No Canon for the Wicked

In many a video game with Multiple Endings (and, in the majority of RPG cases, a Karma Meter), the "good" ending will be the canonical one. Rarely will the "bad" ending be canonical, or the "bad" side actually canonically win. This may be because there is less appeal in a Downer Ending, or simply because having the villains win wouldn't be financially conducive. It may be necessary for the sake of having the protagonists of the first entry be recurring characters.

In any case, much as the "bad" side doesn't get its own campaign, it often doesn't get its canonical ending.

Take note; when this trope is subverted, it can serve a discrete narrative purpose: If Evil wins, Good can come back next time and vanquish the enemy even from a position of weakness. From a player's perspective, it makes previous (righteous) efforts less meaningful, but makes winning his current battle more rewarding.

Sometimes a subtrope of Cutting Off the Branches.


 * The "evil" ending for Might and Magic VII was originally intended to be canonical by the game developers, but they ended up going with the "good" one, instead.
 * In Heroes of Might and Magic II you get to choose whether to play the good or evil campaign(and then later on whether or not to redecide) the sequel Heroes of Might and Magic III however, counts the good side as canon.
 * Heroes I tells us the Warlocks and Barbarians are Evil, and the Knights and Sorceresses are Good. The canonical victor is the Knight Lord Ironfist. Of course, the actual story is a bit barebones, and the only major chunk is in the manual... which doesn't exactly present Lord Ironfist as an unambigiously Good Guy.
 * Canonical Light Side endings are Lucas Arts policy for Star Wars games, as evidenced in the Dark Forces Saga and The Force Unleashed. The only canonical "Dark Side" ending, such as it is, would be TIE Fighter, but that's because it only has one ending.
 * Both Knights of the Old Republic games canonically have light side endings. Thus far this only matters for the Star Wars canon outside of the games, though -- and even then this is mostly theoretical for the sake of official timelines and such (all actual narrative media, like the KotOR comics, have left the events of the games ambiguous). In the games themselves, KotOR II allows you to decide whether the Light or Dark ending happened in KotOR I, and it seems like The Old Republic, by taking place centuries after KotOR II, will permit a similar level of ambiguity about both games. It seems that no matter what you do the galaxy keeps reverting to a basic Crapsack World state.
 * In The Old Republic, the events of Knights of the Old Republic don't usually come up very often (since those games took place three centuries before the MMO), but when they do, Revan and the Exile were Light side (Revan, for example, helped the outcasts on Taris get to the Promised Land).
 * The original Jedi Knight game had two endings: In the Dark Side one, Kyle becomes the new Galactic Emperor. Naturally, the canonical ending is the Light Side one, where he relinquishes his powers.
 * It's also interesting how if you pick the Light Side, you get cut scenes and a plot that ties itself up nicely. If you pick the Dark however, you barely get some exposition text that (barely) justifies doing the exact same missions and actions, but for yourself apparently.
 * The sequel, Jedi Outcast, only has one ending. The spin-off, Jedi Academy, has both a Light and Dark ending; Word of God is that the Light ending is canonical, which is where the novel starring Jaden Korr follows from.
 * The Force Unleashed Dark Side ending leaves Vader dead and you the Emperor's slave, while the Light Side ending ends with you dead but inspiring a resistance against the Empire. If you can't guess which one is canonical, you've never seen the films.
 * However, there are a series of expansions for The Force Unleashed that is a "What If" story taking place right after the Dark ending.  Which, naturally, isn't canon according to the official timelines.
 * Pick any Command & Conquer game. Though it's probably justified as a victory by the bad guys would mean the series comes to an end, while the reverse still allows for the story to continue.
 * Except the expansion pack for Tiberian Sun: In this one, both sides win (but between the game and its expansion, the good guys won).
 * And again with Command & Conquer 3. The GDI, Nod and Scrin campaigns run concurrently, and are all canon.
 * Depending on who you talk to, the first Red Alert game can be both played straight and a subversion depending on which side wins (due to two branching timelines), with a Allied victory leading to Red Alert 2 and beyond and a Soviet victory being the precursor to Tiberian Dawn and that entire series as a whole.
 * Averted with Kane's Wrath; the Nod campaign is the only campaign.
