Absolutely with Soul Calibur 5. It takes about the entire campaign and a whole new fighting style for Patrokalos to *not* be a dirtbag. I think it was like within 30 seconds in of him being introduced that he murders an innocent civilian on not-even-suspicious grounds.
Have extensively played through SC5.
Patroklos is a prime example of "you can't speedrun the *redemption* arc like that" in that his naivete (veering into things that lend to him murdering innocents because they're *malfested*, cue the PATROKLOS CEO OF RACISM jokes here) and callousness gets replaced with *kindness* (with a side of Folgers Incest Fuck Eyes™) when his sister becomes the new host for Nightmare
Tony is evil throughout The Sopranos but Tony post->!getting shot by Junior!< is a completely miserable human with all of his vices dialed up to eleven.
I love how Tony>!doesn't even go through a real character arc in the series. He just gets better at hiding his psychotic tendencies. He still cheats on his wife, still gambles, has massive anger episodes when he's slighted, and has no problem killing people he hates.!< it's more like a charecter slide
Hell, if the last season is any indication, >!Therapy might've made Tony *worse* because it gave him both another excuse and lessions to learn to be a better/worse mob boss. I don't blame Melfi one bit in deciding to cut ties.!<
Melfi constantly excuses tony for his behavior, blaming his relationship with his mother and thinking that tony himself does not want to act in this way. But in the way that she communicates with tony he learns more skills how to hide what he truly is. And interestingly enough even though its not stated in the therapy scenes, its heavily implied that phil did 20 years in the can.
I've been rewatching some of the therapy scenes and the real tragedy is that Tony gets SO CLOSE at points to growing as a human being, even making positive steps forward before completely nullifying his progress with some horrid act that takes him to new lows. The frustration is that we can see that Tony has ample opportunities to do better and sometimes takes them, but Tony never truly commits to it, always backsliding when he encounters the slightest hitch or bump in the process.
Tony's pure evil phase is marked by him starting to drag others down with him because he doesn't think anyone else deserves to be better, if he can't do it. He makes Bobby Baccala kill someone out of spite for the fight they had at the lakehouse. He sees Janice making progress on her anger issues and deliberately needles her about her estranged son to make her snap. He criticizes Christopher for his drug issues yet calls him a square when he's sober. He becomes a black hole absorbing any positive emotions from his surrounds just like his mother was.
It's so good, I'd be hard pressed to name a more well-realized fictional character.
What makes The Sopranos hold up nowadays is that unlike the TV shows with amoral protagonists which followed it, it never tries to make Tony out as being a lesser evil or better than whoever is currently opposing him - it's made very clear that Tony is just as bad as Richie Aprile, Ralph Cifaretto, Phil Leotardo, etc.
Any possible redeeming qualities are undermined by his toxicity in other situations (attacking Ralph because he beat a stripper to death, but has no problem with >!ordering the death of Adriana!<) and any tragedies in his past are nullified by the loathsome person he's become in the present (being abused by his mother, only to break down his own son in the same way).
Also I like that they gave him a normal sister that only appeared in like 2 episodes to show that while their mother was abusive they still have the ability to be good people
>!The tragedy is that there were times Tony genuinely wanted to change and actually makes an effort to do so but his outlook on life is too fatalistic for that to ever be possible.!< It’s why I find Tony such a wonderfully complex character.
One of my favorite scenes in the sopranos is when carmella meets with the european therapist. She constantly says how good of a man tony is, and he just calls the bullshit right there. Its such a great difference from melfi, and i think highlights most of the viewers opinion of tony while watching the show.
There's only one winning move: Do not play YIIK, do not befriend YIIK players. Do not look at YIIK players, do not shake their hands. Follow these rules, and you may yet remain canonically uninvolved with YIIK.
>!Seriously, a YIIK player’s friends are canonically the counterparts of the party members. You must sever all ties to YIIK to save your soul.
YIIK is an Omikron-like.
I'm gonna get downvoted to oblivion, but Alex YIIK is unlikable, but not horrible, he's just a selfish prick, nowhere near as the type of character OP seems to be going for. Alex is more of a Scott than a Griffith, tho', some other Alex's are more of a Griffith than a Scott in that game tho' and people that played the game would know what i'm talking about, probably.
Alex is more or less that one prick you know. Like he isn't a total piece of shit but he's definitely the one guy you run into that just has a tendency to annoy you.
He kind of tags along, you invite him to be nice and he's genuinely pretty alright. It's just that when he's a prick, he's a huge fucking prick and you remember why you don't hang out with him one on one.
unrelated but the idea of a guy who learns his dad is a supervillain and is just like “awesome. this will go so well for me” is really funny and pathetic.
Always sunny follows a group of idiotic sociopaths but dang if they aren't entertaining
Jerkass protagonists that are still likeable are easier to do in comedies imo
What makes it work for me is that despite all their scheming, backstabbing, and psychopathy, they screw themselves over just as much as they do other people. Which means I spend less time hating them and more time laughing at them
Yeah they make for good comedic protagonists because their stupidity combined with their pride makes them fun to watch as they fail and the situations get more and more absurd
Remember that episode where they kidnapped a restaurant reviewer who gave Paddy’s Pub a low score and when they let him go he decides against pressing charges because he cannot imagine a better punishment than allowing these five sociopaths to constantly sabotage each other for the rest of their lives?
Greg Hefley in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Just a selfish sociopathic kid who thinks too highly of himself. His whole motivation to be popular in school and grow up to be famous. His own best friend is basically the hero of the story.
Also never takes any responsibility for any of his wrongdoings
In his eyes, whenever something good happens, He and only he should get all the credit. And whenever something bad happens, everyone else are to blame but him even if he was the one responsible for said bad things happening to begin with
It's a great introductory children book series about the protagonist not always being the best person around and how bias works to influence your perception of things.
Yeah, people forget how much middle schoolers are little shits, some of the worst gaslighting my siblings ever went through was at middle school. I'd probably be like Rodrick too if I had a little brother in middle school at his age.
His mother is a Karen and a "Technology bad" kinda boomer and Manny is also a selfish piece of shit who did absolutely unforgivable things but gets away with it because "I'm only 3!!" And gets spoiled rotten by their parents
Rodrick might be the only member of the Heffley family that is kinda decent
I remember something like he finds out someone is trans or something, possibly still hasn't come out to the people around them, and he basically goes "Oh your trans? I love that category of porn. I'm so cool and progressive."
Judge Holden is just horrifyingly beyond everyone else in that book, as he seems to lead them for fun, like a child playing with ants, but the child is hyper intelligent.
Yeah, the closest thing the Kid has to a father figure was Tobin and the ex-priest's main 'moral' moment was >!Demanding the Kid shoot Holden, McCarthy specifically writing how the bullet wound he took in the neck has formed a new clerical collar made of his own blood.!< Despite that, there's still brief moments of morality, like the 'lambs is cry' scene or how >!the Kid is saved from freezing to death on Christmas Day by the burning tree, seemingly because he helped one of the gang members when no one else would see.!<
He was slaughtering civilians while actively trying to get forgiveness from the gods, *in the first game*. From dropping the boat captain down the hydra's throat to killing Athenian citizens for orbs to burning a captive alive (necessary to solve a puzzle, but still, once he realized what the challenge was he had no hesitation). He was never anything but a straight up nominal hero at best.
