How many is this now? Four? Sheesh, video games really like their murderers, huh. Well, let’s get this over with, than. So yeah, I’ve made three of these lists already… And yet there are still more murderers in games out there. Enough to list forty, that is. So, I guess we need to talk about them again. Now, the rules. Only one game per franchise. I will not be listing games that I have mentioned in the past, as that would be too easy, and I will not be NOT be making a fifth list. This is the last one. I mean, I’ve made so many of these lists, it could be it’s own Hollywood franchise by this point. So, let us start the list.

#10: “Reverend” Josiah Reed from Gun (SPOILERS FOR GUN)



This is a game that doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves. So yeah, you know a list is starting great when the murderer portrays himself as a priest. Even the protagonist himself suspected that this guy wasn’t a follower of god. You first see him on a steamboat, and he’s asking a prostitute for an ancient artifact, followed by hitting her in the back of the head with an axe. After this, he sends a murderous gang out to kill everyone on the ship, leaving no survivors, killing Cole’s father, and with Cole barely escaping with his life. After this, he promises to find Josiah and get revenge for killing his father, but not before Josiah kills more people in order to help the main antagonist. Sure, the villain killed a few people in his years, but he mostly sat in the back and made others do their dirty work. Josiah on the other hand will gladly go out and kill anyone, especially women, just for the fun of it. Even going as far as to kill a friend of Cole’s and place the crime on him just to get him hanged. It takes a certain kind of guts to make a Christian priest be a killer in… well, anything.

#9: Dr. Steinman from Bioshock



There were a lot of characters I could have chosen from the world of Bioshock. But the one that disturbed me the most was Dr. Steinman. He was said to be a once genius plastic surgeon, being able to make anyone beautiful. However, once he had obtained ADAM, a drug that drives people insane with addiction to it, he started to lose his sanity. He murdered his nurse and began to turn people into his own deformed art in an attempt to make people beautiful. However, whenever he fails in doing so, the only other option is to brutally stab the person to death without warning because he deems them as “too ugly”. Even when meeting Jack for the first time, he pulls out a tommy gun and starts to shoot at him because he claims Jack is ugly. It’s pretty scary reading about how these scientists were once normal people who could do so much for society, only to end up falling to ADAM and becoming psychotic serial killers. Steinman may not be the only murderer in Bioshock, not even the best, but he’s the first that made an impact for me in this game on how messed up the world of Bioshock really was.

#8: Petrus of Thorolund from Dark Souls



Sure, Lautrec may be the more popular serial killer, but he seemed to be driven mostly by his religious beliefs in some deity. Petrus knew the entire time what he was doing and didn’t care. When you first meet Petrus, he seems like an okay and calm individual. A bit nervous and not as talkative, but never threatening. That is until you continue with his sidequest. After a while, you will meet Lady Reah of Thorolund, who Petrus is sworn loyalty to. However, after some time, Lady Reah, as well as two other knights, left for the Catacombs to find the Tomb of the Giants, and Petrus will tell you that whatever you do to her is up to you. When you find her in the Tomb of the Giants, she has managed to survive, but the two knights that were with her had become Hollowed and must be put down in order to save Lady Reah. When you head back to Petrus, he will be a little upset that you didn’t kill Lady Reah, who will now be at the Undead Parish church. After some time, she will then be killed, and you will find that it was Petrus who killed her to take her Talisman for his own selfish reasons. I swear, it’s always the quiet ones that are the most dangerous.

#7: Randall Forrester from Red Dead Redemption



We’ve talked about Grand Theft Auto killers, L.A. Noire killers, and Manhunt killers, so we had to get to the Red Dead Redemption franchise eventually. You could argue that everyone, even Marston, is a killer in some way. But, really, they’re mostly just criminals that don’t seem to take joy in the killing of another person. Randall Forrester on the other hand enjoys more than just the killing. When in Armadillo, you hear of many people worried about their families. A woman is crying over the loss of her son, a man is worried for his missing wife, and a woman is asking for you to find her husband. All of them seem to be connected to a mysterious “man in the hills”. When you go up to those hills, all you are able to find are body parts covering the ground. Eventually, you’ll run into Randall Forrester, who says that he was shot in the leg by a man, and that said man was running away. Once you catch the man and bring him back to Randall, he will thank you, but the man will beg you to save him. It’s here that you find out that Randall is actually the cannibal and the one taking all those people from the town. And the most insane part is that you can actually choose to leave the man with Randall. Why you’d ever want to do that, I don’t know.

