My Greatest Failure / Video Games

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• Pick a BioWare game, and chances are you'll hear one of these from at least one of your party members. Chances are, you'll end up with them when they attempt to correct said failures, too. A more comprehensive list:
  • In Mass Effect, Garrus was rather angry about an organ farmer that C-Sec's regulations prevented him from stopping. His personal mission in that game is to hunt down and kill the organ farmer.
    • In Mass Effect 2, you recruit Garrus from the battlefield in which most of his team was slaughtered. His loyalty mission is to hunt down the man that sold them out. Turian culture emphasizes meritocracy, and any screw up that is happening among their members will be blamed to its leader.
  • Also in Mass Effect 2 is Thane's regret that he left his son behind following his vengeance on his wife's murderers. His loyalty mission is to keep Kolyat, the son in question, from following in his footsteps.
  • While Samara cannot be blamed for having daughters who are Ardat-Yakshi, Asari with a rare genetic disease that makes them addicted to murdering people by draining their life energy, she later makes it her life's mission to hunt down and destroy Morinth, the daughter who ran to preserve her freedom rather than join her sisters in isolation at a remote monastery where they learn to suppress their urges and are far removed from any temptations.
  • In Mass Effect 3, being forced to leave Earth in the midst of a Reaper invasion is this for Shepard until the fall of Thessia where s/he hits his/her lowest point, blaming him/herself for not getting the right info and for the fall of the asari homeworld.
  • In the same game, if Shepard tries to convince Mordin to fake curing the genophage, Mordin will finally break down and confess that he views his works to negate the slow krogan development of immunity to it as this. He spent the previous game and his earlier interactions in this one denying that he felt any guilt over it, though. Despite his reassurances that he got over his guilt back at the second game, particularly after his loyalty mission, it was clear that he was lying. This explains the sudden shift of his views about the genophage between the second and the third game.
  • Joker reveals in 3 that he considers the destruction of the original Normandy to be his. Not the destruction itself, but his initial refusal to leave the doomed ship directly resulted in Shepard's original death. He has never quite gotten the guilt from it and, after Shepard's resuscitation, goes above and beyond to keep the Commander both physically and mentally safe to make up for it.
  • In Jade Empire, Sagacious Zu regrets his failure to save Master Li's family from the Emperor's vengeance. You learn later that Master Li's daughter is still alive, and she happens to be right in your party.
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, Wynne was assigned to mentor a young elven mage during her younger days, and he ended up fleeing the Circle and getting killed by the Templars. In her personal quest you learn that he actually escaped and Wynne was told he had died to mess with her, and the two get to meet again.
  • Sten considers losing his sword to be his greatest failure. Swords are very important to the Qunari. For the Qun, his sword is his soul, the representation of his role as a warrior, and being seen by his fellow men without it is a death sentence.
  • Oghren also blames himself for his entire clan dying and his wife Branka going insane, believing that had he been a better husband she may have not gone on her mad quest for the Anvil of the Void and dragged their clan into their gruesome fate.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Thom Rainier ordered his men to assassinate a rival Lord. He realized that the target's wife and children were present when he heard the children singing, but didn't call off the attack, resulting in the entire family being killed. He then let his men take the fall and fled. Eventually, he was recruited for the Wardens by a Warden named Blackwall, whose identity Rainier assumed after Blackwall died saving him.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic, Carth considers his failure to stop Admiral Karath from turning on the Republic to be his greatest failure, which led to the death of his wife; about three-quarters of the way through the game he gets to kill the Admiral. There's also Jolee Bindo, who trained his Force-sensitive wife despite the Jedi Council's insistence that he wasn't ready, which led to her falling to the Dark Side and killing many Jedi before dying herself in the Exar Kun War because he couldn't bring himself to kill her. The Council forgave him and offered him a promotion to Knight, but he couldn't forgive himself and left the Order. If the Player Character considers embracing the Dark Side, he tells them he won't back down this time.
  • In Neverwinter Nights, the confused angsty mess of a person that is Aribeth considers her fiancee's unjustified execution at the end of chapter 1 to be her failure.
• Ace Attorney:
  • Godot/Diego Armando projects this onto Phoenix Wright in Trials and Tribulations, feeling that Mia's death is Phoenix's greatest failure, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it — he switches from being a defense attorney to a prosecutor and goes after him to exact revenge for supposedly not protecting her. He actually blames himself and is just projecting his guilt onto Phoenix, which he finally realizes and owns up to during the final trial.
