Retired Badass / Video Games

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• Quercus Alba of Ace Attorney Investigations was given an ambassadorial position after becoming a highly decorated general in the Cohdopian military. He still won a knife fight with a man half his age, then arrange a complex plot to smuggle his corpse into the Bahbalese embassy to make it look like he was killed somewhere completely different with a different weapon.
  • Phoenix Wright is not retired so much as disgraced and disbarred, but he plays this role for young rookie Apollo in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. At the end of the game, with his name cleared, he comes out of retirement.
• Advance Wars 2 has Hachi and Sensei. The former is the game's shopkeeper most of the time, except he also happens to be one of the most powerful playable characters. As for Sensei, his opponent during his first appearance shrugged him off as just an old man. That is until this person realizes Sensei's real identity and past reputation as a C.O., at which point he becomes positively terrified.
• All Points Bulletin: Chiro, a former gangbanger who went legit and opened a tattoo parlor.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura:
  • Late game, you run into the elven mage Nasrudin, chilling on an uncharted island, after being thought dead for lord knows how many years. What's particularly shocking, however, is that the entire plot up until this point has led you to believe that you're the living one, the reincarnation of Nasrudin..
  • William Thorndop, the firearms master, is a former highwayman who gave up his violent profession and decided to spend the rest of his life as an Order of Halcyon monk.
• In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Ezio leaves the Brotherhood to settle down with Sofia at the end of the game. Embers picks up more than a decade after this and he's still able to keep up with Shao Jun. She's 46 years Ezio's junior, too.
• Buddy Cheque, Abner Dubbleplay, and Erik Stream from Backyard Sports. Barry Dejay seems like this, but he's not officially retired; he just has a broken ankle (and is a Small Name, Big Ego rather than a badass).
• By Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Frank Woods is this. Well into his 90s, he is living in seclusion due to the large amount of secret information he's been privvy to from his combat days. However, he does share his experience with the son of the previous game's protagonist, describing the missions he worked on with Alex Mason.
• "Reverend" Ray McCall in the first Call of Juarez. A former gunslinger, he slaughtered his way across the West before pulling a Heel–Faith Turn after murdering his preacher brother William. Then his other brother is killed, he thinks his half-Mexican nephew is the culprit, and he immediately digs up his old longcoat and revolvers for another blood bath.
• Julius Belmont in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. He's fifty-five years old and has been out of practice for thirty-six years, but the minute Dracula's back in the castle? So is Julius.
• Dingodile in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is revealed to have reformed and retired to run his own diner. He gets dragged into the events of the game by accident and shows that he still can fight just as well as he used to, only with an air cannon rather than his trademark flamethrower.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest II: The messenger didn't go to Midenhall to get the prince to help. He wanted THE KING. Unfortunately, the two kingdoms have probably been out of touch for a while, as Midenhall's king notes that he's a bit too old to be adventuring about. Have at it, my boy.
  • Dragon Quest IX: Greygnarl chased the Gittish Empire out of Upover 300 years ago, but in the ensuing peace, his powers have deteriorated somewhat.
• Dragon's Crown has Morgan Lisley, the game's shopkeeper, equipment repairer, and unknown item identifier all in one, is revealed in one of the Treasure Art to be a legendary genius runic mage who is one of the few who mastered Golem Magic, with the notes stating she was able to control several Golems at once and play with them like dolls even back when she was just a Child Mage more than a century ago.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind:
    • 4000 year-old reclusive wizard Divayth Fyr is one. He was formerly a member of Great House Telvanni and the Psijic Order, but left both to run his "Corprusarium", a safe haven for those afflicted with the Corprus Disease.
    • Yagrum Bagarn, the last living Dwemer, is one of the residents of Fyr's Corprusarium and also fits the trope. He was a Master Crafter in service to Lord Kagrenac who spent time traveling to "outer realms". When he returned to find his people gone, he traveled all across Tamriel searching for any other surviving Dwemer. He caught the Corprus Disease and was forcibly retired. He is still in possession of a full set of Dwemer armor, a stash of Dwemer coins, and the legendary hammer Volendrung.
