Word Of Gay / Video Games

• AMC Squad: According to a series of posts on the game's Discord server◊, Bombshell is queer, Jane Ashford is bisexual and Snowfall is gay.
• Apex Legends: Various characters are confirmed to be a part of the LGBTQ community in various tweets and interviews by the team.
  • Bloodhound is non-binary
  • Gibraltar and Loba are gay and bisexual respectively
  • Fuse is pansexual
  • Valkyrie is a lesbian
• Batman: The Telltale Series: According to director Kent Mudle, John was treated as bi and he has feelings for both Bruce and Harley, with a slight preference for Bruce.
• In Battleborn, Jythri a.k.a Randy Varnell provided some massive lore dump at the Battleborn Discord server. Among the info, he revealed the sexual orientation of certain characters. Shayne is gay. Reyna is Bi but doesn't talk about her sexual orientation at all, much to Ghalt's chagrin. She really doesn't have time for that anyway as she like Ghalt is too caught up in work. Mellka is still exploring as she's had a multi-year anger agenda to tick off first. Additionally when asked if any of the gendered/biological characters are asexual, Randy replied with "Hmm. Kelvin sorta?"
• BioShock:
  • After years of fan speculation, the producers of BioShock confirmed that Sander Cohen is canonically considered to be gay. This was also more-or-less confirmed in the Tie-In Novel BioShock: Rapture, though the developers weren't involved in the novel's writing, and thus its canonicity is unclear.
  • The creators also confirmed that the wildly homophobic Brute Splicer in BioShock 2 is an Armored Closet Gay, which is heavily implied by his flirtatious interactions with the Player Character under the effects of Hypnotize Level 3.
• Mori, the producer of BlazBlue explained in an interview that Makoto Nanaya was born of aborted attempts to write Tsubaki Yayoi as a lesbian. It was little surprise given how much Homoerotic Subtext she has with the other female characters.
• Borderlands:
  • Axton of Borderlands 2 was originally meant to only use flirtatious lines with female characters, but an oversight caused him to use them with men too. Rather than go through the trouble of fixing it, Gearbox chose to say "screw it, he's bi now" and left it as-is, after seeing fans disappointed that he wasn't intentionally bisexual. They then took it one step further and added a line to one of the DLCs confirming Axton's bisexuality. Similarly, they also confirmed Sir Hammerlock as gay while in-game he only makes a brief mention to a former boyfriend of his. The same was done with Mr. Torgue after a line greeting any player character by saying they are very attractive.
  • Anthony Burch has confirmed a number of things on his old ASKFM (as much as he can, anyway; as he says himself, 'what's in [his] head is no longer canon'):
    • Maya is asexual(as well as Zer0, but that's acknowledged in one of the DLCs).
    • Tiny Tina is a lesbian◊.
    • Zer0 is agender/nonbinary/genderless and (ideally) should be referred to with they/them pronouns.
    • Athena is a lesbian.
• Celeste developer Maddy Thorson confirmed the fan theory that Madeline is a Transgender girl, shortly after coming out as trans herself.
• Cyberpunk 2077:
  • There was some confusion over Kerry's sexuality shortly after the game came out: in the original tabletop game, he was bisexual, but in the video game, he's only an available romance option for a masculine (masculine voice + body) V. There are some clues that the player can find (like an email exchange with his ex-wife, or female clothing strewn around his house) that imply he's bisexual, but nothing was openly stated in the game, letting players see Kerry as anything from "bisexual" to "bi with a preference for men" to "closeted gay" to "gay, but used to identify as bi". Talsorian Games, the company responsible for the tabletop game the video game was based on, confirmed on twitter that Kerry is still bisexual, but is attracted to male V because he reminds him of Johnny.
  • The players have discovered unused voicelines for male V that mirror the voicelines for Judy Alvarez's Romance Sidequest done by female V. This led to speculations that Judy was supposed to be bisexual, but due to how the romance system is programmed (no character can be romanced by both a male and a female V, it's always one or the other), it was cut. CDProjekt has confirmed that Judy was always written as a lesbian, and the voiceline were simply recorded for posteriority's sake (in games where the player can pick a voice for their character, it's common for all voice actors to record lines available for the other voices, even if those lines end up unused).
• Dragon Age:
  • Writer David Gaider stated that Wade, one of the best smiths in the game, is in a relationship with his shop manager, Herren. Considering Wade's extremely campy behavior outside of his career choice and the ridiculous amount of Belligerent Sexual Tension in the dialogue between the two, it didn't come as an immense surprise.
  • Gaider also confirmed that Seamus Dumar in Dragon Age II is gay on the old BioWare forums. Like Wade and Herren, his relationship with Ashaad left this unsurprising.
  • Anders and Karl Dragon Age II were confirmed to have been lovers, regardless of whether you played as a male or female Hawke. (In-game, he only mentions the relationship to a male Hawke who expresses interest, leading many players to believe he was only gay/bisexual when in a romance with male Hawke.)
  • On a darker note, it has also been confirmed that Fenris' former master, Danarius, used Fenris as a sex slave as well as his super-powered bodyguard.