  • Detective Badd of Investigations wears a bullet-riddled trenchcoat to remind himself of his failure to protect Cece Yew from being murdered by a smuggling ring before she could testify. This also led him to form the Yatagarasu with Calisto Yew and Byrne Faraday.
• According to this Angry Birds book by National Geographic, the Mighty Eagle's backstory was that he went into a self-imposed exile after letting the pigs steal the eggs under his watch. His only friends who visit him regularly are the Blues, who feed him cans of sardines and have him tell them stories.
• Bravely Default: Ringabel remembers his greatest failure once he regains all his memories... In truth, he is an Alternis Dim from another world, and he failed to save his world's Edea from the true villain Airy. When said villain calls him out on his inability to act in the face of her power back then, the former dark knight cannot defend himself. However, in the credits of the Golden Ending, Ringabel gets the chance to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, proudly proclaiming his original name as he defends Edea.
• Chest:
  • Raks, aka Rain Green, is haunted by one of his machines accidentally killing his brother, Right. Ever since then, thinking about this trauma causes him to fall asleep as part of his mental defense mechanism. He decides to become a royal scientist again when Anzi, a goddess, tells him that his brother in Heaven doesn't blame him.
  • Rosy was unable to protect her brother from bullies, which is why she currently wants to become the strongest warrior in the world so she can protect everyone she loves.
• Sarge, from Chibi-Robo!, blames himself for the loss of Memphis, one of his subordinates. After some of his men abandon the group, and you give him Memphis's dog tags, his tough act comes to a head, and he loses it. "YOU'RE NOT FIT TO BE FREE RANGERS! ... And I'm not fit to lead you..." But tears of sorrow quickly turn to tears of triumph as his remaining men come to his aid. "YOU'RE HARD BOILED!"
• Chrono Trigger: One memorable scene in the game involves Lucca revisiting a traumatic moment from her past in which her mother, Lara, got caught in and permanent crippled by one of her husband Taban's machines. In the original timeline, young Lucca was unable to turn the machine off because she couldn't remember the password (Lara), and afterwards Lucca vowed to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to science to avoid any similar incidents in the future. Thankfully, unlike most examples of this trope, the player character can save Lara by entering the password. Even if the player does so, young Lucca will still decide to dedicate herself to science so that she can avoid any potentially catastrophic accidents.
• The beginning of The Closer: Game of the Year Edition has the titular character give up a home run to Carlos "The Machine" Rodriguez near the tail end of Game 6 of the World Series, dashing the New York Yankees' hopes of securing the championship trophy before Game 7 could exist (they were in the lead 3-2 before the incident). This weighs heavily on the Closer, and the rest of the game is an epic journey to redeem his image and expand his pitching repertoire in what little time he has before the final game.
• At the climax of Devil May Cry 5, it turns out that, for Nero, the death of Credo in Devil May Cry 4 is this for him. Credo was the brother of Nero's lover, Kyrie, and became Nero's own adoptive brother when Nero became part of their family. Growing up, Credo was Nero's mentor, but Credo's loyalty to the Order of the Sword caused the two to become enemies. In the end, Credo sacrificed himself in an attempt to save Nero and Kyrie from his former master, Sanctus. In DMC5, Nero privately admits to himself that he's always hated himself for being unable to save Credo and lacking the strength to do so. His resolve not to let history repeat itself with Vergil and Dante (who he'd learned by this point are his biological father and uncle, respectively) leads him to awaken his Devil Trigger and end their long-running feud.
• Deckard Cain of the Diablo series has much to regret, as shown in his dialogue in Diablo III:
  Deckard Cain: I am the last of the Horadrim. I couldn't always claim this. In fact, if I had turned to the Horadric teachings sooner, Diablo could have been stopped before his reign of terror began.
  Player: You cannot believe this.
  Deckard Cain: When the first signs appeared, I did nothing. I had shrugged the old tales off like they were so much fantasy, and Tristram — no, the world — has paid dearly for my arrogance.
