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More Hateable Minor Villain / Video Games

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More Hateable Minor Villains in Video Games.

  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown:
    • While Colonel McKinsey is technically on the PlayerCharacter’s side, he’s ultimately one of the most despicable characters in the game. Whereas Rosa Cossette d’Elise is not really a villain, Mihaly genuinely cares for his granddaughters and is A Father to His Men, and Hugin and Munin are simply following their programming, McKiney has absolutely zero redeemable qualities to his name, and is meant to be as hated as possible.
    • While Brigadier General Clemens in the SP Missions is the officer in charge of locating and capturing the Erusean superweapon, Alicorn, he’s also the secondary antagonist, as it’s revealed in the second SP Mission, that his intel came from a former member of the Alicorn’s crew, and its implied that he tried to have Trigger assassinated. While Matias Torres is the main antagonist of the SP Missions, and plans on killing a million people, he proves to be too entertaining to truly hate, while Clemens is a total Jerkass, who’s only interested in furthering his military career.
  • Ann: The Principal, despite his few appearances, is revealed to be the one who turned Hana Itakagi into the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl who haunts the Delta Academy of Arts. He would trade sex with his students for good grades and other favors, pressuring students into the deal, and when Hana caught him doing it with her best friend, she confronted him, leading him to strangle her to cover it up. He then tells her spirit that its all her fault for not keeping quiet. Though he never directly antagonizes Ann, he is the indirect cause of all the suffering in the game, and when Ann sacrifices him to Hana to quell her rage, nobody mourns him.
  • The Baldur's Gate series has its share. Most of its Big Bads (Sarevok, Irenicus, and Amelyssan) are brilliant Chessmasters, some of them have sympathetic traits and tragic backstories (especially Caelar), and they're generally too likeable to hate entirely. Even Bhaal, the Greater-Scope Villain of the series and one of the most evil deities on Faerun, makes a nebulous target for audience hate due to how little time he spends on-screen. Thankfully, we have the following characters on-hand to provide easy targets:
    • Angelo Dosan, a Corrupt Cop and one of Sarevok's lieutenants who assumes control of the Flaming Fist after Sarevok becomes duke of Baldur's Gate. If he captures you he puts you through a Kangaroo Court and sentences you to hang purely because you oppose his boss; in fact, he will kill one of your party members if you piss him off at this time. He is also the abusive father of party member Shar-Teel, which goes a long way towards explaining her hatred of men. Killing him in the final fight is thus very satisfying.
    • Also from the first game is a more indistinct example: Sarevok's stepfather Rieltar Anchev. He isn't just a Corrupt Corporate Executive leading the Iron Throne; he didn't just strangle his wife with a garrote over infidelity in front of their adopted son; he even helped dwarven party member Yeslick to reclaim his clan's mines, only to betray him, slap him in a dungeon, and take the mines over for the Iron Throne. His death either at your hands or those of imposters hired by Sarevok is used to frame you for conspiring with the Shadow Thieves in distant Amn to bring about a war between Amn and the Sword Coast; otherwise it's a textbook example of Asshole Victim with shades of Pay Evil unto Evil (Sarevok orders the imposters to use a garrote, to begin with). All in all, he is the one character Sarevok kills or has killed that you can really, truly feel no sympathy for whatsoever.
    • In Siege of Dragonspear, Hephernaan takes this role. Whereas Caelar is a noble and kind woman whose intentions are merely at odds with your own, Hephernaan couldn't look, sound, or act more villainous if he tried. His entire role in the story is to manipulate his superior and you to fulfil his dark goal of opening a portal to the Nine Hells to unleash The Legions of Hell on Faerun, when he's not berating underlings for forgivable failures or running a cabal of necromancers behind Caelar's back. Both of his possible deaths are triumphant examples of Death by Irony. Either he dies in battle alongside his demon lord master when you and Caelar team up to stop him, or Caelar, enacting a Face–Heel Turn by making a Deal with the Devil (the devil in this case being Hephernaan's master), asks only that her new lord destroy Hephernaan for his treachery, which said demon lord gladly obliges, even as Hephernaan pleads pathetically for his life.
    • In Shadows of Amn there are the Cowled Wizards, who are a bunch of Knight Templar, Holier Than Thou jackasses who imprison mages on Crowleyed-up charges, have a secret torture room, kidnap Imoen along with Irenicus at the start of the game, and try to murder potential party member Valygar just so they can get access to an interplanar spaceship using his corpse. Consequently, when Edwin assigns you the job to kill one such wizard tracking him, even good companions admit that going after a Cowled Wizard is okay in their book. All this seems to be designed to ensure that their downfall — Irenicus breaks free from their holdings and slaughters them all, mocking them for thinking they could hold him, and takes over their asylum to serve as his new base of operations — elicits No Sympathy from the audience and causes them to applaud the style with which Irenicus pulls it off. Just to drive the point home, just before Irenicus breaks free, two wizards discuss how Imoen "is a cute one" and that they'll "have to practice some Enchantment spells" on her.
  • Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Batman: The Telltale Series: The main antagonists — Lady Arkham, Penguin, and Two-Face — are all varying degrees of sympathetic. The same cannot be said for these particularly loathsome individuals:
    • Hamilton Hill is the corrupt mayor of Gotham City. Back in the day, Hill was in a partnership with Carmine Falcone and Thomas Wayne, and was complicit in having innocent citizens committed to Arkham Asylum in order to steal their land and riches. Among Hill and Wayne's victims were Esther Cobblepot, the mother of Oswald. When Martha, Thomas's wife, threatened to expose her husband and Hill's activities, Hill hired Joe Chill to assassinate both Thomas and Martha. In the present day, Harvey Dent, backed by Bruce Wayne, is running for mayor against Hill. Hill, teaming up with Oswald Cobblepot, gathers incriminating evidence against the Waynes to hurt Harvey's chances of mayorhood. If Bruce chooses to visit Hill as himself after discovering his partnership with Cobblepot, Hill will try to convince Bruce to stop supporting Harvey in exchange for information, angrily throwing him out if he refuses. During a live debate with Harvey, Hill, under the influence of a drug by the Children of Arkham, reveals his desire to incinerate the city's poor. Under the mercy of Cobblepot, Hill pathetically begs for his life, before Cobblepot shoots him to death, avenging his mother.
    • John and Patricia Vale are the foster parents of Victoria Arkham and one of the main catalysts for her descent to villainy. Taking Vicki in after her birth parents' deaths, the Vales would routinely abuse her and their other adopted children by chaining them up in their Torture Cellar and beating them with a belt. Years later, Vicki, now going by the alias of Lady Arkham, pays the Vales a visit and brutally murders them in retribution for all the pain they put her through.
  • Bendy and the Ink Machine:
    • Joey Drew, the Greater-Scope Villain. Henry finds a lot of evidence of how poorly Joey treated his employees — there's not a single character (other than Joey himself) that mentions Joey without having something negative to say about him sooner or later. He doesn't even believe in his "dream" rhetoric, and he's directly responsible for manipulating and ruining the lives of many other characters. He's also the one to blame for turning his studio into an Eldritch Location.
    • Susie Campbell as Physical Alice: Other characters hate her because she tortures, vivisects, and uses body parts from any ink being that comes near her. They hate her to the point where they write NO ANGELS on their sanctuary walls. Players often hate her because she sends Henry on numerous errands, often with weak weapons to defend himself with, and speaks condescendingly to him as he does so. One such errand is to purposely get Bendy angry at Henry for destroying his cut-outs. She will also present Henry with a tommy gun before she sends him to see a former friend of his, which she will take away right as he's grabbing it unless players fulfill a strict set of criteria. After doing all this, she attempts to murder Henry, kidnaps his pal Boris, and modifies him to be a monster who does her bidding using the things that she had Henry collect for her.
  • Beyond: Two Souls:
    • Phillip Holmes is Jodie's verbally and emotionally abusive adoptive father. When she was a young girl with barely any control of her powers or brother Aiden, Phillip would openly call Jodie a "demon", or "monster". In addition to blaming Jodie for her shortcomings, and not defending her when she's bullied and nearly smothered in the snow, he reacts with impatience or annoyance when someone stands up to him. While it's implied that they lost one child in infancy, Phillip doesn't have that much consideration for his wife's feelings, pressuring her to abandon her second child that she clearly cares about.
    • The bullies at the party Jodie attends. They tease and try to humiliate her for being different, and force her into a closet simply because she got one of them a book for her birthday. It'd be cathartic to have Aiden go on a rampage against them, but in the aftermath, they will refuse to own up and accuse Jodie of being the devil.
    • In the homeless chapter, we are introduced to a gang of degenerate youths who assault homeless people for the fun of it and film it. When Jodie fights off one of their attacks, they go set their building on fire, not seeming to care that there is a baby in there. After Jodie manages to save her friends, they bash her head with a baseball bat, putting her in a brief coma. Mercifully they are arrested shortly after the fact.
    • General McGarth is the head of the Department of Paranormal Activity, and just about every scene involving him highlights his corruption. These include having Jodie kill an innocent politician to trigger a war, forcing Jodie into a final mission by promising her freedom, and trying to lock Jodie into a permanent coma to tie loose ends, revealing he did the same to her mother and rubbing it in her face. Despite this, when entities rampage in the DPA headquarters, McGarth has the audacity to beg Jodie and Ryan to help him.
  • The BioShock series has no shortage of evil characters. However, even the most depraved antagonists tend to avoid this trope and fall squarely into Evil Is Cool, Laughably Evil, or Cry for the Devil territory. The same cannot be said for these specific characters:
  • Borderlands 2: Handsome Jack generally avoids this for the most part, being an entertaining and charismatic villain fans Love to Hate. His backstory even puts him in a tragic and sympathetic light. There are a plethora of other characters you can genuinely despise, though:
  • Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars: Even though Redmond Boyle is the director of GDI, he’s ultimately the tertiary antagonist of the GDI campaign, due to how he’s willing to resort to questionable actions in the name of defeating Nod and the Scrin. While Kane is a Magnificent Bastard whose too entertaining to hate, and we know very little about the Scrin, Boyle meanwhile is a greedy politician whose primarily focused on advancing his career.
