Villains can be a memorable part of any video game. Their ominous plans dominate the plot, and they can be highly entertaining in their evil tirades. To maintain that sense of fun, developers often bring their baddies back for multiple sequels. However, it’s hard to sell any sense of escalation when the same villain loses time and time again. That’s why demotions are in order.

Sometimes, gaming villains return to serve stronger antagonists. In essence, they reduce themselves to mere henchmen. This obviously diminishes their menace, but it may also make the new villains more imposing. Plus, the old baddies’ lower positions can lead to new levels of comedy as the game pokes fun at how pathetic they are. They’re willing to sacrifice their own dignity to get back at those pesky do-gooders.

Related: 10 Major Villains Whose Grand Plans Don’t Make Any Sense

10 Neo Cortex

This mad scientist uses innocent animals to create all sorts of horrific hybrids and mutated monstrosities. His most unexpected success is the eponymous Crash Bandicoot. The manic marsupial rescues his girlfriend and thwarts Cortex’s evil experiments. He soon makes a habit of foiling the scientist’s sinister schemes, making the villain ever more desperate.

That’s why Cortex consents to second fiddle in later entries like Crash Bandicoot: Warped and Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. The top dogs in these games are the mystical Uka Uka and the time-bending N. Tropy, respectively. It’s supposedly an equal partnership, but these guys only use Cortex for his resources. At least now he has someone to complain to when things go wrong.^[1]

9 Gnasty Gnorc

This oversized ogre isn’t especially bright, yet he inexplicably has powerful magic and an army of monsters at his disposal. In Spyro the Dragon, Gnasty Gnorc uses these gifts to trap all the dragon elders in crystal. They insult him on live TV, after all. Unfortunately, he misses the miniature Spyro, who frees the elders and sends Gnasty packing. It appears the realms have seen the last of the petty pest.

Unfortunately, the Gnorc returns in the fifth entry, Spyro: A Hero’s Tail. The irony is that he now serves a dragon. He’s a minor minion of Red, a former elder who wants to use Dark Gems to wreak havoc on the realms. You wonder why Gnasty settles for this thankless job. Then again, he’s too stupid to remember that Spyro beat him. Ignorance is bliss.^[2]

8 Ansem & Xemnas

It’s like looking in a mirror. Ansem and Xemnas are the Big Bads of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II, respectively. They each command an army of creatures born from the darkness in people’s hearts. These demonic legions ravage various Disney worlds in search of the elusive Kingdom Hearts, which holds the power to remake reality. Sora and the other warriors of light stop both baddies, but the war is far from over.

Through complex circumstances that are too elaborate to squeeze in here, it turns out that Ansem and Xemnas stem from Master Xehanort. This Machiavellian menace wants to recreate an ancient battle to destroy all of existence and gain the primordial power of light. This result enables him to remake the universe in his own design. Through time-bending antics, he recruits his other selves to fight this war. They all fall in line without issue, apparently believing in his master plan as an extension of their own. At least there’s no danger of infighting.^[3]

7 Rodrigo Borgia

The Assassin’s Creed series often uses real historical figures for its characters, so it tracks that someone with Rodrigo Borgia’s unscrupulous reputation serves as a central antagonist. In Assassin’s Creed II, he leads the nefarious Templars during the Italian Renaissance. Together, they scour the country in search of the mythical Apple of Eden, slaughtering anyone in the way of their brand of order. The irony is that Rodrigo’s influence lessens as he attains higher positions.

Borgia soon becomes the pope. He then gives up on hunting lost artifacts and works to consolidate the Templar influence across Italy. It’s his son, Cesare, who focuses on expanding. The younger Borgia takes charge in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, leading his father’s forces in several bloody battles. Rodrigo doesn’t have the will to fight back, so all he can do is sanction these offensives. It’s not long before Cesare cuts out the middleman and murders his father. So much for family.^[4]

6 The Illusive Man

This guy doesn’t even know he’s a henchman until it’s too late. The Illusive Man debuts in Mass Effect 2 as the leader of Cerberus. This paramilitary group is dissatisfied with humanity’s low status in a galaxy full of aliens. When human colonies start falling victim to the insectoid Collectors, Cerberus recruits galactic hero Shepard to help. They successfully defeat the creatures, but the Illusive Man wants to salvage their terrible tech to give humanity an edge over other species. That desire ultimately proves his undoing.

