Celebrities haven’t always been used in such a practical fashion.

However, all too often they’re shoehorned in to set up an awkward parody.

Often the game and the person go together like whiskey and shoelaces: They just don’t make any sense at all.

10. The Rock In Spy Hunter: Nowhere To Run

The Rock was actually pretty hands-on in terms of his contributions to the game, doing voice work and motion capture in what was to be a tie-in game to the Spy Hunter movie.

What makes the Spy Hunter cameo so odd is that it’s a movie licensed game for a movie that never actually came out.

Even more upsetting is that while you indeed can deliver a body slam or two between generic shooting sequences, the Rock’s contributions don’t ever lead to any truly wacky wrestling-related Smackdown, sadly misleading consumers into thinking that they could buy a game that involved doing the People’s Elbow onto cars.

9. Mikhail Gorbachev In Street Fighter 2

Due to the nature of their narratives, fighting games tend to apply the Clue Ending principle whenever you beat Story mode, as not everyone is the main protagonist.

Take Zangief for example; large Russian with a tendency for spinning, not the deepest character, nor is he that important to the overall Street Fighter canon.

So when tasked with putting together an ending, the developers reportedly said “meh, have him, I don’t know, dance with Gorbachev” between bites of a doughnut.

So that’s what he did.

8. Ronald Reagan In Bad Dudes vs DragonNinja

After saving the president from ninjas, Ronald Reagan offers to take you out for a burger.

Your heroism is worth one item off the dollar menu.

Were our heroes so impoverished that they felt the need to throw ninjas off of a train just for the right to eat some grade D meat?

7. Bill And Hilary Clinton In NBA Jam: Tournament Edition

Finally we figured out that the joke is “Bill Clinton doing mad dunks” with a side of “Hilary Clinton committing flagrant fouls”.

This was a period of time when Midway put codes in pretty much every game they put out, which just leads to the natural follow up question of why they thought it appropriate to only put the Clintons in the basketball game and not, say, Mortal Kombat.

6. Michael Jackson In Ready to Rumble Round 2

Being a cultural icon, it’s understandable that the King of Pop has found his way into a number of video games over the years.

However,  were the developers making the implication that we would want to live vicariously through Mr. Jackson’s gloved fists?

Or was their intention to make him the opponent, so we could pummel him about the head and neck with Afro Thunder?

5. The Burger King In Fight Night Round 3

There are times when marketing has the right idea, namely the assumption that people that play video games may also enjoy Burger King.

It’s another issue entirely to assume that we want to be anywhere near that… thing.

There’s a reason BK retired the character and stopped airing those commercials. People found him creepy as hell.

4. Christopher Walken In Ripper

90s adventure games loved using celebrities. After all, full motion video is the future.

Christopher Walken, who is rivaled only by Nicolas Cage for his inability to turn down acting roles, chews so much scenery as the shady cop that he has to install a second mouth on his forehead just so he can chew to his satisfaction.

It’s historically known as one of his most subtle performances.

3. Phil Collins In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

It’s a general law of the universe that the inclusion of Phil Collins makes anything funnier.

Most of Phil’s involvement in game revolves around you protecting him from mob hitmen, because any group of people that want Phil Collins dead need to be stopped.

At the end of the mission, you’re rewarded with a full concert rendition of “In the Air Tonight”.

2. Gary Coleman In Postal 2

In a game where you can literally kill and/or pee on everyone, there is a list of celebrities in my head that would come to mind as candidates for such a game.

The worst punishment he could have endured was being Gary Coleman.

Just imagine when they had the pitch meeting.

“Hey Gary. Look, we’re in kind of a jam here. We need a celebrity that the player can decapitate and then urinate on and Heidi Klum’s agent won’t get back to us.”

1. Fred Durst in Fight Club

What’s more insulting, the fact that there’s a Fight Club video game, or the fact that Fred Durst is an unlockable character?

If they understood the themes of the film, they wouldn’t want to be anywhere near something like this.

Let’s not even get into the fact that the game has a Meat Loaf cameo by proxy.

(source: whatculture)