  • Skyrim: Delphine, a former member of the Blades, was forced into retirement and hiding by the terms in the White-Gold Concordat which dissolved and outlawed the Blades. Now in her mid-50s, she is still a highly capable warrior and the Thalmor dossier on her advises the use of "overwhelming force" when engaging her. Midway through the main quest, she'll come out of retirement to take over as the Grandmaster of the reformed Blades.
• Fallout: New Vegas has the Enclave Remnants, former members of the fascist Enclave army. The Courier, with the help of Arcade Gannon can rile them back into action for the final battle, where they drop in from Vertibirds (helicopters) in full Powered Armor with a variety of deadly weapons in which they show why the Enclave should be feared to this very day.
• In Far Cry 2 Hakim and Iosip (Albanian) are retired from their respective nation's armies, but they both still kick ass. And in the first game, you're a retired special forces type (ex-CIA?) until the bad guys blow up your boat. That was a mistake.
• Far Cry 6 has an entire retiree home of them: The Legends of '67, who staged their own successful revolution on the country of Yara and spent the rest of their lives as a living tourist attraction for guerilla fans. Unfortunately for the Libertad resistance, all but one of them are jaded due to their sacrifices coming to nothing for Yara but dignified poverty. And then El Presidente crosses a line by deploying and selling bioweapons, spurring them to go on one last revolution just to see him die.
• Fatal Fury: Richard Meyer is an opponent in the first game, but after his loss there, he decided he wasn't strong enough to be a full-time fighter and quit the tournament circuit to focus on his restaurant, the Pao Pao Cafe. He later became The Mentor to Bob Wilson, who took his place as the resident Dance Battler of the series.
• Finding Light: Uno, the rogue of the Knight Bewitched party, retires to a Sky Farm in order to raise his son Dylan. He initially claims that he's not much of a fighter anymore, but this turns out to be false when he shows up in the Depths, where he's strong enough to be a boss.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Garcia from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones retired from Renais's army when his wife died. He was talked into coming out of retirement by his son Ross after helping Eirika's army ward off bandits who were attacking their village.
  • Jagen retires from the battlefield in between Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, becoming the hero's non-playable strategist. At the end of the saga, he fully retires from the army.
  • After being one of the protagonists of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Eliwood was forced to retire from the battlefield before Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade due to his poor health, and he's not even forty yet. In the bonus trial maps, Eliwood is playable as a Paladin, with stats that suggest he could still be a tough nut if it wasn't for his chronic illness.
  • Jeralt from Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a former captain of the Knights of Seiros who had left the church two decades prior to the start of the game to raise his son/daughter (the Player Character) as a mercenary. The archbishop calls him out of retirement to aid the protagonist in their new role as a teacher at the church's local Military Academy. The few missions where he appears as an allied NPC show that he hasn't lost much of his fighting skill.
• Marcus Fenix by the time of Gears of War 4. While everyone else who survived the first three games now have other jobs, Marcus is a reclusive hermit living in the vast estate of his deceased wife's family, fixing whatever needs fixing and growing tomatoes in between daily visits to her grave, while his son JD gets up to no good with the Outsiders, living at odds with the COG. When JD and his companions come seeking his help, bringing trouble with them, he reveals his vast stash of COG armor and weapons and suits right back up. By the next game, he is officially (and perhaps forcibly) un-retired and back kicking ass for the COG.
• Grow Comeback start with a hero who defeats the monster with no problem, once he defeat the last monster time will pass and he will lose his hair and become fat, then a new monster will appear and you need to help him become badass again so he can beat it.
• Kliff Undersn from Guilty Gear was a retired commander of the Holy Order of Sacred Knights before entering the tournament.
• Agent 47 of Hitman tried to retire after the events of the first game. It didn't work.
• In Icewind Dale II, the origin of the Holy Avenger Cera Sumat involved one of these. Long ago, an old paladin long since retired heard of six powerful villains called the Lost Followers ravaging the land. Taking up his sword once more, the paladin singlehandedly tracked down and defeated them all. The weapon description states that Cera Sumat was once a simple iron sword, but the courage and faith of the paladin made it something more.
• In the Kingdom Hearts series, Yen Sid used to be a Keyblade master on par with Eraqus and Xehanort. But he retired and passed his knowledge onto Mickey, which turned out well.
• King Graham in Kings Quest (2015) is a bedridden old man dying of magical poison in the present day. The premise of the game is that he is retelling the stories of his youthful adventures to his granddaughter Gwendolyn. All the while begging his Magic Mirror to show him one last adventure. Ultimately, the mirror shows him no new adventures.
