You Hate Them, But Should You? 

There’s a difference between hating a a character and hating the idea of a character. Kai Leng is the latter. It’s the video game equivalent of nuclear heat in pro wrestling. It’s a case of the writer snatching the controls out of the players hands and giving Shepard and co. a chronic case of cutscene incompetence to amplify the glory of their self-indulgent GMPC Gary Stu pet villain, and resenting the writer as a result. Shamus Young said it best in his retrospective: “Instead of giving us an interesting villain, the writer gives us a bland villain and tries to make up the difference with a crazy costume. And since the writer doesn’t have the talent or vision to make the villain seem impressive with wit or clever plans, they drag Shepard down with lame dialog and cutscene incompetence until the villain looks impressive in comparison.” I’m also not sure how anyone can find killing him cathartic. You didn’t defeat him in gameplay through skills you developed over the course of the game, like with Saren in ME1. You defeated him in a cutscene because the writer allowed it by taking away his plot armor. We also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that this supposedly cathartic moment is only made possible by Shepard and co. once again being cursed by cutscene incompetence. Shepard and co. turning their backs to Leng without making sure he’s dead. Your squad mates looking out the window for no reason instead of covering the door. Shepard somehow not hearing Leng’s footsteps and gasping breaths. This was not about catharsis, it was about giving Leng an “awesome” send off he did nothing to deserve.

The great thing about Oblivion, the essential NPC's lost their protection after their quests were completed or closed off due to story, why Bethesda didn't continue with this permutation I have no clue. Infinite immunity is dull and uncreative, damn you Maven Black-briar, and half of Starfield.

In the original Persona 3 the social links were designed with the expectation that you would only be able to complete some of them in a single playthrough. Dedicated players eventually discovered a way to complete them all in a single playthrough but the scheduling required was so strict that even if you followed a guide perfectly you would not have a single day of free time. When FES came out despite adding Aigis as a social link, they made it much easier to max all social links by requiring less hang outs between rank ups. Because completing every social link in a single playthrough was realistically achievable in FES they added Orpheus Telos as a reward for doing so. I think the Gourmet King worked better with the original design idea of only so many social links being intended to be completed in a single playthrough. He was a dumb insufferable joke character that you didn't have to deal with for any reason other than curiosity. If you did choose to use your time to hang out with somebody like him then the joke was on you because you chose to spend your limited time on him rather than better, more interesting characters. After FES him being a terrible person is no longer amusing because hanging out with him is no longer a completely optional choice if you wish to complete every social link to unlock Orpheus Telos (or get an achievement in Reload). Even if you don't care about doing every social link the rebalancing of the social links means that over winter break you will likely have only his social link to do if you haven't done it already, railroading the player into either spending time with somebody so unlikable or wasting their time doing nothing.

Sounds like there was an easy fix for the star field character, if you try to harm him, make him laugh and say "do you really think I would risk coming in person?" then flicker and disappear as a hologram or something

The character I hate most in video games isn’t actually a bad guy or even rude, he’s just so incompetent that he’s almost single-handedly responsible for ruining the NCR. I’m talking about General Oliver. If you talk to the NCR’s middle management like Colonel Hsu at Camp McCarran or Ranger Jackson at the Mojave Outpost, you find that they’re actually pretty competent, but are being hamstrung by General Oliver’s asinine orders. You never actually see him until the very end of the game, but you hear all about how much this guy sucks and how he’s almost single-handedly crippling the NCR. Mr House will tell you all about his terrible strategy for holding Hoover Dam, where he’s basically using the NCR troopers to Zerg Rush the Legion. He’s doing this to overshadow Hanlon, who used snipers to take out their Centurions and blew up the troopers at Boulder City when they routed. The straightforward, head to head slugging match is literally the only type of conflict that the Legion has the clear advantage in, and yet he made the battlefield that way because he wanted to win an imaginary dick measuring contest with Hanlon. If the courier hadn’t gotten involved, the Legion would have won the second battle for Hoover Dam, and it’s all Oliver’s fault. When you talk to Lanius in the final boss fight, you have the option to bluff him and say “Your victory so far has been a trap, if you continue, you will lose”. And if it works, he’ll be like “We did take the towers easier than we thought, I didn’t think even the NCR would overlook that opening” You can literally psyche out the final boss into leaving because he doesn’t think he should be able to win that easily. The NCR had every tactical advantage in the world for that battle. They had the defensive position at a location that’s very easy to guard, they had superior range and firepower, and yet they still would have lost without the Courier.

Another note for Wulbren: He claims the Ironhand gnomes helped protect Baldur's Gate the last time it was under threat by a follower of the Dead Three The Ironhand Gnomes HELPED Sarevok during his last scheme to take over Baldur's Gate

Reminds me of how many more people hate Umbridge in the Harry Potter series than Voldemort One is an abusive and annoying teacher...while the other is a genocidal mass murderer who advocates for eugenics. But for so many, Umbridge is just that much more hated

I saw one funny green text about Nazeem, framed such that he actually has a crush on the Dragonborne, but just spaghettis his pickup line.

Funny thing is, I didn't take the high road with Wulbren. I noticed he was left alone after Barcus took over the Ironhand Gnomes. So I took him out on a swim into the Grey Harbor and walked away.

The funny thing aboot Wulbren is that if Barcus isn't there, he comes off much better until you learn the reality of the Gondian situation and his unwillingness to bend.

