Skip to main content
GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
  • Games
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Hardware
  • Video
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Deals
  • More
    • PS5
    • Xbox Series X
    • Nintendo Switch
    • Nintendo Switch 2
    • PC
    • Platforms
    • Tabletop Gaming
    • Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • SFX
    • Newsarama
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsletters
    • About us
    • Features
Total Film
Gaming Magazines
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe from just £3
  • Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$12
View
Trending
  • Prime Day Deals
  • Superman
  • Donkey Kong Bananza
  • Switch 2 stock
Recommended reading
The Evil Queen in hag mode from Snow White
Movies The 33 greatest Disney villains
Resident Evil Village
Games The 25 best video game villains you just love to hate
Walton Goggins as Sonny Burch in Ant-Man and the Wasp holding a shrunken building
Marvel Movies From Fallout's Walton Goggins to Game of Thrones's Kit Harington, Marvel fans are discussing the MCU's biggest wasted castings
From left to right: Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell) in the former Avengers Tower in Thunderbolts*.
Marvel Movies Marvel fans are discussing who they think should have been in the Thunderbolts line-up
Kevin Spacey in Seven
Movies 32 movies where the bad guys win
Superior Avengers #5 cover with Kristoff Vernard kissing an alt-reality Killmonger
Marvel Comics Doctor Doom's son locks lips with Killmonger as the secret of the Superior Avengers heats up
Secret Wars art by Alex Ross
Marvel Movies Sure, Avengers: Doomsday has a massive cast, but these important Secret Wars characters are still missing from the MCU
  1. Games

9 villains who just needed a little more love

Features
By Connor Sheridan published 13 February 2015

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Don't you need somebody to love?

Don't you need somebody to love?

Video game ne'er-do-wells get into the villainy business for all kinds of reasons: greed, jealousy, megalomania, maybe even because they think the hero simply needs somebody to fight. But let's take it one step further back - what causes them to fall in with such a bad crowd in the first place? Turns out that they just want what we all want, man: love.

Rough childhoods, absentee parents, lack of recognition, unrequited romances - yet we sweep them all into the same category as those one-dimensional bad guys who just want to wreck shit for no good reason. Shameful! So I say no longer. Come with me as I recognize some of gaming's most despicable villains who really just need somebody to cuddle.

Page 1 of 11
Page 1 of 11
Bowser Jr. wants to be with his mother

Bowser Jr. wants to be with his mother

I don't know what awful reproductive events transpired to bring Bowser Jr. into the world, but at the start of Super Mario Sunshine, his dad has him convinced that Princess Peach was an important part of the process. Biology aside, you can't blame Jr. for wanting the Mushroom Kingdom's vision of grace and gentleness in his life, given what must have been a pretty rough upbringing in the Bowser household. The little fella just wants a hug from a pair of arms that aren't wearing spiky bracelets.

I'm not sure what gives it away - maybe how Peach doesn't seem to recognize him, maybe that she despises his father, maybe the fact that she has soft human skin instead of a spiny turtle shell - but Jr. eventually realizes that she isn't his mother. If my dad manipulated my deep maternal longing as part of his evil schemes to kidnap a princess and rule the world, I'd probably be a bit upset. To be fair, I had parents who tried to raise me to be a good person rather than as a living, breathing tool of vengeance.

Page 2 of 11
Page 2 of 11
Skull Kid has serious abandonment issues

Skull Kid has serious abandonment issues

If four of your closest friends all decided to up and leave one day without telling you why, you'd probably be a little upset, right? Welcome to the first installment of Life Sucks with Skull Kid. Later on they briefly return, only to banish him for pulling endless mean pranks on the residents of Termina. After that, he wanders around for a while, eventually making friends with a nice little Kokiri boy who teaches him a song on his ocarina and then also disappeared for seven years.

There's no denying that the Skull Kid has a lot of mischief in his soul - that's just the way he rolls. But if all his friends didn't keep vanishing, they might be able to turn that prankster spirit toward more creative pursuits. Seriously, somebody who has the gumption and gusto to be the trick-pulling scourge of an entire kingdom could probably do some really admirable stuff if he put his mind to it. Poor Skull Kid just needs a pal to keep him on track.

