10 Video Games Where The Bad Ending Is Canon
8. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
The Warcraft franchise was launched with 1994's Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, which per its title allowed players to partake in skirmishes as either the humans or Orcs.
The Orc campaign concludes with the Orcs sacking the city of Stormwind and killing the human King Llane Wrynn, while the commander protagonist - revealed in Warcraft II to be Orgrim Doomhammer - becomes the new Warchief.
This is categorically meant to be viewed as the game's bad ending, given all the human suffering that it causes, and yet Warcraft II opted to follow this ending rather than the more hopeful human one, in which the Horde are destroyed and the player character becomes Stormwind's new King.
The canonised bad ending does come with a slight asterisk, though, as a few aspects of the human campaign were also later made canon - namely King Llane's assassination at the hands of half-orc spy Garona, and the death of Medivh, the most powerful mage in all of Azeroth.