What Measure Is A Non Human / Visual Novels

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• A major part of the plot of Doki Doki Literature Club! focuses on this trope as applied to video game characters. Monika turns out to be aware that she's a fictional character in a game, which leads her to an existential crisis. She intentionally worsens her friends' mental health issues and ultimately deletes them from the game, believing it to not be as bad as murder because none of them were "real" to begin with. Everyone has killed people in video games, right? In fact, her Yandere obsession with the player came about because she believes that they are the only real thing in her life.
  • The Updated Re-release contains mail from fictional developers of the program who are experimenting on Monika to see just how much torment her situation puts her in, and one of the messages says they shouldn't "arbitrarily" start making up some ethics to apply to such non-human entities, sort of implying it would be more wrong to think they shouldn't torture her freely. Sounds like somebody didn't take a course in research ethics... In an additional bit of irony and hypocrisy, it's implied the developers are doing this because they know or suspect they're also living in a simulation, although what that means is left totally mysterious.
• In Sunrider, several characters consider the Prototypes — vat-grown, genetically-modified clones with telepathy and a Hive Mind — to be something less than human, with Fontana and Admiral Grey both calling them twisted monsters born of science. For their part, the Prototypes consider themselves superior to humanity and view their superiority as sufficient justification for enslaving the human race (or in Alice’s case, exterminating it).
• Your Turn to Die has Dolls, and one of its deadly games revolves around the notion that, if completed correctly, none of the participants have to die... provided they figure out who was secretly replaced by a Doll and sacrifice them instead of one of the human players. Note that the Doll in question is just as unaware of their status as everyone else, with an AI designed around mimicking the person they're based off of as closely as possible.
  • This is also flipped on its head in places — Rio Ranger ends up being destroyed by his own creator based off the notion that he's become too humanlike, because humans are driven by emotional fragilities and therefore imperfect.
  • During Chapter 3-1A, the participants meet Doll versions (called "Dummies") of the people who didn't survive the First Trial. The participants quickly make it clear that they consider the Dummies to have much value as them and don't treat them any different from regular humans, with some even bringing up what happened with the previous Doll. Towards the end of Chapter 3-1B, however, both humans and Dummies end up prioritizing the survival of one of the humans, with the Dummies even insisting that Sara sacrifice them to protect the human. Of course, if said human dies, it results in all of them losing, so this is something of a justified case.

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