Celebrate Black History Month With The Most Iconic Black Characters in Video Game History

It's February, which in North America is when Black History Month is celebrated... on the shortest month of the year? There is actually a historical context for that. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were both historical figures for the rights of Black Americans during the 1800s, and both of them had birthdays in February, so it was decided that the celebration of Black History Month would coincide with the birthdays of both men. In Europe and the United Kingdom, it's instead celebrated in October, and I'm not going to pretend that I know why because I don't.

But while it's still the second month, I thought it'd be nice to go over some Black characters in video games that are among some of the most memorable and impactful in the gaming sphere. Some of them have gone on to become some of the biggest icons across all of video game history. Before the month ends, let's commemorate the occasion by listing some Black video game characters that are an icon to all of us as gamers.

And no, Shadow the Hedgehog doesn't count.

Jax - Mortal Kombat

Jax's promotional render from Mortal Kombat 11.

Mortal Kombat as a franchise has left one of the biggest impacts on the gaming industry as a whole. It, along with a couple of other games, effectively created the ESRB in 1994, and is essentially the progenitor of controversies surrounding violent video games. Such controversies are ones we've all heard before, and despite the numerous time that we've debunked the notion that violent video games are problematic to consumers, it somehow continues to get brought up whenever a gun-related incident happens.

With a legacy as notable as Mortal Kombat, it's hard for it to not have great characters that are well remembered. Mortal Kombat has a huge array of characters that have cemented themselves as video game icons, and Jackson Briggs (or "Jax") is no exception to that in the slightest. While he was certainly a stepping stone for racial diversity in other games going forward, Jax is a character larger than just his race. Even more iconic than that aspect are his metallic arms, and his lore serving in the Special Forces and mentoring another one of the most prominent characters, Sonya Blade. He even received his own game on the PlayStation 1 in 2000, Mortal Kombat: Special Forces... though that may not be a good distinction given the game's less-than-warm reception.

Jax is also a grappler in a fighting game series that is not particularly known for its grappler characters, making his move set stand out among the remaining cast of the series. Playing as Jax allows you to essentially play a military superhero with metallic arms, and who doesn't want to do that?

Riley Abel - The Last of Us

Riley and Emily as they appear in the promotional art for The Last of Us: Left Behind

The first game of The Last of Us is arguably one of the games that shaped gaming that shaped the 2010s more than the vast majority of games out there at the time. In 2023, it was adapted into a television show, proving that good video game adaptations are possible. The Fallout show would later follow suit in that regard. The Last of Us has stood on its own due to its environment, its narrative, and especially its characters. Joel and Ellie are instantly notable icons of gaming from their era, but the story doesn't end there.

The relationship between Ellie and Riley is one of the standout aspects of the series as a whole, was a huge leap of LGBT+ representation in video games in the 2010s, and served as a pivotal moment for Ellie's character development. While Ellie is always portrayed as a bit of a hardass (and she has a good reason to be one in all fairness), her relationship with Riley served to show the softer emotional side of her, and communicates how exactly Ellie came to be the way she is.

Riley may not seem like she does that much on her own (outside of the fact that needed to learn to survive at a very young age), but people don't exist in vacuums. People are products of the other people around them, and Ellie a product of being around Riley and verse-versa. Without each other, none of them would've been the same people that we know of today.

Carl "CJ" Johnson - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

CJ spouting out of the most iconic lines from GTA: San Andreas.

For what it's worth, I think Franklin Clinton from Grand Theft Auto 5 is a very good contender for the list too, and I almost thought about putting both him and CJ on this one spot on the list. But if we're being real here, no character in the franchise tops the popularity of CJ. Depending on who you ask, San Andreas may even top 5 as a game in that regard too.

CJ stands above protagonists of other GTA games and GTA clones because he has much more dimension than either of them. The status quo for Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row is that your player character and the people you work with are people who have loyalties to the gangs they're associated with, but are simply bad people doing "bad people things" just for the fun of it. For the record, there's nothing wrong with that, if the main characters of similar games and their popularities are anything to go by. CJ however has a lot of dimension in his character over the course of the game. During the game, we see all of CJ's character growth as he ends up questioning his alliances while supporting his family and friends. All that time, we're also seeing him grow in influence from a back-alley gangster to a business mogul.

