Kick the Dog/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Digital denizens doing dastardly deeds.

Examples of Kick the Dog in Video Games include:

  • Alan Wake: The first boss-like foe is revealed to have done this, except with an axe, and to a dog that loved and trusted him, in one of the Nightmare manuscript pages, proving the Darkness is really, really mean.
    • In American Nightmare, Alan's Evil Twin Mr. Scratch kicks a dog pretty much every time he appears on the TVs in the game. His very first appearance has him strangling a captive with his own tie. "I beat some information out of him earlier, but this part? This is just for kicks." Later recordings show him slitting the throat of one of Alan's fans and taking great pleasure in stalking Alan's wife.
  • In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, during a briefing in the "Cold Alliance" episode, Bentley remarks that he saw bad guy General Tsao "kick a puppy, twice!" Taken less literally, Tsao also shows himself to be a misogynist when Sly confronts him about his plans to marry the Panda King's daughter in a Shotgun Wedding.

Sly: She doesn't want to marry you!
Tsao: She's a woman, she doesn't know up from down.

    • Ironically enough, the Panda King got a moment of his own in the first game when he caused a village to be destroyed by an avalanche when testing out his fireworks.
  • Borderlands: You're told to get an important MacGuffin from a bandit leader named Krom. You know nothing about him except for that. Problem is, he's the first major villain that doesn't wear a mask, so players might think he has some secret, sympathetic past. What's the very first thing he does when you see him? Shoot a cowering Claptrap in the face and push it off a cliff. He. Must. Die.
    • A possible Lampshade Hanging of this trope occurs when Patricia Tannis tells the protagonist that their next target, Baron Flynt, stole the last Eridian Artifact and punched her dog.
  • As if his "Sound the retreat!" at the Battle of Ostagar weren't enough, Loghain's real Kick The Dog event is having his daughter locked up and threatening to let Howe execute her. Of course, given that this is Dragon Age, a realm far on the cynical side of things, he can still join your team and become The Atoner.
    • Hell Loghain even has several more Kick the Dog moments which the player can all use to argue against him as the whole point of the landsmeet. Responisble for poisoning Arl Eamon? Selling his own people as slaves? What's missing?
      • Condoning Howe's torture of nobles, perhaps?
    • If a human noble!Warden confronts Howe, he'll describe every detail of Eleanor Cousland's death and what he did with Oren and Orianna's body. Of course, the player may already want him dead by this point but now he just put the last nail in his coffin.
    • The Warden (i.e. YOU) has ‘’many’’ opportunities to kick the dog; some of the dogs you can potently kick include your companions.
      • In one quest Camen’s Lament gives you the chance to unite two young lovers; however, you can kick the quest-giver, the quest-giver’s love interest, and then manipulate the LI into kicking the quest-giver. You can then subtly kick the quest-giver again by accepting a reward for your "help." Really, that quest gives you an obscene amount of ways to kick the dog.
  • Soul Nomad and The World Eaters:
    • At one point you meet Hawthorne, an influential merchant; his daughter, Tricia, is an archer who joins your party. But then you find out that Tricia is the most recent of about half a dozen "daughters" Hawthorne bought from a child slavery ring, the others all having "disappeared" sometime before their 17th birthdays. Of course, it does make you feel a little better about Hawthorne being killed in front of you. This plotline only gets worse in the Demon Path.
    • The Thurists (cultists who worship a World Eater) infect towns with a deadly plague because their "god" tells them to. But the real Kick the Dog moment comes where Kanan reveals that 10 years ago she killed young Danette's parents. Then he laughs about it.
    • Levin, whom you originally believe is your ally, attacks Layna, reveals that he's a World Eater and reveals that he killed his sister Euphoria. Then, to add insult to injury, he resurrects Euphoria just long enough to rub in the fact that she was a soulless puppet and Endorph was a chump for falling for her. On top of the shaming and asskicking Gig and company dish out before this insult, he wins the grand prize from Endorph afterward -- one Psycho Burgundy to put him to final rest.
    • Gamma and Joules' entire Hannibal Lecture, which is followed by their attempt to devour Feinne purely for power.
