Times where the villain creates their own hero in Video Games.
- Assassin's Creed: The Templars have a really, really, really bad habit of doing this, routinely motivating one person to dismantle their latest operation via their own pettiness. And they never learn from it.
- Assassin's Creed II: Ezio Auditore was a layabout Florentine youth, until the day Rodrigo Borgia had his father and brothers arrested and killed for being a thorn in his side. Ezio spent the next twenty years hunting down and killing all of Rodrigo's confederates, before taking the fight to the man himself in Rome, rebuilding the Italian Assassins while he was at it.
- Assassin's Creed III: Connor Kenway was a child when Charles Lee and his fellow Templars attacked him, insulted him, and apparently tried to burn down his village, killing Connor's mother. Connor's efforts to find Lee wound up not only getting all those Templars killed, but helped kick-start the American revolution. Connor's father, Haytham, even pointed out to Lee that this wouldn't have happened if Lee hadn't hit a kid in the face with a rifle for no reason.
- In Modern day, Desmond Miles had abandoned the ways of the assassins, believing them to be a crazed cult. Warren Vidic had him kidnapped and forced him back into the war. This resulted in the deaths of himself, Master Templar Daniel Cross , and his double agent Lucy Stillman.
- Assassin's Creed Origins: Bayek and his wife Aya were just minding their own business in Siwa, until the Order of Ancients rolled through, looking for a Precursor vault in their village, resulting in the death of their child. The couple's Roaring Rampage of Revenge is what ultimately cause the founding of the Assassins.
- Assassin's Creed: Odyssey: Alexios / Kassandra was quite happily lounging around on Kephallonia, minding their own business and occasionally working as muscle-for-hire, when one of the Cult of Kosmos hires them to march off into the middle of The Peloponnesian War and assassinate some general. Who turns out to be their stepfather. Their anger prompts the Eagle Bearer to start investigating, and ultimately go after the entire Cult.
- In Modern day, Layla Hassan was an employee of Abstergo Industries who only wanted to work on the Animus. After getting no recognition for her efforts, she choose to build her own and present her findings to her bosses. They sent in a strike team after her driving her straight into the arms of the Assassins.
- Yuuki Terumi in BlazBlue does this on purpose. He destroys Ragna's home and family and kills Kokonoe's mother in cold blood, knowing (as well the tactical reasons) that this will make them both grow up to despise and seek an end to him at all costs. The reason for this is that Terumi has No Ontological Inertia - he needs others to register his existence or he will cease to exist entirely. Since he knows that Ragna and Kokonoe's hatreds are ferocious and unending, they are a powerful source of strength and anchoring to reality for him. That's the kind of guy he is.
- In Bravely Default, the Grand Marshal had his daughter train to eventually fight against him. Later, it turns out that Airy did this by leading the heroes through the five worlds and guiding them, to eventually be defeated. And in Bravely Second, Anne did this with you in the first game, making it so you could defeat Ouroboros and clear the way for Providence.
- Crash Bandicoot: The titular bandicoot and his sister Coco were ordinary bandicoots until they were mutated by the evil scientist Dr. Neo Cortex as part of his plan for world domination. The two bandicoots escaped Cortex's clutches and have frequently opposed him ever since.
- Devil May Cry:
- Devil May Cry: One of the reasons Dante became a demon hunter was to eventually find and kill the demon that killed his mother. That demon turns out to be Mundus, the ruler of the underworld who makes the foolish mistake of luring Dante to his island in an attempt to murder him. Worse, Mundus' cruel treatment of his minion Trish causes her to pull a Heel–Face Turn and lend her power to Dante in his climactic battle with the villain. Trish becomes Dante's partner in Demon Slaying from then on.
- Devil May Cry 2: Lucia is revealed to be one of the demons created by Arius but was discarded for being a "defect". She is adopted by the demon hunting clan of the Vie du Marli and trained as a protector of the island. She kills Arius in the game's climax.
- Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: Arkham's murder of his wife Kalina Ann results in their daughter Mary, now known as Lady, becoming a demon hunter and killing him.
- Vergil, Dante's Evil Twin brother, begets a child named Nero, who would become the protagonist of Devil May Cry 4 and Devil May Cry 5. Nero would also defeat Vergil in 5.
- DmC: Devil May Cry basically retreads the same backstory of the original continuity but with some alterations - Mundus' murder of Eva and torture of Sparda led Vergil and Dante to embrace their Nephilim heritage and be reunited. This ultimately comes back to bite Mundus in the ass in a big way, as he is later killed by the twins.