THANK YOU for pointing out Han'Gerrel's character assassination! For the longest time I felt like I was the only one who felt this way about him, and even got told that "he was always supposed to be a dick" even though despite him having an attitude he was actually one of the nicest admirals to Shepard and Tali (and was even friends with her father.) I think they did this because they wanted to simplify the Quarian-Geth conflict by equating wanting to wipe out the geth to being bad. This also happened to Zaal'Koris, who was an absolute dick in ME2 but didn't support going to war, so they completely changed his character in ME3 to suit that narrative. imo the entire geth plot was ruined in ME3 by changing the geth into innocent robots who just wanted to be human (alien, you know what I mean), while their original writer wanted them to have goals that were more mysterious and incomprehensible to organics, that weren't really morally good or bad in the end. Also, my main problem with Kai Leng is that he's a major writer's pet. They really just wanted to constantly show off what an absolute badass he was, which is why he has so much cutscene power. Writer's pet characters are always my least favorite characters (other examples of my most hated characters are Graha from FFXIV and Liara also from ME, two major examples of writer's pets), but the difference is that Kai Leng is a villain and meant to be hated, but at the same time they also wanted you to think he was so cool?

I never hated the Gourmet King, from the start it was all too clear to see he has issues and is envious of us, who has friends and is slim and even then he still became friends with us. And then as I completed his social link I was proven true, he even went as far as to declare us the Gourmet King, discarding the one thing he kept clinging to. Nozomi had a lot of character development as you progressed his social link.

Stabbing Kai Leng was my only Renegade action my entire Paragon playthru of 3.

Theseus is my favourite hatesink. And I saw his best moment with over 100 hours into the game- when he offered Zag his autograph, Zag refused, and Theseus went "pfffffffffft I was merely pretending" Love making this guy mad. And kudos to his voice actor, I could hear the spittle spraying everywhere.

Surprised I didn’t see Micah here. That man has LEGENDARY hatred behind his name to the point where I feel like if you look up the dictionary definition of “Rat” you would see Micah there.

I hate Nazeem but not for his attitude. When I played Skyrim, I had the Dawnguard DLC enabled and a vampire attacked him as soon as I loaded into the city. I reloaded like 15 times to try to save him, but the game would take too long to load and he would basically be dead by the time I could move. So I decided to just let the damn vampire kill him.

This is just proof that you don't get to the Cloud District very often.

Nazeem is just a goofy little dude and Maven is a big dummy who can't shut up about her crimes. I don't think they realize who the Dragonborn even is. But Kai Lang? He's just poorly written. A sword wielding ninja in a setting where everyone uses guns. He has to bend reality to even stand a chance. He could have been a Shep clone or previous companion. But the game insists he's your rival despite having no previous connection to him.

I missed out in organically hating wulbren on my first bg3 run by messing up the quests and generally not talking much to the gnomes, so my most hated character was (and still is) orin. I just cannot stand how one note her character is with that “i’m sooo crazy i love murder” shtick, plus the insane plot armor that lets her just walk up to you in “disguise” to fuck around then get away with 0 consequences. Playing as tav (and skipping the first 2 games) made the act 3 bhaal plot really uninteresting, it really felt like the game was forcing you to care about it while not connecting you to it directly, but playing as dark urge and finding out the whole villain plot failed because of how dumb and petty orin is really sealed my hate for her.

I'm fairly confident that Sentinel Prime in Transformers Animated is supposed to be a hate sink character but I can't help but really like him: both appreciate him as a well written character and enjoy his screen presence. I have to wonder if past one thing he does, consistently he's very clearly a joke and characters are often not afraid to tell him off, especially his partner Jazz and his apprentices Jetfire and Jetstorm, and his arrogance regularly is rewarded and almost immediately with the nature result. His interactions with Optimus are also just pure gold. There's something to be said about how when Sentinel insults Optimus, his crew immediately comes to his defense where as Sentinels crew are more than happy to mock Sentinel with Optimus's crew.

Some of us wear those kitty meowing with each step shoes because it's funny thank you. I'd actually wear them in real life to make people wonder where the cat is.

Kai Lang can burn in hell for what he did to Thane

I really only do Nozomi once in a new iteration of Persona 3, and that's just to get the compendium filled. After reaching 100% Compendium, I never touch him again, and just use those days praying at the shrine to boost someone else

Adachi from persona 4 is maddeningly awful. I love him. Hes what makes persona 4 worth it. Hes such garbage but in a realistic and frustratingly normal way. Hes just a crook cop, a bully turned psychopath classic arch that real cops show often. Putting that man in jail is satisfying especially after you listen to hear him rant about how boring the town is. You get this nice mirror image of what yosuke might have been like had he not been able to socialize. The isolation being almost a sickness for adachi also paints the themes of the game so well. Persona 4 just wouldnt be good without him.

My favorite recent example of a hate sink is Varre from Elden Ring. First npc you find and he immediately calls you maidenless. In the beta he even tells you to go die in a ditch in a really apathetic way. I would say he’s as iconic as Nazeem, but I won’t lie, I did have to look up his name… Patches from the entire Souls series is another example, but in his case, he’s kinda lovable in a way. Even got a bit of a redemption arc in Dark Souls 3.

Omg, the background music is the song 'f### wulbren bongle'. This makes me so happy

Gourmet King was actually one of my favorite social links since back in original P3. It's way more interesting to hang out with someone who's unapologetically a bad person like him or Tanaka, rather than the art guy or BeBe. I like the emperor guy for this reason too, he's kind of an asshole.

