20 Video Game Villains You Couldn’t Wait To Kill

2. Handsome Jack, Borderlands 2 (2012)

Hard to believe sci-fi looter-shooter Borderlands has been occupying our screens for 17 years now, and yet four main games in, there’s enough content across this franchise to keep new players going for years. 

Never one to leave us twiddling our thumbs, Gearbox have packed every game with main missions, side quests, weapons, planets and, of course, the characters who make it all worthwhile. The revolving cast of Borderlands feature oddballs from across the universe, encountering all manner of friends, rogues, freedom fighters, villains and weirdos on our quest to crack open a big ol' vault and snatch some swag.

Everyone has their favourite vault hunter – Lilith, Zer0, Claptrap... well, maybe not Claptrap – but only one villain shines out as an across-the-board winner. Smug and arrogant from the off, it ain’t hard to loathe Handsome Jack. The architect of our miseries and CEO of the Hyperion Corporation, Jack seizes control of Pandora and does everything in his power not just to stop but to, like, really antagonise us. But we draw the line at him capturing Mordecai’s bird Bloodwing, mutating her and then blowing her head off in front of us.  

People may hate the Calypso twins from #3, but Jack is the one who deserves his death and makes you want to tear him apart so bad that when you finally get to once is not enough. We can’t overstate how many times we’ve gone back just to shoot him in the face One. More. Time.