As a Death Trope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Murder by Inaction in Video Games.
- Batman: Arkham Series:
- General consensus is that Batman kills the Joker after the events of Batman: Arkham City. Granted, Batman was stabbed in the shoulder by the Joker, causing him to drop the only cure to the Joker's sickness, but random chatter in the post-game of City and throughout Batman: Arkham Knight make it clear that nobody sees much of a difference.
- In Arkham Knight's "Season of Infamy" DLC, it's possible for Batman to do this. The end of the League of Shadows mission sees Batman given the choice between saving a feeble Ra's al Ghul, or letting him die of old age without the Lazarus Pit. It seems throughout the mission that Batman is considering the latter option for the greater good, but is worried it will break his one rule. Alfred even asks Batman beforehand "is not saving someone really the same as taking a life?"
- Amnesia: Justine: The player character is presented with the option of doing this three times as a Secret Test of Character given to you by the title character, the Ax-Crazy Justine - who is the amnesiac Player Character.
- All There in the Manual for Clock Tower 2. The novelization of Helen's route states that her father was physically and sexually abusive. One day, he suffered a massive angina attack and begged Helen to get him his medication. She opted to instead go to the park, intentionally staying there long enough that he was dead by the time she came home.
- Dead by Daylight: Ji-Woon, The Trickster, started his descent into evil when, during his career as a K-Pop Idol Singer, the recording studio his band was using caught fire. Ji-Woon refused to rescue his bandmates, instead choosing to let them perish due to a combination of jealousy (Ji-Woon felt that he was overshadowed in the band) and fascination at their screams. He would then go on to become a prolific Serial Killer, albeit one that more directly participates in his victims' demise.
- Dragon Age: Origins: Loghain's betrayal at Ostagar basically amounts to this. Instead of performing his part of the battle plan, which involves attacking the darkspawn from the rear while King Cailan, his forces, and the Grey Wardens are busy on the front lines, he sounds a retreat and returns with his forces to Denerim, leaving the King, Duncan, and everyone else to die at the hands of the darkspawn.
- Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: When Hector arrives in Santaruz, he sees his best friend Eliwood under attack and demands to know why the guard is doing nothing. When the guard dismissively tells Hector that it's no concern of a "foreign lordling" like him, Hector kills the guard and joins the fight on Eliwood's side. After the battle, he goes so far as to say that the guard was not just an Accomplice by Inaction, but actually wanted to see Eliwood die.
- Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes has a darkly amusing meta example. On Chapter 15 of the Scarlet Blaze route, Count Varley, Bernadetta's Abusive Parent, will come under attack, with defending him becoming a side objective. Letting him die won't fail the chapter with the only negative impact it has is triggering more reinforcements. Given Bernadetta and Hubert's reactions if this happens, the player is practically encouraged to fail this objective on purpose.
- In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, you came across a prisoner who's going to be executed by the militias, in order to maintain your low profile in a stealth mission, it is wiser to remain silent and let him die. You may try to save him but he'll immediately be killed by the militias and your cover will be blown.
- Ghost Recon: Future Soldier: The Ghost team deployed in Russia is about to take out the leader of the coup in Moscow when they're ordered by the US government to take him in alive. The coup leader laughs as he thinks he's getting off scot-free until they all hear the sound of an oncoming train, at which point he begs the team to save him. Ghost Lead refuses, telling him "our orders were not to touch you."
- Heavy Rain:
- Norman Jayden can do this if he fights the Origami Killer in the end. The alternative is to save him and then kill him.
- Shelby can also do this to Charles Kramer by not giving him his pills while he's having a heart attack.
- Across the Hitman franchise, many levels have ways to eliminate a target without 47 being directly involved, usually finding intel about someone who has a grudge against the target and letting them finish the job. In the mission "Death In the Family", the target Alexa Carlyle can be Driven to Suicide by assuming the role of the Great Detective called in to investigate the recent death of her brother, Zachary, and telling her a specific lie about his cause of death.
- Hollow Knight: The achievement "Neglect" is obtained by not attempting to save Zote from the jaws of a Vengefly. You can only get it if you return to the place in Greenpath where the Vengefly was and whack what remains of Zote with your nail.
- In Ghost Trick, when Sissel speaks to Lynne after she dies and tells her that he saw a video feed of her shooting him, Lynne comments that he could easily get back at her for it by simply leaving her dead. Sissel has no intention of doing that, however.
- Injustice 2: Wonder Woman, Superman, and Damian all accuse Batman of this, pointing out how his adherence to Thou Shalt Not Kill enables psychopathic villains like Brainiac or the Joker to just keep on killing.Robin: You coward! We are at war with these animals! You think you're better than him!? You let the Joker keep on killing! You couldn't save Lois, or Jason, or ANYONE!
Wonder Woman: None of us wanted this. But the Joker forced our hand. Metropolis changed the world. Now WE have to change with it!
Superman: Metropolis and Coast City are gone. How many more innocent people have to die before YOU accept that some lives need to be TAKEN?! - One of the cases in Law & Order: Legacies has a murder victim bleed out to death from his wounds while his wife looked on and didn't call for help until two hours later. When the wife is caught and questioned by the police for her inaction to save her husband, she claims she didn't call for help to "teach him a lesson" after he had failed to keep his promise of not blowing money on his stories and to be a better father to their child.
