Video Game Characters - TV Tropes

Protagonists that are controlled by the players themselves.

• Player Character: A character controlled by you, the player.
• Player Party: An entire team of playable characters.
• Adventure Duo: A serious main character coupled with a weird or quirky partner.
• An Adventurer Is You: A description of the class-based systems common to many Role Playing Games.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: When the player takes control of another different character partway through.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: A character who excels in melee attacks without wielding weapons.
• The Beastmaster: A type of character who uses the assistance of an animal, force of nature, or just some sort of not-highly-sentient creature to help them fight.
• Black Mage: Magic user who specializes in offensive magic.
  • Black Magician Girl: A young female Black Mage with a forceful personality.
    • Lady of Black Magic: An older female Black Mage with a more reserved or mature personality.
  • White Mage: Magic-user who specializes in healing and support magic.
    • White Magician Girl: The female magic-using co-star of an RPG, who often wields a staff or rod.
• Bouncing Battler: A character whose primary form of attack is to jump or bounce off obstacles and enemies.
• Bragging Rights Option: A character or option characters pick to show off with.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Snarky self-important kid who's usually the youngest in the party.
• Character Customization: The protagonist's physical appearance, in-game abilities, and other attributes can all be modified by the player themselves.
• Character Select Forcing: The game forces you to choose different characters, even though you have the choice of not using them.
• Characters Sharing a Slot: Multiple characters in a game are treated as alternate outfits rather than separate characters.
• Child Mage: The main magic user is the youngest in the group.
• Cipher Scything: Blank slate characters always get the short end of the stick in adapted works.
• Combat Medic: Although he's the main healer and buffer, he can also dish out damage.
• Combat and Support: The two roles video game characters often divide each other into when in groups.
• Competitive Balance: The various character types in competitive games need to be balanced so no one character is automatically better.
• Confusion Fu: A character whose main advantage is their unpredictability.
• Critical Hit Class: A class or character's strategy is based on getting critical hits.
• Crutch Character: Early game playable character who starts out powerful, but whose usefulness declines.
• Cute Bruiser: A young girl who has Super-Strength.
• Damage Over Time: A character type that deals damage gradually, wearing the enemy down.
• The Engineer: A character who specializes in the use and application of machines and technology. Usually a support unit, but many times quite capable of combat.
• Elite Tweak: A character or class that can be very effective, but needs a lot of work or strategy to reach its potential.
• Featureless Protagonist: An Ageless, Faceless, Gender Neutral, Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person is you!
  • Non-Entity General: The player is a general or commander in a strategy game who may not actually even exist.
• Fragile Speedster: A character who's very fast, but has low defense.
• Glacier Waif: A character of thin build who's nevertheless extremely strong and slow.
• Glass Cannon: A character who has powerful attacks but can't take a lot of damage.
• A God Is You: Games that star a protagonist who's actually a god or who has godlike powers.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Someone who joins your party temporarily as a "guest".
  • Region-Bound Party Member: Someone who is only with the party while they're in a certain area.
• Healing Hands: A character who has the ability to heal others.
• Heavy Equipment Class: A class or character that stands out due to their proficiency with heavy weapons and/or armour.
• Heroic Mime: A main character who never speaks.
• Hero Unit: A unit, usually in a Real-Time Strategy game, that represents the player or a major character in the game's story on the battlefield.
• Immobile Player Character: When a Player Character has incredibly limited movement.
• Item Caddy: A character whose skills revolve around using items.
• Jack of All Stats: A character who has good strength, speed, and defense, but is not great in any category.
  • Master of None: The Jack of All Stats where the end result is an almost useless character, since their mediocre skills are never useful enough to be chosen over a specialist.