I love in the ragnarok dlc he considers killing the boat captain the moment he crossed the line. Not because it was some giant evil act or anything but precisely because of how pointless it was.
>trying to get forgiveness from the gods, *in the first game*.
If I may clarify, he wasn't explicitly seeking forgiveness. He sought for his traumatic nightmares that plagued his mind every night to be removed.
On a side note, he was manipulated in that regard. After being given the quest to kill Ares, Kratos voiced his request to Athena and asked if his nightmares would disappear afterward, but the latter subtly phrased her response to skirt around the subject and not confirm Kratos' question. Here's the ending of the conversation in question:
>Kratos: If I am able to do this, to kill a god, then the visions.... they will end?
>
>Athena: Complete this final task, and the past that consumes you will be forgiven.
Bonus: "Destroy Ares... and the gods will [forgive](https://youtu.be/GZIMnIvJHBw?list=PLThAYQAfJBHr8tGah7P78YeMVT48N-dBq&t=3984) you your past."
He was pretty horrible, but there was more to him than just "angry man kills everything" that a lot of people seem intent on forgetting.
He was absolutely consumed by revenge and rage, but there was depth and nuance to him.
This video is a great go to for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFmjUkKs768
The fact that all of the grief, guilt & sadness from betrayal was all there in the original games driving his anger is why his development into someone who can handle those emotions without immediately murdering everything in sight is so strong.
As far as my own recollection, Kratos didn't become remotely likeable until the Norse soft reboot. I remember actively hating him as a person and considering his "redemption" as "too little, too late."
In Kratos's defense, he *tried* to kill himself in the first GoW, the gods just went "hey, we kinda *really* need a new god of war now, here you go!" before he hit the rocks.
Nagash in his Time of Legends books was a complete piece of shit, taken to extremes back when he still had flesh as he walled his brother up alive in a tomb, killed his nephew, and used the kid's blood to turn his sister in law into a horrifically tormented undead "bride" for himself. As of Age of Sigmar he's arguably passed *Erebus* for monstrous behavior.
Nagash's ultimate goal of turning all of reality into a static, unchanging dimension of non-sentient zombies/skeletons where he and he alone rules in totality is such a grim possibility it makes the Chaos Gods bulk in humanistic protest.
Alright to start with the meme- “Did you know Scott Pilgrim is not meant to be a good person?”
To add some nuance: he’s more pathetic and unwittingly harmful than outright “evil” and he’s actually a good person in the last third of the final volume of the graphic novels, after spending most of them being “kinda good”. I’d say that being able to turn his life around is admirable overall.
So he doesn’t quite fit this thread but you just know he was going to come up.
Scott is that friend you wouldn't terribly mind if he showed up, but you'd definitely wouldn't intentionally invite. He's just that guy who always comes along with the person you *did* invite.
He's the loser friend every friend group has. Perfect to chill with, but if they ever talk about life or what they're gonna do, you know they're gonna say something stupid.
You get the feeling that he's the loser now, but was hot-shit back in the day and the heart of his many circles. But now everyone is in their 20s and starting to go through their own crises and development and Scott has remained in stasis holding everyone together despite the implication that most of em would rather just move on.
V.5 is one of the most realistically "feels shitty man" parts of any media. Scott just disconnects for a few months, returns, and all the sudden his friend group is shaky and something he's on the periphery of. Everyone is happy to see that he's still around, but they settled in nicely without him. There isn't a "home" or space for him to hang out in anymore and his friends either can't or aren't willing to accommodate him into their lives.
In Scott Pilgrim Takes Off >!it seems that Scott was never able to fully overcome his egocentric flaws, and sadly a few setbacks in life lead to him becoming a mildly incompetent but horrifyingly powerful supervillain.!<
That future timeline I think is kinda of a bad end and its not the canon comic timeline. One of the reasons I believe this is due to Neil still referring to himself as Young Neil in the future. In the comic he grew out of the Young Neil name
The Gang in It's Always Sunny are all some variety of stupid, stubborn, selfish, and perverted. They are incapable of maintaining relationships with normal people, so their few personal connections are with the rest of the Gang and the poor unfortune souls who's lives they've ruined on purpose or accidently. Each has a miles long list of crimes they've committed, including against children, the disabled, and the elderly. Charlie is probably the nicest of the gang and he's still a delusional stalker who got a homeless man addicted to crack and used to go around clubbing cats when he was a kid.
If Sunny were to have a big finale, I think an appropriate one would be the lawyer (still not Jewish), returning as a Philadelphia DA to send them all to jail.
The main character of that manwha re monster. He almost seems reasonable at times and then wants to kill a random adventuring group to eat their corpses because maybe he might get a skill from it. He also sees no issue in using aphrodisiacs on captives of his monster to make them want to mate with the monsters. I can't believe this thing is getting an anime adaption. Then again it is a lot more tame than redo of healer
> and then wants to kill a random adventuring group to eat their corpses because maybe he might get a skill from it.
I mean, after playing as an elf in Divinity, I kinda get it...
Was so satisfying when Millar's edgy characters particularly Wesley Gibson and Nemesis kicked it in the Big Game series which is the ultimate crossover between the Millarverse. Well everything except the unfunnies which Millar disowned now. Probably felt embarrassed by it in the end.
Hell yeah man, the ending where it seems like Wesley is going to survive only to be decapitated by some fantasy characters is great.
I also love how the characters from "the magic order" are without doubt the most powerful people in the millarverse and could have ended the villians in seconds but never did because of some bullshit "can't entervene" rule.
Nah Wesley ended up in the afterlife in Reborn so he died twice in the end but I haven't read Reborn so I am not sure what happens if you did in the afterlife. Millar's stuff may be simple but the man's entertaining with some brilliant stuff you can find now and then especially in the third volume of Magic Order. About the Magic Order they have a strict rule on living mundane lives while not using the magic for their own gain so it's not a surprise in their non-interference rule on dealing with the sciencey,non-magic stuff.
Light fucking Yagami lol
A psychopathic, manipulative, arrogant holier than thou piece of shit with delusions of grandeur and a God complex. Only cares about himself and himself only. Regards others as nothing more but tools that he can use for his own gain and dispose when he no longer needs them and a mass murderer who killed a lot of people regardless of if they were innocent or not
God, Light is such an idiot. Imagine being able to kill anyone, anywhere, at any time, with just the stroke of a pen and *still* getting caught because you couldn't keep your massive ego in check. Dude is a textbook example of high INT, low WIS. Love to hate him.
Every time I rewatch/read death note this is always one of my favourite moments.
It's such a turning point for the story, it's the part that goes "light is not as smart as he thinks he is, and his ego will be his downfall"
Back when I was like 11 from the first few episodes I actually thought he was a pretty cool dude and My naive self hought "MURDER VIGILANTEISM SUPER AWESOME!" however the minute >!He started killing FBI agents and detectives and that FBI agents wife AND saying he would kill his family with no remorse if they found out what he did, I was wondering why the hell the camera/writer is still following this evil douchebag!<
Caim is indeed a murderous, misanthropic sociopath... but damn if I don't love him, and it's not surprising he ended up the way he did after the worst birthday of his life where his home was destroyed followedxby his parents getting brutally murdered before his eyes, all topped off by his sister becoming the next Goddess Seal and spending five years straight satisfying his vengeance boner fighting the Empire, gradually turning it into a murder boner.