- Dread Templar: Beelsebur II the demon killed the heroic Dread Templar's grandfather, back when he was a kid, while leaving the Templar alive so his desire for vengeance may awaken the Dread energy inside himself. Upon the Templar reaching maturity, Beelsebur II arranged for the Templar to be Dragged Off to Hell so he may consume the Templar's soul. But as it turns out, the Templar is powerful enough to defeat and destroy Beelsebur II in an epic battle.
- Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG:
- President Zazz fears Akira's popularity will allow them to undermine his political power, so he sends Barbados to kill Akira along with Pon Pon Village. Akira survives and decides to actually become a political threat by organizing a revolution against Zazz.
- By necessity, Zazz had to program the robot Detritus-11 to have a heroic personality with a strong sense of justice, since he needs the latter for PR and for being a moral compass for his chosen humans. He also notes that this inevitably caused Eleven to turn on him for discriminating against non-humans.
- Omega in Final Fantasy XIV actively Invokes this trope. It desires to fight powerful enemies to further grow in strength and evolve. After reading about countless accounts of "heroes", both factual and fictional, who overcame objectivly impossible odds to save the day, it purposefully acts villainous by threatening innocents and attacking those close to the Warrior of Light to shape them into the perfect heroic opponent.
- Freedom Force: In Minuteman's origin story, he is shot by an American traitor during his meeting with Sukhov. The mortally wounded man crawls to the statue of a minuteman nearby, which has been hit with Energy X and absorbs the energy.
- Khotun Khan in Ghost of Tsushima starts off well, invading Tsushima, massacring the samurai army, filling the main character Jin full of arrows, then curbstomping the main character when he comes looking for a rematch. But then Khan pulls a Bond Villain Stupidity and chucks Jin off a bridge instead of finishing him off. Not only does Jin survive, but two near-death experiences teach Jin that straightforward samurai tactics are not going to work against the Mongol army and switches to using guerilla/assassin attacks, which work much better.
- In Ghost Trick, Yomiel causes Sissel's death, triggering the events of the night and eventually leading to his plans foiled. Also, One Step Ahead Tengo in turn causes Missile's death, which turns the latter into the Big Good of the story.
- Grim Dawn: During the titular Grim Dawn, one wayward Aetherial spirit decides to possess some random schmuck, wiping their memories and puppeteering them right until the locals try to hang them; then, instead of getting banished back to their realm for a while as the body is killed, it decides to depart the body with just enough time for the host to be cut down and survive. A host that now has no memory of the past, a slew of unusual and useful abilities and unnatural, growing strength that Aetherial energy seems to enhance. A host now known as the Taken, who can proceed to dismantle almost everything they had achieved, and take down threats of similar apocalyptic caliber. Notably, the Taken can find the same spirit possessing a different body later on during the assault on their stronghold at Malmouth, and the spirit is not happy that things spun so far out of control.
- Halo 2: The Prophets decide to spare the life of disgraced commander Thel Vadam and appoint him as Arbiter, intended to be used for dangerous suicide missions, while also making moves to replace his species with the dogmatically loyal Brutes. He ends up becoming the leader of the Covenant splinter faction after learning the truth of Halo and ultimately kills the Prophet of Truth.
- Hi-Fi RUSH: Kale Vandelay is entirely responsible for his own downfall by instigating each of the main heroes to fight against him.
- During the opening scene, because he was petty enough to throw a music player off of the rafters, the very same music player ends up becoming fused to its owner, main character Chai. The fusion turns what was originally going to be a simple garbage collector into a kid who can wield The Power of Rock. It also gets him labeled as a Defect, which Kale decides is reason enough to kill him, giving Chai direct motivation to stand up to him.
- Peppermint has even more personal matters at stake since Kale is her brother, and he personally saw to wiping her out from the Vandelay name, not to mention brainwashing her mother to make him head of the company in the first place.
- Macaron was the former head of R&D in Vandelay Technologies, but Kale demoted him and replaced him with one of his own personal cronies, making Macaron disillusioned with the company and giving him reason to act as a whistleblower for Peppermint.
- And finally, by keeping Korsica out of the loop regarding his more sinister plans and immediately trying to kill her when she does find out, he gives Korsica enough reason to trust the heroes over himself which eventually leads to her making a Heel–Face Turn mid-game.
