6 Video Game Villains Who Defeated Themselves

Highlights

• Villains tend to be self-destructive, as seen in Master Kohga’s demise in
  Breath of the Wild.
• The “Master” in
  Fallout
  faces doom due to his flawed mutant evolution plan in the end.
• Sullivan Knoth, a cult leader in
  Outlast 2
  , meets his destructive end driven by his twisted teachings.

Whether it’s out of self-loathing, poor impulse control, or just a straight-up death wish, villains tend to be pretty self-destructive by nature. It’s no surprise. These characters are designed to have something or someone to ruin, and they’re not usually known for making the best life decisions. Even the ones who come up with the most detailed schemes tend to overthink themselves into a corner.

Sometimes, a video game will have a classic ending where the hero defeats the villain. There’s nothing wrong with good triumphing over evil, after all. However, there’s something even more poetic and satisfying when a villain ends up being the architect of their own destruction.

6 Master Kohga

Proof That Bigger Is Not Always Better

For a character who swings around a sword all the time, Link isn’t usually a hero who gets his hands dirty. He’ll slay plenty of Moblins and Bokoblins, but actual people? That’s not usually Nintendo’s vibe. That’s why defeating human villains in The Legend of Zelda franchise tends to be a little more creative.

Master Kohga is a perfect example. Aside from his comedic moments, there’s no denying that the Yiga Clan’s leader is a menace who the Hero of Time needs to bring down. Once their battle is finished, thoughm the final blow isn’t by Link’s own hand. It’s by Kohga himself, summoning a giant spiked ball that ends up pushing him into a pit.

5 The Master

And It Was All For Naught

Some people just can’t ever admit when they’re wrong. Luckily for players of the original Fallout, the game’s final antagonist doesn’t have this problem. The “Master” is a horrifying amalgamation of machinery and flesh who dreams of mutants inheriting the world as the next phase of human evolution.

There’s just one problem with his master plan: mutants can’t procreate, which means his dreams won’t last more than a single generation. If players confront The Master with this inconvenient truth, he’ll be left horrified by the ramifications of what he’s done. He then promises to destroy his life’s work in atonement, taking himself down with it.

4 Malus Thorm

Proof That Sharran Philosophy Is Severely Unhealthy

The chief surgeon at the House of Healing could have chosen to worship any of the Life domain deities of the Forgotten Realms, but no, Malus Thormhad to worship Shar of all Gods. The Lady of Loss isn’t a great fit for a hospital setting, and it shows. Thorm’s teachings to his nurses are backwards and nonsensical, not to mention his atrocious bedside manner.

Confronting this sinister doctor can lead to a fight, but astute players can manipulate Thorms’ own philosophies against him. By succeeding the right Persuasion checks, gamers can get Thorm and his nurses to turn their scalpels on each other, rewarding them with all the loot while facing none of the combat.

3 The Joker

He Might Have Lived If He’d Trusted Batman

Everyone knows Batman and Joker’s endless dance by now. The Joker kills people. Batman stops him. The Joker gets put back in Arkham Asylum, and then he just breaks out and does it all over again. Batman refuses to use lethal force, and the Joker uses that to his advantage. At the end of Arkham Asylum, though, it’s different. Batman doesn’t need to kill the Joker. All he has to do is withhold the serum that will cure the Joker’s illness.

That’s probably why the Joker is especially jumpy about stealing the vial out of Batman’s hands. So much so that he ends up knocking it to the ground, where it shatters. As the Joker despairs over how screwed he now is, Batman lets him in on a little secret: he was going to save the Joker after all. All the Joker can do is laugh and laugh in his final moments over how he ended up dooming himself.

2 Sullivan Knoth

A Fitting End For A Zealous Cult Leader

Outlast 2 has a lot to say about cults and religious trauma. The Testament of the New Ezekiel is absolutely disturbing for a number of reasons, all of which stem from the selfish and abhorrent leader, Sullivan Knoth. His twisted and perverted teachings brought his flock further and further away from God with each passing day.

In the end, though, it wasn’t by protagonist Blake’s hand that the cult was destroyed; it was Knoth himself. Believing the end times were upon them, Knoth destroyed the following he created before joining them in whatever afterlife their “faith” deserved.

1 Damon Gant

Destroyed By Creating “Insurance”

Chief of Police Damon Gant is one of the most conniving criminals the Ace Attorney franchise has ever seen. His power play to control the police department and the prosecutor’s office was almost the perfect crime. After all, his biggest accomplice, Lana Skye, couldn’t blow the whistle on his corrupt deeds without putting her sister, Ema, in harm’s way.

In order to hold Ema’s fate over Lana’s head like a guillotine, Gant falsified two pieces of evidence. What he didn’t take into account was that one of those pieces held a fatal contradiction. As Phoenix Wright uses this contradiction to expose the truth, Gant quickly realizes that his vast tapestry of lies is coming apart, and he was the one who gave Wright the exact loose thread he needed to pull.