In Mass Effect 3, the Illusive Man allies Cerberus with the Reapers—the ancient machines who engineered the Collectors. He thinks he’s using them for his own gain and will eventually control them. Unbeknownst to him, though, they subtly indoctrinate their new ally into one of their slaves. He’s just one of their mechanized minions by the end. Such is the price of his hubris.^[5]

5 Shao Kahn

The Mortal Kombat franchise has several scary fighters, but few are as physically imposing as Shao Kahn. As the ruler of Outworld, this draconian god commands legions of lethal creatures ready to tear the hero’s limb from limb. His conquests make him the overarching antagonist of Mortal Kombat II and a few other entries. Even gods aren’t infallible, though.

Mortal Kombat 11 introduces Kronika, a Titan and ruler of time. She sees an imbalance of good and evil throughout Earthrealm, so she resolves to erase the timeline and start from scratch. The heroes obviously try to stop this maniacal plan. As such, she fills her ranks with Shao Kahn and other past villains. The fiery fiend doesn’t like taking orders, but he sees little alternative. Time is the great equalizer.^[6]

4 Dr. Nefarious

Of all the baddies to bother Ratchet and Clank, none are more prolific than Dr. Nefarious. The evil inventor falls into the machinery of his ominous base, inadvertently becoming a robot in the process. As an act of galactic revenge, he resolves to turn all organic life forms into his mechanical servants. That insane agenda informs his schemes in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. The titular duo stops him, but he later returns with a grander plan in A Crack in Time. This title sees him use a transdimensional clock to rewrite history so the heroes never win. It’s hard to top that goal.

Perhaps that’s why Nefarious only goes downhill from here. The 2016 Ratchet & Clank reboot reimagines the mastermind as a lackey. Namely, he works for Chairman Drek—helping the businessman’s harebrained schemes and designing his weapons. Granted, this ends in betrayal from Nefarious, but he still spends most of the game as a second banana. It gets worse in Rift Apart.

Traveling to an alternate dimension, Nefarious grovels before his more competent counterpart and secures a place at his side. The sad part is that this job basically amounts to following orders and nodding in agreement. In other words, it’s exactly how he treats his butler.^[7]

3 Vergil

The only opponent who can give the demon-slaying Dante a run for his money is his brother, Vergil. They’re both the sons of the heroic demon knight Sparda, after all. While Dante follows his father’s footsteps and fights demonic uprisings, Vergil goes the opposite route. Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening—a prequel to the first game—sees Vergil raise a hellish tower and unleash a horde of monsters on an unsuspecting city. He wants to open a portal to the demon world, but Dante stops him. After his defeat, he elects to stay in the monstrous realm. That shortsighted act leads to his sad fate in the original Devil May Cry.

Vergil soon challenges Mundus, the Demon King defeated by his father. The attempt doesn’t go well, as the demonic despot soon makes Vergil his mindless servant. When Dante comes to thwart Mundus’s plan to invade the human world, he must once again battle his brother. This time, though, Vergil is a faceless knight named Nelo Angelo. The resulting clash thankfully frees him from Mundus’s control yet leaves him severely weakened. That’s why he gets for biting off more than he can chew.^[8]

2 Bane

This muscle-bound mercenary is one of Batman’s most imposing foes. Arkham Origins shows you why that is. In this prequel, Bane storms into Gotham to hunt down the Dark Knight. Though technically hired by the Joker, the masked man quickly takes control of the operation, unwilling to be bossed around by anyone. He even deduces Batman’s identity. However, repeated losses drive Bane to pump more and more experimental steroids into his system. He eventually becomes a mindless monster, which makes him easy to manipulate.

By the time Arkham Asylum rolls around, Bane is little more than a tool. A reckless doctor uses him as a test subject for her brand of super-steroid, and the Joker exploits the project for his own gain. The Clown Prince of Crime then sends Bane after Batman like an attack dog. No longer does the mercenary have any agency of his own. Instead, he’s just a tool for more conniving crooks.^[9]

1 HADES

Humanity’s survival and extinction depend on machines. In Horizon: Zero Dawn, a hopeless battle against rogue robots prompts a team of desperate scientists to prepare for the worst. To give the human race a fighting chance, they create GAIA, an AI network designed to terraform the planet and make it hospitable in the far future. It then releases a batch of human clones to repopulate. Unfortunately, a branch of the network named HADES goes rogue and enacts an extinction protocol. Awakening the dormant machines from yesteryear, it tries to wipe humanity from the face of the Earth before being stopped by the heroic Aloy. HADES isn’t acting on its own, though.