- Horizon Zero Dawn: Had HADES not tried to kill Aloy the moment he saw her, then she may never have left the Nora tribe's Sacred Lands. It's possible she would have eventually found out about the end of the old world, the role of the machines, and her power as a clone of Elisabet Sobeck via the door in All-Mother Mountain eventually, but the odds of that happening early enough to lead to her being able to defeat HADES prior to his assault on the Spire are practically zero given the tribe's isolationist customs and their gerontocratic system of government, meaning that it would be decades before Aloy would even know she had to, as only women with living grandchildren are even allowed near that door, and Aloy doesn't even have a boyfriend.
- Exploited in Jade Empire. After the sacking of Dirge, Master Li killed the caretaker of the one entrusted with the last survivor of Dirge and discovered a Spirit Monk baby whom he was carrying away from the ongoing destruction of the city, whom he adopted and trained to be the instrument of his revenge against his brothers. Once the Monk was ready, Li told them of their heritage, got himself kidnapped and the town where he lived destroyed, all to set the Monk on a quest to rescue him. Once the quest was finished and Li's brothers dead, Li killed the Monk using weaknesses he had deliberately taught them for that very purpose; if not for the Water Dragon's intervention, he would have won then and there.
- League of Legends
- Evelynn's extended lore says that, as one of her many sadistic flings, she killed a pair of Demacian nobles in front of their child. She then left, figuring that the look of trauma on the child's face was funny enough. Said child grew up to become Shauna Vayne, one of the most feared, proficient and ruthless demon hunters in all of Runeterra — and, in the right hands, one of the strongest ADCs in the game.
- Gankplank coldly executed the gunsmith who forged his flintlock, along with her young daughter. But the daughter survived, growing up to be rival pirate Miss Fortune. Who got her revenge in spectacular fashion by blowing his ship, his crew and his arm to pieces.
- The backstory of Loopmancer has the crime lord, Wei Long, trying to assassinate the hero, budding detective Xiang Zixu's life, by arranging for an "accident" that leads to Zixu's left and and legs being ripped off, and the death of Zixu's daughter. But this also results in Zixu being rebuilt into a bionically-enhanced badass who persists on investigating Wei Long's activities before uncovering Wei Long's dealings with Tompson Technologies.
- Manafinder: King Vikar exiles Lambda and several other citizens for unknown charges, most of which are implied to be false accusations or frivolous reasons. Lambda survives and gains the blessings of the gods. On Starkas's route, she uses this power to kill Vikar and and replace him as a benevolent ruler.
- In Mass Effect 2 Commander Shepard is literally brought back from the dead with a reinforced skeleton, enhanced mental capacity, off the charts biotic powers, on top of Shepard's pre-existing military training and inherent instinct for battle, in order to fight off hordes of Reapers who seem to be harvesting humans. Shepard was engineered by Cerberus to be a nigh unstoppable super soldier. However, when Commander Shepard finds out that Cerberus is allowing human colonies to be targeted in order to track Reaper movement, s/he breaks with Cerberus who then tries repeatedly to kill Shepard if they can't control him/her. That's right. They try to kill the already badass military (wo)man that they then enhanced into a super soldier engineered to be able to take on hordes of insanely overpowered aliens single handedly. And they try to bring him/her down with mid-level goons with guns.
- Metroid: Ridley's attack on 3-year-old Samus' colony and the murder of her parents ended up creating his greatest enemy.
- Done deliberately in NieR: Automata. The entire YoRHa project 2B and 9S were created for is part of a larger charade between machine lifeforms and androids to perpetuate the Forever War. If YoRHa ever got the upper hand (which they eventually do,) contingencies were in place to destroy the entire project and either kill or infect and convert everyone involved with it. Unfortunately for the machines, there were still survivors.
- In the backstory of NiGHTS into Dreams…, Wizeman created his highest-ranking minions — NiGHTS and Reala — with free will. Unfortunately for him, NiGHTS used their free will to defend the Night Dimension from the Nightmarens instead.
- In Overwatch, Doomfist's strike on the peaceful city of Numbani is what inspired the young robotics prodigy, Efi Oladele, to create Orisa as its protector. However, it's revealed in The Hero of Numbani that this was not an accident. Doomfist is a Visionary Villain who believes that humanity must evolve through conflict, and trashed Numbani to not only retrieve his titular gauntlet of doom, but to stir unrest in the complacent city that would create someone strong enough to oppose him... or join him. Efi and Orisa naturally reject the offer, but either way, Doomfist gets what he wants.
