50 Video Game Characters: 19

"Now I know you blind, man - but you gotta see this"



19. Carl Johnson (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas)

Growing up in gang-infested Los Santos, Carl "CJ" Johnson had no choice but to be wrapped up in the Grove Street Families business. But after the death of his brother Brian, CJ resolved to get out at age 18, moving to Liberty City on the east coast. But after the death of his mom(s)(notice a pattern forming?) five years later, Carl is forced back for the funeral and after seeing drugs running rampant in his city, he decides to stay and help out the Family.

Over the course of the game, Carl goes from small-time hoodlum, robbing houses and shooting rival gangs, to some big time shit. He manages a rapper(who's career he ruined earlier), he robs a casino in a big time heist, he invades a secret govenment facility for a jetpack. San Andreas, if you haven't gathered yet, is a pretty wild game, especially if you consider past game, which didn't have much diversity in terms of activity and vehicles.

Speaking of diversity, Carl Johnson is also a fairly positive depiction of a black man. At least in video games, where most of them are mainly gangsters. I mean yeah Carl is still a gangster but he aims not to bring people down, but to bring them up. To get rid of drugs and bring the GSF back together and all that good shit. Plus he's more of a step up in terms of character than previous GTA protagonists(an angry, unlikeable Italian and a nondescript mute white guy) and it gave Rockstar the go ahead to put more diversification into the game. Since then we've had a boring Serbian man, a Jewish biker and a Dominican bodyguard/business partner to a fairly non-stereotypical gay nightclub owner. Good on you guys.

Best moment: Basically planning to rob a casino for 1/3rd of the entire damn game all by himself. That takes some fucking brains.

50 Video Game Characters: 20

"Oh, all right, Uncle Ulty REALLY want you to paint his portrait!"



20. Ultros (Final Fantasy VI)

Kefka may be a jester, but Ultros is the only real clown in FF6. I mean look at him. He is a giant purple octopus. And he can talk.

Ultros pops up from time to time in the game as a recurring boss, showing up to chew the ear off the heroes, both figuratively and literally as Ultros is very carnivorous and desires the taste of human taste. As well as a different kind of flesh, since he often has his eyes on the ladies in the party.

It's not often a character like him appears in a Final Fantasy game. As a comic character who provides a light comic air to his parts of the game, but as a boss, he's not to be take lightly. Fierce, funny, freakish. That's Uncle Ulty.

Best moment: His final appearance at the Coliseum, acting as receptionist. He's got debts to pay, just like the rest of us.

50 Video Game Characters: 21

"I may be 32, but I still believe I'm a fairy!"



21. Tingle (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask)

who the fuck let you in

Tingle is an odd character. He's a short, tubby man who believes he's a fairy and shows it by wearing a skintight green bodysuit. He also has a weird fixation on gems, whether they be rupees, force gems or kinstones.

Tingle is just...Tingle. He's this weird little man who seems so out of place in the Zelda universe. But he's there. Whether it be in alternate universe Termina, selling maps for his father's business, or the Hyrule of the far-flung future, running his own weird little island. Tingle is eternal. And he can't be stopped.

And his father is ashamed of him.

Best moment: When you talk to his brothers turning the wheel on Tingle Island, one of them reveals that he's not related Tingle. He was shipwrecked and is being forced into labor. So Tingle isn't only a weird creep but also owns a human being.

You didn't land on Tingle Island, David Jr. Tingle Island landed on you.

50 Video Game Characters: 22

"I am only a man."



22. Commander Video (Bit.Trip Beat)

From birth comes death. From all, nothing. From beat, life. There is the rub. It is all inevitability. Simply.

To understand one's self, one must delve deeper than the surface. One must explore the core of what makes us all. The drive, the fear, the hope, the fury, the sorrow, the pain, the joy, the end.

But what of when the sorrow overtakes our bodies? What then, when the void fills us? Do you we simply fold like laundry or do we explode, whether it be inward or outward? We press on, we grow older.

Like a long-distance runner, time is ever moving, never stopping. We age, we move, we continue forward eternally.

