This trope is a Super-Trope to the following tropes: (Please make sure that the examples you add do not fit better in one of these.) And if you are, then you're a sick bastard. You may laugh at video games, but if someone did this in Real Life? You probably wouldn't be laughing. One of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality. If the game or genre usually does not permit cruelty even though there's no particular in-game reason for that, but this time they do, you have Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. See also What the Hell, Player? and Video Game Perversity Potential. Remember, though: Just because a game lets you do something doesn't necessarily mean you should do it.Ĭontrast Video Game Caring Potential - though sometimes helping your little drones means doing horrible things to their enemies. This can also happen outside of creative games/sandboxes through the medium of joke weapons or modifications/hacking. In games where there is a level editor or allows a sense of creativity, the trope allows those with less constructive intentions to target those of a player character nature just for fun. Still other games give you absolute, unchecked control over your subjects. ( Harmless enemies will still be fair game.) Other games let you torment random NPCs you meet along the way. Some games only let you be cruel to your enemies and give harmless Non Player Characters immunity. This can also be the carrot along the path to The Dark Side for players in a game with a Karma Meter. Some games specifically cater to this these often skip out on a Karma Meter. Something Awful has dubbed two specific variations of video game cruelty as Asshole Physics and Asshole AI. It can be knee shots causing screaming, telekinesis to literally play catch with guards, punching out scientists, flat-out torture, or many, many other things. This is the potential a video game has for the player to do awful, horrible things to enemies or even friendly and neutral NPCs.

Alternate art master of cruelties