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: The leader of the archangels, Slash, regrets listening to Quot's request to spare Asterisk, since this just led to Asterisk continuing with his cycle of wiping out humanity and reviving them. Slash now believes the only way to atone for his failure is to stop the party from unwittingly delivering the Zodiac stones to Zazz's office, thus preventing the cycle from continuing. Quot herself regrets convincing Slash to spare Asterisk, since she is not only ostracized by the other angels, Asterisk dumps her anyways.
• In The Elder Scrolls series' primary Creation Myth, this is the case for Auri-El, the Aldmeri eagle version of Akatosh, the draconic God of Time and chief deity of the Aedric pantheon. In his only known moment of weakness, he agreed to help Lorkhan create Mundus (the mortal plane) in exchange for the privilege of being its king. However, Auri-El was disgusted with what they had created and insisted that everything was permanently spoiled, and all they would be able to do would be to teach the elves to suffer with dignity. He went to war with and vanquished Lorkhan, then ascended to heaven in full observance of his followers so that they might learn the steps needed to escape the mortal plane.
• Eastern Exorcist begins with the hero, Lu Yun-chuan, failing his mission to hunt down the demon lord known as King Mandrill, where two of his sworn brothers are killed by King Mandrill's forces while his last brother is mortally injured... all because Lu decides to spare a hulijing his brothers caught. According to his only surviving brother, Zhang Huai-zhou, the hulijing is one of King Mandrill's minions who then rats them out, leading to Lu Yun-chuan deciding to atone for his failures by completing the quest solo. And then comes the last stage's revelation; the hulijing is actually innocent, his supposed sworn brother, Zhang, is the real traitor in league with the demons.
• Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code: Tovit pushed his daughter, Dita, into becoming a Judge, even though she never wanted to be a warrior. When she had to lead her troops into battle, she deserted and left them to die, leading to the rest of Idinite society, including Tovit, scorning her. Dita eventually committed suicide and Tovit's wife left him, causing him to realize that he was at fault. In the prologue, he wants to find a place to spread his Dita's ashes, though he knows that he'll never be able to truly atone for his misdeeds. He also notes that while it'd be easy to simply blame the Cainites, he should have loved his daughter for who she really is rather than an ideal version in his head.
• With you playing as Evil Genius, in, well, Evil Genius, you get to inflict one of these on one of the Super Agents of the Forces of Justice in order to be permanently rid of him — specifically, A.N.V.I.L.'s Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy Jet Chan. He's gone so long without losing a fight that it's gone to his head, something which his old master will tell you when you interrogate him. You can then set up a one-on-one match between Jet and one of your own martial artists while also drugging his sushi prior to said match; when he loses he will be so ashamed he will retreat into the mountains and meditate upon his loss, never to bother you and your secret island base again.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash Kyrielight never forgave themselves for freezing up while Olga Marie Animusphere was being killed. Later, when Goredolf Musik is about to be killed, they freeze again, but when Goredolf begins to unknowingly echo Olga Marie's last words, they snap out of it and save him, determined not to let history repeat itself.
  • Avicebron feels immense shame and guilt for his actions in the Greater Grail War — specifically betraying his master Roche, and using him as a core for his Golem, Adam — to the point where he considers it the worst thing he's ever done, and badly wants to atone. Unusually for this trope Avicebron only hazily remembers the actual crime, since he's a Servant, and Servants aren't supposed to retain memories between Grail Wars, but the fact he remembers it at all just emphasizes how bad it actually was: his crime was so severe, it permanently damaged his Saint Graph and followed him into the Throne Of Heroes — his crime was actually horrible enough to mar his very legend as a hero. He finds some degree of redemption by making a Heroic Sacrifice: turning himself into Adam's core, and handing control over to the player so they can save the world with it.
  • Don Quixote is haunted by the fact that in the Atlantis Lostbelt, he gave in to fear and fled when his comrades were being killed, betraying his own dream to become a heroic knight. He is so haunted that when he and Sancho are in a losing battle and Sancho suggests defecting to survive, he screams that he will fight for the Human Order and attacks Constantine recklessly. He only survives because Charlemagne saves him.
  • Saint Martha regrets the time when Jesus visited her home and she concentrated on preparing the food and yelled her sister, Mary, for wasting time talking to Jesus instead of helping her. This caused Jesus to rebuke her and say listening to his teachings is far more important than Earthly concerns. Martha has struggled with feeling unworthy ever since.