 * The canonical ending for Shin Megami Tensei I, as it would appear from Shin Megami Tensei II, is not the Law or Chaos endings (each of which have their bad points, one more than the other), but the Neutral ending. As the Neutral ending is the only one that acknowledges that both sides, in the end, are jerkasses, it's as close to a "Good" ending as one can get.
 * Of course considering they don't fix anything and Law takes control after SMTI with the Hero dying between both games and in the Neutral ending of SMTII ends with things being worse than if either side had won calling them good is really not the case.
 * Similarly, Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne seems to follow the Freedom ending, given that there have been subsequent Shin Megami Tensei games.
 * Not quite, as Nocturne clearly establishes that there's a multiverse of similar worlds, which would have to be the case because the first two SMT games also took place after an apocalypse; Nocturne couldn't have happened as it did if it was on the same Earth as SMT 1 and 2. The Demi-Fiend's appearance in Digital Devil Saga suggests that the True Demon evil ending for Nocturne is the canonical one.
 * That can't be correct because in the True Demon ending, the Demi-Fiend destroys all of time and space, ie the whole Amala network which represents the multiverse... if that ending was canon, then there'd be no more multiverse. On the other hand, his appearance in DDS fits with both the bad demon ending where the Vortex World becomes eternal (he's still a demon and still has access to the Amala network, Kagutsuchi is just gone), and (strangely) the Normal ending where you restore the world (if you pay attention, it's never said that the Demi-Fiend lost his powers, only that he returned the world to normal, and as the game ends the Pixie's giggle can be heard, implying that while he did restore the world, he apparently left some way for demons to enter it, or at the very least kept his party around).
 * Demi-Fiend is called "Lucifer's Greatest General" in Shin Megami Tensei Imagine where he appear as a story boss so it's likely he destroyed the Vortex Worlds of the Amala Network itself and not the worlds that existed before/after the Vortex World.
 * Disgaea always uses the Good Endings, since the Bad Endings tends to be... really, really bad. Also, the Good Ending ensures that all the important characters are alive and well so they can make cameo appearances in the following games.
 * In fact, most of the Nippon Ichi games do this, with three exceptions: La Pucelle Tactics and Phantom Brave only have one ending, and Makai Kingdom's story is never resolved, because Zetta always appears in his book form.
 * Metal Gear Solid had two endings, both of which were congruent with Snake's character. Metal Gear Solid 2 avoided talking about which ending was canon as much as possible; it wrote out the character whose life depended on the Good Ending except for a bitter joke Snake makes about her. The on-disk supplemental material even implied both endings - "The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses" says the Intrepid Reporter finds a bandana on the beach (which Meryl picked up and gave to Snake in the Good Ending, suggesting she didn't survive to find it), and "In The Darkness Behind Shadow Moses" omits the scene where Meryl's fate is decided, but has the narrator say that it seemed like he had managed to save Meryl at the end. Then, of course, Metal Gear Solid 4 reintroduced Meryl, who seemed pretty alive, thus Schroedingering the ending into Good.
 * The Resident Evil series takes it to a particularly far extent. In the first game, none of the endings are actually canon, as the official version of events is impossible to achieve in an actual play-through - most notably, there's no way to get everyone out of the mansion alive in RE 1 (You'll never even meet at least one character), yet canon dictates they all survived.
 * Total Annihilation canonized the Arm campaign version (and therefore good-guy victory) when the expansion pack was about the victorious Arm having to deal with a backup Core Commander seeking to destroy the galaxy.
 * In Overlord II, it is made clear the canon ending for the original game could not have been the 100% corruption one. However, the 0% corruption "good" ending is not enforced either. As only two corrupt actions in the original contradict the sequel, the canon Overlord could be anywhere between 0-80% corrupt.
 * Just about any fighting game character ever who qualified as a villain. It's so blatant, in fact, that the moment you see it, you know right away that it's not going to stick. M.Bison takes over the world ("of COURSE!")...uh, no. Fulgore spearheads Ultratech's enslavement of humanity...come on. Heihachi kills both Kazuya and Jin...he wishes. The Orochi cultists finally succeed in reviving him...not. Raiden's buddies didn't blow up the planet, either.
