When it comes to survival scenarios, Jurassic Park has no shortage of annoying characters fans still can't stand. From poor comic relief to flat performances to characters who weren't as popular as the studios thought they'd be, the Jurassic Park franchise has often struggled with making some of its cast as memorable as its dinosaurs. For every fan-favorite like Alan Grant or Ian Malcolm, there's someone whose presence drags the story down, or worse, makes audiences root for the Indominus Rex. Before new faces enter the iconic "King Kong" gates, it's worth taking a look back at the ones fans are still trying to forget.

Originally based on Michael Crichton's sci-fi novel, 1993's Jurassic Park became a box office blockbuster and pop culture touchstone. Thanks to Steven Spielberg's direction and groundbreaking visual effects, it quickly spawned a franchise that few dinosaur-themed films could compete with. Rebranded as Jurassic World in 2015, the series has evolved into an expansive universe that includes six feature films, several tie-in series, and a deluge of branded merchandise. With Jurassic World Rebirth slated for release in 2025, fans are again reflecting on the characters they loved and the ones they wish had never made it past the first act.

In an already overcrowded cast, Jurassic World Dominion introduced Kayla Watts, a pilot and dinosaur smuggler who never quite takes off or sticks the landing. No sooner does she hit the sky than Kayla's plane is brought down by a pterosaur, stranding her in BioSyn's sanctuary with some of Jurassic World's fiercest dinosaurs.

Kayla looks cool, sounds cool, and carries that action-hero swagger, but she exists more for plot convenience than story impact. With little room to shine, Jurassic World's hotshot pilot is mostly reduced to last-minute rescues, quippy one-liners, and a smug case of judging books by their covers, particularly when it comes to Claire Dearing. It is as if Jurassic World Dominion wanted a Han Solo type but had her written by an Instagram caption generator.

In Jurassic Park III, Alan Grant's colleague Billy Brennan joins the rescue mission for Eric Kirby, believing it to be a simple excursion for an eccentric couple and an easy payday as he plays guide for a bunch of "tourists." However, after blowing Alan's grant money on a 3D printer, it turns out Billy has more than just dwindling funds on his conscience as he steals dinosaur eggs.

Billy is the guy who said, "I did it for science," after stealing raptor eggs and making one of the dumbest decisions in Jurassic Park history. The movie tries to redeem him with Eric's rescue in the aviary, but it's tough to root for someone who endangered everyone by stealing dinosaur embryos. After all, isn't that exactly how this whole mess began in the first place?

When Claire Dearing's nephews, Zach and Gray, came to Jurassic World, they expected to get quite a show while touring the Mosasaur lagoon. What they didn't expect was watching their aunt's personal assistant get snatched by a pterosaur and dropped into the waiting jaws of a massive marine reptile. Still considered one of the most brutal deaths in the Jurassic Park franchise, it is hard to imagine Zara Young being remembered for anything else.

Beyond her death, Zara is mostly defined by what she puts up with, namely, doing the jobs at Jurassic World that nobody else wanted, including babysitting her boss's nephews. Her personality is nonexistent, her attitude is grating, and even in a dinosaur theme park, Claire's assistant somehow manages to look bored. Zara's assignment was to make sure the boys had a visit they would never forget and to watch over them… and in at least one respect, she delivered.

If Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous ever had anyone who felt like DLC villains, it would be Mitch and Tiff. Posing as friendly ecotourists, it does not take long for the audience to realize they are actually trophy hunters with more on their minds than snapping pictures; otherwise, this series would've ended there.

While Mitch is the gun-toting big game hunter, Tiff is insufferably loud, over-the-top, and constantly griping. Whether it is about her favorite rifle being wrecked or a group of meddling kids ruining her plans, Tiff feels less like a threat and more like someone spiraling through a bitter divorce and a very messy midlife crisis.

Jurassic World pitched itself as a smarter, sleeker version of its predecessor, with thrilling theme park attractions, better technology, and fewer lethal encounters with dinosaurs. That illusion starts to fade after fans are introduced to the park's control room staff, including Lowery Cruthers. Cruthers isn't exactly employee-of-the-month material, but at a park where the baseline is "not actively stealing dinosaur embryos," the bar is already pretty low.

When the franchise needs an Ian Malcolm but cannot justify bringing him back to Isla Nublar, you get Lowery Cruthers. Acting as an audience surrogate, Lowery might have been Jurassic World's attempt at comic relief, but he mostly comes off as a smug park operator who thinks he is better than the movie he is in. Cracking jokes at every tense moment and managing to be both morally outraged and complicit, Lowery feels less like a person and more like a comment section in a vintage Jurassic Park tee. His disappearance in Jurassic World's sequel might have been the smartest decision the franchise ever made, and one of the CIA's worst, as he somehow ends up on their payroll in the Dangerous Species Division.

After Claire Dearing followed in John Hammond's footsteps as a "born-again naturalist," she was joined by technical specialist Franklin Webb and paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez as part of the Dinosaur Protection Group. Despite claiming to protect prehistoric life, the group accidentally helped unleash countless invasive species on the modern world. Somehow, Franklin's reward for helping cause an ecological disaster was landing a job with the CIA's Dangerous Species Division, because when the world is falling apart, apparently, the guy who has problems keeping calm under pressure is exactly who the government calls.