My favourite ending for RDR2 is going back for the money and getting killed by Micah but taking his eye out in the process. I reckon you can make Kai Leng an infinitely better character by a) getting rid of the annoying dialogue b) giving him a real fight on the citadel and c) making it so that even if you lose in the cutscene because the dude has a gunship pointed at you, you can still change the cutscene by winning in gameplay. Think of how much more satisfying the reveal of Cerberus implanting their soldiers with reaper tech would be if instead of being revealed by a nameless corpse on Mars it was revealed by kicking Leng's arse on the citadel and having him show up looking like Saren on Thessia.

What is also worthwhile to note about getting "revenge" on Kai Leng is that that is a total sideshow. Like, you're busy saving the universe and killing him is more a "well, I guess we kinda had to solve this somehow" moment from the writers. Compare that to a similar character in Azar from Genshin Impact: a condescending prick who thinks he is smarter than everyone that you don't get to beat up. However, taking him and his cabal down is the entire core of that part in the story to the point that the world-saving part is actually more of a side note in the service of developing another character. Much more satisfying, especially since he gets beaten at his own game, i.e. by being outsmarted by people he thought beneath him.

One of my biggest grievances with the Leng cutscenes was they turn Shepherd from a badass Vanguard into a guy with a pistol, and later an omni-blade. Let me charge him off a car! Also, I hate the flying cars. You'd think a society as advanced as the citadel would know trains are better.

I think the bigger problem with Kai Leng is that the writers really want you to think he's just so cool, you guys, and everything about his design just doesn't work with that. His visual design and fighting style make him look like someone at Bioware had just finished playing Guns of the Patriots and filed the serial numbers off Raiden without any of the tongue in cheek attitude that makes the goofy shit in Metal Gear Solid work. So when he's played dead serious, he just comes off as edgy in a way that's more obnoxious and tone-deaf than it is actually compelling. I think Pat (formerly of the Super Best Friends) put it best when he said KL feels like two writers had completely different opinions of him and were constantly pushing back and forth, one thinking he genuinely was cool and the other thinking he was dumb, and that disconnect only makes him come off as more frustrating than usual.

Watching this vid made me realize just how lackluster the humanoid ME antagonists were after saren. In the first game you constantly had run ins with him every couple of missions starting with eden prime, then after fighting him in the end (let's be real u told him to kill himself) your squad double taps him just to be sure. Sure the illusion man is voiced by martin sheen but all he does is send out his goons while sitting in his chair like shao Kahn, and kai is as you said a edgy ninja man with plot armor.

Disagree, Morrowind had it right with essential NPCS. Just fail any quest involving them or write a short journal post mentioning you murdered them. Starfield is infact a game that SHOULD not have essentially NPCS at all, as its ending literally allows you to fix everything.

Chae Lim from King of Fighters Maximum Impact. She just spams flip kicks and combs for days, she's not even a boss character. I honestly don't know anything about her just that she is frustrating to fight. I'll also throw in Solas especially after the Trespasser DLC. On subsequent playthroughs I can't stand talking to him knowing what I know. How are you going to start beef with someone and involve me? Then there's the arguments he has with Vivienne and The Iron Bull. He sounds like such an arrogant prick. It's like he can't wrap his head around people valuing community or their safety about "freedom". His idea of freedom only benefits the powerful. Same goes for Anders in DA 2.

Ok so not a video game character but holy shit, scaramouche from the continuation of samurai Jack is awful not just on a character level but is so terrible that his inclusion actively harmed the pacing of the season. So the first time we see him is a classic samurai Jack introduction like the old days and there one shot antagonists, he’s a robot playing the flute who talks funny and is wearing a swanky outfit. Cool! The fight is good, he dies, we move on. Except, we don’t move on to the rest of the story that actually matters and needs to be told. He survived as a head and decides to inform lord aku Jack doesn’t have his special sword anymore. The show then spends the unforgivable sin of wasting time, in a session already plagued by issues of poor pacing, plot contrivances and god awful tonal whiplash, that we spend SO MUCH TIME watching the boring as shit B plot of this jackass just hobbling along to lord aku all the while complaining over and over and over how “ohhhh is only the mighty scaramouche had his body ohhh! 😩” he eats up SO MUCH valuable time that this final chapter of samurai Jack DESPERATELY NEEDS for shit that ISNT IMPORTANT! And by then end, he finally makes it to aku and spills the news. He’s rewarded with a new body. Yippee. Then, when Jack and aki show up, he’s lording over them that he told aku everything about Jack having no sword anymore. Jack then immediately shows off the reclaimed sword and then aku just kills scaramouche. All this time, completely wasted, on a annoying one note character on a boring side story, eating up time that could have been spent in infinitely better and more productive ways that is shitty pacing tells us it DEFINITELY NEEDS, down the drain. Squished under aku’s fist. No cool climactic battle, no enjoyable pay off, just wastes time and dies. Fuck scaramouche, all my homies hate scaramouche!

Pikmonwolf you’re the best!!!

Nazeem is a rare case of a character you're suppose to hate, but end up loving.

I get why people don’t like Nozomi but didn’t realize how hated he was. I’m pretty indifferent to him and honestly pretty sure if you want to max out a specific social link as soon as possible, you usually have to make the right dialogue choices every time and kinda kiss up to them, regardless if you like the character or not and or what they want to do.