- Mass Effect:
- Mass Effect: The Council mocks, questions, and otherwise screws you for most of the game, even colluding with Udina to ground your ship on the Citadel. At the climax, you have the option to leave the Citadel fleet and the Destiny Ascension to be annihilated fighting the Geth fleet, allowing the Alliance to ride in and mop up the remnants and take down Sovereign. The dialogue tree option literally says, "Let the Council die!" Later, a renegade Shepard has the option to claim he/she was waiting for a chance to get rid of them all along, prompting a shocked response from Anderson and a smug response from Udina. However, this option also causes 10,000 people to die and can result in worsened relations between humanity and the other Council races.
- Mass Effect 2: In Jacob's loyalty mission you have the option to leave Acting Captain Taylor to be presumably maimed and killed by his feral crew. Why? He set his mechs on you and his crew, brainwashed several of them to be mindless guards, forced most of the crew to worship him like a god, and passed around the female crew members like sex slaves between officers. His abuses are so unacceptable his own son recommends you kill him or leave him to die.
- Mass Effect 3: The Renegade method to achieve peace between the Geth and Quarians is to tell the Quarians that you're sick of helping them out like you did in the past and that if they attack the soon-to-be-upgraded Geth, they will die and you will not stop it; they will then get the hint and abandon the attack. This option does, however, require a fair bit of preparatory choices going back as far as Mass Effect 2 to be available (as is the more Paragonic alternative to reconciling the two sides).
- Metro:
- There are a few instances where this can happen in Metro 2033. In particular, on the Frontline mission, you can find a pair of Red Line officers interrogating an apparent deserter, who tells them that he was merely investigating a rumor about a shortcut behind the Nazi line, after which they kill him anyway unless you kill them first. Letting the man die makes you lose a moral point while saving him gains you one, so there's incentive to do if you're trying to get the "good" ending. On the other hand, letting him die and then allowing the officers to walk away is preferable if you're trying not to kill anyone, which is required to get the achievement/trophy "Invisible Man" (and also gets you a moral point if you do go through the entire level without killing anyone).
- Metro: Last Light: One of the last levels in the game culminates with fighting Pavel and a bunch of communist soldiers in Red Square. After you wound Pavel and compromise his gas mask, the Little Dark One shows you his memories and then you're taken to a hellscape where the souls of the damned in the surrounding area start trying to drag Pavel in with them while he begs you for help. If you take too long getting to him or choose not to help, he dies; if you help him, he simply passes out and you replace the filter on his mask. Letting him die gets you the "Revenge" achievement/trophy, but it also practically guarantees that you'll get the "bad" ending.
- In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Huey Emmerich leaves his wife Dr. Strangelove to suffocate in the A.I. Pod she gets sealed into after she tries to stop him from placing their 2-year-old son in Sahelanthropus. When she realizes she's never getting out she begs him for a quick death, but he just leaves. When her corpse is found later Huey tries to claim she committed suicide, but at this point his credibility has been shot to hell by his pathological lying so no one believes him.
- Persona 4:
- After Nanako's apparent death, the entire Investigation Team is so outraged at Namatame for his role in itExplanation that they seriously consider just tossing him into the TV world and leaving him to be ripped apart by the Shadows within as revenge; doing so leads to the Bad Ending. In The Animation, as well as the manga adaptation, Yu very nearly does just that before managing to stop himself.
- When the true killer is revealed to be Tohru Adachi, he adamantly insists to the protagonists that he himself didn't kill Ms. Yamano and Saki; he merely threw them into the TV world and let the Shadows do it for him. Of course, some of them point out that since he had some idea of what would happen to them when he did so, that doesn't make much of a difference. The party later averts this trope when Adachi asks them to leave him in the TV world to die after he loses to them since they want him to pay for his crimes.
- Persona 5: Ichiryusai Madarame, representative of Vanity of the Seven Deadly Sins, lives up to his namesake when he lets a woman die so that he can steal her painting and adopt her young son Yusuke, whom Madarame uses to make paintings that he passes off as his own. When this fact comes out, Yusuke loses any reason to forgive Madarame for his sins and attacks him.
- In the DLC for Tomb Raider: Underworld, Lara Croft manages to take control of her doppelganger that was sent after her by Natla. Lara orders her clone to "make sure Natla suffers as long as possible" and then tells her to be independent and have free will while not taking orders from anyone anymore. Lara's clone then returns to Natla, who was wounded earlier, and is ordered to help free her from the debris. The clone simply stands there and watches with a devilish grin on her face as Natla starts to drown under the blue muck rising from the ground.
- In Until Dawn, this leads to a possible death for Chris. If you earlier chose not to save Ashley in the death traps or tried to shoot her with the gun, she will refuse to open the door when Chris is being chased by Wendigos and will watch him die instead.
- Vampyr (2018): The player can opt for Jonathan to do this when he finds out that Dr. Swansea was responsible for the Skal epidemic in London. Considering the latter was mortally injured, Jonathan can leave him to die because of the severity of his act, straight up drain him or turn him into a vampire as a Cruel Mercy. Keep in mind the first one keeps your "Not Even Once" run clean, but allows the district to fall into chaos, the second one gives you extra XP on top of ruining your run and the district, and the third one preserves your run, the district albeit at a huge cost of your XP, but backfires because Swansea regards his new condition as a blessing and now the district is at the hands of a vampire Mad Scientist. So basically, there is no good option.
