We come to this earth with no clothes, no money, and no food. Not gonna lie, it sucks ass. During our first years in this plane, everything we own is provided by two significantly taller children who, by trying to keep us alive, sometimes end up damaging our psyche in ways that only a few professionals can understand.
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And video games are no different. There have been a few times where parents have done a less-than-ideal job while raising their kids, which ends up with us as the players having to deal with some immature, shady, and even psychotic characters. Parents, am I right?
10 Rip Blazkowicz
Wolfenstein: The New Order
A piece of work who gave away his wife to the new regime just so they could kill her, he might actually be the worst person on this list. However, and despite Rip’s behavior, his son Billy is a heroic figure of the free world throughout this beloved series, so in the end, his kid wasn’t that damaged, and thus, he gets the earliest entry.
Also, we see him for a few minutes at best, so it’s fine. Rest in pieces, you nazi scum.
9 Hades
Hades
While it shares the name with the title of the game, the god of the underworld is not the protagonist of the main story. Instead, it is his son Zagreus, who tries to escape the woeful place his father rules, only to be met with scorn and mockery every time he wakes up after dying in his escape attempts.
Hades is, at best, a tyrant who mocks and uses violence to gaslight his son, and if that’s his best, you can only imagine his worst. However, Zagreus tries to mend the shared trauma of what was once a family, and honestly, there might be some hope in that.
8 Zeus
God Of War
Not only in gaming, but literally in any multimedia adaptation, Zeus always shows up as one of the worst possible parents ever existed, for a multitude of reasons; from being an unfaithful husband to a deplorable father, the God leader for the Olympic pantheon is just a horrible being, so it only makes sense his offspring inherit his worst traits.
And this is true to a certain degree; depending on the adaptation you’re watching or reading, sons of Zeus like Hercules, Ares, or Kratos, can either be straight villains, or at best, heroes who need a really long introspective journey. This is true for Kratos, as you spend several games on what is basically a divine killing spree that ends with patricide. I would say RIP, but Zeus had it coming for a looooong time.
7 Kratos
God Of War
With a father like Zeus, it would only make sense that his most famous child in gaming would be as violent and vicious as him. Kratos makes a deal with the treacherous god Ares, who enslaves him to the point of delusion until he murders his own daughter, before realizing what he has done.
After taking revenge on the whole Greek pantheon of gods, Kratos dares to love one more time and has a new child, many years later. However, as God Of War (2018) shows you, he has to work on himself and undo decades of trauma and violence if he wants Atreus not to follow the path of his old self. Which, frankly, takes a while, as the kid is at best reckless, and at worst, a little bit unhinged, until he learns to do better.
6 Giovanni
Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver
Ok, so, in his original appearances, Giovanni isn’t a paternal figure of any kind. However, this would change in Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, where, thanks to some time travel shenanigans, you get the confirmation that Giovanni is your rival Silver’s father, who abandoned him after getting destroyed by Red in the original Pokemon games.
And boy, do we suffer from that. From the get-go, Silver shows an aggressive demeanor, not only in his interactions, but as a Pokemon trainer as well; the dude steals his first few Pokemon from other people just so he can beat the hell out of you and become the strongest trainer. Talk about daddy issues.
5 Ghetsis
Pokemon Black And White/ Black And White 2
However, the award for worst father in the Pokemon series goes to Ghetsis, truly a monster who not only turns PETA into a violent cult, but also tries to raise his adoptive child as some sort of messianic figure for that cult. Ultimately, when N shows that he’s nothing like his father, Ghetsis has a meltdown where he truly reveals he never even loved his son. And even though N would become one of the series’ most beloved characters, it takes him a good while to get there.
In the original Black and White games, you see him struggling as he travels across the world and faces the fact that he’s not the messiah that Team Plasma gaslights him into thinking he is. Fortunately, by meeting your character and many others, you help him to gain a proper perspective of how the real world works, and he changes sides for good.
4 Mother Miranda
3 Resident Evil 8
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And speaking of evil cults, Mother Miranda is a monster who will manipulate, infect, and kill anyone in her path to resurrect her dead child. Even though she’s not technically a mother to the rest of the village, she creates this sick dynamic and becomes an artificial motherly figure for a group of demented creatures who plague Ethan Winters’s story throughout this game.
And even tho she’s not her child, Rosemary Winters ends up growing without a father thanks to Miranda’s actions during the game. As we get to see during the Shadows of Rose story, she has a rough childhood due to her powers, and even though she gets to meet Ethan, she could have used his father’s presence in her early years.
2 Anabella Rosfield
Final Fantasy 16
Anabella Rosfield, initially showing up in the game’s prologue as a Karen-adjacent mom, is quickly revealed as the very reason the Grand Duchy of Rosaria falls. After being promised a high place in the Kingdom of Sanbreque, she defects and betrays her husband, marrying Emperor Sylvestre Lesage and giving birth to his child, called Olivier.
As a mother, she loved Joshua, but after Clive was rejected by the Phoenix Eikon, she just discarded him and considered him a lesser being, barely speaking to him in the years after that. After the timeskip, she becomes a truly deranged psychopath, and her third son was nothing but an empty abomination, and a thrall for Ultima to use; after Dion kills him, she gets the ending she deserves.
1 Your Mom
Every Pokemon Game
Ok, so, this might sound like a joke, but just take a few steps back, put the nostalgia glasses on the table, and look at the big picture. Who the heck would let a 10-to-15-year-old kid go and walk around the country by themselves just to make their pets beat the living hell out of other people’s pets? What???
And you might say, “Oh, c’mon, it’s not like the Pokemon trainer in every game is a psychopath, right?” I don’t know, bro, you tell me. How unhinged are you when you play the Pokemon games? Have you played VGC tournaments? Did you ever take a look at the kind of sick stuff shiny hunters do to get their hands on some differently-colored animals? Yeah, I thought so.
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