  • Corpse Party: The Big Bad in both continuities was ultimately born from tragedy, but the Greater Scope Villains responsible for said tragedy is another story.
    • Corpse Party (PC-98):
    • In the Heavenly Host continuity, Principal Takamine Yanagihori is the father of Big Bad Yoshikazu Yanagihori and is indirectly responsible for his insanity. In the past, he tried to rape Sachiko Shinozaki's mother Yoshie, leading to her accidental death when she tripped down the stairs trying to escape, and then strangled the seven-year-old Sachiko to death to keep her quiet. As a result, the spirit of Yoshie cursed him and his bloodline for all eternity, which made Yoshikazu go insane — and his murder of Sachiko unwittingly unsealed the Nirvana/Witch Queen, the true villain behind Yoshikazu, making the events of the game his fault. Even when the spirit of Sachiko tortures him for his actions, he refuses to take responsibility and blames her instead. Though revered by the community as a good man, Takamine Yanagihori is rightfully considered by Aiko to be a disgusting individual who is ultimately responsible for the suffering that the heroes and trapped souls must endure.
  • Dragon Age: Origins: Vaughan Kendells is the Arl of Denerim who uses his power to get away with various acts of rape. Preying upon female Elves, who he sees as rats, Vaughan frequently rapes and often kills them. In the City Elf storyline, he kidnaps all of the women at a wedding, including the Player Character's cousin (and bride if playing male). When the player character tracks him down to free the elves, Vaughan tries to bribe them off with money, even after killing one elven girl and raping another, gloating how his death will result in the Elven district being eradicated. Even as a teenager, Vaughan abuses maids and is responsible for the rape and murder of a dockworker's daughter.
  • In Dragon Age II, Knight-Commander Meredith and First Enchanter Orsino may be the final bosses, but Mother Petrice is the game's main Hate Sink, being a paranoid bigot who constantly raises tensions between the Qunari and the rest of Kirkwall in the hopes of getting the Qunari banished from Kirkwall or killed off.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: While the vanilla game and its DLCs each pit the Dragonborn against a variety of powerful villains, it is Harkon from the Dawnguard DLC who is easily the most detestable of the lot. By comparison, Alduin from the main game, in spite of being an arrogant monster, is ultimately a necessary force of nature whose sole purpose for existing is to destroy the world so that a next world may be born, something that several characters point out throughout the game. Arch-Curate Vyrthur, from the Dawnguard DLC (and the true Big Bad of the DLC), is just seeking revenge against the god he once worshipped out of belief that his god abandoned him by letting him become a vampire, while Miraak was ultimately a pawn of the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora in the Dragonborn DLC. Mora himself, like all Daedric Princes, is an eldritch god that operates on a different sense of morality, but is considered one of the more neutral Princes, as he rarely engages in acts of cruelty, always keeps his word, and prefers tempting mortals with promises of power over actively coercing them into servitude note . Harkon, on the other hand, is an arrogant and sadistic monster who is too shortsighted to see how much his plans would inevitably, massively backfire (even if he managed to complete them), he views all mortals as inferior animals who only exist to feed him at his pleasure, he sacrificed thousands of innocents to Molag Bal (the truly, unequivocally evilest of the Daedric Princes) to gain the 'gift' of vampirism, and he is dumb enough to betray note  and antagonize the Dragonborn, one of the most powerful demigods to have ever existed on Nirn. Worst of all, he's a monstrously abusive father, whose first concern when reuniting with his only child and daughter Serana was ensuring that the Elder Scroll she carries was safe in his establishing moment. Needless to say, killing him at the end of the Dawnguard DLC is immensely satisfying.
  • The main two antagonists of Fear & Hunger: Termina, Per'kele and the Kaiser, may be an organizer of a Deadly Game worshipping the local Satanic Archetype and a tyrannical war criminal respectively, but have some redeeming qualities: the former saves your life in the prologue and will honor your decision after one last fight regardless of whether or not you accepted his offer to join the Cult of Sulfur, whereas the latter is a Well-Intentioned Extremist fully convinced that activating Logic is for humanity's greater good, and as both are higher powers, they can be argued to be operating on Blue-and-Orange Morality. The same cannot be said for Caligura, who's a relatively normal human uninvolved in the grand scheme of things — and perhaps the most morally despicable of the contestants, being a homophobic, murderous sexual predator whose potential death is treated as karmic justice.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: While not introduced as an antagonist, Argath Thadalfus was ultimately a grunt for some of the more powerful players (i.e. Ramza's brothers) manipulating the political scene of Ivalice, and is killed off in the final battle of the first chapter. However, his disdain for anyone not born into nobility, coupled with the fact that you're stuck with him as an ally for most of the chapter, made Argath draw more heat than most of the other villains who range from manipulative and power-hungry politicians to kinslayers to outright demons (and sometimes, all of them at once).
