10 Video Game Heroes That Got Everyone Killed

Heroism can be defined many ways, but typically it involves bravely saving the day with little concern for one's own wellbeing, and above all else just straight-up not killing the good guys, right?

In which case, these celebrated video game heroes all stretched the definition of "hero" to breaking point given that their actions ultimately led to a basically genocidal level of death.

Though these heroes all had good intentions one way or another, their acts largely ended up condemning thousands or even millions of regular, harmless folk to brutal deaths - a fact some of these games would perhaps prefer you didn't think about too much.

Even with some of these protagonists having more ambiguous, nebulous takes on heroism than others, it's still shocking just how much blood they ultimately have on their hands, whether in the name of the greater good or simply because they screwed everything up.

One thing's for sure, if you call yourself a hero you should absolutely avoid killing off the population of a large city while going about manoeuvres. In some cases the heroes paid the price for their carelessness, while in others they basically got away with it scot-free...

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.