 * When it tried to stay in its niche as Darker and Edgier, Mortal Kombat, became more of a mixed case: The canon ending in Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance was Reptile's - he became the host for the next game's Big Bad. Neither of the main villains took over the world like they wanted, but the next game does establish that none of their evil deeds were undone: Liu Kang remained dead, and most of the other heroes wound up joining him (though they were all resurrected as slaves of other villains). And apparently, after Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Shao Kahn winds up killing just about everyone and taking over the cosmos, forcing Raiden to invoke the Timey-Wimey Ball and create a Continuity Reboot: Mortal Kombat 9.
 * Dawn of War: Winter Assult features 4 possible endings: Imperial Guard, Eldar, Chaos, and Orks. Despite this, only the Eldar campaign could be considered canon, as both Farseer Taldeer and Gorgutz live on to Dark Crusade.
 * The Dark Crusade and Soulstorm campaigns possess seven and nine potential endings respectively. Dawn of War II states that the Blood Ravens won the former: The only thing known about the latter is that the Blood Ravens lost, and badly. Though considering how notorious anything in Warhammer 40000 is with unreliable narrators, neither of these statements are exactly reliable.
 * In the sequel, Retribution makes one of the two 'purest' endings from Chaos Rising the canon one: Diomedes is alive and joined Gabriel's rebellion, Avitus is revealed as the traitor and Cyrus and Martellus are playable squadmates during the Space Marine campaign, while Davian Thule and Jonah Orion make cameos,, and the Force Commander's Thunder Hammer is one of the ultimate weapons. The evil endings for Chaos Rising includes the entire party being sent on penitent crusades, the execution of the Force Commander (the player) and his name being struck from the Chapter in disgrace, and the whole group betraying their chapter and joining the Black Legion. None of the three would allow for the above to happen.
 * In King's Quest VI the storyline branches into two towards the end, each with a very different way to finish the game. In addition, there are a number of triggers that affect the final cutscene. Your actions affect whether there is a wedding ring, whether both families attend the wedding, who is alive or dead, and so forth. The novelization treats the longest "good" path as the real one.
 * Fear Effect 2 has two endings based on a choice near the end. The main character can shoot her girlfriend Rain, leading to a bad ending. The game is a prequel to Fear Effect, where Rain doesn't appear. Bury Your Gays? Nope, the good ending is the canonical ending, and Rain just doesn't happen to be on screen in Fear Effect.
 * Fear Effect itself has 3 possible endings, with every character dying in at least once in two of them. On hard however, all 3 survive.
 * At the end of Ultima VII (part 1) you are given the choice of destroying the Black Gate, or going through it and allowing the Guardian to enter Britannia. The future games all assume you destroyed it. Some fans have noted, though, that Ultima: Ascension (note the lack of number in its title) works better as a sequel to the Evil Ending of Ultima VII than as a sequel to Ultima VIII.
 * The second and third installments of X-rated Visual Novel series Inyouchuu assume the player got the best possible endings in the first and second games, which makes sense, considering the bad endings generally involve the main characters being killed or enslaved.
 * Done with little subtlety in The Neverhood, where you can make a choice between Good and Evil at the very end of the game. The fact that the Good ending is the true one is already very obvious just through the sheer length difference between the two final cutscenes, but the Actionized Sequel Skullmonkeys explicitly starts from the Good ending, though not without a twist: the Big Bad, whom you'd presume to be dead, survives and continues his evildoings on another planet, requiring you to get rid of him again.
 * Streets of Rage has a bad ending should one player accept Mr. X's offer and the other refusing. This results in both players fighting to the death, then the survivor fighting Mr. X to overthrow him and become the new evil overlord of the crime syndicate. However, the sequel assumes that the main characters chose wisely and fought Mr. X right away instead of fighting him for his power since Mr. X comes back in the sequel.
 * Most of the nine endings of Matches and Matrimony are good, with just two bad ones, but the best ending is the one that exactly follows the plot of Pride and Prejudice and ends with the Player Character happily married to Mr. Darcy.
 * The endings to Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 assume all of the 'good' choices were made, even options that are only theoretically available due to bugs disallowing the player from achieving the perfect endings without mods.
 * Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer presumes the player defeated the King of Shadows instead of siding with him.
