Game Villains Who Are Actually Gorgeous In Real Life
A gripping narrative, an immersive world, and engaging gameplay — each of these aspects contributes to a video game's potential success. That said, let's face it: A video game lives and dies by its protagonist. Whether players are stepping into the boots of the green-garbed Hero of Hyrule, Link, or fixing to turn ol' papadukes into a steaming bowl of zuppa di Zeus courtesy of Kratos, a compelling hero — or antihero — means everything.
And, sure, seeking justice for a dire misdeed, preventing a galactic cataclysm, or protecting a youngster who just might be the saving grace of humanity won't hurt your protag's resume. But, realistically, without an equally intriguing baddie to justify your hero's gloomy mug on that cover art, they're nothing but a glorified neighborhood watchman (or, of course, watchwoman).
A good villain challenges your hero, quite literally changing the game and starting your goodie-two-shoes down a journey of trials, tribulations, and self-discovery. Needless to say, they're pivotal to most games' plots. And while you may be familiar with gaming's vast pantheon of ne'er-do-wells, there's a decent chance you don't know what the actors who lend their talents to these big bads look like. These are the gorgeous faces behind gaming's most sinister sinners, psychopaths, and supervillains.
Higgs - Troy Baker (Death Stranding)
Death Stranding sees protagonist Sam traversing the ruins of America. This means navigating dangerous environments while hiding from ghostly BTs (or "beached things") and avoiding the MULEs and Homo Demen terrorists populating the game world. Needless to say, Higgs, the big bad head honcho, makes those fools look like amateurs.
Thankfully, the actor lending both his voice and face to the leader of the Homo Demens is considerably less volatile than his virtual counterpart. Troy Baker is a veteran of video game voice acting, having lent his talents to a variety of good guys (Joel in The Last of Us, Booker DeWitt in Bioshock: Infinite) and not-so-good guys (Pagan Min in Far Cry 4, The Maw in The Medium). Interestingly enough, Death Stranding wasn't Baker's first time working with Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima, as the actor lent his talent to Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, portraying a younger Revolver Ocelot.
During Death Stranding's launch event, Baker opened up about the traditional hero-slash-villain dichotomy. He explained to video game journalist Geoff Keighley, "There's forces that act for your hero and forces that act against. There's no 'heroes' and no 'villains,' because ... from the other perspective, I'm the hero."
Catherine - Laura Bailey (Catherine)
There are family friendly video games meant to be played with loved ones — parents, siblings, even one's spouse. Then, there are games like Catherine. The 2011 Atlus title, which combined puzzle-solving gameplay with elements of dating sims and a hefty helping of psychological and supernatural horror, is the definition of risque — mostly thanks to its namesake: Catherine.
Early on, main protagonist Vincent (voiced, incidentally, by Troy Baker) is torn between two women: Katherine — his longtime girlfriend — and the mysterious Catherine. The former is a mature, family-oriented woman. The latter... isn't. Vincent meets Catherine-with-a-C at a bar and they quickly — and drunkenly — get to bumpin' uglies, endangering his relationship with Katherine-with-a-K and promptly plunging Vincent into a literal living nightmare.
The voice behind those big blue anime peepers is none other than voice actor supreme Laura Bailey. As talented as she is diverse, Bailey has played virtual ventriloquist to hundreds of video game characters, from Mary Jane Watson in Marvel's Spider-Man, to the polarizing Abby in the Last of Us Part 2, to Gears 5's Kait Diaz. Gamers with one foot stuck firmly in the anime sphere might also recognize her as the longtime voice of Dragon Ball Z's Trunks.
Solas - Gareth David-Lloyd (Dragon Age: Inquisition)
Of all the dirty, rotten scoundrels populating the pantheon of fantasy video game baddies, Solas is in a league of his own — largely because he is just a little too okay with genocide. Posing as a trusted companion of the Inquisitor and a powerful Hedge Mage, Solas seems to check off quite a few boxes. If only he hadn't — spoilers ahead — created the Veil, a metaphysical barrier between the world and the Fade to seal away the Evanuris, unintentionally dooming the entire Elven race (Dragon Age is a lot). There's more, but explaining his entire plan would take... well, the lifespan of an Elf. The important part is that he had good intentions, but he also sought to basically destroy the world in order to rectify his mistake and save the Elven race.
Gareth David-Lloyd, fortunately, doesn't appear to have world-obliterating aspirations. The Welsh actor is best known for playing the ill-fated Ianto Jones, the romantic partner of the immortal Captain Jack Harkness on the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood. He's also appeared in over two dozen (mostly British) shows, mini-series, and TV movies. Notably, David-Lloyd appeared in 33 episodes of the long-running BBC show Casualty.
