Navi (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
Let’s get this one out of the way, shall we? Intended as an anodyne guide through the newly three-dimensional world of Hyrule, blue fairy Navi has become the poster child of annoying video game NPCs. And it’s not unwarranted: Navi will yell “Hey! Listen!” at you every time you encounter something new – and since this game is about exploration, you’re encountering new things a lot.
Blue (Pokémon Red and Blue)
Blue, better known to fans of the Pokémon cartoon as Gary Oak, is one of gaming’s greatest rivals, matching you every step of your creature-battling journey. His crowning moment of aggravation comes at the Pokémon League. You’ve just defeated the formidable Lance the dragon tamer and become the champion! Except some snarky wannabe beat you to it. Guess who?
Hunter (Spyro)
The Spyro series has always struggled to balance cute and cool. One the one hand, you play a tiny little dragon. On the other, he skateboards. Hunter the cheetah, Spyro’s companion on these adventures, is an attempt to push things in a cooler direction: he’s a daredevil, roguish Han Solo type. But in reality he’s a braggart who often gets captured.
Ashley (Resident Evil 4)
In Resident Evil 4, Ashley Graham is the daughter of the US president who’s kidnapped by the parasite-worshipping Los Illuminados. Leon Kennedy, a roundhouse-kicking special agent, is tasked with saving her. Struggling to remember Agent Kennedy’s first name? Don’t worry: Ashley screams it every few seconds as she’s being hauled away by cultists. Thankfully, the 2023 remake went some way to making Ashley more bearable.
Uncle (Red Dead Redemption II)
In 2010 Western epic Red Dead Redemption, you play John Marston, dragged back into his former gunslinging life. Marston lives with Uncle, a layabout drunkard. So when the sequel rolled around in 2018, fans thought Uncle might have a cool backstory. Not so: in fact, he’s a key agent in the gang’s difficulties, owing to his greed and recklessness.
Slippy Toad (StarFox)
Zoological space-dogfighting franchise StarFox sees the titular StarFox team fighting intergalactic evils. On said team is Fox McCloud (often the player character) as well as Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare and Slippy Toad. Slippy is a juvenile-sounding mechanic who’s both cowardly and useless, hardly befitting the ultra-cool stylings of StarFox.
Preston Garvey (Fallout 4)
Nuclear wasteland RPG Fallout 4 is filled with monsters and underhanded characters. Preston Garvey is neither. In fact, the cool-hatted Garvey is one of the game’s most morally righteous figures, seeing as he’s always going on about helping settlements that need your help. Unfortunately for the player, he really doesn’t stop going on about it.
Soda Popinski (Punch-Out)
Since Muhammad Ali turned boxing from a minor-league sport into primetime entertainment, there’s always been room in the ring for showboaters. But sometimes showboating goes too far. That’s the case for Punch-Out’s Soda Popinski (originally, less sensitively known as Vodka Drunkenski), who relentlessly taunts the player in-between rearranging their intestines.
Villager (Minecraft)
For the longest time, the world of Minecraft was eerily quiet. Sure, there were cows and chickens, as well as monsters who spawned in caves and during the night, but no manmade structures. That changed with Villagers, originally and bizarrely called ‘Testificates.’ But these Squidward-esque figures are judgemental, hard to ‘help’ into your various farms and devices, and simply ugly.
Natalya (GoldenEye 007)
Ask any gamer what their least favorite type of quest is, and they’ll say ‘escort quests.’ These involve helping an NPC from one point to another, via an enemy-packed and hazard-filled path. What you don’t want, therefore, is an NPC who actively leaps into danger. GoldenEye 007’s Natalya does exactly that, which is salt in the wound for an already difficult game.
Raiden (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty)
Raiden got a raw deal. The character is actually pretty interesting in his own right (if a little whiny), but players just couldn’t see past the fact that he was the reason they weren’t getting to play as Solid Snake. It’s telling that fans’ attitudes towards Raiden softened as the franchise progressed, but it’s safe to say that he infuriated everyone who played Metal Gear Solid 2.
