Catherine: Pretty much the whole point of Vincent, the weak-willed, cheating protagonist.note Technically he isn't sure if he cheated due to alcohol, but is so skittish that he never works up the courage to properly talk to the woman he may have committed the act with and figure out what happened.
In the MMO City of Villains, one mission you can get is to kidnap a snitch named Joshua who saw you committing a crime from his apartment while he was "staying up late playing dOs". The Joshua NPC character model is fat, balding, frumpily dressed, and has a decidedly unintelligent-looking face. And to add injury to insult, his pathfinding sucks, which not only makes him really annoying during the mission, but making him look extra idiotic as every twenty feet you have to go back for him and find him standing there staring around as if he had no clue where you went.
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening of course has Dante himself, on closer insepction. Anime-level pretty boy and muscly good looks and demonic badassery aside, he's still a pizza gobbling, rock guitar loving dork who is only on his adventure primarily to have a fun crazy "party" of a time (much like you) as well as find hot chicks and get laid (hitting on Action Girl Lady frequently in the game). Really saving the world appears to behind several immature priorities for him, although in some fairness he's only 19 years old in the third game. Even when he's older, Dante cannot resist being an relatably embarssing and hilariously cringey goofball e.g breaking into Michael Jacksondance in DMC5 to the withering expresion of Trish and glee of the equally dorky Nico. Also worth noting Dante's relatably dumb antics are precisely why fans love him and attempts to make him more traditionally "cool" and gritty such as in DMC2 and more drastically DmC: Devil May Cry were met with considerable dislike.
Nero, Dante's nephew and successor from DMC5 and DMC5 is actually more of a Played for Drama case of this. The frustration Nero feels being Overshadowed by Awesome courtsey of his Trickster Mentor uncle in both gameplay and story is designed to reflect how the player feels while playing as Nero and fighting Dante or being around him (not helped by Dante calling Nero "dead weight" in the fifth game). Much of DMC5 is about Nero coming into his own and managing to rub shoulders with his uncle and father Vergil with the former Passing the Torch to him. Like Dante, Nero also has his fair share of player reflective dorky traits such as Air Guitar.
Divekick: Stream is a goofy-looking, hate-filled demon in a straight jacket who spends all of his time on the Internet and only derives pleasure from trolling people. He is meant to mock the typical viewer of fighting game streams, known as a stream monster.
Divine Divinity: Your diary contains some observations on your stats, which were uniformly insulting until you got them fairly high, which took grinding and focusing on only a few. As a starting character, even though you look and act like an average person, your diary paints a portrait of a crippled, bumbling simpleton who gets winded from getting out of bed and has trouble forming sentences longer than three words. Made worse when you realize it's your own diary, meaning the person who wrote those horrible things was you.
Final Fantasy VII: Cloud Strife, believe it or not actually as he was originally presented was an example of this, similar to Raiden. Despite his good looks and genuine BFS swinging badassery, Cloud frequently ends up making a fool of himself in relatably embarrassing situations and tries his damnest to be cool (especially concerning his love interests) and not a dork yet is seemingly always overshadowed by The AceBig Bad Sephiroth. This also ties into the major crushing relevation of the game that Cloud isn't the First Class SOLDIER he thinks he is, but rather a grunt who has the Fake Memories of his actually acomplished friend Zack with Cloud accepting who really is being the He's Back! of the third act. This trope in relation to Cloud is often cited as one of the reasons why the unambiguously cool "emo" Tragic Hero Cloud of later titles can be often disliked, as the original game empathised that the edgy badass is who Cloud wants to be rather who he actually is.
Cloud: Alright everyone, let's mosey!
Cid: Damn! Again? Stop sayin' it like a wimp! Can't you say 'Move out!' or somethin'?
This aspect of Cloud resurfaced in Final Fantasy VII Remake. While he's still cooler and more aloof than ever, Cloud in Remake has the attitude of impatient gamer or disgruntled worker who is only interested in getting paid and swearing up a storm. Like the original though he starts to soften up and show his more relatable and endearing dorkly insecure side thanks to Tifa, Aerith, Jessie and Barret putting chinks in his armour and teasing him for wanting to be nothing more than an antisocial edgelord.
