You Have Failed Me.../Video Games

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Examples of You Have Failed Me... in Video Games include:

  • Averted (amazingly enough) by Darth Malak in Knights of the Old Republic, after a bounty hunter hired by Saul Karath fails to kill the heroes. "The penalty for failure is death, Admiral Karath... but the failure was Calo's, not yours. You may rise."
    • On the other hand, Malak's apprentice Darth Bandon blasts away a random underling just for crossing his path.
      • It makes a certain kind of sense, given the Sith's Social Darwinism. Anyone stupid enough to get in the way of an angry Sith lord is too stupid to prosper in that environment.
        • He forces pushes the mook into a droid and an officer on deck who were doing nothing but their jobs, killing both of them as well. Original KOTOR Sith are big on Stupid Evil. Revan was the only one who really had a plan; if it hadn't been for Malak's betrayal, he'd probably have won.
      • While taking the "test" of the insane ex-master of the Sith Academy, one of the hypothetical situations involves a loyal and capable subordinate embarrassing you in front of your superiors. The proper answer to the question is to execute the underling rather than take the chance of him screwing up again.
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2 also has a 'You have failed me' moment directed at the player when Kreia loses her patience with a dark-side Exile's psychopathic comments after Exile's killed all the Jedi Masters and the party returns to Dantooine. Unusually, Kreia's not concerned with what the Exile has done, but with why she does it. When she realises that the Exile favours brute force and vengeance over manipulation or advancing an ideology, she embarks on an idiosyncratic philosophical rant, starting with the very words 'You have failed me. Completely and utterly.' Marking the beginning of the endgame, she does then proceed to almost kill the Exile, but then the Exile mysteriously wakes up again.
  • Considering the exposure the Sith Empire is given in Star Wars: The Old Republic, it's not exactly surprising that numerous people fail for the last time there as well. Notably, in a particular flashpoint, the player character can execute a starship captain for refusing orders to attack a superior republican ship and then assume command of his vessel.
  • In Dune II and its sequels if you lose too many battles House Harkonnen will install a heart plug, then pull it out; House Ordos will attach your severed head to a life-support system ("Why won't they let us die?"); while the Atreides, being the nice guys of the game, will simply let you go, into the hands of their Fremen allies who want your water.
  • You can do this on Evil Genius with your minions to completely refill the loyalty, attention and endurance of everyone in the room.
    • There's even a number of short voice-overs for each Evil Genius when you do this; Shen Yu gets bonus points because one of his actually is "You have failed me... for the last time!" Not that you'd expect anything less from a game that exists to affectionately parody cheesy action movies and their villains.
  • In Perfect Dark, after the first two version of their plan, which attempted to take advantage of Trent Easton's political connections, fail, Mr. Blonde reveals his alien nature and dispatches Easton in a combination of this trope and You Have Outlived Your Usefulness. When the last, least subtle plan is thwarted as well, the Skedar imprison their other ally Cassandra DeVries for the same reasons.
  • Happens to Drakuru in World of Warcraft. After being deceived and nearly defeated by the player, he summons the Arthas, The Lich King, and explains that you've been double-crossing them. Arthas' response—to say this, kill Drakuru, and spare the player.
    • Ragnaros in Molten Core quite happily slays Majordomo Executus after he fails to stop the players reaching Ragnaros' lair. Not only that, but he also shouts "You have failed me, Executus!" before the encounter.
    • Archimonde apparently has this as policy, as does most of the Burning Legion. Kil'jaeden stands out as being willing to give people a second chance.
  • In the first Mega Man Star Force, Queen Ophiuca is killed by Gemini Spark shortly after her defeat. Gemini then sends an ominous warning to Megaman that the next lightning bolt will be for him.
    • Similarly, Airman's operator is executed by the head of Gospel in Mega Man Battle Network 2. The leader claims that the execution is due to a different principle: Death to those who make lame excuses.
