Double agents have been a popular dramatic tool since the rise of spy fiction in the 1950s. After all, pretending to be in the enemy ranks is a good way to get key information. It can also be underhanded, leading to most double agents, fictional and otherwise, to be antiheroes at best, and snitching rats at worst depending on who they ultimately work for.
Hence, these popular video game double agents. They’re a mix of heroes turned villains, villains revealed as heroes, and many who skirt the line between the two. If they can’t be trusted as people, they can be relied upon to provide a dramatic twist or two for the plot.
6 Iron Bull
One of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s many fantasy races are the Qunari: bull-like residents of Northern Thedas who eschew personal identities in service of a strict caste-based regime. Despite looking more like a typical bruiser, Iron Bull does sneakier work for the Qunari’s secret police.
As a Hissrad, he works as an undercover agent to track down traitors and deserters and pass on any important knowledge back to his superiors. He gets the perks of living life outside the Qun’s teachings without the stain of being an apostate. Though the player can change that or affirm it depending on their decisions through the story. Give the Bull a break or break the Bull: it’s up to them.
5 Paul Denton
Deus Ex: Human Revolution may be a little more familiar to fans now, be it for the gameplay or memes. However, the original Deus Ex was much more of a smash on its release back in 2000. UNATCO agent JC Denton’s nanotech-fuelled campaign against terrorism and government conspiracies was critically acclaimed and is still considered as one of the best PC games ever made by fans and critics alike.
One of JC’s fellow UNATCO agents is his brother Paul, who joined to avenge the death of his parents. However, he starts off the game as a defector to the NSF terrorists. It sounds like an odd move for someone with such a personal motive. However, as the story progresses, it shows Paul never strayed from his objectives. It’s just that there’s more to UNATCO, the conspiracy, and both Denton brothers than what’s on the surface.
4 Ada Wong
To think Resident Evil’s most popular femme fatale was almost a generic lab researcher called Linda. She was renamed Ada Wong to tie into the first game via one of its memos, then made into a full character in Resident Evil 2. She says she’s looking for her boyfriend in Raccoon City, but it’s soon revealed she’s an agent for one of Umbrella Corp’s rivals, looking for a sample of the G-Virus. Yet she develops a soft spot for Leon before disappearing.
Even in Resident Evil 4, where she gets a cooler response from her old flame, she still looks out for him while serving her own goals. Resident Evil 6 complicated things further by having her seemingly work for a new employer in Derek Simmons. But whether she’s working for one side or another, she ultimately works for one person in the end: herself. It just helps that her aims align with the good guys most of the time.
3 Albert Wesker
Ada wasn’t the only source of duplicity in the series, though Wesker’s more popular as an outright villain these days. Still, fans back in 1996 might’ve found him suspicious as the leader of STARS Alpha Team in the original Resident Evil. If only because he wears sunglasses at night while surrounded by undead nocturnal threats. But as the plot goes on, it reveals Wesker was more than just an Umbrella plant in STARS.
He was manipulating nearly all the events of RE1 from behind the scenes. He was instrumental in the corporation’s research in the T-Virus, had Barry Burton in his pocket through threats, and engineered the Tyrant. Despite his own creation turning on him in that game, he kept coming back as the master schemer for subsequent games. Whether behind the scenes or in front of them, Wesker had left his mark throughout the RE series.
2 EVA
Metal Gear’s so famous for its twists and turns that it’s a revelation when one of its characters is straightforward about their aims. But two double agents stand out the most over the likes of Naomi Hunter, Fatman, and Richard Ames. Like Metal Gear Solid 3’s EVA as she was upfront about her duplicity, or so it seemed. She was an American defector to the USSR but helped both sides by working undercover within Colonel Volgin’s ranks.
This straightforwardness is probably why her more overt femme fatale act didn’t work on Snake, but their growing mutual trust did. It helped her when she took the game’s true MacGuffin, a microfilm with access to a large stash of cash called the Philosophers’ Legacy, off to her true employers in the Chinese. Still, while she fulfilled her mission, it left her conflicted. She ended up reuniting with Snake for a new goal to bring East and West back together: becoming part of an organization called the Patriots.
1 Revolver Ocelot
Metal Gear’s other big double agent has played so many sides that calling him that or a triple agent is an understatement. In his debut game MGS1, he played off Liquid Snake and FOXHOUND by revealing he was working for the president, Solidus Snake. Then he betrayed Solidus, revealing he was working for the Patriots all along. He joined them after betraying the CIA in Portable Ops, after previously working for them as a GRU Major in MGS3.
Though his alliance with the Patriots was shaky, as he helped Big Boss' anti-Patriots activities while carrying out work for them in MGS5. By MGS4, he was a rogue agent possessed by Liquid Snake’s right arm (seriously). But that was also a trick, as he lopped that arm off ages ago and used self-hypnosis and nanomachines to fool the Patriots' AI. In other words, he tricked everyone, including himself, just to ultimately help the protagonists. It’s this dedication to sneaky duplicity that makes him the most famous double agent in games.