  • Tales of Symphonia has several; all of the Desian Grand Cardials get at least one involving doing some manner of nasty stuff to an Innocent Bystander, and Mithos gets a particularly Anvilicious one when he's revealed as a villain by nearly killing one of his former Nakama and kicking him while he lies defenceless on the floor while laughing evilly.
    • This game also features a literal version of this trope as Colette kicks a dog after having lost her humanity at the Tower of Salvation. This is not done to portray her as a Heel, but to underscore the fact that her personality as gone, as she is the game's dog lover.
  • In Snatcher, a pair of the titular Ridiculously-Human Robots attempt to search Katrina's house for a list of Snatcher-run hospitals hidden there. When they fail to find it, they slaughter her dog, Alice, gut it violently, and throw it through Katrina's window, entrails hanging out. In the original Japanese, uncensored version, it's still twitching.
  • In Jak II, the Krimzon Guard -- a fascist organization led by Baron Praxis -- that holds Haven City in the grip of oppression at least seems to have a redeeming trait in that they keep it safe from the monstrous Metal Heads. Then, partway through the game, you find out that they've been bribing the Metal Heads to make ineffectual attacks for them to thwart -- rather than staying quiet until they can stage an effective assault -- in order to justify their brutal rule as necessary in face of this danger. Because, y'know, just being fascists who tortured the main character for two years didn't make them bad enough.
    • And in the first cutscene after Jak escapes prison, you get this little gem.

Krimzon Guard: By order of his eminence, the Grand Protector of Haven City, Baron Praxis, everyone in this section is hereby under arrest for suspicion of harboring underground fugitives. Surrender and die!
Daxter: Ahh, excuse me sir, don't you mean surrender OR die?
Kor: Not in this city!

  • The World Ends With You's Megumi Kitanji has one the instant he introduces himself to the players, saying that Neku's entry fee is now Shiki, so instead of restoring her to life like the Reaper's Game promises, he instead sends her to a state of limbo, on pain of death if Neku loses. That in itself was a jerk move, but he later blantantly abuses the rules he's supposed to uphold when he says that now every single player is now Neku's entry fee, so he puts all their lives on the line, when Neku needs them to even play the Game without getting killed. Is it any wonder he's listed in TWEWY's own entry as a Jerkass?
    • It's stated in the Secret Reports later that Kitaniji is actually a step below the guy who actually has the power to revive the fallen who win the Game, and was using Shiki's instatement as Neku's entry fee to cover that up. The jerkery still holds about using every other Player as Neku's entry fee for the final week. He's just very fortunate Beat was the only Reaper who didn't have intentions of leaving his ass out to dry.
    • Let's not forget Mitsuki Konishi, resident passive-aggressive Baroness. In her chapter, she crushes Beat's cute pet Noise into a pin just minutes before we found out said pet Noise was Rhyme after being Blessed with Suck so that Beat could resurrect her in human form...All with a grin on her face.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Seifer actually goes and kicks a mongrel the first time he's in the party.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, Vayne crosses the line when he seizes power. While Drace has opposed his authority and openly rebelled, proving Vayne couldn't trust her, there was no need to have her killed... And even less need to command Gabranth, which he refers to as a dog, to kill her himself in order to prove his loyalty. That was really cold and cruel, since Gabranth and Drace were comrades, and perhaps even friends. One scene, two dogs kicked.
    • Gabranth does this quite a few times? Frames his own brother for murder? Check! Torture him for two years? Check? Try to goad Ashe into a rage by describing how he murdered her father? Check and mate.
  • There's also this gem from Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, specifically Kefka's treatment of Kuja after the latter is defeated/killed by Lightning:

Kefka: Oopsie! Someone went and lost, didn't he? (Kefka approaches a keeling Kuja) You know what they say about second place: Completely pathetic! (Kuja fades away in clouds of darkness) Meh. Don't sweat it, a little thing like that's not gonna be the end of you. Should be the end of that rebellious phase of yours, though! The next time you fight, it will be study time! (mimes writing) All over again!

