Tragic Monster / Video Games

• In The Adventures of Rad Gravity, the apparent Big Bad is Agathos, a former human who has been mutated into a giant brain. After you defeat him, he returns to human form and reveals that the real big bad is your sidekick Kakos, who manipulated you into reactivating the evil Compuminds that Agathos shut down.
• In Alien Syndrome for the Wii, you have to fight the terribly mutated form of the Aileen's husband.
• The Beast that hunts Henri Clément throughout the entirety of Amnesia: The Bunker is actually Augustine Lambert, Henri's best friend and fellow soldier in World War I. When Augustine didn't return from a routine patrol his friend tricked him into taking, a guilt-ridden Henri snuck out into No Man's Land at night to find him and discovered him injured at the bottom of a pit. Seeing that his friend was weak, Henri gave him some water from a pool in the hole to drink before carrying him out. What he didn't know was that this water was infected with the supernatural mutagen from Amnesia: Rebirth, saving Augustine's life but also unwittingly turning him into near-mindless Humanoid Abomination.
• Mithala in Aquaria was revered as the forefather of the Mithalan civilization. Then the local Path of Inspiration took over and the rites took a darker turn. Instead of food, they brought worshippers. Eventually, he was driven insane by hunger and accepted the "offering". The cult fed him the entire civilization, turning him into a Womb Level.
• The game over screen for Area 51 shows the protagonist morphing into one of the alien mutants, having been infected with The Virus.
• In Area 51 (FPS), one of your teammates succumbs to The Virus about 1/4th of the way through the game, turning into a mutant and forcing you to fight and kill him. You yourself partially turn into a mutant halfway through the game.
• The monster who repeatedly chases the toddler protagonist in Among the Sleep? It's his mom. Or rather, how his young mind sees her when she drinks. Sadly, she's trying to be a good mom, but her alcoholism and the stress of going through a divorce causes her to lash out at her young son. Near the end of the game, when the mom slaps her son to the ground in a fit of anger, she's clearly mortified by her behavior and breaks down crying.
• Estina from Astebreed is probably this due to experimentation. Oliga and Hugo from the prologue are also this, whose brain tissues were used for the Agnesi and Evolute bosses, respectively.
• Asura's Wrath: Wrath Asura, the result of seeing a little girl that looked just like his daughter die after being slaughtered by Olga of the Seven Deities. Made much more obvious with his battle theme, Bonds.
• Baldur's Gate II:
  • If your character has a romantic interest, and you're far enough along the romance storyline, they will be kidnapped and vampirised by Bodhi. While you will have to kill them, there's a way to bring them back: take their corpse and Bodhi's heart to the ruined Temple of Amaunator, then stick them in a specific idol — instant cure. You don't find this out until after you've killed them, though.
  • Using the Ascension Mod for Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal means the Big Bad turns your sister Imoen into the mindless Slayer form and sets her on you. She will revert and rejoin your party if you leave her long enough, unfortunately the Big Bad also sets Jon Irenicus, Bodai, and a fallen Solar on you at the same time. Taking on all four at once is very difficult, and she's the easiest to kill... This is also how Imoen dies in the novelization of the game.
• Bendy and the Ink Machine:
  • All of the creatures Henry meets in the studios are this, brought to life by Joey Drew's experiments with the Ink Machine. Some used to be people, turned into inky monstrosities, while some were born of the ink itself. Either way, they are brought into a world where they are trapped in the ruined building where they must struggle for survival.
  • In Chapter 2, Henry can listen to a recording by lyricist Jack Fain. Shortly after, he comes across the ink creature that Jack's become — with just enough personality left to still be wearing his hat. Henry ends up having to kill him in order to get closer to escaping the studio, and he apologizes for it afterward.
  • In Chapter 3, Alice sends Henry on a quest where she says he can see "an old friend". This friend, Norman Polk, is also character who's made audio logs that Henry can find in-game. However, Norman has been turned into a screeching ink monster with a projector for a head.
  • Bendy himself is the biggest one. Chapter 5 reveals he was the failed, first attempt to bring the cartoon character to life. Since he had no soul, it failed, but he only wandered around not harming anyone. However, due to Joey worrying he could scare people off, he was locked in the bottom of the studio.
• BioShock:
  • The Splicers will attack you on sight, but the story behind them is quite tragic. They were ordinary people who took the Fantastic Drug ADAM, which gave them superpowers but was extremely addictive and detrimental to sanity. Rapture's extreme capitalist policies meant that there was never any control nor warnings about the dangers of ADAM until it was too late. And even those who didn't want to splice felt forced into it to protect themselves and their families from mad Splicers, which only got worse as Rapture fell into a civil war and splicing became both sides' weapon of choice. Now the non-spliced population of Rapture probably measures in the single digits, and the Splicers act as muscle for anyone who can sate their desperate need for ADAM. In their occasional moments of lucidity, they apologize to you for what they've done and are horrified at their current state.
  • The Big Daddies, human beings forcibly reconstructed into amphibious cyborgs and brainwashed into serving as guardians to the Little Sisters, are especially good at evoking this. Watching how gentle they can be with the Little Sisters has been known to give gamers pause in killing them, and the forlorn way they go wandering when no Little Sisters are around is just sad. The fact that they are brainwashed and not acting on their own choices, even when they attack you, just makes it worse.
  • BioShock 2:
    • In a rather heart-wrenching series of events towards the end, Sofia Lamb captures Augustus Sinclair and turns him into an Alpha-Series Big Daddy and has him hold onto a key you need to progress, except she leaves his mind intact and aware. A chunk of the last level involves Subject Delta working his way through the multiple defenses that Sinclair's body has set up... while Sinclair's voice is talking to you over the radio, apologizing for everything, telling you that you have to kill him, and saying he enjoyed the time spent helping you. When you finally gun him down, he thanks you as he dies.
    • If you followed the ARG, then Mark Meltzer. A chap whose daughter was taken from the surface, in order to be made into a Little Sister. Meltzer searched for her, stumbled upon Rapture, and was given a choice to either be killed or stay with his daughter forever... as a Big Daddy. Guess what he chose. And the worse part? You don't even know it's him until after you kill him, since he looks and behaves identically to any other Rumbler Big Daddy.
  • The new Big Sister enemies were once Little Sisters who weren't saved in the first game. The onset of adolescence broke down their brainwashing and drove them insane, so they were locked in diving suits and pointed at whoever Lamb doesn't like. They're still teenage girls who've been exploited since young childhood, and they can't be saved like the Little Sisters can.
  • Meanwhile, in BioShock Infinite, two of the Heavy Hitters are these.
    • Handymen are cyborg monstrosities created from people who were sick, disabled, or invalid — sometimes against their will, sometimes in hopes of being cured. The result is a monster that knows what a monster it is, can no longer interact safely with humans, and is in constant (and vocal) pain thanks to the crude attempt at implanting its remaining organs into the new body. Worse still, they're also prone to fits of berserk rage induced by this pain, one of the reasons why they're so dangerous in combat.
    • The Siren is a "living quantum singularity" — a human woman who is trapped in a fluctuating position between life and death and left as a screaming, half-insane, enemy-resurrecting "ghost." What makes it even more unsettling is the Siren was originally Lady Comstock, meaning Comstock turned his own wife into this thing.
