which the player asks him to help the Forsaken war effort; since he is a repentant Old Horde war criminal who is haunted by the memories of the atrocities he committed, he is horrified that the Forsaken could commit similar atrocities without feeling anything.
  • In Naxxramas you can find Kel'thuzad's Right-Hand Cat Mr. Bigglesworth. If you decide to kill him, you'll hear the usually stoic lich becoming genuinely angry.
  Kel'thuzad: NO! A curse upon you, interlopers! The armies of the Lich King will hunt you down! You will NOT escape your fate!
  • In Warcraft III, Medivh is perpetually calm while trying to subtly unite the mortal races against the Burning Legion. The sole exception is when Jaina calls him mad for suggesting she ally with the Horde, at which point Medivh angrily yells, "Have you heard nothing I've said!?"
• The first couple of hours of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 establish Shulk to be a soft-spoken Science Hero, the rational blue oni to Reyn's red, and a Nice Guy in general. So when he responds to Metal Face murdering Fiora by hollering a barely coherent "I'll Kill You!", going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and swearing to kill every last Mechon, Reyn lampshades how uncharacteristic it is of him.
• Yakuza
  • Throughout the series, Goro Majima switches between wise-cracking, jumping around and cackling like a madman and getting involved in all kinds of wacky shenanigans. When Majima goes calm and quiet and speaks in his normal voice, it's a sign that he is beyond furious, and no longer cares about having fun or maintaining his image or anything other than murdering whatever has roused his ire in the face until it dies.
  • In Yakuza: Like a Dragon Ichiban always addresses Masato by the formal title of "Young Master", even when he is revealed as the main villain under the name Ryo Aoki. As such, it shows how serious things are when in the ending when Aoki, undergoing a massive Villainous Breakdown after having his entire career ruined by Ichiban, is pointing a gun to his head Ichiban in the English Dub tearfully pleads Masato that he can't bear to see his brother die.
    • In general, Ichiban can flip a switch, going from "Goofy Manchild" to "Stone-Cold Facewrecker", almost as effectively as Majima. The situations where he does are few and far between, but it's there.

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