• Dishonored: Billie Lurk is confirmed by series co-creator Harvey Smith to be bisexual, with a preference for women. The only piece of in-game evidence is from a missable audiolog in Dishonored 2.
• EarthBound (1994): In a 2003 interview, Shigesato Itoi stated that even though it isn't outright stated in-game, he wrote one of the game's child characters as a gay, simply because he himself had a few gay friends and wanted to reflect the fact that gay children like Tony existed in real life. Though Itoi didn't give an exact name, he heavily implied that it was Jeff's roommate Tony, which localization director Marcus Lindblom later confirmed. The game's subtext makes it fairly clear that Tony has a crush on Jeff.
• Guilty Gear:
  • Venom is officially declared as so—in a drama CD, not in the games. The games' story modes heavily imply his devotion for Zato is actual love, but never say it outright.
  • In -STRIVE-, Bridget's Arcade Mode is devoted to her Coming-Out Story as a transgender woman. However, this was followed by misinformation about how the Arcade Mode endings worked, with some insisting that Bridget is still officially a man and only comes out as a girl in a "bad ending". The developers followed up on the official development blog, where both Daisuke Ishiwatari (creator of the series) and Akira Katano (producer of -STRIVE-) reaffirmed that Bridget is transfeminine, accepting herself as female, as well as confirming that all of the Arcade Mode outcomes are canon and do not contradict each other.
• Kevin Smith from killer7 had a male lover according to the companion book Hand in killer7.
• League of Legends has a few cases of this among its enormous character roster. Not including characters whose non-hetero sexualities actually are spelled out in the actual game/supplementary text (such as Rell, who openly crushes on specific male and female champions):
  • The dynamic of conflict and familiarity with Diana and Leona had been teased for many years, and it wasn't until years after their creator left Riot Games that he revealed that Diana at the very least was meant to be written as having romantic interest in Leona. Years after that, Riot would finally drop the subtext and confirmed in the short story "Rise With Me" that both of them were — and possibly to a degree, still are — in love.
  • Neeko has several interactions that could be seen as flirting specifically with female champions (at one point, she asks Shyvana out for a date), and it was quickly clarified after her reveal that she's a lesbian. Her fondness for Nidalee in particular isn't merely that they were close friends in their backstory, but because Neeko had an unrequited crush on her.
  • In the Legends of Runeterra spinoff, Nami has two followers — the male Loto (Abyssal Guard) and the female Tama (Marai Songstress), who each call one another "beloved", while Nami calls them her "heart" and "soul". It was quickly explained on Twitter that these weren't just formal niceties — all three of them were in a shared relationship.
  • Twisted Fate and Graves were originally pushed by their writer to be a gay couple. While the original proposal of them being married was vetoed, Riot has also been increasingly inclined to present them as being in a gay relationship, officially canonizing them as such in the short story "The Boys and Bombolini" for Pride Month 2022.
  • Caitlyn and Vi have always been written with a flirtatious subtext within the confines of the game^note Due to MOBAs not being the most conducive to storytelling, only Vi (created a few years after Caitlyn) had interactions acknowledging this dynamic, but around the release of Arcane — a series where the two are major characters — everyone on the writing board agreed that they were romantically involved (the series itself is also very forward with depicting the two as girlfriends).
• Life Is Strange released a tweet showcasing the main characters who are a part of the LGBTQA+ community during the 2021 Pride Month. Two characters worth mentioning that are shown to be part of the LGBTQA+ are Ryan from Life Is Strange: True Colors who while having no hints of his sexual orientation prior to the release of that game in previews and no direct mention in the game itself, is very much hinted to be a romantic asexual and Cassidy from Life Is Strange 2, who had no hint of her sexual orientation and gender identity at all besides being sexually attracted to men.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: Jaal, an alien squadmate, was revealed by developers to be bisexual. Originally when the game was released, he was only available as a romance option for the female main character but through fan reviews and comments on how to make the game better, developers decided to make Jaal an available romance option for both the male and female Ryder. They officially made him bisexual through update patch 1.08, revealing his sexuality through the patch details on what patch 1.08 was updating. Because of this, it's also considered to be a case of Ascended Fanon.
• Metal Gear:
  • Kojima confirmed that Revolver Ocelot had feelings for Big Boss. Note that we say "confirmed" because the subtext was so blatant that most people had already made the not at all difficult leap. The part where Ocelot spends the rest of his life after meeting Big Boss working to fulfill his ultimate plan of destroying the Patriots, going so far as to brainwash himself and eventually die to achieve that goal was a bit of a tip-off, really. This wasn't unexpected as everyone is gay for Big Boss.
  • In this 2013 tweet from Kojima's Japanese Twitter, he directly compares Snake and Otacon's relationship to the then-popular Johnlock ship, as well as to BL. He then says that both pairings "go one step further than traditional friendships" and that they should just marry each other, hinting that Snake and Otacon go beyond being Heterosexual Life-Partners.
• In Mortal Kombat X, Kung Jin has some rather telling dialogue when talking to Raiden in his flashback. Word of God confirmed that this conversation indeed meant that Kung Jin was canonically gay.