  • Siegfried regrets that in his original life, he allowed himself to be killed to try to prevent a war, without consulting his wife Kriemhild or considering her feelings, especially since she got herself killed avenging him and doubted that he loved her when she found out what he did.
• In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud feels regret over several failures. His failure to become a SOLDIER, the death of Zack who died trying to protect him, and blaming himself for not being strong enough to protect his childhood friend, Tifa, when she falls into a ravine and slips into a coma (also didn't help that Tifa's father blamed Cloud for Tifa's injury) leads to Cloud suffering from psychological disorders like Trauma-Induced Amnesia and Split Personality. He also regrets failing to prevent the death of Aeris, which motivates Cloud to take down Sephiroth.
  • In the prequel Crisis Core, Zack's failure in capturing Genesis and preventing the death of Angeal also falls into this category.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, the Crystal Braves is this for Alphinaud; Alphinaud had intended for the Crystal Braves to be the saviors of Eorzea, but his hubris caused him to miss the smaller details and not realize the Monetarists for Ul'dah had gotten their hands on them via funding. This allowed the scheming Teledji Adeledji to seemingly assassinate Ul'dah's Sultana Nanamo Ul Namo and frame the Scions of the Seventh Dawn for it.
• The events of the original God of War trilogy, his Deal with the Devil with Ares and the deaths of his wife and daughter by his hands are these for an Older and Wiser Kratos in God of War (PS4).
• In The Halloween Hack, Dr. Andonuts blames himself for the deaths of his wife and the Chosen Four.
• Halo:
  • In the backstory for Halo: Reach: both Carter and Kat consider the same event, the death of their squadmate Thom, to be Their Greatest Failure. Kat planned the operation he was killed on, while Carter blames his "inadequate team preparation." However, to quote their commanding officer:
    "Eventually I hope to be able to get it through their thick Spartan skulls that Thom is dead because he chose to pursue a group of enemy combatants ON HIS OWN rather than wait for backup."
    • For the record, they're all wrong.
  • The backstory, particularly The Forerunner Saga, shows that the Didact seems to consider his life to be this trope. Particularly his hand in nearly wiping out humanity over a misunderstanding, losing every one of his children in the effort, being defeated by the Builders in his efforts to prevent and safeguard against the inevitable return of the Flood, and getting marooned in Flood-infected territory by the Master Builder without completing the potentially galaxy-saving mission he was sent on by his wife, where he ends up transforming into a genocidal madman, forcing his own wife to seal him away. To top it off, even the sane copy of himself imprinted upon Bornstellar gets forced to commit galactic genocide in order to defeat the Flood, via the same drastic methods the original Didact fought against in his aforementioned failure with the Builders, killing his wife in the process. This guy just couldn't catch a break (except for that thousand-year coma he was forced to go into after the again-aforementioned struggle against the Builders and the 100,000+ year exile his wife put him into).
  • As Master Chief himself says to Echo 216 in Halo Infinite:
    Master Chief: I should have protected Cortana. Stopped everything from going wrong. I failed her. I will not fail you.
• Ethan Mars from Heavy Rain believes that his son Jason's death was his fault, and seems to suffer some degree of PTSD as a result.
• Inazuma Eleven: Goenji Shuuya (Axel Blaze) blames himself for his sister's serious accident a year before the game's event because playing a national soccer tournament against Teikoku lures bad guys into harming his family and put his sister into a coma, but is snapped out of a Wangst state by The Hero's Hot Bloodedness. Then he is determined to win a Football Frontier tournament for his sister.
• If we allow JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle a bit of canonicity, specifically its post-fight comments, Fugo never forgave himself for not getting on the boat with the rest of Bucciarati's group.
• Kingdom Hearts has Riku. He is so ashamed of allowing his heart to be consumed by darkness that he spends an entire game avoiding Sora and reluctant to return home even after Xehanort's shadow is removed and his form returned. Then, in a journey through dreams, he notes that the results of his failure (namely, having his body stolen by Ansem) just keeps coming back to haunt him.
  Riku: I gave in to the darkness once. And ever since, it's haunted me in some form or another. The Heartless of the man who stole my body, a puppet replica of the shadows within my heart, and now I'm facing myself.
• Rean Schwarzer in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II believes that his greatest failure was him not bringing back Crow to Thors school as Crow dies in Rean's arms at the end of the main storyline of Cold Steel II. And in Cold Steel III, letting Millium die right in front of his eyes is another moment of failure for him.
