The Peter Principle / Video Games

• G1 Michigan from Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is a walking demonstration that peerless piloting skills do not translate to peerless leadership skills. His corporate rivals in Arquebus have little but disdain and mockery for him, and considering how regularly and easily they outmaneuver him, it's not hard to see why. His tactics don't really have any greater depth than 'throw steel at a problem and hope it goes away', his peculiar obsession with 621 means the independent merc is routinely Easily Forgiven for Playing Both Sides even when their antics do serious damage to Balam (up to and including bullying and demoralizing his own troops with 621's superior performance even when they're literally coming for his head), and his constant Drill Sergeant Nasty attitude has created a downright toxic internal culture in Balam's armed forces that further degrades their combat effectiveness.
• Ace Attorney Investigations: Di-Jun Huang's body double pulls a Scar on himself by assassinating Huang because he thought that if he was the one risking his life then he should run the country. This person is absolutely excellent at impersonating Huang; nobody noticed the difference for over a decade. However, he proves to be an absolutely terrible leader; he's the reason Zheng Fa was home base for that international smuggling ring from the last game, and the economy is terrible under his rule. In the first case, before his exposure, he literally equates snarling and bullying other people into compliance with the force of his personality to "leadership," as opposed to, you know, actual leadership skills.
• The Sims 3, where an early job promotion can lead to poor performance at the new level, if skills and other requirements are not improved.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In Morrowind, Mages Guild Archmage Trebonius Artorius is a shining example. He actually is an incredibly talented Battlemage, which helped him to rise through the ranks of the Guild. However, he quickly proved hopelessly incompetent at managing Guild affairs. His mainland superiors responded by promoting him further (in the Kicked Upstairs fashion) and putting him in charge of the Guild branch in the most backwater district in the Empire where he could cause the least amount of trouble. He let in a badly disguised spy (whose credentials even had High Chancellor Ocato's signature spelled wrong), spends his time giving his underlings (who consider him a Pointy-Haired Boss) Impossible Tasks and sending them on Snipe Hunts, all while generally acting petty and immature to those who offend him. When the Player Character comes to him for assignments, he sends you on a task to learn about the disappearance of the Dwemer, and is shocked when you actually manage to find a plausible answer. Then he sends you on a mission to kill all of the Telvanni councilors. While there is a peaceful way to deal with him, it leaves you as the co-head of the Guild with Trebonious, which is obviously less desirable. You can instead challenge him in a duel to the death for his position, receiving it as a Klingon Promotion if you win. However, need we remind you that he is, despite his other flaws, a very talented Battlemage?
  • Other games, including Oblivion, show that this is unfortunately very common with the Mages Guild. Being skilled with magic does not automatically translate to being a skilled administrator, leading to many Pointy Haired Bosses in high-ranking positions within the Guild. When they became detrimental, they'd either (like Trebonius above) be Kicked Upstairs and/or Reassigned to Antarctica to keep them out of them way.
• Mass Effect:
  • The turian race actively tries to avert this. From the in-game codex: "Throughout their lives, turians ascended to the higher tiers and are occasionally "demoted" to lower ones. The stigma associated with demotion lies not on the individual, but on those who promoted him when he wasn't ready for additional responsibility. This curbs the tendency to promote individuals into positions beyond their capabilities." It does, however, mean that Turian individuals are not actually in control of their career paths, essentially leaving that determination to their superiors whether they like it or not.
  • The entire Citadel Council tend to be portrayed this ways, as a group of over-glorified ambassadors and politicians. If left to die in the first game, the third game reveals that their replacements aren't that much better either. The tendency to simply stick their head in the sand whenever there's trouble forces Shepard in the third game to go over their heads and organise a summit with the leaders of each of their respective governments, so that they can properly organise a counter-offensive against the Reapers, although to his credit the same turian ambassador that was such an Obstructive Bureaucrat in the previous two games is the first to reach out to Shepard and try to coordinate something after the Council meeting. This is somewhat consistent, unfortunately, with their racial hats; as the representative of the disciplined and martial Turian Hierarchy, it makes sense that their ambassador would be more helpful and useful in open war than shaky peace.