Eternally, that is, until we reach what must be the end. A life resigned to fate. The end. It is unstoppable, inevitable.

Life is forever, from birth until death, in a constant state of flux. From on end of the cycle to the next. And where do we part from there? Another life, a soul inhabiting one corporeal frame to the next? An eternity in paradise or damnation?

There is none. There is only. Letting go.

Life is.

Simply.






doctor videogames here is the mascot for the bit dort trip games and why the fr*ck is he pixels he's from 2009 this some bullshit.

50 Video Game Characters: 23

"It's all part of the plan"




23. Revolver Ocelot (Metal Gear Solid)

The son of the Boss, Adamska rose through the ranks to become the Major in his own specialized Spetsnaz team dubbed "Ocelot unit." He's kind of a smug jerk and also totally in love with Naked Snake(ocelot x snake squeeee lolz). Major Ocelot grew to appreciate the power of the revolver after a suggestion from his crush that he should use the gun instead of the standard Makarov handgun. Oh also he was a triple agent and weird shit and whatever who cares.

Flash forward like 40 years and Revolver Ocelot is now super evil and also insane. Dude does so much weird shit now that he's an old man and harassing Naked Snake's clone son. He developed a torture fetish from his days in Russia, he starts calling himself Shalashaska, he pretends to absorb Liquid Snake's essence into his arm, he does this thing:



And through it all, he gets more done that the fucking protagonist. He is, for lack of a better understanding, better than Solid Snake.

Over the course of the Metal Gear Solid series, Revolver Ocelot is the only character that truly becomes as outrageous as the story is. Sure, Raiden and Snake and Otacon are running around pretending this all makes sense, but Ocelot just goes batshit nuts.

Best moment:

50 Video Game Characters: 24

"It figures the only thing in this damn city NOT on fire is the one thing we need to burn down"



24. Francis (Left 4 Dead)

Let's just get this out of the way right now. Francis doesn't like you. Even if you don't know him, Francis hates you. But it's not your fault, Francis is a hateful man. Throughout the game, as four survivors are finding their way out of Pennsylvania, biker Francis expresses his disdain for everything from cops to airplanes to stairs to Ayn Rand(although he has a point with that one).

A completely brash asshole and a total idiot, Francis asserts his dickish nature the whole time, constantly talking about how much he hates everything, especially all the "goddamned vampires" running around trying to kill him and his teammates. Suffice it to say, Francis' one-liners are a welcome cut to all the tension in Left 4 Dead.

Best moment: After getting on his team's nerves enough with his hatred, he's finally asked what he doesn't hate. His answer?

He doesn't hate vests.

50 Video Game Characters: 25

"Yes, yes the city years, I like to call them. I was a raccoon of action, hm?"



25. Tom Nook (Animal Crossing)

Tom Nook is the eyes and ears of your new town. He's also the fucking pocket.

Nook will bleed you dry at every opportunity. Once you find yourself a house, you have to pay him the mortgage. Once you pay the mortgage, he'll expand your house. When you do that, he'll do it again. And again. Your money is his money and no matter how many times you pay him off, you'll still owe him. If not for the house, then for the fact that his is the only racket in town. Sure, every so often a black market dealer will come around, but Nook will presumably rat him out to the cops so his monopoly stays in the black.

Tortimer may be mayor, but make no mistake: he is merely a puppet figurehead. Tom Nook is in control. Your little town is a Plutocracy, that in which the wealthiest rule. And Tom Nook is the richest little raccoon in the business.

And he owns you.

Best Moment: The fact that you can't refuse your house expanse no matter what. Fucker.

50 Video Game Characters: 26

"I am looking at you look at me...And our eyes meet...And we go even deeper...Into the center of our world...through a weird and wonderful tunnel..."



26. King TV Dinnah (Little King's Story)

Ruler of the Primetime Kingdom, TV Dinnah broadcasts his signal all over the world using his head. Yes, that TV in a suit you're looking at is TV Dinnah. If you think that's weird, you should check out the guy in the egg. Or the king made of junk.