Final Fantasy VIII: Squall is similar but distinct in this regard compared to Cloud. While Squall is a highly skilled gunblade toting badass, his antisocial behavior and lone wolf attitude are actually attributed with his immaturity rather than being positive aspects of his mental well being. When a cool new girl enters his life, rather than sweep her off her feet with his badassery and brooding demeanor, he is the one who is taken back by her enthusiastic attitude. When she falls unconscious, Squall stops the plot to find her a cure so much he plays into the villains hands and nearly gets them both killed. Basically Cloud is what a gamer thinks they are instead of what they actually are, Squall is what a gamer would be if they actually lived in a fantasy world.
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon: Lose enough units to get enough replacement characters, and eventually you'll get ones with insulting names. Note that to get the best secret characters, you have to keep your army small, and there will be some times where picking up replacement characters (which happens automatically) will put you over the desired army size.
Taken literally with the nameable protagonist of the Visual NovelGo! Go! Nippon!, a dorky, socially awkward Occidental OtakuManchild who goes to Japan without knowing anything about it, thus implying that his only learning materials were manga, anime and games. Because the game was made with a foreign audience in mind (an unusual case in the mostly Japan-only world of VNs), and the Featureless Protagonist is supposed to be an avatar for the player, This Loser Is literally You, the player! He still gets the girl in the end, though.
Trevor, one of the three main playable characters, is a psychotic, brutally violent sexual deviant who constantly threatens his friends with sexual and violent acts if they keep pissing him off. Word of God is that he's a representation on how a typical GTA player acts in the game, combining this trope with You Bastard!.
HuniePop: Nikki is a stereotypical Gamer Chick and not even a particularly flattering one at that. She is a misanthropic NEET who works part-time as a barista (and is rude to her customers) and spends her days playing video games and eating junk food. Yet she is a firm fan favourite, and even major streamers like TotalBiscuit found her the most endearing heroine.
The King of Fighters: Normally, most people from SNK don't fit this trope. Unless you're Iori Yagami. If being possessed by Orochi, failing to beat his rival Kyo, and being forced to turn into a girl isn't enough proof, go play a challenge of Iori vs Homer in M.U.G.E.N. Homer will sum Iori up in 9 words.
Homer: (after seeing Iori fall on his back from laughing too hard) Do you know how stupid you look right now?
Despite being a Heroic Mime, Link semi-qualifies in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass due to how the games cutscene-humor tends to abuse him (at least until he gets badass later on). It is very easy to picture him scoring 10% on a math test, despite being able to take on the most complicated dungeons and puzzles known to man. His often very, very clueless expressions really don't help. To quote King of Red Lions: "You are... surprisingly dull witted..."
The interesting thing about this example in Wind Waker is that the game repeatedly shoves in the player's face that this Link IS NOT THE HERO OF TIME NOR HIS REINCARNATION....that's right, you're effectively some nobody kid dressed up in garb in remembrance of the Hero of Time, but nothing more... no dreams about you kicking evil dark lord ass, no prophecy about how you'll save the land, nothing. And after all that, this Link... goes on to meet his own destiny, not as a prophesied hero, but the Hero of Winds through sheer will and perseverence alone.
"Who wants to play as a weak, pathetic character like this? Wouldn't you rather be a tough guy? Isn't that the whole point of playing a game? To feel empowered? To be someone you're not? I mean, I get it. He's supposed to be a nerd. Well, this nerd makes me look like Charles Bronson. Steve Urkel could beat the shit out of this guy!"
Then again, he slowly evolved into a tough hero towards the end of the game, losing his awkward stance, his fear of creatures, and he even got to use a sword! He even gets the girl in the end. Two of them, in fact.
Lollipop Chainsaw: While Juilet herself isn't example of this, her boyfriend the Deuteragonist Nick (a disembodied head) most certianly is. Nick is very reflective of the Most Gamers Are Male trope with his blustering bravado, whininess, crudeness, favourite hobbies including "masterbation" and lustful reactions to Juilet changing into other Ms. Fanservice outfits "Man I wish I still had a penis right now". Swan the Troubled TeenBig Bad can be similarly seen as this as well, with his backstory of pinning shyly after the beautiful Juilet after she was compassionate to him meant to be realistic and relatable... at least until he triggers the Zombie Apocalypse over Juilet dating Nick.