On top of that, San Andreas has a setting, story, and general atmosphere that sets it apart from other open-world games, not to mention memes like "Ah shit, here we go again", or "follow the damn train, CJ!", or Big Smoke's order at Cluckin' Bell. And when your game is a standout area of the series, your main character is going to be a standout area of the series too. CJ essentially set the stage for fleshing out other GTA protagonists. Niko, Franklin, Michael, and Trevor, are all much more fleshed out as personalities compared to either Claude or Tommy, and really we have CJ to thank for getting the ball rolling. Will Jason and Lucia be up to the task of adding to the franchise's repertoire of interesting main protagonists?

Alyx Vance - Half-Life 2

Alyx as she appears on the official artwork of Half-Life 2 Episode One.

Gordon Freeman is one of the most well-known characters in video game history. However is sidekick from the second game, Alyx Vance, may have just as much of a pedestal as Gordon himself. She even got her own game in 2020, appropriately titled Half-Life: Alyx.

Alyx essentially acts as your best friend throughout the adventure. She's not a damsel in distress or a piece of eye candy. She's a "regular" character that happens to be female, and holds her own weight over the course of the adventure. She feels like a real person, and that's why Alyx has stood out in the Half-Life universe. I'm not going to say that normal, unsexualized female characters never existed before her (because that's a different can of worms to open), but her status as a believable human character with real human depth, not trying to prove that women can be strong too, was definitely a welcoming change. Chell from the Portal games similarly followed this design philosophy.

Alyx is precisely what happens when you make a female character without trying to make her either a blatant feminist statement or an object for attention, and is given proper importance for the plot of the game.

Ulysses - Fallout: New Vegas

Image from fallout.fandom.com

Fallout: New Vegas is often considered to be one of the best RPGs of all time, if not one of the best video games of all time just in general. It has held a legacy that eclipses the legacy of every other Fallout game. One such reason for that is its cast of characters, and Ulysses is one of the most memorable characters in the game... in a game that already has maybe a hundred memorable characters in it.

Ulysses is a very complex character. Essentially serving as a background pseudo-antagonist across the entire game, Ulysses is connected to nearly every aspect of the Courier's story in some way, as if he is another player character who gained sentience outside of the player control and made his own playthrough. The player's interactions with him throughout the Lonesome Road DLC is somewhat of an icon in the game from his booming, commanding voice, to his drawn out philosophical statements. He is an intelligent man, but he also has an extremely warped perspective on life, stopping you to essentially question your actions in the game up until that point.

Ulysses makes several references to history and mythology. His name itself (and his motive that he "fought to unite two tribes under one flag") is a reference to Ulysses S. Grant (and not the character from Odysseus). He also references the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt, the 30 silver coins that Judas Iscariot receives for betraying Jesus, and for all the memes you can make about his "bear and bull" comments, it is a realistic philosophical description of the battle between the NCR and Caesar's Legion, comparing it to past wars. His character design itself is also really great, bearing arguably one of the most sought-after prizes in the entire game, the Courier's Duster. A great prize to receive once you reach the end of the road.

Lúcio - Overwatch

Lucio as he appears in Heroes of the Storm.

We are a website that covers a lot of Blizzard properties, so I guess this one fills our Blizzard quota. Even if you've never played Overwatch before, you're almost surely familiar with characters like Tracer, D.Va, Reaper, and likely a couple of others. Lúcio instantly stands out among the crowd of characters that are already quite recognizable. Brazilian representation in video games is quite limited, so you make a name for yourself instantly when one of your game's launch heroes is one such figure of that.

Lúcio's design is also really fun because he looks like a character from Jet Set Radio was put into Overwatch. I can't say for sure if that actually translates into his gameplay mechanics as I've never played the game before, but for people who are fans of games like Overwatch, the idea of essentially playing Jet Set Radio while playing your favorite hero shooter sounds like a blast. I don't think I would ever actually play a hero shooter, but knowing that Lúcio can rollerblade around is definitely a compelling argument to start doing that.