Page 3 of 11
Page 3 of 11
Vaas learned the definition of insanity early on

Vaas learned the definition of insanity early on

I know what you're thinking. "Vaas doesn't need more love, he needs a life sentence or intense therapy, preferably both." And it's true that he does seem to derive a bit more joy from being a murderous, treacherous asshole than the other people on this list. But it all could have been different if he'd literally anybody to rely on aside from Citra.

If you've finished Far Cry 3, you know that Citra doesn't quite match the the noble resistance leader image she tries to cultivate. Vaas learned that a long time ago. Maybe, aside from ordering him to kill people to prove his Rakyat loyalty, she was a loving adoptive sister. But judging by the really unhealthy way Citra uses sex as a carrot-on-a-stick for her most loyal soldiers, I'm guessing there was some more creepy shit going down there. You can't blame Vaas for ending up a little bit off and betraying his people (whatever that means). You can still blame him for kidnapping outsiders and selling them into slavery though, because that's just an uncool thing to do in general.

Page 4 of 11
Page 4 of 11
David Archer is a computer

David Archer is a computer

If you didn't play Mass Effect 2's Overlord DLC, you never met the Mass Effect series' most sympathetic antagonist. I could recount the sad story of David Archer leading up to his encounter with Shepard, how his brother Gavin was using him to command the Geth to claim their armies for Cerberus To be honest, it's pretty much Rain Man, if Tom Cruise had abused Dustin Hoffman's talents for memorization and calculation by strapping him into a computer to dominate a synthetic life form instead of making a couple bucks at a blackjack table.

That's pretty much the definition of being a shitty brother, right there. Inevitably the plan goes sideways, David's consciousness is shattered, and he takes over the entire facility and kills almost all of its occupants. His story can have a happy ending if you free him from the machine and take him to the Grissom Academy, at least.

Page 5 of 11
Page 5 of 11
Dr. Wily is tired of being second fiddle

Dr. Wily is tired of being second fiddle

You might know the phrase 'publish or perish' if you're familiar with the cutthroat world of academia. It means you have to regularly conduct valuable research and publish your findings if you want to remain relevant and thus eligible for jobs or tenure - but for Dr. Wily, it was more like 'publish and perish'. Whatever brilliant contributions he made to the field of robotics, Dr. Light was always a step ahead of him, scooping up all the praise and international goodwill.

Wily just wanted some recognition for his almost-as-impressive body of work, but they don't give out runner-up Nobel Prizes. The jealousy drove him mad, and he decided to forsake love and admiration for total domination, reprogramming Dr. Light's robot masters to seek global conquest. Dr. Light rebuilt his beloved lab assistant, Rock, into a war machine to fight the Wily menace, and the bad feelings have gone on ever since. Maybe next time Light could just share the spotlight?

Page 6 of 11
Page 6 of 11
Cia fell for a forbidden love

Cia fell for a forbidden love

Ok, what's rule number one for maintainers of balance and observers of history? Aside from "don't have sex with your ancestors" and "don't tell anybody the lottery numbers"? That's right, it's "don't fall in love". But poor Cia spent a little too much time watching the era-spanning exploits of Link instead of reading the Triforce overseer rulebook, and she ends up developing a huge crush on him.

While she knows that her duties will never permit her to be with the hero in green, she becomes massively jealous of Princess Zelda, who can't seem to throw a musical instrument without hitting some incarnation of him. Those feelings (plus some demonic possession) drives her to take over Hyrule so so she can be with him? The guy who always fights and kills whoever's trying to take over Hyrule in any given week? Hm. She didn't really think this one through. But such is the weakness of a lovesick mind, I guess.

Page 7 of 11
Page 7 of 11
Gary Smith needed some parental intervention

Gary Smith needed some parental intervention

Gary Smith is really bad news in Bully. Aside from endlessly scheming to take over Bullworth Academy, he also makes it his personal mission to completely undo every little bit of social standing that new kid Jimmy Hopkins manages to cobble together (once he goes off his meds, anyway). Seriously, he probably tortures small animals when he's not busy drawing up complex schemes to turn all the school's cliques against each other.