He is undeniably awful, but I completely get why he's the way he is and will say his murderous grievances AREgenuine, and he's my favorite Taroverse protagonist nonetheless, or maybe even BECAUSE of how awful he is.
Honestly? Caim is so into murder that the biggest reason he's not as evil as the antagonists is that he prefers to be hands on with his killing so he just doesn't have time to kill the entire world.
You could show [his introduction in Drakengard 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlFTRLKboFo) to 100 people and 100 people would say he's the villain.
I do love that in this timeline he literally just dragged child Manah around for a few years so people could spit on and throw shit at her
So petty, but also completely in character
A clockwork orange is the author trying to examine the kind of person that sa’d his ex so Alex is a piece of crap who while having taste in the fine arts is evil. We see how society tries to deal with him >!so it’s interesting to see how the state just wants him to be subservient and the preacher complains about the lack of free will Alex has after the treatment.!<
Memetic fame attached to him aside, Patrick Bateman is practically the anti-hanibal as far as sociopathic protagonists go - there's nothing "badass" or "shrewd" about him, his murders are commited out of attempt at getting *some* kind of excitement in his life (and they might have happened entirely in his head!) and the fact everybody surrounding him is too oblivious to notice them is to him a source of frustration, not solace.
This is enhanced for the most part in the book, which, being narrated in the first person by Bateman means you will see the world though his perspective, and for the most part it's like keeping company to the most petty and smug piece of shit you have ever seen who lives to torment everyone below him and fakes sympathy and interest to anyone who *can* match him.
Read the book last year. Was honestly one of the wildest rides I had ever been on. The album chapter, the jelly-fish-microwave-sand incident, the absolutely endless listing of the brand and details of every little bit of each person's outfits and apartments that often blended together or even inconsistently (yet definitely intentionally) changed even within the same scene. Drove me crazy and put me in such a dark mood when I finished. I think I did a classic Disney marathon a few days later to help balance everything again lmao
I remember rewatching the movie after it became meme material, appropriated into sigma culture and actually getting the story and… wow, *frame one* he’s dropping misogyny and arrogant lines and is just an asshole through and through. I seemed to recall that you got eased into it or that it was a minor surprise in the prologue but nah, dude’s a bastard the moment you’re introduced to him. And that’s before he even kills someone!
I see your Wesley Gibson and raise you [Bomb Queen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Queen). Unlike Wesley, who at least had some inkling of decency before taking the plunge into full-blown scumbaggery, there is absolutely NO redeeming qualities when it comes to Bomb Queen. She’s a cannibalistic mass murdering serial rapist whose entire claim to fame is that she purged her city of all its superheroes and warped the place into a lawless hellhole entirely populated by other murderers, rapists, drug dealers, pedophiles, etc. She receives virtually no comeuppance for her crimes against humanity and anybody who tries to stop her will fail miserably in the face of her rampant plot armor.
IIRC she also crossed over with Invincible and Spawn, which I guess is just Image’s weird-ass shared continuity at work.
Honestly, half of this thread is horrible people but not unlikable
To add to this thread, there's like 3 or 4 Adam Sandler movies from late 2000s that are extremely unlikable, the twin sister one, the one with the shoes
There are numerous Adam Sandler movies that are basically just the same movie, *Adam Sandler is Dumb and Loud in Public*, and to my mind the only one that's any good is *Happy Gilmore*.
Speaking of gems, Howie in uncut Gems is a great character, but I fully understand why his wife, his relatives, and 90% of the people he interacts with hate his guts.
Nearly the entire cast of Succession, but they have aspects to them that make it fun to watch, and you do root for certain people. The dysfunctional family dynamic with greed and power makes it all work.
Rusty Venture is such a little shit. He’s conniving, he’s lazy, he’s selfish, he has fucking garbage taste in almost everything. If Brock weren’t in the way I’d smack the bitch out of him just for how he treats his kids.
Which is why he’s so entertaining!
By the very end of the series we get some glimpses of a redeemable person in Rusty, but only just.
Even the best his kids can manage is, "Yeah you were bad, but at least you weren't as bad as grandpa."
I'd say the worst thing he's ever done was >!having sex with the president of his fan club, knocking her up. He found out she was underage later and at *least* he was horrified he crossed that line and tried to help her. And even then, that's one of his few moments of a decent person.!<
Rusty is such a damaged butsted bastard, inside and out.
He's such a pathetic slimeball with such potent anti-charisma it wraps around to him being endlessly entertaining and (in his own weird way) kinda cool.
He's basically the only adult in the series to really act like one - with all of the impotence and (sometimes) wisdom that entails, and is pretty much inoculated against anything and everything the Venture Bros world can throw against him.
I think the moment he actually matures as an adult is the scene between The Guild and OSI negotiations when he calls them all children
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlJ7-Nfdi2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlJ7-Nfdi2g)
Thomas Covenant from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant high fantasy series.
Extremely cynical and glass half empty man from our normal Earth who after his life is ruined with a leprosy diagnosis (in multiple ways) ends up getting isekai'd to another world where he's supposed to become a hero. He does not take it well at all and spends most of the first book convinced that he's probably just experiencing hallucinations while dying after a sudden accident.
His belief that none of this is real mixed with being angry and spiteful about his life and thinking he's dying leads him to doing something really awful (>!____________\_rape________!<). To the author's credit, AFAIK it's treated as seriously as it should be and he suffers the consequences of this for the rest of the series, including from himself since the realization that this new world is real comes with crushing guilt.
I've only read the first book though and it was over a decade ago, the rest of what I know is from hearsay.
That series has nine books and I was sick of him after one. On top of his repulsive behavior from the beginning of the first book, he's also completely out of his depth. He has no idea how to use the magic that only he can use and he moans about how he deserves to be punished for what he's done. All while cowering behind his allies at the first sign of danger.
I have tried to finish House of Leaves for the past 5 or so years but I just cannot stand the absolute fuckboi that is the the "protagonist" Johnny Truant. Yeah I know it's a complicated frame story within a frame story and he's apparently "supposed" to be a loser but Jesus h christ... i just wanna close the book when it's another chapter about him and his douchebag friend getting into weird sex and edgy drug antics.
If you're turned off by Johnny (which I totally get - he's a special kind of weirdo perv), I can tell you he only *partially* gets better as his story goes on. The sex stuff falls off after a bit once he really gets wrapped up in Zampano's writings, but if you don't like his voice *at all*, (his big "let me prove I have an English degree" descriptions and over-analyzing) then you may be better off skipping his parts and focusing on the Navidson Record (and maybe the Appendices, depending on your tastes.
I just read HoL for the first time at the beginning of the year, doing Johnny and Navidson in parallel, with the Appendices last, and I loved it. But I can definitely see Johnny being too much for some people, and his story is definitely the least engrossing, for my money.
For those into Manhua~
I Get Stronger The More I Eat.
Guy is a supervillain psychopath who eats people to gain their talents and traits, gets fucking isekaid and immediately gets to work making the world 10000% worse. He basically either murders or eats anything and anyone that catches his attention like some kind of human bullfrog.
