What happens when the ridiculous world of professional wrestling meets the rushed development of a yearly sports video game cycle? A handful of great games, sure, but mostly some outlandish roster inclusions. These happen for all sorts of reasons. Cross-promotion, in-jokes among developers, or even locked-away content that was never meant to be seen in the final release.
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Some are silly for the sake of it, while a few are outright confusing. Some have the excuse of being carryovers from their games story related modes, with others just being downright bizarre. Here are the weirdest guest characters in wrestling games.
10Terminator: WWE 2K16
As a cross-promotion with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s WWE Hall of Fame induction in 2015 (and Triple H’s induction into the International Sports Hall of Fame at the Arnold Sports Festival that same year), his portrayal as the Terminator was added to the roster ofWWE 2k16.
Aside from how heavily featured Arnold was in the marketing in this game for an unlockable character, his in-game entrance was just as odd. The Terminator materializing at the top of the ramp – with no entrance-specific commentary to acknowledge his appearance – gives credence to the theory that it was a fairly late addition.
It’s not quite Rikidozan literally descending from Heaven into the ring like in the Japan exclusive All Star Pro Wrestling, but it’s definitely up there.
9Tony: Smackdown Vs Raw 2009
SvR 2009 was the first WWE game to feature the relatively short-lived ‘Road to Wrestlemania’ game mode. While the mode did feature a few standout stories, most of them were laughable. John Cena’s section falls somewhere in the middle. As part of his route, Cena comes to the ring with his army friend, Tony.
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This character serves no other purpose than a throwaway segment in this story mode. On top of his copycat moveset and entrance theme of Cena’s, he lacks detail in his player model and was clearly a victim of a short development time for a yearly sports title – right down to his voice actor being one of the game’s designers, Bryan Williams.
8Colonel Sanders: WWE 2K18
Another cross-promotional deal for WWE, KFC had a commercial filmed by WWE the year prior to Sanders inclusion in WWE 2K18. WWE wrestler Dolph Ziggler had become one of the many people who had donned the Sanders gear in that timeframe, such as Jason Alexander or the late Norm Macdonald.
Despite the overexposure of the ad on WWE TV in the following months, at least it resulted in a popular ‘create-a-wrestler’ design being officially featured in the game for the first time.
7Zombie Santino And Finlay: Smackdown Vs Raw 2009
Another of Smackdown vs Raw 2009’s Road to Wrestlemania inclusions, zombie Santino and Finlay are from Undertaker’s section. This entire storyline feels like a fever dream. It starts simple enough with Santino and Finlay attempting to use the Undertaker’s urn to control him. Eventually both become possessed and Boogeyman gets involved for some reason.
The rest of the road to wrestlemania offerings in the game at least had thought put into them, with Taker’s, it just feels like everyone collectively threw their hands up and signed off on whatever they had. Both Santino and Finlay turning into Zombies doesn’t really make sense with any established canon either on WWE TV or in the game itself, leaving the in-game roster to randomly feature two lower-card wrestlers of the era to have zombie forms for some reason.
6Turok: WWF War Zone
Acclaim was the publisher of both the originalTurokgames and WWF War Zone. Whether he was a secret character to be included later that ended up being cut or an easter egg leftover by the devs, players will have to use a Gameshark to put Turok back into their game. Either as a default moveset choice or a less than clever play on words, Turok’s moveset was copied over from The Rock.
5AKI Man: WCW/NWO Revenge
The AKI era Nintendo 64 wrestling games were known for, in addition to their excellent gameplay and bizarre hidden characters. One of the more memorable was AKI Man – a generic wrestler in a full bodysuit and the AKI logo over his face. His general weird factor and great moveset made him a fan favorite.
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With the upcoming AEW: Fight Forever game having its roots in the original AKI games, here’s hoping we see AKI Man’s spiritual successor featured in some capacity.
4Crash Test Dummy: WrestleMania 2000
The Dummies' place in pop culture is a strange one – a litany of car commercials, road safety PSA’s, TV special, video games, comics, and even a toy line in the early 90s. A secret character in a wrestling game isn’t that far a reach by comparison.
The only way to get the Dummy into your game was to use a cheat device like a Gameshark in order to copy the model over to your game. It’s still not entirely known if this was just used as a test model during the game’s development, but given the characters lack of original moveset or anything else unique to it, that seems to be the most likely explanation.
3Fred Durst: Smackdown: Just Bring It
The height of the popularity of both Rap Rock and Pro-Wrestling happened to coincide with one another. It’s only natural that the two would create possibly the most unexpected guest character in the history of the wrestling game genre.
One condition of allowing the Limp Bizkit song “Rollin’” to be used by WWE for the Undertaker starting in 2000 was Fed Durst’s inclusion in the WWE video game Smackdown: Just Bring It. Durst came fully featured with his own entrance and a tag entrance with the Undertaker. He can be unlocked by getting 15 wins with Undertaker in the game’s “Slobberknocker” mode. With such a difficult requirement, most players never saw him, adding another wrinkle to his inclusion.
2Green And Red Guy: Smackdown Vs Raw 2010
Those of you who remember this era of WWE video games will have spent at least a small amount of time messing around with movesets. These moves were shown off by using a red and green wrestler to demonstrate the person doing and taking the move. In one of the original THQ’s better moves, they decided to make them both playable characters in SvR 2010.
Aside from the joke factor of seeing him in an online match, I can’t imagine he saw much use. That being said, it was nice to know THQ was putting in some additional effort for what they felt was a fun, albeit really weird, inclusion.
1Gold AJ Styles: WWE 2K19
There is no better demonstration of 2k sports misunderstanding the wrestling game audience than the inclusion of Gold AJ Styles inWWE 2K19.
Tower mode was 2K’s idea of having a ‘myteam’ type of mode in a non-NBA 2K property. EA swung and missed heavilytwicewith their EA UFC series attempting to replicate Madden’s Ultimate Team mode. Clearly, nobody at 2K got the memo. By finishing the AJ Styles Million Dollar Tower, players would unlock a ‘gold’ AJ Styles for the regular game.
This prompts so many questions. Why does he have new commentary recorded just for his entrance and matches? Why does he have the highest rating in the history of the series? How did anybody at 2K think any fan of this game was going to care about a bland palette swapped wrestler to play one of their least liked features in any of their games?
