Top 20 Video Games Where You Don't Know YOU'RE The Villain

Script written by Johnny Reynolds

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 20 Video Games Where You’re Unknowingly the Villain. For this list, we’ll be looking at video games that revealed your protagonist was actually in the wrong, whether they were outright villainous or were being misled. Many of these reveals come late, so beware of spoilers ahead. Which of these heroes were you surprised to learn were villains? Share with us in the comments!

#20: “Assassin’s Creed III” (2012)

Before “Assassin’s Creed III,” we had grown accustomed to hopping into the memories of Desmond Miles’ various ancestors. During the opening sections, we assumed Haytham Kenway to be another member of the Brotherhood. Nothing seemed that out of the ordinary; we pulled off an assassination and even freed a group of Mohawk Native Americans. But then came the reveal that Haytham was not a member of the Brotherhood, but rather the Templars. We had spent several games being taught how evil this group was, yet we hadn’t played any events from their perspective. While you do play as Connor for the majority of the game, the fact that you were actually performing villainous acts was a great early twist.

#19: “Aragami” (2016)

This action-adventure game plays with the assumption that ‘light’ means good and ‘dark’ means evil. You play as an aragami, a vengeful spirit who can move through shadows. You’re summoned by a girl named Yamiko, who asks for aid against a clan that has murdered her people and imprisoned many others. Throughout the game, you use dark magic to fight against the light magic of the evil clan, flipping the aforementioned assumption on its head. However, your first instinct was right. Yamiko is actually the Shadow Empress, and the clan she asks you for help with are actually the good guys. Even worse, you were once one of them and helped seal her away in the first place.

#18: “A Dark Room” (2013)

Calling back to the days of text-based adventure games, “A Dark Room” has a great villainous reveal to set itself apart. You begin the game with nothing, but gather resources and work with a builder to construct a village. Upon bringing in other villagers, your character will force them into slavery. That’s already pretty villainous, but your true nature isn’t revealed until after you explore the post-apocalyptic wasteland outside the village. You find out you’re a wanderer, part of an alien race that invades and ravages planets. So it’s you to thank for the world’s current state, and you end up leaving your villagers to fend for themselves.

#17: “Amnesia: Justine” (2010)

Although “Justine” is only DLC for “Amnesia: The Dark Descent,” it’s still a great case of having you unknowingly play as a villain. You awake in a dungeon with a recording from a woman named Justine telling you you’re in a test. You’ll then come across three puzzles that, when solved, will save the life of an innocent person. Or you can simply leave them to their fate, as you’re also being chased by disturbing monsters. By the end, it’s revealed you are Justine, and you wanted to test yourself to see if you still held any sympathy for your fellow man. Not only that, but the monsters chasing you were really your former lovers you had mutilated.

#16: “Undertale” (2015)

Toby Fox’s indie darling is a special case, as you can actually choose how you behave. Falling into an underground world populated by monsters, one might assume you should approach the situation like countless other RPGs: kill or be killed. Flowey, though clearly evil, still serves as part of the tutorial, telling you to increase your ‘LOVE’, or ‘LV,’ by earning ‘EXP;’ two shorthands universally known as ‘Level’ and ‘Experience Points.’ Although you can spare any monster you come across, many probably didn’t on a first playthrough. However, the monsters don’t actually want to fight you and are mostly innocent. And Sans reveals that ‘LV’ means ‘Level of Violence’ while ‘EXP’ really means ‘Execution Points.’

#15: “Furi” (2016)

“Furi” is full of bullet hell, hack and slash greatness, tasking you with defeating unique and increasingly difficult bosses. You play as The Stranger, a man kept in an impressive prison and tortured by his captors. After being freed by a mysterious man known as The Voice, you fight your way to freedom. Despite some of your guards being pretty vicious, there’s a good reason you’ve been imprisoned. Your very existence causes the planet the prison orbits pain; as soon as you make it to the surface, your aura kills the very grass you walk on. Moreover, you were created to gather intel on the planet, and your creator plans to send an army of those like you to destroy it for good.