- Persona 5:
- The Heavy of the game, Masayoshi Shido, is guilty of this not once, not twice, but four times over.
- First, he got the Protagonist convicted of assault because he got a minor scratch when the Protagonist tried to stop him from sexually harassing a woman. This gets the Protagonist put on probation, which gets him sent to Tokyo and puts him in a position and mindset to interfere with Shido's plans.
- Later, Shido shoves Ryuji out of the way in order to get onto an elevator. While much more minor than the earlier incident, this gives Ryuji the idea to form the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.
- The protagonist isn't the only person he's been pushed to opposing him, either; he killed Futaba's mother using Akechi for the sake of getting her cognitive research for his own use two years prior to the game's events, and instead of simply murdering Futaba's mom, in an incredibly unnecessary Kick the Dog moment on his part, he forged a suicide note stating that Futaba's mom committed suicide because she hated her daughter and read it out loud to a 14-year-old Futaba and her relatives! Sure enough, Futaba was instantly driven into an increasingly extreme depression to the point that she generated a palace, heard hallucinations of Wakaba telling her that she's disappointed on her and even believing that if she died her mom will come back to life. Once she knows the truth, it's quite clear that she would accompany the protagonist to take down Shido at all costs.
- In the events of the game itself, he also ordered Akechi to kill Haru's dad just to remove an obstacle to his political campaign, frame the Phantom Thieves for his murder and the fact that the scandals over Okumura's business practices had got him lots of notoreity. While it makes no ambiguity that Haru's father is despicable by the events of the game since he works his clerks and employees to death and tried to sell Haru to a fiance that could care less about her for the sole reason of competing with Shido for presidency, Haru was totally grief-ridden when she saw her dad die in front of the camera, since unlike most targets in-game, Haru's dad did genuinely care for her like a daughter before he went too far, adding one more adolescent he tried to ruin onto the list of people who are going after his head.
- He also literally created his own Anti-Villain as well. He had impulsive sex with a prostitute and she gave birth to a bastard child named Goro Akechi, then committed suicide soon after. Akechi desired to be loved and wanted, and fostered the needs to be loved by their father but also to seek revenge for the abandonment. After acquiring Persona powers, he presented himself to Shido as an asset to take down rivals through mental shutdowns. Being publicly loved for "solving" those cases became an added bonus for Akechi. Then at the peak of Shido's political career, he would destroy Shido's reputation through a public tell-all. So while Akechi's goals were somewhat heroic in exposing Shido, his methods were far from noble, and sure that, he doesn't get this way and just ended up seemingly sacrificed himself in front of his cognitive doppelganger.
- While only a Starter Villain, Kamoshida created 3 out of the 4 founding members of the Phantom Thieves by causing a Career-Ending Injury to one, molesting the friend of another and trying to commit statutory rape on said member, and spreading rumors about the third, ruining their reputation.
- Principal Kobayakawa, having contributed to the Phantom Thieves' formation through his failure to protect the student body from Kamoshida, caused the Phantom Thieves' ranks to swell by forcing Makoto to investigate them when she wanted to investigate reports that yakuza goons were extorting Shujin students, resulting in her joining the Phantom Thieves.
- The Heavy of the game, Masayoshi Shido, is guilty of this not once, not twice, but four times over.
- The Big Bad of Pillars of Eternity, Thaos, does this twice to the Watcher: once, when his ritual at Cilant Lis Awakens the Watcher to their past lives, and many centuries before that, when Thaos made a previous incarnation of the Watcher betray Iovara, which effectively tied all three of their souls together, bound to clash with each other again, sooner or later.
- Rave Heart: The Draconians imprison Prince Chad for criticizing Arcturo's arrest, which leads to Chad stealing a shuttle and coming into contact with Klein and Ellemine to join their party. If they didn't do so, he likely would have been stuck in Sector 1 with no knowledge of how deep the conspiracy goes and no means to change the outcome of the trial.
- Albert Wesker in the Resident Evil series was one of the founders and original leaders of Raccoon City's S.T.A.R.S. unit. He would go on to betray the unit in the first game as part of his schemes. Unfortunately for him, two of the unit's members, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, would survive to become persistent thorns in his side. In his final appearance in Resident Evil 5, Chris has foiled his latest scheme and succeeds in killing him. Wesker admits that he should have killed Chris years ago.