Mr. Resetti (Animal Crossing)
A pickaxe-wielding mole in dire need of some anger management classes, Mr. Resetti’s wrath can be incurred by switching off Animal Crossing without saving first. The next time the game is turned on, Mr. Resetti will show up, eyes wide with homicidal rage, demanding that you read through several lines of tedious text and, if he’s in a particularly unhinged mood, forcing you to write out an apology.
The dog (Duck Hunt)
The dog from 1984’s NES classic Duck Hunt is given neither a name nor a backstory, which makes his hatred of the player all the more incomprehensible. While he does reluctantly collect the ducks you manage to shoot, he also subjects you to a level of derision that borders on vicious every time you miss a shot, cackling in your face with pure, gleeful spite.
Conrad Verner (Mass Effect)
A self-proclaimed ‘huge fan’ of Commander Shepherd, Conrad Verner somehow manages to be sycophantic and arrogant at the same time. The only mercy is that it’s possible to make this toxic super fan leave you alone, either by convincing him to go home to his wife or – if subtlety isn’t your thing – by holding a gun to his head.
Paimon (Genshin Impact)
After you rescue her from drowning in a lake, Paimon spends the rest of the game guiding you throughout the land of Teyvat. However, her blunt interpersonal style, grating voice and intolerable habit of referring to herself in the third person will soon make you wish you hadn’t bothered.
Trophy Thomas (Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts)
A side character in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Trophy Thomas is an anthropomorphic cheetah who relentlessly boasts about his high scores in every mission and dismissively recommends that you don’t even try and beat him. The fact that it’s actually relatively easy to best his scores somehow makes him even more infuriating.
Baby Mario (Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island)
Escort missions are bad enough, but basing an entire game around shepherding an NPC to safety is borderline sadistic. Especially when said NPC is Baby Mario, the most irritating character in the history of gaming. The second you get separated from Baby Mario, he begins emitting an ear-piercing screech, a sound that players will likely be hearing in their nightmares by the time they complete the game.
Alpha-152 (Dead or Alive)
Dark Souls’ popularity proves that difficulty isn’t, in itself, annoying. However, for a fight to feel engaging, players need to have some sense of fairness. This is why Dead or Alive’s Alpha-152 is so universally loathed. Armed with a teleport move that she can spam at will, Alpha-152 delights in appearing behind you and sucker-punching you in the back of the head, without giving any kind of visual cue.
John Madden (Madden Football)
Sports games always do their best to emulate the real event as faithfully as possible, and this includes having commentators. Unfortunately, in the case of the Madden Football games, this means listening to former NFL coach John Madden make painfully obvious observations with an infuriating degree of repetitiveness.
Daxter (Jak and Daxter)
Half weasel, half otter and wholly irritating, Daxter’s tendency to relentlessly criticise you when you’re struggling with a difficult section has led many a player to mute their TV in rage. The wisecracking rodent is also a complete coward, leaving you to handle all the danger while providing relentless, unhelpful commentary from the sidelines.
Tails (Sonic the Hedgehog 2)
Tails was added to the second instalment of the Sonic video game franchise as a sidekick for everyone’s favourite hedgehog, but his main contributions are holding you back and dying. Tails approaches danger with the self-preservation of an inebriated lemming, forcing players to keep repeating levels until he manages to miraculously blunder his way through.
General Tsao (Sly 3: Honour Amongst Thieves)
Video games would be boring if they only contained likeable characters, but General Tsao is so odious that it’s hard not to feel genuinely riled up after interacting with him. The self-appointed leader of a village, Tsao is arrogant, condescending and wildly misogynistic, and it’s entirely fitting that the game designers chose to make him a rooster, because he’s a complete… well, you get the idea.
Tyreen and Troy (Borderlands 3)
You’re never supposed to root for a game’s villains, but in the case of Borderlands 3’s Tyreen and Troy the hatred goes deeper than it should. While Handsome Jack, the game’s primary antagonist, is an interesting character with genuine depth, Tyreen and Troy are completely one-dimensional, with their inflated egos and cringe-inducing one-liners coming off as a caricature of evil rather than the authentic article.