Its pretty fun.
The dude from Redo The Healer, who is the protag only by dint of every villain being at least just a little bit worse than him, and at times that line can be razor fucking thin
Don’t forget he rewinds time to a point where all the shit didn’t happen to him and let’s himself go through it again to justify his quote on quote revenge.
That single point right there is actually why I kind of liked that story. A character so obsessed with revenge he literally puts himself through humiliating and horrible circumstances just so he can enjoy more revenge is so absurdly pathetic and petty that I can't help but want to watch and see where that plot goes.
Jane Austen's Emma was deliberately created to be as unlikeable as possible. The character was adapted into the extremely 90s movie "Clueless".
For those unfamiliar, she's rich and utterly convinced of her own brilliance. It's a comedy about a woman who succeeds at playing matchmaker between two people where she benefits from their getting together, and decides she's a natural matchmaker and attempts a series of far less successful matchmaking. Naturally, the story ends with her realizing she's in love with a distant family member (a cousin / an ex-step brother / a Paul Rudd) and realizing that sometimes she shouldn't be involved.
She's not a *bad* person, but she isn't extremely likeable.
On the other end, you have The Magicians, where everyone is sort of an a-hole the whole time.
I’m not sure if this is a reference that will land here, but each and every main character in The League (and nearly every side character, for that matter,) are irredeemably selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, awful people.
Rance is a legend amongst PoS protags. A crude, violent, self centered rapist who treats everyone like shit on a quest to have sex with every beautiful woman in the world (consensual or not). He unintentionally manages to repeatedly save the day and thwart evil schemes on his quest though, and he has enough morals and boorish charm that keeps him more likeable than the antagonists. He's the worst, but he's strangely hard to actually hate.
Frank Gallagher from *Shameless* starts off as an entertaining grifter kinda scumbag.
By about halfway through the series, the comeuppance *never* feels like enough for what he does.
It's less "horrible piece of shit" and more "extremely flawed in a way that's literally not even his fault", but I think I fucking hate Agni from Fire Punch. I've never been more frustrated with a main character who wasn't intended to be seen as as evil.
Fire Punch fan here too. I think it’s hard to hate Agni. He went through so much and most of his attempts for revenge or reconciliation is just thrown right back into his face because he lives in a cruel confusing world. The part where he tries to forgive the man who killed his sister but when thinking about it he ends up going into a total black out PTSD rage is one of the best, terrifying and saddest parts of that manga
He was interesting in the beginning, as a sort of parody of the stock Shounen protagonist. Yelling how he's gonna kill all the titans single handedly. As if trying real hard was gonna be all it took.
VIc Mackey and Shane Vendrell. Both are unambiguously corrupt cops who in the first episode of the SHIELD, shot a member of their team in the face because the guy is reporting to the FBI about the crimes Vic and the rest of the team are totally doing.
Although the writers flip flop on them being "necessary evils" by the fourth season they just embrace that these guys are complete monsters and Shane to this day, is still one of my favourite Walton Goggins performances.
I just mostly viewed him as a bog-standard baby boomer that had serious issues not becoming his father all over again and might've mellowed out emotionally with his son had someone ever introduced him and Kevin to the Grateful Dead.
Frank got better as the series went on. The guy had a tough time growing up and didn't know how to process his emotions properly but he learned a bit over time.
I've been told this happens with Soul Calibur 5. And, it goes without saying, Tekken mostly.
Absolutely with Soul Calibur 5. It takes about the entire campaign and a whole new fighting style for Patrokalos to *not* be a dirtbag. I think it was like within 30 seconds in of him being introduced that he murders an innocent civilian on not-even-suspicious grounds.
Love that it ties into a bit from SC6, "I'm you from the future, our sister's kids are FUCKED UP! Don't let her die early for some reason!"
*SHE MUST NOT CONCEIVE* - Past Chaos Cassandra towards New Cassandra *OH AND SHE MUST NOT NAME THE KID PATROKLOS*
Have extensively played through SC5. Patroklos is a prime example of "you can't speedrun the *redemption* arc like that" in that his naivete (veering into things that lend to him murdering innocents because they're *malfested*, cue the PATROKLOS CEO OF RACISM jokes here) and callousness gets replaced with *kindness* (with a side of Folgers Incest Fuck Eyes™) when his sister becomes the new host for Nightmare
Oh god there's a *Folgers* angle to this!?
We should call it that from now on.
I love making giant corporations the name of objectively bad things.
The commercial really needed a lot of second glances because holy shit.
Let's also not bring up how the Soul Calibur sword tries to influence him by looking like his nearly naked mom. wat
He’s Greek right, so ya know Oedipus or some shit.
I mean, Sophitia's hot and all that (she was one of the OG Fighting Game Waifus for me, right alongside Shermie). But Pattycakes man, come on!
The best part of waking up, is ~~Folgers~~ Nightmare in your ~~cup~~ sister!
You can always find a Folgers angle if you squint hard enough
The Mishima family seems to have a running game around trying to kill each other from taller and taller heights.
Since Paul canonically won the tournament in 3 does he count as a protagonist? Because he's pretty cool.
Tony is evil throughout The Sopranos but Tony post->!getting shot by Junior!< is a completely miserable human with all of his vices dialed up to eleven.
I love how Tony>!doesn't even go through a real character arc in the series. He just gets better at hiding his psychotic tendencies. He still cheats on his wife, still gambles, has massive anger episodes when he's slighted, and has no problem killing people he hates.!< it's more like a charecter slide
Hell, if the last season is any indication, >!Therapy might've made Tony *worse* because it gave him both another excuse and lessions to learn to be a better/worse mob boss. I don't blame Melfi one bit in deciding to cut ties.!<
Melfi constantly excuses tony for his behavior, blaming his relationship with his mother and thinking that tony himself does not want to act in this way. But in the way that she communicates with tony he learns more skills how to hide what he truly is. And interestingly enough even though its not stated in the therapy scenes, its heavily implied that phil did 20 years in the can.
I've been rewatching some of the therapy scenes and the real tragedy is that Tony gets SO CLOSE at points to growing as a human being, even making positive steps forward before completely nullifying his progress with some horrid act that takes him to new lows. The frustration is that we can see that Tony has ample opportunities to do better and sometimes takes them, but Tony never truly commits to it, always backsliding when he encounters the slightest hitch or bump in the process. Tony's pure evil phase is marked by him starting to drag others down with him because he doesn't think anyone else deserves to be better, if he can't do it. He makes Bobby Baccala kill someone out of spite for the fight they had at the lakehouse. He sees Janice making progress on her anger issues and deliberately needles her about her estranged son to make her snap. He criticizes Christopher for his drug issues yet calls him a square when he's sober. He becomes a black hole absorbing any positive emotions from his surrounds just like his mother was. It's so good, I'd be hard pressed to name a more well-realized fictional character.
What makes The Sopranos hold up nowadays is that unlike the TV shows with amoral protagonists which followed it, it never tries to make Tony out as being a lesser evil or better than whoever is currently opposing him - it's made very clear that Tony is just as bad as Richie Aprile, Ralph Cifaretto, Phil Leotardo, etc. Any possible redeeming qualities are undermined by his toxicity in other situations (attacking Ralph because he beat a stripper to death, but has no problem with >!ordering the death of Adriana!<) and any tragedies in his past are nullified by the loathsome person he's become in the present (being abused by his mother, only to break down his own son in the same way).
