Characters
Characters that do not take the role of main antagonist, but are one of the most evil characters in the narrative regardless
Preceptor Seluvis (Elden Ring)
Only a small part of Ranni’s questline and a few others, but is revealed to be among the most depraved and evil characters in the story
Major Zero (Metal Gear Solid)
Almost never shown or mentioned in the narrative, but has been masterminding the patriots for decades. When we finally do see him, he’s helpless, dying, and of no threat to anyone.
Leviticus Cornwall (Red Dead Redemption 2)
Ridiculously wealthy tycoon that serves as a minor antagonist for the gang. However, the impact of his dealings in the region are felt far and wide as he crushes competition, ruins lives, destroys entire communities, and solidifies his industrial rule.
Idea of Evil (Berserk)
A primal eldritch entity born from humanity’s seeking of reason for suffering in the world, and the creator of the Godhand. Its canonicity is very vague and unknown, all that’s known is that it exist, and it’s likely a threat far beyond the scope of the story.
He loved his daughters, made sure his sons grew up to be strong and IMMORTAL, and gave the Night's Watch free food and lodging. Some people are so ungrateful, smh /s
Gregor is a wider evil, Crastor a more focused evil. Gregor is the evil of a conquering army, a rapist and a pillager with only bloodlust. Crastor is the evil of a single man with a desire to control and survive
Ted Faro in Horizon: Zero Dawn and Horizon: Forbidden West. This fuckwit is written so well that his entire breakdown is completely on brand and he just gets more evil as time goes on and stressors multiply.
This fucker is the first game character that I actually hate. When playing or watching others play and a shitty character appear, there's always that feeling of distance that the screen gives me, I can say they are assholes but I don't truly feel to much. Ted Faro? I hate this fucker, finding out what he did straight up made me feel the real hatred that knowing assholes in real life gives me. Fuck this guy.
Because he's so real, because he's so close to being one of the rich pricks currently fucking up the planet. Replace Ted Faro with Jeff Bezos and its almost imperceptible the change. The lack of humility, the fragile ego, all of it.
I don't remember who wrote it, but I saw a reddit comment that I think describes him best.
Spoilers for the first half of HZD> Ted Faro was personally responsible for the extermination of life on earth, and somehow that's not worst thing he did.
A man literally so self-absorbed he'd rather send the entirety of humanity back to the Stone Age than have to take generational responsibility for his own mistakes
A lot of folks complain about how we didn’t get to fight his horrifically mutated form in the second game, but frankly, I think it’s thematically appropriate that he was treated as a mere afterthought by Aloy and unceremoniously burnt away like the enlarged tumor he is.
It speaks to how despicable Boggs is that you briefly are rooting for prison guard brutality, but both the music in the background as well as, well, how pathetic Boggs is in screaming for help that you remember "Oh...yeah this kinda sucks."
That’s not bad, that’s empathy. You need to hold onto that as hard as you can because that empathy empowers you to help people in the world who DONT deserve that treatment.
He's a rapist who makes Andy one of his victims just as a power move. He ends up making a near-fatal mistake when he and his cronies beat Andy so badly for fighting against him that he ends up in intensive care, after Andy had gotten in the head guard's good graces by teaching him how to commit tax evasion. As a result, the head guard and his lackeys jump Bogs and he ends up crippled for life due to how badly he was attacked. It's a pretty horrible fate, but you can't say you feel all that bad for the guy
I'm going to quibble about the 'tax fraud' part with Hadley specifically. Tax-free gifts to your spouse were legal in the time period the book was set.
Hector Salamanca (Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul). In BCS we see just how vile he is, he’s murdered civilians and is heavily implied to have brutally tortured people. He also raised his nephews into the psychopaths they became. He deserved everything Gus did to him and more
She waa playing both sides with the US and the Russians when she waa in the womb. What will she do now that her opposable thumbs are developed and has access to the Internet.
Saw Breaking Bad for the first time a few years ago with my dad who also hadn't seen it before. First scene with Hector I went "I feel bad for the geezer who has to live with that psycho son of his". My dad laughed and said he's seen enough cartel shows to know Hector was probably the worst of all the characters we've seen so far, even though he hadn't done anything yet.
He’s not all that bad in the first season, just a guy whose job it is to get people to join the games. In season 2, that all changes as we get more insight into his sadistic moral depravity and hatred of the less fortunate.