Here's a protip for any parents reading this: if your child is very likely an undiagnosed sociopath, you probably shouldn't drop him off at a crappy boarding school, set him up with an awful therapist in town, and disappear from his life. I don't know if Gary could ever expect to live a normal life free of megalomaniacal/homicidal urges, but a little more parental involvement could have kept him from "primary antagonist" status, at the very least.

Page 8 of 11
Page 8 of 11
Revolver Ocelot's mom was never the Boss of him

Revolver Ocelot's mom was never the Boss of him

Is Revolver Ocelot a villain or a hero? That's tough to say with 100-percent certainty about almost any of Metal Gear's recurring characters, but Ocelot is a particularly dense knot of duty and deception. Since you end up shooting at him more often than not, I'm going to say he's a villain for the purposes of this article. Baddie cred established, what's love got to do (got to do) with it? Just about everything.

Ocelot is the son of The Boss and The Sorrow, but he's babynapped soon after birth by the Philosophers, the increasingly nefarious international organization both of his parents work for. Would the pair have retired from international super-soldierdom to raise their kid if given the option? I kinda doubt it, but at the very least they wouldn't have let him be raised in secret military academies to become an instrument of the Philosophers' will. Unlike most of the sad kids in this article, Ocelot's parents really did care about him - the Sorrow even agreed to let the Boss kill him rather than risk Ocelot's life - they just weren't allowed to show him that love.

Page 9 of 11
Page 9 of 11
Isair and Madae went off the tief end

Isair and Madae went off the tief end

Being the child of a demon father and an elf mother sounds kinda metal, but it actually sucks. Hard. Isair and Madae, the sibling antagonists of Icewind Dale 2, found that out when their mother ran out of the room and jumped off of a cliff as soon as she saw their wrinkly little devil wings and cloven hooves. Not a great start, they actually had a pretty decent childhood under the care of a benevolent priestess who sheltered them from the outside world.

But when that priestess passed away (I don't think she threw herself off a cliff) the townsfolk got their pitchforks and torches and proceeded to undo their kindly upbringing. Cast off and accepted neither by humans nor fiends, they strike off on their own and try to create a new world order where their kind can live without fear for their lives until a bunch of adventurers come around and boot them into another plane. To think, this all could've been avoided if people weren't so awful about the whole "half-fiend" thing.

Page 10 of 11
Page 10 of 11
No love lost

No love lost

But those are just some of the poor, villainous souls who could've done with a few more hugs in their formative years. Can you think of any more villains who just needed a little more love? Let me know in the comments below!

Want some more villainous insight? Check out these 7 minibosses who were better than the final boss, and 8 boss fight tropes that need to die

Page 11 of 11
Page 11 of 11
CATEGORIES
Android iPad iPhone PC Gaming Wii-u Nintendo PlayStation PS4 Xbox Xbox One Platforms Mobile Gaming
Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan
Social Links Navigation

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.