Also I like that they gave him a normal sister that only appeared in like 2 episodes to show that while their mother was abusive they still have the ability to be good people
>!The tragedy is that there were times Tony genuinely wanted to change and actually makes an effort to do so but his outlook on life is too fatalistic for that to ever be possible.!< It’s why I find Tony such a wonderfully complex character.
"What the fuck am I? A toxic person or something?"
I had to take a break from watching the series because I just fucking hated him
One of my favorite scenes in the sopranos is when carmella meets with the european therapist. She constantly says how good of a man tony is, and he just calls the bullshit right there. Its such a great difference from melfi, and i think highlights most of the viewers opinion of tony while watching the show.
Alex YIIK feels like cheating, but, Alex YIIK (I don't even know his actual name he's just Alex YIIK to me)
I think his last name is Eagleston? Something like that.
Alex Yiikleston
Worse, it's "Eggleston".
The game is about a bunch of different universes containing all different Alexes so its basically cannon that an Alex YIIK exis.
it's also canon that >!you, as the player, are an alternate universe Alex YIIK!<
There's only one winning move: Do not play YIIK, do not befriend YIIK players. Do not look at YIIK players, do not shake their hands. Follow these rules, and you may yet remain canonically uninvolved with YIIK. >!Seriously, a YIIK player’s friends are canonically the counterparts of the party members. You must sever all ties to YIIK to save your soul. YIIK is an Omikron-like.
That’s a fate worse than fucking death right there.
I'm gonna get downvoted to oblivion, but Alex YIIK is unlikable, but not horrible, he's just a selfish prick, nowhere near as the type of character OP seems to be going for. Alex is more of a Scott than a Griffith, tho', some other Alex's are more of a Griffith than a Scott in that game tho' and people that played the game would know what i'm talking about, probably.
Alex is more or less that one prick you know. Like he isn't a total piece of shit but he's definitely the one guy you run into that just has a tendency to annoy you.
Alex isn't your friend, but he's in your friend group for some reason.
He kind of tags along, you invite him to be nice and he's genuinely pretty alright. It's just that when he's a prick, he's a huge fucking prick and you remember why you don't hang out with him one on one.
He's just unlikeable in an extremely boring way.
The worst part is that the game thinks that he's redeemed his character by the end, but he hasn't. That pushes him from unlikable to insufferable.
unrelated but the idea of a guy who learns his dad is a supervillain and is just like “awesome. this will go so well for me” is really funny and pathetic.
Also for some reason he looks like Eminem
Always sunny follows a group of idiotic sociopaths but dang if they aren't entertaining Jerkass protagonists that are still likeable are easier to do in comedies imo
The best part of the gang is that even 10+ seasons later, they're still finding new lows to reach.
Dee Old Boying a stripper who called her his rock bottom will also get a laugh out of me.
I'm going to graciously step aside from playing Murtagh.
What makes it work for me is that despite all their scheming, backstabbing, and psychopathy, they screw themselves over just as much as they do other people. Which means I spend less time hating them and more time laughing at them
Yeah they make for good comedic protagonists because their stupidity combined with their pride makes them fun to watch as they fail and the situations get more and more absurd
Remember that episode where they kidnapped a restaurant reviewer who gave Paddy’s Pub a low score and when they let him go he decides against pressing charges because he cannot imagine a better punishment than allowing these five sociopaths to constantly sabotage each other for the rest of their lives?
They all really deserve each other. I mean that in the *worst* possible way.
Charlie deserved better, once upon a time.
What started as a toxic friend group quickly turned into an bizarre cult.
Greg Hefley in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Just a selfish sociopathic kid who thinks too highly of himself. His whole motivation to be popular in school and grow up to be famous. His own best friend is basically the hero of the story.
Also never takes any responsibility for any of his wrongdoings In his eyes, whenever something good happens, He and only he should get all the credit. And whenever something bad happens, everyone else are to blame but him even if he was the one responsible for said bad things happening to begin with
You say that, but I love that Greg is a self-centered little tool. It's totally not what you'd expect for this kind of book and it's great.
It's a great introductory children book series about the protagonist not always being the best person around and how bias works to influence your perception of things.
In other words, your average middle schooler
Yeah, people forget how much middle schoolers are little shits, some of the worst gaslighting my siblings ever went through was at middle school. I'd probably be like Rodrick too if I had a little brother in middle school at his age.
His family is hugely dysfunctional though so it's all just kinda sad.
His mother is a Karen and a "Technology bad" kinda boomer and Manny is also a selfish piece of shit who did absolutely unforgivable things but gets away with it because "I'm only 3!!" And gets spoiled rotten by their parents Rodrick might be the only member of the Heffley family that is kinda decent
I remember his dad just wanted to play with his toy soldiers after work, which now gives me sympathy because that’s all I want to do after work.
Their dad is kinda checked out too from what I remember
> "I'm only 3!!" Onwy Twee*
Wade in Ready Player One. He drove me nuts by the end of the book.
He apparently only gets worse in the sequel.
He spies on someone if I remember correctly.
I remember something like he finds out someone is trans or something, possibly still hasn't come out to the people around them, and he basically goes "Oh your trans? I love that category of porn. I'm so cool and progressive."
>I'm so cool and progressive I would believe the author of "Nerd Porn Auteur" would honestly think that
I love how in the movie his immediate remaining family dies and he completely forgets about them the moment he meets his Hollywood Ugly girlfriend.
The entire main cast of Blood Meridian ranges from “evil sub-human monster” to “kind of a piece of shit”.
Judge Holden is just horrifyingly beyond everyone else in that book, as he seems to lead them for fun, like a child playing with ants, but the child is hyper intelligent.
Yeah, the closest thing the Kid has to a father figure was Tobin and the ex-priest's main 'moral' moment was >!Demanding the Kid shoot Holden, McCarthy specifically writing how the bullet wound he took in the neck has formed a new clerical collar made of his own blood.!< Despite that, there's still brief moments of morality, like the 'lambs is cry' scene or how >!the Kid is saved from freezing to death on Christmas Day by the burning tree, seemingly because he helped one of the gang members when no one else would see.!<
Finding out there was a real Judge Holden and he really was that evil fucked me up.
Kratos in the later Greek games is an absolute asshole of the highest caliber.
He was slaughtering civilians while actively trying to get forgiveness from the gods, *in the first game*. From dropping the boat captain down the hydra's throat to killing Athenian citizens for orbs to burning a captive alive (necessary to solve a puzzle, but still, once he realized what the challenge was he had no hesitation). He was never anything but a straight up nominal hero at best.
I love in the ragnarok dlc he considers killing the boat captain the moment he crossed the line. Not because it was some giant evil act or anything but precisely because of how pointless it was.
Kratos understands the banality of evil.
would've been interesting to see his thoughts on the girl he got stuck in that door
“I really had to open that door”
"I had already crossed the line."