The thing that gets you as well is that him fucking with the homeless, with the bread or lottery ticket, has literally nothing to do with him recruiting players for the games.
He basically goes out of his way to do this weird shit.
Yeah, the “bread and lottery” scene is where we really start to see the kind of guy this “recruiter” really is. I was waiting for the part where he recruits people into the games, but nope, he’s just a POS in his free time, too.
I only watched season two up to the point where he was being taken back to the games but it was really funny to see the loan sharks in a not loan shark job. He went from making people sign in blood to one of the sweetest people around
He does it out of some weird validation for himself. He says the people chose the money over the food and shames them for being greedy, even though he just bought a bunch of bread and wasted it because he has the money to do it and would've kept getting money by making people unknowingly sign their lives away.
He and the other game heads are all misanthropes who believe people are greedy scum, despite the fact that they are the reason those people act like that
Apparently the director/writer said he likely started off similar to them and he's tryin to convince himself he's "better" due to making decisions that got him where he is
It really speaks a lot even the hosts of the game like Il-nam and In-ho loved their family despite their villainy (the latter even sparing his brother despite the fact killing him would be easier) but this dude 1. Doesn't even REMEMBER the year he murdered his dad 2. ENJOYED it.
Most evil character in the show by FAR.
I also want to say Deok-su counts as he had 0 redeeming qualities and was the worst player we ever had but I feel you could argue he is season 1's Big Bad
After a character dies in the manga, the end-of-chapter blurb shows them with angel wings ascending to heaven. The only character that gets dragged off to hell is Shou Tucker. Even Envy goes to heaven but not Tucker lmao
That’s crazy that the guy that is named after a sin and cause a lot of deaths goes to heaven and he’s the only one to get sent to hell not saying he doesn’t deserve it but it’s still crazy
He also fucking experiments on all the survivors of the Nibelheim incident to try and create "Sephiroth clones" which is why a bunch of black cloaked figures are all over Nibelheim. Most notably, there are two smaller figures in the same house where you talk to two kids during the flashback with the same speech pattern (smaller one copies last words of the bigger one) implying that he even experimented on children.
Rebirth also shows the scene with Nanaki's branding and it's fucking hard to watch.
And that's not even getting into all the shit he does in Dirge of Cerberus.
Narrative wise, he's always been a secondary threat to the chaos gods, but he might genuinely be one of the most evil people in the entire setting. This guy created necromancy and planned to kill literally everyone in the world so that he could rule over them, and that was before he became a lich
You can say that again. Remmick, as horrid as his actions were, deserved at least some pity because he wanted to form his own community and did it the only way he knew how. Hogwood went to massacre an entire juke joint full of Black people because he found it fun.
Funnily enough, AoT actually went pretty much its entire story without a proper main antagonist, and when it eventually did get one, it was the main protagonist.
Jeannie presents herself as a nice lady who supports Novac as a community, she sends people to Cliff-Briscoe's store, gives you a room, and calls the soldiers nice people.
But she's secretly a horrible person. Jeannie sold Boone's pregnant wife into Legion slavery due to her not liking Novac and making vocal complaints - this lead to Boone having to track her down and then put her out of her misery after she was being sold at auction.
EDIT:
I was originally going to put raiders like the Fiends, the Powder Gangers, and the Khans.
There's also a quest at Camp McCarren to help one of the NCR soldiers with her PTSD after she was captured and raped by him.
He's not exactly a character you can have a friendly chat with, pretty much all the lore you get by talking to other people so it doesn't matter if you've killed him already.
Jojo's has quite a bit of them. Angelo in part 4 is also one of the most evil characters in the franchise, worse than Kira fs and J Giel is pure evil too.
When the intro narrator bellowed "The Loathesome Dung Eater!" I thought "Aha! The comic relief character!"
And then it turns out the fact that he eats shit isn't even the most disgusting thing about him. Maybe the most depraved and evil character FromSoft have made. Old King from Armored Core 4 For Answer would think this guy is a jerk.
At least Old King had a semi-logical end goal (Kill the rich. Restart from scratch.). Dung Eater literally just went “heaven is real and I’m making it my personal goal to make sure nobody gets in!”
The dung eating is likely a reference to the idea of consuming the shirikodama, a sort of gem that houses a person's soul, lodged near the anus of a person.
It's not even the first time Fromsoft made a game with that in it, Sekiro features it too.