- Shadow the Hedgehog: The villains of the game are the Black Arms, an evil alien race whose leader, Black Doom, was involved in Shadow's creation by contributing some of his DNA. Black Doom tries to sway Shadow to his side, but fails in the game's canonical good ending and is beaten by the dark hedgehog.
- StarCraft uses this twice, in the same campaign, with the same character. Jim Raynor was originally a marshal on a backwater Confederate world of Mar Sara. When Mar Sara fell victim to a Zerg invasion, Raynor took matters into his own hands rather than wait for Confederate backup, and destroyed an infested Command Center. The Confederacy responded by placing Raynor under arrest for destroying Confederate property. Enter the Sons of Korhal, a rebel group led by the charismatic Arcturus Mengsk, who were evacuating Mar Sara and offered Raynor a way out, which he accepted. But later, Mengsk crossed the line by deliberately luring a Zerg invasion to the Confederate capital world of Tarsonis, and abandoned Raynor's Love Interest, Sarah Kerrigan, when her outpost got overrun by Zerg. This led Raynor to split with Mengsk, and he formed Raynor's Raiders to combat Mengsk's new regime — which quickly became as oppressive and corrupt as the one it replaced.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Sith Inquisitor PC, especially if played lightside (and in fact their default name if a level 60 character is created in the expansions is the lightside title Darth Imperius). After they kill their first master, Darth Zash, in self-defense, Zash's enemy Darth Thanaton tries to kill them out of an Association Fallacy, driving the PC to become one of the mightiest Sith Lords in living memory and eventually overthrow Thanaton just to survive — whereas if he'd just accepted their offer to become his apprentice, he could have lived (while Darth Nox would have probably offed him in the grand Sith tradition, Darth Imperius is known for showing clemency towards defeated enemies and would have likely let Thanaton go off the grid instead of finishing him off).
- Sword of Paladin: Lancelot frames Nade for the Bokka Village attack and reveals his plans, leading to Nade becoming a Paladin to stop him. If he didn't involve Nade in his plans, the latter probably would have remained an ordinary knight.
- Turbo Overkill: Johnny Overkill's backstory (lifted wholesale from Robocop) have him being killed by Syn's robots for daring to take a stand, only for the resistance to rebuild Johnny with stolen Syn technology, with Johnny eventually becoming an unstoppable One-Man Army who took down Syn.
- Frau Engel's disrespect over her daughter Sigrun, and her eventual abandonment, is what led to her defeat and death in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. During the climax of the first act of the game, she's scolded after she failed to execute Caroline Becker, leader of the Kreisau Circle, prompting Frau to do the deed herself. After a fight, she leaves her daughter for the rest of the KC to finish her... only for the resistance members to instead welcome her onto their ranks. This led to Sigrun hacking the codes that led to the Ausmerzer's capture, Frau Engel's eventual assassination at the hands of BJ Blazkowicz, and the Second American Revolution happening.
- This trope appears in all 3 games in the Watch_Dogs franchise.
- Watch_Dogs: Aiden Pearce was just a high tech thief until mob boss Dermot 'Lucky' Quinn put out a hit on him because he mistakenly believed that Aiden had tried to steal the blackmail he had on the mayor. The hitman, Maurice Vega, failed to kill Pearce, but the accident he caused killed Pearce's neice, Lena, sending him on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Chicago underworld, ultimately resulting in the death of both Quinn and Iraq, the actual attempted thief.
- Watch_Dogs 2: Marcus Holloway was set on the path that let to him joining DedSec when he was falsely accused of a crime by the ctOS.
- Watch Dogs: Legion: DedSec itself is restarted by Sabine Brandt, the treacherous former member who, posing as a rival hacker group, Zero Day, orchestrated the fall of the group's previous incarnation while framing them for her bombings.
- In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Moebius (specifically, D and J) pull this on the party twice in a row. First, they interfere with the fight between the Kevesi and Agnian squads over the Ouroboros Stone Guernica was transporting, which leads to the two sides being forced to team up and Guernica's decision to activate the Stone since a mixed Keves-Agnus team was exactly what was required for the Ouroboros transformations to kick in. The two squads were still perfectly content with just going their own separate ways and remaining enemies... had it not been for the Moebius's "parting gift" of making their home colonies perceive them as foes. And that's not even getting into the backstory, where Z "recruiting" the original Noah and Mio had the side effect of turning them into the exact kind of being capable of taking down Z himself.