• This is the reason given, via All There in the Manual, for why Dawn of War's Indrick Boreale was such a raging General Failure. He was one of the Blood Ravens Chapter's greatest scout snipers as an initiate and a brilliant squad sergeant when he was first promoted, but his achievements in his first two positions lead to him being promoted far above his level of competence, culminating in him being given the unenviable task of trying to subjugate an entire solar system overrun with over a half dozen different enemy factions, with predictable results. Cyrus in the sequel is a deliberate defiance of the trope both in- and out-of-universe, being a scout sniper revered for his competence who refuses to be promoted past Training Sergent because he feels his skills are best suited to that position. It later turns out that Boreale was deliberately promoted to a position he wasn't ready to take by the Blood Ravens' secretly Chaos-corrupted Chapter Master. This was for two reasons, to make the Blood Ravens look bad and cause a political divide between them and the Imperium, and to kill many of the most Emperor-loving members of the chapter so that his fellow traitors could later take over. If Cyrus is the traitor in II, his betrayal is in part out of outrage at a system that would allow a failure like Boreale to rise to the top and drag a third of the chapter into the grave with him.
• Hearts of Iron 2 depicts this process with its military commanders: each successive promotion (which is required to allow them to command larger armies or fleets) reduces their skill level. Therefore, an excellent Major-General (skill level 4), who commands one division, can be promoted three times to become a mediocre Field Marshal (skill level 1), who commands twelve divisions. (Fortunately, skill level cannot fall below 0.)
• Jackie Ma from Sleeping Dogs (2012) is a not-completely-incompetent low-level street hustler at the beginning of the game, but as he begins to move up, it becomes painfully clear that he has neither the skills nor the stomach for higher-level crime.
• The Elder Powers in the Nexus War series have the ability to promote their followers to higher tiers of power than what's represented by player characters (and the setting contains some examples of this) but generally don't because of this trope. Only the player characters are able to directly influence the outcome of the Cosmic Chess Game that drives the series, and so the Powers need a very good reason to promote someone, lest they render one of their most effective game pieces ineffective in pursuing their main goal.
• Dragon Age: The Qunari avert this through the use of Frontline General and similar tropes; people are promoted to positions that make use of the skills that got them promoted. If a soldier is promoted to officer, he is expected to lead his men from the front. The Arishok, the highest rank in the Qunari military, is the greatest soldier in the military and is expected to make use of his skills on a regular basis. There are other roles that handle the more strategic, logistical, and paperwork sides of the job, although it can be part of the Arishok's role if the Arishok happens to also be skilled at that sort of thing.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • Legate Lanius, The Dragon, is a One-Man Army and a clever tactician. It's suggested, however, that he's beginning to reach his level of incompetence as General of the entire Legion's armed forces, as the Courier can convince him to back down by pointing out that his lack of logistical support in the pivotal battle of the game will make any victory a pyrrhic one. He's even more out of his depth if Caesar dies and he has to take over the nation, at which point the Legion basically gives up its plans of Utopia Justifies the Means and becomes even more violent and disorganized. History repeats, as much the same thing happened to Joshua Graham, a One-Man Army who openly admits to having no tactical ability was promoted to General and then fumbled horribly the moment he went up against an actual tactician.
  • Father Elijah was another example, within the Mojave Brotherhood of Steel. He was by all accounts, an exemplary scribe and brilliant engineer who could deconstruct and understand the implications of technology far better than any other scribe, and he could jury rig some really innovative powerful weapons. Problem was that he was horrible at inspirational leadership and sucked at organization and tactics too. This resulted in the Brotherhood suffering a humiliating defeat and rout at the hands of the NCR at HELIOS One with the survivors never knowing why he wanted them to fight for that place. His poor track record also bites him at the Sierra Madre casino, where in spite of having bomb collars installed on them to ensure compliance, the Player Character can inspire other similar victims to eventually work together and defeat Elijah once and for all.
• Sigurd in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War is unshakeably moral, a cavalier without peer and a One-Man Army, beloved by his soldiers and skilled in battlefield command. Unfortunately, his Chronic Hero Syndrome means that he's really not great at understanding the consequences of his actions or judging the people around him, which leads to disaster when he ends up conquering half the world, leading to him being murdered and leaving the results of his myriad mistakes to be cleaned up seventeen years later by an army led by his orphaned son.
