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Nowadays, if you want to play as Batman in Fortnite, or Cody Rhodes in Call of Duty, you just pay a few bucks and download the skin. It wasn’t always like this, though. Back in the days before online gaming and microtransactions, you’d have to work for secret characters. And it would take months, or sometimes even years for them to be discovered.
But the results would be worth it because older games tended to pack some extremely surprising extra characters deep in their code. These are the best hidden characters in video games.
15. Magus – Chrono Trigger
At this point, Magus is such a well-known part of Chrono Trigger that it’s hard to even consider him a secret character. Still, he’s completely optional, and you can end up killing him, or even missing out on the final confrontation with him completely if it’s your first time through the game and you don’t know what you’re doing.
But what’s really cool about Magus is that it’s one of the first times in an RPG that you could recruit one of the game’s villains into your party, and bringing him along added a lot to the story. And really, that’s just another reason why Chrono Trigger is so awesome and will always be considered one of the greats of the genre.
14. Morinth – Mass Effect 2
In the classic Mass Effect 2, Commander Shepard meets Samara: an elder Asari who needs help tracking down her wayward daughter Morinth who suffers from a rare condition that kills anyone she mates with. Mind you, in Mass Effect, Asaris are known to mate a lot and with almost any other sentient species.
As such, it seems like kind of a no-brainer to take out Morinth. She’s very plainly one of the bad guys. But the Mass Effect games are also known for their open-ended choices, so Shepard is also free to turn on Samara and recruit Morinth as a companion. Unfortunately, Morinth then just spends the rest of the game impersonating her mother. So while there are a few notable changes when you add her to her party (and Sheperd can even try mating with her), the differences aren’t as noticeable as with a lot of other hidden characters.
13. Indiana Jones – Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga went out of its way to cram almost every obscure character you could possibly want to play from the first six Star Wars movies into its roster. But even then, the developers at Traveller’s Tales took it just a little bit further to add George Lucas’s other famous creation to the mix.
Unlocking Indiana Jones is surprisingly easy compared to some of the other characters on this list. You simply watch the brief trailer for Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (another excellent Lego game in its own right), and then purchase Dr. Jones for 50,000 studs. Indy wields his trademark whip and pistol, and as an added bonus, has the same idle animation as Han Solo.
12. Abe Lincoln – Fight Club
There’s just so much wrong with the Fight Club game that launched on the PS2 and Xbox. It’s bad enough that its very existence mocks the film’s entire anti-materialism message, but that could maybe be overlooked if the game was actually good. Spoiler: it’s not. From the ho-hum graphics to the bland gameplay that does absolutely nothing to distinguish itself from other fighting games of the era, Fight Club really has no redeeming qualities. No one talks about Fight Club anymore, but not because that’s the first rule of Fight Club, it’s because the game sucks.
But, if you feel so inclined to actually beat the game with every other character, you will unlock America’s 16th president as a playable character. Why? Well, it’s all thanks to a throwaway line in the film about historic figures the main characters would like to fight. It’s not really worth the trouble to do this, of course, but if you’re so inclined, check out a YouTube video of Honest Abe in action for a quick chuckle.
11. Blade – Ghost Rider
Released in 2007 at the tail end of the PS2’s lifecycle, Ghost Rider is a rather forgettable beat ‘em up unless you’re a really big fan of the Spirit of Vengeance and/or the very average Nicholas Cage film. For a licensed game released after most gamers had moved on to the next generation, it’s actually not even that bad. It’s just that God of War clones were already plentiful on the PS2 at this point, and Ghost Rider does little to distinguish itself.
Still, if you get through the rather short campaign on easy difficulty, you can replay the game as Blade the Vampire Hunter. What’s really notable though is that, unlike a lot of other secret characters, Blade plays completely differently from Ghost Rider. He relies only on his sword and vampiric abilities to replenish his health. And since we’ve never had a good solo Blade game, it’s a real treat to be able to play as the daywalker here.
10. Hornet – Fighters Megamix
Sega was well known for taking all sorts of crazy risks in the mid-‘90s, but few paid off as well as Fighters Megamix: a Saturn fighter that mixed the characters from Virtua Fighter, Fighting Vipers, and any other franchise Sega felt like including. Think of it as kind of like a 3D Super Smash Bros., but it was released before the first entry of that Nintendo franchise.
There are quite a few secret characters in Fighters Megamix, but the most surprising has got to be the car, Hornet. Actually, Hornest is one of the cars from Daytona USA that fights by “standing” on its back wheels and boxing with the front wheels. Oh, and it also makes car noises during the fight, and you can knock off its panels, revealing the engine underneath. It’s awesome, and really makes me sad that Sega has never ported Fighters Megamix to anything else.
9. Donkey Kong – Punch-Out!! (2009)
Even though it’s only seen a handful of entries over the last four decades, Punch-Out!! is still regarded as one of Nintendo’s best franchises, with the most recent entry, the 2009 Wii game, still considered a high point for the series. It was a real treat seeing almost all the characters from the old NES and SNES games return in full 3D, and even a few new faces showed up.
Once you complete Title Defense mode, you’ll unlock Mac’s Last Stand, where Donkey Kong will randomly show up to challenge you. Being a huge gorilla, Donkey Kong is unsurprisingly strong and unpredictable, meaning besting him is one of the toughest challenges in the game.
8. T-Rex – Need for Speed II
There have been more than 20 mainline Need for Speed games since the series’ inception way back in 1994, and yet one of the most memorable vehicles in the entire series dates back to the second installment released for PC and the original PlayStation. If you input the password “TREXME,” you get…well, not an actual dinosaur, but a model of one sitting on top of a vehicle.
