10 Most Shocking Gaming Betrayals
8. Roy Earle - LA Noire
Roy. Roy. The name that will remain forever unpopular for new-born boys, at least for any parents who played LA Noire.
Roy Earle was never a particularly likeable character. His smarmy attitude made him a dead giveaway as a corrupt cop, taking bribes on the side in exchange for a lighter hand. But his betrayals soon became personal, when he sold protagonist Cole Phelps down the river in order to make him a scapegoat.
By revealing Phelps’s affair with German singer Elsa, Earle distracted the media from his (and the LAPD’s) secret involvement in the Suburban Redevelopment Fund, a crooked operation that dealt in insurance fraud and drug-pushing.
As a result, Roy gets his former partner demoted, and ensures that almost nobody will listen to Cole’s theories regarding the SRF.
To really spread the icing on the cake, Roy attends Cole’s funeral in the game’s closing moments, delivering his eulogy and slamming the corrupt officials he was working for. Earle ultimately escapes justice and rubs it in the face of a deceased Phelps, making him one of the slimiest and most underhanded video game characters of all time.