I appreciate how CDPR managed to turn Adam Smasher from a tense and difficult boss, but one void of emotional stakes into a proper hate sink with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Watching that anime took me from occasionally forgetting to double-tap Smasher to kill him, to always making sure I had a tech shotgun handy in the final fight to make sure there was no way that cockroach could crawl back out of the bowl, and maybe also throwing all my incendiary grenades at him as well. Just to be sure. Would of course have been better if CP2077 had gotten to complete its dev cycle so the end boss could be better integrated into the main game. But for after-the-fact fixes, Smasher is a great one. Also, I found that the planet Meridia was functionally a hate sink in Helldivers 2. The deploy dark fluid mission was so irritating, spawn rates were so high, the environment was so ugly and diseased-looking, and of course the nightmarish shrieker spam at the end of the mission all made me want to destroy that fucking planet so much.. Killing everything on it wouldn't have been enough, I wanted the planet to not be there anymore. Lucky for me, I got my wish 😈 Goes to show that you don't even need writing to make a well-written hate-sink. You can pull it off with nothing but mechanics and a view from a Super Destroyer window of a big, beautiful black hole.

I think the yakuza series has some very good hateable characters. Usually the main character and villain have good dialogue together at their final battles and end up respecting something about each other. But in yakuza 6 kiryu disrespecting the main villain whos basically a shitty rich kid by calling him “little baby iwami” feels so good to see

GOD DAMN IT I FORGOT TO PUT THE INTRO IN! I was making adjustments to the intro and forgot to put it back :(

Bro could do a video on top 10 worst cakes and still somehow fit Kai Leng into The Video 😂😂.

I love to hate Wulbren Bongle, I hate to hate Kai Leng

The only character I genuinely hated is Grøh from Soul Caliber 6. He reminds of Kai Lang, where he just feels sort of out of place with the vibe of the games. One Reddit post described him as "An anime character with a dark past, has an anime transformation where his hair turns red and spike up, and is regarded in-story as the most dangerous thing around." He's also a bit annoying to fight against, which is even worse since he's always in the middle of the Arcade mode and is usually my choke point. I don't remember too much since it was years ago too, but in Libra of Souls (story mode with created character), you meet him, he's a edgy jerk who doesn't care for you as the created character sucks up to them. I got told that the only real difference between picking Soul Edge and Soul Caliber near the end of the story was that I got to kill Grøh in the end. Grøh made me evil and it was worth it, like, literally cheered as he died.

Really big missed opportunity to not have Kai Leng eating a bowl of cereal in the thumbnail

To be fair, everytime I meet Wulbren in act 3, I kill him and knock out everyone else who then attacks me !

Just saw your video on the Arrival DLC, and while I see your point about the plot holes in it, there's an even bigger plot hole that streteches across the entire series. Where were the asari when the salarians were developing the Genophage? Did they know what was going on, or did the salarians and turians go behind their backs? If they didn't know, it makes the salarians and turians look like even bigger jerks, and if they did know, then maybe the whole Citadel Council should be disbanded and restructured so that every species has a voice, not just the most powerful ones.

kai lang, tingle, sylvannas windrunner. she is responsible for SO MUCH BULLSHIT but you don't get to kill her!?!

I really hated Bastilla in the KOTOR games. It's like an example stated previously, where you save her and she acts like she's so goood for being a jedi and actually saved YOU! Never once did she break the mold of the snobby uppity bitch she came off as on Taris, and that pisses me off the way people love her like she's some kind of prime waifu material. Were I Revan, I'd have banished her from my ship at the first opportunity

Nozomi is irritating AF for that exact reason. I will never complete his link ever again. It just makes MC look like an absolute idiot for talking to him.

I’ve never been more mad than I was with the big bad in Deadly Premonition (won’t spoil who). I was seething by the end and not cause it felt like bad writing. Quite the opposite it felt like the pieces of this crazy puzzle finally fit into place. I empathized with York and felt like I missed the same clues as him and the hollowness of finally solving the case and defeating the big bad but at such a huge loss. You know it was necessary but it’s still harrowing.

Funnest hatesink I’ve seen in a recent while was Heimdall from gow Ragnarok, dude was an utter asshole and actually pretty funny at times lol. Didn’t hurt that he actually somewhat backed up his talk when it came time for his boss fight.

For Kai Leng, there's a mod that turns him from Cringe edgelord to a Silent Assassin. And in the Priority Cerberus HQ when you FINALLY defeat him, his face is actually like every Cerberus troop

Wow I think you might be one of the few people to understand the point of Nozomi's character. He's literally just one big troll job but most people think he's supposed to be likeable.

I’d like to mention Ted Faro from Horizon as the most hated character of all time for me

So, hear me out on Skyrim: A lot of the Daedric Princes are hate magnets to me. The likes of Molag Bal, Sheogorath, Hermaeus Mora... You're basically forced to deal with their bullshit and let them talk down to you and even be frightened by them. I don't care if they're "gods". I should be able to not only tell them to shove their Daedric Artifacts up their asses, but I should be able to fight them and at least kick them out of Mundus/Nirn for a few centuries by smiting the shit out of their physical being. Its extremely unsatisfying in any RPG to have characters who can just talk down at you and you can't do anything but take it. The game is a power fantasy, so let me break a god's teeth for shit talking me if I can get strong enough to win the fight, dammit!

