Video Game Cruelty Potential/Video Games/Adventure Game


 * In Snatcher, Handsome Lech Gillian Seed can flirt with almost every woman in the game, walk in on Jean Jack Gibson's daughter while she is showering (and she was 14 in the original JP version of the game; chances are her raised age in Western countries was due to how Squicky the scene could be.), force a Robot Buddy to watch a porn movie, and go to a strip club. The problem? Gilliam is married.
 * Gillian has nothing on his Spiritual Successor, Jonathan Ingram, from Policenauts. Gillian can hit on every woman. Jonathan can outright molest every single woman in the game, including fondling the breasts of every single female character. The remake for the Sega Saturn actually upped the amount of Fan Service "due to popular demand."
 * In updated rereleases of The Secret of Monkey Island, one Xbox Achievement/PS3 Trophy requires you to let Guybrush drown. Gee, thanks for making me feel guilty just for a virtual reward!
 * Both Little Big Adventure games pretty much allow the player to attack anyone. Some of the NPCs can even be killed (only to come back later once you leave the area), and some of them will fight back. Note that most of the friendly characters can't be hurt, but if they fight back, you do get the damage. In particular, try beating up the kids near the beginning of the second game when it's still raining, then go outside and watch an... interesting cut scene.
 * The second game also has some locations that allow for creative ways of killing the Franco guards. One can be lured onto an electrical bridge while it's turned off and fried on it by pressing the switch in time (complete with X-Ray Sparks). Another one can be tricked into following you into the space suit chamber on the Emerald Moon and sucked into space when you put the suit on, opening the gate.
 * There is one part of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders where you have to raise hell on an airplane to loot the crucial stuff you need from it. First off, you plug the sink up with toilet paper and call the stewardess. She quickly shouts "Oh no!!!" and starts cleaning up the mess. Then, in order to keep her completely distracted, you go to the microwave...set in an egg and then BOOM! The stewardess then asks what the awful smell is and notices the microwave on the airplane is a mess. "AAAAAIEEEEEE WHO DID THIS?!" Poor stewardess... Zak would end up on (The Customer is) Not Always Right for that!
 * You can also kill animals in inventive ways (Bludgeoning a squirrel, running a fish named Sushi through a garbage disposal.) Unlike tormenting the stewardess, these are optional.
 * In Maniac Mansion, it's possible to steal Weird Ed's pet hamster, put it in the microwave, blow it up, and then show him its exploded corpse. Of course, he'll kill you for it, but it's worth a shot at least once, because hey, not many video games allow you to nuke hamsters in a microwave!
 * Subverted in the sequel, Day of the Tentacle; Laverne revives the frozen hamster in a 22th century microwave oven, while delivering An Aesop. (She explains that in her century kids who microwave their hamsters are taken away and put up for adoption, so don't do it.)
 * In The Journeyman Project, you can dispose of the robot in NORAD by turning up the pressure in the sub dock and watch him crumple like a pop can. You lose points for a non-peaceful resolution, though.
 * In the flash game Haunt the House, your goal is to scare everybody out of the house; you're warned not to freak them out too much, or else they may "do something stupid" (i.e. jump out of a window and kill themselves). Judging from user comments, quite a few people have finished the game by deliberately killing everybody.
 * Each mission of Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (video game), you start with a landing party of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a Red Shirt. There is always, always a way to get him killed. Painfully.
 * In Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse, you have to use ventriloquism to distract the Samulacra -- you can have Max throw his voice into a warehouse, making the Samulacra assault the door. Or you can use ventriloquism to have them assault Bluster Blaster or Sal, depending on who you like least.
 * There's a totally pointless Easter Egg in Ice Station Santa which lets you fling bleach-laced yellow snowballs in the face of each of The Soda Poppers, just in case you don't like them.
 * There used to be a list of evil actions you could take in the Quest for Glory series, titled Quest for Evil by the discussion board members that came up with them. They included such things as killing the unconscious EOF opponent when told to in QFG2 and stealing coins from the musicians in QFG3 and 5. In 5, the musician would even thank you for stealing by playing a song for you.
 * In addition to a certain amount of required rat-abuse, Ghost Trick also lets you cause a couple of hilarious alternate deaths for people you're allegedly trying to save. It can be very hard to resist the urge to, for example, recline Detective Rindge's chair while he's driving, or, when Yomiel shoots Inspector Cabanela, swap the bullet for a nearby hard hat instead of the knit cap you're supposed to use.
 * In the 16-bit era Pac-Man game Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, you do not control Pac-Man directly, but act as his offscreen helper, guiding him along and helping him achieve his various goals. It is very possible to put the poor guy through a lot of suffering. Some of it is unavoidable, like where you have to induce a crow to attack Pac-Man in order to knock down an out-of-reach item. The downside to tormenting him is that he'll start ignoring your cues and you won't be able to proceed further until his mood improves.