  • In Fire Emblem 7, The Vamp Sonia sends her daughter Nino and teenage contract-killer Jaffar to kill the Prince of Bern for Lord Negal. She also gives Jaffar an order to kill Nino, then justifies it Hannibal Lecture style by saying that the Prince's killer must be killed to avoid panic in Bern. Nino and Jaffar don't go through with it, and actually defect to your side after a Quirky Miniboss Squad member runs her mouth about Sonia's plan in front of Nino.
    • Even worse was the fact that she just promised Nino that she would hug her, just once, if she finished the mission. Worse still, she kills her foster father and reveals that she killed her entire family of mages when she was a baby, by using her as a human shield. Wooooooooow, Sonia.
    • And from the same game, just in case you didn't know that Prince Zephiel's father Desmond was one huge bastard, they show him ordering a baby fox to be killed. A baby fox! A baby fox Zephiel had given to his baby sister Guinevere! And Guinevere was Daddy's favorite!
    • Let's not forget that Ephidel, instead of kicking the dog, stabs an old man to death after the other questions him.
  • In the John Woo game Stranglehold, Big Bad Mr. James Wong is shown early on to be an utter bastard when he reveals during his meeting with Tequila that he intimidated his own daughter Billie into breaking up with the Cowboy Cop on pain of death eighteen years ago while she was still pregnant with their daughter Teko -- and ordering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Tequila on top of it. Eighteen years later, after charging Tequila with the task of rescuing her and Teko from the Zakarovs and the Golden Kane, Wong decides to stick the knife in by ordering Tequila's own partner Jerry to betray Tequila by murdering Billie after Tequila took out Damon Zakarov and trying to kill him as well, both to protect his syndicate (Damon had threatened to force Billie to reveal everyone on the payroll of her father's syndicate in order to keep Damon from killing Teko) and to deny Tequila the woman he loved forever in true rat bastard fashion.
  • Most of the later assassins in No More Heroes enjoy kicking the nearest canine. Since the viewpoint character isn't exactly a friend to all living things, this is probably there to justify the bad guy's eventual gory deaths.
    • Number 2, Bad Girl, states that she feels no remorse about killing anyone while slaughtering clones for fun, Number 3, Speed Buster, kills a major trainer in a rather messy manner, and Number 7, DestroyMan, cheats so consistently it's remarkable.
    • As a twist, a good bunch do not kick the dog, however. In comparison...
  • In Assassin's Creed, every single Templar that you're assigned to kill gets at least one Kick the Dog moment (breaking a test-subject's legs, pushing somebody into a pile of burning books, murdering a priest out of paranoia, etc.) before you kill him.
    • Except, of course, for the slave trader. Because do you really need any other reason to kill a slave trader?
    • Apparently horrible storage conditions for the slaves, as mentioned on this very wiki. "Even Altair seems vaguely appalled."
    • The sequel goes further and gives each of the Templar assassination targets a "Kick The Dog" video profile showing why each is a very bad person (with the tragic exception of Dante Moro). The sequel to that though eschews this, being seemingly content to have Cesare Borgia kill a helpless Mario Auditore, with the subsequent sin of the Borgia regime and troops being guilt by association.
  • In Overlord, you have a tower, which, naturally, is your base of operations, housing an armory, a forge, even a private chamber for your mistress. It also features a jester, (a brown in a jester's outfit, kinda like a toned-down Monster Clown,) who will laud your various accomplishments, and whom you can kick in the head. It serves no purpose, has no effect on your corruption meter, and if you do it enough, the jester will cower in fear of your mighty boot, and later comment on how mean you are to jesters. But you are supposed to be an Evil Overlord, and the fact is, the game lets you do some pretty, ughh, heroic deeds. So you need to kick the jester, to prove to yourself that you're still evil.
  • In Destroy All Humans! 2, Crypto panders to the Black Ninjas by saying that the Furon god Arkvoodle (Or "Darkvoodle," as the ninjas put it) is so evil that he eats kittens for breakfast, and that he's hungry now and wonders if they have any kittens. The Black Ninjas are unimpressed, saying that they eat babies for breakfast.