Thank you for the well-crafted video. :) I find it fascinating how at times, even if a character is not written as an intended "hate sink", they can allow a certain emotional resonance with the player that causes intense disdain, usually based on the latter's personal experiences and traits. For me, the main villain in Tales of Berseria, Artorius Collbrande, would fit the bill. While I have played other games featuring betrayals from mentor / parental figure characters, none of them had the nearly as big of an impact, due to Arthur's stand-out traits, namely his unflinching self-righteousness, his complete disregard for individuality and his sociopathic manipulation of others, both individuals through their personal desires and goals, and entire groups of people through religion and power dynamics. Likely my association with the game's protagonist and the inhuman cruelty in his mistreatment of her also contributed to my feelings towards him. While the game does have some notable flaws in its writing, particularly with some aspects of its character development, I felt that Artorius was handled immaculately as a villain. The revelation that he was just as flawed as everyone else and it was effectively his destroyed mental health (a major theme in Berseria) that pushed him to act the way he did perfectly rounds off his character ark and shows that he is human, although at that hardly elicits any pity.

I'd love to hear about a character you're supposed to like or feel neutral about. 999 is my 3rd favorite game of all time, but if it would end all the bullshit that the other sequel games go through, id gladly kill innocent child Akane Kurashiki to save other timelines. I'm convinced that her living is the reason various apocolypes happen in all other timelines. She absolutely strings Junpei along, killing him and his grandson in multiple time lines, and turns a positive shonen protagonist character into a goth emo with a complex with her. I despise her like none other.

I spent a good 5-10 minutes trying to kill Bayu the second that he started insulting me to my face and threatening me. The man is such an unrepentant bastard and Bethesda never should have put him in the same room as the player unless they were willing to make him killable.

My hatred for Mishima started slow. He's just got no backbone and is whiny but my hatred only bloomed when he starts getting high on himself for managing the app. At that point I began actively bullying him every time the game let me.

Chloe from Life is Strange was so unlikeable that I can’t remember whether that was the point or not. Also, Morgana from Persona 5.

I love how you have the instrumental from F#%k Wulbren Bongle playing in the background😂😂😂😂😂

I would like to point to Roger Retinz in Ace Attorney Spirit of Justice, who for whatever reason was removed from Hate Sink even though he deserves to be on there. Retinz got infuriating fast between "entertainment" that involved wrestling between girls in bikinis, his magician bashing, the fake contract business, the harassment toward people for mere association with the Gramaryes, and ESPECIALLY the office invasion including mob incitement that is the scariest scene in the entirety of SOJ (which is not a small feat, mind you) even if we ignore the Harsher In Hindsight factor there involving January 6. I was expecting him to prove to be even worse after THAT and he STILL surprised me about how much worse he proved when it turned out that the guy he murdered was his own loyal fan he named successor, when the murder was for pure gain. WHY is this guy not on the Complete Monster trope? "Not heinous enough" is ignoring that he's pulling this bull on significantly less resources than Kristoph Gavin, whose excuse for setting Vera Misham up for being poisoned at least tracks to witness control, not that HIS original motive is good in the first place. This is a Case 2 villain who isn't even a law agent causing so many problems, and he got to the point where I screeched on my blind stream to "become my (b-word)" and that he was my property at the start of his Breakdown, and I already planned before even the second half of the case to do that much at that, well before the added bonus of Retinz calling Athena a "yellow gorilla" and "Trucy's pet." My favorite part about vanilla TV Tropes' handling of this is when they have Paul Atishon-Wimperson on Hate Sink. I think he's more Love To Hate, because his Leitmotif is so cheesy that I quickly become unable to take him seriously, even with the murder of Archie Buff and attempted murder of Apollo. What I was recognizing was a VERY obvious Disc One Final Boss whose privileges, including having Nick as his supporting lawyer, only let him come repeatedly back to getting his metaphorical butt kicked, and even the comparison to Matt Engarde that I realize now only punctuates how much of a failure Atishon-Wimperson is. Atishon-Wimperson is a political jokes inviting reject in a critical part of the story, while Retinz has nothing to do with the main story beyond exploiting Nick's convenient absence, yet the damage he did shakes me to this day, nearly 8 years down the line. But I can tell you something I do recognize: Trucy did in fact beat Retinz, the guy calling her a "naive greenhorn", and it has NOTHING to do with the Gramarye lineage, and everything to do with Trucy adapting to Bonny's mistake where Retinz didn't. ...right. So something I can talk about with the Hate Sink topic is that I have a story I want to make and the Big Bad is a guy who revels in inflicting torture, even killing a baby after holding said baby hostage in an already cruel manner during a False Flag Operation framing a guy trying to stop him, and even his overarching plan to take over all of creation for all eternity is not only built on it, but has the omnicide infliction required for it be a perk to him. I'd be having 3 additional enemy characters who would be built to draw the audience's ire: -A "knight" captain who not only violates women without remorse, but treats those under his command as mere pawns at best and even gleefully kills civilians in crossfire trying to kill the heroes; said character is meant to parody Mangs, who is this sort of person, one who has been enabled by RU-vid and by the Advance Wars communities, and it's worth noting that the "knight" captain would also be a reflection of the protagonist being a Chivalrous Pervert as well -Said "knight" captain's fanatic Expy to Bellatrix Lestrange, somebody who whips up women into being hostile to men, particularly the heroes, before then discrediting them and supporting the "knight" captain's designs; this would be a reference to Mangs' girlfriend/now-wife being the worst kind of enabler, the one who wants men to be nasty and cruel -A sycophant of the "knight" captain who violently confuses the truth to disrupt the heroes' efforts against these bad guys while being somebody who would beg for his miserable life when he's put on the spot; I would be referring to a sycophant of Mangs who claims to now be against Mangs yet undermines the primary opponents of Mangs with misinformation I would particularly want to make clear that the Bellatrix Lestrange Expy would also be contrasting a Manic Pixie Dream Girl princess character who is worth talking about because the MPDG wouldn't be a Hate Sink, but rather somebody who would be intended to be admirable, and I come to recognize that it wouldn't be hard to make said character a Magnificent Baddie. To clarify about the MPDG, she meets the protagonist taking a spell for her that would disable her defensive power, with her not realizing the spell does that specifically until after the battle when the protagonist, a Squishy Wizard who wouldn't be compromised nearly as much by the spell, makes that much clear in clarification. The MPDG shows an airheaded demeanor in general and in appointing the protagonist as her bodyguard, and whenever she puts her hand on the protagonist's face and does light movement that nudges his face up while she tells him "you're looking down, let's fix that, okay", no doubt she's recognizing him as unhappy. Of course, what I do add to the ideas is her sanctioning support from volunteer child soldiers without signs of seeing the problems still involved in that and even giving them advice on how to fight while stating that they can trust the protagonist actively. Oh, and the MPDG is a Mighty Glacier/Melee Tornado hybrid whose sense of tactics and strategy with spell usage is to undermine opponents who would fight at long range before that becomes a problem, both by crafting resistance to anything outside anti-armor, and by compromising their mobility with option lockdown, with the common goal of forcing them to fight her up close. It's a show of how OP the Big Bad will prove to be that he effortlessly breaks the close range, but when the protagonist saves her from the Big Bad's attack that includes a promise to "teach (her) respect" for her persistent defiance from protecting the protagonist to the last and belying a moment of the MPDG eyes widening upon the close range breaking, the MPDG, in her battered state with the protagonist pulling a Now Let Me Carry You with her, pep talks the protagonist, even promising him a "present (he) just might like" for his 18th birthday that is right past when the story's conflict would be decided, and stating that his battle against the world all by himself has not robbed him of his kindness and that same kindness is exactly what will allow them to defeat the Big Bad, which has the protagonist ask if that's what she believes, the MPDG happily replying that that's what she knows, which the protagonist simply says "if you say so." The clincher? At the deciding moment, it's a Self Sacrifice Scheme by the protagonist that the protagonist only survives because of a divine power letting live through otherwise fatal injury, that directly causes the Big Bad's defeat from successful judgement and consequential destruction of the Big Bad's soul. After a bit more of the events following, the protagonist and the MPDG get wed...and yeah, I think you can guess a key point with the MPDG, which I'm going to say IS going to be significant in why the Self Sacrifice Scheme gets to be set up. And I think you can see the important point: that the MPDG encourages the protagonist to be a better person, where the Bellatrix Lestrange Expy, and Mangs' GF/wife by extension, are awful for encouraging their guys to be scum. So yeah, some stuff I thought I'd go ahead and share, to see what you think.

