More and more games give you the option to customize your character's appearance, but you're usually better off sticking with the pre-made suggestions. Sure, you could drop a few hours into tweaking sliders and prodding at palettes until you've made a perfect recreation of your (theoretical) lovechild with Chris Evans… but once you get her in the game, you'll probably realize the lighting was off and she actually has jaundiced skin and a severe overbite.

Thankfully for all of us, there's a better way: stop fighting the creepiness. Let the 'randomize' button do its work and then throw a few sliders to the maximum just for good measure. You'll come up with instantly memorable results in a tenth of the time and I'll have plenty of fodder for another article just like this one. Until then, let's bask in the glory of some of the strangest creatures to emerge from character generation.

This guy looks like the failed result of a cloning experiment that used frog DNA to reconstruct incomplete parts of Hugo Weaving's genome. Life found a way (it always does), but in this case that way also led to asymetrical bug eyes, a nose that's threatening to soar off its face and into the stratosphere, and curiously well-oiled hair. But, really, I could have taken a screenshot of anybody in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and used it here. It's damn near impossible to make a Hero of Kvatch who doesn't look like they have a rotten cabbage atop their neck.

Frog Hero by

"Ugh, I know Miranda did her best on the Lazarus Project, but Shepard isn't the same since he came back from the dead. No, no, it's not just the scars. It's… everything. The mouth, the nose, the eyes... God, the eyes! Whenever he looks at me it feels like he's trying to figure out which parts to eat first and which to save for breakf - what are you looking at… Oh. Oh. H-h-hello, Commander."

Creepy Shepard by

OK, so the last one was obvious. Everybody's seen some off-kilter Shepards. Clearly BioWare wouldn't let it happen again in Dragon Age: Inquisition, right? Well. Hm. First we have to determine whether this guy is an elf, or if his ears just do that. And, to be fair, he'd still look like some kind of deep-sea terror even without them. Actually, you know what this Inquisitor is? He's what would happen if drew a clown instead of Joan Collins.

Clownquisitor by

Who's that walking next to Shaundi? No, not the elbow, that's Pierce. I had to cut him out of the image so I could give you a better look at whoever that is next to Shaundi. Is that a grown-up Chucky from Child's Play? No, no, Chucky's a doll, he couldn't grow up. Is it Carrot Top after an unsuccessful start to his boxing career? Ah, no, I know who that must be. That's Frida Kahlo's second cousin once removed, Frodo Kahlo. Shaundi always did appreciate the arts.

Frodo Kahlo by

Oh, no, sorry. There's Chucky. Seems like he's taken up golf and dyed his hair brown, but that's probably just in accordance with PGA regulations. Hey, if hitting the links keeps him from killing babysitters, it sounds fine to me. Looking good out there, Chuck!

Source unknown, probably a bog somewhere

Me gusta.

Source unknown, but wherever it is, I like it

Dark Souls is another one of those games where it's a challenge to make something that doesn't look like a Stretch Armstrong figure post-microwave - it's probably a bigger feat to make a decent-looking dude than to finish the game with him. But this guy is unique, in that I think he might actually look better with the wrinkly, rotten skin of a Hollow. At least you could tell where his cheeks ended and his eye sockets began. Until then, all I can imagine is something that got cut out of Evangelion because they thought it would it would confuse people too much.

Human Instrumentality Man by

I really shouldn't make fun of this guy. He finally makes it as a pro football player only to get stung by 30 bees swarming his face. To add insult to grievous injury, Bugs Bunny then tricks him into sucking up a bunch of liquid alum with a straw so his mouth gets frozen in a permanent pucker. Then he notices his girlfriend making out with his best friend on the sidelines and is rightfully angry and hurt. It was just not a good day to appear in a video game.

Bad day pro by

Have you ever seen one of those Korean horror movies where the protagonist's obsession with her own beauty eventually causes her undoing? And there's usually some horrible, deformed creature that symbolizes the path she's heading down if she keeps focusing on her looks to the exclusion of her friends and family (or maybe it's actually the spirit of a classmate she accidentally killed in high school)? That's pretty much this Sim's entire life. Great hair, though.

K-Horror Sim by

There's a good reason why everybody started off looking so damned ugly in GTA Online: the character creator didn't actually give you direct control of what anything would look like. The end result was a bunch of human compromises marauding around Los Santos, the creations of players who just couldn't be bothered to beat their heads against the system any more. But even now that Rockstar gives you more direct control, your character will still collect hideous scars and bruises throughout a busy play session - as was the case for this sorry-looking specimen, who wasn't even that handsome before he got that shiner.

Mr. Bruises by

Toad! Oh, no! This is why you were never supposed to follow Mario back through the warp pipe, Toad! You're an abomination! How could any just, loving, and GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY allow such a creature to exist, even in WWE 2K14?! You make Goldust look like Margaret Thatcher!

Wrasslin' Toad by

One of the many heartbreaking things about APB is that, no matter how incredibly intricate its character creator is, you'll simply never look nearly as good in-game. Your avatar will show up in the world with fuzzy textures and choppy hair, and you'll feel like you wasted hours perfecting a face only you would ever see in its true form. Unless you get wise like this player and make your character a scarred, misshapen wretch - in which case she'll actually look better with a thick coat of rendering vaseline slathered on.

Green, mean, poorly healing machine by

World of Warcraft only lets you pick a pre-made face from a dozen or so options for each race and gender combination. So you'd think they'd all be winners, right? Maybe winners in the 'everybody gets a medal' sense. But I have one serious question for anybody who picked the face in the upper right. Did you want your character to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger pretending to understand a joke? You can see Blizzard thankfully toned down the cluelessness in the modernized model below, so now he looks like he may get the joke after a few hours of careful consideration.

Facial collage by

It's not the big potato head or the huge, bushy eyebrows. Plenty of Dragon Ball Z characters have those and I don't feel bad for them. It's not the Dumbo-level flappy ears or even the gaunt cheeks. No, the reason my heart aches when I look at this strange man is his sad, empty eyes. That's the look of a man who has gone through so much pain, who knows that he has so much more ahead. And miles to go before he sleeps, and miles to go before he sleeps. He really does look like a baked potato, though.

The Spud of Doubt by

Those are some of my favorite player-made aberrations, but I know that so many more are out there, waiting to spring to life on the character creators of tomorrow. Until then, why don't you share some of your beloved creeps in the comments below?

Want more creepy game people? You're a strange one. Well, might as well check out the .