  • In The Bard's Tale, if you decided to adopt the cute puppy that the Bard will show some actual affection for -- a Druid stops the group to allow their Griffith to stomp on the dog, breaking the poor thing's spine as it gave a pained cry. A literal Kick the Dog and Player Punch in one swoop.
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare makes it a point to ensure the player won't feel any sympathy for either Khaled al-Asad's revolutionaries or Imran Zakhaev's Ultranationalists. Al-Asad's troops do such pleasant things as mass-executing civilians in broad daylight, publicly executing President Yasir al-Fulani on national television, and detonating a nuclear bomb inside his own city. Zakhaev's Ultranationalists routinely murder civilians, bomb civilian villages indiscriminately, and conduct another mass execution in a village for no apparent reason except to be complete bastards.
    • The nuke starts off as a Kick the Dog moment (very dramatic but otherwise unimportant to the campaign, aside from giving the US, England, and Russia reason to cooperate) but eventually escalates into a legitimate plot point, as it serves as General Shepherd's Start of Darkness for his Magnificent Bastard villainy in Modern Warfare 2.
  • The announcers in Gradius Gaiden will give you words of encouragement if you run out of lives early on, but later on, they rub your defeat in your face with more disparaging comments:

"Poor boy..."
"Get outta here, forget about it!"
"Hahahahaha!"

  • The first thing a minor villain does during his introduction in Fable 2 is kick the player's dog.
    • That bit-part bandit is nothing compared to Reaver's puppy-punting spree. Upon his introduction, he kills a sculptor and an artist trying to capture his likeness, sends you off to get your soul drained by ancient demons so he can stay eternally youthful, kills a character you've known since childhood, and then informs you cheerfully he's just betrayed you to the very person who...dammit, Lucien needs a new section.
      • The stories around Lord Lucien in your childhood depict him as a noble, if somewhat eccentric man. In fact, he even offers to adopt you and your sister, both homeless orphans... unless he gets exactly the result he does get from a simple test which reveals that the two of you have the blood of heroes, at which point he shoots your helpless, unarmed sister in the head, and then shoots you in the chest, sending you out a window in a tall tower. You get better. After this point, he becomes a fairly standard Big Bad, but at the end of the storyline he reveals that again, to try to cut off the heroic bloodline, he's personally murdered your spouse and any children you have, and then literally kills your dog when it takes a bullet to save your life.
      • Actually, according to the Banshee, he didn't shoot Rose in the head; rather, in the chest, and she didn't die out right away. Oh, no. She had to watch while Lucien shot you, and then Lucien puts another bullet in her head.
    • Sometimes when a villager sees your dog, he/she will taunt your dog and then kicks the dog in the face.
    • Peter Molyneux has said in interviews that this trope was one of the main purposes of the dog in Fable 2 - the dog is designed to make the player grow attached to him, so attacks against him become the player character's Berserk Button.
    • The sequel also uses the literal meaning in the DLC. After being strapped to an electrical chair by the person who you thought was helping you, having him suck out your powers as a Hero, him transforming into an exact copy of you in order to destroy the crown, he shoots your dog with a magical fireball. Unfortunately, that was a bad idea, considering that the Hero loves that dog more than anything and after yelling "Never. Hurt. My. Dog!", breaks free of the chair and then goes on to kill him.
  • In Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2, Archibald Grims (a recurring enemy character for the first part of the game) merely comes off as a minor Jerkass. It's not until you've fought him a few times that you find out that he actually is a sociopath -- his solution to digging up a rumored lost-technology giant robot is to bomb the area, blasting away the sand covering the robot as well as the pesky civilians who were digging it up the hard way. A subordinate even tries to reason with him, and Archibald seems to consider for a moment.

"I see. Yuuki, are you trying to say you don't like unnecessary bloodshed?"
"Not in this situation, Sir."
"What a shame. But I do. Especially from non-combatants!" (Cue maniacal laughter and screamy civilians)

  • World of Warcraft: Choose a Blood Elf in The Burning Crusade, and you're required to kick many dogs (or cats, as it may be.) Play a death knight in Wrath of the Lich King, all you do under the Lich King's control is kick dogs -- oh, and kill your best friend.