#6: Doctor Tseng from Sleeping Dogs (MINOR SPOILERS FOR SLEEPING DOGS)



The world of Sleeping Dogs is not at all a pleasant place. It’s got it’s moments, but everything is always coming back to how corrupt and dangerous everything is. At least GTA had satire to break up the reality of crime and murder. Not Sleeping Dogs. And Doctor Tseng proves that perfectly. When Wei Sheng discovers bodies of Sun On Yee members, he starts to realise that this is more than just gang activity. As the killings continue, Wei suddenly finds the body of his friend, Vincent, as well as two other Sun On Yee members. This is the moment where Wei Sheng realises that there is more going on to this and that there is definitely a serial killer. During the third case, Wei Sheng finally manages to find the serial killer, a doctor by the name of Doctor Tseng, who is killing Sun On Yee members to harvest their organs and make a profit out of transplants. After finally stopping him, he is arrested and is said he will be sentenced to twenty years. The scary thing is, if you played Sleeping Dogs, you know that there are some corrupt law enforcers in this game. This means that, because Doctor Tseng only killed gang members, he will most likely be let out very soon, because the judicial system believes gang members lives don’t matter compared to others. And that’s just a very disturbing thought.

#5: Albert Contiello from Dead Rising 3



You may know that I am not a fan of Dead Rising 3. In fact, it’s my least favorite in the entire genre. But I had to talk about the crazed killer in this game. I mean, I talked about the other two, so I might as well talk about the 3rd one. After Nick is knocked unconscious by this guy, he wakes up in a dark room, where he finds Albert harvesting the organs of survivors, using the zombie outbreak to his advantage. He’s like Doctor Tseng, only even more insane. The drugs in Nick’s body will make him hallucinate, which causes him to see all the survivors that Albert has trapped in there appear as copies of Albert. This means that Nick will have to find the real Albert in order to defeat him. Throughout the fight, Albert will try to drug Nick, or even harvest him during the battle. However, despite being one of the most evil psychopaths in the franchise, he’s also one of the easiest, since he’s pretty slow, has very low health, and can be distracted by throwing the organs he collected around the room. But it still doesn’t change the fact that Albert is a psychotic killer none the less.

#4: Calixto Corrium AKA The Butcher from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim



A murder mystery side quest in an RPG. Oh, I love these. And it’s just as haunting as the one from Fable: The Lost Chapters. When you head to Windhelm, you’ll see a group of guards surrounding a small casket. When you head over, you’ll find that there is a dead body on the ground. Suddenly, you’re involved in a murder mystery (I don’t know why the guards just let a civilian investigate a murder, but whatever). As you start searching, you’ll find that there is a small house that must be investigated for clues. Inside, you’ll find small journals about a killer known as The Butcher, that has been killing woman during the night for a while now. You’ll also find a strange amulet (So strange that that’s what the Wiki calls it). You’ll be told to talk to Calixto himself, who will say the amulet belongs to Wuunferth the Unliving, the court mage. After he is hauled off to the dungeon, the killings will continue a few days later. The mage will tell you where the killer may strike next. Once you head to the location, you’ll find that the killer is Calixto, who is about to kill another woman. It turns out that he has been practicing necromancy and has been murdering woman in order to revive his dead sister. I’m sure she’d be proud to hear her brother was murdering innocent people just for those reasons.

#3: East Coast Killer from Still Life



Still Life, yet again, is a game that doesn’t get as much praise as it deserves. Only now, this guy isn’t a hired killer. He’s a killer for fun. The East Coast Killer is a killer that has been around since the 1920s, over seventy years. The main character, a government official named Victoria, finds an old journal by her grandfather, Gus, who was looking for a killer, that was very similar to the killer she was looking for. The game than has you follow both of these characters in different time periods as you try to find the killer. Victoria is to believe that the killer she is looking for is not the same as the one her grandfather was looking for, and is just influenced by the killer Gus was hunting down. The killer hunted down woman throughout both time periods. From the prostitutes of the 1920s to the workers of small clubs and salon parlors of the modern day. It’s haunting enough to imagine a killer spanning generations, but the creepiest part is that we never got to know the killer's identity. He was shot in the chest by Victoria, but he threw himself into the river to escape. I’ve never heard of the sequel, so I can’t confirm what happened. All I can say is “Play this game, damn it. It needs all the attention it can get.”