• BlazBlue: This trope is the reason behind Litchi and Arakune's entire backstory. They were both scientists working under an organization, until an incident occurred in which Arakune lost his body and mind, continuing to exist only as an Eldritch Abomination who eats people. Litchi then set out to find a cure for Arakune, even willing to put him out of his misery herself if she has to. What makes it even sadder is that Arakune has occasional moments of lucidity... but only around Litchi. During these moments, he does nothing but begs her to stop trying to save him and go to their old superior to stop anything from killing her, as she's constantly exposing herself to the corruption that turned him into what he is. His wrong end in Continuum Shift even has him erase Litchi's memories of him, bring her back to her clinic, and watch over her in secret until the aforementioned superior and her assistant show up.
• Bloodborne: The Beast Scourge causes this. Most people who use the Old Blood are normal civilians unaware of its dangers, the terminally ill desperately gambling on its healing properties, and hunters who just want to protect their loved ones from werewolves. But they fall to it all the same and become the monsters they fought against.
  • Gilbert. The first truly friendly person you're likely to meet, who sympathizes with your plight, gives you helpful advice and items, and has even found the silver lining to his chronic illness, that being that at least he'll die human. Except it turns out that he's suffering from the ashen blood sickness, the same sickness that took Old Yharnam. If you visit him after the blood moon rises, you'll find the bars of his window torn apart and a new beast nearby.
  • Father Gascoigne is a decent man with a wife and two daughters, and a summon for the Cleric Beast boss fight. Unfortunately, he's been at the hunt for long enough that by the time you meet him in the graveyard, he can no longer tell people apart from beasts, and he finally loses himself at the end of his fight.
  • Ludwig, the first Church Hunter, was a noble man who just wanted to protect Yharnam, but failed to realize the true corruption of the Healing Church. Now he's a horrible deformed centaur-beast trapped in the Hunter's Nightmare with the rest of his generation's hunters. After he has a Restoration of Sanity in his boss fight, he won't blame the player for leaving him as a severed head and will just ask them if the Church Hunters were the "noble Spartans" he wanted them to be. Telling him they were will let him die peacefully, while telling him they weren't will have him despair that his work was All for Nothing.
  • Laurence, the First Vicar, otherwise known as the fiery Cleric Beast in the Nightmare. He won't even fight you unless you have a specific item, his human skull, that he thinks will restore his humanity. And while he created the Healing Church, it's hinted he had genuinely good intentions.
  • The DLC's final boss, the Orphan of Kos, is the locus of the Nightmare, but he isn't its cause or even malicious at all; he doesn't really understand what's going on as he is a baby, and is merely responding to the curse the residents of the Fishing Hamlet (who themselves count for this trope, as they're only hostile because of the atrocities that hunters committed on them) placed on the Hunters.
  • The huntsmen are just (literally) rabid villagers trying to protect their homes and families, who think the player is one of the werewolves plaguing Yharnham. They even have moments of lucidity where they call out to God for help.
• Bloodwing in Borderlands 2 was captured by Handsome Jack and experimented on, making them giant size and giving them all of the game's Elemental Powers. Since one of those elements is Explosive, Jack installed a bomb collar on her, which he detonates and blows her head off when Mordecai manages to take her down non-lethally with a tranquilizer, hoping to find someone who can reverse the transformation.
• From Breath of Fire I, we have your angelic sister — she returns near the end of the game after having been absent since the prologue, but is under the Man Behind the Man's mind control, and is eventually slain by the heroes in her dragon form.
• Castlevania:
  • Annette in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, if you fail to get her out of her cell beforehand.
  • And again in the remake Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, although the mood is kind of sidetracked since, instead of being turned into a skull sorceress as in the original, Annette is instead transformed into a Stripperiffic succubus in cleavage-baring black lingerie.
  • Dracula in many of the games qualifies as such, as he turned into him in the first place because of both loves of his life's deaths.
  • A main plot point of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. If you cannot obtain the healing spell, you have to kill Stella and Loretta to end the game.
• Cave Story: Toroko, an innocent villager, becomes a raving monster after being force-fed a nasty red flower by Balrog under the wicked Doctor's orders. And she's not the only one that is transformed, either (though she's the only one with a name.)
  • And then you have the progenitor of those red flowers: Ballos. He used to be a kind sorcerer, beloved by everyone who's met him, with the sole exception of king of that land. Said king then proceeded to torture him to his limit, upon which Ballos let his magic run wild, to both his and the rest of the world's dismay.
• Lynx of Chrono Cross. Originally the hero's father, Wazuki, he came in contact with FATE at the same time his son was healed by and genetically bonded with the Frozen Flame. This, combined with how close he came to seeing his son die while he was helpless to prevent it, broke down his willpower enough to allow FATE access to his heart and mind, until she was able to eventually corrupt him completely, turning him into her human incarnation and reshaping him to look like a demi-human via the DNA of the very panther demon that had tried to kill Serge. By the time of the game's events, absolutely no trace of his former self or personality is left — not only is he a complete and irredeemable villain, but he also initiates a Grand Theft Me to possess his own son's body. And in a twisted irony, the man who had been so determined to save his son's life he was willing to risk the creepy robot-manned city from the future ended up being the one who drowned him in Another World. You have to kill him, of course as FATE, never knowing who he was until an eleventh-hour Reveal after the fact.
• City of Heroes does this in a few arcs.
  • The Terra arc features a strange case in which you must protect an environmental terrorist named Terra who used to know the Hamidon when he was still human. She is given a serum that eventually turns her into a monstrous Devoured and you have to beat her down. It's never explained if she can be helped at all.
  • The end of the Lady Grey taskforce forces you to fight the universe's greatest hero, Hero-1, who disappeared when he escaped to the Rikti homeworld and in the eight years since was turned into a horrific Rikti monster named "The Honoree". Not helping matters is that despite the extensive Rikti mind control in place, the act of fighting heroes starts to crack it, but only enough that he is helpless to stop himself from fighting you while crying out in horror at what has happened to him. Upon defeat the mind control is restored and the Rikti teleport him back, so he remains stuck with this fate for the present. The last issue of the City of Heroes comic book also features this story arc.
  • One Malta Ops mission arc has the player meet a woman who is trying to investigate the disappearance of her son Joe, a convict who'd begun to turn his life around in prison. Pursuing the investigation ultimately leads the player to a lab in which Malta Operatives have removed Joe's brain and put it into a Humongous Mecha. The player is then obliged to fight the "Titan called Joe" while Joe's voice cries out in horror from the robot. At the conclusion of the mission, the player's contact laments that Joe could not be saved.
• This happens to Lance Bean in Contra: Shattered Soldier after he injects the Devil Emperor Gava DNA into his body.
• In Dark Chronicle, after you defeat Gaspard at the base of Mt. Gundor, he sees the error of siding with Emperor Griffon and turns to walk away, wishing you well, but before he leaves, Griffon telepathically chastises Gaspard and takes control of him, and morphs him into Ultimate Flame Demon Gaspard, who you must fight to the death.
• Dark Souls is such a Crapsack World that nearly every enemy in the game is a Tragic Monster. Even the player character is on the verge of becoming one thanks to the Dark Sign. The most noticeable example is Chaos Witch Quelaag, the half woman, half spider creature. The first time you fiught against her, you may assume that she's merely an evil creature protecting the bell from being rung. It turns out she's actually protecting her blind sister who's in need of humanity for easing the pain. And what's worse, the said blind sister is waiting for Quelaag, who's not coming back again. And she assumed the heartless murderer was her dear sister!