 * In In Famous, Cole is canonically a hero, though Infamous 2 allows you to play starting from a karma based on your previous runthrough, starting you halfways into the karmic rank you inherited and changing the dialogue in later dead drops. In no uncertain words, Word of God has said if they make a third game, the hero ending will be canonical for 2 as well.
 * In Winter Shard, Frederone can be a total bastard who kills and mistreats everyone in his path and even dethrones the Evil Overlord himself, but the True ending requires him to be as considerate and thoughtful as possible to those around him and ultimately go the redemption route.

Aversions

 * The game Metro 2033 had two endings; a good one, and a bad one. Judging from the trailers, the sequel, Metro: Last Light, averts the trope by continuing on the bad ending where . Kind of a Broken Aesop, since the bad ending in Metro 2033 basically told you how much of a douche you were, since the entire game was determined to avoid that ending. It doesn't help that
 * In Soul Calibur, endings tend to be an amalgamation of several character's endings. And not always the good characters. Siegfried's ending in Soul Blade where he becomes the new wielder of the Soul Edge is canon (Though he didn't fight Cervantes directly, only Soul Edge itself.)
 * Colony Wars, where the second-best ending  is used as the background of the sequel, Colony Wars: Vengeance, which involves not only a Perspective Flip where you're on the side of a long-since post-apocalyptic Empire which has been pulled back together by a charismatic leader to strike back against the League, but also
 * Blizzard averts this in Starcraft and Warcraft III by making all the campaigns sequential parts of a larger narrative. Notably, in both cases, the good guys win in the game, but the bad guys in the expansion.
 * Averted in Warcraft I, as the Orc ending, in which daemonically corrupted Orcs overrun the continent, is canon though some aspects of the Human campaign (like killing Medivh) are also integrated. The sequel also does this with the roles reversed, so the humans win, but some aspects of the Orc campaign are also canon.
 * It was never made completely clear which campaign of the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion was canonical until The Burning Crusade allowed players to enter Outland and meet the Alliance heroes there (thus confirming that the Alliance campaign was the one that happened).
 * The Warcraft III manual made it very clear that the Alliance campaign happened.
 * Except the Orc campaign wasn't very contradictory to the Alliance one - both end with Draenor being torn apart, for example.
 * Some elements of the Orc Campaign are included: Teron Gorefiend's raids, the Warsong and a fraction of the Shattered Hand clans left behind on Azeroth and Ner'zhul's escape.
 * Some of the Alliance campaign is, through retcon, NOT included. In fact, the alliance campagn ends with the narrative that kadghar led their remains through one of the new portals in the hope of finding their homeworld again, yet none of this seems to have happened in the Burning Crusade. All in all, a mixture of the 2 seems to have happened.
 * Total Annihilation Kingdoms, like Starcraft, has every mission as canonical...though rather than discrete campaigns it is organized in the rather odd way of the player taking over random countries in turn, and even at some points e.g. fighting to gain a beachhead before then taking command of the other side to try and destroy that beachhead.
 * The True Endings of both Blaz Blue games are largely neutral, with both happy and downer elements and neither side getting a clear victory.
 * Shadow Hearts 2 went off from the bad ending of Shadow Hearts, while Shadow Hearts 3 most likely went off of the good ending to SH 2, though this is up for debate.
 * Since the good ending to SH2 seems to imply that Yuri will be stuck in a loop until he manages to save Alice, both games effectively have the good ending as canon (simply so SH3 can happen).
 * The ending of Silent Hill canonical to Silent Hill 3 seems to be the Good ending, rather than the best, Good Plus. Though, according to Word of God, all the endings are canonical, so they might have themselves a nice plot web to work with.
 * In Silent Hill 4, however, Henry will remark that his landlord, Frank Sunderland, claims his son (i.e. James, the protagonist from the second game) never returned from Silent Hill, but it's never made clear whether that means James is In Water or just lost contact.
 * The "Bad" (more like evil) ending is canon for Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen. Though that might have been a . Turns out it was.
 * Half-Life 2 runs with the idea that you have chosen to join forces with G-Man instead of going for the Doomed Moral Victor scenario. This makes sense as the first is the one that lets the player character be alive for the sequel, but neither can really be said to be a "good" ending as it is the result of The Sadistic Choice.