See more Games Features
Read more
The Evil Queen in hag mode from Snow White
The 33 greatest Disney villains
Resident Evil Village
The 25 best video game villains you just love to hate
Walton Goggins as Sonny Burch in Ant-Man and the Wasp holding a shrunken building
From Fallout's Walton Goggins to Game of Thrones's Kit Harington, Marvel fans are discussing the MCU's biggest wasted castings
From left to right: Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell) in the former Avengers Tower in Thunderbolts*.
Marvel fans are discussing who they think should have been in the Thunderbolts line-up
Kevin Spacey in Seven
32 movies where the bad guys win
Superior Avengers #5 cover with Kristoff Vernard kissing an alt-reality Killmonger
Doctor Doom's son locks lips with Killmonger as the secret of the Superior Avengers heats up
Latest in Games
A woman in a underwater machine waving during the cinematic teaser for Subnautica 2.
Krafton says the Subnautica 2 delay had nothing to do with money and was already being discussed before last week's leadership shakeup, and oh, here's a 90-second gameplay teaser
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle screenshot of Indiana
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle being a first-person only game "was a given" from the start because "if you're going to be Indiana Jones, you need to look through his eyes"
Screenshot from the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom with the product image of the Nintendo Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle on top.
A freak GameStop accident left some Nintendo Switch 2 consoles stapled – that stapler, the first staple, and the repaired Switch 2 it damaged are now being auctioned to support children's hospitals
Old School RuneScape
"There isn't FOMO and your progress matters": An MMO migration turns to revelation for some, with a World of Warcraft horde becoming a wave of RuneScape enjoyers
A woman in an underwater suit receiving a danger warning during the trailer for Subnautica 2.
Subnautica 2 reportedly delayed to 2026 "against the wishes" of devs and ousted leaders who stood to receive a $250 million bonus from publisher Krafton if it came out this year
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 screenshot of Verso, a man with black hair with white streaks running through his fringe
BioShock creator says "audiences reward" single-player games that don't have "other methods of monetization," like Baldur's Gate 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Latest in Features
Superman kisses Lois Lane in James Gunn's Superman
After years of loveless Marvel and DC movies, I hope Superman and Fantastic Four prove romantic relationships are just as important as world-saving spectacle when it comes to superhero flicks
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay running with the Switch 2 upgrade
I wanted to make a beeline for Tears of the Kingdom's ending, but Zelda's Switch 2 upgrade has forced me to slow down
Heroes 3 screenshot
The greatest strategy RPG ever is making a comeback with the publisher behind Manor Lords, and I'm ready to relive my Behemoth-collecting 2000s
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017) screenshot showing Darth Vader walking through a hangar flanked by two stormtroopers
I've spent 11 hours fighting AI in EA's Star Wars Battlefront 2, and it's taking me back to the glory days of PS2 skirmish modes
Dollman is lost in thought in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
This is now a Dollman fan account: Death Stranding 2's puppet pal makes for my favorite PlayStation duo since Ratchet & Clank
Agent 47 on a mission in Hitman: World of Assassination
I'm loving Hitman: World of Assassination on Switch 2, but the game's always-online requirement is worse than ever
  1. A Gundam style mech in Mecha Break
    1
    Mecha Break review: "This mech battler makes up for lacking customization with a varied roster that lets me live out my Evangelion fantasy"
  2. 2
    Death Stranding 2: On the Beach review: "This tarpunk delivery epic is more Metal Gear Solid than ever, for better and worse"
  3. 3
    Rematch review: "As with Rocket League, the just-one-more-game pull is magnetic"
  4. 4
    Tron: Catalyst review: "Disc slinging is a thrill in this gorgeous rendition of the series, but I'm let down by a time-loop story that falls flat"
  5. 5
    FBC: Firebreak review: "A disappointingly bland multiplayer FPS that's missing far too much of what made Control special"
  1. David Corenswet as Superman inside the Fortress of Solitude in James Gunn's Superman.
    1
    Superman review: "A triumphant reinvention and a promising start for the DCU"
  2. 2
    Jurassic World Rebirth Review: "An unscary sequel that needed a little more time in amber"
  3. 3
    M3GAN 2.0 review: "A bold sequel with a slightly underwhelming conclusion"
  4. 4
    28 Years Later Review: "Enough terror, splatter and suspense to satisfy”
  5. 5
    Predator: Killer of Killers review: "Great characters, thrilling action, and gorgeous Arcane-esque animation"
  1. Lee Jung-jae as Gi-hun in Squid Game season 3
    1
    Squid Game season 3 review: "A staggeringly excellent final season wraps up one of the greatest Netflix shows ever"
  2. 2
    Ironheart review: "A relic of Marvel's content-at-all-costs era"
  3. 3
    Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 review: "The show's most assured run of episodes to date"
  4. 4
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 8 spoiler review: 'The Reality War' is "a mix of the good, the bad, and the truly baffling"
  5. 5
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 7 spoiler review: 'Wish World' is "an exciting and ambitious" start to the season finale, with hints of WandaVision

GamesRadar+ is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Review guidelines
  • Write for us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...