  • Forest of Drizzling Rain: The Kotori Obake, despite being a child abductor, is too insane to hate and is also very sympathetic because she was tortured into her insanity. But these two men are much more personally loathsome:
    • The nameless Government Official only appears in one scene near the beginning, but establishes himself as a Smug Snake nonetheless. In said scene, he informs Suga, the manager of the local museum, that the government plans to demolish the museum to make room for land development. He proceeds to be rude and disrespectful to Suga, outright telling him he does not care if Suga ends up jobless, then when Sakuma objects, he tells her that her father would support the demolishment. Finally, when Shiori tells him that she is the heir to the museum and can shut him down, he rudely expresses disbelief before storming out in a huff.
    • The first Ogami-san, though seemingly a benevolent hero of old, is revealed to have been the Greater-Scope Villain who warped an innocent woman into becoming the Kotori Obake. Running a system in which crimes are punished by selling the wives and children of the criminal into sexual slavery, he fell in lust with a woman, and so falsely accused her of crimes to imprison her, before having her family executed. He then raped her and later killed the fetus, finally driving her insane. Ultimately, all the sorrow and child deaths at the hands of the Obake can be traced back to him.
  • Ghost of Tsushima's Khotun Khan, while the main force of the Mongol invasion of Tsushima, proves to be an interesting character on top of being a pragmatic villain. It's also hard to hate Ryuzo, as he is ultimately a tragic villain who makes several mistakes that lead to his downfall. However, there are plenty of minor villains who serve as the hate sinks throughout the game:
    • Lady Hana Ikeda, the older sister of Lady Masako Adachi and Arc Villain of her quest line is the mastermind behind an attack on Clan Adachi during the Mongol invasion that resulted in the slaughter of Masako's daughters-in-law and grandchildren carried out by former servants of Clan Adachi (most of who were equally vile people), while Masako's husband and sons were dying in battle. Her motive? Hana strongly resents Masako for being the one to marry the samurai Lord Adachi, while she was sent up north to marry a retainer who turned out to be an abusive drunk behind closed doors. Even worse, Hana insists that she suffered more than Masako ever did, and feels no remorse for killing innocent children, even blaming Masako for everything bad in her life. Hardly anyone sheds a tear when she ends up committing suicide in the last mission of Masako's questline, and records scattered throughout the game even indicate that Hana Ikeda isn't as well-liked among people as much as she thinks she is.
    • Kajiwara, a former retainer and one of the conspirators behind the attack on Clan Adachi, responsible for hiring the assassins who carried out the attack. Fired after being caught abusing his wife and daughter by Lady Masako, he later killed them both when the Mongols threatened his home in order to save his own skin. When Jin and Masako corner him, Kajiwara still tries to justify his actions by saying he'd killed them "out of love", which completely disgusts Jin, and his death at Masako's hands is completely deserving and justified.
    • The Black Wolf, one of the villains of Yuna's quest line. A shameless and unrepentant pedophile slaver who targets children, he was the one who sexually assaulted Yuna and Taka when they were children before selling them to the equally vile Mamushi brothers, which is what he has been doing for at least twenty years, only getting worse when working alongside a Mongol general. When Yuna and Jin confront him, the first thing the Black Wolf does is try to throw his boss under the bus, then has the gall to victim-blame Yuna for him sexually assaulting Taka, even calling him his favourite. It's all the more satisfying when Yuna cuts him down with her sword, ending his cruelty and ensuring that no more children get hurt by him again.
    • The Mamushi Brothers, a trio of cruel slavers and the other villains of Yuna's quest line. Both Yuna and Taka were enslaved by the brothers when they were children, and it's heavily implied that they and many other slaves were raped by them during their time in captivity. During the events of the game, the Mamushi brothers operate with even greater cruelty under the Mongols, leaving burnt corpses impaled on pikes outside their farmstead as a message to any slave that might want to escape, in addition to decapitating slaves who displease them. Having Jin carry out Yuna's vengeance proves to be quite cathartic, as he goes as far as beheading the brothers before mounting their heads on a pike to send a message to the Mongols.
  • Ghost School: Reika Izayoi, the Vengeful Ghost in charge of the titular school, was warped into a hateful being by nasty bullies and is sympathetic. The bullies and one unrelated villain are not.
  • Grand Theft Auto, somewhat unsurprisingly, has a lot of these:
    • Marty Chonks is a deranged dog food manufacturer who has people killed and processed into meat. He does this to his wife for overspending and two thiefs he hired to burgle his own home for insurance. So nasty is he that it's downright impossible to feel bad when one of his intended victims beats him to it.
    • Marty Jay Williams in Vice City Stories is an abusive redneck who mistreats his wife and infant daughter, even trying to pimp the former out for supposedly "betraying" him.