 * Some fans have argued that either works, since we never actually experience Freeman's death and the G-man could just be messing with him to prove a point. This would be consistent with the gameplay and story theme that 'The One Free Man' doesn't really have any choices, and goes wherever he's railroaded.
 * In a more amusing aversion, near the end of Episode Two it's shown that Gordon ruining someone's lunch in the first game by leaving it in the microwave too long is canon (it was Magnusson's).
 * Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow features an alternate play mode that occurs immediately after the game's Bad+ ending, wherein It's difficult to say whether this will stick, though, as Dawn of Sorrow is currently the last game in the series, chronologically.
 * Though not a game sequel per se, the School Days anime series is worth mentioning for choosing to base its ending after the games' violently bad endings for its personal canon. In fact, the fact that they did so is probably the first thing anyone learns about School Days.
 * Somewhat disturbingly, The 11th Hour operates on the premise that the player lost The 7th Guest (this is not made clear at the outset, but becomes obvious as you go on). Trilobyte claims that had they gone on to do a third game it would've been an alternate sequel to The 7th Guest rather than a sequel to The 11th Hour where the player won the final battle against Stauf -- and thus been less of an unrelentingly dark game and also, possibly, given us some actual character development of the eponymous character in The 7th Guest (who would have been the protagonist of the third game).
 * Note that none of this has much to do with the much later proposed (and failed) attempt at making a sequel, The Collector, which seemingly has nothing in common with the first two games except the character of Stauf along with some general thematic similarities.
 * Star Control, The first game features an interstellar war between the Alliance of Free Stars and the conquering Ur-Quan Hierarchy. At the beginning of the sequel you learn the Alliance lost handily, and humanity and the rest of the Alliance races have been enslaved by the Ur-Quan.
 * ... mind, the Hierarchy won using a ship they didn't have in the first game...
 * Averted in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. At least half of the sides are jerks, or power-hungry, or have ill-reputed connections. The most "Good" ending is probably to give it to the Underking. According to Word of God, because of the activation of the giant brass golem Numidium causing the god of time himself to screw-up, ALL of the endings occur simultaneously and all the contradictions cancel each other out.
 * The Elder Scrolls is kind of an interesting example in general - the sequels each assume that the storylines of the previous games were completed (though not necessarily by the same person), but anything optional is left ambiguous (for example, in Tribunal, Meanwhile, in Oblivion, in the Pocket Guide to the Empire that comes with the Special Edition, in reference to the previous game it says that
 * In the case of Skyrim however,
 * Midway through UFO: Aftermath, the invading aliens have a proposition for you, . Accepting is a Nonstandard Game Over, refusal leads to you wiping said aliens out. The sequel, UFO: Aftershock, however assumes you accepted.
 * Star Wars: Empire at War, Imperial story. The missions leading up to the ending are canon, but the ending itself (the destruction of the Rebellion with the Death Star) isn't, obviously.
 * Sonic Adventure 2 uses selective editing to make both sides' endings true: the dark side ends with Eggman seeming to have accomplished his goal, but zooms in to a warning message that he ignores, which, in the hero story, is shown to be because Sonic sabotaged his plans at the last minute. Of course, both plans lead into the last story where Eggman fails to take over the world, so in the end this trope is in fact used.
 * The reason why both the Hero and Dark endings are canon is because there is The Man Behind the Man who wishes to destroy the world whereas Eggman simply wants to take it over. Both sides cooperate to stop his plans. In other words, the Dark characters accomplish their goals, but those goals changed drastically from when the story began.
 * Sort of done, in Avernum III. While it's canonical that, there is a much harder way to win the game, that preserves her life. You just have to never accept the plot token she gives you, leading to much harder battles in the end game, and having to fight the final battle several times.
 * Mass Effect mostly avoids the trope by avoiding establishing any of the player-choice elements as canon. However, starting Mass Effect 2 without importing a save from the first game leaves you with a default backstory matching the first game's Renegade ending, rather than its Paragon one.
 * The Interquel novel Ascension basically hand waves the end of the first game in a sort of nihilist fashion.
 * The evil route of Champions Return to Arms fits into the EverQuest continuity while the good route doesn't.