• Luminous Plume:
  • Raven abandoned the White Talons in their battle with the Calamities, allowing the golems to ravage the city the Talons were protecting. He regrets this so much that he refuses to take credit for killing Jade, the controller of the Calamities.
  • Likewise, the Black Blade, Victor, failed to save the Outer Ring of Arcana from a brute invasion and later cowered and did nothing in the face of the Harbingers of Calamity. This caused him to lose confidence in his abilities, though Raven convinces him that they can both continue improving themselves.
• In Mega Man 11 it's revealed that Dr. Light feels this way about Dr. Wily. Though their friendship was already strained by that point, the straw that broke the camel's back was Light speaking out against Wily's Double Gear System and convincing the department to choose his research into robots with independent thought instead. This finally broke their friendship once and for all and also managed to be Wily's Start of Darkness, which Light still regrets to this day:
  Dr. Light: Wily never forgave me. And his views have grown ever more extreme since then... How ironic. That my efforts to quench Wily's hotheadedness before it led him astray... only ended up fueling the fire. If only I'd shown him there was a way to work together... instead of just telling him that he was wrong, maybe we'd still be friends.
• In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Big Boss views the killing of his mentor and friend who taught him everything he ever knew as a soldier and then going on to fight for causes that she never would have believed in as his greatest failure. He goes so far as to claim after that point he was already dead emotionally. At the end of Metal Gear Solid 4 as he stands above her grave, Big Boss proclaims to his son that if their roles had been reversed, he probably wouldn't have made the same mistakes and that he still has a chance to do things better than he ever had.
• In Metroid: Other M, Samus's falling out with Adam is implied to be a result of her greatest failure. The incident in question turns out to be trying to get Adam to change his mind about leaving his brother Ian on a ship that is about to explode, making an already hard decision even harder.
• In the Sam & Max game The City that Dares Not Sleep, Sam's greatest failure is not being able to rescue Max from "The Final Imperative;" Max was Killed Off for Real, and most of the game's ending scene follows Sam's guilt and grief over Max's death. He seems to get over it by Poker Night 2 and doesn't mind that the Max with him now is from an Alternate Universe, where Sam is the one who died.
• In Ōkami, when Waka tried to save the Celestials using the Ark Of Yamato, he didn't realise that Yami was on board, leading to the Celestials getting slaughtered. It also led to a horde of demons being unleashed in Nippon.
• In Persona 3 FES, one of the things The Answer deals with is Aigis's Greatest Failure. That is, her inability to prevent the Protagonist's death despite her promise to protect him.
• Physical Exorcism Series: In Case 03: True Cannibal Boy, Brucie reveals that he feels guilt over Grete killing Hans in Case 00: The Cannibal Boy, who he genuinely loved. The Cannibal Boy of Mt. Candyhouse takes advantage of this by shapeshifting into Hans in order to make him hesitate.
• General Azimuth in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. A plot point in Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction was that Big Bad Tachyon took over because he had access to Lombax technology. Azimuth was the one who granted him access, as he believed Tachyon would help improve them to better the galaxy. The result was that the Lombax people had to take refuge in an alternate dimension, with Azimuth being left behind as punishment. To this end, Azimuth hoped to use The Great Clock to Set Right What Once Went Wrong... no matter what the cost.
  Ratchet: Why aren't you with the other Lombaxes?
  Azimuth: Because I failed them! I... I failed them...
• Red Dead Redemption 2: Accidentally beating the sick-and-dying family man Thomas Downes to death over a debt is this for Arthur, for different reasons depending on his honor; at high honor, it's for finally making him realize just how often (and how badly) he's ruined innocent lives, with the Downes family just being the biggest and most obvious. At low honor, it's because it's how Arthur contracts tuberculosis, signing his death warrant. Made clearest by the following sidequests revolving around the Downeses, as well as the speech (both honor variants) he gives Leopold Strauss upon kicking him out of camp after finishing the Debtor missions.
• Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins: If Syphon is taken to the blizzard event at the top of the Giant Tower, he'll apologize in his sleep. In town, a conversation between him and Deneros reveals that Syphon accidentally killed his friend in an experiment gone wrong. It's implied that Syphon wants to obtain the Book of the Dead to find some way to revive his friend.