    • Eddie Low is a sexually-deviant, child-raping, animal-abusing serial killer who Niko has a chance encounter with. While he is shown to be mentally disturbed, his grotesque actions and the fact that he prides himself on his horrid actions (such as bragging about raping and murdering children and repeatedly taunting police for being unable to catch him) makes him one of the most feared and reviled characters in the whole franchise.
    • Rocco Pelosi and his uncle verbally abuse Luis and Tony with racist and homophobic remarks. While Ray Bulgarin, a human trafficker, is at least Laughably Evil, the Pelosis are just offensive and cruel bullies. Rocco himself doesn't improve much when he shows up again in Los Santos, assaulting an elderly filmmaker and trying to sabotage his project.
    • Beverly Felton is an arrogant prick who has Franklin humiliate and ruin numerous celebrities, under the guise of humbling them for "acting like they're gods". Surprise, surprise, he ends up being just as bad when he finally gets his own tv show and cuts Franklin out for his troubles.
    • Peter Dreyfuss is a sadistic movie-maker who devalues his actors, ultimately raping, torturing, and killing Leonora Johnson, tormenting her family by mailing her lips and taunting letters to them as some sort of "art project". He also insults one friend for his unwillingness to partake in other depraved acts against strangers. While Eddie Low at least has a Freudian Excuse, mental illness, and some degree of Even Evil Has Loved Ones, Dreyfuss has none of those, being completely in control of his actions and proud of it.
  • Halo has Kinsler, a cop who wants to kidnap Sadie Endesha and rape her. Even as the Covenant invade New Mombasa, Kinsler keeps stalking Sadie, intending to kill her, as well as his driver Branley who helped Sadie escape, and takes her father, Dr. Endesha, hostage. When Sadie turns herself in for her father's safety, Kinsler reveals he already killed him. Humans Are the Real Monsters indeed.
  • Jade Empire: Gao the Lesser is the spoiled son of crime boss Gao the Greater. His tenure sees him act as an elitist bully, thinking his father's wealth and power entitle him to everything, including Dawn Star. When he loses a fight against the protagonist, he cheats using a dangerous technique, resulting in his expulsion. Not content, he rats out Li's school and the surrounding village to his father and Sun Hai, kidnaps Dawn Star, murdering a young student in the process, and tries to flee.
  • Knights of the Old Republic: Xor's first lines of dialogue are him insulting Juhani for her Cathar heritage, asking to take her as a slave. He then brags about how he not only took part in the massacre of Juhani's people, but killed her father and tried to buy her for his collection, later returning with some thugs to abduct her. In just two scenes, he is shown to be an unrepentant slaver, mass murderer, bigot, and heavily implied rapist, a record to be sure.
  • Mass Effect: Many of the main villains are too morally complex to hate or are Eldritch Abominations that rely on Blue-and-Orange Morality. That said, there are numerous exceptions:
    • Dr. Saleon is a Mad Doctor responsible for horrid surgeries, using desperate patients as organ banks and not caring about the horrifying defects they cause. He's so loathsome that Garrus was willing to shoot him down with several hostages, as opposed to letting him go free. When encountered again years later, Saleon is still conducting vile experiments, this time creating zombie-like monstrosities.
    • Anoleis is an obnoxious, unpleasant, and bigoted bureaucreat who sees humans as uncivilized and dirty, and has to either be threatened, killed, or arrested to proceed on Noveria.
    • Mass Effect 2 has an unnamed Batarian bartender who poisons human customers, killing at least one. Of course, you can force him to drink his own poison.
  • Midnight Train's antagonists, the Black Gear organization, are a sympathetic vigilante group, so these backstory characters serve as the Asshole Victims that they targeted:
    • The mayor's son, from Apollo Carson's backstory, is a haughty Upper-Class Twit who beats up Apollo one day simply for being poor. He does this while espousing his hatred of poor people, whom he considers to be a plague on "his" city. As a result, Apollo pushes him into a fence in self-defense, killing him.
    • Apollo's unnamed partner was a prisoner of the Midnight Train like him, and brought a pet bird, Celeste, along. He would befriend Apollo and bond with him, only to eventually steal his pocket watch, which would leave Apollo trapped in the Prison Dimension forever, so he could escape, even abandoning Celeste, leading to Apollo's deep trust issues. In the next building, he becomes so paranoid about Selene Ambrose betraying him that he refuses to take her advice and rejects her help, resulting in him getting killed by a trap. While Neil pities him, he ultimately shows himself as a pathetic, cowardly man.
    • The unnamed terrorist from Luna Wyndell's backstory is a Mad Bomber who pretends to be kind to Luna before bombing the nearby restaurant, killing her parents in the process. This even traumatizes Luna, to whom the terrorist gloats before deciding not to kill her, because he finds letting her live with the trauma to be sweeter. He then says he will be planning his "next show" before leaving. Luna ultimately joins Black Gear and stabs him later as revenge.