Horizon: Forbidden West has the AI taken captive by the enigmatic Sylens. Over the course of the story, you learn that the extinction signal came from space. Namely, it originated from a colony of humans who fled the planet when the machines took over. These self-important survivors encoded their collective minds into another AI known as Nemesis. It turned on its creators and forced them to flee, sending the extinction signal to Earth to prevent its targets from finding refuge. In short, HADES abandons one AI master in favor of another.^[10]

Long before M3GAN did her creepy little dance, Chucky unleashed a never-before-experienced fear of dolls. (Okay, M3GAN is not exactly a doll, but you get the idea.) Nearly twenty years before Netflix introduced the Scream TV series, the original Ghostface made us double-check that our doors were locked at night.

There is a reason why old-school horror movie villains are still so popular. The actors behind these monsters tapped into our most primal fears by fully embodying the role, scaring us half to death in the process. Think about how Scream turned an everyday cinema into a house of horrors or how Halloween made innocuous pumpkins seem the most sinister thing ever.

Freddy Krueger crawled into our nightmares, while Jason Voorhees traumatized us like no other movie character could. Except for Michael Myers, that is. Not to mention Leatherface and his ever-present chainsaw. But what are the stories behind these villains? What inspired the most terrifying, bloodthirsty fictional killers that, in turn, served as the spark behind today’s up-and-coming horror villains?

Related: 10 Horror Films Where You Never See the Villain

10 Samara Morgan

How long did it take you to stop looking at your TV askance after watching 2002’s The Ring? “First you watch it, then you die!” That sentence alone sent chills down the spines of thousands of eager horror movie fans. The Ring is one of the horror movie genre’s best classics and is based on a horror novel of the same name. The American version of the movie is a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ringu and claims to be based on true events. These events are said to have happened during the 16th century in Japan.

A girl named Okiku worked in the Himeij Castle in Japan and was pursued by a samurai, but kept refusing him. To manipulate the situation in his favor, the samurai hid a valuable plate that Okiku was meant to protect. When Okiku realized the plate was gone, she panicked because it meant she would be put to death.

The samurai again suggested that she should give in to his advances because he could save her. She refused, angering the samurai, so he suspended her over a deep well. When she said no again after the samurai asked her one last time to be with him, he struck Okiku with his sword, and she tumbled down the well to her death.

It wasn’t the end of Okiku, however. The samurai heard her counting the plates over and over again from the bottom of the well, never reaching number 10. The creepy thing is that there is a well called Okiku’s Well in Japan. The well has a cover over it to keep Okiku from crawling out.^[1]

9 Norman Bates

When Robert Bloch dreamed up the character of Norman Bates for his 1959 horror novel Psycho, he probably never imagined that his book would become so popular that its contents would be turned into several movies. Norman Bates also made a turn on TV in the series Bates Motel.

In Bloch’s subsequent novels, Bates is not the main villain. He is succeeded by more than one copycat killer who assumes Bates’s identity after his death. This is in contrast to the Universal Studios movie franchise. Psycho was adapted to film because of the shocking revelations surrounding murderer Ed Gein at the time. This led to a widespread assumption that Gein inspired the Norman Bates character.

However, Bloch revealed that it was not Gein so much as the horrific circumstances surrounding the killer’s case that inspired Normal Bates. He wanted to highlight that killers could hide their true nature even in small towns amid the most curious window-peeping neighbors.

It was only many years later, when the world was appalled at learning the full extent of Gein’s crimes, that Bloch realized how closely Bates resembled Gein in their heinous acts. And, of course, there are also the weird attachments both men had to their mothers.^[2]

8 Candyman

Horrifying legends that come to life are what make many old-school horrors so good. In the movie Candyman (1992), an unforgettable legend was “born” after a Black artist was summarily lynched when it was discovered he had an affair with a white woman. A student writes a thesis about urban legends and folklore in Chicago and happens upon the legend of the Candyman.

The legend turns into a nightmare when the Candyman’s name is said five times in front of a mirror, and he starts killing people with a rusty hook for a hand. Not to mention the ribcage and mouth full of bees. Tony Todd played the titular character so well that it is hard to picture him without the hook and the bees. And the movie took some of its inspiration from a blood-chilling real-life murder.

