In most cases, a game's great hero is only as great as the game's villain. Over the years, the villains we've seen in video games have evolved, becoming more sinister and having more depth than villains we've seen in earlier years. While many video games feature antagonists with schemes so evil and carefully executed that it's hard to imagine the hero even winning, there are certain video game antagonists that kind of leave you scratching your head wondering why they are such a threat in the first place.

Being evil doesn't necessarily make you smart and many video games feature antagonists that could have easily won. Despite that, the truth of the matter is they often overlook certain details in their schemes, don't kill the hero when they have the chance, or simply just don't have much of a motive to really be a villain in the first case. Just because these villains are bad, it doesn't particularly make them good at it. Here are some of the villains we've faced in video games that are the absolute worst at actually being bad.

15 Totally Could Have Won But Is More About The Drama

Liquid Snake may be Solid Snake's biggest enemy, despite his apparent death in the original Metal Gear Solid. Sure, he may be the head of an evil terrorist syndicate, yet he completely fails in defeating his cloned brother, all for the sake of being dramatic. After having captured Snake before the final battle, instead of killing the brother he hates so much, he instead goes into a ten minute monologue telling Snake all about his evil scheme in traditional Metal Gear Solid fashion. He then releases Snake from his shackles, challenging him to a one on one match of fisticuffs on top of the destroyed Metal Gear all while a bomb's timer ticks down. For someone that claims that Snake's death is the only way he can be satisfied, Liquid sure goes overboard on delivering the drama all while giving Snake the chance to rebound and save the day.

14 Can Bring The World To Its Knees, Beaten By A Hedgehog

Dr. Eggman, formerly known as Dr. Robotnik, is a villain that should seemingly be able to take over the world with ease. He clearly has the resources to do so as he is able to manufacture an entire robot army, build a wide array of destructive vehicles for him to pilot, or even man the ARK space station which could easily destroy the entire planet. But despite everything Eggman has going for him, it turns out he's quite the moron, consistently being foiled by a mere hedgehog. Most of Eggman's designs for his machinery make it so that Sonic can easily defeat them as he usually follows a pattern of the same attacks over and over, eventually leaving an opening for Sonic to attack his weak point. Piloting a hovercraft with a giant wrecking ball tethered to it is hardly an example of efficient machinery unless Dr. Eggman is planning a career in construction. Considering the crazy contraptions he's capable of making, surely there is something more vile that could be used against the speedy hedgehog.

13 The Ultimate Villain Who Does Absolutely NOTHING

The primary antagonist of Conker's Bad Fur Day, the Panther King, is more of a plot device to get the story rolling. A milk-chugging obsessed panther spills his milk early on in the story after setting it on a wobbly table next to his throne with only three legs. His cohort Professor von Kripplesac comes up with the idea of fixing the table by using a red squirrel to replace the fourth limb, thus resulting in the Panther King's desire to kidnap Conker. While the Panther King's stature and demeanor come off as intimidating and he could most likely tear Conker to threads, his motives are as petty as literally crying over spilled milk. Despite being the lands evil king, it is really Professor von Kripplesac who puts plans in motion as he designed the evil Tediz that Conker would soon have to confront. In a surprise twist, the Panther King doesn't even get to display his power as the final boss is a xenomorph alien that rips out of his flesh. Talk about a main antagonist who does absolutely nothing.

12 An Evil Syndicate With Absolutely No Purpose

Each entry in the Pokémon franchise has some sort of evil syndicate that the player squares off against and honestly, this list could be full of them as most of them are pretty helpless in a fight. Yet Pokémon Sun and Moon's Team Skull are probably the biggest group of dimwitted individuals spanning from Kanto to Alola. Depicted as a group of young thugs who represent a street gang, members of Team Skull are Pokémon trainers who were not able to complete Alola's Island Challenge. Even though they steal other people's Pokémon, they don't really have an end goal in mind as they are pretty much just typical street thugs, making them a huge departure from previous Pokémon evil syndicates that usually have some sort of ultimate plan in mind. Wrap their lack of ambition up with using the same Pokémon over and over and jiving to bad rap music, Team Skull is nothing more than a group of people who want to be bad, but fail miserably at it.