  • In Skies of Arcadia, Admiral Alfonso attempts to save his own reputation by placing blame on his vice-captain and chucking the poor guy overboard (even if these were regular oceans, with water, all that armor would drown him) for this reason. Refreshingly, Galcian sees right through it thanks to Alfonso's own men filing a full - and accurate - report prior to the meeting.
  • In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, the fake Ganondorf is punished by the real Ganondorf for exactly this reason.
  • In Team Fortress 2, the price of being informed by the Announcer that "You failed!" is having your weapons removed, your opponents getting guaranteed critical hits, and being pulled into third person to watch your character cower and flee with their hands in the air. It's not called "Humiliation" for nothing.
    • Additionally, during the war between the Soldier and Demoman, one of her special lines was "You have failed me... with your friendships."
    • Also, one of the Soldier's lines for the "Jeers" voice macro is "Each and every one of you has failed me!"
  • Tenchu 2. Suzaku kills Yukihotaru after she loses to Rikimaru.
  • Devil May Cry has this, minus three words, after the final fight with Griffon, where Mundus appears in the sky as an ominous three points of light, declares "Griffon, you have failed me. You are no longer worthy" And Agony Beams Griffon to death while it begs for mercy.
  • In Resident Evil 5, during Mercenaries mode, if dying, Albert Wesker grunts. "You've... failed... me." Whether he exacts the typical post-failure execution is more a matter of player creativity.
  • In Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, Petrine orders her men to carry off the minor boss Dakova to what is presumably his execution if the player fails to kill him.
    • Narshen in Sealed Sword threatens to do this to one of his underlings named Slater, the guy is so focused on the death threat that he is easily defeated.
    • A Genre Savy boss named Beran flees on a boat with a Mook to avoid this fate if the player fails to kill him. Judging from the fact that his boss is an even more psychotic Expy of Narshen, he made the right choice.
  • In Final Fantasy V, the Braggart Boss Gilgamesh gets banished into the Void by his boss Exdeath for being a one-man Goldfish Poop Gang. This is actually an effective Kick the Dog moment, because Gilgamesh is, while not sympathetic, really funny.
  • In the Hoth mission included in The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, Starkiller one-ups Vader by informing an Imperial captain "You have failed me for the last time" and Force-choking him, all over the radio.
  • Varesh does this at least once in Guild Wars, to a guard who captures the players party (thus allowing the players ot escape during a mission) rather than killing them directly.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, If a l'Cie fails in his or her Focus, they get turned into a Zombie, doomed to walk the earth untill they fall apart.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics has a sequence where the characters take refuge with a cardinal fleeing mercenaries working for the corrupt Bart Company. Later it's revealed the cardinal is actually the leader of the conspiracy, and shortly afterwards he executes the leader of Bart Company for failure.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the Reaper Harbinger grimly tells the Collector General, whom he has been possessing the entire game, that he has failed right before "releasing control" and leaving him to die in an exploding/ irradiated space station.
    • Making it a really amusing case of blaming someone else, he's been running around possessing random Collectors all through the game "Assuming direct control" over the situation...and repeatedly getting shot, zapped, or blown up by Shepherd's merry band. So nothing was really his fault. But since the Reapers consider themselves superior to everyone (probably not without reason given how they've been successful for millions of years), obviously the blame must go to something else.
    • He isn't talking to the Collector General at all, it's in his parting speech to Shepard as he flees the base. He's saying Shepard has failed to stop them as they will just find another way. Spoileriffic video of it here.
  • In Armored Core Last Raven, Jack-O have absolutely no qualms about killing other Ravens off using third degree executions (Claiming that a Raven "Betrayed" Vertex for example.) to accomplish his goal of destroying the Pulverizers. Even the Corporations will not be so willing to throw Ravens away.
  • In Assassin's Creed 2, Jacopo de'Pazzi gets stabbed a few times by Rodrigo Borgia for failing to kill Lorenzo de'Medici and Ezio.
  • In Dawn of War, the Imperial Commissar will sometimes spout the trope name if you use his "Execute Guardsman" command. And in one of the stronghold battles:

Guardsman: The Emperor has abandoned us!
Commissar: If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!

    • If you defeat the Chaos faction in the Dark Crusade expansion, you'll see Eliphas the Inheritor on the receiving end of this courtesy of a Daemon Prince, who psychically choke-slams Eliphas into a geyser of gore. He gets better in time for Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, though.
  • Strangely averted in Crash Bandicoot: Warped; sick of Cortex's failure, Uka Uka decides to do a plan right. When you realize that, in the big scheme of things, Cortex has no major role in Uka Uka's plot, you can't help but wonder why he didn't just play it straight.
    • Except, oh yeah, then the rest of the series wouldn't exist.
    • He was "feeling...generous" since Cortex's last blunder had inadvertently led to his release from his temple prison. He did actually try to fry Cortex for a couple of later failures, though has bad aim. In Crash Of The Titans he once again decides to fire Cortex, but in a business sense.

Cortex: You can't replace me! My name's on the stationary!!!

Velo: As punishment, you must clean the trophy podium...and when you're done with that you can clean...the entire coliseum. *Evil Laugh*

  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has a variation that is even worse than the normal use: It mentioned that The Patriots would have killed Olga Gurlukovich's baby if she failed her part of the S3 plan, and the Patriots imply in their mind screw speech to Raiden that, if he fails to kill Solidus, not only will the Patriots execute Gurlukovich's child, but they'll also kill Rosemary the exact same way (And, oh, it gets worse: This happened after Rosemary revealed that she was pregnant with Raiden's child, so not only are they going to kill Rosemary, but they're also going to abort their child in the process)
    • Also heavily implied to be one of the reasons why they deactivated Richard Ames' nanomachines besides the obvious fact that he had outlived his usefulness in their S3 plan (If you read the in-game novel In the Darkness of Shadow Moses, you'll notice that Richard Ames not only spared Nastasha Romanenko, but also supplied her with the records of the Shadow Moses Incident, as well as all the details of FOXDIE's development and the people involved (which means he might also turn himself in, since FOXDIE is his brainchild, and by extension the Patriots), which also resulted in the creation of the novel, and it is implied from the Colonel [actually an AI construct] that the Patriots did not like the book.)
    • Similarly, Paz also was given a threat about this if she failed her mission. The punishment for failure was actually a Fate Worse Than Death.
    • Volgin threatened the soldiers at Groznyj Grad that he'll kill them if Snake dies in his prison.
  • In Star Wars Rebel Assault II, Vader says the same line when he Force-chokes Admiral Sarn near the end of the game.
  • At the end of Wing Commander Secret Missions, the leader of the task force that destroyed the Goddard Colony was executed by the Kilrathi Emperor for losing the entire task force, including it's flagship, the experimental warship Sivar, to the pilots of the Tiger's Claw. The leader of the task force was the Emperor's own son. The commander's death causes the promotion of his son, Prince Thrakhath, who would be a major villain in the series until the end of the third game.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, Caesar's Legion's former Legate Joshua Graham was set on fire by order of Caesar as punishment for failing to capture the Hoover Dam from the NCR. Unfortunately for him, Graham turned out to be Made of Iron, surviving said punishment.
  • The real Big Bad in Star Trek Elite Force II shoots The Mole after she fails to prevent you from beaming back to the Enterprise-E.
  • In the Martian intro cinematic for Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, the Martian society as a whole gives a mass telepathic execution to the Senior Elder for his ineffective actions in solving the dying of Mars. If the invasion fails, his successor suffers the same fate.
  • The original Command & Conquer indicated that this was how the Brotherhood of Nod handled incompetent officers, with Seth, Kane's second in command, warning the player that if you failed you died. Seth, it is worth noting, starts seeming wary of you (noting that "you are rapidly becoming Kane's favorite") as the campaign progresses and continues sending you on difficult missions with faulty intelligence. He eventually tries to send you on an outright Suicide Mission against the Pentagon (all the way across the ocean from the African theater where you're fighting). Then Kane introduces himself by executing Seth in mid-sentence, pushing him out of the chair, and promoting you. In Renegade the player can also overhear a conversation between Kane and an incompetent Nod officer who is ordered to "report to Interrogation for 'faith restructuring'."
    • In Tiberian Sun's GDI campaign, a Nod General has just lost to the player character GDI commander McNeil and is beseeching Kane for reinforcements. Kane's response is to nuke the General's island base.
    • In Renegade, Raveshaw uses this against Sakura when she fails to kill Havoc.
    • In Red Alert, Stalin personally chokes a general who has failed to disable the Allied self-destruct device resulting in the loss of the Chronosphere, which you have just barely managed to capture.
  • The ending of one level of Heroes of Might and Magic V has Demon Sovereign Kha-Beleth killing one of his generals for failing to capture the renegade Agrael.
  • Twice in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II: Aizagora strangles her servant, the Red Queen, as punishment for fleeing from a fight. When Habdazar swears an oath to guard the Air Foundation with his life, Kharn tells him that if the Zhentarim lose control of the Foundation, his life will be forfeit; when Habdazar flees the foundation in order to beg Kharn for reinforcements, Kharn reminds him of his promise as he stabs him through the guts.
  • In the 1997 first-person shooter "Blood" by Monolith Productions, the intro cinematic has dark god Tchernobog tell the Chosen Ones "You have failed me. I disavow you all". Only before the very end of the story is the reason for this explained.
  • Mastermind World Conquerer, naturally, lets you do this in order to keep your minions in line.
  • In The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, by the Draug after the Draugir is defeated by Geralt.
  • In Baldur's Gate II, Jan Jansen makes fun of this trope. When you are tasked with killing the rebel sahuagin prince by the king, he finishes his sentence with "Succeed, and you shall be rewarded greatly..." To which Jan continues: "Oh, I know that song, it's the oldie-but-goodie "Fail and I shall kill you", as sung by the infamous ogre bard Chumba-Khan. In this case it is rather "Fail and I shall eat you", but still..."
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