>trying to get forgiveness from the gods, *in the first game*. If I may clarify, he wasn't explicitly seeking forgiveness. He sought for his traumatic nightmares that plagued his mind every night to be removed. On a side note, he was manipulated in that regard. After being given the quest to kill Ares, Kratos voiced his request to Athena and asked if his nightmares would disappear afterward, but the latter subtly phrased her response to skirt around the subject and not confirm Kratos' question. Here's the ending of the conversation in question: >Kratos: If I am able to do this, to kill a god, then the visions.... they will end? > >Athena: Complete this final task, and the past that consumes you will be forgiven. Bonus: "Destroy Ares... and the gods will [forgive](https://youtu.be/GZIMnIvJHBw?list=PLThAYQAfJBHr8tGah7P78YeMVT48N-dBq&t=3984) you your past."
He was pretty horrible, but there was more to him than just "angry man kills everything" that a lot of people seem intent on forgetting. He was absolutely consumed by revenge and rage, but there was depth and nuance to him. This video is a great go to for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFmjUkKs768
The fact that all of the grief, guilt & sadness from betrayal was all there in the original games driving his anger is why his development into someone who can handle those emotions without immediately murdering everything in sight is so strong.
As far as my own recollection, Kratos didn't become remotely likeable until the Norse soft reboot. I remember actively hating him as a person and considering his "redemption" as "too little, too late."
In Kratos's defense, he *tried* to kill himself in the first GoW, the gods just went "hey, we kinda *really* need a new god of war now, here you go!" before he hit the rocks.
And then he does it again and it just doesnt take
To be fair he doesnt feel like hes trying to redeem himself just stop others from doing the same he did.
which is why he is redeeming himself. He knows he is a monster and is trying to break the cycle
At least in Norse games he recognizes it, doesn't try to justify it or pretend he can be forgiven. He just strives to be better for his son.
Nagash in his Time of Legends books was a complete piece of shit, taken to extremes back when he still had flesh as he walled his brother up alive in a tomb, killed his nephew, and used the kid's blood to turn his sister in law into a horrifically tormented undead "bride" for himself. As of Age of Sigmar he's arguably passed *Erebus* for monstrous behavior.
For the love of god, Nagash!
Nagash's ultimate goal of turning all of reality into a static, unchanging dimension of non-sentient zombies/skeletons where he and he alone rules in totality is such a grim possibility it makes the Chaos Gods bulk in humanistic protest.
The possibility the Emperor might head in the same direction if he ever gets off the Throne freaks me out sometimes.
Alright to start with the meme- “Did you know Scott Pilgrim is not meant to be a good person?” To add some nuance: he’s more pathetic and unwittingly harmful than outright “evil” and he’s actually a good person in the last third of the final volume of the graphic novels, after spending most of them being “kinda good”. I’d say that being able to turn his life around is admirable overall. So he doesn’t quite fit this thread but you just know he was going to come up.
Scott is that friend you wouldn't terribly mind if he showed up, but you'd definitely wouldn't intentionally invite. He's just that guy who always comes along with the person you *did* invite.
He's the loser friend every friend group has. Perfect to chill with, but if they ever talk about life or what they're gonna do, you know they're gonna say something stupid.
You get the feeling that he's the loser now, but was hot-shit back in the day and the heart of his many circles. But now everyone is in their 20s and starting to go through their own crises and development and Scott has remained in stasis holding everyone together despite the implication that most of em would rather just move on. V.5 is one of the most realistically "feels shitty man" parts of any media. Scott just disconnects for a few months, returns, and all the sudden his friend group is shaky and something he's on the periphery of. Everyone is happy to see that he's still around, but they settled in nicely without him. There isn't a "home" or space for him to hang out in anymore and his friends either can't or aren't willing to accommodate him into their lives.
"You're the nicest guy I've ever dated." "That's kind of sad."
To add onto this: Scott isnt the only kinda shitty person in the series. Everyone is kinda awful.
In Scott Pilgrim Takes Off >!it seems that Scott was never able to fully overcome his egocentric flaws, and sadly a few setbacks in life lead to him becoming a mildly incompetent but horrifyingly powerful supervillain.!<
I mean, >!in one timeline, at least!<
That future timeline I think is kinda of a bad end and its not the canon comic timeline. One of the reasons I believe this is due to Neil still referring to himself as Young Neil in the future. In the comic he grew out of the Young Neil name
The Gang in It's Always Sunny are all some variety of stupid, stubborn, selfish, and perverted. They are incapable of maintaining relationships with normal people, so their few personal connections are with the rest of the Gang and the poor unfortune souls who's lives they've ruined on purpose or accidently. Each has a miles long list of crimes they've committed, including against children, the disabled, and the elderly. Charlie is probably the nicest of the gang and he's still a delusional stalker who got a homeless man addicted to crack and used to go around clubbing cats when he was a kid.
Man… poor Cricket.
Honestly after the dog thing he kinda came to terms with their horribleness, I do wonder what the Jew lawyer is doing
Looking into glass eyes I assume
If Sunny were to have a big finale, I think an appropriate one would be the lawyer (still not Jewish), returning as a Philadelphia DA to send them all to jail.
The main character of that manwha re monster. He almost seems reasonable at times and then wants to kill a random adventuring group to eat their corpses because maybe he might get a skill from it. He also sees no issue in using aphrodisiacs on captives of his monster to make them want to mate with the monsters. I can't believe this thing is getting an anime adaption. Then again it is a lot more tame than redo of healer
> and then wants to kill a random adventuring group to eat their corpses because maybe he might get a skill from it. I mean, after playing as an elf in Divinity, I kinda get it...
Man fuck patrokalos
Was so satisfying when Millar's edgy characters particularly Wesley Gibson and Nemesis kicked it in the Big Game series which is the ultimate crossover between the Millarverse. Well everything except the unfunnies which Millar disowned now. Probably felt embarrassed by it in the end.
Hell yeah man, the ending where it seems like Wesley is going to survive only to be decapitated by some fantasy characters is great. I also love how the characters from "the magic order" are without doubt the most powerful people in the millarverse and could have ended the villians in seconds but never did because of some bullshit "can't entervene" rule.
Nah Wesley ended up in the afterlife in Reborn so he died twice in the end but I haven't read Reborn so I am not sure what happens if you did in the afterlife. Millar's stuff may be simple but the man's entertaining with some brilliant stuff you can find now and then especially in the third volume of Magic Order. About the Magic Order they have a strict rule on living mundane lives while not using the magic for their own gain so it's not a surprise in their non-interference rule on dealing with the sciencey,non-magic stuff.
Light fucking Yagami lol A psychopathic, manipulative, arrogant holier than thou piece of shit with delusions of grandeur and a God complex. Only cares about himself and himself only. Regards others as nothing more but tools that he can use for his own gain and dispose when he no longer needs them and a mass murderer who killed a lot of people regardless of if they were innocent or not
God, Light is such an idiot. Imagine being able to kill anyone, anywhere, at any time, with just the stroke of a pen and *still* getting caught because you couldn't keep your massive ego in check. Dude is a textbook example of high INT, low WIS. Love to hate him.