    • Neil Lawton's Evil Uncle took him in after the death of his parents, only to abuse him by giving him pieces of bread for food while gorging himself and crippling his self esteem by forcing him to verbally degrade himself. Uncaring of the bullying Neil has to deal with at school, the uncle also shows disdain for Neil's father, whom he calls useless. He is also in the business of extorting money from people, and kills a man for not paying on time, then threatens Neil into staying quiet and is acquitted as a result, going on to kill two innocent sisters. He is promptly targeted and assassinated by Luna.
    • The child kidnappers from the backstory of Justice II/Kale and Purity/Lucine captured them as well as several children. Putting them through abuse so horrible that most of the children died from it, the kidnappers would receive comeuppance thanks to Justice I, who killed them. This traumatic event is what led Kale and Lucine to join Black Gear.
  • Misao: The two main antagonists, Misao and Mr. Kurata, despite their murderous tendencies towards people who they've felt wronged them, have rather troubled backstories involving brutal bullying and being betrayed by those they turned to for help, explaining why they became who they were, and both are treated sympathetically by both other characters and the narrative. Unlike them, Yoshino has no justification for her vile deeds of social manipulation and mistreating her fellow students, especially towards Misao herself whom she subjected to Rape by Proxy, to the extent that only the male protagonist will mourn her demise, the female protagonist instead reacting with glee.
  • OMORI: Of the main villains, Something is too eldritch to hate, and Omori himself too sympathetic. Sweetheart, meanwhile, is The Heavy and an obnoxious, arrogant monarch whose main role is to get in the way of the heroes' quest to rescue Basil. Despite her public image as a kind girl, Sweetheart is a tyrant who throws her subjects in the dungeon for the pettiest of reasons (like trying to ask her out but being too short), and she twice dates Captain Spaceboy only to cruelly dump him because he is not good enough for her, leaving him heartbroken. She is narcissistic enough to then demand a clone of herself to marry, only to try and cheat the clone-makers out of payment for not satisfying her. It is thus karmic when she is eaten by Humphrey and forced to serve as Perfectheart's maid for the rest of her life.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Grubba, the seemingly kind promoter of the Glitz Pit and the Arc Villain of Chapter 3, proves to be a despicable adversary for Mario and company to face despite being unconnected to the X-Nauts. Midway through the chapter, fighters Bandy Andy and King K disappear and are removed from the roster. Mario starts getting threats from an anonymous blackmailer along with benign tips from a helpful person. He later finds out Grubba has since been draining the energy out of fighters, nearly killing them. In Prince Mush's case, he did kill him to keep his 65-year-old body youthful and in shape using a machine powered by the crystal star. Jolene is revealed to be the anonymous tipster and Grubba the blackmailer. Mario fights Grubba, and despite Grubba admitting that was a good fight, it has more to do with his Blood Knight personality.
  • Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners: Both members of the Big Bad Ensemble, Professor Tsuchida and Pharaoh Khufu, have sympathetic reasons for their evil acts. Meanwhile, Soji Mizumi initially seems to be a simple photojournalist who is only concerned with getting a big story from the tourist expedition into the ruins but is, in fact, a Serial Rapist who tries to blackmail Sae Otogi, the tour guide, into having sex with him by threatening to expose her drug dealing, bragging that he's done so with many women in the past. If he doesn't get himself killed as a direct result of his sexually predatory nature, he is never punished for his crimes.
  • In Persona 5, Suguru Kamoshida may just be a Starter Villain with no direct ties to the Big Bad, but he's a very effective Hate Sink because of how personal his deeds are to the founding members of the Phantom Thieves — he spreads rumors about the protagonist to make his first days at school very uncomfortable, he's caused Ryuji's Career-Ending Injury and forced the track team to disband, and sexually assaulted Ann's friend Shiho and nearly drove her to suicide. To top it all off, he's abusing his position of power to intimidate everyone around him into silence. No other villain apart from the Big Bad affects this much of the Phantom Thieves.
  • Red Dead Redemption and its sequel have no shortage of these:
    • Randall Forrester, much like Eddie Low, is a deranged cannibal who kills and eats people, children being among his victims.
      • The sequel introduces Edmund Lowry Jr, an expy of both Forrester and Low.
    • Catherine Braithwaite is the controlling, cold-hearted matriarch of the Braithwaite family, seeking to undermine the Grays while maintaining her family's superiority. So prideful is she, that to avoid disgrace she hides a mentally impaired daughter in an outhouse. When she finds the Van Der Lindes have double-crossed her, she kidnaps Jack. While she is horrified at her family being killed in retaliation, it's clear it's more for her loss of status than actual love.
    • Many of the gangs encountered end up being this:
      • The Murfree Brood are a deranged group of inbreeds who rape, torture, mutilate, and kill innocents, their caves being full of horrific trophies and reminders of their atrocities
      • The Night Folk are more disturbing and creepy than hateable, but still are one of the more vile factions in the game, their unclear nature establishing them as a borderline horror antagonists to the point that one could hardly be faulted for slaughtering them.