• Suiciders from Dead Island are a horrific example of this. The Kuru virus turns them into a lump of disfigured, bloated flesh about to explode. Even worse, they are still alive even after the infection, and they will plea for help while slowing walking toward you and blowing themselves up.
• Dead Space: All of the Necromorphs are horrifying in their own way, especially with the constant reminders that these things used to be human, but the Guardians are by far the worst. The entire time you’re fighting them, they’re screaming their lungs out, clearly feeling all the pain of their transformation. When you finally kill them, they actually give a sigh of relief that the pain is finally over.
• In Digital Devil Saga, this happens not once, not twice, but three times. The first is when Jinana loses herself to hunger because she hasn't eaten since the events in the game began; the second when Lupa is hit with a nasty technique from Varin Omega that causes him to lose control and attack his own men, not to mention the protagonists; and in the second game Heat, after his Heel–Face Turn. Heat's case is particularly heartbreaking since it's implied in-game that he knows he's a monster and is committing suicide by True Companions. In the first and third cases, the only cure was to be heavily mortally wounded. In the second case Lupa was too weak to even manage that.
• Doom³ tries to do this with Mission Control Sarge, who gets turned into a cybernetic tank demon about 3/4ths of the way through the game. It fails, since he was always a hardass who constantly railed on your character, and it's unclear as to whether or not most of your interactions with him were after he succumbed to The Virus anyway. It's heavily implied that Sarge nearly immediately succumbed to the virus and was leading your character (and the rest of the military force) on the entire time — however, there's also evidence that he was converted by Bertruger sometime after (one theory places the time at when his transmission is cut off while yelling at you for disobeying orders) and that his attempts to call for backup were just Genre Blindness.
• Appears in Dragon Age: Origins — the taint can really mess you up.
  • The Dalish Grey Warden's game starts with them exploring with childhood friend Tamlen. Said childhood friend gets a little too close to an Artifact of Doom and the Warden wakes up three days later apparently found alone and with the taint and a high fever and is taken off by Duncan to be put through the Joining, which will suppress it (for a few decades, anyhow) if they survive — Tamlen gets left for dead not only by Duncan but his and the Warden's whole tribe. Guess who pays the Warden a surprise visit halfway through the game as a ghoul, going insane from progressive taint and begging his old bestie for a Mercy Kill?
  • Quite similar to the Dalish Elf's case is Danyla in the Brecilian Forest, a missing member of the Dalish clan from the "Nature of the Beast" quest whose husband asks the Warden to search for her as a side mission. She's succumbed to the werewolf curse and is still barely there when she's found, begging the Warden to put her out of her misery and take her scarf back to her husband before losing it and attacking.
  • And don't get started on Broodmothers.
  • Arguably the Archdemon himself. There are no reliable sources in the game describing what the Tevintran Old Gods were really like (the Chantry is hardly unbiased on the subject), but to reiterate the point above: the taint really messes you up.
• Dragon Age II: The Legacy DLC has Larius, a half-insane ghoul who used to be the Warden-Commander of the Free Marches. He is the sad result of what fate eventually awaits all Grey Wardens and the reason why they embark on the Calling to prevent themselves from fully succumbing to ghoulification. He unfortunately survived this last stand and has been left to wander the Deep Roads, utterly ignored by the rest of the horde. His fate becomes even worse if Hawke allies with him against Janeka, as it's heavily implied that he becomes possessed by Corypheus, an Ancient Tevinter Magister and one of the first Darkspawn.
• In Drakengard 3, dealing with one turns out to be the reason why Two becomes an Empty Shell after the game's prologue — her Magic Music fused all of the orphans she'd cared for into a monster that retained just enough of their memories to recognize her and cry out in pain during their Mercy Kill. Five also shows up as a shambling corpse in one route, and despite her crude and selfish personality beforehand, Zero and her party don't believe she deserved that. In fact, all of the Intoners could probably count as this, to varying degrees; they started out as innocent little girls who really did want to make the world a better place, but due to being creations of the Flower, they slowly succumbed to insanity and all of their actions only served to hasten the end of the world. None of them except for One are aware of this, so they believe their Fake Memories of Zero as a kind older sister and don't understand why she's trying to kill them.
• Dying Light:
  • Virals haven't fully succumbed to the virus yet. Injure one, and there's a good chance they'll regain control of themselves just long enough to panic or to beg you to get away. Unfortunately, they don't have enough strength to regain control, and will attack almost immediately after this reaction. You can't save them.
  • Screamers are children who have turned, who live in a state of perpetual fear. When you encounter one they scream loud enough to disorient you, and their scream also attracts hoards of infecteds to your location. Worse, as one you encounter is actually laughing at cartoons on a television, it's possible they don't even realize they're infected and may instead see you as some sort of monster there to kill them. Like virals you can't save them, but you can get a Mercy Kill on one where you comfort it as you put it out of its misery.
• In ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights, many of the spirits and bosses that Lily encounters were once brave warriors who were devoted to protecting the kingdom and the White Priestesses but became corrupted by the Blight and became monsters through no fault of their own.
  • Siegrid was a Guardian who took up arms to protect Lily in the sept but the constant fighting caused her to be consumed by madness, eventually mindlessly attacking Lily, the very person she was to protect.
  • Eleine was a gifted sorceress who did everything to protect the Coven from the Blight and her dearest friend Fretia. While she was able to protect the Coven, she was not able to help her friend.
  • Gerrod refused to be purified because he did not wish to burden the White Priestess anymore than necessary. He died a lonely death, defending the doomed citizens.
  • Silva was chosen to be the Priestess of the Fount's personal Guardian but failed and mentioned she had no choice but to "flee", implying she was forced to leave Fretia behind. She soon became Blighted and began killing others in the cathedral, aware of her actions but unable to stop.
  • Ulv was very loyal to Fretia who was the only one showing him kindness. Even after becoming Blighted, he protected the gardens that Fretia so dearly loved.
  • Hoenir was deeply dedicated to his kingdom and his last actions were to defend one of the White Priestesses, as well as guarding Fretia's location in the Verboten Domain to prevent others from finding it as her final request to him.
  • Julius was the Knight Captain who killed his own father, the king, whose obsession with immortality allowed the Blight to spread rampant across the kingdom. His words, when defeated, were an apology to adding the burdens to Lily.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: In the Shivering Isles expansion, your old mentor Sheogorath turns out to have been an alter ego of Big Bad Jyggalag all along and, due to a curse, he is forced to return to his original form of Jyggalag at the end of every era and destroy his own world. In the final quest, you have to kill him before he carries out these plans, although, this means "you kill a god". Also, on the way to the Arc Villain of the Mage's Guild quests, you are sent to rescue an informant who is spying on the necromancers. You find him... a little too late, after he's been turned into a zombie.
