Almost the entire mythology around D&D panics can get traced to the movie Mazes and Monsters. At certain points the characters confuse reality with their roleplaying game. Tom Hanks tries to jump off the world trade center south tower thinking he's a paladin who can fly.

My cousin told me once he wasn't allowed to play Diablo because it had devils in it "But... you kill the devils?"

everyone who plays it wants to be the paladin with the holy avenger killing liches, like good guy stuff.

Ah, I see you've never been at the murder-hobo table.

I mean, even in the "best" scenario of players reenacting the plot of the 1970s cartoon, you've still got kids pretending to be Gandalf-esque Wizards and tree-hugging hippie Druids and Ki-powered Monks, running about the world battling villainous industrialists while befriending sparkly unicorns and faeries. And that's in the Dad-run games, where the parents are trying to keep it as PG as possible.

There are plenty of games more morally gray than that - the Curse of Stradh puts in you a bunch of nasty binds where you might align with a bog witch or a some villainous Romanians. And plenty more - Tomb of Horrors, for instance - where its an unapologetic gore-fest.