      • The Lemoyne Raiders and Ku Klux Klan are bigoted reactionaries who believe in persecuting minorities and seek to continue the Civil War. The fact that both have real-life counterparts that not only committed similar atrocities but in many ways succeeded with their goals making them hateable in their own unique way. That said, the Klan is largely played for laughs, being depicted as a group of inept idiots who often humiliate and injure themselves in their rituals. It is rather telling that killing them doesn't impact one's honor.
      • The Skinner Brothers are a group of sadistic raiders who torture and mutilate their victims, being little more than a gang of serial killers and psychopaths.
    • Some of the strangers encountered can be this, the most noteworthy being Sonny, a deranged redneck who knocks out and is heavily implies to rape his victims. Another example is a smug eugenicist in St Denis who you can kill with no consequence.
  • The Professor Layton games tend to be lighthearted, with nearly every character, even the Big Bad of each game, usually having some sympathetic qualities. However, they'll throw in the rare character you just can't help but find hate-worthy. Case in point, Prime Minister Bill Hawks from Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. He is the source of the miseries of the sympathetic Dimitri Allen and Clive Dove. Initially an associate of Dimitri's, he ends up being too ambitious for his own good and insists on testing the time machine despite being warned about it in order to gain the money he was promised for testing the invention. This ends up fatal, as it causes an explosion which kills several people, chief among them being Clive's parents and Layton's sweetheart/Allen's crush, Claire. Hawks, having survived, uses the funds as a means to become Prime Minister, while the former's deaths would end up becoming the beginning of the path to evil for Clive and Dimitri, who'd conspire to kidnap him. This escalates into London being nearly razed to the ground thanks to Clive's machinations, yet even after being rescued by Layton and co., Hawks never once shows remorse for his actions and winds up getting away with everything in the end. He has a tendency to get on many Most Hatable Characters in Games lists, and it is easy to see why; screwing over innocent people for the sake of his greed, Bill Hawks is the embodiment of political corruption.
  • The Sakabashira Game: The nameless host of the titular Deadly Game and their helper Ceci the nurse are both Affably Evil. Evan the computer genius, one of the players, turns out to be far easier to hate. He starts out as a Jerkass who antagonizes the other players, and just when it appears to be showing some hidden goodness, it's an act so he can kill one of the players to advance. He then reveals himself to be the one who terrorized the orphanage he and Alex grew up in, killed his own sister, and decides to join the Horrors by becoming one himself while taunting Alex about all the evil he has done.
  • Seraphic Blue: Of the main antagonists, the Gaia Cancers are too eldritch to hate, Ende is more scary than hateable, the goddess Er is a product of childhood trauma and nihilism, and the Kursk family truly believe in their cause. These men, on the other hand, have no such qualities:
    • Siegbert Ansbach is in charge of raising Vene to be one of the members of the titular Seraphic Blue. However, he clearly cares more about satisfying his sick sense of humor when he tries to kill her emotions via killing kittens in front of her whenever she gets attached to them. Eventually, he makes Vene apathetic enough to do the deed herself, all while claiming that emotions and compassion are unnecessary for saving the world. When he discovers his actions caused an evil Split Personality, Er, to emerge in Vene, he decides to keep Vene's evil half a secret for his own amusement. Said evil personality is also capable of misusing Seraphic Blue's power to end the world, thus destroying any of his claims of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Sure enough, Er kills Siegbert and he's so hated by the party that they taunt him as he dies, telling him that it's "Game Over" for his life of treating everything as a game. He continues to be a complete ass beyond the grave when the government finds that he has an elaborate security system protecting Er's data, which will be automatically deleted if they botch too many attempts to crack the password.
    • Georg Roseburg was once a normal village pharmacist before getting drunk on the economic power and knowledge granted to him by the Fezzite government, causing him to become one of the most hatable characters in the game. He proceeds to become a Corrupt Corporate Executive with ambitions of conquering Fezzite and tearing the world apart, regardless of if he has to stage false flag operations on his hired soldiers, if he has to sacrifice a city that was built over his war machine, or if he has to team up with the Gaia Cancers in their goal to destroy the world. His family life makes him worse, since he's possessive of his daughter, Syria, to the point of leaving her to die when she gets pregnant and sending assassins after her lover and child. Worse yet, when his daughter is reincarnated as Vene, Georg intends to steal Vene's spirit and place her in a clone of Syria in order to make her a possession again. Eventually, he allows Ende to transform him into a Gaia Cancer so he can take the party down with him, forcing Lake to perform a Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Morgan Douglas doesn't have as much onscreen villainy as the other two and is more of a Dirty Coward, but his very existence still warrants disgust. For one thing, he endorsed the aforementioned Siegbert's abuse towards Vene because of his love of harming the weak. Some time after he gets demoted, he teams up with Ende and starts a coup d'etat against Queen Minerva Fezzite, and then engages in a terrible war against Georg where both sides use Devil/Lucifer soldiers. At one point, he tries to torture a civilian hostage For the Evulz, only to be scared off when another hostage threatens him. Despite claiming that he doesn't want to go as far as destroying the world, he has no issue with using his newfound Gaia Cancer transformation to kill all three members of Seraphic Blue out of spite for the one who caused his demotion, making him the most pathetic antagonist in the game.