• Fable III: The final boss is your friend and mentor, Walter Beck, who is possessed by the Crawler. His Boss Banter alternates between raving about how he is going to horrifically kill all of the people of Albion and begging you to put him out of his misery.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Done very well in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance when King Ashnard of Daein uses Izuka's drug to warp the mind of the Goldoan prince Rajaion and force him to remain permanently in dragon form, so he could use him as a personal mount. This causes Ena — Rajaion's fiancée — to find work under Ashnard in an attempt to get close to Rajaion, which in turn causes Nasir (Ena's grandfather) to spy on your party for Daein. Ashnard took advantage of both Nasir and Ena, using the former to steal the MacGuffin he needs for his plans from your party, and the latter in a Uriah Gambit when he orders her to attack your party, thus bringing this trope into play as you're forced to fight Ena and treat your former friend Nasir as a prisoner of war.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, after Eliwood obtains the dragon-slaying sword Durandal, he is greeted by an enormous ice dragon and is driven by the sword to kill it. Then the Big Bad Nergal shows up to rub his face in the fact that he has just killed Ninian, the girl he (most likely) loved, but at the very least he knew she had trusted and loved him. Nergal had forced Ninian to shift to her true, dragon form, but despite having the mind of a beast, her desire to be with Eliwood was strong enough to make her seek him out. Still a Tear Jerker, even knowing the ending.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, it turns out that the Big Bad is actually the two main characters' meek childhood friend possessed by the spirit of an evil demon. To make matters worse, if you decided to follow Eirika, you learn that the villain is actually in love with her and, by the time the final chapter rolls around, they're forced to try and kill the other.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening:
    • The Avatar of the Bad Future is a tragic monster. They are forcibly possessed by Grima and murder Chrom along with all of his friends and bring about a hellish world where humans are on the verge of extinction. Bonus as an extra Player Punch if you married Chrom.
    • This is the Central Theme of the "Death's Embrace" Xenologue, in which the party is teleported to a parallel dimension where an entire village has been massacred and turned into Risen, albeit with a twist of magic that makes them Technically Living Zombies who are aware of their plight and desperately seeking the release of death. Most party members' pre-battle quotes express sympathy for them and vow to Mercy Kill them. Indeed, sometimes when you kill a Risen foe on this map, they will openly thank the party for killing them.
• First Encounter Assault Recon: In F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, you have to fight Sgt. Keegan, who has gained all your powers, turned into some sort of ghoul and is insane because Alma likes you more than him... while Alma rapes you.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • It's heavily implied (and eventually confirmed) via Easter Eggs and minigames that the original quartet of animatronics (and Golden Freddy) are haunted by the ghosts of children that were murdered by a Serial Killer in the establishment. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 adds in the Puppet, who is implied to have been the first victim of the Fazbear killings. Fortunately, by Five Nights at Freddy's 3, they (or at least five of them) finally get revenge on their killer, and all six are able to move on after completing hidden minigames, leaving the animatronics as lifeless husks in the good ending.
  • However, there's also evidence suggesting the Toys from 2 are haunted, as well.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location has Eggs Benedict a.k.a. Michael Afton. First, he ends up scooped by Ennard so said robot can wear his skin. Then he manages to barf up Ennard but is cursed to be an immortal, purple-skinned zombie by the spirit of his own sister.
  • Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator manages to bring every one together (possibly). Molten Freddy has the ghosts of some of the murdered children. Lefty is The Puppet, whose backstory is completely explained (she was locked out in the rain by some brats and by the time the security puppet found her, she was dead). Circus Baby, who's been possessed by Elizabeth Afton, has gone completely insane and now just wants to become Daddy's Little Villain. And it's hinted that the protagonist of this game is Eggs again. All end up burning alive, along with Springtrap, in order to release their souls, by Cassette Man (who happens to be the Puppet's father). It's noted that both the protagonist and Henry willingly died alongside them to lay the Fazbear nightmare to rest for good.
• Freedom Planet: At the end of Final Dreadnaught round 3, when playing as Carol or Lilac, Meela (the third playable character) is transformed into a weird scorpion-tailed monster and made to fight the others.
• Glory of Heracles III: The Climax Boss of Mount Atlas, Baor? That's the Protagonist, having been turned into a monster for the sins of his past self and sent back in time to be slain by himself and his party. Fortunately, you get to avert this when you relive the fight from the monster's side.
• Golden Sun:
  • Golden Sun: The Lost Age does this with the last boss, the 3-headed Doom Dragon, which is made of Kyle (Issac's dad) and Felix and Jenna's parents. They got better at the end thanks to the massive amount of Psynergy emitted from the Mars Star, so it's all good.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn does this as well, when Sveta's brother Volechek is transformed into a monster of darkness by Blados and Chalis.
• The final boss of the original Gungrave is actually Big Daddy, who in the main character Grave's human life was the closest thing he had to a father and a mentor figure. Harry, having overthrown and taken control of The Syndicate, had who-knows-how-many experiments performed on Big Daddy while he was still alive until he reached his present state — a giant, twisted blue monster locked up at the very top of Millenion's Tower. He no longer has any will of his own or memories of who he used to be — and now Grave must kill the father that never even got to really meet or know his own biological daughter (Mika), the very girl whom Grave serves as Guardian for her.
• Definitely the entire point of .hack//G.U.. Let's start from the beginning: Haseo's best friend Shino is comatose, his newly acquired allies start suffering left right and center. The protagonist also becomes entangled in a Batman Gambit (and is an Unwitting Pawn himself), and finally he gets a shot at killing the true culprit after chasing false ends. This is what the true culprit, Ovan wanted from the beginning, launching a convoluted plan to have Haseo kill him. Why? The Corruption has gotten to him and has resulted in a comatose little sister. He has the required cure that will bring everyone back, but it requires a Heroic Sacrifice, and he knows that I Cannot Self-Terminate. By the time Haseo (and by extension, you, the player) knows about this, you cannot help but feel sorry for the guy.
• Just Shapes & Beats: One character is painted from the moment they appear as a close friend of the protagonist, and quite cute besides — so the boss battle where they're infected by The Corruption is considered by many fans to be the most emotionally impactful, especially with how painfully obvious it is that they're fighting it with everything they have.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In the first game, Maleficent leads Riku on to believe that she can help him save Kairi and that Sora has abandoned him. He confronts Sora multiple times over the course of the game and eventually leads to Riku having his body taken over by Ansem when he agrees to give in to the darkness.
  • Then there's Roxas' fight with Xion from Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. After being forced to transform into an Ax-Crazy One-Winged Angel form, Roxas wins their duel to the death resulting in her being erased from reality.
  • All the Nobodies and members of Organization XIII in particular qualify, as they're the way they are not of their own choice, and most of them are shown to have been perfectly good people before they became Nobodies. Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] makes them even more tragic by revealing that they were all an Unwitting Pawn to Xemnas, Xehanort, and Braig/Xigbar, they were evil because they were told they had no other choice as heartless shells, but they develop hearts of their own given time. Ultimately most of their fledgling consciousness are snuffed out by the heroes, with the only bright spot being that killing them makes their Somebody come back.
• In Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, after Leorina collects the four Elements, the power of sorrow engulfs her and mutates her into Cursed Leorina, a creature best described as a giant bird-like creature with small-fairy like wings and a and an extremely creepy roar. Thankfully, she turns normal after you defeat her.
• Knights in the Nightmare has two prominent examples: Nordische gets turned into a werewolf and Pisce gets turned into a harpy. You're forced to kill them as well and only death turns them back to normal.
