Who are your favorite greedy bastards in video games, besides Wario himself? (mild spoiler warning)

xandermartin98

Wario Fan Supreme
Just to name the top 11 most obvious examples IMO:

Ultimate Supreme Executive Chairman Drek (Ratchet & Clank 1): While he may have been considerably humanized by the game's (incredibly lame) PS4 reboot, Chairman Drek was absolute pure evil incarnate back in the original 2002 version of R&C; long story short, he polluted his own alien race's (the Blarg's) entire home planet (Orxon) to un-death just so that he could make sympathy money off of doing so, then decided that he was going to repay his fellow Blarg citizens by blowing up every other planet in Orxon's entire solar system and then combining their remaining pieces into exactly one new home planet exclusively for himself and the Blarg, just so that he could make real-estate profit off of it...oh, and just in case you may have thought that he was going to learn his lesson from what he previously did to Orxon and not deliberately pollute his new planet to death as part of an endless vicious cycle, guess again. Surely enough, he plans to repeat his in-game plan for the Solana Galaxy across all of the R&C universe's many, many galaxies (oh, and did I happen to mention that he is also a downright insufferably snarky bastard? That doesn't exactly help his case either)

Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik (Sonic The Hedgehog): Not only is he proud of being morbidly obese (as was clearly proven when he openly adopted Sonic's mockingly given nickname for him as his official nickname), but he absolutely will not rest in any main-line Sonic title that he is featured in (even Spinball, assuming that you define "being on the Genesis" as "main-line") until he has used his outrageously extreme intelligence to mechanize and pollute the entire world around him to death (even including literally all of its resident plants and animals, as seen in Sonic CD) just to cater to his own disgustingly unhealthy obsessions with machines and world conquest (also, the fact that he deliberately themes so many of the things that he builds explicitly after himself, even going as far as to include his very own Joker-esque amusement park in Sonic Unleashed, doesn't exactly help the general "manchild narcissist" impression that he constantly gives off either)

Kefka (Final Fantasy VI) and Lavos (Chrono Trigger): While the former has a destruction fetish due to (again) Joker-esque mental derangement and the latter has it simply by nature, both of these characters are completely irredeemable monsters in every way, and both of them end up horrifically ruinating the entire worlds that their games are set in for literally no other reason than simply to fuel their own sadistic appetites (with Kefka's being metaphorical while Lavos' is actually literal); also, it's more than heavily implied that Earth is far from being the only planet that Lavos has devoured, technically making it make Kefka look like an absolute saint by comparison when judging by how severe the two characters' in-game atrocities are (heck, Kefka's in-game equivalent to Earth at least technically was still somewhat livable after what Kefka did to it; Lavos, OTOH...well...just see for yourself if you haven't already)

Handsome Jack (Borderlands 2): Symbolizing and ultimately personifying the now-undeniably villainous role of the company he runs (Hyperion) in the Borderlands universe, Jack has absolutely no respect for anyone or anything besides the aforementioned Hyperion and himself, with pretty much his only motivations behind corrupting and commercializing the already brutal and inhospitable world of Pandora the way that he does in BL2 being money and power; despite all of this, however, he still manages to be one of the funniest sarcastic jerks to ever grace video games, particularly with the way in which he constantly trolls the player characters through his intercom system (again, let's not forget how many outrageously over-the-top narcissistic monuments he's dedicated specifically to himself over the course of the franchise either)

Zanza (XenoBlade Chronicles): Uses the entire sentient population of the continent over which he rules as its god (the Bionis) as food for himself while also forcing them to helplessly grovel beneath him and obey his every command without question; needless to say, he is the game's ultimate proof that the Mechonis was actually (relatively speaking) its good guy all along

Porky Minch (Earthbound and Mother 3) and Fassad (Mother 3): Ironically, while Porky might initially seem like just an abused variant of your typical "fat spoiled brat" stereotype (sort of like South Park's Eric Cartman, who may or may not have more-than-secretly been inspired by him) when Ness first meets him in EarthBound, his "rags to riches" progression over the course of the game slowly but surely degenerates him into easily one of the most amazingly detestable little psychopaths (if not the most) that I've ever seen in a game, culminating first in him becoming completely drunk off of Giygas' power and attempting to unleash him upon his own entire planet just to spite Ness at the end of Earthbound, then in him destroying the entire world except for one ridiculously small island just so that he can then make his personal army of Pig Nazis take over said island without any resistance whatsoever (apart from that of Lucas and his gang, anyway), mechanizing and biologically fusing many of the island's sentient life forms into miserably deformed husks of their former selves, and most notably time-travel-degrading himself into a horrifically aged and rotting corpse of his former self just so that he can ensure that he will live absolutely forever, all throughout MOTHER 3. He might not have quite deserved a fate as horrific as being locked in the Absolutely Safe Capsule for all of eternity, but damn, did he come exceptionally close to doing so over the course of MOTHER 3 in particular.