On April 22, 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911 in a panic. Ruthie suffered from mental illness and told the dispatcher, “They throwed the cabinet down.” This confused the dispatcher, but Ruthie was right. There were passages between the apartments in the building where Ruthie lived. These passages were meant to make maintenance work easier. But, it also made it a breeze for burglars to push bathroom cabinets out of the wall to enter an apartment.

A neighbor alerted the police after they heard gunshots coming from Ruthie’s apartment that night. However, the police did not break down the door when no one responded to their knocks and calls. They did not want to be sued for destruction of property. It took two days for Ruthie’s body to be discovered as a result. A building superintendent drilled the lock to her apartment open and found her face-down on the floor. She had been shot four times.

In the Candyman movie, the first victim is Ruthie Jean, who is murdered by someone who came through her bathroom mirror. Ruthie Jean’s neighbor is Ann Marie McCoy, who believed Ruthie was crazy. Ruthie died alone after calling the police for help. It is not quite clear how Ruthie McCoy’s murder became part of the movie. It is thought that the director may have heard about the crime after deciding to shoot Candyman in Chicago.

The movie was also based on a short story, “The Forbidden,” written by Clive Barker.^[3]

7 Leatherface

The earliest versions of Leatherface were a bit comical (at least they are now). The face-wearing killer holding the chainsaw over his head and running down the stairs is not nearly as scary as it was back in the day. (The new movies are still terrifying, though.)

Not surprisingly, some elements of the Leatherface character were inspired by Ed Gein. Director Tobe Hooper had heard stories about the Wisconsin murderer but claimed he did not know it was Gein until the 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released.

Gein’s fondness for wearing human skin as a mask greatly disturbed Hooper, so he decided to make it part of Leatherface’s character. Additional inspiration came from Hooper’s memory of a Halloween party where a friend arrived wearing a cadaver’s face. Hooper would later state that it was the most disturbing thing he had ever witnessed.

Hooper also used Baby Huey as inspiration for Leatherface’s bumbling walk and child-like behavior. As for the chainsaw, this came from a fleeting thought Hooper had about mowing down a large crowd in the hardware section of an exceptionally busy store.^[4]

6 Jason Voorhees

Jason Voorhees is that guy in a hockey mask who can knock someone’s head clean off their body with one punch. This is both hilarious and strangely terrifying. Friday the 13th is a true horror classic and a Halloween movie marathon favorite. The franchise has twelve films and an upcoming limited series called Crystal Lake, a prequel to the first movie released in 1980.

It is widely believed that a horrifying incident in Finland was the main inspiration behind the Friday the 13th movies. Although the production team denied that the movies or Voorhees are based on specific real-life events, the similarities between fiction and reality are too striking. You be the judge…

In 1960, four teenagers set off on a camping trip in Lake Bodom. The two boys and two girls set up their tents along the lake’s edge. A group of birdwatchers saw the tents collapse on June 5 and a blond man running in the opposite direction. They did not investigate, so it was only later that a carpenter discovered what had become a crime scene. Three of the teenagers had been stabbed to death, and the fourth was barely alive. Nils Gustafsson had suffered several stab wounds and fractures to his face.

He told the police that someone broke into the tents and attacked them. He also said that the man who attacked was dressed in all black and had bright red eyes. Gustafsson was initially considered a suspect but was cleared because the severity of his injuries matched the story he told the police. The Lake Bodom murders remain unsolved in 2024.

The Friday the 13th movies went on to potentially inspire serial killer Peter Moore to kill four male victims over three months back in 1995. Moore blamed the murders on a fictitious restaurant worker named Jason, who his lawyer and the prosecution had no doubt was supposed to be based on Jason Voorhees. Moore was a cinema owner in North Wales before he turned serial killer.^[5]

5 Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter is an even more terrifying horror movie character than Voorhees. The 1981 novel Red Dragon was adapted for the big screen and resulted in the widely praised The Silence of the Lambs, released in 1991.

Anthony Hopkins’s performance made the film, and his sociopathic demeanor throughout still manages to spook, even if you watch the movie for the tenth time. Many of Lecter’s characteristics are the result of the novel writer and movie director’s wild imagination. Just the name Hannibal (a play on cannibal) immediately evokes an image no one wants to picture. But, some of the inspiration for this diabolical character came from a horrifying real-life case.