Vanille (Final Fantasy XIII)
It’s hard not to feel a bit bad for disliking Vanille. The character is relentlessly cheerful, fiercely loyal and goes out of her way to care for animals. Unfortunately, she also possesses some exceptionally irritating traits, chief amongst which are her habit of grunting with every movement and a tendency to break down in floods of tears at the slightest provocation.
Adoring Fan (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)
Becoming Grand Champion in the Arena might seem like a worthy goal, but unfortunately it will put you on the radar of the Adoring Fan, who will then attempt to insert himself into all your quests. If you let him, he will alternate between getting in your way, panicking at the slightest hint of danger and screaming “by Azura” over, and over, and over again.
Mindy (Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum)
If there was any justice in the world, Mindy would be behind bars for fraud. When you meet her, Mindy offers to swap you a Haunter (which evolves into a Gengar upon trade) for a Medicham, which most players then spend hours tracking down. Immediately after the trade, however, Mindy casually reveals that she’s conned you by equipping the Haunter with an Everstone, preventing it from evolving.
Maven Black-Briar (Skyrim)
When you first meet Maven Black-Briar in Riften she makes it abundantly clear that she considers herself better than you on account of her wealth and status. What makes Maven truly infuriating, however, is the fact that her attitude towards you never changes, even when you have accumulated wealth and status to rival her own. No matter what you do, Maven will always treat you with the same level of contempt.
The police (Road Rash)
It’s not exactly surprising that the police turn up in a game about illegal motorcycle racing, but the cops in Road Rash (referred to in the game as “the fuzz”) exclusively target you in a way that ends up feeling punitive and deeply unfair. They also show up far too frequently, meaning you rarely get the chance to just enjoy the racing.
Eric Sparrow (Tony Hawk’s Underground)
Eric Sparrow starts out as your friend in Tony Hawk’s Underground, but he is revealed to be the overarching villain by the game’s end. While it’s meant to be a twist, absolutely no was surprised, largely because – even when he was ostensibly your friend – Eric was just the absolute worst. The alternate ending, which sees Eric knocked out cold, is one of the most satisfying spectacles in video game history.
The Shadows of Yarnham (Bloodborne)
Bloodbourne is famous for its punishing but rewarding boss fights. The Shadows of Yarnham nail the punishing part, but completely do away with any sense of fun. The biggest issue is that the boss is actually three enemies, each with their own abilities, the most irritating of which is a ranged fireball attack that makes it impossible to do anything other than run around hoping to get the odd lucky strike in.
Codsworth (Fallout 4)
It takes time for your hatred towards Codsworth to develop; at first, your robot companion provides a much-needed dose of cheerfulness in an otherwise bleak apocalyptic wasteland. However, the shine soon comes off, thanks to Codsworth’s smug, know-it-all attitude and painfully bad jokes, all of which are delivered in a relentlessly annoying voice.
Noober (Baldur’s Gate)
Noober’s only saving graces are the fact that his appearance in Baldur’s Gate is short-lived and that you can kill him. The character has mastered the art of spouting pointless, inane garbage, as he cheerfully demonstrates every few seconds. Tellingly, should you choose to cut him down, you won’t lose any reputation points.
Tingle (Zelda: Majora’s Mask)
The Zelda franchise is widely loved for its peculiar, off-the-wall characters, but Tingle is just irritatingly weird. Whether it’s the spandex suit he’s squeezed himself into, the fact that he’s a man in his thirties cosplaying as a forest fairy or the bizarre made-up words he ends every conversation with, Tingle elicits endless eye-rolls and angry mutters with everything he does.
Teemo (League of Legends)
Don’t let Teemo’s undeniable cuteness fool you: the duplicitous Yordle can kill you in a bunch of different ways, all of them extremely annoying. Whether he’s poisoning you, blinding you or taking you out with his lethal mushroom, Teemo will gleefully end your existence while emitting one of the most annoying laughs ever possessed by a video game character.
Philippa Eilheart (The Witcher)
Granted, having your eyes gouged out is a pretty good reason to be in a persistently bad mood. But the constant, thinly-veiled contempt that Philippa Eilheart directs towards everyone, including the people that are helping her, causes any sympathy that players might initially feel to quickly evaporate. Compounding matters, she is also completely untrustworthy and just not a very good person.