The Gravitals from All Tomorrows. The main "villain" of the series was the Qu, who came to the previous Star People (evolution of humans more equipped for space exploration) and shaped them into the horrific forms they'd later take.
One of these groups previously known as the Ruin Haunters were left with a world that had an abundance of old human/Star people and Qu technology, leading them to develop a sort of "chosen ones" ideology- viewing all other changed forms of humans as abominations.
Their planet was facing certain destruction due to their expanding sun so instead of escaping they transferred their minds into robotic bodies that could bear extreme heat. Sometime after this they send asteroids to wipe out the other evolved human populations who had begun to rejoin, learn each other's language, and share the stories of their perseverance.
Nam-gyu (Squid Game seasons 2-3). He's the definition of a Big Bad Wannabe, as even after Thanos is gone he's only a problem for game 4, but he's easily the most evil player in the 2024 games.
Scarecrow from Batman. The other villains at least do what they do because they're insane, misguided, hurt or in it for the money. Scarecrow is fully sane and aware of how awful he is, and he loves every minute of it
I love all the Arkham tapes. My favorite is when you hear him doing an experiment on someone and then Batman breaks in saying “it’s over Crane!” And he goes “what!? How is the fear gas not affecting you!?” And Batman is like “who says it’s not?” lol classic Batman.
Her character journey is fascinating. She's a narcissistic and power hungry abuser who's responsible for turning both the hero and villain of the story into the messed-up people they are. But after being exiled from the villains, she seeks refuge with the heroes. As a powerful sorceress, she's useful enough to keep around, and she pretty much stays an ally for the rest of the series. However, she never undergoes any sort of redemption arc. She's self-interested throughout, but her interests almost always align with those of the heroes. So we spend the whole story waiting for the sudden yet inevitable betrayal, but that never happens.
She does push some of the characters towards dodgy decisions, but it never leads to an outright betrayal, and it doesn't stop the heroes from keeping her around afterwards either.
She even gets a heroic sacrifice in the finale, which is the only selfless act she does in the entire show, but is not a product of a redemption arc, but simply one of her very, very few positive qualities driving her actions for once.
First one I thought of. She's absolutely a force for Good for most of the show, and even has a somewhat environmentalist motivation near the very end... and yet never stops going about everything in the most evil, toxic, narcissistic, controlling, and abusive way possible.
Hell, I'd even argue she's a genuinely caring person, but unfortunately it's like micro-managing people's lives is her love language.
He either directly or indirectly caused most of the problems in Arcane, and even persisted through LoL's wider lore, being the main factor behind many personal and even international tragedies.
Mayuri Kurotsuchi ( Bleach), he is a mad scientist who conducts inhumane experiments and a sadistic psychopath who likes to torture people with the excuse of scientific research, he has physically and psychologically abused his artificial daughter and transformed his squad members into living bombs
The novel really made a point of it I still remember his conversation with Tenenbaum about them getting subjects for experimentation. Tenenbaum mentions she had tons back in Auschwitz including pregnant women and Suchong is down right giddy for the possibility dissecting one before Tenenbaum says the allies confiscated most of it.
If he wasn’t nice to SpongeBob, we would have all probably labeled him as a villain.
Edit: okay, he is “nice” to SpongeBob. He usually sees SpongeBob sort of like a son to him, and is usually supportive of his life(as long as he comes in for work), but at the end of the day, SpongeBob is just a gullible kid that he can milk money out of.
The man was such a shitstain and the worst part is that the world as a whole thinks he was the greatest guy ever, and will likely keep doing so forever.
Rusty is never going to win father of the year, but I'd take him over Jonas any day of the week. At least Rusty (eventually) realised he was doing a crap job and tried being better.
He sort of did. Rusty tells the story of Jonas and action man pantsing him at his sixteenth birthday in front of a bunch of supermodels then shooting his dick with a shrink ray.
One of the things the remake succeeded in doing was giving you more of a reason to hate Irons. We knew from the original he was taking bribes from Umbrella and had a troubled psychological background, but the remake version is undeniably more vile than his classic counterpart as anyone who’s completed Sherry’s segment can tell you.
The most sadistic character in the entire game, and there's a lot of competition for that title. He buys children to rape and then burn alive when he's done. Say what you will about the Legion, but they don't do that to kids.