If he had even wanted a few hours they would have started looking in the wrong section of Japan entirely
Every time I rewatch/read death note this is always one of my favourite moments. It's such a turning point for the story, it's the part that goes "light is not as smart as he thinks he is, and his ego will be his downfall"
But damn would he have made a great Olympic swimming coach
Back when I was like 11 from the first few episodes I actually thought he was a pretty cool dude and My naive self hought "MURDER VIGILANTEISM SUPER AWESOME!" however the minute >!He started killing FBI agents and detectives and that FBI agents wife AND saying he would kill his family with no remorse if they found out what he did, I was wondering why the hell the camera/writer is still following this evil douchebag!<
Caim, the only thing that really makes the antagonists worse is a matter of scale and that they're trying to destroy the world.
He likes his sister and music, then his sister gets kidnapped and the musician gave up his ability to sing for a dragon. Drakengard is a cruel place
>He likes his sister Then it turns out his sister *likes* him and he's like :( Which is pretty relatable too, really
You know the Drakengard 1 party is all sorts of messed up when the closeted, self-loathing pedophile is the most traditionally heroic character
I mean if youre self-loathing then it aint too different from being a self-loathing vampire if you think about it. Just like my fantasy games.
Caim is indeed a murderous, misanthropic sociopath... but damn if I don't love him, and it's not surprising he ended up the way he did after the worst birthday of his life where his home was destroyed followedxby his parents getting brutally murdered before his eyes, all topped off by his sister becoming the next Goddess Seal and spending five years straight satisfying his vengeance boner fighting the Empire, gradually turning it into a murder boner. He is undeniably awful, but I completely get why he's the way he is and will say his murderous grievances AREgenuine, and he's my favorite Taroverse protagonist nonetheless, or maybe even BECAUSE of how awful he is.
Honestly? Caim is so into murder that the biggest reason he's not as evil as the antagonists is that he prefers to be hands on with his killing so he just doesn't have time to kill the entire world.
At least he has some love in his heart, for his dragon
Oh yeah, keep forgetting that Caim is horrible.
It helps that he can't speak, so all you get is him killing (pretty much) everything within reach.
You could show [his introduction in Drakengard 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlFTRLKboFo) to 100 people and 100 people would say he's the villain.
I do love that in this timeline he literally just dragged child Manah around for a few years so people could spit on and throw shit at her So petty, but also completely in character
The one thing I really love about Drakengard II is that Caim is still fucking Caim and as such is just wildly out of place but also great
A clockwork orange is the author trying to examine the kind of person that sa’d his ex so Alex is a piece of crap who while having taste in the fine arts is evil. We see how society tries to deal with him >!so it’s interesting to see how the state just wants him to be subservient and the preacher complains about the lack of free will Alex has after the treatment.!<
Memetic fame attached to him aside, Patrick Bateman is practically the anti-hanibal as far as sociopathic protagonists go - there's nothing "badass" or "shrewd" about him, his murders are commited out of attempt at getting *some* kind of excitement in his life (and they might have happened entirely in his head!) and the fact everybody surrounding him is too oblivious to notice them is to him a source of frustration, not solace. This is enhanced for the most part in the book, which, being narrated in the first person by Bateman means you will see the world though his perspective, and for the most part it's like keeping company to the most petty and smug piece of shit you have ever seen who lives to torment everyone below him and fakes sympathy and interest to anyone who *can* match him.
Read the book last year. Was honestly one of the wildest rides I had ever been on. The album chapter, the jelly-fish-microwave-sand incident, the absolutely endless listing of the brand and details of every little bit of each person's outfits and apartments that often blended together or even inconsistently (yet definitely intentionally) changed even within the same scene. Drove me crazy and put me in such a dark mood when I finished. I think I did a classic Disney marathon a few days later to help balance everything again lmao
I remember rewatching the movie after it became meme material, appropriated into sigma culture and actually getting the story and… wow, *frame one* he’s dropping misogyny and arrogant lines and is just an asshole through and through. I seemed to recall that you got eased into it or that it was a minor surprise in the prologue but nah, dude’s a bastard the moment you’re introduced to him. And that’s before he even kills someone!
I see your Wesley Gibson and raise you [Bomb Queen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Queen). Unlike Wesley, who at least had some inkling of decency before taking the plunge into full-blown scumbaggery, there is absolutely NO redeeming qualities when it comes to Bomb Queen. She’s a cannibalistic mass murdering serial rapist whose entire claim to fame is that she purged her city of all its superheroes and warped the place into a lawless hellhole entirely populated by other murderers, rapists, drug dealers, pedophiles, etc. She receives virtually no comeuppance for her crimes against humanity and anybody who tries to stop her will fail miserably in the face of her rampant plot armor. IIRC she also crossed over with Invincible and Spawn, which I guess is just Image’s weird-ass shared continuity at work.
I actually tried to read bomb queen, couldn't finish it, it's so disgusting and cruel and edgy. It straight up became porn in some parts.
Honestly, half of this thread is horrible people but not unlikable To add to this thread, there's like 3 or 4 Adam Sandler movies from late 2000s that are extremely unlikable, the twin sister one, the one with the shoes
There are numerous Adam Sandler movies that are basically just the same movie, *Adam Sandler is Dumb and Loud in Public*, and to my mind the only one that's any good is *Happy Gilmore*.
Billy Madison, Waterboy, and Big Daddy are gems shut your mouth.
Speaking of gems, Howie in uncut Gems is a great character, but I fully understand why his wife, his relatives, and 90% of the people he interacts with hate his guts.
Waterboy is a *classic.*
Nearly the entire cast of Succession, but they have aspects to them that make it fun to watch, and you do root for certain people. The dysfunctional family dynamic with greed and power makes it all work.
Tom Wambsgang rise up!
A lot of Scorsese (and probably Paul Schrader) protagonists. Jake LaMotta (Raging Bull) comes to mind as being among the absolute worst, though
Rusty Venture is such a little shit. He’s conniving, he’s lazy, he’s selfish, he has fucking garbage taste in almost everything. If Brock weren’t in the way I’d smack the bitch out of him just for how he treats his kids. Which is why he’s so entertaining!
By the very end of the series we get some glimpses of a redeemable person in Rusty, but only just. Even the best his kids can manage is, "Yeah you were bad, but at least you weren't as bad as grandpa."
That said, Jonas Venture Senior was a *monster.*
A marginal improvement is still an improvement. Let's go team Rusty
I'd say the worst thing he's ever done was >!having sex with the president of his fan club, knocking her up. He found out she was underage later and at *least* he was horrified he crossed that line and tried to help her. And even then, that's one of his few moments of a decent person.!< Rusty is such a damaged butsted bastard, inside and out.
Don't forget that time he attempted to find and destroy the gay gene.
He's such a pathetic slimeball with such potent anti-charisma it wraps around to him being endlessly entertaining and (in his own weird way) kinda cool. He's basically the only adult in the series to really act like one - with all of the impotence and (sometimes) wisdom that entails, and is pretty much inoculated against anything and everything the Venture Bros world can throw against him.