• According to the original backstory, Serious Sam was the captain of the starship that drew Mental's attention to humanity and he threw himself headlong, even suicidally, into the fighting to try and atone.
• In Spirits of Anglerwood Forest, Ezra feels extremely guilty for cursing his family since he feels it robbed him and Phoebe of a normal life. So guilty, in fact, that he goes deep into the woods alone to put a stop to it. It doesn't work.
• Sun Haven has Wornhardt, the doctor of the eponymous town. Though he's a capable and well-mannered medical professional, he's still haunted by his failure to save a mayor's daughter from an illness he couldn't diagnose, leading to his hometown in the Southern Isles turning on him and Wornhardt leaving in shame.
• Asbel of Tales of Graces considers his biggest failure to be his inability to protect his friends during the Prologue sequence, which leads to Sophie's Heroic Sacrifice (though she gets better in a few years). This kickstarts the basis for his entire character arc.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd and Genis are most troubled by the mutation and death of their friend Marble after Lloyd had been caught sneaking into the ranch to visit her with Genis, which also led to an attack on Iselia. It's made worse when her granddaughter Chocolat refuses to be rescued after learning this.
  • Sheena is also burdened by her failure to make a pact with Volt, even though she was unable to understand what he was saying and (unbeknownst to her at the time), he no longer wanted to make a pact.
  • Kratos has at least two of these, both spoilery: his inability to prevent Mithos from falling into despair after Martel's death, and being forced to kill his wife after she was turned into a monster. No wonder he's a Death Seeker.
  • Regal considers Alicia's death to be this, to the point he refuses to remove his handcuffs because they are a symbol of his crime.
• In Tales of the Abyss, Jade's backstory includes having accidentally killed his teacher with experimental magic as a child. He's mostly gotten past it now, but it drove him to extreme lengths trying to make a Replacement Goldfish for about ten years until Peony knocked some sense into him.
  • The magic he developed in this time — fomicry, used for making clones called "replicas" — is what kicks off the whole plot, allows the main character, a replica, to exist, and forms the basis for the Big Bad's plan. In a way, Tales Of The Abyss overall is Jade Curtiss' greatest failure. He is very aware of this.
    Jade: I wish I could go back in time and kill myself as a newborn.
• In Tears to Tiara 2 Enneads and Monomachus, first leaders of La Résistance and then of Hispania and Hamil's advisers have the same two events. First, they had failed to protect Hamil's father and their old commander Hasdrubal. Second, they had both failed to see through Hamil's Obfuscating Stupidity to help him as he does his best to lessen the burden of the people of Hispania under the oppression of The Empire and only thought of rebellion, going as far as planning to use Hamil as a puppet.
• If you fail to save a patient in Trauma Center, the Player Character becomes so ashamed and depressed over their failure that they decide to resign from the medical field and they're never seen again, implying that they can't consider themselves as doctors nor face their colleagues after the failure they had.
• In The Walking Dead (Telltale), depending on player choices, Clementine can blame herself for Lee's death in Season 2. Season 4 sadly confirms that even seven years later, she still blames herself.
• World in Conflict: In a rare use of the trope, this is not part of the backstory, but rather a key plot point. Colonel Sawyer considers the use of the tactical nuclear warhead during the battle of Cascade Falls to be this. Later, he throws caution to the winds and pushes his forces into high-casualty head-on assaults to ensure using another one never becomes necessary.
  Sawyer: I won't let this become another failure, like Cascade Falls.
  Webb: But... we didn't fail at Cascade Falls, sir.
  Sawyer: When I have to sacrifice a company of my men and drop a nuke on my own country, I'LL CALL IT A GOD-DAMNED FAILURE!
• World of Warcraft:
  • A real-life example with Blizzard concerning their on-going development of the game, where they flat-out stated during a Blizzcon interview that their biggest regret for the franchise was not creating Azjol-Nerub into a world zone during the Wrath of the Lich King era.
  • Grom Hellscream came to view his decision to seal the pact between the orcs and demons as this, even choosing to hide his involvement from Thrall.
  • Thrall sees making Garrosh Hellscream the Horde Warchief as one of his greatest failures, because he felt he had to look after Grom's son and it killed his best friend and many others, including causing one of his friends to hate him and go Omnicidal Maniac. It kind of WAS Thrall's greatest failure...

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