Possession Burnout in Video Games.
- Vincent Olmstead from Borderlands 3 "Guns, Love and Tentacles DLC" is a Lovecraft-style cultist trapped inside the heart of an Eldritch Abomination that can turn anyone who puts a ring made from a piece of the heart into a copy of himself that he can control. The twist is that Vincent got put in the heart in the first place because he was terminally ill and that was the only thing that could stop the disease from killing him and since the ring can only recreate his body exactly as it was all the clones are terminally ill too but don't have the heart to keep them alive.
- In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, Dracula can possess people by sneaking up behind them and turning into blood that enters his victims' orifices. His hosts can barely do anything but move slowly as their health slowly deteriorates.
- In Dishonored, Corvo has the ability "Possession" which can be used on either animals or humans, neither of which respond kindly to the process. Animals die once the possession ends (with some, like rats, winding up as Ludicrous Gibs), while humans puke their guts out.
- Final Fantasy XIV has the Ascians, a race of beings that can possess bodies. It takes quite a bit of energy to possess a living host and doing it too much can put a strain on the Asican doing the possessing. Lahabrea was severely weakened due to him hopping from one body to another constantly, which made him weak enough for the primal Thordan to absorb his soul. Emet-Selch had many clones of his host body made so he can retain his full strength due to him possessing the "same" body every time.
- In FEAR 3, when you're playing as Paxton Fettel, you can only possess a body for a while before it explodes and you're expelled. You also destroy the body if you willingly leave it.
- Zato-1 from Guilty Gear is an assassin who relies on a shadowy beast named Eddie to help him fight (as Zato sacrificed his eyesight to gain control of Eddie), which includes Eddie possessing his body at times. Until he died at the end of GGX, that is. In the XX installments, Eddie has to deal with controlling Zato's decaying corpse in combat until he can find a new host (or, in one Accent Core Plus ending, realizes he's capable of surviving on his own just fine). This is also a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as it was the way the creative team found to write around Kaneto Shiozawa's death, as he voiced Zato-1. note
- Zappa from the same series wakes up with more and more damage to his body every time he is (very frequently) possessed by S-Ko, although in this case it's less that the possession is inherently harmful and more that S-Ko's Hair-Trigger Temper causes her to get Zappa in fights with just about everybody they come across.
- In Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, the Light Side ending has the ancient spirit of Marka Ragnos possessing the Big Bad, Tavion, with the help of an Ancient Artifact that Tavion had used to resurrect him in the first place. Once the artifact is destroyed and Ragnos' spirit leaves Tavion, there's nothing left but her body.
- Mass Effect:
- In the first game, Saren's corpse is possessed by Sovereign, burning away all tissue until only the cybernetic components remained.
- Mass Effect 2; while there's no gameplay consequences, the fact that Harbinger-possessed Collectors crumble into ash on their defeat while regular ones leave corpses suggests that there's something like this going on. Also notable is that their health bar is replaced with an armor bar, indicating they're no longer really alive. Collectors are implanted with Reaper tech, that allows Harbinger to override their nervous systems, effectively driving the implants into overdrive. As Shepard wears them down, the implants work harder to keep the Collector alive, until they burn out, taking the corpse with them.
- Extended Leviathan channelling in the DLC of the same name can be seriously bad for your health. Passive control seems to be sustainable indefinitely, with one area being under Leviathan control for ten years, but when they actually speak through you it can cause serious damage quickly, as Ann Bryson will demonstrate if you take the Renegade interrupt. Even if you don't, and she's saved, it's pretty much explicit in her War Asset writeup that she sustained a bit of damage, although most of her faculties are intact.
- In Messiah, possession is a major game mechanic. Whenever the player character, Bob, possesses someone, that person's physical health is drained to replenish Bob's own health.
- The Body Snatcher race known as the Ing in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes usually possess hosts with little trouble, though it is apparently a power that requires a little practice according to Samus's scan notes. Younger Ing sometimes form imperfect possessions that cause permanent damage to the host form. Ing can also possess fresh corpses, but the bodies are still dead so they are slow and zombie-like. If inexperienced Ing bite off more than they can chew and try to possess powerful creatures, the creature can reject them or even kill them from within. The Space Pirates figured this out and began to look into how to prevent possession, though it mainly devolved into Unfriendly Fire or suicide.
- In Street Fighter this is M.Bison’s main problem. The strength of his Psycho Power is so great that his own body can barely handle a portion of his full power without starting to rapidly breakdown, which has caused his power to fluctuate between games. One of his main goals is to find or create a body capable of handling the full might of his Psycho Power.
- Super Mario Odyssey features a "capture" mechanic that lets Mario possess enemies by flinging his partner Cappy onto their heads. In an inversion to this trope, he can't possess a T-Rex for too long as it's too strong for Cappy to fully control.