#14: “Mortal Kombat: Deception” (2004)

If someone claims to be an emissary of the Gods, you might want to look into it before blindly following them. In “Deception’s” Konquest Mode, players control Shujinko, a student of Bo Rai Cho. As a young man, Shujinko is tasked by Damashi, the emissary, in collecting the Kamidogu, six incredibly powerful items, to send to the Gods. Unfortunately for Shujinko, it takes him 46 years to track them all down. It’s only after the fact that Damashi reveals himself to be the Dragon King Onaga, and everything Shujinko has done over the decades has been in service of villainy. Harsh.

#13: “Prototype” (2009)

In order to hide a protagonist’s villainous nature, many developers have gone down the tried and true route of giving them amnesia. In “Prototype,” you play as Dr. Alex Mercer, an amnesiac scientist with marvelous but dangerous shapeshifting powers. As if that wasn’t problematic enough, a virus has broken out in Manhattan that turns citizens into horrific beasts that you can fight and absorb, killing the person they used to be. Hot on your trail is Blackwatch, a section of the military that deals in biological warfare. Come to find out, it’s Alex who’s responsible for, well, everything. He developed the virus and, when Blackwatch tried to shut it down, he let it loose in the city.

#12: “OFF” (2008)

“OFF” begins by imparting the importance of the main character’s mission. Known only as The Batter, he believes himself on a sacred mission to purify the world. He strives to defeat the Guardians, the rulers of the game’s zones. Each zone throws various seemingly evil spirits at you to fight, so ‘sacred’ seemed like the right term. Of course, it’s anything but. You find that killing a Guardian will wipe out all living things in each zone; you’re actually committing genocide. What makes it worse is that you as the player are referenced throughout. So during the final confrontation, you are actually shamed for not stopping him when you very easily could have.

#11: “Silent Hill 2” (2001)

While calling James Sunderland a villain seems a bit severe, he definitely isn’t the hero. And he’s responsible for causing us so much fear. After receiving a letter from his deceased wife, Mary, asking him to meet her in Silent Hill, James sets off for the haunted town. As anyone familiar with the series knows, he then has to contend with a wave of grotesque and distorted creatures trying to rip him apart. However, it isn’t until much later that we find out his current horrible state has come from his own actions. It’s revealed that James euthanized his wife rather than see her live in pain. And all of the monsters chasing him have been born from his own twisted psyche.

#10: “Heavy Rain” (2010)

Chronicling the crimes of the Origami Killer, “Heavy Rain” was heavily lauded and awarded upon release. While you play as four intertwined characters, one of them is really the killer, though certainly not the one we would have guessed. Scott Shelby is a private investigator working the case, collecting evidence from each victim’s families. Except the only reason he’s collecting evidence is to destroy it so it can’t be used against him. Born from childhood trauma, Scott takes the lives of children in a desperate search to find a father that would do anything for their child. He has a perfect cover, and his story even features a run-in with a fake-out killer.

#9: “Planescape: Torment” (1999)

In this beloved RPG, your character’s villainous past is again covered by amnesia. Known only as The Nameless One, the protagonist is reborn upon every death, but forgets most if not all of his memories whenever he dies. Additionally, his curse kills someone else in the multiverse in order to resurrect him. Essentially becoming a new person, and sometimes even changing personality, he’s forced to search for clues as to why this is happening to him. Well, he’s only got himself to blame. His original incarnation sought immortality out of fear that he’d be damned for all the horrible crimes he’d committed in his life. Not only that, but his Mortality became a separate being, hiding clues to his past in order to keep living.

#8: “BioShock Infinite” (2013)

“BioShock” games are known for big twists, and the one in “Infinite” is quite a doozy. In order to erase his debts, private investigator Booker DeWitt is hired to retrieve a woman from the floating city Columbia. At every moment, he’s met with resistance from the city’s officials, who all work for Columbia’s founder, the religious zealot Zachary Comstock. After killing Comstock, you find out that he and Booker are one and the same…sort of. Comstock is an alternate reality version of Booker, who was baptized as a way to atone for the Battle of Wounded Knee. We already had the sense that Booker wasn’t the best person, but as we see, he could’ve been a lot worse.