It’s actually more of a novelty than anything. The T-rex isn’t very fast and doesn’t handle very well, but it’s definitely unique. And given the mixed reception the last few Need for Speed games have received, maybe that’s what the series is missing: dinosaur cars.
7. Tofu – Resident Evil 2
The Resident Evil series is known for its scares, gore, relentless action, and also some really odd jokes, the most infamous being Tofu. Unlocking Tofu is no easy feat. You first have to beat the game with either Claire or Leon, then beat their alternative scenario, and after that, you need to get through tough the 4th Survivor minigame featuring HUNK. Finally, after all that, you can now play as a giant piece of Tofu with a knife. Or, you can just buy him as DLC if you’re playing the excellent 2019 remake.
Supposedly, Tofu is based on the polygonal model that Capcom used to test collision detection during development, and then the team kept him in the game as a joke. As out of place as Tofu is in the Resident Evil universe, it’s actually now kind of hard to imagine Resident Evil 2 without the giant piece of soy wandering around Raccoon City.
6. Fred Durst – WWF Smackdown! Just Bring It, WWF Raw, and Fight Club
Believe it or not, there was a brief period of time in the early 2000s when Limp Bizkit was the biggest band in the country, and Fred Durst was the very definition of cool. Thankfully, we all came to our senses pretty quickly, but we’ll never fully escape the horrors of our country’s brief flirtation with nu-metal. Fred Durst, never one to not cash in on an opportunity, used his newfound fame to become a playable character in two WWF (now WWE) games and also the aforementioned abysmal Fight Club fighting game. Yes, you really can play a retail game where Fred Durst fist-fights Abraham Lincoln for some reason.
Apparently, one of Durst’s demands in the 2000s was that he had to appear as a playable character in any game using Limp Bizkit songs on the soundtrack. The Undertaker used “Rollin’” as an entrance song at the time, which explains his inclusion in the WWF games. And putting Limp Bizkit on the soundtrack was just one of Fight Club’s many poor design choices. Anyway, the risk of having to include Fred Durst in their game seems to have dissuaded most developers from including Limp Bizkit in many video games since then.
5. Gon – Tekken 3
Tekken 3 was one of the more advanced arcade games of its time, and there were serious concerns about how it would translate to the aging PS1. But Namco knocked it out of the park with one of the greatest ports of the time. Tekken 3 on the PS1 doesn’t just run flawlessly with only a slight drop in graphical quality from the arcade version; it also includes a bunch of new features exclusive to the console, including Gon.
If you’re unfamiliar with Gon, he’s a diminutive dinosaur who starred in a manga that was popular at the time. In Tekken 3, he’s a tiny, fire-breathing beast. He also has one of the coolest looping endings in any video game ever. Sadly, likely due to the difficulty in securing Gon’s rights, he hasn’t appeared in another Tekken game since.
4. A Toilet – Saints Row: The Third
More than a decade after its release, Saints Row: The Third is still widely considered to be the pinnacle of the franchise. Developer Volition went balls out for the third Saints game, letting players get as wild and creative as they pleased. It remains the only game around where you can hop into a harrier jet, fly around a wide-open city, and then jump out to beat random people to death with an oversized sex toy.
And while the game has plenty of character customization options, the absolute best is saved for last. Once you beat the game, you have the option to play as a toilet. To be clear, there are no special abilities for this. The storyline doesn’t change. You are simply a living toilet, going about its daily business and leading the 3rd Street Saints’ empire. And it’s awesome.
3. Shaquille O’Neal – UFC Undisputed 2010
When talking about MMA, who doesn’t think about legendary NBA center Shaquille O’Neal? Literally everyone. Shaq isn’t exactly synonymous with combat sports, but he’s unlockable as a playable character in UFC Undisputed 2010 if you input a code at the title screen. In case you’re wondering, Shaq is a big UFC fan and was even known to do MMA training during the offseason when he played ball (though he never actually made it to the octagon in real life)
Curiously, this isn’t even the first fighting game to feature Shaq as a playable character. There are, of course, the two Shaq Fu games, but he also appeared as a boxer in Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2. He truly is a renaissance man.
2. Spider-Man – Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is hands down one of the greatest games of all time. It just plays so damn well, and the levels are so perfectly laid out. It’s also chockful of secrets, with one the best (and hardest to unlock) being none other than Spider-Man himself. Unlocking the webslinger requires getting 100 percent in the game with a created character, which is no easy feat. But it’s also totally worth it to see Spidey skate around levels, and swing webs around his board during air tricks.
Spider-Man was the first licensed character to appear in the Tony Hawk games, but he paved the way for later inclusions like Wolverine, Darth Maul, and Shrek. So, Spidey still stands out as the best (and his inclusion was a big surprise at the time). Sadly, a host of rights issues kept Spider-Man from joining the fray in the recent Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 remake.
1. Bill and Hillary Clinton – NBA Jam: Tournament Edition
Fun fact: Bill Clinton was approached to voice the president in Fallout 3, but turned down the role for whatever reason. That’s a shame. Maybe he was burned on his first video game appearance? The NBA Jam games were known for including all sorts of wild secret characters back in the day, from Mortal Kombat fighters to all three members of the Beastie Boys. But perhaps none is more surprising, or epic, than Bill and Hillary Clinton showing up in the console versions of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition.
To be clear, playing as the Clintons is pretty much cosmetic, and given the power of 16-bit consoles, you can’t even really tell it’s them on the court, but it’s still pretty damn fun having the first couple dunk all over the ‘90s Bulls dynasty.
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