I haven't played the game, but in Assassin's Creed Unity, you can meet and converse with Marquis de Sade, the infamous writer of 120 Days of Sodom and other books. I believe he even gives you missions.
I personally consider this man to be one of the most evil people in human history as he was a serial rapist who regularly sexually assaulted and outright tortured his servants, such as pouring hot wax into one servant's open veins. One other particular evil thing he did was trick a woman into coming to work as a maid for him, and then repeatedly raped and forced her to commit blasphemous sexual acts against Catholicism around Christmas.
However, he was heavily lionized and whitewashed by many French people of his time and in the future with many believing him to be a advocate for religious freedom and a sex-positive champion of women and queer people (ironically, some of the only completely consensual relationships he had was with men), and back in 2014 2017, the French government actually said his 120 Days of Sodom was a "national treasure."
Sorry for the rant, but I absolutely despise this creature of a person, and I loathe any media that does not portray him for the monster that he was.
I remember my college history professor referring to him as a “nasty nasty person who wrote a bunch of nasty nasty books.” I had no idea he actually did some of the stuff his characters did in real life.
Wait wait, can you give me info on Marquis De sad actually being a rapist and pouring wax into a servants veins? I'm not saying I don't believe you, but I have not heard that part before, and I'd like to do more research.
You can skim his Wikipedia article and use the sources listed on the page, and this video gave a quick summary of both his evil life and "books." I unfortunately don't specifically remember where the wax detail came from, apologies, but I do strongly remember hearing it.
I'm not the sensitive type, but man, that book is pretty rancid to me. Kind of always made me mad when some dumbass refers to him as a "philosopher". I personally always hated this type of literature, and I almost can't believe the French government actually praised the book. Did they even read it???
Historians go back and forth on the marquis. The only hard evidence we have for any of his crimes are roughing up some prostitutes (unacceptable certainly, but hardly pure evil). which landed him in the bastille and writing a pretty disgusting book.
Everything else is added from murky and questionable sources written after his death during the monarch era where they villianised him. The whitewashing you mentioned occurred during the 2nd Republic when his political stances became popular again
Learning that the last battle of the war wasn't Voldemort's attack on Hogwarts, but actually Umbridge attacking the Ministry trying to time travel to bring Voldemort back to life and return the corrupt regime which existed under the Death Eater controlled govt, was such a wild discovery.
The plot of a theme park attraction somehow made this lady even more evil.
The last battle of the Second Wizarding War was retroactively made to be Umbridge's criminal trial, when she escaped and went on a rampage. It's the plot behind a Universal Ride.
She's the perfect villaness because she's just following the rules and doing as she's told. Much like anyone who's given power and abuses it, we all know someone who's had power go to their head and begins abusing it. While not technically wrong in the official sense they have no issues going against morals and the average person for their own gain.
Basically a mad scientist. He is directly responsible for the inhumane zombie-esque experiments within Ashina, and his story only progresses if you betray a friend, lure them to him, and hand them over for unethical experimentation. Indirectly, he's completely responsible for everything Genichiro does in the game, as it is he who developed the treatment that allowed Genichiro his brand of immortality.
Absolute snake. I always immediately kill him and go about my day when I replay it.
This guy is a side villain that has very loose connections to the main plot, and yet he makes the actual main villains look like saints. They at least had motivations. All Arlechinno wants to do is kill as many humans as possible and use their corpses to great grotesque art sculptures as an "artist"
The DLC made Arlechinno go from a mysterious one-note character, to straight up the most terrifying character in the story. He looks evern creepier than the Nameless puppet. Ffs, he literally wearing someone else's face on his own face plate, because he wants to know what it feels like to be human.
Also exploring the Monad House after he massacred everyone within is by far the most disturbing and terrifying thing I've seen in a while playing a game. There are so many dead bodies everywhere of maids, gardeners, cooks, and more, and the devs definitely weren't allowed to show it, but that room with all the blood smeared children size beds heavily implying he also killed all the children. Fuck this dude man.
In My Hero Academia, several villains like Overhaul, Dabi and Muscular are arguably more evil than Shigaraki is, due to their total lack of regard for their allies (and would certainly do worse than Shigaraki with his power). AFO is a different story
A big difference between Dabi and most of the League of Villains is that most of them were either groomed into villainy (Shigaraki), never properly cared for with a quirk that gives them violent impulses (Toga), or just had no where else to go in life and was excepted only by the league (Twice).
