10 Lamest Video Game Characters of All Time
Cheap, obnoxious, or just plain stupid, some characters are so annoying they induce rage just thinking about them. This is a list to commemorate the 10 most irritating characters of gaming's past.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
Gary Oak
Gary Oak is the spoiled-rotten grandson of our good old friend Professor Oak. He’s a whiny brat, a sore loser — and if that isn’t awful enough — shows up at the most inconvenient times possible. It’s like he’s stalking you all over Kanto just to rub it in your face that he’s better than you. In the show, they take his smugness to the next level by giving him a red Corvette and a harem of babes that follow him around. Even worse, we’ll never know how he has 10 badges.
Waluigi
When a villain's first appearance is in a tennis game, you know he’s going to be super wack. Waluigi made his first appearance in Mario Tennis as Wario’s tennis partner. There’s no lamer entry for a villain possible. No grand arson or kidnappings to see here… just a couple of Nintendo’s finest, kicking it back at the recreation center for a game of tennis. He also has a super creepy mustache and an overall demeanor that screams "I take lollipops from babies."
The Dog
Duck hunt is a very simple game with a few simple characters: the ducks you have to shoot to kill, and the dog who mocks you every time you miss your shot. Why must he get up and laugh every time? Is that necessary? What if all games had a mascot that laughed at you every time you missed a gunshot or failed to dodge? That dog is just plain rude. I know I’m not the only one who tried to shoot him down.
Bowser Junior
What else should we expect from the prince and sole heir to King Koopa’s throne? With all his crazy demands and crippling need for instant gratification, this psychotic little turtle has one terrible case of only-child syndrome. Not only is he insufferable in every Mario platformer he’s been featured in, he’s also an absolute menace in Super Smash Bros. Wii U and 3DS. Come to think of it… Bowser Junior gives me major Game of Thrones Prince Joffrey vibes. No thanks!
Christie Monteiro
The cheapest character in the Tekken series, Christie made her first appearance in Tekken 4. From that moment forward, button mashers and scrubs far and wide finally had a shot to enter the fighting game arena. Just faceroll the game pad and I promise you will have a juggle combo. Okay, I can’t guarantee that, but what I can say on behalf of all fighting game fans, Christie is just plain annoying.
Baby Mario
Poor Yoshi. He had to ride around his island with this liability strapped to his back. Oh wait. Maybe if Baby Mario was strapped in, he wouldn’t have fallen off and gone into 1,000,000 separate crying fits. Babies crying in real life are unbearable, but Baby Mario has that newborn in the movie theater beat by a few octaves. I haven’t played Yoshi’s Island since the Nintendo DS re-release in 2006, and I can still hear the cries. Please, someone help me! Make them stop!
Vanille
Meet the most useless character in Final Fantasy XIII. Okay, that's harsh. If you level her classes correctly, she’s actually the best Saboteur in the game, but just because she serves as the narrator and central catalyst to the plot, doesn’t mean I have to like her. Between her inconsistent Aussie-Brit accent, compulsive lying, and insatiable desire to be liked, I’m blinded to her redeeming qualities, if she possesses any at all. Even Rikku from FFX, who Vanilla is commonly compared to, has more gumption… and she’s 15.
Slippy Toad
All Slippy does for the entirety of Star Fox 64 is shout useless commands at you in an obnoxiously high-pitched voice. When he’s not telling you what to do or giving you useless mechanical advice, he’s asking Star Fox to save him and starting every other sentence with, “Hey!”
"Fox, get this guy off of me! Hey, that was mine! Hey, leave me alone!, Hey, we made it! Hey, what’s the big idea?" C’mon Slippy! Get it together! No one likes a complainer.
Tingle
This is one of those characters who makes me question the sobriety of the concept artist who created him. We first met Tingle in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. He's a 35-year-old man who wears a head-to-toe green leotard and believes he is the reincarnation of a fairy. He also surveys all of Hyrule by flying through the sky using a big red balloon strapped to his back and has an affinity for mapmaking. In fact, that’s all he’s good for: making and selling maps. Allegedly, he makes these maps to help out his father and somewhere between Majora’s Mask and Windwaker he’s imprisoned. So if things weren’t bad enough for Tingle, he’s also an ex-convict. Oh … did we mention that all of Tingle’s siblings dress just like him? They’re all a little Kooloo-limpah, if you know what I mean!
Navi
Tinkerbell is to Peter Pan as Navi is to Link… except Tinkerbell actually helps Peter Pan, and Navi just points out things that we have either already figured out, or are looking right at. Meet THE Captain Obvious. “Hey! Hey! Listen! Hey! Look! Hey!” This is what Navi does, and this is all Navi will ever do. Her tactlessness and perpetual nagging not only makes her the lamest sidekick, but also quite possibly the most repetitive and irritating character of all time.
Honorable Mentions: Tails, Oddjob, Ashley Graham. You are all just as unbearable.