 * The canon ending of Clock Tower: The First Fear, is either A, B, or C, since D-H show and S shows
 * Fatal Frame, the canon ending for the first game is that, even though you survive, it is still not exactly a happy ending. In 2, the canon ending is that , again, although everybody is now free from the eternal torment, still a Bittersweet Ending. While as in the much happier ending added in the Xbox exclusive version, . In 3, the two endings decide between , while as . However, neither of the endings have been officially declared canonical.
 * Command & Conquer: Generals features an episodic campaign that showcases the viewpoints of all three sides and runs in chronological order. This continues in the Zero Hour expansion.
 * Bioshock 2 avoids the issue as well by having the sequel take place ten years later, with a very different main character, and no definite answer to the original's ending.
 * Which raises a lot of questions if you took either of the evil endings in the first Bioshock and, no?
 * Well, he wouldn't have any reason to go back to Rapture if he looted it, I'm fairly sure a mutated and dead city at the bottom of the ocean wouldn't be a threat.
 * The multiple endings are nodded to in the second game as well, you find a group of splicers arguing over what Jack did at the end of his journey, neither of them reach a conclusion that they can agree on.
 * One wonders whether this trope is averted (and what constitutes "canon") in old-school arcade games like Space Invaders where the game continues forever until the player is defeated (and hence by implication the only possible outcome is one where the baddies win?)
 * Space Invaders in particular dodges this issue by having the various "sequels" and spin-offs not actually take place in the same "continuity" as the original -- in one of the silier ones, the original is a Video Game in-story that inspired the aliens.
 * Spider-Man: Web of Shadows has 4 total endings, with no true ending, so you can in fact have the bad guys win.
 * Blaze Union's most depressing ending (in which ) is canon. Due to some obfuscating translation choices by Atlus, Yggdra Union's D ending is often mistaken to be canon, although that's not the case--in all Dept. Heaven games except Riviera, the A ending is the one that's canon regardless of how "good" or "bad" it is.
 * Fatal Fury 3's canonical ending involves Geese beating the Jin twins and getting all the scrolls--the next game in the series doesn't end as well for him though (but the look on his face in the canonical ending is hardly one of disappointment).
 * Depending on how you see it, According to Garou: Memories of Stray Wolves (part 1, part 2), a bonus featurette created for the 15th Anniversary of Fatal Fury, this ending is canon.
 * The sequel to The Suffering defaults to beginning from the first game's neutral ending, although the good and evil endings also lead into the plot. Importing an old save allows you to start from the good or evil ending, and beating the game allows you to choose which to start from on future playthroughs. (Which ending you begin from does have an effect on what happens in the rest of the game.)
 * Mechwarrior 4: Black Knight, assumes that Ian Dresari let his sister die in the original game and has since become a tyrannical despot.
 * Day of the Tentacle assumes the player put the hamster in the microwave in its predecessor, Maniac Mansion.
 * Deus Ex features three endings. Deus Ex Invisible War assumes that all three happened in some form.
 * Deus Ex Human Revolution doesn't have any explicitly good or bad endings, but with what the player learns, . However, it being a prequel to Deus Ex heavily implies that this did not happen, but one of the other endings did.
 * Not a video game example, but a recent Magic: The Gathering block, Scars of Mirrodin, revisits the previously-detailed plane of Mirrodin, now the site of a battle between its natives, the heroic Mirrans, and the Phyrexians, the fan-favourite villains from the Weatherlight saga (and quite possibly the worst people in existance). For the final set, Wizards of the Coast previously released two logos, set symbols, and titles for each side, to prevent spoiling who would win - the Mirrans would have Mirrodin Pure, and the Phyrexians New Phyrexia, with one set being fake and the other to become canon. As it turns out, the Phyrexians win.
 * More "batshit" than "wicked", but Nie R results from the bonus fifth ending of Drakengard, rather than the good ending that leads into Drakengard 2.
 * The Mega Man X series may be the ultimate aversion: Every subsequent game has assumed the worst possible ending from the prior game if it had multiple endings, up until X6 where  This was done mainly so people could still play as Zero.
 * Splinter Cell: Conviction assumes that the player killed  in the previous game, Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
 * Corpse Party: Blood Covered has a sequel titled Book of Shadows which follows directly after the first game's bad ending, where