Persecution Flips in Video Games.
- The conflict between the Templars and the Mages in the Dragon Age franchise is a result of this. To summarize, long ago the mages used to rule over ordinary humans and keep ordinary humans as slaves. Then a woman named Andraste inspired an uprising against them, and a new religion was formed around her after she was betrayed and killed. Unfortunately the people who founded the religion believed that all mages were like their previous mage oppressors, so to make sure that never happened again, the religion teaches mages from the time they're born that they're full of sin and must redeem themselves, and mages are given no choice but to be shipped off to "Circles" to learn to control their magic. Thus, where mages used to persecute ordinary humans, now the mages are the ones being persecuted precisely because the ordinary humans never got past their pain at their previous enslavement. And just to complicate matters even further, there are still mages around who enslave ordinary humans, namely the Tevinter Imperium, which some of the now-persecuted mages end up joining in hopes of turning the tables on the Templars, and that's not even counting the desperate mages who turn to blood magic and really do go crazy. Potentially, this cycle could go on forever.
- Also, the series flips the traditional dichotomy in a Standard Fantasy Setting where the elves are a majestic, technologically and/or magically advanced race with far greater power than the humans. That was the case a long time ago, before the ancient elven civilization fell to Tevinter, a human empire (although Dragon Age: Inquisition challenges this account, along with many other aspects of the lore). Now the elves are a powerless, persecuted minority, akin to Jews in medieval Europe, while the humans are the dominant political power in all of Thedas.
- On a Real Life level, the Chantry is a not-so-subtle Take That! at the Catholic Church for its failure to allow women to become priests, since the Chantry is run exclusively by women, and there's many times throughout the series that you can confront Chantry priests over their failure to include men in the priesthood. Incidentally, the arguments heard are exactly the same as what you hear in Real Life, just with the gender pronouns flipped.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, this happens a lot, both in the backstory and in the time that this game takes place. The Dunmer had previously enslaved the Argonians, but by the time of Skyrim, the Argonians rose up against their masters and now the Dunmer have been driven away from the Black Marsh. The Thalmor faction of the Altmer (high elves) persecute the Nords for allegedly being a threat to the Altmer's very existence, and they got the Empire to ban Talos worship. The Nords, as revenge for Thalmor persecution, persecute all the elves, including innocent Altmer as well as the Dunmer (who had no hand in the Thalmor's behavior) and Bosmer (ditto). The Nords also persecute the Khajiit for supposedly all being sneaky thieves and won't give them legitimate work... which means that all Khajiit are sneaky thieves because nobody will give them legitimate work and they have no other option for survival. Meanwhile, when the Nords first landed in Skyrim, the Falmer (snow elves) attacked their settlement of Saarthal because the Falmer were suspicious of Nord expansion. So as revenge, the Nords started persecuting the Falmer, which drove them underground where they were enslaved by the Dwemer, only now the Falmer wish to destroy the Nords right back. And then there's the fact that the Nords persecute the Argonians and Dunmer just for not helping the Stormcloaks, so now they discriminate against the Nords right back and refuse to help them. If all of that sounds like a mouthful, let's just say that the Nords tend to be on both ends of this trope a lot (either flipping the persecution they receive from others, or starting the initial persecution and then having it flipped on them).
- In the world of Fallout, the nuclear apocalypse occurring hundreds of years ago combined with the descendants of the current survivors mostly coming from multiethnic settlements that have long lost their previous cultural identities means that no one really identifies with prewar races and ethnicities anymore. This can lead to such situations.
- Eulogy Jones, the leader of the Slaver faction in Fallout 3, is of African-American ancestry. Race in general seems overall irrelevant to whether one ends up as a slave or slaver in Fallout, though females seem more likely to get enslaved than males for obvious reasons.
- Ulysses, a Legion frumentarii in Fallout: New Vegas, essentially plays the role of the Mighty Whitey (despite being black) to the White Legs, a group of primitive Caucasian tribals: he teaches them the ways of war and technology, and promises them to allow them to join his (Caucasian) boss's faction as equals. For this, as well as his exemplary skill in combat, he gets the entire tribe practically worshipping him and honoring him despite being an outsider; note that he never planned to keep his promise and was merely using them as a convenient proxy. He and his boss were always going to forcibly assimilate or destroy them.
- My Child Lebensborn is set in post-World War II Norway, which at the time has taken to ostracizing children fathered by soldiers from Nazi Germany. In addition to the "child of a former invader" aspect, a belief that people with German blood are mentally deficient on a genetical level has emerged in the general population.
- This drives a great deal of the plot in Tales of Symphonia. At first glance, it looks like just a case of the Desians (who are half-elves) being assholes to the humans, since when you start the game, the Desians have humans rounded up and taken to a ranch. Later in the game, you discover that the reason the Desians are persecuting the humans is because previously, the humans were being assholes to them (and to complicate matters, the full-elves also treat the half-elves badly). In fact, the motivation of the Big Bad is that the Big Bad is a half-elf who finally couldn't put up with discrimination anymore, so he deliberately set up the Cruxis organization to bring forth the Age of Lifeless Beings, except that Cruxis then attracted half-elves looking for payback against the humans.
- And then in the sequel, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, the people from Teth'ealla are still discriminating against the people from Sylvarant, so the Vanguard is formed to allegedly fight on Sylvarant's behalf, only the Vanguard ends up persecuting the people from Teth'ealla.
