10 Video Game Heroes That Got Everyone Killed

10. Joel - The Last Of Us

The ending to The Last of Us is one of the most brilliantly polarising in video game history, as protagonist Joel decides to shoot his way through a Firefly hospital in order to rescue Ellie, who was being prepped for experimental surgery.

With Ellie being immune, the Fireflies' hope was that removing her infected brain would allow them to synthesise a cure, but with there being no guarantee of success, Joel instead decided to retrieve Ellie and slay anyone who got in his way.

To make matters worse, he then lied to Ellie about what happened, insisting that the Fireflies found other immune people to experiment upon, and that their attempts to create a cure failed. Ouch.

While there's indeed no guarantee that the Fireflies' experiment would've created a cure, it was certainly possible, and so by saving Ellie - effectively his surrogate daughter at this point - Joel may well have selfishly doomed humanity.

What we know for sure, though, is that Joel's climactic rampage teed up his own demise, as in The Last of Us Part II he gets brutally murdered by Abby, the daughter of the doctor he shot at the end of the first game while escaping.

Joel's actions are absolutely understandable on a human level, but that doesn't mean they weren't overpoweringly self-serving in obliterating a potential cure.