Cats (The Sims 4: Cats & Dogs)
Released in 2017, The Sims 4’s Cats & Dogs extension allowed players to add pets to their homes, which everyone did, and then immediately regretted. While dogs are less problematic, the cats’ incessant, plaintive meowing becoming unbearable almost immediately, and speeding up the game only makes things worse, with the cats’ cries turning into piercing shrieks.
Claptrap (Borderlands)
There’s something endearing about robots with big personalities, with C3PO and R2D2 providing the most obvious examples. Robots with overexcitable, try-hard, self-obsessed personalities, on the other hand, are less fun. Unfortunately for Claptrap, his repetitive, desperate stabs at humour have the complete opposite effect than intended, with most players gritting their teeth through interactions with him.
Sebastian Castellanos (The Evil Within)
While most people would probably discover untapped reserves of stamina if they were being chased by a nightmarish monster, not Sebastian Castellanos. After a few seconds of running flat out, The Evil Within’s hapless protagonist will insist on pausing to catch his breath, normally resulting in a swift, gruesome and completely infuriating demise.
Kai Leng (Mass Effect 3)
A super-assassin sent to kill Commander Shepherd, Kai Leng’s arrogance makes him a generally irritating character. However, easily the most maddening thing about Kai Leng is that the game’s designers couldn’t figure out a better way of conveying how deadly he is than by suddenly making your player turn into a bumbling idiot during combat with him.
Reverend Swanson (Red Dead Redemption 2)
Reverend Swanson is a generally unlikable character, stealing from the collection box when he thinks no one is looking and exhibiting extreme cowardice in the face of danger. It’s when the Reverend drinks, however, that his behavior gets truly infuriating, as he will follow you around camp, spouting a steady stream of pathetic self-pity and refusing to leave you alone.
Big the Cat (Sonic Adventure)
Tails might have been despised by fans of Sonic, but the fox has absolutely nothing on Big the Cat. Introduced in Sonic Adventures, Big is a bumbling moron with irritating controls, and playing his annoying fishing game is about as fun as going to the dentist. The hatred towards Big was so intense that visuals of the character dying in a variety of ways were added to Sonic Adventure 2.
Sir Arthur (Ghosts n’ Goblins)
Ghosts n’ Goblins is one of the most frustrating video games of all time, thanks to the utter feebleness of its protagonist, Sir Arthur. A single blow knocks off Arthur’s armour, and another instantly kills him. While the game was obviously designed to be difficult, it’s hard not to scream at Arthur for being so pathetic the tenth time you’re slain in as many minutes.
Moneybags (Spyro the Dragon)
There’s nothing wrong with sneaking life lessons into video games, but cramming a crash-course on the pitfalls of capitalism into a game aimed at children might be a bit much. Moneybags is a bear in the Spyro games who allies himself with the villain of the day simply to extort you of your hard-earned gems. He blocks off areas and abilities unless you can pay your way… just like in real life.
Runewright (The Witcher 3)
Part of The Witcher 3’s Hearts of Stone expansion pack, the Runewright soon started appearing in angry online rants. The source of the rage was the fact that the Runewright promises to equip players with some vague but impressive-sounding enchantments in exchange for an exorbitant ton of money, and it’s safe to say the goods he delivers are seriously underwhelming.
Patches (Elden Ring)
After encountering and defeating Patches in a cave, players are given the option to spare him. It they do, he will give them one of the worst quest lines in the entire game, and reward them for completing it by giving them an item that is almost entirely useless. Worst of all, you can’t then go back on your decision to spare this despicable trickster’s life.
Nazeem (Skyrim)
There’s nothing wrong with standoffish characters, and if done well they can quickly become fan favourites. Nazeem, on the other hand, has no personality traits outside of being weirdly hostile and grandiose about the fact that he owns a farm, and seemingly spends every waking second wandering around insulting NPCs or, if none can be found, the player.
Your friends (Pokémon X and Y)
Companions are nothing new in the Pokémon games, but you usually bump into them from time to time while searching for Pokémon in the wild. In X and Y, however, the same four children show up almost every time you leave a city and refuse to leave you alone. It’s a classic case of quantity over quality, as your friends have borderline nonexistent personalities and contribute absolute nothing of value.