• Legacy of Kain:
  • The corrupted Guardians from Blood Omen were once the great heroes of Nosgoth. The murder of Ariel the Balance Guardian caused them to go mad and suffer different levels of Body Horror. Special mention goes to Ariel's beloved Nupraptor, the Guardian of the Mind, whose psychic backlash at his lover's death caused the Guardians' madness.
  • Raziel was the beloved son of Kain until his master killed him. He comes back as a wraith who has to devour souls. He finds out later that he is being used as a tool of the Elder God to get Kain out of the way. In the end, Raziel lets Kain kill him so that he can purify the Reaver and help Kain defeat the Elder God.
• Legend of Legaia:
  • This applies to the vast majority of Seru. Before the Mist came, they were benevolent creatures who lived in harmony with humans and co-existed through mutualistic relationships. Once you learn about their past, it makes the Seru's involuntary madness and eventual extinction all the more tragic.
  • There's also Gaza, a mighty swordsman. After being defeated by the party, he is taken away by Songi, one of the main antagonists. Later, Gaza shows up again, this time under the control of Sim-Seru. He turns into a monster, which the party has to defeat. Gaza is injured fatally, but he makes a noble sacrifice to save his town in his last breath.
  • Depending on how you interpret things, Prince Cort is also an example of this. He might have been willing, though the game also notes that Rogue Seru are capable of possessing unwilling hosts as well. It never states clearly whether he was Brainwashed and Crazy or evil all along and really evil after getting a Rogue Seru. Fortunately for Noa, he gets a second chance after all, but at the time you fight the monster form in the last boss fight, the heroes are under a different impressio..
  • Thanks to the Mist being spread from the Absolute Fortress, the Sim-Seru presented to the King during Noa's backstory began to grow in an unstable fashion, eventually absorbing the entire town of Conkram. By the time you get there, everyone there has become a part of the massive beast, and the King and Queen both help the party prepare to storm the Absolute Fortress with full knowledge that the result is a massive Mercy Kill.
• In one of the minor quests in Legend of Mana, one of the professors at the magic university is looking for his brother, who was out exploring a snowfield for faerie treasure. By the time we get there, the professor's brother has turned himself into a snow monster in order to survive, which you have to kill in order to complete the quest.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: All the generic soldier mooks, sort of. They're actually completely innocent people who are being forced to do evil because Agahnim's used magic to make them Brainwashed and Crazy. Yet there's absolutely nothing you can do to help them — you have to kill them, or they'll kill you. At the beginning of the game, there are several friendly guards who haven't been affected yet. One of them laments how his fellow men have lost their minds — and the fact that it is going to happen to him, too. The sequel replaces them with summons created by the Big Bad's Art Initiates Life power.
• In The Lord of the Rings Online, the Ranger Amdir, who you spend the first parts of the game trying to help as a Hobbit or a Man after he is stabbed with a Nazgûl's morgul-blade during the introductory sequence, becomes one of the Cargûl, lesser wraiths in red who are slaves of the Nazgûl, after succumbing to the effects of the weapon. Book 1, Chapter 1, your very first quest in the Epic storyline after completing the Intro and the Prologue, consists of finding and killing Amdir, who has become lost to Darkness and is killing his fellow Rangers.
• In the third party Marathon Expansion Pack, Marathon: RED, at one point the player is captured, infected with The Virus and mutated into a grotesque cyborg-alien hybrid known as the "Reaver", and then sent to kill the surviving humans, but then turns back against his creators.
• A few of the villains, (hell an entire race) qualify as this in the Mass Effect series.
  • Matriarch Benezia is under Reaper indoctrination, meaning her free will has basically been destroyed by the Reaper. She joined Saren to try to persuade him from his dark path. If it hadn't been for Sovereign, it might have worked. The Collectors were once Protheans, the last race destroyed by the Reapers, who the Reapers corrupted and turned into bug-like monsters, forced to do their bidding.
  • Saren doesn't really count as he was a monster before being indoctrinated.
  • Many people think the Rachni were also victims of Reaper indoctrination.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the asari agent does state that the rachni queen's own memories and nature point towards the rachni having been mind-controlled, and Shepard's immediate suggestion is that the Reapers were responsible. Legion states that Nazara, aka Sovereign, did seek out other allies before coming to the Geth, so it's quite possible the rachni were an early, failed attempt.
  • David Archer from the "Overlord" DLC. Not only was he forced by his brother to become a VI figurehead in an attempt to unite the geth, he's also autistic, so he doesn't fully understand what's happening to him. The VI's shrieks of static you hear throughout the entire set of missions are "MAKE IT STOP!"
  • From Mass Effect: Andromeda, there's the kett Chosen. They used to be angara until they were taken, experimented on, and turned into more kett, all memories and connections to their prior life removed or suppressed, and made to assist in the systematic genocide of their own species.
• Metal Gear:
  • Done to death in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, in which the first two of its three climactic boss battles are against the protagonist's best friend. Metal Gear Solid calls back to it, only now the best friend is a crazy Cyber Ninja.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots also has it with the Beauty and the Beast Unit. Once ordinary civilians, the four members were so badly traumatized by the horrors of war that the only way they could cope was by becoming war machines in Powered Armor. Their pain and torment is such that Liquid convinces them that they can cleanse their minds by killing Snake... though, as it turns out, simply fighting him turns out to be just the therapy they needed.
• Rundas, Gandrayda and Ghor in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Also, if you're not careful, Samus. To be more specific, in the beginning Dark Samus infects all four bounty hunters with Phazon.
  • First, you fight Rundas on Bryyo. A bunch of Space Pirates arrive in a cutscene. In a Big Damn Heroes moment, Rundas destroys them all... then attacks you. One boss battle later, the player is treated to a cutscene of Rundas coming to his senses to a moment, then is impaled on a spike of his own ice and absorbed by Dark Samus.
  • Then, on Elysia, you fight Ghor. You return to your ship, only to find Ghor trying to destroy it. He spots you, and tells you you're just in time. He throws the ship at you, and the boss battle begins soon after. His battle suit explodes, and then Dark Samus absorbs him.
  • Then, on the Space Pirate Homeworld, you fight Gandrayda. She disguises herself as a federation trooper, then tries to shoot Samus In the Back. After the boss battle, she changes first into Rundas, then into Ghor, and finally into Samus. At this point, Samus can't bear to look as Dark Samus absorbs Gandrayda.
• As a game built around various environmental themes, it should come as no surprise that Monster Hunter would have some examples.
  • In Monster Hunter 4 monsters afflicted with Gore Magala's and Shagaru Magala's Frenzy virus become berserk engines of destruction, attacking anything and everything including their own kind until they die from the affliction. There's also Chaotic Gore Magala, a Gore Magala trapped in the intermediary state of its molting process into Shagaru Magala. Constantly in pain and lashing out because of it, the only thing anyone can do for it is put it down.
  • In Rise, there are the monsters involved with the Rampage, a recurring event in Kamura Village where countless monsters stampede across the land, wreaking havoc wherever they go. As victims of the influence of Wind Serpent Ibushi and Thunder Serpent Narwa, Fugen can't bring himself to blame them for the destruction they cause.
