The Most Controversial Characters In Games

Listen, not every single character is a winner. For every Sonic the Hedgehog or Mega Man, there's must be an Awesome Possum or Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel. Sadly, lightning isn't caught in the bottle every time. Mistakes will be made, and bad characters are just a fact of fictional life. Sometimes, though, characters can go beyond being simply bad and can stir up some real controversy. Whether it's due to poor characterization, iffy design, or the subversion of fan expectations, there occasionally comes a character that people just aren't cool with.

With all of that in mind, the following list will take a look at these pariahs of the gaming world, many of whom were even featured in pretty decent games. Some of these characters deserved better, while some of them probably would have been better off staying in someone's sketchbook and never seeing the light of day. Prepare yourselves; this isn't going to be pretty.

Adolf Hitler is ... well, he's obviously not a popular guy, so it's not unexpected that the mad Führer's inclusion in a video game would cause a stir. In fact, Germany exerted quite an effort in the years following World War II to scrub Nazi symbolism from the public consciousness, including removing the Swastika from buildings and enforcing strict bans on Nazi-related content in popular culture. Even films that didn't receive censorship but featured Nazi imagery, like 2004's Downfall, received significant backlash for their portrayals of the Nazi party.

Fast-forward several decades, and the content ban was still very much prevalent in Wolfenstein: The New Order, Bethesda's reboot of the Wolfenstein series. The first game in the Wolfenstein series to be officially released in Germany, the German version of The New Order removed references to the Third Reich and replaced the Swastika with a different symbol. Things reached a boiling point when Wolfenstein 2's appearance from Hitler himself was edited, removing his mustache and the initials on his monogrammed bathrobe in the game's German release. 

Outcry from gamers led to Germany's Entertainment Software Self-Regulation Body, also known as the USK (essentially their version of the ESRB), to reevaluate their position on the controversial imagery, approaching them through the same lens they would with films or print media. The content ban was lifted, with the USK agreeing to judge video games on a case-by-case basis, rather than instituting a full-on ban on the offending imagery.

Conker's Bad Fur Day blew people's minds when it came out, and right at the center of that mind-explosion was its adorable lead character, the titular Conker. An adorable creation with big, bright eyes a fluffy tail, Conker was best known at the time for appearances in Diddy Kong Racing and the kid-oriented Conker's Pocket Tales. Conker looked like something out of a Disney film, rather than the South Park-esque adventure he'd eventually inhabit.

In an interview with IGN, the game's lead artist, Chris Seavor, said that his team "were basically given no boundaries" while designing Bad Fur Day. IGN points out that it was this lack of censorship that resulted in a hilarious game that used parodies of major Hollywood films for its set pieces, as well as "graphic violence, sexual innuendos, drug abuse, and LOADS of toilet humor." Naturally, this extra dirty game from the normally family-friendly Nintendo, as well as the lead character's cutesy design that was totally at odds with the game's content, drew quite a bit of ire.

As noted by the LA Times in an article on the controversy, KB Toys refused to carry the game in their stores, while parents expressed shock and disgust toward Nintendo. One mother compared the situation to being "like Disney releasing pornography." One can't help but wonder if the reaction would have been less intense had Conker's Bad Fur Day been released by any company other than Nintendo.

Forget about Batman for a second (that felt weird to say): the Arkham Knight's greatest enemy is actually expectation. The deck was stacked against this international militia leader from the very beginning. Even before Batman: Arkham Knight was released in stores, it was theorized that the titular Arkham Knight was the game's adaptation of the character Red Hood, aka Jason Todd. Still, Rocksteady insisted that the Knight was a brand new character, saying, "We hadn't in the previous games introduced someone new to the universe." This was presumably their opportunity to do so, teaming with DC Comics' Geoff Johns in creating the "new" villain.

However, about halfway through the game's story, Batman flashes back to watching the supposed death of his second Robin, Jason Todd. It was at this point that gamers realized they'd been duped. Heck, when the Knight is finally unmasked, he immediately dons a red mask before going back into battle, just to hammer it home that the Knight was only technically a new character. This was just an alternative origin story for a character who'd been around in the comics for years, the "Arkham Knight" identity being the only new aspect. As Forbes pointed out, "It works within the game, but it was more than a little deceptive for Rocksteady to insist his identity would shock and amaze us all." No matter which way you cut it, the twist was lame and fans were right to feel duped.

Mr. Game & Watch, for those unfamiliar, is the mascot of a series of handheld games made by Nintendo in the '80s and '90s, some of which recreated arcade games and others which were original titles. Mr. Game & Watch was officially given his name when he was added to Super Smash Bros. Melee as a playable character. Possibly the most interesting aspect of his character in the Smash Bros. series is that his many attacks manifest as animations referencing different installments of the classic Game & Watch games. Unfortunately, one of these animations didn't go over well in 2018.

The controversy arose when Mr. Game & Watch showed off a fire-based move during a Japanese livestream of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which included the character in a loincloth with a feather on his head, reminiscent of problematic "native" imagery. As pointed out by Screen Rant, the way this attack was depicted is based upon the 1982 video game Fire Attack. Fan backlash was immediate, but to Nintendo's credit, they didn't simply try to sweep this faux pas under the rug. In a statement from Nintendo, they explained that they had actually planned on releasing an update that removed the offensive animation, but had not yet done so. "The original game on which this depiction of the character is based was released more than three decades ago and does not represent our company values today," they explained.

Honestly, is there a more divisive character in gaming history than Metal Gear Solid's Raiden? The poor fella had the deck stacked against him from the beginning, as his very existence was revealed as the long payoff to a set-up from MGS series mastermind Hideo Kojima. Early demos for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty featured franchise hero Solid Snake as the main focus, but when excited fans bought the game, they discovered that those demo sequences were all from the first chapter, which ends with Snake's apparent death. Afterwards, players were thrust into the role of new character Raiden for the rest of the game, which led to many people feeling cheated.

These days, Raiden does have his defenders. In fact, in a retrospective on MGS2, HeadStuff points out that the player's feelings of betrayal toward the switcheroo were likely built up by Kojima in order to help them sympathize with Raiden, who was similarly manipulated and struggled to find his own identity. Kojima responded to Western audience's complaints over Raiden's "androgynous" appearance in an odd way, by creating a cowardly and effeminate character in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater who is modeled and named after Raiden.

Raiden eventually led another game, the hack-and-slash spinoff Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which still received flak from fans over its deviation from the normal MGS formula. Raiden just can't catch a break.