A company is only as good as its leader, and sometimes a well-oiled operation can fall apart due to erratic and poor leadership from its CEO. Video games love making a large organization or corporation the main enemy of the protagonist because it sets up that perfect underdog format.
While these companies are fake, we can only imagine how poorly valued they would be on the stock market due to the moves by their CEOs. If their motivation is pure power, they sometimes fail to factor in anything else and a company can fall apart on them in a hurry. Nobody on this list is making a world-changing electric car or smartphone...
8 Bowser (Super Mario Bros.)
While Bowser isn't a CEO per se, he acts as the overall leader of the Bowser Royal Family. Yes, apparently there is some sort of royal apparatus for this evil fire-breathing baddie according to Mario lore. While running "Bowser Royal Family Inc." Bowser has managed to beat Mario precisely zero times while expending a ridiculous amount of money.
Even though he is well-liked by fans, Bowser has sunk an incredible amount of money into castles, airships, and other flying machines just to see them destroyed. The real shame is that he actually had a pretty promising kart design that was one of the fastest vehicles in the Mushroom Kingdom, but instead of starting his own car company, he keeps focusing on kidnapping people.
7 Oswell E. Spencer (Resident Evil)
The CEO of Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation, Oswell Spencer is exactly the kind of CEO you would expect in charge of a company responsible for several virus outbreaks. Cold, elitist, and extremely rich, Spencer thinks that mankind is self-destructive and that a change is needed. Spencer's desire is to become a god and turn society into a utopia that he rules over. This sort of ambition results in some pretty terrible bio-weapons being created by Umbrella, something that dooms Raccoon City.
As residents of the city are infected, things go so badly for Spencer's company that the U.S. government ends up bombing the city and dismantling the Umbrella Corporation for its role in the whole fiasco. Spencer never achieves his goal of becoming a god, instead being killed by one of his own bodyguards.
6 Geese Howard (Fatal Fury Series)
Geese Howard is a fan favorite for being a great villain in the Fatal Fury series. While being the CEO of the Howard Connection gives him wealth and power, Howard ends up fighting people when he really could pay someone else to do it.
While he seems like a charismatic guy, you can't have the head of the company taking swings at other people because that can end badly for a variety of reasons.
5 Giles Wolstencroft (Fallout Series)
Fallout's Vault-Tec Corporation won a contract to create vaults that ensure the survival of United States citizens in case of a nuclear war. Giles Wolstencroft was the assistant Chief Executive Officer of Vault-Tec, and played a part in the botching of the vault system.
The company spent more time setting up social experiments in these vaults than ensuring they were all sound structures. Because of this, when the bombs fell, many of the vaults eventually ended up failing. Wolstencroft himself was inspecting Vault 76 when he got abducted by aliens, and was eventually killed while trying to communicate with these beings. Bang up job, Giles!
4 Ian Kelliher (Doom Series)
Anyone who is the CEO of Doom's UAC Corporation has got to be bad at their job. While never seen in the Doom series, Ian Kelliher oversees a company actively trying to harvest the resources of Hell. Naturally, things go wrong for Kelliher's company as it unleashes demons onto its Mars facility.
Kelliher must have created such a great company culture that even after the demons invaded Earth, factions split within the company, and some employees allied with the demons. We can only imagine the board meeting where UAC saw hellspawns and said "Perfect! Yes, let's go with that!"
3 Olivier Garneau (Assassin's Creed and Watch Dog Series)
Olivier Garneau makes an appearance as a CCO in Assassin's Creed 4 and a CEO in Watch Dogs. While Ubisoft says this is an easter egg, we're going to make it count anyways. Garneau looks like your typical tech startup CEO, but unlike the real-life versions where these types of guys run websites that sell dog toys, Garneau is involved in retrieving genetic memories from people at Abstergo Entertainment.
The company is tied to Assassin's Creed's main antagonists, the Templars. Anyone who can lead a company with questionable morals like Abstergo, which makes identity theft look like a joke, and work with Templars is probably a very shady character.
2 Jonathan Irons (Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare)
Jonathan Irons becomes the main antagonist in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare by being a military-industrial complex CEO on steroids. Irons's company, the Atlas Corporation, is the most powerful military contractor on the planet. He allows terrorist attacks by the KVA to occur in various cities worldwide, so he can tighten his grip on the world while preaching peace and security.
He comes up with a devious biological weapon and decides his company is so powerful that he is going to attack the United States. This ends poorly thanks to the player, and Irons eventually dies in the final assault on his headquarters.
1 Handsome Jack (Borderlands)
Handsome Jack takes over the Hyperion corporation in Borderlands 2 and immediately appoints himself dictator of Pandora. Talk about a promotion. Like any video game villain would do, he makes a super weapon that can destroy entire settlements.
Jack is power-hungry, narcissistic, and violent — but at least the game portrays him with a sense of humor. He also wears a mask to cover up scars because he can't help himself from retrieving artifacts from vaults. This sort of behavior never works out for CEOs. Never.