• Arthur from the first Shining Force fell victim to this in his Backstory. After rising through the ranks as a knight, he became the commander of his squad, and led his troops to a miserable defeat. He left his country in shame and became a humble laundromat in Manarina, before joining the Force and resuming his original position as a knight.
• Zacchariah Trench in Control felt this way about his appointment to Director of the Federal Bureau of Control. He doesn't think he's particularly well-suited to the job, but there was no better candidate at the time — and no one else he'd trust now.
• Kratos from God of War. He is an excellent fighter and able to adapt during any battle to defeat his enemies after his Spartan training. Unfortunately, his usual first choice of strategy is to just charge into combat blades swinging, with his previous successes in combat being partially a result of his more savvy superiors knowing to point him in the right direction. And when Kratos is promoted to General of the Spartan Army, his decision to go recklessly charging into battle without thinking and with his blades swinging like he always did before his promotion nearly leads to his death and results in his entire army's decimation, with he himself only getting out of it with a figurative Deal with the Devil (which unsurprisingly bit him in the ass not very long after). And after the end of the first game and being promoted to the titular position? Let's just say there's a reason why he was kicked out of the post not less than 15 minutes into the second game. By the time of God of War Ragnarök, Kratos after Character Development is painfully aware of this weakness, and refuses to lead the battle against Odin and the Aesir fearing he might make a worse mistake than any of the two instances above but is ultimately asked to take command of the Anti-Odin alliance near the end due to having the most military experience (and this time around actually does much better).
• One mission in Saints Row (2022) is directly named after the trope. Due to getting things done during their first two jobs for Marshall, Atticus himself gives the Boss a very important task: guarding a very precious artifact in a museum. Unfortunately, you end up in the middle of a Mêlée à Trois with Los Panteros and the Idols, and the artifact gets stolen by the Idols, leading to you getting fired. The Boss started off their career at Marshall by doing impressive things, and as a result they got promoted to a job that was beyond their experience level or skill set.
• In Suzerain, Lucian Galande (your Chief of Staff and Chief Political Strategist) proves himself to be excellent in those roles, with his advice frequently being helpful to navigating the conflicts and decisions of the Presidency. In a late game event, the opportunity arises to make him your Vice President, a role which he has seemingly been gunning for. If you promote him to that position, it turns out that being good at internal political machinations does not make you good at the more PR-heavy retail politics that being a Vice President requires, and he will ultimately do a poor job at it. Your other options, Gloria Tory and Albin Clavin, are leaders of the conservative and reformist wings in the Assembly respectively, and thanks to their electoral experience turn out to be much more adept at the VP job.
• Knights of the Old Republic: Darth Malak achieves this via Sith-style Klingon Promotion. Malak is heavily implied to have been a reasonably competent tactician, as well as a brilliant warrior and Master Swordsman, an even better swordsman than his master. However, after firing on and (seemingly) killing his master and assuming the role as the head of the Sith Order, his flaws start to show. While a competent tactician and still extremely dangerous, he lacks any subtlety or nuance with long-term strategies. Mixed with his Stupid Evil tendencies, this gives the Republic a window to regroup, in spite of his brutal methods. Malak's shortcomings in this position stand out even more when compared to his master, Darth Revan, a poster-child for Pragmatic Villainy and widely regarded as one of the most intelligent and powerful Sith Lords who ever lived and one of the greatest military strategists the galaxy had ever seen.
• In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Prelate Hulrun is an excellent warrior and military commander, but gets promoted into positions where those aren't helpful and his other traits of inflexibility and paranoia come to the fore. When made leader of the Third Crusade against the demons he obsessed over finding hidden cultists- a legitimate concern, but one he took to the point the whole enterprise devolved into a Witch Hunt. Afterward he was placed in charge of law enforcement in Kenabres, which just made him worse. The player is quite likely to kill him when they encounter him trying to track down and kill a handful of innocent artists he thinks are demon worshippers while demons are actively conquering the city, but if left alive proves a useful asset once they get him onto a battlefield.
• In Mortal Kombat 1, this comes up in Li Mei's arcade ending: Li Mei is an amazing constable, and in recognition of her service in saving the realms, the empress promotes her to director of the entire constabulary. Li Mei immediately can't handle the job as she has no idea how to handle the bureaucracy and political intrigue and eventually chooses to resign her post and return to being First Constable, deciding that she's more useful to the empress as a field agent instead of behind a desk.