    • The Sunbreak expansion introduces the Qurio Affliction, a state similar to the Frenzy virus with parasitic Qurio constantly draining a monster of life and whipping them into a destructive rage. Like Frenzied Monsters, they have no choice but to keep attacking until they're either bled dry or put down. Malzeno can be seen as a downplayed case of this, since it's clearly suffered from the Affliction being weaker and more emaciated than its Primordial variant, but it also controls the Qurio instead of the other way around.
• After the end of Mortal Kombat 9, a large majority of the Earthrealm heroes under Raiden, with the exception of Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage (and later Jax, the younger Sub-Zero and Scorpion via resurrection in Mortal Kombat X), became undead revenants under the control of Shinnok and Quan Chi. Considering the fact that the only guy who can resurrect the revenants as living beings was killed off by Scorpion (mind you, Quan Chi had it coming for years), and the fact that Raiden has taken a darker persona after cleansing the Jinsei, it's very likely that this is permanent for the remaining fallen Earthrealm heroes.
• Oh man, this is like the entire point of Mother 3. That cute little family of friendly dinosaur-dragons you play with in the prologue? One of the parents is turned into an aggressive, fire-spewing cyborg who kills your own mother, only about half a day since you saw it last. How about your excitable, friendly twin brother? Killed by aforementioned cyborg, is brought back to life as one himself with his emotions and memories wiped and forced to fight against his own father and brother. Plenty of other animals get this chimerical treatment — look at some of the enemies' faces and tell me they're not screaming. The song's called Tragic Reconstruction for a reason, y'know.
• One boss monster in Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer is the long-lost mother of one of your party members. You don't find out until after defeating her, though. The bit while fighting her where she possesses one of your party members also qualifies.
• NieR:
  • Kainé becomes this in the third and fourth endings as a result of the Shade in her body taking control. She becomes the True Final Boss in these ending paths. You then have the choice of either killing her and ending her pain as she had originally wanted or sacrificing your entire existence to restore her to a fully human form.
  • Several of the Shades fought as bosses also turn out to be a lot more sympathetic in New Game Plus, when you can understand what they're saying.
• Odin Sphere:
  • Belial is a dragon who once liked humans but was magically enslaved by the Three Wise Men to be their attack-dog, forced to fight for them (including against the protagonists) and to eat humans. In the moments when he gets to actually speak, he expresses regret and anger at what's he's been forced to do and, in the end, pleads with Cornelius to kill him (and stop him from eating Velvet) if he truly feels any pity for his situation.
  • Ingway transforms into Darkova at the end of his sister Velvet's chapter to take revenge on Odin while also believing he deserved to die for his past sins; though able to return to normal form after the first transformation, Ingway fully transforms just in time for the boss run final book of the game ironically enough in a desperate attempt to stop the main villain with this power only to lose himself again. Oddly enough, to get the best ending you have to fight him with Cornelius, his sister's boyfriend. Fighting him with his sister will result in the bad ending — and fighting him with his love interest Mercedes leads to both the bad ending and a big-time Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter.
  • Another example comes in one of the bad endings if Oswald is sent to fight Onyx, eventually resulting in Oswald using too much of his power and turning into one of the ghostly Revenants that haunt Hornridge Mountain before he wanders off calling Gwendolyn's name.
• In Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, you must fight Ohatsu when she has been possessed by the Genma. Tragic music even plays during the battle.
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps:
  • Kwolok, the Guardian of the Marsh, gets possessed by the Foul Presence/Stink Spirit, forcing Ori to fight him for the Luma Pools Boss Battle. Though they manage to vanquish the parasite, Kwolok succumbs to his injuries and Disappears into Light afterwards.
  • The major antagonist Shriek hatched from her egg with her parents already dead and a body heavily mutated by the Decay that caused the other owls and most inhabitants of Niwen to shun her. A dying world is the only thing she's ever known, and despite part of her still longing for acceptance, she lashes out when Ori tries showing her mercy because she's too bitter to be capable of trust. Her last act as she dies is to drag her body to the corpses of her parents for the embrace she never got in life (and given her size in comparison to them, it's possible that, despite her monstrous appearance, she was still relatively young).
• Parasite Eve:
  • The police dog Sheeva goes berserk from Eve's influence and mutates into a three-headed beast. To make it even more tragic, Ben, her 8-year-old friend is forced to kill her.
  • All Melissa Pierce wanted was to be a renowned opera singer — she was very excited about getting the role and easily manipulated by people she trusted. Makes one detest Klamp and Eve even more.
• Penumbra:
  • A certain character is infected with the virus, forcing you to kill them. Subverted, as Clarence, your own lovely strain of virus, only makes Amabel look like one of the monsters. Once you bash her head in with a steel brick, Clarence reveals your tragic mistake, and crosses the line in record time. However, it's possible that Clarence, after killing Amabel, makes her look like her original form to try to muck with your mind, when in reality she was truly infected, possibly playing this trope straight.
  • It is also suddenly revealed that Red was also infected, which is why he couldn't commit suicide — the Hive Mind wouldn't allow it.
• In Persona 3, Ryoji Mochizuki turns out to be the Anthromorphized avatar of the spirit of Death, Nyx Avatar. Fully aware that he's doomed to kill everyone on Earth, he gives your party the chance to wipe their own memories of the past year, just in time for the end of the world. Made even more tragic by the fact that he's actually rather fond of the world now, having spent 10 years trapped inside the main character. The battle against him has him spouting off Tarot card lessons in a defeated sounding, near-emotionless voice all while bemoaning how "It's useless." He's right. The new Persona 3 Portable throws an even more tragic twist into the situation: if you pick the female version of the Main Character, Ryoji becomes an S-Link with romantic potential. So, not only is he forced to bring forth the end of the world he's fond of, he's forced to fight the girl he loves as well, and she dies to seal Erebus just as the original MC from the original Persona 3 game did.
• Subverted in Phantasy Star IV as Chaz has to fight an illusion of Alys to get the Megid spell.
• In Portal, information on the turrets says that they have an empathy generator, which is immediately turned off by an empathy-suppressor when a human stands next to it. This means this only realize the gravity of killing and shooting someone until after they have done it. In Portal 2, they may say "Oh, no" or "She's probably fine" to themselves after killing you.
• In Prey (2006), your girlfriend Jen's upper body is grafted onto the body of a monster. This is a very disturbing sequence, as not only was Jen the de facto Damsel in Distress up to this point, but she's also not brainwashed or possessed in any way. The monster half simply has a mind of its own, thus forcing you to kill your still very much alive girlfriend or be eaten.
  "Tommy? I can't feel my legs..."
• Psychonauts 2: Maligula turns out to be one. She was Lucrecia Mux, one of the founding members of the Psychonauts, but between her mental defenses being lowered by Otto Mentalis' experiments and the stress put on her by the Grulovian War and becoming the enforcer for Gzar Theodore Malik, she became more and more cruel and violent. After she accidentally killed hundreds of innocent protestors (including her sister and brother-in-law) in a flood, she snapped completely and became the feared and dreaded monster the psychic community knew her as.
• In Quake IV, Lt. Voss, your squad leader, gets Stroggified and turned into a mech-like boss monster about 1/2 way through the game. The stroggified Kane may be considered one of these, since his cybernetic makeover is permanent, although he still has control over himself, making him a Phlebotinum Rebel.
