In the world of video games, trust is unusually hard to come by. For all the honest comrades and Good Samaritan NPCs I've met on my gaming adventures, at least one traitorous backstabber always takes advantage of my trusting nature. What can I say - I'm a team player. When a character serves up helpful tips and points me towards objectives, I like to take their help at face value. All too often, I end up regretting the trust I place in these video game Judases. Unsurprisingly, it's usually after I've done the bulk of their dirty work for them. Call me naïve. I deserve it.
Though obvious double-crossers like Albert Wesker wear their evil intentions like a badge, the best traitors are those who slowly earn a player's trust. In a way, they make for the best villains. They're both easier and harder to hate because of the personal connection the player formed with them, making their betrayal all that more painful. I miss my helpful ally and hate what they've become. For that reason, I'll never forget these five devious schemers who stabbed unsuspecting gamers in back.
Obviously, heavy spoilers lie ahead.
Kendra Daniels - Dead Space
Selfish, shrill and notoriously unsympathetic, Kendra Daniels goes out of her way to make players dislike her the moment they set foot on the USG Ishimura. But with Isaac Clarke stranded on a derelict starship infested with Necromorphs, it's no time to be picky about allies. Barricaded in the ship's computer core, Kendra kept in contact with Isaac throughout the game, assisting him with his engineering errands. The two relied on each other to survive an impossible situation. But all of that comradery went out the airlock, when Kendra shot the good-natured Dr. Kyne through the chest and made off with the Red Marker. Turned out she was a two-timing government agent all along. Happy to leave Isaac to his death, she even had the gall to taunt him with footage of his girlfriend's suicide. Eventually, karma came back to bite Kendra when she ended up bludgeoned to death and dismembered by the Hive Mind.
Admiral Havelock - Dishonored
It would be easy to forgive Corvo Atano for developing trust issues after everything he went through in Dishonored. At the very start of the game, the High Regent of Dunwall framed him for regicide and ordered him tortured for months on end. Sprung from jail by a motley crew of loyalists, things began looking up for the former royal bodyguard. Loyalist ringleader Admiral Havelock, a stately honorable man, wielded him like a knife against Dunwall's corruption. Corvo brought down the conspirators who wronged him, rescued the Empress's daughter and gained a host of supernatural abilities as a bonus. And how did Havelock and his comrades repay Corvo for acting as their covert assassin? They served him up an unhealthy dose of poison and sent him floating down the river. By turning against the skilled assassin, Havelock proved to be just as selfish and shortsighted as Dunwall's other villains. Twice betrayed, Corvo thankfully rose up again to continue stabbing backstabbers in the neck.
Wheatley - Portal 2
From the onset of Portal 2, the personality core Wheatley quickly won over players with his goofball chatter and frantic personality quirks. At first he even proved useful. He revived Chell from cryogenic sleep and guided her through Aperture Science's crumbling facilities. Unfortunately, the "dumbest moron who ever lived" lived up to his name when he carelessly reactivated the sociopathic computer GLaDOS. While that misstep raised questions about Wheatley's decision-making skills, his poor judgement took on a whole new meaning when he linked up with the central computer system. Insecure and resentful, the robotic British core went mad with power and swiftly double-crossed Chell. Even then, he remained a likable character. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him as the game's test chambers fell apart under his inept management. It made the endgame scene with him getting shot into space downright tragic. All that said, when a potato-battery-powered GLaDOS turned out to be a more trustworthy ally, you know Wheatley belongs on this list.
"Atlas" - Bioshock
A onetime savior to Rapture's downtrodden, Atlas ultimately turned out to be the underwater city's topmost two-timer. Early on, he won players over with street-smart Irish wit and a sob story about his trapped family. I truly felt for him when it looked like his wife and son had died at the hands of Andrew Ryan's splicer mob. So much so, I barely thought twice about murdering the tyrant and handing Atlas the underwater city's keys. Only then did Atlas shed his phony persona. As the psychotic conman Frank Fontaine, he engineered the game's protagonist Jack as a mind-controlled hitman to take out Ryan. Underneath his callous web of lies, he was a man without any principles whatsoever. At least Ryan had his misguided ideals to fall back on. With Atlas, there was nothing but his violent hunger for power. In a failed utopia overrun by spliced freaks, no greater monster rivaled him.
Kreia - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Arguably the most complex character ever written into the Star Wars mythos, Kreia made betrayal a key tenet of her personal philosophy. The former Jedi historian and Sith Lord mentored the Jedi Exile on her quest to find the last Jedi masters, keeping her own motives obscured behind cryptic teachings. Both condescending and nuanced, she was the greatest mystery in a deeply mysterious game. Manipulating the Exile and using her party members as pawns all built towards her ultimate goal - to overthrow her former Sith apprentice Darth Nihilus and destroy the Force itself. And yet, her affection for the Exile remained genuine, even as she plotted to use the young Jedi's status as a living wound in the Force to her advantage. She even openly encouraged the player to play both sides of any given conflict, giving him or her their own taste for betraying characters. For this and more, she definitely earned her Sith title: Darth Traya, Lord of Betrayal.