Fictional depictions of plagiarism in Video Games.
- BioShock Infinite:
- "Tears" to alternate universes sometimes open, letting you see the contents of another universe, often at a different time. Musician Albert Fink found some tears that had music playing, and readily claimed their lyrics and melody as his own while making them more like the kind of music played in the early 1900s setting. The result are anachronistically-arranged versions of songs that in our universe won't be written until decades after that universe's time, including a barbershop quartet arrangement of "God Only Knows" and a ragtime piano cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World".
- Albert's brother, industrialist Jeremiah Fink, used the tears to steal technology from Rapture and pass it off as his own inventions, such as plasmids, which he figured out how to make drinkable and marketed them as "vigors". Plasmid inventor Dr. Suchong found out about this and gave Fink a taste of his own medicine by stealing his drinkable plasmid idea and passing it off in Rapture as his own, earning praise from Andrew Ryan for "his" genius idea. "Theft of intellectual property... two-way street."
- Borderlands 2: In one sidequest, Sir Hammerlock shamelessly asks you to find his dead boyfriend's notes so that he can plagiarize them for his own manuscript.
- OG Loc in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a try-hard gangsta rapper wannabe who finally achieves his big break when he enlists CJ to help him steal the rhyme book of the far more successful rapper Madd Dogg. It's enough to make him famous... at least, until Madd Dogg finds out and has CJ steal it back and publicly humiliate Loc.
- In Hollow Song Of Birds, Shiran's "Chirplagiarism" Spell Cards mimic Spell Cards from official Touhou Project games. If you play as Reimu, she'll threaten to expose Shiran's plagiarism.
- Hotel Dusk: Room 215: Summer's debut hit was actually written by his then friend Alan Parker. During the game he promises to reveal himself to the public and write something of his own.
- In NEO: The World Ends with You, it turns out that Motoi, the popular influencer known as An0ther, stole his content from other people.
- Persona:
- In Persona 5, Ichiryusai Madarame is an artist who steals his students' work to pass off as his own. Fittingly, he represents Vanity of the Seven Deadly Sins. In a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, this is also reflected in his boss battle. Several of Madarame's skills are the same as your own skills, only with fancier names (Thunderclap = Zionga, Flame Dance = Agilao, Silent Snowscape = Bufula, etc.). The best example being his special attack Madara-Megido, that unlike the real Megido spells, does pitiful damage (~10 at a point where your characters' HP are above 200). This truly cements Madarame's creations are pale, inferior imitations of other works.
- In the game's sequel: Persona 5 Strikers, Ango Natsume is an author and the Jail Monarch of Sendai whose novel Prince of Nightmares is a highly plagiarized, and at times incoherent, Frankenstein's monster of a story based on various anime and video game sources. Unlike Madarame though, Ango openly admits to being a plagiarist, only caring that he gets to one-up his publishers for talking down to him. He also shows genuine respect for those whom he acknowledges the talent of, such as Yusuke, and instead represents the sin of Greed.
- Psychonauts 2: Hollis Forsythe's memories reveal that during her time as a nurse, she developed a research paper of using Mental Connection to treat patients. Her superior Dr. Potts renamed, published, and took all the credit for it, which caused a very upset Hollis to use her Mental Connection technique on Potts to mess with his mind in revenge.
- In The Sims 4, Sims in college have the option to plagiarize their homework or term papers to save time. However, it's Schmuck Bait and more often than not gets caught, resulting in humiliation, a penalty to your grades with suspension in the case of repeat offenses, and a disappointed text from your mom.
- In D3's detective attorney game The Trial, one of the cases Momota has to solve is about Paul, a fictional character from Show Within a Show anime The Stars, who is actually traced and modified from Kasuga, the mascot from the Kasugaya sweets shop. Momota the defense attorney must prove that the company who made the anime has plagiarized the shop mascot.