• Job System: Eastern RPG system whereby classes have distinct equipment and abilities but can be changed at any time.
• Joke Character: Characters, often in the form of Easter Eggs, deliberately unbalanced in the negative sense.
  • Lethal Joke Character: A Joke Character who has one or two awesome skills which can lead to him being used very effectively.
• Kid Hero: Slaying dragons and beating down goblins, but he still has a teddy bear when he goes to sleep.
• Lady of War: A female fighter who retains an air of grace and reserve not usually associated with violence.
• Lightning Bruiser: A character who has very good strength, speed, and defense.
• Mage Marksman: An archer or gunner who also delves in sorcery.
• Magically Inept Fighter: A fighter with great physical ability but lacking skills in the magic department.
• Magic Knight: A wizard who can also swordfight or a swordfighter who can also use magic.
• Mascot with Attitude: A snarky Funny Animal with kickin' powers and improbable jumping abilities.
• Master of All: A (usually broken) character with better stats than anyone.
• Master of Unlocking: Opening doors is an art, don'tcha know.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: A character class whose mechanics are unusual in comparison to its fellow classes.
• Mighty Glacier: He's got great strength, but he isn't all that fast.
• Missing Main Character: Playing as someone else because the protagonist is MIA.
• The Minion Master: Summon mooks to do the job for you!
• Monster Allies: Where monsters fight alongside the humans in RPGs.
• Multi-Slot Character: A single character is split into multiple different incarnations of themselves that act as different characters.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Several party members who, for whatever reason, cannot all be in the same party at the same time.
• Mystical Waif: A young girl with a mysterious past who the villains are trying to exploit and the heroes are trying to protect.
• One-Man Army: Action Game protagonists are almost always very capable of wiping the floor with thousands of enemies.
• Optional Party Member: Someone who may not join your party if you don't fulfill the requirements to get them.
• Overrated and Underleveled: A character introduced as being really powerful ends up, statistics-wise, as being weaker than the main character.
• Platforming Pocket Pal: An adventuring companion in an action game who, for whatever reason, is not hindered by the action segments.
• Player Mooks: Nameless, personality-less characters that make up your team.
• Power-Up Mount: An animal that the main character can ride on and is beneficial in some way.
• Promoted to Playable: A character who was an NPC or enemy in a previous installment becomes playable in a sequel.
• Protagonist Without a Past: You just sort of popped into being in the first village.
• Rebellious Princess: She's had enough of being pampered and wants to get down and dirty with the monster fighting!
• The Red Mage: A magician capable of casting spells from two different or even mutually exclusive schools of magic.
• Required Party Member: Someone who you have to have in your group, usually due to plot reasons.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: The game offers multiple characters to choose from with various backstories, but only the character you choose as your PC ever appears in the game.
• Secret Character: A bonus character that the casual player may never see.
• Solo Class: Classes capable of going alone where others are forced to team up.
• Space Marine: Standard FPS hero: A military man (often in bulky armor), who wields lots of big guns and kills lots of aliens.
• Squishy Wizard: Phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty life bar.
• Starter Mon: If you want To Be a Master of Mons, you have to start somewhere.
• Stone Wall: A character with extremely high defense but lame offensive capabilities.
• Strength, Sorcery, Finesse: Three types of character classes/gameplay styles defined by physical power, magical power and fine skill.
• Support Party Member: A party member whose' primary abilities are mostly non-offensive.
• Swiss-Army Hero: The player character can change forms to cover many different situations or roles.
• Sword and Sorcerer: When a physical fighter and magic user team up.
• Team Pet: The default mascot of the party and usually the most outlandish of the bunch.
• The Turret Master: A character with the ability to summon a stationary turret that attacks enemies or an object that fulfills a similar role.
• Tomboy Princess: A princess who behaves in a tomboyish manner.
• Utility Party Member: The character you keep in your party for their non-combat skills.
• Wild Man: A usually shaggy, musclebound and underdressed character who looks like he just came out of the jungle.