Second Sister - Elizabeth Grullón (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order)
From Darth Vader to Jabba the Hutt to Darth Maul and countless others, Star Wars is a franchise known for its villains. So when a member of the Sith Inquisitorius named Second Sister was revealed to be the main antagonist of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, casual fans may have been left scratching their heads. The more fanatical of the fandom, however, might've recognized the villainess from her Star Wars canon premiere in a 2018 issue of the Darth Vader comic series.
Fallen Order sees Second Sister — AKA Trilla Suduri — hot on the trail of protagonist and Jedi fugitive Cal Kestis. To make a long story short, it's eventually revealed that Suduri, a former Jedi, was abandoned by her master Cere Junda, only to be tortured by the Empire. Her mind warped by the dark side, Suduri was twisted into a sadistic Jedi hunter.
Second Sister's voice actor, Elizabeth Grullón, is a newcomer to video game acting; her only other video game voice credit is Niesha, a companion character in the game Technomancer. That said, she's graced the small screen in a number of television roles, appearing in shows like Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, and Lucifer.
Cortana - Jen Taylor (Halo 5)
To put the popularity of the Halo franchise's Cortana into perspective, all one needs to do is recall how the AI's name was lent to Microsoft's "Siri rival" in order to convey a "helpful, intelligent, intuitive character that you get to know and trust over time" (via NBC News). That's not how one might categorize ol' Corty's behavior circa Halo 5.
Long story short: Cortana entered a state of "rampancy" in Halo 4 which caused her to essentially overthink herself to madness. She managed to avoid slipping too far into the corrupted state — but following a too-complex-to-explain-here series of events, she decided that AI like herself were meant to enforce order throughout the galaxy. Yikes.
Jen Taylor — Cortana's voice actor — has been portraying the babe in blue since 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved, though she'd already been lending her voice acting chops to nearly a dozen titles (Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Luigi's Mansion, to name a few) before she landed the longtime gig. While Taylor has appeared on the TV series Leverage and Everything Sucks!, she's also portrayed the big bad Salem in the anime RWBY. Taylor is set to return to the Halo-verse as Cortana in the Halo TV series.
Shao Kahn - Ike Amadi (Mortal Kombat 11)
Ah, Mortal Kombat. Where would the gamers of yesteryear be without the joys of tearing beating hearts from chests and blasting foes' flesh off courtesy of that loudmouth Sindell? The MK games are a treasure trove of treacherous tyrants — the most tyrannical of which has got to be Shao Kahn. Introduced in 1993's Mortal Kombat 2, the hulking Konqueror is one of the series' most ubiquitous and devastating baddies — and the incarnation that players traded blows with in 2019's Mortal Kombat 11 is no exception.
The difference between this version of the Outworld antagonist? Save for this guy's more reptilian vibe, MK11's Kahn marks the villain's first portrayal by Nigerian-American Ike Amadi (who also portrayed Cyrax in the same game). Though his name might not be as recognizable as some of the other actors on this list, Amadi boasts an unquestionably impressive and diverse range of video game performances — from William Lake in Death Stranding to Aaron Davis (AKA The Prowler) in Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Amadi has also lent his voice to a ton of TV shows and movies, including Love, Death & Robots, Avengers Assemble, and the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge, in which he played Jax.
Paz Ortega Andrade (Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker) - Tara Strong
Paz Ortega Andrade had it rough. In Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, not only is it suggested that she was tortured by Skullface, but the Phantom Pain prologue showcases the removal of a bomb from her belly. And then the detonation of a second bomb located... elsewhere. Still, she wasn't exactly innocent either. Enter 2010's Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
The short and sweet of it goes like this: Paz, a highly trained Cipher agent posing as a peace-loving high school student, stole Metal Gear ZEKE and threatened to frame protagonist Big Boss by bombing the East Coast. She'd hoped this would cause the public to label his organization, MSF, an extremist cult. Needless to say, she was defeated by Big Boss — and then all that belly bomb stuff went down in Ground Zeroes.
If Paz's voice sounds familiar, that's because she's played by Tara Strong, a voice actor who's portrayed many beloved childhood cartoon characters (Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls, Timmy in Fairly Oddparents, and Raven in Teen Titans, among loads others). She also played Harley Quinn in the Arkham games, a role that she is set to reprise in 2022's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Sephiroth - Tyler Hoechlin (Final Fantasy 7 Remake)
Any RPG gamer worth their materia collection knows the story of Final Fantasy 7's Sephiroth, the former SOLDIER First Class operative-turned-psychopathic supervillain and self-proclaimed god. Killer of Aerith and ultimate momma's boy, Sephiroth has gone down in RPG history as one of the most badass — and bonkers — baddies in gaming. And while his original iteration didn't boast any spoken dialogue (nobody in the original FF7 did), the FFVII Remake version of ol' Sephy isn't afraid to deliver an ominous line or two every now and again.