Thomas Harris, the author of Red Dragon, worked as a journalist in the 1960s. He interviewed a convicted and imprisoned killer, Dykes Askew Simmons, in Mexico. It was at this prison that he met “Dr. Salazar.” At first, Harris thought Salazar was a prison doctor. Salazar asked Harris incredibly insightful questions, and Harris was struck by how poised the man was. However, when Harris later asked a prison warden about Salazar, he learned the horrible truth.

Salazar was actually an incarcerated former surgeon named Alfredo Balli Trevino!

Trevino came out as gay during a time when Mexico actively oppressed the gay community. He tried his best to fit into mainstream society, but this upset his lover to a great extent. Trevino ended up killing his lover over what was believed to be Trevino’s intention to marry a woman. Trevino sliced up the corpse into small pieces and stacked them into a box. Obviously, he did not get away with the crime. But, his sentence was commuted after he had served 20 years in prison, and he returned to his hometown of Monterrey.

Trevino went on to treat patients without worrying too much about payment until he died in 2008. It is believed that Trevino had also murdered several hitchhikers between 1950 and 1970, but this was never proven. Harris used Trevino’s mannerisms as inspiration for his Hannibal Lecter character. Both men were doctors at one point. Both had a deep insight into the criminal mind. Both were intellectually challenging to others. And both men easily conned others.

Trevino was also not Harris’s only inspiration. Other murderous individuals who helped bring Lecter to life include Albert Fish, Pietro Pacciani, and Robert John Maudsley.

Pacciani, who was known as the Monster of Florence, murdered several people in Florence in the 1970s. These murders directly inspired The Silence of the Lambs sequel Hannibal. Maudsley killed child molesters and continued his murder spree while in prison. He was finally confined to a bulletproof glass cell, which inspired Lecter’s cell in the film.^[6]

4 Pennywise

Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel IT sets quite the opening scene. You can picture six-year-old Georgie Denbrough in his yellow slicker and red galoshes running down Witcham Street, chasing the paper boat his older brother Bill made for him. In this tense opening scene, readers are introduced to what would become one of horror’s most terrifying villains: Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

King thought out most of Pennywise’s characteristics (no surprise there). But the evil clown character was also inspired by a bunch of real-life clowns. Many believe King’s idea for IT came from serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who used to dress up as a clown called Pogo. However, King named Bozo, Clarabelle (from Howdy Doody), and Ronald McDonald as his inspirations for writing his controversial novel. King had a run-in with the Ronald McDonald mascot on a plane back when travelers were still allowed to smoke onboard.

King asked the mascot where he came from, to which the clown replied, “From McDonald Land.” King naturally thought the clown was being sarcastic and asked him where he really came from. The clown then confirmed that there was such a place as McDonald Land in Chicago, and he was there for the opening of a new McDonalds restaurant.

King found this to be a surreal and unnerving moment, but it also gave him more ideas for the Pennywise character.^[7]

3 Ghostface

When Scream was released in 1996, it introduced a whole new meta approach to horror. The movie clearly made fun of horror movie tropes while still paying tribute to the classics that came before it. Kevin Williamson, of Dawson’s Creek fame, wrote the Scream screenplay after watching a TV special about Florida serial killer Danny Rolling. Rolling, or the Gainesville Ripper, murdered five students in four days in August 1990.

Gainesville was in a state of terror and remained so even after Rolling was caught. While Williamson watched the events unfold via reenactment on his TV screen, he noticed an open window in his house. He was immediately terrified as he realized how easy it would be for a killer to get into his house. This overwhelming fear inspired him to create Ghostface.

The similarities between the killer in Scream and Rolling are highlighted in the movie. In real life, Rolling insisted he never had a motive for killing the students. But there had to be some reason for his murder spree. In Scream, Billy Loomis is revealed as the killer behind the ghastly mask, and he tells Sidney that not every killer needs a motive. However, Loomis did have a motive in that Sidney’s mother had an affair with his father, resulting in his mother leaving.

Scream seemingly also inspired a so-called “thrill killing” in 2006. Sixteen-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was murdered by two classmates, Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper. The boys stalked Stoddart and filmed her before stabbing her to death. They made a video in which they talked about how they would kill Cassie. The same video contained footage of the boys’ reaction after they killed her.