Characters found in Fighting Games (who may or may not be playable).

• Assist Character: A non-playable character who assists a playable one.
• Balance, Speed, Strength Trio: The three most common character types for Beat 'em Up and Hack and Slash.
• Character Roster Global Warming: The series' character roster increases over time, but the number of Mighty Glacier characters is kept constant.
• Ditto Fighter: A character who copies the moveset of the other characters, sometimes with the added catch that the moveset is chosen randomly.
• Fighting Clown: A character that looks and acts wackier to the rest of the cast, but actually plays like a normal character.
• Guest Fighter: A character from another franchise who shows up in a Fighting Game.
• The Grappler: A character who specializes in grapple moves and punishes opponents who dare get too close.
• Husky Russkie: A Russian fighter who's bik, stronk, and dreenks vodka.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: A Fighting Game character with a bizarre playstyle and mechanics compared to others.
• Moveset Clone: Two characters given equal or similar abilities/appearances and playstyle. Earlier fighting games often wound up having these as their main characters.
• Perfect Play A.I.: An AI which continually walks forward, dodges or blocks all attacks, and attacks flawlessly once it reaches its target.
• Skill Gate Characters: Fighting Game characters that are a challenge to newcomers, but those with experience will easily mop the floor with them.
• Shotoclone: Stock Fighting Game character whose skillset includes a energy ball and uppercut, and often wears a karate gi.

Neutral (sometimes friendly) characters that cannot be controlled by the players.

• Non-Player Character: NPCs are people and creatures controlled by in-game AI instead of the player's direct input.
• Non-Player Companion: A friendly NPC ally who follows and assists the player character throughout the game.
• Apathetic Citizens: A supervillain is conquering the world? You take care of it.
• Arms Dealer: A merchant who sells weapons (and sometimes other useful items) to you, as long as you have enough cash to pay them.
• City Guards: The local authorities (police, soldiers, or security guards) of a particular place, patrolling around and standing watch. Usually neutral towards the player character, unless you provoke them into turning hostile by actively causing trouble and violating the local laws.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Characters who nudge the player character back onto the main quest.
• Easily Angered Shopkeeper: If you steal something from a shop, you'll be attacked or zapped instantly.
• Exposition Fairy: A recurring or sidekick character whose purpose is to fill you in on elements of the interface and your abilities.
  • Annoying Video Game Helper: Where your Exposition Fairy starts to get on the player's nerves.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Friendly NPCs who are following/fighting alongside you, but they can never actually be seriously injured or killed in combat.
  • Invulnerable Civilians: Neutral NPCs who cannot be harmed at all by the player or enemies.
    • Vulnerable Civilians: Neutral NPCs who actually can get hurt by the player or enemies.
• Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: Factions composed entirely of NPC's, who are, respectively, concerned more with their territory than victory, completely ignorant, or permanently hostile.
• Precursor Heroes: A hero or group of heroes (often oddly similar to your own Player Party) that arose in the hour of need and sealed the Ultimate Evil in its can 1,000 years ago.
• Quest Giver: An NPC who will give you a sidequest.
• Recurring Traveller: A character who just keeps showing up throughout the game, usually thoroughly lost.
• Redundant Researcher: A researcher who's trying to figure out all those ancient ruins and is invariably pre-empted by the hero.
• Relationship Values: A gameplay mechanic in which an NPC's friendliness (or hostility) towards the PC is affected by the player's actions.
• Skill Point Reset: A trainer who can reset a Player Character's skill and ability scores, allowing you to redistribute them.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: The helpful person at the other end of the main character's earpiece.

Another kind of non-playable characters, except they're hostile to the player characters.