And ominous those lines are delivered by the ever-talented Tyler Hoechlin, who TV fans might recognize as the Arrowverse's Superman (appearing in Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash, Batwoman, Legends of Tomorrow, and 2021's Superman & Lois alongside Elizabeth Tulloch). In the early 2000s, he played baseball prodigy Martin Brewer in Seventh Heaven, after which he'd go on to portray Derek Hale in the supernatural drama Teen Wolf from 2011 to 2017. Hoechlin has also appeared in a slew of smaller TV roles, popping up in police procedural shows like Castle and CSI: Miami.
Kerrigan - Tricia Helfer (StarCraft 2)
Terran Ghost-turned-so-called Zerg Queen of Blades, Sarah Kerrigan started off in StarCraft as a promising young agent of the Sons of Korhal resistance movement. After being captured and mutated by the Zerg, she became an invaluable asset to the Overmind — which she promptly replaced following its destruction in StarCraft 2. Another villain with an infinitely complex origin story — so infinitely complex that it spans multiple games and novels — Kerrigan's tale is both terrible and tragic. This might make it difficult for some gamers to accept the fact that the Queen of Blades shares a voice actor with Mass Effect's friendly AI EDI.
Kerrigan's voice actor in StarCraft 2, Tricia Helfer, is best known for her exceptional portrayal of the seductive lady-suited Cylon Number Six in the early 2000's Battlestar Galactica reboot — both its 2003 miniseries and its full-fledged 2004 show. Helfer has appeared in a host of television shows since — Criminal Minds, Supernatural, Chuck, and Two and a Half Men, to name just a few. Her stint on Lucifer, in which she played the Goddess of All Creation — and Lucifer's mother — further cements Helfer's ability to play all-powerful characters with ease.
Mr. Negative - Stephen Oyoung (Marvel's Spider-Man)
Mister Negative — born Martin Li — is another one of those villains that it's hard not to feel sorry for. Injected with the experimental "Devil's Breath" serum, the transformation that then-young Li underwent caused an explosion that killed both of his parents. Eventually, after amassing a considerable fortune in China, he opened the F.E.A.S.T. homeless shelter.
Sounds all well and good until you remember that Mister Negative is both the leader of the Demons gang and is obsessed with exacting revenge.
Stephen Oyoung and Martin Li might look and sound alike, but we'd say that the former is a lot more well adjusted than the latter. Talking to ComicBookMovie.com, Oyoung dished on portraying one of the few major characters of Asian descent in the Spider-Man universe. He explained, "To be one of the few Asian faces in that world is a dream come true," adding that "bringing out the human side to the monster was the most satisfying part of the job."
An accomplished voice actor, Oyoung has lent his talent to games like Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, and Fallout 76. He's also appeared in live action shows, including How to Get Away with Murder, The Last Ship, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow.
Excella Gionne - Nina Fehren (Resident Evil 5)
If there's one thing aspiring baddies need to know before they try their luck at supervillainy in the Resident Evil universe, it's this: Do not work with Albert freaking Wesker. Apparently, though, Excella Gionne didn't get the memo. Although the Director of Tricell Africa proved invaluable to Wesker, he would go on to betray Gionne. How? Why, by injecting her with a virus that would reject her DNA and transform her into a kaiju-sized monstrosity of flailing tentacles and massive pulsating pustules, of course.
Luckily for fans with a healthy fear of devastating viruses and eldritch horrors, Nina Fehren — who provided both voiceover and motion capture for the dubious business woman — looks a whole lot more like Excella pre-mutation. Though she's appeared in a number of shorts, TV movies, and shows — including Entourage, How to Get Away with Murder, and Revenge — Resident Evil 5's Excella marks Fehren's sole video game credit. Still, it seems as though she enjoyed the experience, telling Resident Evil Realm that she was "thrilled to be a part of such a popular game series." She added that, while she doesn't play many video games, "now that [she's] in one, [she's] definitely going to start!"
Vaas - Michael Mando (Far Cry 3)
As an actor, you know you've done a bang-up job when you inspire the character that you wind up portraying. In a G4 X-Play segment, Michael Mando — the face and voice of Far Cry 3's Vaas — revealed that, when he auditioned for the role, "the character of Vaas did not exist." He went on to explain that, while Ubisoft had a vague idea of the character's physical and behavioral traits, Mando flipped the script quite literally and gave them "anything but what they were looking for."
Incidentally, Mando didn't get the part. However, he did eventually receive a call from the Far Cry 3 devs who'd decided to develop a whole new character based upon his audition — a character that looked just like him and shared the same insane vibes as his take on the original role.
Mando's performance as Vaas might delight video game fans — but the Canadian actor's got a little something for everyone in his diverse repertoire, from nail-biter dramas like Orphan Black, The Killing, and Better Call Saul to campier fare like Psych. He's even popped up in the MCU, where he played Mac Gargan (Scorpion in the comics) in Spider-Man: Homecoming.