Hell if we're talking about "main characters" that you don't play as for most of the game then Emil is a "main character" in Nier Replicant and a boss you can kill in Nier Automata. Of course that guy doesn't know that because he doesn't even realize Automata is a sequel to Replicant so he likely had no idea who the fuck Emil was.
Not sure why people who never played Nier try to jump in like experts on the comparison and criticize that guy for it when it's true and destroyed their entire stance.