    • Also in the opening cinematic a Blood Elf cuddles with a small magical creature, only to destroy it so she can absorb its mana.
    • At the Argent Torunament a woman takes the confessions of champions from both factions. An undead champion informs her that he punched a penguin in the face just so he could see her expression when he revealed it.
  • Jade Empire lets you indulge in a little dog-kicking, if you're evil enough. When your karma meter hits rock bottom, the cute little dogs running around in the background become targetable - interacting with them lets you kick them, making them explode, and drops a health power-up.
  • BioShock (series) does this indirectly in an event that could also be considered a Moral Event Horizon. Dr. Suchong forces the protagonist, Jack, who was a genetically conditioned child in Rapture to snap his new puppy's neck. Jack is mentally conditioned to obey him, even though the child protests profusely. This just demonstrates how much of a huge dick Dr. Suchong was.
    • Then there's the fact that he was so abusive with a little girl. I know he was irritated, but he had no excuse for doing what he did. He even said "shit" right in front of her! Shouldn't he know you're not supossed to use foul language when you are near the little ones? At least that resulted in him getting mauled by the Big Daddy. You can even see a huge drill in his belly when you find his corpse.
      • For extra dickery, bear in mind how the little girl referred to him as Papa Suchong.
  • In the Japanese dub of Mega Man Legends (dubbed Rockman Dash in Japan), when you reach a scene where you have to get the dog Paprika away from Tron, players have the option of just merely kicking the dog, causing him to scamper away. In the english dub, however, players have the option of "telling" the dog to go away.
  • In Planescape: Torment, you get to experience flashbacks to previous incarnations of your character, the Nameless One. One is dubbed the "Practical" Incarnation. Pretty much everything he does is dog-kicking and Moral Event Horizon-crossing. And yet, it's implied that something your original self, the Good Incarnation, did before he repented was so far beyond the Moral Event Horizon that the Practical Incarnation is a near saint in comparison.
  • It's the first thing you see the "protagonist" of Postal 2 do after he gets out of his trailer on Monday morning. And then it gets better. It's that kind of game.
  • Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies has a cutscene where the Erusean invaders set up an anti-air gun post on top of a hospital in the narrator's hometown. It also reinforces Yellow 13's Anti-Villain status by having him be disgusted by this.
    • And earlier in the same game is the "Escort" mission, wherein Erusean fighters go after a pair of civilian airliners, which the player must defend.
    • Some Leasath chair forcers from X: Skies of Deception rain bombs on a defenseless city just because they can spare the ordnance. The Hamlet special forces unit goes as far as to unleash a biochemical agent on Santa Elva in what may be a crossing of the Moral Event Horizon.
  • In Airforce Delta Strike, the OCC launch a major air assault against a lone, stranded and disabled hospital ship of no tactical or strategic value. Ruth Valentine tries to prevent the ship's destruction, but the mission is a Heads I Win, Tails You Lose mission.
  • Saints Row 2. Boss, the character you play, does a lot of this.
  • She doesn't kick an actual dog, but give one to her, and Larxene would probably kick it. She does this trope enough, you'd think it was her job (then again, it kind of is.....)
  • Pokémon Red and Blue: Mafiaesque Team Rocket was the lightest villain group in the games, bar none. Whacking a few Mons, running a casino and the Viridian Gym as legitimate business ventures, taking over a city, intermeddling with the Lake of Rage, and hijacking the Goldenrod Radio Tower were pretty big for their day, but compared to more recent organizations they're small fries.
    • Much hyped in the continuity is Pokémon Diamond and Pearl's Team Galactic, who slid right up the Sliding Scale of Villain Effectiveness by bombing Lake Valor, extracting the gems from the Lake Trio, and using the gems to shackle Dialga and/or Palkia in an attempt to rewrite reality. Unfortunately for them, the Mooks are plain dumb, the Lake Valor explosion was pure shock value, and the lion's share of bad intentions come from emotionally stunted Cyrus, who believes that living spirit is an imperfection that needs to be scrubbed away. If it weren't for his leadership and the effectiveness of the commanders, even the Rockets would have someone to laugh at.
    • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire's Archie and Maxie must play canine soccer when their groups aren't at each other's throats. Sure, they take their cause a bit too seriously, but what drives them dangerously close to the Moral Event Horizon is their operation at Mt. Chimney. Whatever they planned to do to the global climate does not excuse them from nearly driving Lavaridge City to ruin - the eruption that Team Magma was aiming for would have burned it all away and left multitudes of both humans and Pokemon homeless for years to come, while the death of Mt. Chimney would have financially devastated the city, with the demise of its hot springs as part of the backlash. (Keep in mind this was before Team Galactic was even a concept) In the manga, Archie becomes a professional Poochyena kicker by actually killing Mt. Chimney via his Elite Mooks, one of which he sends off to die for doing his job right later on, and proves to Maxie prior to the Emerald arc that he is indeed Eviler Than Thou after they partly recovered from being used by the Red and Blue Orbs. Still, neither of them hold a candle to...
    • Cipher makes Poochyena kicking, if not molestation, its modus operandi. In the events of Pokémon Colosseum, they were literally running all of Orre from the shadows of the criminal underworld, with even its most affable Admin, Miror B., holding the mayor of Pyrite Town around his pinky while distributing Shadow Pokemon shipped from the Under to people at the Pyrite Colosseum. Dakim was the enforcer who put everyone else in line, Venus was the pretty face that kept the people of the Under out of Cipher's affairs with her gaudy entertainment programming, and Ein corrupted the stolen Pokemon that Team Snagem and other criminal organizations paid Cipher as tribute for use as weapons. The place was hell on earth in a near-literal form until Wes waged his two-man war, and five years later during the events of Pokemon XD, changes in personnel aside, Cipher's at it again, and the loss of support from Team Snagem is merely a setback to their greater operations. Say what you will, but any organization with nigh-Complete Monsters comprising the entirety of its cabinet is a Complete Monster itself, bar none - and given the sheer assets Cipher possessed during XD, the possibility of a third coming is very real.
    • This trope is done quite literally in Pokémon Black and White with Team Plasma. Initially, Team Plasma's goals sound like they are actually reasonable. Players might originally find themselves intrigued by them. However, in the player's first direct encounter with Team Plasma's grunts, they are quite literally kicking a Munna, hinting that their intentions may not be all that genuine. It gets worse from there, with two grunts stealing a little kid's Pokémon and later Bianca getting her Munna stolen; it becomes clear very quickly that Team Plasma are just as bad, if not worse than Team Rocket with the added bonus of being myopic Hypocrites. The ending is a long series of Kick the Dog moments, from the grunts in N's Castle rubbing in how Ghetsis has been manipulating the hearts of Unova's citizens to a scientist referencing how they're going to release all of the Pokémon stored in the PC boxes. Then, after you beat N, Ghetsis hurls insult after insult at both him and you.
      • Ghestis's insults even cross over into Moral Event Horizon for many; Ghetsis wasn't even a Tautological Templar like many of the Plasma Grunts, he was just a power-hungry jackass who invented this rhetoric in a bid to take advantage of people's better nature and take over the world as the only trainer left. He then proceeded to emotionally cripple his own son as a step in this plan and gloats about it to you while rubbing in N's face that he never actually cared about him and considered him a pathetic failure of a human being.
  • Mass Effect is quite fond of this trope. Saren shoots keepers (which can't fight back) when he attacks the Presidium. He also attacks a peaceful human colony then tries to utterly destroy it, just so he can use the Beacon. The sequel gives us Warden Kuril, who casually guns down the prisoners in his care and orders vicious beatings.
  • In .hack//G.U., there's Atoli who spends most of the series as the game's resident dog being kicked by just about everyone in Haseo's rogues gallery. Even Sakaki, who found her on a suicide website and convinced her to play The World rather than kill herself.
    • Not just in-game, her real-life self also gets kicked by almost everyone, including her parents.
  • Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles manages to turn Alexia Ashford into even more of a Complete Monster than she was before by having her murder Alfred -- apparently, simply for not waking her up from cryo sooner... Quite a switch from the original.
  • In the God of War series, Kratos does this a lot, Video Game Cruelty Potential notwithstanding.
    • Kratos' very first Kick the Dog moment is also an Establishing Character Moment: when a Hydra attacks the ship that Kratos is on, it chows down on the ship's captain who has a key that Kratos needs. After killing the Hydra in badass fashion, Kratos climbs inside it to retrieve the key. The ship captain thanks him profusely for coming back for him, only to receive this cold response: "I didn't come back for you." And then Kratos rips the key off him and sends him down into the Hydra's gullet for no reason at all. Ladies and gentlemen, our hero.
    • You can even literally kick Cerberus pups -- and in the third game, you can even get an achievement trophy called "Obedience School" for doing this to 50 pups.
    • And as assholish as Kratos can be, his enemies are even worse. Ares and Zeus, his primary nemeses in the series, do much to earn Kratos's (and the player's) hatred throughout the games. The other gods are not much better.
  • Fassad spends a great deal of his on-screen time in Mother 3 electrocuting the adorable little monkey Salsa.
  • In the pre-match cutscene before fighting Saiki in The King Of Fighters XIII, Saiki killed Mukai when the latter requests to let him handle the fighters instead.
  • Lego Universe has a rather brutal example, upon the rather idiotic creation of the Maelstrom, the first thing the one Spiderling did was crush a puppy with its leg. It gets repaired though, don't worry.
  • Luminous Arc begins with the player in command of a group of Church soldiers hunting "Witches"—until it turns out that some of the Witches are actually friendly, even willing to help break a curse that has turned one character's arm into a dragon claw. Unfortunately, a superior officer appears to remind your party of its duties, ordering you to attack the Witches. The characters poignantly struggle with this moral conflict...for about 10 seconds, at which point the knight gets fed up and decides to kill everyone, incidentally revealing that he had been planning to kill the party anyway once they disposed of the Witches. And if THAT wasn't enough, when the accompanying bishop asks him not to kill the cursed character, the knight's response is: "We only need the arm to do experiments on, right?".
  • The tenth mission of Advance Wars Days Of Ruin sets three "civilian" units (in gameplay terms no different from regular ones) directly in front of the enemy. Two of these units can escape, but there is no way whatsoever to save the third. The game goes to these lengths to set up a dogkicking moment for the Beast, who proceeds to slaughter the doomed unit for fun. With a War Tank. (For reference, that's the strongest ground unit in the game. The target is an Infantry - the weakest ground unit in the game... before taking into account it's a civilian in story terms. Talk about swatting flies with a cannon.)
  • Mundus' You Have Failed Me... moment on Griffon in the first Devil May Cry before Agony Beaming him to death was very much a dick move, even before what he does to Dante and Trish later on.
  • Breath of Fire III had a couple characters who are this fairly early in the game. Balio and Sunder are brothers who were first seen killing off your party for stealing from a corrupt mayor. After Ryu survives he will soon approach these two again on the path to Wyndia, one of them will think you're a ghost. After running around a bit his brother will approach him and to prove to him that Ryu is a ghost he will proceed the stab Ryu in the back. Afterward Ryu will lie unconscious after a short dragon transformation and these two will capture Ryu and present him to the King of Wyndia. By the time the unveil Ryu, he will have already transformed back into his human form where these two brothers get the idea that kicking the cage several times will make Ryu transform back. After this fails both Ryu and the brothers are sent to a jail within the castle. Shortly after princess Nina will appear to free Ryu and was stopped when the brothers call for her to free her promising that they "will not hurt that kid again." After a short hesitation, Nina decides to free them and shortly afterward, the brothers proceed to kick her in the face and ran off with her for a ransom. After having to break out of the cell by ramming into it twice, you chase after the princess. Upon arriving to the scene where she is being held captive these two pricks decide to kick the princess yet again just because they are getting sick of Ryu. Keep in mind both Ryu and Nina are about 10 at this point in the game.