Kermit the Frog once crooned about how sequels aren't as good as the original, and if that's the case, then Justice Smith understood the assignment as Franklin Webb. Supposedly a successor to Jurassic World's Lowery Cruthers when Jake Johnson failed to return for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Franklin Webb's "comic relief" wears thin pretty fast. Webb's over-the-top panic, awkwardness, and constant commentary make him feel less like a character and more like a poor attempt at levity when things get too grim. Instead of delivering genuine humor, Webb becomes an anxiety machine who seems less equipped to handle dinosaurs than the franchise's actual children.

When fans were introduced to Hammond's long-lost business partner, the Jurassic World franchise needed a reason why the name "Benjamin Lockwood" had never come up over the past few decades. Apparently, he had cloned his daughter… or so Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom claimed, until the divisive Jurassic World Dominion retconned Maisie Lockwood into a bizarre genetic experiment. What could have sparked thoughtful questions about the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering instead became an excuse for increasingly convoluted retcons and surrogate stand-ins aimed at younger audiences.

Maisie is the walking definition of a plot device with legs. From a surprise cloning plot to unleashing every surviving dinosaur into the wild because "they're alive like me," her actions cause a potentially world-ending ecological disaster, and the script barely bothers to justify any of it. Benjamin's granddaughter is less a character and more the franchise's reset button, ultimately coming off as a forced attempt to make her feel more important and relevant than she actually is.

They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but if you try to capitalize on it, you get The Lost World: Jurassic Park. After the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park bit InGen in the bottom line (and a few other places), Peter Ludlow stepped in to realize his uncle's vision. Unfortunately for him, "in the red" takes on a very different meaning when he ends up on the children's menu for a hungry T. Rex family.

With all the insight of a modern shareholder meeting and just as much charm, Peter Ludlow was the corporate executive nobody asked for. Smarmy and comically out of his depth, he treated dinosaurs like theme park assets instead of, well, the main cause of Jurassic Park's original Mesozoic massacre. And for those who think he deserves to be lower on this list, clearly never had to listen to him in Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis.

If there is one thing worse than a corporate suit meddling with dinosaurs, it is a corporate suit who thinks he is the real victim in all of it. Enter Eli Mills, the assistant to Benjamin Lockwood and the supposed inheritor of his legacy, who doesn't hesitate to sell it to the highest bidder.

Eli is the kind of guy who delivers a full-on villain speech about moral gray areas while casually arranging black market dino auctions and murdering anyone who gets in his way. When confronted, he smugly deflects blame by accusing Claire Dearing of exploiting the dinosaurs first and Benjamin for illegally cloning his daughter, like that somehow justifies feeding a man to the Indoraptor. For someone so eager to lecture others, Eli sure does a lot of scheming behind mansion doors and empty justifications that sound like they were copied from a bad TED Talk.

Jurassic Park sounds like a very different film when described as "two kids spend a day at the zoo with their grandfather." Whether Hammond was gauging feedback from his target audience or just trying to convince his investors the park was safe by gambling they wouldn't be eaten, Tim and Lex Murphy still managed to escape with their lives. However, the fact that Alan Grant never changed his mind about having kids of his own should say something about his experience trying to keep them alive.

While some may argue Tim's endless dino enthusiasm bordered on annoying, it's his sister Lex who takes the cake… or maybe the jiggling green Jell-O. There is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian, but Lex pretentiously declaring it like a badge of superiority went over about as well as a serving of kale in a raptor pit. Moreover, Lex spends half the movie complaining and the other half smugly announcing that she's "a hacker," which now feels about as current as an AOL demo disc.

After the Nublar Six washes ashore on Mantah Corp. Island in the final seasons of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, they uncover a conspiracy involving robots, genetically engineered hybrids, and mind-controlled dinosaurs. And as fans continue to question the exact moment this series decided to jump the Mosasaurus, they are introduced to Kash D. Langford, the annoying tech bro villain nobody asked for.

As a character, Kash is less of a villainous mastermind and more like that annoying kid who never grew out of cheat codes. Radiating the energy of an egotistical influencer who never got the sponsorship he wanted and treating dinosaurs like TikTok content, every moment he is on-screen feels like a Twitch stream that should have ended hours ago. When Kash is eventually dragged off by Jurassic World's dinosaurs, it feels less like a long-awaited payoff and more like the franchise finally hitting the mute button on its worst livestream.

In Jurassic Park III, Amanda Kirby joins the rescue party to save her missing son Eric, after allowing him and her boyfriend Ben to parasail dangerously close to Isla Sorna. Whether she was unaware that humans tend to end up on the wrong side of the food chain when dinosaurs are involved or simply placed blind faith in a shady tourist trap operating in illegal waters, the plot had to happen somehow. But when the raptors come across as more attentive parents than she does, it is no wonder that fans were rooting for the dinosaurs.

While she's given more depth and heroic moments in the Jurassic Park Adventures series, Amanda Kirby comes off less like a concerned mother and more like a human car alarm in Jurassic Park III. Seemingly in competition with the Spinosaurus to see who can be the loudest, she actively puts Alan and the others in danger as she spends most of the movie screaming. And while Amanda dares the Pteranodons at the end to go nest in Enid, Oklahoma, audiences suspect the dinosaurs will be looking for quieter neighbors.