Regardless, TV Dinnah is a man of brains. He challenges King Corobo to a geography quiz. Get where he's hiding and you'll get a chance to attack him via the Western channel(in sepiatone). But get it wrong and you and your team have to deal with a number of other channels that punish you. The Baseball channel will throw balls at you, the Cooking channel will drop giant knives at you, etc.

King TV Dinnah is one of the most bizarre aspects of the already bizarre Little King's Story. A television obsessed king who as hypnotized his subjects into becoming couch potatoes with the giant eye on the television that is his head. Which he broadcasts on a giant television in the middle of the kingdom. Weird guy.

Best moment: The beginning of the fight that turns into an 8-bit title screen of "KING VS KING! FIGHT! PRESS A!" It also has an 8-bit version of Rhapsody in Blue(TV Dinnah's theme).

50 Video Game Characters: 27

"Shake it, baby"



27. Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem)


Duke Nukem is an alpha male. Or at least that's what he wants you to believe. Originally, he was a semi-simpering couch potato with a pink tanktop, a machine gun and a love of Oprah. However, come the third game in the series, Duke was transformed into a shaded, cigar-chomping, macho man spouting stolen one-liners from better heroes.

So yeah, Duke Nukem is a violent sexist asshole. But he's no better than any Tom, Dick or Arnold from the 80s. That's all Duke is. One overblown doofy(doof nufem) action hero parody turned to 11. And it works for him. It's a great evolution for the most American video game character of all time.

Best moment: His promise to a monster that he'll "tear off your head and shit down your neck." Which he proceeds to do after killing him. Complete with newspaper in hand.

50 Video Game Characters: Twahnty-Eight

"WALUIGI. WANT. KATE PLUS ATE."



28. Wah(Wahhhhhh)

WALUIGI NUMBER ONE

Best moment: Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

50 Video Game Characters: 29

"Objection: This unit is not for sale, meatbag"



29. HK-47 (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic)

BioWare loves going back to wells when it comes to video game characters. Useless mentors, agressive psychotics, honor-bound ass-kickers. All the same archetypes tend to pop up. But no matter how many times they try to recreate the snippy robot sidekick, they will never beat their original: HK-47.

An assassin droid in the same vein as IG-88, HK-47 was built in the style of the classic C-3PO protocol droid model(meaning he has a very human build and also talks like a butler). But here's where it gets wacky!!!!!! See, HK-47 hates organic lifeforms! In actuality, it makes HK as a character even better as his deep disdain wriggles out of his AI with the wryest expressions of sociopathic dialogue.

As you speak more with your robot pal who's fun to be with, you begin to delve deeper into the droid's history, revealing he was built to kill anyone who might distabilize the galaxy and has done jobs between serving "meat bags" masters including acting as a hitman for the Hutt mafia. Also, he's killed every previous owner he's had.

But don't worry. He'll assure you that this time is different.

Best moment: His assertion that he had nothing to do with Bochaba's death. Well...he had very little to do with it, at least.

50 Video Game Characters: 30

"I suppose the doubters think you can paint a picture without soiling your smock..."



30. Sander Cohen (Bioshock)

Poet, composer, sculptor, playwright. Sander Cohen is a jack of all trades. He wears many hats and it just so happens one of those hats happens to be another human head.

Always misunderstood on the surface, Cohen traveled below to Rapture to escape what he called "doubters." In Rapture, he became what some would describe as a "lap dog" for Andrew Ryan, designing propaganda for Ryan when he wasn't creating his own works. Once the Rapture Civil War broke out, Cohen's works obviously went less and less noticed. Between the lack of recognition(which Cohen described as a return of doubters) and his own extensive splicing, Cohen went insane and locked down Fort Frolic, leaving him and his former disciples trapped.

What I love about Sander Cohen is he is the "tortured artist" to the extreme. A lost soul driven mad from poor reviews. And genetic mutation. It's a shame that aren't as many interesting characters in the Bioshock universe.

Best moment: His Audio Diary of a work he calls "The Wild Bunny," a mad diatribe on his curse of entertaining. He begs to take the bunny ears off but he can't.