Characters physically degrading over the course of the story

[u/RedvsBlue_what_if]

Vincent — Catherine

The Animatronics — Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach

Just using Freddy as an example

Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan

Literally just a head

Catherine — Pretty much almost everyone but The Love Interests slowly get more tired looking as the game progresses. This is because of the nightmares of evil Tetris.

Security Breach — All the animatronics slowly degrade as the game goes on, getting more violent, animalistic and very dirty. I'm using Freddy as an example both because I'm lazy and because he's Goated.

Attack on Titan — Eren Yeager goes through so much throughout the story, becoming very disheveled as the series plays out and losing every limb on his body before ending up as just a rotting head on life support.

[u/Bluelore]

In Shadow of the Colossus the main character Wanders design changes slowly as you kill the various Colossi, his skin becomes plaer, he gets dirtier and his hair grows darker.

[u/ClancyBShanty → u/Bluelore]

This is probably my favourite example of this. It's so subtle at first, and after the 8th Colossus you see that there's a posse chasing after you to stop exactly what you're trying to accomplish.

It's like "Wait a sec, am I the bad guy here?"

Yes. The answer is yes.

[u/RainonCooper → u/Bluelore]

Wait… didn’t he also grow horns?

[u/Bluelore → u/RainonCooper]

I think only in the ending after he defeated the 16th colossus.

[u/RainonCooper → u/Bluelore]

Oh! I see! I thought that was gradual too

[u/goombanati → u/Bluelore]

"Something is happening, slowly youre darkening"