ComedyNGaming wishes our readers and all their mothers and maternal figures a happy, healthy Mother’s Day. Now, traditionally Mothers don’t play a huge role in many games. They may appear at the beginning of a game only to die tragically because they’re a plot device, or worse, spend the entire duration of the story, sitting in a living room until you get back from your journey.

To celebrate Mother’s Day, and to help you better appreciate your own mothers better, we’ve compiled a list of some of the WORST MOMs we could find in video games. Be warned that this article is rife with spoilers!

Queen Brahne from Final Fantasy IX

Believe it or not, Queen Brahne is only 39 years old. Now a woman’s appearance should never be used to as a reflection of her character, but Queen Brahne both looks and acts utterly monstrous. Consumed by grief after the deaths of her husband and her first child, Brahne let herself be seduced with elegant words. The result was a brutal, bloody military campaign involving black mages and attempting to have her daughter Garnet executed. Now, Brahne is not the main villain of her game. She even gets a humanizing moment where she apologizes to Garnet before dying after sustaining wounds from the true bad guy, but her completely reckless and greedy actions still earn her a solid spot on this list.

Morgan Fey from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

Morgan Fey is a vindictive medium that became consumed with a desire for vengeance towards her sister after her lackluster abilities caused her to be demoted within her family of psychics. She eventually succeeds in murdering her sister but is foiled before she can kill her nieces, too. What really sets apart Morgan from other terrible video game mothers is not her willingness to use her daughters for her convoluted plots, but her use of one when they are already dead. Geez, you think someone who can commune with the dead would know better than to murder people who can come back as witnesses in the courtroom!

Tharja from Fire Emblem Awakening

Tharja is a hypersexual, dark mage stalker who many view as the evil face of fanservice in the Fire Emblem world. Despite being a playable character and a popular one at that, she is also a horrible mother who frequently used her own daughter as a guinea pig for painful curses or otherwise neglected her entirely. The prolonged abuse eventually caused poor Noire to develop a disturbing split personality. Tharja joins your party after deciding to stab her own nation in the back for no other reason than she felt like it at the time.

Sonia Reed from Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken.

Sonia is a relatively minor, optional boss in Fire Emblem 7, but she ranks among the franchise’s most notable, hated villains. Sonia is introduced as the human wife of Black Fang Leader Brendan Reed and the biological mother of mage-in-training Nino. Nino aims to please her mother throughout the game, but continually comes up short. Sonia runs her husband’s clan into the ground and intentionally gets his sons killed. In fact, Sonia actually murdered Nino’s real parents and brother, torturing them and their son for secrets on magic. The first opportunity Sonia gets, she sends her “daughter” on a suicide mission. She treats both allies and foes like garbage, seeing herself as a perfect being. Sonia might not be able to bear any children of her own, but as one of the most wicked step and adoptive mothers in gaming history, she definitely deserved a mention here

Mrs. Phillips from Grand Theft Auto V

Remember Trevor, the completely violent, psychotic Canadian protagonist of Grand Theft Auto V? Well, if he stays alive by the end of the game’s campaign, you’ll get to meet his mother, and the apple does not fall far from the tree at all. In her brief but memorable appearance, Mrs. Phillips angrily berates her son after being let out of prison, asking if he thinks she’s a prostitute before alluding to a history of sex work. She then questions Trevor’s sexuality upon learning he is still single, before adding that she would prefer a gay son because he wouldn’t forget about his mother. She guilts Trevor into stealing a truckload of painkillers for her, but when he returns she’s nowhere to be found. Whether or not she was a drug-induced hallucination or she simply didn’t feel like sticking around is never answered, but her declaration that Trevor has always been “An ungrateful, wretched, sniveling sack of shit of a boy” reduces the career criminal to a heap of tears on the floor.

Dr. Sofia Lamb from Bioshock 2

Psychiatrist, geneticist and cult leader, Dr. Sofia Lamb demonstrates that a woman really can have it all. Now, Sofia was not the person who initially signed her daughter up to be an ADAM-harvesting Little Sister. However, her insistence on continuing the cruel and inhumane experiments on Eleanor in pursuit of a perfect host to contain all the memories, thoughts, and minds of everyone in her dystopia, is just plain wrong. She truly believes that surrendering the individual is the only way to maintain peace and happiness, even if that means reducing her own daughter to a walking, radioactive USB drive, and killing anyone who tries to escape her experiments. Unlike many of the other mothers on this list, Sofia’s life is determined by the player…. and the type of behavior they chose to model for Eleanor. Parenting was never so fun!

Adria from Diablo 3

The witch Adria is yet another mother who wishes her daughter to be something that she isn’t. Introduced as a helpful, kooky NPC in Diablo, Adria returns in Diablo III as a conniving, backstabbing shrew. She pretends to aid you on your quest and train her daughter in the magical arts, but in reality is merely raising Leah to resurrect her master, the demon Diablo, in a voluptuous new body. It’s worth noting that Adria’s plan is largely successful: Diablo returns and Leah dies horribly for it. While you can confront Adria at her spooky hut and kill her in a remarkably long and unsatisfying mini boss fight in the Reaper of Souls Update, Leah’s body and soul remain lost, cementing her as one of the worst video game moms of all time.

Lusamine from Pokemon Sun and Moon

The Pokemon series is not one often known for its moral complexity or compelling villains, but Lusamine stands out as one of the series most memorable antagonists and by far its worst mom! Introduced as the President of the Aether Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping wild Pokemon find nurturing, sustainable habitats, Lusamine seems helpful and kind enough. Until you realize that she is insane and that all the Pokemon she wants to save and collect are meant to compensate for her actual children running away from her when she became megalomaniacal and abusive. Later, we find out that she was poisoned with the neurotoxins of a particularly sinister Pokemon that she grew to worship. Lusamine might not be the most violent villain on this list, but in terms of shock value and menace relative to her surroundings, she is one wicked lady. Even her Pokemon look mean and messed up!

Last modified: May 14, 2017