Badass Bystander / Video Games

Badass Bystanders in Video Games.

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• Sakupen, creator of the Dad Series, appears in the Dad Game as a random bystander in the middle of a panicked crowd in an early level. If you attack him enough times, he suddenly turns into the hardest boss in the game.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, Bodahn Feddic's adopted son Sandal is just an Idiot Savant with unusual skill at enchantment. Except at the endgame, he murders over a hundred Darkspawn, including several Ogres, by himself. In the sequel, he does it again, and then adds a pile of massacred demons on top of it. Precisely how this happens is not clear.
    Warden: You're surrounded by darkspawn corpses! What happened here?!
    Sandal: Enchantment!
  • And mind-bogglingly in the second game, among Sandal's victims is an Ogre that was somehow frozen solid without any other enemy or thing in the area being similarly afflicted. Naturally Hawke can ask Sandal what happened to the Ogre, his response?
    Sandal: Not Enchantment!
• In Dwarf Fortress, human and dwarven merchant caravans will keep visiting your fort even during a siege. And since they all have bodyguards proportional to the quantity of carried goods, they can often dispatch a whole sieging force by themselves, and then just start bartering with you as if nothing had happened.
  • The Forgotten Beast that attacked the fortress of Bronzemurder was ultimately slain by human caravan guards.
  • In Adventure mode, if you're attacked and manage to make it back to a town, everyone will wake up, gather around you, and beat your assailant to a pulp.
  • This can also happen in Fortress mode if things go to hell and one or more dwarves decide not to run away. The usual manifestation is a dwarf gone Berserk being put down by everyone nearby, but there's also the occasional Werebeast getting mauled by a bar's worth of patrons and their cups. Miners in particular are known for ending any shit started nearby in seconds with a carefully-applied Powerful Pick.
• In the Fallout series, as well as Oblivion, random people will try to take you out if you try to do something evil close to them, and will pick up random weapons like assault rifles and submachine guns lying around nearby to do it with. Sometimes (especially in Oblivion) overlaps with Shoplift and Die.
  • The willingness of random people to take on the dragons in Skyrim has reached memetic levels among fans. It is quite distressing (or perhaps heartening) to note the number of people who will charge straight in a torrent of flame in order to beat a dragon to death with their bare hands. Though this might explain all the random people who tell you they think they might be the Dragonborn.
  • In Fallout 4, every member of your settlements can become this. And depending on how well you arm them, they can potentially take on Raiders, Gunners, Super Mutants, and even Deathclaws on their own.
• Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: 3-13 Archer. While most of the time the other army units are useless, one archer in this level is able to take on three laguz at once without dying. Best of all, he doesn't even have to do this. If he would simply remain at his starting position, the beasts would be unable to climb the ledge to attack him.
• There is a cheat in some of the Grand Theft Auto games that causes every civilian to try to kill the player and another one that gives them weapons. Both cheats in tandem is a recipe for awesome.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, if you try to go upstairs or shot someone in the Malibu Club without owning it, the female bartender will immediately draw a stubby shotgun and try to kill you on the spot.
  • In certain areas of the map on Grand Theft Auto IV, firing a weapon will cause any nearby gang members to draw down on your player character.
  • Grand Theft Auto V features random citizens who pack heat by default, so the absence of police in an area doesn't necessarily mean the coast is clear.
• In Halo 3 during the assault on Covenant Anti-Air positions around Voi, a group of construction workers takes up arms and joins the Marines attacking the last battery.
• The Wastelanders in Jak 3: Wastelander qualify, as not only will they shoot at you if you hit them, but when Spargus is overrun by Dark Makers, they fight back.
• In Kingdom Rush: Vengeance, during the stage Otil Farmlands you might notice a farmer catering to his flock of sheep. These sheep can be popped by repeatedly clicking them, just like in the first game, but he gets angry every time you do so. Kill all of them, and he reaches a Rage Breaking Point, charges up and suddenly enters the fray to teach you a lesson. And how! He has the stats of a Giant Mook, his damage is high, he can do a special three-strike burst attack and even summon combat-capable sheep! For a seemingly simple farmer that is more than badass. According to an achievement you get for killing him, as well his stats name, he is Joe Jenkins, brother of Leeroy Jenkins. Yes, that one.
• In L.A. Noire, you come across shop owners once in a while who have actually managed to scare the shit out of their robbers beforehand. Also occasionally pulled by ordinary beat cops.
  • In one occasion, if you spend enough time chasing a perp, a random resident standing on his lawn will throw a decking punch and stop him for you.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure: An escaping counterfeiter's runaway is stopped by a mysterious eastern woman tripping them, who turns out to be Kilika, the former Bracer.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The giant pig at Link's home island in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Pigs are Wind Waker's replacement for Cuccos in that they attack Link if he attacks them enough times, and the giant pig acts the same way, only he does more damage to Link in a single hit than any other enemy in the entire game.
  • Attacking most unarmed civilians in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild usually makes them flinch back or duck in fear. Attacking Gorons, however, will usually get them to attack Link back.
• In the school level of Lollipop Chainsaw, one student in the background actually fights back and defeats a few zombies before getting overwhelmed, unlike the others, who are mostly Too Dumb to Live.