#2: Eye of Adam from The Cat Lady (SPOILERS FOR THE CAT LADY)



You know, you don’t always have to be in the same room with the person to be a murderer. You can be miles and miles away, only using your words to murder a person. You can do more than just harm a person with your hands, but with your words, driving them to suicide. That makes someone as much of a murderer as being there to kill them physically. That is what the Eye of Adam does. When Mitzi, a friend to the main character, was diagnosed with cancer, her boyfriend was devastated, and not sure what to do. He went online for help, only for the Eye of Adam to appear, and demand that he kill himself. And he did just that. Ever since then, Mitzi, a girl who seemed innocent when you first met her, wanted the Eye of Adam dead and nothing more. As it turns out, The Eye of Adam is one of the parasites, characters that are ruthless murderers that Susan, the protagonist, must kill if she is to pass on to the afterlife, and he happens to be living in the same apartment that Susan is living in. When they find her, they see that the Eye of Adam is an internet troll that is immobile, needing the help of his father to do anything, with his eye being the only thing that moves. He believes that Susan won’t kill him, and you can choose whether to kill him or not. Sure, there were other killers in this game. Like a murderous psychiatrist that turns people into art, an exterminator and his wife that are secretly cannibals, some carpenter that just walks into Susan’s apartment with no explanation…. But, The Eye of Adam manages to show that a killer can do more than harm a person physically, but mentally as well.

STOP! MAJOR SPOILERS, AND I MEAN MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SILENT HILL 2! DO NOT CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THIS POINT IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED SILENT HILL 2! I MEAN IT, I AM GOING TO SPOIL THE ENTIRE GAME FOR YOU! REMEMBER, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!


















#1: James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2



It takes a good writer to make you understand how evil a murderer can be. It takes an even better writer to make you actually sympathise with the murderer. And that is what Silent Hill 2 does. When the game starts, you picture James as just an average man, still depressed and trying to get over the loss of his wife. When he hears that his wife may still be alive in the town of Silent Hill, he heads straight over there in order to meet her. However, this proves to be a rather dangerous choice, as the entire town of Silent Hill is filled with monsters. However, he still keeps going, claiming that he just doesn’t care if it’s dangerous. When James gets to Silent Hill, he meets characters like Angela, a depressed girl who is trying to find her mother, and Eddie, an obese man who is affected by the names people call him. When James learns about their backstories, Angela having killed her abusive father and brother after years of being abused, both physically and sexually, and Eddie mentally breaking after the names he was called making him want to kill people who insult him, James is not sure what to do. Angela leaves, with it being b canon that she killed herself off screen, but Eddie is forced to be killed by James, as he had become too angered and insane to be saved. When James does kill Eddie out of self defense, he is horrified and ashamed of what he has done. But, it’s not the first person he killed. The game proves this, what with the little girl Laura telling James that he never loved Mary, his deceased wife, or with the writing on the wall telling James to kill himself, but he may be going to a different place than Laura. When James finally reaches the hotel that Mary claimed to be at, James finds nothing by a video tape and a VCR. When he plays it, he finds out that James was the one who killed his wife. She was suffering from a disease that was already affecting her, making her angry with James, but also making her depressed. James killed her for several reasons. He did it because he loved her, and didn’t want her to suffer with the disease anymore, but he was also angry and frustrated with her insulting him, and with the monsters in the game representing his sexual frustration. It takes a lot to make you sympathize with James. He’s not an evil character, but he’s not good either. He know’s he’s done wrong, and accepts what he’s done. That is what makes Silent Hill 2 a glorious game. It isn’t black and white characters. They’re all messed up in their own special way. They all have flaws and mistakes like real people, and James is one of those characters.

Well, there you have it. Did you enjoy the list? Tell me what you thought of it. With that said, I will see you all next time.