• Interviews with the makers of NieR confirmed that Emil is gay has a Precocious Crush on the Player Character.
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Through his Twitter, the author confirmed stated about Santa that "he might be able to love both men and women".
• According to Blizzard, at least one of the characters in Overwatch is gay. It wasn't stated who at first, but then it was revealed in the comic "Reflections" that Tracer has a girlfriend. Later on, the short story "Bastet" revealed that Soldier: 76 was in a relationship with another man that he still has feelings for.
• Hairdresser Octopus from PaRappa the Rapper 2 was confirmed to be "openly gay and proud of it".
  • From the spinoff, Um Jammer Lammy, it has been confirmed by the creators that Lammy and her bandmate Katy are in a relationship.
• In an AMA promoting Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, developer Thainen lamented that few people picked up on the Homoerotic Subtext that Linzi from Pathfinder: Kingmaker had a crush on Valerie and Annamede.
• Persona 4:
  • When doing the English dub, the voice actor for Kanji Tatsumi was basically told by Atlus that his character was gay. Despite that, in-game, the English dub is ambiguous over whether or not he really is. The original creators have said that his sexuality was kept deliberately ambiguous in order to accommodate Rule of Funny.
  • The voice actor of Chie Satonaka in Persona 4 Golden, Erin Fitzgerald, has stated that she recorded her lines under the impression that Chie was deeply in love with Yukiko which, given that Chie is also a potential romance option for the Protagonist, would make her bisexual/pansexual.
• Janet Hsu, the director of the localization team for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, confirmed in a blog post that Jean Armstrong is gay, though this is hardly a surprise to anyone considering how he acts. The purpose of this confirmation was more of a clarification about his gender identity and presentation, namely that he is a gay cis man with a female drag queen persona, rather than a transgender woman.
• Resident Evil has several examples, some confirmed by writers or developers, and others by actors.
  • For the former, there's Nadia from Resident Evil: Vendetta, confirmed by the writer in commentary for the film to be a lesbian who lives with a partner in San Francisco; Crispin Jettingham, confirmed to be gay (his codename is a subtle reference to Don't Ask Don't Tell); and Tyrone Henry, who according to the director was established behind the scenes from the start to be gay but no references made it into the game.
  • For the latter, Richard Waugh commented in an interview that he played Wesker as "not gender-specific" when it comes to attraction, while Maggie Robertson has simply confirmed that Lady Dimitrescu is sapphic in some way (though there was plenty of evidence in-game already).
• The developers of RuneScape confirmed that Zanik's relationship with the player is intended to be potentially romantic, making her effectively bisexual.
• The SaGa Frontier book Essence explains that Rastaban and Ildon are gay lovers.
• Scratchin' Melodii: On October 11, 2022, LJ confirmed in a tweet that Melodii is nonbinary, while also clarifying that any pronouns are fine for them.
• An interesting case in the Sly Cooper games. There are reports floating around that the original idea was for Murray to be bisexual, although this got downplayed when nobody got it. By the time he Took a Level in Badass and became "The Murray" for the second game, he was Ambiguously Gay at most, but the developers and voice actor seem to have held on to his original sexuality behind the scenes, mentioning in at least one interview that his comical-looking stealth-animations in the second game were due to "Sly envy", and playing a non-canon heist involving a bag of spiced nuts for all the cringe-comedy it could take.
• Star Trek Online: Commander Samuel Winters, first officer of the USS Enterprise-F, was stated to be gay in his bio in Star Trek Magazine (written by one of Cryptic's devs).
• Dr. Fetus, Big Bad of Super Meat Boy, has been stated to be gay via Twitter, but is deep in the closet, hence why he acts like a Middle Schooler on his own Twitter account.
• This tweet from one of the Team Fortress 2 writers is an attempt to confirm Miss Pauling to be a lesbian (rather awkwardly, and in the face of other writers who clearly didn't agree with him). Compounding this issue is that Jay said it in response to fan informing him that they didn't want to see Pauling with anyone, because "she's mine," making it unclear if it was a serious confirmation or simply a joking retort to the fans.
• Tails Noir: A tweet from the game's official account confirms that the main character, Howard Lotor, is bisexual. Another tweet after finding this trope on the game's page promised to "un-jkrowling" that statement, which they then clarified meant including references to his sexuality in the game so it wasn't just an Informed Attribute.
• The Walking Dead:
  • Walter and Matthew from The Walking Dead: Season Two were confirmed by Telltale staff on their forums to be lovers. In the game itself, it was displayed rather vaguely with the other characters calling them "friends". Walter does call Matthew his "partner" at one point, but this wasn't enough to convince some players, a lot of whom insisted they were just "good friends" before being corrected.
  • Javier, the protagonist of The Walking Dead: Season Three was confirmed to be bisexual by the creators.
  • Kent Mudle, the director of The Walking Dead: Season Four specified that Violet is a lesbian and James is gay. He also confirmed that Clementine is always bisexual, no matter if the player romances Louis or Violet.

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