King Rhoam (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)
Breath of the Wild revitalized the Zelda franchise by placing a clear focus on go-anywhere, do-anything exploration. So it came as something of a shock to players that the game’s much-hyped glider is first seen in the firm grasp of an old man who refuses to give it to you, at least until you do his bidding. It turns out this old man is none other than Hyrulean King Rhoam himself, who was testing your abilities. Just give us the glider already!
Tommy (The Last of Us)
Tommy truly embodies the stereotype of the annoying younger brother. However, Tommy’s capacity for irritation goes a lot further than the judgemental attitude he takes towards Joel’s actions, and his reckless, inconsiderate behaviour frequently endangers the lives of characters that players actually care about.
Chloe Price (Life is Strange)
Chloe Price is supposed to be a sympathetic character. Her dad is dead, her friend is missing and the game literally opens with Chloe getting gunned down in a bathroom, before protagonist Max rewinds time and saves her. Unfortunately, Chloe’s manipulative tendencies, explosive temper and steadfast refusal to take responsibility for her actions make it extremely hard to empathise with her.
Dutch van der Linde (Red Dead Redemption 2)
Sure, Dutch van der Linde’s gradual but inexorable unravelling is pretty much the entire point of Red Dead Redemption 2, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not seriously irritating at times. As Dutch falls apart he makes increasingly terrible judgement calls, leading to the deaths of some of the game’s most beloved characters.
Sergey Nechaev (Atomic Heart)
Sergey Nechaev is such an unpleasant human being that’s it hard not to get secondhand guilt from playing as him. Devoid of any sympathetic qualities, Sergey gleefully takes any opportunity to criticize, insult and generally be abusive to every other character in the game. It is genuinely impossible to root for Sergey, and that can make the game feel borderline unplayable at times.
Lo Wang (Shadow Warrior)
Lo Wang’s undeniable combat prowess in Shadow Warrior does absolutely nothing to compensate for his extreme case of verbal diarrhea. Incapable of keeping his mouth shut for more than a few seconds, Lo’s incessant cheesy jokes and inane exclamations are clearly intended to make him seem quirky and offbeat, but instead have the effect of making him seem desperate for approval.
Hope (Final Fantasy XIII)
Whining is never an attractive behavior, especially when it’s a core character trait. Hope, a child who gets embroiled in the events of Final Fantasy XIII, was clearly written with the intention of getting players to sympathize with him, but the unrelenting intensity with which he complains about everything ensures there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of anyone feeling sorry for the brat.
Aiden Pierce (Watch Dogs)
There’s something to be said for blank slate protagonists that players can project themselves onto, but this tends to work best for first-person games, and gamers generally expect their protagonists to have at least some personality in the third-person – after all, you’re looking at the back of their head for hours on end. Case in point is Aiden Pierce, whose inability to react with emotion to pretty much anything quickly goes from vaguely amusing to incredibly irritating.
Shadow (Shadow the Hedgehog)
Obviously concerned about losing their ageing fan base, Sega released the ill-advised Shadow the Hedgehog game, a 3D-platforming-based shooter. While Shadow was meant to come across as edgy and dark, he instead feels more like what would happen if Sonic went through an angsty, teenage emo phase, which is clearly what Sega thought was happening to the kids who grew up playing their games.
William James Carter (The Bureau: XCOM Declassified)
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified could have been a fascinating game, with the franchise’s sci-fi action transplanted into a Cold War setting. Unfortunately, proceedings are severely undermined by protagonist William James Carter, an infuriatingly emotionally stunted character with some of the worst voice acting in video game history.
Ava (Borderlands 3)
On paper, Ava is quite a sympathetic character. Having been on the run since a child, Ava, now a traumatized teenager, has understandable trust issues and commits crimes to survive. Borderlands 3 did a pretty terrible job of conveying these facts, thanks to the decision to cut some explanatory cutscenes, making her obnoxious, chaotic behavior seem inexplicable and infuriating.