11 Why Do These Genius Doctors Keep Losing To Animals??

For some reason, evil doctors really do have trouble with anthropomorphic creatures. Take Dr. Neo Cortex for example from Crash Bandicoot fame. While it's difficult to really gauge who the worse villain is, Dr. Neo Cortex or Uka Uka, the spirit reincarnated mask who keeps on relying on Cortex to take out Crash to fulfill his plan of enslaving humanity, Cortex takes the cake on this one as he typically comes off as a bumbling idiot. Dr. Neo Cortex has plenty of gadgets and gear at his disposal and he should have no issues disposing of a single bandicoot, albeit one with no real special abilities other than a spin attack. Yet every time these two duke it out, Cortex uses a patterned attack eventually leaving himself open for Crash to attack him. While Uka Uka isn't much better, at least he comes off as a little more intimidating than the doctor with a Napoleon complex.

10 It's Hard To Be Bad When You're Confined To A Fish Bowl

Bob the Killer Goldfish from the Earthworm Jim series is more of a funny joke rather than a worthy adversary for our power suited hero. Though Bob has ill intentions toward Jim and desires to steal his power suit so he can escape the confines of his fish bowl and be able to obtain more mobility, Bob simply has no way of actually acting on his evil plans. Bob relies on the help of his various minions, specifically Number Four who is a large cat who is the muscle to Bob's schemes. Unfortunately, without the seemingly brainless Number Four at his disposal, Bob is completely useless in a fight. When squaring off against Jim in the original game, his fish bowl is simply knocked over to have him end up flopping around on the floor while in the sequel, Jim just plucks Bob out of his fish bowl and swallows him whole.

9 An Easy Recipe For Seafood Soup

Ultros of Final Fantasy VI fame is about as bad at being bad as one can be when being featured as an antagonist. While he is nowhere near being the big bad of the game, he appears enough times to cause our heroes at least a little bit of trouble, probably his biggest feat being separating Sabin from Terra and the rest of The Returners. While more of a comic relief character lacking any real reason to cause so much trouble, you still have to give him credit for being so determined to give our heroes as much grief as he does despite him getting defeated by them so easily each and every time. Even in the middle of an almost-winning battle, his guilt gets the best of him and he lets the ten year-old portrait artist Relm draw a picture of him. Relm's "Sketch" ability secretly replicates an enemy's attack, thus defeating Ultros in battle. At the very least, when things get a little difficult for the eight-legged beast, he can summon his buddy Typhon who is a much more worthy adversary.

8 Foiled By Those Meddling Kids!

Since the main antagonist of Persona 4 remains a mystery up until the final hours of the game, I might as well mention that a big SPOILER is coming up. While typically appearing as a dimwitted detective and partner of Yu's uncle Dojima, Tohru Adachi comes off as a light-hearted comic relief character. He is often using ridiculous puns and making stupid jokes all while supposedly slipping up clues to Yu and his friends helping the Investigation Team get closer to solving the mystery of the T.V. killer. While Adachi is the least likely suspect of being the game's killer, he turns out to be a complete sociopath and has been killing people due to the boredom he experiences in his own life. Adachi isn't a terrible villain, yet ultimately his downfall is caused by a bunch of fifteen year-olds and while he tried to drop clues that would deter the Investigation Team from thinking he's the killer, it was his careless hint dropping that would eventually lead them toward realizing that Adachi was the true killer all along.

7 Maybe You Should Have Stayed In The Tank

Brock Mason from the original Dead Rising serves as the game's final boss for the true ending to the story. While being a lead military strategist and leading his crew to the genocide of Santa Cabeza after its zombie outbreak, you could argue he isn't really a bad guy and his simply doing his job, yet his sociopath behavior and disregard for human life makes him as evil as they come. So why is this guy such a pushover? After Frank West and Isabella attempt to escape, Mason who is manning a tank rams their car over. Instead of utilizing the tank further, he has a hand to hand battle with Frank on top of the tank while a horde of zombies surround the fighting duo. While he easily could have defeated Frank... with his tank and everything... Mason, a military leader, still gets his butt handed to him. By a journalist. With absolutely no previous fighting abilities. Mason is then pushed into the zombie horde and Frank escapes with the scoop of the century.

6 Part Of A Terrorist Organization, Would Rather Be Skating

Fatman from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is probably one of the best boss fights in the series if not only for the battle itself but the sheer ridiculousness of the fight. One of the members of the terrorist organization Dead Cell and named after the atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in World War II, Fatman was a bomb making genius having crafted his first atomic bomb at ten years old. Despite him being a genius, his fight against Raiden was a bit over the top. He enters the battleground on in-line skates, while drinking a glass of wine with a pink umbrella in it, nonetheless. An already buzzed Fatman then goes on a tangent about how he used to hang out in clock stores as a kid and was fascinated by time. Fatman probably isn't much of a physical fighter due to his obese stature, so he uses bombs rather than brute force to fight... bombs that would ultimately destroy him as well if they exploded. While his plan was really only to achieve fame from his explosives, he probably could have done better in a fight if he didn't go into it inebriated while on skates.