Teddie is much more a poor localization than a poor character: his childishness and naivete comes across more as perversion here.

I am very irritated by Beedle from the last 2 Zelda console games. But I am absolutely fine with his first iteration in Wind Waker. My reasons for this are very subjective, but I still feel very strongly about not liking him and want to be able to strap him to a rocket the way you can do to Koroks. His mannerisms, the overly enthusiastic, clown-like noises he makes every time I have to buy arrows from him or sell unneeded food, and his cartoonish head that was imported with no changes onto a normally proportioned human body... midriff included... all make me want to hold my nose like I smelled a week's worth of unwashed dishes.

Micah from Red dead redemption 2 he's a special kind of "screw everyone but me" manipulative psychopath. Then there's Edgar Ross from the first one who's just a real asshole for reasons I won't spoil

Hot take, I've never punched Gerrel, because he was 100% right, they were at war with the Geth, you take nothing for granted, if something is a problem, remove it ASAP, consequences come later.

It might just be the way I read it (which was about a year ago so my memory might be a bit foggy), but Zane and Straff Venture from the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson feel like more like hate sink characters than any of the other antagonists. One of which I think is intentional and the other I don't think is. Straff is an abusive father, a misogynist, and does basically nothing good throughout the entire series. Both of his children hate him and attempt to kill him at different times, and he's enough of a coward that I don't think we ever actually see him fight in any way. He just sits behind his armies of soldiers that don't even like him and lets other people do his dirty work. We're supposed to hate Straff, and we do, so he's an effective hatesink character. The other is Zane, who I honestly don't know if he's supposed to be a hatesink or not. I certainly hated him, maybe even more than Straff, but I feel like that might not be what Sanderson intended. He's portrayed like sort of an anti-hero, but he only really does villainous acts. Similar to Kai Leng, he feels edgy just for the sake of being edgy. Despite having somewhat of an interesting backstory, he doesn't really grow much in any way and we hardly see how it affects him. He starts out on the side of Straff, but even after leaving Straff all he does is try to convince Vin to run away with him (which doesn't make sense as a plan since the world is literally dying at this point and Vin is one of the few people who can stop that) and attempt to start a weird love triangle thing with her despite attempting to kill her several times before, and showing no remorse while doing so and seeming so unapologetic for it. When Vin realises that he's a complete lunatic, he attacks her and she finally kills him. If he was meant to frustrate the reader, then he did a good job of it, because I dreaded hearing his ridiculous logic every scene he's in, but if he was meant to be a respectable antagonist or anti-hero, then the author did a terrible job because his motivations and actions never make sense. And this is in a series with so many well-written villains.