Richard Marcinko (Rogue Warrior)
Considering that Rogue Warrior’s protagonist Richard Marcinko is based on a real person, it’s interesting that developers chose to make the character quite so reprehensible. Marcinko is a full-blown sociopath, expressing not a hint of remorse about the countless lives he’s brutally ended, and his constant, expletive-laden running commentary is somehow boring and shocking at the same time.
Grunts (Halo)
The Halo games have provided players with some of the most memorable enemies in video game history, with the Covenant’s Jackals, Hunters and Elites all earning iconic status. Grunts, on the other hand, seem to exist solely to slow players down and get on their nerves. Arriving in vast hordes, Grunts are barely worth killing, and mopping them up quickly becomes arduous and not fun at all.
Luigi (Luigi’s Mansion)
Luigi is one of the most beloved characters in video game history, with good reason. However, Luigi works best in a supporting role, and when players are placed in control of Mario’s green-clad brother – as they are in Luigi’s Mansion – the character’s cowardice starts to grate extremely quickly. Luigi reacts to the slightest hint of danger with genuinely pathetic yelping, and at times literally crawls away in fear.
Gex (Gex)
Gex, the reptilian protagonist of the Gex games, clearly thinks he’s the height of coolness and comedy. Unfortunately for players who have to endure his inane wisecracking, he is neither. While humor might be subjective, Gex’s jokes are about as close to objectively unfunny as you can get, which wouldn’t be the end of the world if he didn’t spout them at such a maddeningly prodigious rate.
Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem)
Duke Nukem was clearly created as a parody of hyper-masculine action heroes. However, when repeated often enough, parody can quickly turn into sincerity. While Duke’s toilet humor and constant bragging might have begun as satire, by the time Duke Nukem Forever finally rolled around in 2011 the point had fully been lost.
Samus (Metroid: Other M)
Prior to the release of Metroid: Other M, Samus had been considered one of the coolest female characters in gaming. Unfortunately, Other M turned her into an introspective, quasi-philosophical character who – for some inexplicable reason – now gets bossed around by a man. Safe to say, fans were not impressed with this new, incredibly annoying direction.
Infinite (Sonic Forces)
While you’re definitely not supposed to like the villain of a game you’re playing, you’re generally supposed to dislike them on the grounds of their evil plans and actions. In the case of Infinite, however, the antipathy comes from the fact that he’s a whiny, self-obsessed sore loser who continually gets defeated, complains about how unfair everything is, and then runs away, only to repeat the cycle.
Olfina Gray Mane (Skyrim)
Skyrim’s developers clearly intended the character of Olfina Gray Mane to stir up interesting questions of gender equality in the game’s world. However, while games like Red Dead Redemption 2 explicity addressed issues of women’s suffrage, all Skyrim’s could manage is having Olfina say “it’s hard being a woman isn’t it” to female players while acting vaguely hostile towards men, and it just feels forced and annoying.
Tidus (Final Fantasy X)
In a franchise with as many instalments as Final Fantasy, it’s practically guaranteed that not every character is going to be well received by players. Tidus – the protagonist of Final Fantasy X – infuriated just about everyone with his obnoxious personality, and many fans complained that it was hard to get into a game whose protagonist constantly whines about being hungry.
Roman Bellic (Grand Theft Auto IV)
Roman Bellic’s irresponsible behavior sets many of the events of Grand Theft Auto IV in motion, as Nico is forced to save his cousin’s life and gets introduced to a life of crime in the process. Roman obstinately refuses to learn from his mistakes, however, constantly ringing up the player to come and save him from his latest predicament, which often interferes with far more interesting storylines.
Lester (Lester the Unlikely)
Games are supposed to provide a sense of escapism by giving players the opportunity to do things they would never be able to in real life, and it’s just not gratifying to play as a protagonist more afraid of things than we are. Case in point is Lester, a walking checklist of geek stereotypes and a complete coward who literally screams and runs at the sight of a turtle.
Jake Muller (Resident Evil 6)
On the whole, the protagonists of the Resident Evil series have been impressively interesting, especially considering the genre the games belong to usually prioritizes scares over characterization. A glaring exception exists in the form of Jake Muller, the main character of Resident Evil 6. In a lesser series, Jake’s aggressive blandness might not have been so frustrating, but fans of the franchise were understandably unimpressed.