• Jolee Bindo of Knights of the Old Republic is an ex-Jedi hermit who crash-landed on Kashyyyk twenty years ago and never put much effort in trying to leave thanks to being quite disillusioned with the Jedi and the galaxy at large. (Granted, the forest floor is so dangerous that it's a semi-retirement at best.) He joins your party because he doesn't have much else to do and because you're actually Revan.
  • The Jedi Exile in the second game, a General in Revan's army during the Mandalorian Wars, who after detonating the super-weapon that devastated Malachor V and becoming severed from the Force, willingly accepted banishment from the Jedi Order and spent ten years wandering the Outer Rim. Part of their return to action is to discover why they've regained their Force abilities, find out who is trying to kill them, and prevent a Humanoid Abomination from leaving planets devoid of life.
• Bill from Left 4 Dead. A former (so technically retired) Green Beret who served two tours in Vietnam.
• Deconstructed with Cassius Bright in The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Considered a One-Man Army and in-universe Memetic Badass, he leaves the army due to grief over his wife's death. The void he leaves behind is considerable, and several higher-ups in the army believe the country is defenceless without him. This leads to his protege staging a coup and trying to uncover an ancient superweapon. Cassius is eventually forced out of retirement to clear up this mess.
• Giliath Osborne in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel was said to be a former general in the Erebonian army before he became the high chancellor of the empire and retired from his military duties. And if a person is a significant character in the Trails Series, then chances are that the person can kick a lot of ass. He finally proves his worth in Cold Steel IV and it turns out that he's a One-Man Army who could have soloed most of the cast and come out on top.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • King Daltus, Smith, and the hermit on Mount Crenel in The Minish Cap were all swordsmen who competed in the Picori Festival tournament in the past. The former two also had a Friendly Rivalry, explaining why Link and Zelda grew up as Childhood Friends.
  • Link's mentor Alfonzo in Spirit Tracks was previously a member of the royal guard before he retired to be a train engineer.
  • Impa in Breath of the Wild is implied to have been much mightier in her youth compared to her feeble appearance now. True to form, if Link swings a weapon at her she will do a Nonchalant Dodge and call him a fool instead of cowering like most NPCs. You actually get to see her in her prime in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, where she's one of the playable characters.
• Laike from Lunar: The Silver Star Lunar is still an adventurer despite being retired from heroism. He just does it for kicks.
• Mass Effect 2:
  • Dr. Mordin Solus, an old ^note  Technically, he is in his early thirties, but given the salarian short life span it makes him a seasoned adult salarian doctor who set up a free clinic in the slums of a space-borne Wretched Hive so he could spent his final years helping people. He is also a former black-ops science specialist who's very handy with a submachine gun, casually murders mercenaries who try to shake his clinic down and hangs their corpses outside as a warning, and willingly enlists on a suicide mission to stop the Collectors and their Reaper masters.
  • A more minor character, a krogan known only as "the Patriarch", can be found serving as The Dragon to the local crime boss in Afterlife, on Omega. Once upon a time, it was he who ran the planet, until a young asari named Aria came along and overthrew him, only leaving him alive as a symbol of what she was capable of. It's possible through a sidequest to bring him indirectly out of retirement; Aria wants him to hide from some assassins, but he can be persuaded to allow Shepard to kill them in his name, regaining some of his badass status.
• Metal Gear Solid:
  • In the first game, Solid Snake had retired to the Alaskan wilderness to try to get away from his past before being forced back into service. Technically, he had semi-retired prior to the beginning of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, as well. His retirement is usually explained as disillusionment after the many revelations of the first and second games, and it was usually with the blessing of his parent agency (FOXHOUND)... until they needed him again. In Metal Gear Solid, he was understandably upset to be pulled out of retirement, which he entered at only about twenty-seven or twenty-eight.
  • There's also Col. Roy Campbell, who isn't a Colonel anymore during the first Metal Gear Solid, but Snake continues to respect him and refer to him as such despite Campbell's objections.
  • This can also be said of everyone who was part of the Cobra Unit in WWII. No one knows what happened to them after the war, (With the exception of The Fury, who got crisped in space.) but The Boss brings them all back together.