• In Mafia II, if you rob a store there's a distinct possibility (which increases, the rougher the neighborhood) that some civilian will pull a gun and try to take you down. They just might, too, if you're not quick enough getting into cover or shooting them down.
• Mass Effect has the well-renowned Commander Shepard, who has plenty of opportunities for this across the entire trilogy, though it is most prominent in the War Hero backstory, where they single-handedly pull a You Shall Not Pass! on an entire army of Batarians, and the only reason they were there in the first place was because they were on shore leave.
• Common in Max Payne, but hey, it's New York.
  • In 1, Max can shoot a random SUV as it drives by the alley he's sneaking through. The car will crash and the driver will come at Max with guns blazing.
  • In 2, Payne gets attacked by assassins in his own apartment, and has to fight his way through the tenement building to safety. On his way, an elderly woman shotguns one of the assassins through her door and gives Payne her other rifle. Then Payne rescues a hobo from a burning corridor, and said hobo unpacks two pistols, claiming to be an ex-cop himself. Then Payne encounters a random prostitute who got locked in the lobby by the perps. But she also draws a gun of her own, and so both she and the hobo proceed to help Payne to take down all the assassins.
  • In 3, Max's neighbor will kill several of the mafiosos raiding Max's apartment complex.
• Octopath Traveler: Nearly every NPC in the game has individual stats for the sake of the effect that Path Actions have on them, with their power ranging from 1★ to 10★.
• In one cinematic trailer for Overwatch, while the heroes and villains are fighting over Doomfist's Gauntlet, the older kid seen takes the gauntlet himself and punches Widowmaker across the exhibit hall.
• Paper Mario has the Master and his students, residents of the game's dojo which are just as powerful as the game's bosses. The Master in particular can be optionally fought 3 times, with his final form being the game's superboss, even stronger than Bowser's final fight. Why he doesn't just take Bowser out himself or at least join the party to help is rather odd.
  • The opening of Paper Mario: Sticker Star shows several Toads grabbing Bowser by his tail and trying to pull him away from the Royal Stickers. Unlike the Master from above, these are just average Toad civilians without any special training or powers.
• Postal 2 makes many jokes towards the Second Amendment, one of them including the fact that most civilians in Paradise, AZ have plenty of weapons in their house that you can pick up in case you break into them. Some civilians will also effectively pull out their guns and try to take you down in case you start causing trouble, or, in harder difficulties, they just come after you the moment they see you!
• River City Girls 2 has Marian among the game's playable characters, after she spent the previous game as a shopkeeper. Evidently, River City's takeover by a yakuza syndicate , followed by their subsequent capture and forced mind control of her, is a really good motivator to beat them back.
• Blue in Red's quest in SaGa Frontier. When the Cool Ship gets attacked by pirates, Blue easily takes out the one who charges into his room. But because he's kind of a dick, he refuses to help Red because he doesn't like his name. In fairness, it differs only in language from his Evil Twin. His Good Twin, actually.
• In Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, an upgrade allows you to invoke this by getting nearby husks (the civilian-equivalent) to join you in fighting Satan's minions.
• Be careful which civilians you pick a fight with in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. Some of them are tougher than the final boss.
• Space Rangers allows you to pull off a version of this. You can hail any ship in a system to joint attack a target. They won't always agree, but situations where a trader, passenger liner, and diplomat team up to help you take down a troublesome Space Pirate are fairly common. Attacks by a Klissan/Dominator fleet tend to make even the pirates drop everything and pitch in.
• In Super Mario Galaxy 2, there's a Gearmo who purposefully stands in the path of rolling Chomps and lets them collide right into him. The Chomps invariably explode apart on impact, but the Gearmo remains unscathed, despite enduring god knows how many Chomps.
• In the opening minutes of Wolfenstein: The New Order, a crack team of Nazi commandos sweep through a mental asylum and slaughter every single person inside without resistance... With the notable exception of one badass nurse who presumably shouldn't have been fucked with. You find her dead body slumped up against the wall, with a shotgun at her side and a Nazi commando's dead body lying a few feet in front of her.
• X-COM:
  • Civilians and VIP's in the newer games aren't slouches, and have the same mobility as a trained XCOM operative. That includes climbing drainpipes at full speed, leaping through closed windows and doing perfect hang-and-drop jumps off of ledges as high as 15 feet with no ill effects.
  • The Resistance fighters in XCOM 2, who pick up assault rifles to fight the ADVENT troops attacking their camps. They're pretty damn good at it, too, scoring more hits (and critical hits) than the average squaddie.
• As opposed to other such games, in Xenonauts, some of the terrorized civilians are actually armed, which can lead to police officers and shotgun-toting farmers killing space lizard commandos, rare a sight as it may be.
• Yakuza 0: In the epilogue, Makoto Makimura's husband, who is a doctor charges into the street, seemingly perfectly prepared to throw down with Goro Majima, a one-eyed, heavily tattooed man whom he thinks has been harassing her. It's all a misunderstanding, but even Majima is impressed by the little guy's pluck.
• Any student in Yandere Simulator who catches you committing murder. Those with a Heroic personality will try to take you down on the spot. Any others will report you to a teacher or the police, and if you thwart that by cleaning up the crime scene before they get back, they'll still call you out to your face, telling you that they're making sure the whole school knows what you did. Telling you about it is perhaps imprudent, but you have to admit it takes serious guts.

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