When we come across a villain in a video game, we're focused on defeating them in the moment, and we probably don't think about the actor portraying them. However, there have been some truly iconic villainous performances in video games over the years, and even though many of the vile baddies are grotesque, their actors are quite good looking. These actors were the perfect fit for the villainous roles, and one of them gave such an interesting audition that they created a character just for him. Let's take a look at some video game villains who are actually gorgeous in real life.
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00:00While you may be familiar with gaming's vast pantheon of ne'er-do-wells, there's a decent
00:05chance you don't know what the actors who play them look like. These are the gorgeous
00:09faces behind gaming's most sinister sinners, psychopaths, and supervillains.
00:14Death Stranding sees protagonist Sam traversing the ruins of America. This means navigating
00:19dangerous environments while hiding from ghostly BTs or Beach Things and avoiding the mules
00:24and homo-demon terrorists populating the game world. Needless to say, Higgs the Big Bad
00:29Head Honcho makes those fools look like amateurs.
00:32"...lucky loser gets to put an end to this. Rinse and repeat, oh s—, once and for all."
00:38Thankfully, the actor lending both his voice and face to the leader of the homo-demons
00:42is considerably less volatile than his virtual counterpart.
00:46Troy Baker is a veteran of video game voice acting, having lent his talents to a variety
00:50of good guys — Joel in The Last of Us, Booker DeWitt in Bioshock Infinite, and not-so-good
00:55guys Pagan Min in Far Cry 4, the more in the medium.
00:59Interestingly enough, Death Stranding wasn't Baker's first time working with creator and
01:03video game author Hideo Kojima, as the actor lent his talent to Metal Gear Solid V The
01:08Phantom Pain, portraying a younger Revolver Ocelot.
01:12During Death Stranding's launch event, Baker opened up about the traditional hero-slash-villain
01:17dichotomy. He explained to video game journalist Jeff Keighley,
01:20There's forces that act for your hero, and forces that act against. There's no heroes
01:26and no villains, because from the other side, from the other perspective, I'm the hero."
01:31There are family-friendly video games meant to be played with loved ones — parents,
01:34siblings, even one spouse. Then there are games like Catherine. The 2011 Atlus title,
01:40which combined puzzle-solving gameplay with elements of dating sims and a hefty helping
01:45of psychological and supernatural horror, is the definition of risque, mostly thanks
01:50to its namesake, Catherine.
01:51I'm not scared.
01:52You're a bad liar.
01:57Early on, main protagonist Vincent, voiced incidentally by Troy Baker, is torn between
02:02two women — Catherine, his longtime girlfriend, and the mysterious Catherine. The former is
02:07a mature, family-oriented woman. The latter… isn't.
02:11Vincent meets Catherine with a C at a bar, and they quickly — and drunkenly — get
02:15to bump in uglies, endangering his relationship with Catherine with a K and promptly plunging
02:20Vincent into a literal living nightmare.
02:23The voice behind those big blue anime peepers is none other than voice actor Supreme Laura
02:27Bailey. As talented as she is diverse, Bailey has played virtual ventriloquist to hundreds
02:33of video game characters, from MJ in Marvel's Spider-Man to the polarizing Abby in The Last
02:38of Us Part II to Gears 5's Kate Diaz. Gamers with one foot stuck firmly in the anime sphere
02:44might also recognize her as the longtime voice of Dragon Ball Z's Trunks.
02:49From Darth Vader to Jabba the Hutt to Darth Maul and countless others, Star Wars is a
02:53franchise known for its villains. So when a Sith Inquisitor named Second Sister was
02:57revealed to be the main antagonist of Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, casual fans may have
03:02been left scratching their heads.
03:04The more fanatical of the fandom, however, might have recognized the villainess from
03:07her Star Wars canon premiere in a 2018 issue of the Darth Vader comic series. Fallen Order
03:12sees Second Sister, aka Trilla Siduri, plot on the trail of protagonist and Jedi fugitive
03:18Kal Kestis. To make a long story short, it's eventually revealed that Siduri, a former
03:23Jedi, was abandoned by her master, Sia Junda, only to be tortured by the Empire. Her mind
03:29warped by the dark side, Siduri was twisted into a sadistic Jedi hunter.
03:34Second Sister's voice actor, Elizabeth Gruyon, is a newcomer to video game acting. Her only
03:39other video game voice credit is Nisha, a companion character in the game Technomancer.
03:44Still, she seems to have enjoyed her time portraying the sinister Second Sister.
03:48"...we can literally run and chase each other and jump and take swings at each other, so
03:52it's the closest to playing in my backyard at eight years old of any job I've ever had."
03:57That said, she's graced the small screen in a number of television roles, appearing in
04:01shows like Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, and Lucifer.