• Lord Nasher Alagondar, the Big Good of the Neverwinter Nights series, is a former adventurer.
• Muramasa from the Xbox remake of Ninja Gaiden, an elderly shopkeeper, shows himself in the second game to be quite the fighter.
• Half of the main cast of Overwatch, depending on how you define "retired". Following the fall of Overwatch, most of its original members went off doing vigilante and mercenary work — even (and especially, it seems) if they were believed dead before or shortly after the fall. Commander Jack Morrison, the head of Overwatch, and Ana Amari, took up the mantels of Soldier: 76 and Shrike, respectively, and are currently somewhere in Egypt. Reinhardt Wilhelm and his squire Brigitte Lindholm traveled across Europe fighting injustice where they found it, while Brigitte's father, Torbjörn, attempted to atone for his role in the First Omnic Crisis. Jesse McCree and Lena Oxton also (separately) became vigilantes, while Angela Ziegler focused her efforts on helping others. Genji Shimada, meanwhile, retired to a Nepalese Omnic monastery to learn how to accept his cyborg body.
• Admiral Bobbery in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. A tough sailor who sailed the world and such when younger, he comes straight out of retirement after Mario persuades him that they need a captain for the voyage to Keelhaul Key, then joins his party for the rest of the game slightly later.
• Bain in PAYDAY: The Heist used to do heists back in his day. Now he serves as the team's eyes and ears during heists when it comes to police activity
• Brother Florian from Pentiment served as a mercenary in Poland, where he lost his eyes but gained experience on wounds (plus sexually transmitted diseases) during his inspection of Lorez's corpse to prove Piero's innocence.
• The President in Pikmin 2 was once a space captain but left it behind to start up Hocotate Freight. He comes out of retirement when Louie gets left behind.
• Pokémon:
  • Red in Pokémon Gold and Silver/Crystal and their remakes is one; the previous Player Character and champion, despite being only 14 years old, he waits at the top of Mt. Silver, a perpetually snowy mountain and the last area of the game, and has one of the most powerful Pokemon teams in the history of the series, and the highest-level Pokemon that any NPC trainer has had outside of battle facilities (his Pikachu); something that is being actively enforced, as shown when his Pikachu's level was bumped up in the remakes because Barry's starter briefly overtook his Pikachu in levels. In Pokémon Sun and Moon, now an adult, it seems he has returned to civilization and taking open challengers again as one of the bosses of the Battle Tree post-game facility, alongside his old friend turned rival turned friend again Blue.
  • Steven Stone, the League Champion of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, steps down from his position in Emerald, letting Wallace take his position instead, while Wallace's mentor Juan takes over things as the Sootopolis Gym Leader. You have the option of hunting down Steven in Meteor Falls and challenging him to battle; his Pokemon are even stronger than his team as Champion. The remakes make him a champion again.
  • Professor Oak is implied to have been one. He's a Pokémon Professor now but he was Agatha's rival in the past. Agatha ultimately became the more powerful of the two and ended up in the Elite 4.
  • Deconstructed in Pokémon Black and White. Alder gets called out of retirement to put a stop to N's ascent to power, but he's badly out of practice, and N easily defeats him. Reconstructed post-game when Alder starts training again and becomes a Superboss, a position he keeps in the sequels.
• Ford Cruller from Psychonauts is retired, due mainly to a past battle shattering his mind into several personalities. This problem is remedied by the presence of psitanium, leading to a rather dramatic entrance during Sasha and Milla's battle with Oleander, where he ties a block of psitanium on his back and bursts through the damn ceiling.
• Your coach, Doc Louis, in Punch-Out!!. Lighthearted, obese, friendly, and was such a devastating boxer in his prime that, even now long after retirement, his Star Punch is a One-Hit KO: twice as powerful as Mr. Sandman's Dreamland Express and Mac's version of that move. The only other moves that do as much damage as that are Bald Bull's Bull Charge and Von Kaiser's Blitzkrieg Uppercut, and those two require a considerable build-up and telegraph to get the same amount of power Doc Louis can generate by just hurling an uppercut from a standing pose.
• Landon Ricketts in Red Dead Redemption, a former American Wild West gunslinger who retired to Mexico, where he serves as an unofficial lawman when the need arises but spends most of his time relaxing and playing poker.
