Grand stories and clever, sympathetic heroes may linger in our minds long after the credits roll, but the worst video game characters leave a mark just as indelible. They may be poorly written, with thin personalities, unbelievable motivations, or dialogue that grates on your soul. Some are just terrible people in general, characters who, though not the villain or even a threat, certainly do their best to make life more difficult than it needs to be for the heroes of the piece. These are the worst characters we won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Moneybags – Spyro the Dragon
Long before Tom Nook weighed your soul down with a loan, there was Moneybags. Moneybags is a posh bear with a monocle who, quite literally, holds the secrets of life and death in his paws. After Spyro’s first outing, the purple lizard needed to diversify his skillset. Flying and spewing flames wouldn’t cut it anymore, and he had a nasty habit of drowning anytime he touched water.
Cue Moneybags, the not-so-friendly bear who would teach Spyro how to swim and other life-saving techniques – for a price. Nook lets you stagger loan payments and never forces your hand. Moneybags brings your progress to a screeching halt until you fork over hundreds of gems, and, in Spyro 2, he’s perfectly content doing business with the resident tyrant, regardless of the harm he causes. Forget Gnasty Gnorc. Capitalist Bear is the real villain.
Mr. Resetti - Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing is about living your ideal fantasy life in a town full of animals, but Mr. Resetti doesn’t think life should be quite so carefree. He has very strict ideas about what cozy life should be like, and those guidelines don’t include erasing your mistakes. Should you reset the game or accidentally quit without saving – a nightmare scenario in itself – Resetti pops up outside your house with a stream of verbal abuse in tow.
Later Animal Crossing games toned his harshness down, and New Horizons even has Resetti run a rescue service in case you build yourself into a corner. That’s fine. Everyone deserves a redemption arc. Those of us who grew up with the Gamecube original, however, won’t forget being screamed at by a rodent for making a mistake.
Conrad Verner - Mass Effect
Ashley Williams is a terrible racist, and Kaidan Alenko is at risk of being so boring that everyone around him dies, but Mass Effect’s obsessed groupie is a strong candidate for the series’ most annoying character. Conrad meets Shep and co. during their first visit to the Citadel, and indulging his enthusiasm seems harmless. What could go wrong? The quest codex asks you.
It turns out quite a bit could go wrong. He wants to leave his family and demands that Shepard get him a role in the Spectres – as if putting one human in the organization wasn’t difficult enough – and ends up being so demanding that Shep has to either politely discourage him (Paragon option) or shove a gun in his face (Renegade option). Conrad barely even knows Shepard, and the level of entitlement and his fixation are genuinely astounding.
There’s also a narrative quirk where, when you meet him in Mass Effect 2, it turns out the Renegade option of threats with guns is canon, even if you chose another route. It’s inevitable in a trilogy with so many narrative threads floating around, but it’s also still annoying.
Claptrap - Borderlands
Claptrap is the uncle who thinks he’s funny and makes sure everyone hears his jokes at family gatherings, but where your uncle eventually goes home, Claptrap stays with you for almost the entirety of Borderlands. He’s loud. He’s annoying. He never stops talking, and worst of all, his humor is predictable.
Being loud and obnoxious is (mostly) easier to forgive if you’re actually funny. Claptrap isn’t. He won’t let that dissuade him though, and neither did Gearbox. He’s the series’ unofficial mascot and turns up everywhere except, mercifully, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.
Patches – Elden Ring
Patches is a horrible person with one of the most frustrating quests in Elden Ring. The wily thief ambushes you in a cave and acts like a proper boss. Your natural instinct at the end of the fight is to finish him off. This is Elden Ring, after all, the game where everything wants to kill you. If you dispatch Patches, though, you don’t save yourself from harm later. You cancel an entire questline.
Like Patches, that questline is also horrible. Patches hides himself in an obscure spot on Mt. Gelmir and eventually in Volcano Manor, where he suspects things aren’t quite what they appear in the creepy cult, before moving on to the Shaded Castle. He gives you the Dancer’s Castanets, which you can give to Tanith, mistress of the manor. And that’s it. She does nothing with them, and you get nothing. Unless Elden Ring’s DLC adds a new episode to this quest, that’s all Patches does. Terrible man.
Your friends in Pokemon X and Y
Pokemon is about adventure, about leaving your familiar life behind and striking out to see what’s over the horizon, and nothing says “leaving home on an adventure” like having a gaggle of loud children following you across France. That’s evidently what Game Freak thought when they made Pokemon X and Y for the 3DS. Instead of the usual one or two friends that occasionally bump into you on the road, you have four kids that show up almost every time you leave a city.
It could be a fun twist on the formula, even a road trip story of sorts – but it isn’t. They have such thin personalities, and you can’t even help them achieve their goals. Despite bringing up alternative ways to live in the Pokemon world, like as a Pokemon photographer, you’re stuck on the gym path as always.
King of Hyrule – The Legend of Zelda
The King of Hyrule has a rough lot in life. No matter the timeline, no matter the realm, he always makes the wrong choice. Invite the evil wizard into the castle? Every time. Make the sinister-looking man whose outfit screams “I’m a villain” your friend? Surely nothing bad will happen.
The Wind Waker king brings ruin to the world by refusing to let go of the past, but the Breath of the Wild version is even worse. This one bullies his daughter, withholds respect, and places an unreasonable amount of pressure on her. It takes a century of being dead to realize he might have made a few mistakes, though at least he enlists the amnesiac Link to put things right again and help his daughter.
At least Zelda might be spared from cleaning up her father’s mess in Tears of the Kingdom. Unless the dead come back to life in this version of Hyrule, the king is gone for good.
Tommy – The Last of Us
Tommy is your typical younger brother type in The Last of Us, by which we mean his capacity for being annoying never ceases to amaze. He nurses a grudge against Joel for the life his older brother led, and while that’s understandable to an extent – no one wants a murderer in their family – he never stops to consider what Joel was going through. Any trace of civilized society vanished, and Joel was trying to keep what remained of his family alive.
Fast forward a few years, and Tommy is suddenly so devoted to Joel that he kindles Ellie’s wrath and grief, sends her into danger, then has the audacity to push her even harder to the point where he ruins the one healthy relationship Ellie ever had. Tommy never considers how his actions affect others and causes a lot of unnecessary pain and grief as a result.
Infinite – Sonic Forces
Infinite the jackal-thing sounds like a good idea on paper. He’s a troubled, but stoic former mercenary chosen to lead Eggman’s army, with a slick pelt that looks like metal coating. In reality, he’s just a weak copy of Shadow, with one crucial difference. Where Shadow had an entire game to grow as a person – er, hog – and confront his past, Infinite gets no character development and winds up defeated by the power of friendship. Not exactly the ending you want from your cool supervillain.
We’ll be sticking with Shadow, the gun-toting foul-mouthed hedgehog, thanks.
Nazeem – Skyrim
Nazeem the snobby farmer from Redguard must not want any friends, or at the very least, he certainly gives the impression he’s happy for everyone to hate him. Nazeem in Skyrim has no kind words for anyone. He spends his days browsing the marketplaces and insulting the merchants there, and when he’s done doing that, he insults you too.
The main source of his unwarranted pride? A farm. Admittedly, Skyrim is in a bit of a mess, so having a functioning farm that keeps you from starving or relying on someone else is a nice little boost. But what kind of person has this privilege and decides it gives them the right to treat others like dirt? A scumbag, that’s what kind. He’s an awful person, and even the keys he holds are useless, so there’s not even a point in dealing with him.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