04:05To put the popularity of the Halo franchise's Cortana into perspective, all one needs to
04:09do is recall how the A.I.'s name was lent to Microsoft's Siri Rival in order to convey
04:14a helpful, intelligent, intuitive character that you get to know and trust over time,
04:18via NBC News. That's not how one might categorize Ol' Corty's behavior circa Halo 5.
04:24"...the mantle of responsibility for the galaxy shelters all, but only the created are its
04:31masters."
04:32Long story short, Cortana entered a state of rampancy in Halo 4, which caused her to
04:36essentially overthink herself to madness. She managed to avoid slipping too far into
04:41the corrupted state, but following a too-complex-to-explain-here series of events, she decided that A.I. like
04:47herself were meant to enforce order throughout the galaxy. Yikes.
04:51Jen Taylor, Cortana's voice actor, has been portraying the babe in blue since 2001's Halo,
04:56Combat Evolved, though she'd already been lending her voice acting chops to nearly a
05:00dozen titles, like Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and Luigi's Mansion, to name a few, before
05:05she landed the longtime gig. While Taylor has appeared on the TV series Leverage and
05:10Everything Sucks, she's also portrayed the big bad Salem in the anime RWBY. Taylor is
05:15set to return to the Halo-versus-Cortana in the Halo TV series.
05:19Ah, Mortal Kombat. Where would the gamers of yesteryear be without the joys of tearing
05:23beating hearts from chests and blasting foes' flesh off courtesy of that loudmouth Sindel?
05:28The MK games are a treasure trove of treacherous tyrants, the most tyrannical of which has
05:33got to be Shao Kahn. Introduced in 1993's Mortal Kombat II, the Hulking Conqueror is
05:38one of the series' most ubiquitous and devastating baddies, and the incarnation that players
05:43traded blows with in 2019's Mortal Kombat 11 is no exception.
05:48"...Empires must expand, or die."
05:55The difference between this version of the Outworld antagonist and his earlier incarnations?
06:00Save for this guy's more Reptilian vibe, which Netherrealm senior character artist Solomon
06:04Gaten showed off on his ArtStation account, MK11's Kahn marks the villain's first portrayal
06:09by Nigerian-American voice actor E.K. Ahmadi. Though his name might not be as recognizable
06:15as some of the other actors on this list, Ahmadi boasts an unquestionably impressive
06:19and diverse range of video game performances, from William Lake in Death Stranding to Aaron
06:23Davis, a.k.a. the Prowler, in Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales.
06:27"...Damn, Miles. You're a skinny-ass kid. You hit hard."
06:31"...Uncle Aaron?"
06:33Ahmadi has also lent his voice to a ton of TV shows and movies, including Love, Death,
06:38and Robots, Avengers Assemble, and the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends Scorpion's Revenge,
06:44in which he played Jax.
06:45Paz Ortega Andrade had it rough. In Metal Gear Solid 5 Ground Zeroes, not only is it
06:50suggested that she was tortured by Skull Face, but the Phantom Pain prologue showcases the
06:55removal of a bomb from her belly, and then the detonation of a second bomb located…
07:00elsewhere.
07:01Still, she wasn't exactly innocent, either. Enter 2010's Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker.
07:06The short and sweet answer of it goes like this. Paz, real name Pacifica Ocean, is a
07:10highly-trained cypher agent posing as a peace-loving high school student. She notably stole Metal
07:15Gear Zeke, and threatened to frame protagonist Big Boss by bombing the East Coast.
07:20"...When all is said and done, peace is nothing but a fantasy. A game is a game. You either
07:26win or you lose."
07:28She'd hoped this would cause the public to label his organization, MSF, an extremist
07:32cult. Needless to say, she was defeated by Big Boss, and then all that belly-bomb stuff
07:37went down in Ground Zeroes.
07:38If Paz's voice sounds familiar, that's because she's played by Tara Strong, a voice actor
07:43who's portrayed many beloved childhood cartoon characters — Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls,
07:48"...The Bubbles you know is gone! I'm hardcore now!"
07:54...Timmy in Fairly OddParents, and Raven in Teen Titans, among loads of others. She also
07:58played Harley Quinn in the Arkham games, a role that she is set to reprise in 2022's
08:02Suicide Squad, Kill the Justice League.
08:05"...Run, Cloud. Run away. You have to leave. You have to live."
08:13Any RPG gamer worth their materia collection knows the story of Final Fantasy VII's Sephiroth,
08:18the former soldier first-class operative-turned-psychopathic supervillain and self-proclaimed god. Killer
08:24of Aerith and ultimate mama's boy, Sephiroth has gone down in RPG history as one of the
08:29most badass and bonkers bad guys in gaming. And while his original iteration didn't boast
08:34any spoken dialogue, the FFVII Remake version of Olsefi isn't afraid to deliver an ominous
08:39line or two every now and again.