#7: “Golden Sun” (2001) & “Golden Sun: The Lost Age” (2003)

In the first “Golden Sun,” we’re told that alchemy is incredibly dangerous and was sealed away long ago for the betterment of everyone. So when the game’s villains, Saturos and Menardi, attempted to bring it back to the world, Isaac and co. naturally felt inclined to stop them. All seemed well and the world knew peace…that is, until the sequel came out. “The Lost Age” revealed that who you thought were villains were actually trying to save the world since, without alchemy, it would eventually fall to ruin. The sequel follows companions of the original antagonists trying to finish their work, and us feeling a bit embarrassed about the whole thing. Whoops.

#6: “The Witch’s House” (2012)

Short but sweet, “The Witch’s House” tells the story of Viola, a young girl trapped in a supremely spooky house. As you explore and solve puzzles, you find diary entries from Ellen, the witch who owns the house and is seemingly working pretty hard to keep you there. While players thought they were working to gain Viola’s freedom, that is far from the case. Viola is actually Ellen; the terminally ill witch performed a body swap ritual to save herself. Adding insult to injury, Viola’s father shows up at the end and shoots Ellen, not realizing that he’s killing his actual daughter. Ellen is then free to do as she pleases with her new body.

#5: “NieR” (2010)

Usually, it’s safe to assume that shadowy creatures attempting to attack you at every point are in the wrong. Set in a world ravaged by disease, your character tries to find a cure while fighting evil creatures called Shades. Their leader, known as the Shadowlord, even kidnaps your daughter. That all sounds pretty evil, but the plot pulls the rug out from under you. 1,300 years prior, with the disease threatening extinction, humans removed their souls from their bodies and created clones as back-ups for when the world was safe again. Shades are their souls, what you think are humans are really clones, and you are the clone of the Shadowlord, who’s really just trying to save everyone.

#4: “Braid” (2008)

Battling monsters and rescuing a princess locked away in a castle is about as straightforward as video games get. Which is probably why “Braid” surprised so many of us. At the beginning, you’re led to believe Tim’s purpose is to save a princess from a dangerous monster using time-based mechanics. You’re also told that he wants to atone for some past mistake, which the rescue would probably do. However, during the final level, a monkey wrench is thrown into your adventure. As everything but Tim moves in reverse, it appears the princess is fleeing from a knight. But when time moves forward, it reveals she was actually running from Tim, the real monster, with the knight coming to her rescue.

#3: “Shadow of the Colossus” (2005)

“Shadow of the Colossus” lures you into a false belief that you’re the hero by keeping its story vague. All we know is that Wander wants to revive Mono, and the disembodied deity Dormin is the only one who can do it. In order to bring Mono back from the dead, Dormin instructs you to murder 16 Colossi surrounding his temple. Slaying monsters to save someone’s life? So far, so good. The moment it begins to feel wrong slaying these majestic giants may vary from player to player, though Wander’s increasingly corrupted body should be a good clue. The 16 Colossi were keeping a seal on Dormin, who (surprise!) probably shouldn't have been trusted.

#2: “Spec Ops: The Line” (2012)

In this story-driven shooter, Captain Martin Walker leads a team into Dubai following another unit’s horrific failed attempts at keeping peace. Initially only a mission to gather intel, things go South almost immediately. The entire game confronts Walker, and the player, with the intense horrors of war. Throughout, Walker communicates with Lieutenant Konrad, leader of the previous unit who has committed some despicable atrocities. But the soldier's mind is broken, and it’s revealed that Konrad took his own life a while ago. Every communication you’ve had with him has been a hallucinatory effect of Walker’s mind to rationalize his own war crimes, which includes using white phosphorus on civilians.

#1: “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” (2003)

“Knights of the Old Republic” remains one of the best “Star Wars” games, partially due to its great storytelling and twist about the main character. Set around 4,000 years before the movies, it focuses on Darth Malak, a powerful Sith lord who has unleashed war on the Galactic Republic. As a Jedi, it’s your duty to stop him. Similar to many other Sith, Darth Malak once had a master who disappeared named Darth Revan. As you come to find out, you were this former master, but the Jedi wiped your memories to eliminate you as a threat. It’s a clever twist considering you customize your character, and a pretty smart move from the Jedi.