• Boss Battle: A special fight against a Boss, which is an unusually tougher enemy. They have enough sub-tropes for their own index.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: A battle with a "normal" enemy that, as it turns out, can wipe the floor with you.
  • Degraded Boss: Once you beat the boss, it comes back as a normal enemy later.
  • Final Boss: The last enemy fought in the game, usually the most powerful of them all, and is often the main villain/antagonist.
  • Mini-Boss: A minor boss or powerful enemy fought about halfway through the level, though not quite as tough as the true boss at the end of the level.
  • That One Boss: A particularly frustrating boss that would put the Demonic Spiders and Goddamned Bats to shame.
• Goddamned Bats: Enemies that don't pose much of a threat on their own, but can frustrate, annoy, and get in your way when working together.
  • Demonic Spiders: Enemies that frustrate you by killing you in unfair ways, which make them innately more dangerous than other normal enemies.
  • Ledge Bats: Enemies that knock you back in the middle of jumps, often to your death.
  • Ambushing Enemy: Monsters that lurk within the environment and never fully appear until you walk close to them, at which point they suddenly lunge out and try to grab you.
• Mooks: A slang term for the hordes of standard-issue, disposable bad guys whom the hero regularly fights and defeats.
  • Actually Four Mooks: An enemy in an RPG that appears as a single entity on the overworld, but turns out to be a whole party of baddies once the fight starts.
  • Airborne Mook: Mooks that can fly.
  • Anti-Entrenchment Mook: An enemy designed specifically to disrupt the player's fortifications or force them out of cover.
  • Bandit Mook: An enemy that can steal the player's items.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: See above under the Boss Battle entry.
  • Cowardly Mooks: Enemies that run away from the player, either instantly or after being hurt enough.
  • Cute Slime Mook: A mook resembling a Blob Monster with a cutesy design.
  • Fake Ultimate Mook: A massive monster of terrifying appearance that's no real threat.
  • Hard-Mode Mooks: An enemy that only appears when playing on higher difficulty modes.
  • Heavily Armored Mook: An ordinary mook, but with hard steel accessories.
  • Instakill Mook: A mook that can defeat you in one hit.
  • Mascot Mook: A recurring minor enemy that's become iconic enough to double as a Series Mascot.
  • Mook Bouncer: An enemy that can teleport you to a specific location whenever they touch you.
  • Mooks Ate My Equipment: Enemy that eats your stuff (and might eat you as well).
  • Night of the Living Mooks: Zombies, skeletons, mummies, oh my!
  • Patrolling Mook: A mook that patrols around a certain area, alerting its allies if it spots something suspicious or an intruder.
  • Pushy Mooks: A mook that does no damage on its own but pushes the player into hazards.
  • Shield-Bearing Mook: A mook with a shield to protect against frontal attacks.
  • Slave Mooks: Mooks that are actually enslaved by the villains.
  • Sleepy Enemy: An enemy that prefers to sleep, only fighting when disturbed.
  • Smash Mook: A big, strong enemy that does nothing but smash you with straight physical attacks.
• Standard FPS Enemies: Those generic baddies seen in nearly every First/Third-Person Shooter you've ever played.
• Stock Monsters: Those generic baddies seen in nearly every Role-Playing Game you've ever played.
• Asteroids Monster: A creature of significant size that, when killed, splits into several miniature versions of itself.
• Border Patrol: A monster or other hazard introduced specifically to prevent the player from wandering too far without resorting to the immersion-breaking Invisible Wall.
• Chest Monster: An enemy or hazard that has disguised itself to look like something positive, like a treasure chest.
• Clairvoyant Security Force: Manages to always appear the second you try to steal something.
• Cumulonemesis: An enemy in the shape of an animated cloud that attacks with wind and lightning.
• Drop-In Nemesis: Where an enemy or obstacle comes out of nowhere and kills you, generally in a cutscene.
• Elemental Embodiment: When the elements that are the basic building blocks of the universe get up and come for you.
• Enemy Chatter: Enemies (or other NPCs) can be very talkative in some games.
• Enemy Summoner: An enemy who can summon additional enemies to join them in combat, while also causing some damage themselves.
  • Mook Maker: An enemy or object that can produce more enemies to fight you, although they don't usually attack the player directly.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Almost everything in the world is out for your blood.
• Evil Chancellor: The helpful and suspiciously toadying assistant to the monarchy whose morality is usually inverse to the head of state.