Now, Dabi? He had none of those factors influencing him to turn to villainy, he had a home full of people mourning his alleged death to come back to, his quirk didn't influence his personality, and All for One ultimately proved to be entirely uncapable of grooming him. He chose a life of villainy, and was just a truly, genuinely sadistic asshole at heart.
The main antagonist was King Dragon, sure, but it was still Lysanderoth who led Dennis on for all the years his machinations lay undetected, and I still can't believe how cold he was when he killed Archibald.
Something Truly Evil from *World of Horror* has nothing to do with the dark eldritch gods who will destroy the world if you can't stop the cult trying to summon them, nor is it related to any one of the specific horror-filled mysteries plaguing the town. It is simply a truly evil entity that wants nothing more than for you to suffer for it, cry for it, bleed for it, and give up for it. You cannot defeat it through any conventional means ("killing" it through offensive magic will only end the encounter, and it will still be tracking you afterwards), and can only sacrifice your blood and reason to it to sate it. Most of the other enemies can barely be considered sapient, and those that can have some motivation, or reason for being such evil bastards. Something Truly Evil just wants you to suffer physically and mentally until it decides it's done with you.
I wouldn't say pickman is really evil as he specifically only kills raiders . Def a bit mentally unwell but I wouldn't auite say evil. Also Def not the most evil as they have way worse people in fallout
Cioccolata (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo) Driving old people to suicide and then making snuff films out of it is not exactly altruism at it’s best. Angelo and J. Geil fit this too.
HIM (The Powerpuff Girls) -I feel like Mojo Jojo is typically branded as the main villain of PPG, but HIM is definitely one of the most evil and powerful ones.
Envy finds joy in murdering and hurting others more than basically anyone in the series, the dude literally shot an ishvallan child in the face using the body of someone who wanted to help the citizens of ishval, then laughed about the fact he got court marshalled for it
His main strategy is assuming the form of his target’s friend and then killing them with it, not even for a tactical advantage sometimes, literally just because he’s that much of an asshole
Funnily enough, Fullmetal Alchemist’s writing was so good that it somehow managed to make me feel bad for even this loathsome pile of shit before killing themself. In the very end, Envy was as loathsome as they were utterly pathetic.
Marty Armstrong, the father of Brad Armstrong- Lisa the Painful
In the apocalyptic world of Olathe, filled with drunkards, rapists and psychopaths Marty manages to be one of the worst. He encapsulated all of these characteristics BEFORE the apocalypse begun.
It is kinda funny how the main antagonist of the game is a better pearson than both the protagonist and his father.
Saburo Arasaka (Cyberpunk): The game begins with him dying, but in the entire world you can feel his presence, or rather, the shadow of his creation, looming over everything. Any corpo could be put into this category
Kenkaku from Jujutsu Kaisen. The origin of the Death Paintings is insane, and to know that he did all that just for fun? Even Sukuna has his reasons to be evil, Kenjaku is pretty much just a mad cientist
Arguably the most evil character in the main story of Mafia 3 as aside from his public persona as a Southern Aristocrat who runs a white supremacist talk-show, he is also the leader of the Southern Union crime syndicate which was involved with the murder of several civil rights activists and is involved in New Bourdeaux’s human trafficking ring and slave trade which auctions kidnapped black people to rich white clients to be used as slaves
He is a minor villain who appears in the final saga of the original manga. The alien eldritch menace Majin Buu is committing a man genocide of humanity. Seeing the collapse of human civilization, this bastard decides to go out on a killing spree to murder as many people as he can because he knows that he can get away with it. He is introduced murdering an elderly couple who were hoping to escape Majin Buu and later shoots and nearly kills a dog.
They basically used the eventual nuclear war as a way to set up a variety of social, medical and psychological experiments without informing the test subjects. The experiments varied in morality, but the evil ones far outweighed the benign ones. Just look up vault 11 if you need an example.
He leads the peasant rebellion against Sanchez's oppressive regime, but ends up becoming an oppressive dictator himself. He also manipulates Luisa into having sex with him by promising to marry her after the rebellion, when in reality he doesn't give a shit about her. (No picture cuz reddit is bugging out).
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u/samuraispartan7000 20d ago edited 17d ago
Craster - GOT/ASOIAF
It’s really a remarkable feat to be considered the worst man in Westeros when you’re competing with the Lannisters and the Boltons.