Metal Gear's Raiden. While he is beautiful rather than ugly, this is a side-effect of him being made deliberately androgynous so that both sexes identify with him. While he is fairly book-smart, he lacks common sense and does everything extremely by-the-book. He is routinely humiliated, mocked, and has a great sense of smallness and lack of control against the huge Government Conspiracy plot. The coolest man on the planet develops a liking for him, but, even so, hides information from him and says things deliberately to rile him up and humiliate him. His CO patronises him, his girlfriend nags him, and he experiences all manner of humiliating circumstance, such as slipping on bird droppings or getting urinated on by a guard. Word of God has it that all this was designed to make the player identify more with him. Naturally, everyone hated him (though he did get a better reputation later on). One blogger even went so far as to call him Robo-Shinji.
It's an actual plot point in Metal Gear Solid 2 that Raiden did everything Snake did with more emotional baggage. He also had to go through more crap, from being pissed on to watching a young girl die, finding out his enemy is his godfather, discovering his dark past that haunts his PTSD-fueled nightmares, discovering his support team were all AI, he was being manipulated all along, his girlfriend may be faking her love for him, and it very well could be that nothing he knows is real. He and the player both end up on the receiving end of an epic Mind Screw. They even spell it out for you at the end, when Raiden looks at the dog tags he was wearing for the whole game, notices that they have the player's name on them, and throws them away after saying he has no idea who the name belongs to.
Otacon was named after the nutty computer in 2001. He was seduced by his stepmother, which made his father kill himself. He accidentally designed Metal Gear Rex as a tool of the apocalypse. His stepsister died hating him. He named himself after an anime convention. He peed himself in terror when he first met Snake. He wondered aloud if love could bloom on the battlefield. Worst of all, Hideo Kojima designed Otacon as someone that you, the player, could relate to. You are the real loser.
No More Heroes: Travis Touchdown is... well... every negative stereotype of an otaku there is. Suda51 is not subtle. And then No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle has him undoing all of that, becoming a character worthy of actual respect... or at least approaching it. And even then he's still way more of an otaku than most.
And yet, he calls the player out on their perverted love of violence in video games in the opening to the sequel. And then again after finishing off Alice, he calls them out again. The second time comes after some much-needed character development, where he starts to realize he's getting sick and tired of mindless killing.
The gameplay itself is considered to be an allusion to the (stereotypical) player. From the Headscratchers:
No More Heroes is a satire of the outlook one who collects video games would have. Travis represents a gamer, and the assassination missions, with their stylized, hyperviolent nature, represent videogames. The rest of the world, on the other hand, is monotonous and contains dull jobs which Travis is motivated to do only so he can get back to the missions. In other words, it is a satire of the sort of otaku whose only interaction with the outside world are purely for the purpose of acquiring more videogames/anime/etc or more money as to buy more videogames/anime/etc.
Poker Night 2: Most of GLaDOS' dialogue directed at The Player indicate this, but then again, so does her dialogue with just about ALL of the characters.
I wouldn't be ashamed about losing. You have plenty of other things to be ashamed about.
The Secret of Monkey Island has the pathetic Guybrush Threepwood. He knows about piracy about as much as you do, but he does know that he wants to be a pirate. Continued to some extent in Lechuck's Revenge, where Guybrush is apparently a realised pirate, he just doesn't get any respect and is on his way to discover the Big Whoop, an alleged immense treasure to fix that problem.
Silent Hill 3: Heather like Nikki is a Rare Female Example. Unlike the vast majority of her contemporary female protagionists Heather is not a extremly gorgeous and cool Lara Croft/Jill Valentine type, with her face being noticeably freckly, realistically blemished and has rings under her eyes. Hell In-Universe Heather even states she hates mirrors, with this Appearance Angst about how she looks being horrically mocked by Silent Hill which presents Heather with her Enemy Without Memory of Alessa being a disfigured and rotting mirror of Heather herself. Heather also proves to be relatably dorky and ackward in the game's moments of levity and even in the more serious moments she uses lame one-liners taken out of a 80s action film, saying "checkmate" unironically when confronting Claudia with a gun in the climax. This all likely why Heather is so beloved among female fans of the series and genre.
Other protagionists such as Harry (Heather/Cheryl's dad), James, Henry etc are also examples of this. Rather than being macho One-Man Army desperados they're instead all unathletic and scared dudes who Stumbled Into the Plot and are hapless as anyone else would be in that situation. James as well as Eddie from the second game provide darker examples of this with their rotten luck and frusation in life meant to be relatable making their crimes all the more terrible, though James at least is geuinely guilt ridden. Harry Word of God was even designed to be as non-distinct as possible so the player could project themselves onto him better.