Fassad, OTOH, is basically just the "Fat Bastard" portion of Porky's personality dialed all the way up to 21 and combined with "Arab Oil Shiekh", to the point of him more-or-less being a more evil version of Wario (which sadly also isn't mentioned by TV Tropes), betraying his own race (seemingly) just for the Hell of it and mercilessly torturing an innocent baby monkey (most obnoxiously by stealing a Luxury Banana that said monkey found himself and gluttonously scarfing it down right in front of him) quite literally just for the Hell of it; even after his Death By Hypocrisy (not actually an official trope, but it definitely should be one nevertheless) in the Thunder Tower chapter, he still doesn't get any better, as he gets himself reconstructed back to life in a downright hilariously embarrassing and grotesque manner for the sole purpose of getting one last chance to tear Lucas and the gang limb-from-limb...TWICE

Tingle (Legend Of Zelda - Wind Waker): When you first meet him on Windfall Island, he's already been locked up in said island's local jail, presumably for how incredibly greedy he is in this game; naturally, his initial repayment to Link for busting him out of his cell is mostly just to make Link sail all the way over to his very own personal island with literally nothing on it but a single mailbox and his hilariously narcissistic Tingle-headed totem-pole lighthouse that he recruits random people that he dresses up as himself and calls his "brothers" to exhaustingly work at 24/7 just to keep its aforementioned giant Tingle head spinning literally all freaking day, just so that he can talk to him again...

oh, and just to top it off, once Link reaches the painfully tedious (original) Triforce Shard hunt near the end of the game's main quest, Tingle forces him to hand over 398 Rupees each for the game's eight Triforce Chart decipherings (totaling at 3,184, in addition to the 201-Rupee price of the Incredible Chart, forming a grand total of 3,385 Rupees)...oh, and this is also in addition to Tingle naming an entire alternate version of the GameBoy Advance after himself and making no less than five solid-gold statues of himself, all in their very own unique poses

Tom Nook (Animal Crossing): Not nearly as villainous as most other video game examples, but still has a very obvious fetish for putting people into endless debt, hence why Animal Crossing, like many other games nowadays, is a game that can last literally forever if you let it; no matter how hard to try to settle your income differences with him, he never stays satisfied

President Max Profitt Haltmann (Kirby: Planet Robobot): While I personally find the game itself to be incredibly overrated even by Kirby standards, there is no denying how shockingly well-written of a villain Mr. Haltmann is for the type of game that he is in. Combining the "malevolent all-father" theme of Infinity War's Thanos with (presumably) a hilariously obvious parody of President Trump, Haltmann and his insanely ravenous desire to conquer and mechanize the entire universe Eggman-style (place it underneath his own literally iron-fisted rule, if you will) as a pathetically desperate attempt to self-compensate for his falsely assumed loss of his daughter (Susie) at the hands of Star Dream are both equal parts charming and tragic...and hearing how maniacally he laughs when you finally face off against his massive gold-and-jewel-plated mech (that he even goes as far as to aggressively and quite literally rub the more-than-presumably obscene expensive-ness of right in your face by covering the entire game screen with his very own limitless dollar bills mid-fight) absolutely seals the deal on everything that I just said about him, to say the least

EDIT: I was originally going to mention King Dedede, also from the Kirby franchise, but just didn't find him nearly as interesting as Haltmann...outside of the anime, at least
 
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Mine's Cloud Strife, from Final Fantasy VII. Specially that part where he steals the poor kid's money while he dreams of what to spend it on... oh wait
 
What about King Knight from Shovel Knight? His own alternate campaign for the game is even explicitly modeled after Wario Land

King Knight is definitely a greedy bastard, and he loves gold so much that he painted his castle that colour when he overtook it, but I think Treasure Knight is even more greedy, as he raided the entire sea for gold treasures that he kept in his private submarine.

I mean, the Plague Knight campaign was pretty garbage so I wouldn't assume anything
The campaign itself was great storywise, but I must agree, the gameplay (especially the controls) was extremely annoying. Specter of Torment wasn't exactly what you'd call easy either, but the story more than makes up for it.
 
King Knight is definitely a greedy bastard, and he loves gold so much that he painted his castle that colour when he overtook it, but I think Treasure Knight is even more greedy, as he raided the entire sea for gold treasures that he kept in his private submarine.


The campaign itself was great storywise, but I must agree, the gameplay (especially the controls) was extremely annoying. Specter of Torment wasn't exactly what you'd call easy either, but the story more than makes up for it.

Personally, I feel like Castlevania's Dracula also deserves special mention for having castles as big and extravagant as the SOTN one all to himself

(also, Treasure Knight at least acts somewhat honorable, whereas literally everything about King Knight is just plain hilariously fake and pretentious)
 
(also, Treasure Knight at least acts somewhat honorable, whereas literally everything about King Knight is just plain hilariously fake and pretentious)

Plague Knight said that King Knight's crown isn't real gold, just gold plated, which is hardly a surprise since his official bio describes him as a
king-themed knight, not a true king. His delusion of being a real king actually makes him one of the more funny characters.
 
The Ammo Baron from the Shantae series.
Okay, he's not greedy money-wise, he's more the kind of megalomaniacal would-be dictator who wants to conquer every square inch of land and doesn't accept it when anyone impedes his plans, nor does he care about the consequences of his actions to the towns and people he wants to rule over.
That makes him, in my view, a greedy bastard too, even if he's not interested in money itself.
 
Tingle, hands down. Wario is the man I look up to, and strive to be. Tingle is the man I really am deep down inside. Play the DS games if you haven't, they're a lot of fun!
 
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