I wouldn’t say Han’Gerell was character assassination. I think it’s pretty clear in ME2 that all three admirals are trying to weaponise Tali’s trial to their own ends. Zaal’Koris for peace & colonisation, Xen for studying the Geth & Han’Gerell for encouraging the war. The only reason you get a more ‘sympathetic’ version of him in 2 is because he’s the only one whose goals align with keeping Tali alive. Even then it still relied on her throwing herself at a suicide mission.

Captain Aureus in Divinity: Original Sin. Well written hate-sink, he is the laziest most insufferable completely incompetent captain. I could kill him, but I *need* him for the investigation, and there's always the risk one of the guards might see it. His attitude really encourages you to seek leads from other people as much as you can, opening up so many side quests and alternate plot threads that you wouldn't discover if you were just trying to progress the story through him and Arhu.

Dude please make more videos I've watched them all multiple times already!!!

The video is quite interesting, but the background music makes it annoying to listen to imo

No social link will ever be as awful to me as the Devil confidant of Persona 5, Ichiko Koya. "Hey now, you're not looking into those stories I told you not to investigate, are you?" "What? Noooo, of course not, I'm just out here dating high schoolers!" "Oh, okay. That's fine, then, carry on." That *absolutely disgusted* me so much that I never touched the social link again, and likely never will. Sure, Persona 4's Devil also has an adult woman being kind of.... weird, about the high schooler, but at least the correct option is always to blow her off, and it's not actually possible to form a relationship with her. Persona 5, though, DOES, which is just.... so uncomfortable. Learning that it's actually possible to date the adults in the game also made me stop talking to the teacher for a while, too, but at least her's was alright enough that I eventually got back to it (after I ran out of other things to do). (I also can not STAND Rise in 4; for me, being very asexual and not really interested in romance, her NONSTOP flirting and flattery no matter how much I try to blow her off really, REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. She came across like people THINK Morgana does in 5.)

Pikmonwolf, did you ever watch that Mass Effect 3 failure at storytelling video? Also the best way to deal with Nazeem is to pickpocket poison into his inventory which he will then drink.

One of my favorite hate sinks is from the Battletech novels. In a series full of plot armored Mary Sues... Sun Tzu Liao starts out as an insufferable bastard. But it's cool, House Liao is always getting it's ass kicked and contributing nothing of value. Right up until Sun Tzu's crazy ass mother dies and he takes control... Then you find out it was all an act to not get straight up murdered by his psychotic family. When in Rome and all that. Once he's secure, he goes hard on redeeming himself. He's extremely intelligent, he cares about his people, and he's good at the things a leader needs to be good at (he still has the cardinal Battletech sin of being a crap mechwarrior though).

If its one Character that is supposed to be Character you hate that falls flat. Then id say its Roberto from Monster (2004-2005). For me to explain why Roberto is the worst. I must first explain the premise. Monster is a show where the good Japanese doctor Tenma in Germany is framed for murder, but the real killer Johan is a menace and must be stopped. So Tenma must evade the law while trying to catch and kill Johan. The show wants Johan to be five steps ahead of everyone, but also don't want to show Johan in the show that much to keep him a secret. So when a side Character in a one of episode gets close to exposing the whole thing and show uncovering the whole plot of Johan and Tenma's innocents. They send Roberto to kill them off. And Roberto does this so many times that it gets hilarious and then annoying how he just pops up out of no where and knows everything. Now this makes him very much a hate Character. The only problem is that the viewer never gets any satisfaction from him. Becuse spoilers: Roberto dies in the most stupide, Roberto anti climatic way he can. he shows up from no where. shots a guy and then dies of a wound he got. Roberto is more of annoying itch you can't get rid of. And i feel that the ending of the show was planned different. Becuse Roberto the asshole is showed to be the long lost friend of one of the protagonist in monster, but they never fucking meet. so why even have Roberto be the long lost friend? Monster has another annoying hate Character that fails. One of the reason Tenma is seen as a criminal is becuse of BKK (german FBI) detective Lunge. Lunge is told that is a masterful detective and has solved many cases, but he believes Tenma is the killer. Now this seams like a normal thing to believe at first, but the show keeps introducing minor detectives that find out about Johan and see that Tenma is innocent. Which just makes Lunge and idiot. He also gets so obsessed with the case that he destroyers his relationship with his wife and pregnant daughter. And when his daughter reaches out again later to him. And asks if he wants to see his grandson. He firsts accepts, but then decides not to go and instead goes to karaoke with some Japanese business men. So he can get into the Japanese head of Tenma. These two hate Characters annoy me in monster becuse it has a really good hate Character that quickly turns into a Character you feel sorry for. And that being Eva. Who first dumps Tenma and is one of the reasons Tenma gets framed for murder, but you find out much of terrible life she has and the show beats her up more then then Roberto and Lunge. I also feel the fanbase hated Eva more then Lunge and Roberto. And this hate then also transferred over to Edelgard in Fire Emblem. Becuse there both German coated with the same voice actor, but that is just a nut case theory of mine.