• Flying Seafood Special: Fish that float in the air. And generally try to kill you.
• Giant Hands of Doom: A character who fights only with giant hands.
• The Goomba: The most basic enemy in the game, has a simple movement pattern, and is reassuringly easy to beat.
• Half-Hearted Henchman: A normal henchman who's lazy, unmotivated, or otherwise unwilling to do his job.
• Harmless Enemy: An enemy that can't directly damage you.
• Incredibly Durable Enemies: When the basic mook is an unstoppable killing machine, you know you're in a difficult game.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy: When an enemy gets harder to beat if the fight goes on for too long.
• Invincible Boogeymen: Powerful enemies that cannot be killed, defeated, or even fought; you can only run and hide from them.
  • Invincible Minor Minion: A weak enemy who is nevertheless completely impossible to harm in any way.
• Invisible Monsters: You can't see them, but they can probably hurt you.
• Killer Rabbit: Any monster that's far more dangerous than it looks.
• Mole Monster: An enemy that hides in the ground, attacking only when the Player Character's close.
• Money Spider: An enemy creature that drops money or other rewards when defeated.
  • Metal Slime: An enemy that appears and runs away very quickly, is hard to hit, but gives very good rewards.
  • Piñata Enemy: An enemy target sought out by the player, because they are (relatively) easy to kill, and have a very high cash payout.
• Personal Space Invader: A monster who grabs onto you and must be shaken off.
• Puppet Fighter: A character who can control one or more entities separate from itself.
• Rat Stomp: Finally, you get to the adventuring part! But first, fight some rats.
• Respawning Enemies: Enemies which can be defeated or killed indefinitely, but under certain circumstances they'll somehow reappear again or be replaced by more enemies.
• Reviving Enemy: An enemy which can be temporarily defeated or "killed", only to rise back up to full health soon afterwards.
• Roaming Enemy: An enemy which appears randomly under various circumstances.
• Savage Setpiece: A character that is peaceful to your character unless he attacks it. Then it demolishes you.
• Scratch Damage Enemy: An enemy which takes Scratch Damage from all attacks.
• Segmented Serpent: An enemy which is made up of lots of mostly identical segments, and moves like a worm or snake.
• The Spiny: A Platform Game enemy that will damage or kill you if you try to jump on it.
• Stalked by the Bell: An enemy that only appears if you take too much time.
• Teleporting Keycard Squad: Whenever you take something important, a slough of new enemies suddenly rushes in.
• Undead Counterpart: Zombie-version Mooks.
• Underground Monkey: Exactly the same as a regular monkey - but underground, and therefore has better stats.
• Underrated and Overleveled: A character whom the plot provides no reason to be particularly strong turns out to be quite powerful in statistical terms when they join your party.
• The Unfought: A major antagonist who you don't fight in the actual game.
• Unique Enemy: An enemy that only shows up once in the whole game, but is otherwise fairly unremarkable.
• Waddling Head: A stock monster that resembles a colored oval with eyes and feet.
• Weaponized Offspring: A creature gives birth to Cannon Fodder as a defense mechanism.
• Whack-a-Monster: You see lots of holes in the ground: you know you're going to have to fight a bunch of monsters that pop up, attack, and pop back in.

Miscellaneous video game character tropes.

• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: A setup of four playable choices with a balanced choice, one choice at one end of a stat scale, one choice at the other end, and one choice different from all three.
• Game-Over Man: A character shown on the Game Over screen.
• Glitch Entity: A video game character whose existence is due to a glitch, rather than them being deliberately coded into the game.
• Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: A sexy female in a game's promotional material who's not actually in the game itself.
• Live Item: A character or creature that the game treats as an item.
• Massive Race Selection: When your player character can come from any of several cultures or species.
• Pet Interface: An interface in which you are given a sidekick, usually a pet, that acts as a guide/virtual pet of sorts in the world.
• Prestigious Player Title: You and your fellow players are yourselves, but you're given a fancy title to call yourselves by.
• Training Dummy: Some (usually) immortal character that you can return to, to practice your moves on.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The main character and his Rival Turned Evil spend most of the game fighting over the girl.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: The game starts off with the hero, his or her childhood friend, and another person, often a girl, from out of nowhere who needs his help.