5 Taking Over The World One Sick Dance Move At A Time

You probably wouldn't expect the Dance Central series to have much of a storyline (and it really doesn't) yet elements were hinted at throughout the initial Xbox 360 trilogy until the unveiling of Dr. Tan from Dance Central 2 despite his brief appearance in the first title. Another evil doctor who has plenty of tools at his disposal to actually take over the world such as robots, brainwashing helmets, and an airship, this evil doctor only cares about one thing: being the best dancer in the world. Instead of killer robots, he created dancing robots that couldn't (or could they??) be beaten in a dance battle. He traveled through time and used mind control helmets to get the Dance Central crew to form only systematic dances making songs like "The Macarena" or "The Cupid Shuffle" staples of the dancing world. Despite being an evil mastermind and having committed multiple felonies, Dr. Tan really should have set his sights a little higher than being the world's best dancer.

4 So Bad At Being Bad, He's Never Actually Been Bad

It was a tough call between Waluigi and Wario, but considering Wario has actually been featured as the main antagonist in a video game, Waluigi wins this fight between the evil duo. Designed to be an evil version of Luigi, much like Wario was designed to be Mario's evil counterpart, Waluigi is pretty much just considered a villain because Nintendo labeled him as such. He usually shows up on the villain's roster in video games, but it seems like he mostly exists because Wario needed a tennis partner. He mostly shows up in sports titles or party games appearing to be nothing but a cruel joker, but has not once been seen actually concocting any evil schemes to take down Mario and his friends. While it's likely he isn't capable of much, a lot like Mario's other foes, we'd still love for Nintendo to give this evil Luigi variation a time to shine as the main antagonist, possibly giving Luigi and Daisy a chance to get some time in the spotlight as well.

3 These Syndicates Think Destroying The World Will Make Life Better

While most Pokémon evil syndicates are usually pretty bad at achieving their lofty goals, Team Aqua and Team Magma from the third generation of the series in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire were the first teams that were working toward a new world order. While Team Magma desired a world where there was more landmass to accommodate more humans and Pokémon, Team Aqua desired the exact opposite, wishing for a world that was one vast ocean and little land. Both ideas were clearly terrible as limiting either landmass or water would probably devastate most species on the planet. Not only that, but in attempting to achieve their goals, both teams typically use a set type of Pokémon with Magma usually using fire and ground types and Aqua using typically water types, making them overly simple to beat with a single type of Pokémon. Not only that, but in typical Pokémon fashion, they are brought down by a single ten year-old kid.

2 Not Rotten To The Core

Wheatley is Chell's bumbling idiotic, overly talkative, yet charming companion throughout the Aperture labs in Portal 2. He's known for usually having bad ideas and concocting plans that don't really work. Wheatley surprisingly became the main antagonist of Portal 2 replacing GLaDOS as the head of the Aperture Science facility. Even though he was deemed a good guy in earlier hours of the game trying to help Chell escape the facility, he became corrupted with power after taking over GLaDOS's body. After Chell is forced to team up with GLaDOS to restore the facility, GLaDOS explains that Wheatley was originally designed as an Intelligence Dampening Sphere that would consistently come up with bad ideas. GLaDOS goes ahead to admit he was essentially designed to "be a moron." Unfit to run the facility, Wheatley repeatedly ignores warnings of an upcoming nuclear meltdown nearly bringing destruction to the lab and everything in it. Being designed to actually be stupid, he is literally the most foolish villain in video game history, yet his moronic nature is why he's so likeable in the first place.

1 If At First You Don't Succeed, Try Again... and Again

What is there really to say about Bowser from the Super Mario Bros. franchise? This guy is the worst possible villain ever to grace a video game, albeit the most popular. He has concocted dozens upon dozens of schemes to beat Mario and take over the Mushroom Kingdom with the help of an entire Koopa army, yet he's beaten every time... by a plumber, nonetheless. Bowser is also pretty much immune to Mario's main attack, which is jumping, and wouldn't even be able to be beaten by him unless Mario had the help of a powerup, yet Bowser keeps making it so that Mario can defeat him in the final battle. In the original game, he stands on a destructible bridge over lava letting Mario jump right past him to destroy it. In the third installment while trying to crush Mario, he destroys the bridge they're on, thus falling to his doom. He repeatedly grows to behemoth sizes and is still defeated with a few bashes from the plumber. While being far more powerful than Mario, he can't help but make the same mistakes over and over leading to his failure. If one thing is for certain, Bowser is certainly determined, but he's just simply bad at being a bad guy.