Lúcio even has a card modeled after him in Hearthstone, Audio Medic, with his abilities and card flavor referencing his musician theme and support class role in Overwatch. Not only that but the card also uses the same voice actor and his voicelines are ripped straight from Overwatch. If that wasn't enough to convince you, read the flavor text.

Balrog - Street Figher

Balrog's character portrait from Street Fighter IV.

Balrog made his debut in the series in Street Fighter II in 1991, while Mike Tyson was still storming the boxing world. Adapting one of the most dominant figures in professional boxing into a fighting game character seems like a no-brainer decision to me. If the fantasy of playing a fictional Mike Tyson sounds interesting to you, then you however may regret to learn that Balrog in fact, cannot bite the opponent's ear off. This wouldn't be Tyson's first connection to the world of video games either because he actually stars in his own game, Punch-Out!! in 1987.

Balrog however actually has an interesting story because he wasn't always Balrog. He was originally called "Mike Bison" (titled in game as "M. Bison"), honoring Tyson himself. His name was swapped around with other characters when Capcom feared that the name being such a blatant reference would get him into legal trouble. As a result, M. Bison would be called Balrog overseas, with Vega taking the name M. Bison for himself when it was believed that "Vega" would not be a strong enough name for a prolific antagonist of the series. The name Vega would go to the character that was previously called Balrog. In Japan, all of the original character names went to their intended characters, but they rotated the names around overseas. If you're a fan of Lord of the Rings, you might be familiar with another such entity known as a "Balrog", but I can't say for sure if that actually affected anything with the character names or not.

Fighting games and boxing characters just go hand-in-hand. Street Fighter has quite a few boxing characters in its line-up, though with the possible exception of Dudley, none of them really have as much impact as Balrog. None of them have as much lore prominence as Balrog though, serving as an enforcer to M. Bison. It's been confirmed that 50 Cent is also expected to play as Balrog in the new Street Fighter movie.

Jordan A. Mun - Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet

Jordan as she appears on the game's official artwork.

This one may seem like a bit of a cheat. Her game isn't even out yet, and we know we're not getting it in 2026. We very well may not even get it in 2027. However, even without being able to play as her, she's made her own impact on the gaming sphere, and I wanted to bring her up to discuss the unfortunately negative aspects that still exist without gaming culture as a whole. This is because the game's official trailer from 2024 is standing as an example of both racism and misogyny among gamers, with Jordan unfortunately being on the receiving end of both, and quite harshly too. At the time of writing this article, the trailer has about 2.5 times as many dislikes as likes.

All of this hatred pretty much stems from one central point. - The protagonist being a Black woman with a hair style that is not conventionally feminine, resulting in "anti-woke brigade" rushing in to tell us how much they hate a video game that we know very little about other than the fact that it stars a Black woman that isn't designed to be "sexy". This unfortunately resulted in the racist, sexist, and "anti-woke" attitudes meeting into the middle to create a triple-layered temple of hatred... for a property we know nothing of yet. I guarantee you that if the character's appearance was even slightly different, about 95% of the hate for the game would instantly disappear.

I don't mind at all in the slightest that my main protagonist is a bald, Black woman that isn't conventionally "fuckable", and instead I'll reserve my judgement for the things that actually matter. This also ignores the fact that the game takes place thousands of years into the future. For all we know, women having short hair styles might be the normal culture in-universe. Naughty Dog has been one of the most reliable development studios in well, ever, and while it's true that many of the same people no longer work there, the spirit of the studio is very much still intact. If the game ends up being bad, it'll be for reasons other than the character's appearance, and if it's good, then we're going to have a huge group of people begging for forgiveness that they don't deserve. Let's wait until the game's actually playable before we decide to throw ourselves onto trains, right?

That's our list of iconic Black characters to send off the month. Many of them have become icons synonymous with gaming culture as a whole, and I argue the diversity of characters is precisely why there's so many great ones that have become so beloved. Who are your favorite Black video game characters? Let us know in the comments below.