Fighting games are full of diverse and colorful characters. Sometimes, things get a bit too colorful, and they start expanding their roots into the soil of strange. Sometimes, you just look at a character design and say “What am I even looking at?” Allow us to do and exercise like that right now.
10. Meat (Mortal Kombat)
In a game where people can end up skinless by way of some gruesome fatality at the end of a match, Meat stands out by starting the fight pre-mutilated. It takes a lot to be weird in a cast like Mortal Kombat’s elaborate and sprawling roster, and a walking muscular system might take the cake.
9. Blanka (Street Fighter)
So, there are many strange characters in the Street Fighter series. There’s an English gentleman who drinks tea and reads papers with boxing gloves on and a strange Indian man whose limbs can stretch down street alleys. In context, though, at least they’re all still people or caricatures of people. What the hell is Blanka? A feral, green bear-man who doubles as a living battery?
8. Yoshimitsu (Tekken/Soulcalibur)
This Manji clan ninja has been a mainstay in Namco Bandai’s two biggest fighting game series since their debuts, and he has never really made any sense. He’s equal parts a jovial goof and a deceptive masochist. He’s also mostly machine, at this point. And he goes through such drastic visual changes each game it’s almost like he’s a different character each time.
7. Zappa (Guilty Gear)
Zappa is a generally kind, humble, and decent person who is just a little lonely and is looking for companionship. Unbeknownst to him, he’s got all the friends he could ever want. What he thinks is some sort of illness that causes him to lose consciousness and wake up in unfamiliar places is actually the poor guy being possessed by aggressive and vengeful spirits at the most in opportune times.
6. Voldo (Soulcalibur)
Voldo is a twisted, writhing bucket of strange. He is blind and speaks no audible words outside of grunts and hisses. He slithers around the ring, a bipedal serpent driven by base violent and awkwardly sexual impulses. He’s one of the creepiest characters in video games, not only because of how strange he is, but how strange he is in comparison to other SC alumni.
5. Amingo (Marvel vs Capcom 2)
A man-sized fighting cactus. It’s almost hard to take seriously, but Amingo was very much a go-to character in Marvel vs Capcom 2. What makes it weirder is, unlike many of the other character in the series, Amingo was created by Capcom for this game. He wasn’t some trash tier Darkstalker; someone at Capcom sat down and said “I got the perfect idea for this one: a man-sized, fighting cactus.”
4. Double (Skullgirls)
Unlike most of the characters on this list who are pretty easily identifiable as some sort of living, breathing thing, I couldn’t even begin to tell you what Double is. Clearly the creation of something with a terrible sense of humor, Double is a wild amalgam of lots of organic looking things that shouldn’t be on the same body. Luckily, Double can quite handily shift it’s shape into something more logical.
3. Arakune (BlazBlue)
Arakune used to be a scientist, until he did what all fictional scientists do and turned himself into a creepy shadow beast by accident. He wears a white mask, yet has a series of faces throughout his body, Arakune is a sticky singularity of really odd things. Maybe not out-rightly scary, but definitely a creeper.
2. Mega Man (Tekken X Street Fighter)
One of the reasons that no one can really trust Capcom with Mega Man licensing is his appearance in Tekken X Street Fighter, where he and Pac-Man were special guests. The Blue Bomber we know and love wasn’t the Mega Man players got their hands on, though. For some reason, Capcom felt this would be a great time to reference one of the weirdest takes on the character ever, in Bad Box Art Mega Man. It wasn’t.
1. Hornet (Fighters Megamix)
Fighters Megamix was already a weird game. Collecting most of Sega’s biggest fighting personalities, including the entire casts of Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighting Vipers, Megamix was the Sega Saturn’s attempt to make a congruent Sega fighting game universe come together on the Sega Saturn. Of course, there wasn’t enough stand out Sega characters to turn into brawlers, so they hard to reach a little. Enter Hornet – a car you drive from Daytona USA. Hornet stood on its back bumper, and used its tires as arms and legs. No, I’m not kidding. What’s probably more unbelievable is that Fighters Megamix ended up on the Game.com.
Which is your pick for the weirdest video game character? Tweet them to us @CurseGamepedia, or let us know in the comments below.