• Resident Evil:
  • All the zombies/Ganados/Majini from all the games are these. If the viruses and Las Plagas parasites hadn't broken out, they wouldn't have become these... things... Special mention goes to the credits of Resident Evil 4, which shows a number of the Ganados living happy normal lives in a hand-drawn slideshow complete with peaceful music. About halfway through the music turns ominous, and you begin to see scenes of the villagers clutching their throats in agony and eventually killing one another.
  • William Birkin in Resident Evil 2 is kind of one of these, especially in the 2019 remake. Mortally wounded by Umbrella's agents, he injected himself with The Virus out of desperation, turning him into his tragic One-Winged Angel form. Mitigated somewhat by him being a downright evil man even before he transformed, though he nonetheless loved his family.
  • In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, you encounter a UBCS officer named Murphy who is turning into a zombie. Either Carlos or Nicolai puts him out of his misery.
  • One of the bosses in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, "Nosferatu", is the product of a botched experiment with the Veronica-T virus on Alexander, Alfred's father. Steve is also infected with a form of the virus, mutating into a giant hulking monster that Claire has to take down.
  • Lisa Trevor from Resident Evil (Remake) puts all the above to shame, as she was the helpless 14-year-old daughter of the mansion's creator, and she and her mother were made into test subjects by Umbrella against their will. Her mother died from being infected with the T-Virus, but Lisa sadly survived and was then proceeded to be injected with the Nemesis virus (which was used to produce the walking nightmare in Resident Evil 3 of the same name) and upon its injection, it created the G-Virus in her body. Making matters worse, even with her mind completely deteriorated and now orphaned, she longed to find her mother in a mansion now completely ridden with monsters... alone....
  • The first Scagdead you fight in Resident Evil: Revelations is this. You first hear the Comms Officer mumbling a distress call over the radio and think he may be a survivor until you open the door and a bloated mutant comes out and attacks... and continues to beg you not to kill it as it chases you.
    Mutated Comms Officer: Mayday, mayday... This... is the Queen Zenobia... Emergency call number... I don't feel like myself anymore... Please stop! I'm human! I can't feel my legs... Let me talk...
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard:
    • Jack and Marguerite Baker used to be a nice, normal couple who were friendly and helpful. Then Jack rescued a shipwreck victim who turned out to be a Living Weapon created to Mind Rape civilians. It promptly took over the minds of the entire Baker family, turning Jack and Marguerite into raving, filth-eating lunatics who kidnapped and murdered people for the amusement of their tormentor, as well as mutilating and abusing themselves and each other. Jack doesn't even get the chance to rest in peace, instead being revived after his tormentor's death as an insane, hideously deformed "Swamp Man" who has to be killed by his own brother.
    • Eveline, or E-001, is a Tyke Bomb with a fixation on family. Even the In-Universe research documents aren't sure if that fixation is a result of her design or whether she genuinely wants that sort of family bond, but determine that it's useful either way. Her last words (prior to her becoming genuinely monstrous) are "Why does everyone hate me?"
• You, any time your Space Fighter gets infested by the Bydo in R-Type.
• Implied to be the case of the Final Boss in Secret of Mana. The Mana Beast looks a lot like Flammie, the Team Pet, who completely disappears from the game after the Mana Beast's destruction. This explains the main character's reluctance to slay it despite the Mana Beast posing a threat to the entire world. Well, that and the fact that it would result in his friend vanishing along with all the world's magic.
  Popoie: It's a Mana Beast!
  Purim: Isn't it... Flammie?
• Shadow Hearts: From The New World:
  • Lady, a.k.a. Grace Garland. Sacrificing her soul to save her dying brother had the undesirable aftereffect of turning her into a soulless, almost mindless killing machine hellbent on destroying the world.
  • Edna Capone, Al Capone's sister. Her lover Ricardo must kill her after she is brought back as a creature of Malice by Lady.
• Shadow of the Colossus: Basically, all of the colossi. Most of them are non-aggressive and react to the player character with curiousity until you start climbing them. Even the aggressive ones are only defending their personal space and their right to exist. Literally, none of them would be a danger to anyone if only they were left alone. Their slow death animation and the somber music playing really drives the point home.
• Issachar in Shin Megami Tensei IV becomes a demon and forced to confront you, his best friend. As he fights you, you can try to invoke "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight. Be prepared for a horrifying Tear Jerker if you do — and it won't even work, anyway.
• Silent Hill:
  • Most of the monsters can be interpreted this way. For all we know they're human souls bound to monstrous bodies as punishment. Even Pyramid Head seems to be punished by wearing his signature uncomfortable-looking helmet. It's even easier to see things this way in games where the monsters are easy to beat, as the player character rampages around, shooting any helpless freaks they find.
  • In the first Silent Hill, you have to fight the possessed Cybil on the carousel in the amusement park. You can either kill her, or for a better ending, splash the bottle of Applied Phlebotinum that you may have obtained in the hospital on her, to exorcise the parasite possessing her. Cheryl/Alessa becomes a tragic monster if you don't unlock the motorcycle gas tank and hereby allow Kaufmann to obtain the Aglaophotis vial. Cue Downer Ending. Luckily not as much a Guide Dang It! as the "+" ending.
• In Skies of Arcadia, Drachma spends most of the game chasing after an arcwhale that killed his son (in his introduction, he chastises the main characters because they needed rescue, and doing so caused him to lose track of the whale). At the end of the Purple dungeon, you find him sitting peaceably next to the whale as the whale takes his last breaths. He's finally realized he shouldn't blame the creature for his son's death — the ancient Purple civilization rammed their Moon Crystal into his forehead to make him their Gigas, and pain and immortality have driven him mad.
• Splatterhouse: Your girlfriend transforms into the stage 5 Boss. In the sequel, fortunately, it was retconned so that that one was a monster disguised as her, and she and the protagonist have a child together by the time the third game comes out. The Japanese version of Splatterhouse 2 instead makes it clear that the monster was Jennifer, and that she did die. Either way, Rick fights his way through Hell to get her back.
• In Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion, the titular Spooky rallies somewhere between being the endearing kind of antagonist and a serious piece of work who traps people in her monster-infested mansion, abuses her employees, and wants to invade the human world and scare it to death because she hates being called "cute", but her backstory recontextualizes her as one of these: she was once an ordinary, happy girl who liked trying to scare people for fun — always being dismissed due to her being so gosh-darn cute — until one Halloween, she successfully scared her father... setting off his fierce PTSD, resulting in him accidentally shooting and killing her in a blind panic. Horrified and regretful for his actions, he spent the rest of his life dabbling in the occult in a desperate attempt to resurrect his daughter, and the Spooky we meet is her having come back wrong — everything about her original innocent personality and desires got warped into something far more ghoulish.
• StarCraft: The original Kerrigan certainly wouldn't have approved of her infested counterpart's actions, but after a while, she has a Then Let Me Be Evil moment. While the original game largely avoids this, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty employs it with regards to Raynor's relationship with her. Especially prominent just prior to the campaign's finale when the remnants of Kerrigan's uninfested personality whisper encouragement to Raynor. Then promptly averted when they do save her. Though Kerrigan is indeed de-infested, she admits that she can still contact the zerg, and her relationship with Raynor is strained at best. (As for the rest of the Terrans, they're keeping her locked in a grade-A biological quarantine cell.) Then the Dominion attacks the facility, and while the two fight together well and the scars seem to be healing over, they are separated and Raynor is captured by the Dominion. Kerrigan wants to stay and wait for him, but the rest of her allies abandon her — and then a Dominion broadcast airs that claims that Raynor was interrogated and summarily executed. With nothing else holding her back, she goes back to the zerg, re-assuming her infested form by becoming the "primal Queen of Blades" on Zerus, the original zerg homeworld. However, she's clearly much more humane and restrained than before and no longer genocidal.