Zenos is a discount fujobait Kotomine written similarly to Kai Leng in Stormblood, then given 1/5 of a story arc in Endwalker. I'm surprised he's not in the video.

I'm no fan of ME:andromeda, but I'm curious to hear your opinion on it. Will you make a video about it ?

In wrestling a bad guy is called a heel and they a supposed to do things that gets the booed or in the business its called getting heat. beat up the good guy, cheat to win that sort of thing. If the audience is reacting to your actions thats a good thing your because your getting them to know you as a character and they are loving the show. However there is a thing called go away heat which is they arnt booing you because your a "good" bad guy. They are booing because the genuinely do not like you as a person and the fact that your taking up t.v time is annoying them and the booing becomes more vitriolic 😅

F wulbren bongle, agree, agree.

Really like your Dragonborn design, or it a someone’s bg3 footage. Either way I like the eyes

seeing kai leng and nozumi suemitsu in the same thumbnail was massive whiplash

Im trying to remembet what character(thats not even a hate sink) that really grinds my gears lately Prolly because the remind of of a jerk of a person during college

I guess I'm weird but I like Suemitsu. To me he always felt like such a lonely kid that needed a friend. I felt bad for him, in part because I'm kind of lonely sometimes too. It's hard to maintain friendships into adulthood, and even more difficult to make friends/maintain relationships while working a night shift job. Of course his personality isn't the best, but I wanted to help him become better.

Congrats on 20K subs!

Ahhhh Nozomi... Yeah screw him, guess Minato had to kiss his ass to get Metatron's brother lol.

since when have ppl hated wulbren, i loved the guy

I'd like to add Gaspen Payne from Ace Attorney as a good example of a hate sink. The AA franchise has this tradition that the first prosecutor you face off against (the equivalent of a tutorial boss, if you will) is a member of the Payne family (save for the Layton crossover, but you can't tell me Flynch isn't a distant relative at least). These people are both self-absorbed and pathetic but not entirely hateable. Gaspen is... special. He has a (self-proclaimed) reputation for humiliating both defendants and rookie defense attorneys; he spends his first moments badgering the defendant for a confession and nearly driving Athena catatonic. With the rest of the game as context, he's a proponent of what is known as the "Dark Age of the Law," where attorneys on either side care more about the verdict than the morality of acquiring said verdict. But it's really in Spirit of Justice where it gets especially bad. With the Dark Age having been basically dismantled, Gaspen flees the consequences by fleeing to a new country, one where defense attorneys happen to be all but nonexistent. By the time Phoenix meets him again, Gaspen's gained enough of a string record that he's decked out in gold regalia. And when Phoenix takes the defense (the first in the last 20+ years in this country), he welcomes the opportunity for revenge, and he happens to leave out the itsy-bitsy-but-ever-so-crucial-little-tiny-detail until partway through the proceedings that the reason they're are no defense attorneys is because they share in the defendants' punishment. This man was willing to basically have Phoenix killed over what happened in the last game. Needless to say, I was more than happy to see that lofty crown finally fall. And take his wig with it.

omg i just started watching ur videos like 2 days ago and i was wondering when you'd post next, hell yeah dude finally playing the legendary edition of ME cause of u

I'm amazed you didn't mention arguably the most infamous hate sink in modern gaming. Abby from The Last Of Us 2.

I think out of every series I’ve seen, One Piece does hateable characters the best. So many characters got just want to punch in the mouth when they’re on screen.

6:10. You are dead wrong. I am NOT able to do what I want to do with him. What I would have actually done if I were in charge of the game the way I was in the first game, I would have used my omniblade into his gut.

Almost any character in StarCraft 2 hots and onward, except alarak, the rest are shells of their former selves or written like sock puppets holy shit does it infuriate me to listen to them breathe

I remember doing the p3 social moon arcana and when i saw the card flip back to normal i laughed my ass off😂

No Moneybags from Spyro 2?

i doubt anyone here cares about miitopia like i do but the FUCKING. PRINCE OF NEKSDOR. most annoying major role in miitopia by a landslide. he's an asshole when you meet him and rushes you to escort him, feeds you lies as you're escorting him right before you encounter a monster, when you DO encounter the monster he doesn't help in the slightest and to top it all off, when the princess' face is taken he just RUNS AWAY????????????????????????????????? shoutouts to the miitopia fans in here

As much as I love DMC 3 your mention of cutscenes deciding the fate of a fight remind me of Dante v Vergil. Don't get me wrong it's all well executed but beating Vergil only to technically lose feels like a common thing for videogames. Would be funny if you couldnt win that first fight and if you do die the cutscene plays as normal

I don't really know or play that many games so I'm just gonna put Crimson 1 here.

This has me thinking about how many hate sink characters Danganronpa has and how many of them are so damn obvious as well as them just being poorly written. Junko is a pretty good one since she's so cartoonly evil. But holy fuck a lot of them are just, "Hey by the way I did this terrible thing." Then they die. There's at least 1 of these characters in each of the games, too. Going play Person 3 again now.

I dislike most of the friendly rivals in the pikemon games; Hopp, Rally, and Bianca being a few exceptions. Like even when I sweep their team with one pokemon they're like "wow you're really strong. If I want to catch up I'll have to work twice as hard". But the most disappointing thing is when they heal up your pikemon after the battle and I'm left carrying 50 hyper potions for no reason now.