  • Home Front starts with such a moment when before the game even starts proper you witness GKR troops kill a mother in front of her son, while she tells him not too look.
  • In Maniac Mansion, you can put a hamster into a microwave, set it on and the rodent will explode in a bloody mess. You can even give the remains to the original owner...
  • The Ocarina of Time version of Ganondorf has so many of these moments that it is hard to pinpoint which is his Moral Event Horizon:
    • Killing the Deku Tree for refusing to hand over the spiritual stone of the forest.
    • Blasting Link to the ground with an energy blast, for refusing to tell him where the princess went.
    • Causing the Hyrule Castle Town to pretty much become a charred wasteland populated by the undead, which leaves unstated how he did it, but judging by other actions of his in the game one could reasonably assume he burned it to the ground.
    • Attempting to feed all the Gorons to a dragon in the fire temple, as a "warning to those who would oppose" him.
    • Freezing nearly the entire Zora population under the ice.
    • Letting Bongo Bongo loose to cause a fire in Kakariko village.
  • The first act you witness the Van Graffs committing in Fallout: New Vegas is executing one of their own employees, in order to intimidate a business partner trying to negotiate a better price for their services.
    • Also, one of the possible answer to Doc Mitchell's word association psychiatric examination for dog is "kick", and "human shield" for "mother".
    • Also, you can kick an opponent with the ranger takedown, allowing you to literally kick dogs.
  • Luca Blight, from Suikoden II, just takes this trope and run with it: he used the massacre of the Youth Brigade of his own army (massacre that he planned himself with his own troops dressed up as a neighboring nation) in order to restart the war between Highlands and the City-States. The war burning anew, he gleefuly destroys and pillages villages in his path. At one point, a innocent woman begs for her life: he tells her to act like a pig. She obliged, then asked if she can go. Luca then politely requests her to "DIE PIG!" and promptly kills her (while laughing). After the mercenary fortress falls to Luca early in the game, Luca is found running Pohl, a teenage boy, through with his sword. He then terrifyingly turns his attention on a very young girl named Pilika (whom he killed the parents during one of his pillage) and in a Break the Cutie moment, attempts to run her through as well. The heroes try to stop him, but he single-handedly dispose of them, and is ready to cut her in half while Jowy can't do anything but yell at him to stop. Luckily he was prevented from doing so but Pilika becomes a Cute Mute after the incident. Truly, a Complete Monster to the bones.
  • Ace Attorney has examples of this. In episode 1:5, the true Big Bad of the case is pretty much already a doughbag however the real moment in which the player knows he is a complete Jerkass is when he say that his dosen't feel even a single shred of sympethy or emotion for Ema Skye, a girl who had (at least at the time believed to have) almost been murdered, killed a man causing unbearable hatred for herself after finding this out and fainted. Considering how absolutly sympethitic Ema comes off as when you learn all that happened to her/she did, this is makes him sound like a HUGE dick.
    • Kristoph from Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney has one of these. In the final case, it's revealed that he is the reason Phoenix lost his badge, that he murdered at least two people and is a complete Jackass who doesn't mind killing someone if it helps him. Therefore, there's already enough reason for the player to destest his guts. However the final straw, and the thing that puts him on most players "top hated villian" list, is the fact that he gave a little girl a bottle of POSIONED NAIL POLISH so that she would end up killing herself by biting on her fingernails...In other words, HE TRIED TOO KILL A LITTLE KID...In the end, said little kid, never ended up biting her nails untill she became a young adult, in which she was knocked unconcious by the posion but survived. Still, just the fact that he TRIED too do something so cruel and morbid makes him seem like one of the worst villians in the entire series.
  • Kefka from Final Fantasy VI kicks the dog on more than one occasion throughout the game, but probably the most notable instance of this is when he kills General Leo. It wasn't enough for him to simply cast an illusion copy of himself for Leo to vanquish, or even to kill Leo and burn the village. No, he just HAD to also project an illusion of Gestahl "admitting" that he set Leo up to collect more espers before killing him.
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