10 Video Game Villains Who Actually Killed The Hero
9. Arnold Leach (Clive Barker's Jericho)
A great example of catching the player off-guard, decent 2007 FPS Clive Barker's Jericho begins with players controlling badass soldier Captain Devin Ross, only to kill him off right in the opening chunk of the game.
Ross - along with his comrades in the Jericho Squad - has been dispatched to deal with Arnold Leach, a crazed supernatural obsessive responsible for the deaths of countless innocent civilians. It's billed as a relatively simple "in and out" mission, but unfortunately for Ross, the whole thing ends in a brutal, untimely and fatal fashion.
After being baited into standing atop a circular platform away from his team, Ross is ambushed, grabbed, and violently beaten by the monstrous Leach - who has completely lost his humanity - before being carried into the air and dropped to his death.
Ross then returns as a spirit, able to possess the other members of the Jericho Squad and assist them in battle. But physically? He was dead and gone right out the gate, with the game switching you to another playable character.