Skies of Arcadia: The protagonist, Vyse, can become this if you get a low Swashbuckler Rating. The complete embodiment of this trope is having between zero to five points (and it does take some effort to sink that low) thus earning you the title "Vyse the Ninny." The result of this will be ridicule from NPCs, higher store prices, and the inability to access certain features, such as crew members (one of them needs a high rating to get).
The absolute lowest is actually implied to be "Vyse the Fallen Pirate," but this is only triggered in the remake via an in-game event and doesn't affect you in the same way the regular ratings do. When you defeat three particular enemies, your rating skyrockets.
Spec Ops: The Line: The actions you commit are basically one long string of the game saying, "You suck for buying\renting this game, you suck for playing it, you suck for liking it, you suck for buying\renting other shooter games, you suck for playing them, you suck for liking them..." This is best summarized with a line that is Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
Konrad: The truth, Walker, is that you're here because you wanted to feel like something you're not - a hero.
Captain Martin Walker is a ruggedly handsome, physically imposing US officer in Delta Force, exactly the kind of character who is normally a projection of a usually male power fantasy. The game uses this trope in a meta way, as Walker's desire to be a hero and quasi-fourth wall breaking certainty that the events going on around him are a Hero's Journey just waiting for him to go through it proves to be his — and the player's — undoing. Word of God is the only way to "win" is to not play at all.
Paul: It is refreshing, though. This is the game literally explaining the combat mechanics to you as if you were a child.
Takeshi's Challenge is a game which involves making a Salaryman get drunk, divorce his wife and quit his job. The game even makes fun of you for actually trying to beat the game pointing out that you have just wasted your time getting trolled.
We Happy Few: Arthur Hastings is a skinny and meek office worker who constantly sounds like he's on the verge of a panic attack. Even when he is (seemingly, in the case of his peers) on the Joy, his "friends" dominate him. Unlike Sally and Ollie, Arthur is clearly out of his depth. Later, Arthur's cowardly streak is shown in a much darker light: when the Nazis were rounding up the children of Wellington Wells, he tricked his brother Percy into coming to the station with him and then switched their identification cards, so Percy got dragged off in his place.
World of Warcraft introduced a new quest in the Cataclysm Expansion that consists of the player hopping on an NPC's horse and becoming an actual questgiver while 3 NPC PCs approach to accept a quest. The first is named Dumass and is a perpetual moron who speaks in all caps and behaves like the players everybody loves to make fun of. The second is Kingslayer Orkus, who is a fully decked out, high-end raiding warrior who comes looking for stuff to do, and despite being geared to the high heavens, balks at even the slightest bit of danger. and the third is Johnny Awesome, who is that one pompous dirtbag in heirloom gear with a real money mount who brags of his awesomeness, everyone wishes would shut up, and leans on and occasionally punches holes in the fourth wall. Bonus points for Johnny Awesome actually referencing 20 Bear Asses.
Inverted and played straight by the quests Mystery of the Infinite and Mystery of the Infinite Redux. The former includes a Future You NPC, and latter a Past You NPC. Both state they are kind of ashamed of you... while looking exactly like you, implying you don't improve at all, and goes about combat in a way that would pretty much be very incompetent if a player actually did that (as in they just run up and hit stuff).
The Legion expansion has a quest where you play as Illidan Stormrage defending the Black Temple. The developers made a raid of characters (including Johnny Awesome) who are well... as bad as most players in 2007 actually were, but a lot worse than anyone wants to admit they ever were. Also, you have to lose to these schmucks, because the plot says so. To make matters worse, they take your cool warglaives, the bastards.
This is a selling point for Zettai Hero Project: You (as in, you the player) are the most pathetically weak protagonist of all time, and the world's greatest hero has just died and passed on his mantle to you. Better start grinding.
Subverted in the Wham Episode that reveals that the Heroic Mime actually has a past, and at least one personality trait, upgrading him to Iron Woobie status. His entire family has hated him for his weakness for the past eight years thanks to an incident where, unbeknownst to them, he saved his sister from a cannibal by letting himself get beat up over and over again.
loving dork who is only on his adventure primarily to have a fun crazy "party" of a time (much like you) as well as find hot chicks and get laid (hitting on Action Girl Lady frequently in the game). Really saving the world appears to behind several immature priorities for him, although in some fairness he's only 19 years old in the third game. Even when he's older, Dante cannot resist being an relatably embarssing and hilariously cringey goofball e.g breaking into Michael Jackson dance