8 Best Nintendo Villains With Heroic Tendencies

Highlights

• Bowser and other Nintendo villains have complex motivations, showcasing shades of gray in their character development.
• Team Rocket members in the Pokemon anime are portrayed as lovable rogues who occasionally help save the day.
• Nintendo characters like Tom Nook and Wario have shades of villainy, engaging players in morally ambiguous situations.

Nintendo, on the surface, is a family-friendly company promoting video games that almost everyone can enjoy. They have helped create characters that everyone loves as well, including Mario and all of those Pokemon. There are even villains that are easy to side with.

Then there are villains with seemingly no good spirit inside of them. Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda series is a fine example. Except for Hyrule Warriors, Ganondorf has never been good and, even then, he was in it to win it. Ganondorf aside, these Nintendo villains do deserve some credit. They have good qualities or at least did one act to help save the day.

8 Bowser

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Bowser has been Mario’s major rival since Super Mario Bros. began in 1985. He has bowed out occasionally, but most of the time he is a villain. There are some games where he is a hero, though, like Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. He’s one of the five playable characters in that game but he begins as a villain.

In Legend of the Seven Stars, Bowser teams up with Mario as an excuse to go after an even greater threat, but he does it in a pathetically obvious way. Even in games where he is a villain, like Super Mario Odyssey, Bowser has a softer side. He intends to marry Peach out of love and that’s worth a small amount of credit, even if kidnapping her is the wrong way about it.

7 Bowser Jr.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

Bowser Jr. also deserves a shoutout for his involvement in Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. This was a Switch remaster of the Wii U game with a new mode starring Mario and Bowser Jr. He thinks his father has gone a little too out of control, which is why Bowser Jr. joins Mario in this bite-sized adventure.

Overall, Bowser Jr. is just a kid who does whatever his dad says. Maybe he doesn’t want to be evil or maybe he just wants a mom, which is why Bowser kidnaps Peach all the time. The world may never know, but hopefully, this father-son duo can one day end this vicious cycle.

6 Claude/Dimitri/Edelgard

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

This one is a three-way tie between Claude of the Golden Deer, Dimitri of the Blue Lions, and Edelgard of the Black Eagles. Fire Emblem: Three Houses begins with the protagonist, Byleth, attending an academy with those three representatives.

Eventually, players have to make a choice about who they want to follow, which then leads to a time skip. Whoever players don’t choose will become enemies, but all three have the potential to be good and do indeed do good things, although they can also become corrupt leaders, depending on player choice.

5 Claus

Mother 3

Claus is a character most Nintendo fans may not be familiar with as Mother 3 has never been officially localized. He is the brother of the protagonist, Lucas, who disappears one day. Throughout the game, a masked cyborg will appear, which is revealed to be Claus in the end.

Claus was turned into a cyborg and brainwashed by the Pigmask Army. In a moment of clarity in the final battle, Claus knowingly uses magic to reflect off of Lucas to kill himself. In death, Claus is free from evil and can rest easy knowing his brother is safe.

4 Jesse/James/Meowth

Pokemon Anime

esse, James, and Meowth are all part of Team Rocket in the Pokemon anime. It may not be a game, but it is a Nintendo property and the three villains represent this idea well. The three are always trying to steal Pikachu from Ash and will seemingly do anything to get it.

There are many episodes where they help each other out, though, in dire situations, like the arc where all the villains and heroes get stuck on an island following a ship crash in season one. They also help Ash save the day in Pokemon The Movie 2000, the second movie. Those are just a couple of examples, but there are many others as Team Rocket is just a lovable bunch of rogues.

3 King Dedede

Kirby’s Return To Dreamland

King Dedede occupies a similar space in the Kirby universe as Bowser does in the Mario universe. In the early games, he was the main villain aiming to take over Dreamland, but as time went on, each game reduced his influence more and more to the point where he basically became a hero, albeit an apathetic one.

A big example can be seen in Kirby’s Return To Dreamland on the Wii. King Dedede is one of the four playable characters and the game itself is a 2D platformer. He may be slower than the others, but using that comically oversized hammer is always a blast.

2 Tom Nook

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Tom Nook is not really a villain in the Animal Crossing series, but there are undertones to his character. On paper, it always seems like he is doing the players a favor. They move into a new area, and he sets them up for a cushy life. However, Tom Nook also wrangles players into extreme debt.

It’s an entrapment situation where players don’t have a choice in the matter. He’s like a secret villain who does nice things on the surface but is secretly creating dastardly plans behind the scenes.

1 Wario

Wario Land: Shake It

Wario is an antagonist to Mario in his portable Game Boy series, starting with Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. After that, he takes over the Game Boy franchise as a treasure hunter only in it for himself. Money is always the goal and Wario Land: Shake It is perhaps the best example of the line that Wario draws morally.

The Shake King is the main villain who steals a magical sack that gives him infinite coins on top of usurping the throne from Queen Merelda of the Shake Dimension. Wario saves her and Queen Merelda’s people from certain doom but only to grab the coin sack for himself in the end. Wario will do good things if it means a big payout in the end.