• Files found in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard tell you that Jack Baker is a former Marine. Despite this, he never uses any of the guns or ammunition littered around the house. One imagines it's a combination of being too mentally unstable to have the patience to use them properly, as well as just having too good a time throwing his superhuman strength around to bother. His brother and the protagonist of the End of Zoe DLC, Joe Baker, is also retired military. He's spent his time since hunting gators at the edge of the Baker family property and, when Eveline and her monsters arrive, take to fighting them with his bare fists.
• In the Sakura Wars series, Sumire Kanzaki, a member of the Imperial Combat Revue's Flower Division, was forced to retire from active duty when her spiritual power dwindled to the point that she could no longer operate her Mini-Mecha. Come Sakura Wars (2019), she serves as the new commander of the Imperial Combat Revue. Now Older and Wiser, she doesn't need to fight on the front lines to prove that she is still not a woman to be trifled with.
• Senran Kagura has Asuka's grandparents, Hanzo and Sayuri. The fact they made it to retirement age in a field of work where students are advised not to set any life goals that involve making it past 25 says it all — Hanzo operates a Truce Zone by sheer presence, and Sayuri can kick the ass of students a quarter her age without breaking a sweat.
• The Getter Team in Shin Super Robot Wars. They act as mentors for the protagonists' group and join up with Shin Getter late in the game.
• Silver Falls Gaiden: Deathly Delusion Destroyers and Ruby River has Slim, who used to be an ace fighter pilot. However, he's been a long downward spiral of alcoholism for years. He feels guilty about being so useless, so he's particularly gung-ho about helping despite being clearly sloshed. But given that the plot revolves around finding a missing hiker deep in a forest teeming with Lovecraftian monsters, he's more of a liability than help. The protagonist has to gently, but firmly tell him to go back into town and sober up over some coffee. The best he can do now is pass along rumors of various cryptids roaming the area.
• Splatoon has Cap'n Cuttlefish, who was a hero of the Great Turf War roughly a century ago, but is now too old for frontline duties in the New Squidbeak Splatoon.
• In Sword of the Stars: The Pit the Marine character is technically an ex-Marine, a former SolForce man retired to the planet the game's set on.
• Tekken: Kunimitsu eventually retired from fighting after suffering humiliation due to failing to steal Michelle's pendant and Yoshi's sword. She eventually married a fellow shinobi and gave birth to a daughter who would eventually surpass her and take up her title.
• Twisted Wonderland: Lilia is an elderly retired military general, and can singly beat up multiple bullies without using magic despite his small stature.
• Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End when they help Samuel Drake get the Treasure or stop Nadine and Rafe. Nate is technically retired for a short period and now working as a Salvage diver and calls back to adventure by his older brother Sam. and Nate lies to her wife, and go treasure hunting. Until they encounter by telling the truth at Madagascar. Victor is a Retired marine officer who still knows how to fly a plane, too.
• The Walking Dead:
  • At the end of the series, Clementine is no longer able to fight walkers efficiently after losing a leg and now spends her new peaceful life leading her community.
  • Larry used to be an army commander. He is considered the brawn of the motel survivors, often participating in manual labor.
• World of Warcraft has several examples. Most notably Tirion Fordring, who players first meet as a humble small-holder in the Eastern Plaguelands. After the death of his son Taelan he reveals himself as a powerful Paladin and goes on to play a major role in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
  • His Worthy Opponent Eitrigg is a retired orc warrior who ran into him by chance. After some mutual life-saving, he rejoins the Horde as an advisor to help them learn the pre-corruption ways.
• Citan from Xenogears: When you first meet him, he is just a simple country doctor with a hot wife and precocious daughter. Then it turns out that he was one of Solaris's elite Elements and is one of the most powerful playable characters. Especially on disc 2, where he's retrieved his sword. As a bare-handed fighter, he was already tough. As a master of iaijutsu, he's a virtual one-man army.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Masumi Arakawa was a hitman with a such a prodigious reputation that he was known simply as "the Assassin". However, when the game begins he is content to head up a small-time third-string family whose worst crimes are roughing up debtors. After the Time Skip, he has been promoted to an HQ role, but his role is purely administrative. His gun skills are still more than up to par, however, as his ability to non-lethally shoot Ichiban in the chest proves.

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