08:41And ominous those lines are, delivered by the ever-talented Tyler Hoechlin, who TV fans
08:46might recognize as the Arrow vs. Superman. He's appeared as a character in Supergirl,
08:51Arrow, The Flash, Batwoman, Legends of Tomorrow, and 2021's Superman & Lois alongside Elizabeth
08:57Tulloch. In the early 2000s, he played baseball prodigy Martin Brewer in Seventh Heaven, after
09:03which he'd go on to portray Derek Hale in the supernatural drama Teen Wolf from 2011
09:08to 2017. Hoechlin has also appeared in a slew of smaller TV roles, popping up in police
09:13procedural shows like Castle and CSI Miami.
09:17Mr. Negative, born Martin Li, is another one of those villains that it's hard not to feel
09:21sorry for. Injected with the experimental Devil's Breath serum, the transformation that
09:26then-young Li underwent caused an explosion that killed both of his parents. Eventually,
09:31after amassing a considerable fortune in China, he opened the Feast Homeless Shelter.
09:35Hey, Martin, so sorry I'm late.
09:37You were right on time. Just keep her distracted while we get everything ready.
09:42Sounds all well and good until you remember that Mr. Negative is both the leader of the
09:45Demons Gang and is obsessed with exacting revenge on Mayor Norman Osborn, whom he blames
09:50for his parents' death.
09:52Steven O. Young and Martin Li might look and sound alike, but we'd say that the former
09:56is a lot more adjusted than the latter. Talking to ComicBookMovie.com, O. Young dished on
10:00portraying one of the few major characters of Asian descent in the Spider-Man universe,
10:05saying it was a dream come true. He also enjoyed the process of exploring the depths of his
10:09villainous character, saying,
10:11"...bringing out the human side to the monster was the most satisfying part of the job."
10:15An accomplished voice actor, O. Young has lent his talent to games like Cyberpunk 2077,
10:20Death Stranding, and Fallout 76. He's also appeared in live-action shows, including How
10:26to Get Away with Murder, The Last Ship, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow.
10:30If there's one thing aspiring baddies need to know before they try their luck at supervillainy
10:34in the Resident Evil universe, it's this — do not work with Albert freaking Wesker. Apparently,
10:40though, excella Gioni didn't get the memo. Although the director of Tricell Africa proved
10:44invaluable to Wesker, he would go on to betray Gioni. How? Why, by injecting her with a virus
10:50that would reject her DNA and transform her into a kaiju-sized monstrosity of flailing
10:54tentacles and massive pulsating postules, of course.
10:58Luckily for fans with a healthy fear of devastating viruses and eldritch horrors, Nina Ferrin,
11:03who provided both voiceover and motion capture for the dubious businesswoman, looks a whole
11:07lot more like excella pre-mutation.
11:09"...The preparations are almost complete. Then we can leave."
11:15"...Good."
11:16Though she's appeared in a number of shorts, TV movies, and shows, including Entourage,
11:21How to Get Away with Murder, and Revenge, Resident Evil 5's excella marks Ferrin's sole
11:26video game credit. Still, it seems as though she enjoyed the experience, telling Resident
11:30Evil Realm that she was thrilled to be a part of such a popular game series. She added that,
11:35while she doesn't play many video games, now that she's in one, she's definitely going
11:39to start.
11:40As an actor, you know you've done a bang-up job when you inspire the character that you
11:44wind up portraying. In a G4 X-Plays segment, Michael Mando, the face and voice of Far Cry
11:493's Vaas, revealed that, when he auditioned for the role, the character of Vaas did not
11:54exist. He went on to explain that, while Ubisoft had a vague idea of the character's physical
11:59and behavioral traits, Mando flipped the script on them with his performance.
12:02"...The part was initially written as 6'6", 280 pounds, very sociopathic, stoic, and I
12:08gave them anything but what they were looking for."
12:11Incidentally, Mando didn't get the part. However, he did eventually receive a call from the
12:16Far Cry 3 devs, who decided to develop a whole new character based upon his audition
12:20— a character that looked just like him and shared the same insane vibes as his take
12:24on the original role.
12:25"...I'm sorry, I don't like the way you are looking at me."
12:32Mando's performance as Vaas might delight video game fans, but the Canadian actor's
12:36got a little something for everyone in his diverse repertoire. From nail-biter dramas
12:40like Orphan Black, The Killing, and Better Call Saul to campy affair like Psych, he's
12:45even popped up in the MCU, where he played Mac Gargan, aka Scorpion, in Spider-Man Homecoming.