• In Star Fox: Assault, General Pepper begs for you to kill him during the entire fight as his body and ship are controlled by the aparoids.
• Shows up in Starlancer with Viper. The number of Chris Roberts games that don't utilize this trope can be counted on one hand.
• In System Shock, you have to deal with SHODAN's minions, whom she infected with her mutant viruses. Edward Diego had you remove her ethical constraints, and how does SHODAN play him back? By making him one of her zombie slaves!
• In System Shock 2, the Many has turned 98% of the Von Braun's crew into its mindless monstrosities. They weren't responsible for what happened, but you still had to kill them anyway.
• Tales of Symphonia: The Exsphere monsters ("Exbelua") are regular humans turned into grotesque monsters. It's played with a bit as the first time you fight one, the characters don't know that they're fighting a friend (Genis' friend Marble) until it's mortally wounded, but they get hit hard by the horror once they find out and cannot bring themselves to fight any other hostile Exsphere monsters. it is played straighter in Regal's backstory, as when his love Alicia was turned into a monster, he knew it was her he was fighting. We also have (Kratos' wife/Lloyd's mother Anna) in a flashback. However, one of them (Dorr's wife Clara) actually can be saved in a sidequest.
• Tales of Vesperia:
  • Belius is the epitome of this trope. From her, Estelle learns the hard way that her healing artes don't have a positive effect on an Entelexeia's sanity.
  • There's also the battle against a Brainwashed and Crazy Estelle near the end of act two. Fortunately, it's solved by Yuri simply beating the curse out of her.
• The robotic "Servants" of Karras in Thief II: The Metal Age once it is found out they were once people.
• The Tiamat Sacrament: One of Az'uar's brothers is mutated and driven insane by synthetic dragon DNA, courtesy of Ry'jin. All the party can do is Mercy Kill him.
• Brink is an NPC who joins as an ally near the start of Torchlight. The Big Bad turns him into the first boss via The Corruption, and the player is forced to kill him. Partially subverted as the player character doesn't know Brink for very long at all. However, the NPC ally whom Brink was fighting alongside at the very start of the game definitely seems distraught after his death.
• The Voids from Under Night In-Birth are Eldritch Abominations that are driven by powerful instinct to feast on the life energy of living beings and are an intense danger to everyone in the cast and indeed world. Merkava, however, is a unique Void that retains human sentience. He doesn't want to kill random people he comes across, but he can't stop himself because the Horror Hunger is too strong. And he's fully aware that no-one will ever sympathise or try to help him out, and that even if they did, he would likely end up killing them involuntarily. He's stuck in a great big Cycle of Hurting and none of it is even his fault.
• Undertale: As revealed throughout the final moments of the Pacfist and No Mercy runs, the reason why Flowey is so utterly evil is because, despite being sapient and sentient, he lacks a soul and a heart. He is literally unable to feel empathy for anybody or understand why anyone would feel empathy for him. His creation was an accident resulting from DETERMINATION experiments, which is why he exists in this unnatural state. His original self, Asriel, was a sweet little kid who died because he wanted to help his human friend Chara, but it went sideways because Asriel was an Actual Pacifist and wouldn't kill the humans who attacked him in panic. He died and the flower that would become Flowey was grown from the spot, and later selected for experimentation by Alphys (who didn't know about its backstory). The result was a being with Asriel's mind but none of his heart, and his sociopathy combined with his ability to manipulate save files led to him treating the Underground with Video Game Cruelty Potential (and he says that he tried being nice at one point, but got bored of doing it over and over). When he returns to being Asriel in the finale, he eventually gives up the fight because he can't bear to hurt you.
• Near the start of Valkyrie Profile, Princess Jelanda is transformed into some kind of undead demon, and you have to kill her. Then she proceeds to join your party. Later, Lezard transforms Lorenta's husband into a monster, and you are forced to kill him. Also, a certain boss in the first game is revealed to be a childhood friend of the main character of the prequel.
• Vindictus: When Ingkells and all the soldiers of Ortel Castle become so overcome with despair that they drink a potion laced with Bloody Shade, Ingkells turns into a furious monster. Learning of this act is one of the most poignant moments in Vindictus' story. Ingkells, however, is unique in that he actually chose to become a monster. However, the fact that he felt enough despair and fury to be driven to such an action makes it all the more tragic..
• Lady Harken from Wild ARMs used to be Elmina Niett, a knight of Arctica, sworn to protect the kingdom and its people. Then the demons attacked, and Elmina was captured by Alhazad, then transformed into Lady Harken. Poor Jack is forced to kill her as there appears to be no way to reverse the process.
  • This could also apply to anyone who has ended up as one of Alhazad's experiments, including nearly everyone in Saint Centaur, and a number of people and a dog in Court Seim.
• Wing Commander: This trope makes an appearance in Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga with Hobbes, and is either played straight or subverted in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, depending on when you choose to defect from Confed.
• This happens to either Fergus Reid or Private Wyatt in Wolfenstein: The New Order, depending on which of them you choose to be dissected at the end of the prologue. Deathshead extracts their brain, and after keeping it in stasis for 14 years, implants it inside a giant Prototype Robot that you're forced to fight as the penultimate boss of the game. The robot continually begs for you to kill him during the fight, and the only way to stop him is to paralyze the robotic frame and destroy your friend's brain. The mission objective is even given as "End Fergus/Wyatt's suffering".
  Fergus/Wyatt: Captain Blazkowicz... please... kill me...
• World of Warcraft:
  • Examples from The Undead include Thaddius (Those terrified screams in Naxxramas? That's one of the mutiple women and children' used to create him), Sir Zeliek, Madrigosa/Felmyst and the resident Dark Action Girl Sylvanas Windrunner (although she never does this as a boss).
  • Keristrasza knows that she's too far gone to be saved, and demands you kill her. "Finish it. FINISH IT! Or I swear by the Dragon Queen you'll never see daylight again!" Though she is not a victim of the Scourge, but rather of Malygos: the aspect of Magic, who has gone insane. He has enslaved her through magic and done some pretty messed up stuff to her.
  • Medivh has the ultimate Big Bad, Sargeras, mind-controlling him, but he has moments of lucidity and uses them to surround himself with friends who he knows will take him down. At one point, said friends do take him down after learning that he is responsible for the Orcish invasion. They end up having to cut off his head: although because of some magic shenanigans he does end up coming back.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
  • The faced mechon are homs subjected to Unwilling Roboticization, and if they attempt to resist, control of their body will be overridden. Later models have their mind suppressed entirely, they are still fully aware of what's happening, but unable to do anything about it.
  • The majority of the High Entia race ends up like this, being devolved into Telethia by the Big Bad and robbed of their sentience so he can use them to enact his plan to eradicate all life on the Bionis. Made more tragic if you had bothered to do quests for the victims beforehand, and still more tragic when their surviving friends and family ask you to give them a Mercy Kill, often after describing an account of said victims having protected them even in their warped state.

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