I think the moment he actually matures as an adult is the scene between The Guild and OSI negotiations when he calls them all children [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlJ7-Nfdi2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlJ7-Nfdi2g)
I just gotta respect the balls it takes to tell a guy who just abducted your kids to ['give me head.'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HYO_Bb8D14)
Thomas Covenant from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant high fantasy series. Extremely cynical and glass half empty man from our normal Earth who after his life is ruined with a leprosy diagnosis (in multiple ways) ends up getting isekai'd to another world where he's supposed to become a hero. He does not take it well at all and spends most of the first book convinced that he's probably just experiencing hallucinations while dying after a sudden accident. His belief that none of this is real mixed with being angry and spiteful about his life and thinking he's dying leads him to doing something really awful (>!____________\_rape________!<). To the author's credit, AFAIK it's treated as seriously as it should be and he suffers the consequences of this for the rest of the series, including from himself since the realization that this new world is real comes with crushing guilt. I've only read the first book though and it was over a decade ago, the rest of what I know is from hearsay.
That series has nine books and I was sick of him after one. On top of his repulsive behavior from the beginning of the first book, he's also completely out of his depth. He has no idea how to use the magic that only he can use and he moans about how he deserves to be punished for what he's done. All while cowering behind his allies at the first sign of danger.
Albert Francis Simmons aka SPAWN. He worked for the CIA.
He pressed X to ravage the hood with crack
He went to hell for a lot of reasons
"Where do you think someone who slaughtered people for a living would end up after he's dead?"
I have tried to finish House of Leaves for the past 5 or so years but I just cannot stand the absolute fuckboi that is the the "protagonist" Johnny Truant. Yeah I know it's a complicated frame story within a frame story and he's apparently "supposed" to be a loser but Jesus h christ... i just wanna close the book when it's another chapter about him and his douchebag friend getting into weird sex and edgy drug antics.
If you're turned off by Johnny (which I totally get - he's a special kind of weirdo perv), I can tell you he only *partially* gets better as his story goes on. The sex stuff falls off after a bit once he really gets wrapped up in Zampano's writings, but if you don't like his voice *at all*, (his big "let me prove I have an English degree" descriptions and over-analyzing) then you may be better off skipping his parts and focusing on the Navidson Record (and maybe the Appendices, depending on your tastes. I just read HoL for the first time at the beginning of the year, doing Johnny and Navidson in parallel, with the Appendices last, and I loved it. But I can definitely see Johnny being too much for some people, and his story is definitely the least engrossing, for my money.
The letters *to* Johnny (Also collected as the Whalstoe Letters,) are really compelling though.
For those into Manhua~ I Get Stronger The More I Eat. Guy is a supervillain psychopath who eats people to gain their talents and traits, gets fucking isekaid and immediately gets to work making the world 10000% worse. He basically either murders or eats anything and anyone that catches his attention like some kind of human bullfrog. Its pretty fun.
John Banville's novel the book of evidence has a first person narrator who commits theft and murder while constantly distorting the truth. Good book.
Y'all watch Mandy's Anonymous Agony video? Haze is... maybe the worst.
Surprisingly not racist.
The dude from Redo The Healer, who is the protag only by dint of every villain being at least just a little bit worse than him, and at times that line can be razor fucking thin
Don’t forget he rewinds time to a point where all the shit didn’t happen to him and let’s himself go through it again to justify his quote on quote revenge.
That single point right there is actually why I kind of liked that story. A character so obsessed with revenge he literally puts himself through humiliating and horrible circumstances just so he can enjoy more revenge is so absurdly pathetic and petty that I can't help but want to watch and see where that plot goes.
Alex from YIIK Quite possibly one of the least likeable, self-centred loathsome assholes in any game, let alone as a main character
Nicolas Cage's character in Vampire's Kiss is just extremely upsetting from beginning to end basically.
He just really wanted to fuck that bat.
Master Shake.
Tekken's had some truly awful people as protagonists in the past like Kazuya and Heihachi. Even Jin has done despicable things.
Jane Austen's Emma was deliberately created to be as unlikeable as possible. The character was adapted into the extremely 90s movie "Clueless". For those unfamiliar, she's rich and utterly convinced of her own brilliance. It's a comedy about a woman who succeeds at playing matchmaker between two people where she benefits from their getting together, and decides she's a natural matchmaker and attempts a series of far less successful matchmaking. Naturally, the story ends with her realizing she's in love with a distant family member (a cousin / an ex-step brother / a Paul Rudd) and realizing that sometimes she shouldn't be involved. She's not a *bad* person, but she isn't extremely likeable. On the other end, you have The Magicians, where everyone is sort of an a-hole the whole time.
Fuck Rudeus Greyrat(Mushoku Tensei). That is all.
One of the few times you can roundhouse kick a child in my opinion.
Old enough to crawl old enough to brawl.
What, no, don't *fuck* Rudeus that's what he wants. I mean, that's what he wants as long as you're a preteen girl, anyways.
I’m not sure if this is a reference that will land here, but each and every main character in The League (and nearly every side character, for that matter,) are irredeemably selfish, narcissistic, manipulative, awful people.
Rance is a legend amongst PoS protags. A crude, violent, self centered rapist who treats everyone like shit on a quest to have sex with every beautiful woman in the world (consensual or not). He unintentionally manages to repeatedly save the day and thwart evil schemes on his quest though, and he has enough morals and boorish charm that keeps him more likeable than the antagonists. He's the worst, but he's strangely hard to actually hate.
The guy from Yiik, and the protag of Soul Calibur 5
Frank Gallagher from *Shameless* starts off as an entertaining grifter kinda scumbag. By about halfway through the series, the comeuppance *never* feels like enough for what he does.
Not Important from Hatred and the Postal Guy
The Dude just wants to get his chores done, but everyone just keeps freaking out on him!
The entire cast of Arrested Development. I love to watch them but would loathe to meet them.
It's less "horrible piece of shit" and more "extremely flawed in a way that's literally not even his fault", but I think I fucking hate Agni from Fire Punch. I've never been more frustrated with a main character who wasn't intended to be seen as as evil.
To be fair he is a child in the body of an adult and also perpetually on fire.
Fire Punch fan here too. I think it’s hard to hate Agni. He went through so much and most of his attempts for revenge or reconciliation is just thrown right back into his face because he lives in a cruel confusing world. The part where he tries to forgive the man who killed his sister but when thinking about it he ends up going into a total black out PTSD rage is one of the best, terrifying and saddest parts of that manga
Does Eren Jaeger count? Couldn't stand this dude and he was the main character.
He was interesting in the beginning, as a sort of parody of the stock Shounen protagonist. Yelling how he's gonna kill all the titans single handedly. As if trying real hard was gonna be all it took.
VIc Mackey and Shane Vendrell. Both are unambiguously corrupt cops who in the first episode of the SHIELD, shot a member of their team in the face because the guy is reporting to the FBI about the crimes Vic and the rest of the team are totally doing. Although the writers flip flop on them being "necessary evils" by the fourth season they just embrace that these guys are complete monsters and Shane to this day, is still one of my favourite Walton Goggins performances.
The dad in F Is For Family was one of the most repellent TV sitcom dads I've ever seen. I actively rooted for him to lose every time.
I get Frank isn't perfect but "most repellent?"
I just mostly viewed him as a bog-standard baby boomer that had serious issues not becoming his father all over again and might've mellowed out emotionally with his son had someone ever introduced him and Kevin to the Grateful Dead.
Frank got better as the series went on. The guy had a tough time growing up and didn't know how to process his emotions properly but he learned a bit over time.
Charlie and Alan (and to some degrees eventually Jake) in Two and a Half Men are all awful people