  • Most of the villains in Spider-Man (PS4) are either Tragic Villains (i.e. Mr. Negative and Dr. Octopus), have a noble side (i.e. Tombstone, Shocker) or get taken down a peg by Spider-Man's constant quipping (i.e. Electro, Rhino, Hammerhead). However, two villains stick out as truly loathsome individuals:
    • Mac Gargan/Scorpion is the Sinister Six's resident Hate Sink. While the Master Planner motivated the other villains by promising them a better life (freeing Rhino from his suit and curing Vulture's cancer) or helping them achieve their goals (giving Electro his wish of becoming pure energy and helping Mr. Negative kill Norman Osborn), Scorpion is motivated only by money and opportunities to indulge his sadism. He poisons Spider-Man and taunts him as he swings around New York finding the ingredients for an antidote. Once the hallucinatory parts of the poison kick in, hallucinations of Scorpion harass Spidey, crossing a line by mocking Uncle Ben's death. To make him even more infuriating, he's completely incapable of backing up any of his tough talk, relying on sneak attacks and Spider-Man being overwhelmed by numbers in their two fights. In his boss fight, his contributions consist of screaming insults at Rhino and throwing easily-dodgeable poison attacks, all the while talking a big game of killing Spider-Man and keeping his corpse as a trophy. All this to say, most players understood when Rhino snapped after one too many insults and turned on Scorpion to deliver a long-due beatdown.
    • Screwball first appears in a side mission in the main story, which sends Spider-Man on a wild goose chase to save a hostage that doesn't exist, all a gambit for her to gain followers on her social media. That's unlikeable, but her sheer contemptibility ratchets to eleven in the DLC. Here, she takes Taskmaster's place in setting up challenges for Spider-Man around the city. Unlike Taskmaster, who either sets up bombs in isolated areas or sends Spider-Man after other mercenaries, her challenges regularly put innocent people in danger, from setting up bombs, using her social media influence to release and arm dangerous criminals, and setting up EMPs that could leave thousands of people without power. And unlike Taskmaster, a silent observer, Screwball provides a constant stream of obnoxious commentary, mocking Spider-Man if he doesn't get the maximum score and threatening to dox livestream viewers who try to report her crimes to the police. Many players were happier defeating her than Hammerhead.
  • In the Tales Series, the Big Bad is typically revealed to be some form of sympathetic villain, whether they be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, Tragic Villain, Noble Demon, or the like. So to give the audience someone to hate, each game will instead have another villain who lacks the sympathetic qualities of the main villain and exists to earn the ire of the heroes.
    • Tales of the Abyss: Grand Maestro Mohs. More or less every moment he's onscreen oozes smug sliminess, and he's got an impressive dog-kicking resume ranging from warmongering to masterminding Akzeriuth, convincing Natalia's father to kill her and Luke, holding Anise's parents hostage to blackmail her, and killing Ion by forcing him to read the Score. He is ultimately a patsy for Van Grants, who is much more sympathetic, and by the time you fight him, he's completely lost his mind and been turned into a monster. The characters express pity on his death, but more likely, the audience will not.
    • Tales of Vesperia: Of the main villains, Alexei Dinoia wants to bring order to the Empire and feels guilt over nearly dooming the world, while Duke Pantarei wants to save the world and hates humanity for betraying his friend, and The Adephagos is just a mindless Eldritch Abomination. But the game has a pair of particularly villainous characters whom Yuri ends up killing in the name of vigilante justice.
      • Magistrate Ragou harshly taxes his people, and offers a reprieve to anyone who retrieves the horn of the Rhybgaro, a monster, simply because he's amused by the idea of people getting eaten by monsters. He also takes the loved ones of people who owe taxes as collateral, including their children, and imprisons them with monsters. He's even responsible for the storms that make sailing out of his town difficult, thereby ruining the economy for his own twisted amusement.
      • Cumore, an Imperial Knight, tricks people into volunteering for strenuous labor with the false promise of making them nobles. He later pressgangs peasants into searching the desert for the phoenix-like monster Phaeroh, and the party finds two parents almost dead of thirst in the desert. He even gives the same punishment to one of his men for not rounding up people quickly enough.
    • Tales of Xillia 2 has Rideaux. He's smarmy, snarky, and generally acts very pompous to the party, even going so far as to mock their (and the player's) attempts at fixing the prime dimension. Rideaux is also fought multiple times, so as satisfying it is to beat him up, one still has to do it three times in total, and even then, the player doesn't get to finish him, either. He gives one last mock to Ludger, before being dragged off and Killed Offscreen. Oh, and he's the reason Ludger, and the player, is hit with that obnoxious debt to begin with.

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