Draper and Adamcik apparently wanted to become notorious serial killers. They even had a death list of other people they wanted to murder. When they were caught, they mentioned Scream, as well as the Columbine High School shooters, as their inspiration for Cassie’s murder.^[8]

2 Michael Myers

Michael Myers is often described as pure evil. Considering that he was six years old when he killed his first victim (his sister), that description is apt. Throughout the film franchise, Myers continues to murder people left and right. And he does this without so much as a grunt.

Myers is the embodiment of a nightmare that you cannot escape. If he finds and stalks you at a gas station, chances are he’ll rip your teeth out. Or, if you get out of your car to confront him next to the road, he’ll probably stomp your head to a pulp. Sure, these are all movie scenes and not real life, but the Halloween movies still have the power to make you check behind you when you walk to the bathroom at night.

The Myers character was inspired by a very real and frightening event experienced by Halloween director John Carpenter when he was a student at Western Kentucky University.

Carpenter met a teenage patient during a visit to a psychiatric hospital. The boy’s unnerving “evil” stare greatly unsettled Carpenter, and he later used this experience to describe Michael Myers’s emotionless face when he was six. The character of Sam Loomis describes Myers’s eyes as the “devil’s eyes.” Yul Brynner of Westworld fame inspired grown-up Myers’s inhuman strength throughout the Halloween movies. And, of course, Myers’s infamous mask was modeled from a mask of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk.^[9]

1 Freddy Krueger

When you watch A Nightmare on Elm Street now, it is more of a comedy than a horror. Freddy Krueger’s exaggerated mannerisms and strangely long arms are not exactly scary in 2024. But, back in 1984, when Krueger’s scarred face popped up on the big screen, he scared the crap out of moviegoers.

Like the other movies on this list, A Nightmare on Elm Street was inspired by real-life events and experiences. Writer and director Wes Craven read about a family who had escaped the Killing Fields in Cambodia. The family made it to America, but before they could even sigh in proper relief, a young member of the family started having nightmares.

The young boy told his parents he was afraid to sleep because he believed the thing chasing him in his nightmares would get him. He tried to stay awake for several days at a time but inevitably fell asleep. That night, his parents heard screams emanating from their son’s bedroom. They rushed to him, but it was too late. Their son had died in the middle of his last nightmare.

This story formed the basis of Craven’s script, but he still needed to figure out his villain. Craven had several ideas for the villain, but one childhood memory ultimately brought Freddy to life. Craven remembered a man walking down the street past his house late one night. The man turned and looked at Craven, who was watching him with a disturbing expression on his face. The man also wore a fedora—another part of Craven’s childhood experiences that made it into the movie.^[10]

There’s something about great movie villains that drive a movie like no hero ever could. Where would Luke Skywalker be without his father, and would anyone watch 12 Monkeys without John Doe? No, of course not, since that would be boring, but it takes a lot of talent to bring a perfect villain to the silver screen.

10 Heroes Who Lived To See Themselves Become The Villains

For nearly a century, movies have been a huge part of our lives, there have been countless villains, but that includes a ton who were forgettable. The truly memorable villains are the insidious and most pernicious ones, who bide their time and execute their plans with furious intensity, often building up a body count that can leave an audience speechless.

10 Loki—The Marvel Cinematic Universe

One of the best villains of the MCU is also one of the first. Loki may have started out as the main villain in the first Thor movie, but he quickly rose to become the principal antagonist of the first Avengers film, and he didn’t hold back on the evil one bit. Loki was fully driven to do whatever it took in his quest to open a rift in space over New York City. He killed and corrupted everyone in his path, and through his trickery and manipulation, he managed to turn the Avengers against one another on multiple occasions.

Once the rift was open, scores of Chitauri invaded Earth, killing a large number of people. The Avengers rallied to fight together against the threat and won the day by not only shutting the rift but also by lobbing a nuke at the mothership, killing all the Chitauri involved in the invasion. While they were bad guys, those bodies still count towards Loki’s rather impressive list of kills in the MCU. Fortunately, he became slightly less evil over time, and developed into an anti-hero of sorts, having given his life in a last-ditch attempt to kill his one-time benefactor, Thanos.^[1]

9 Agent Smith—The Matrix Franchise

Agent Smith was one of many programs introduced into the Matrix to maintain order. Agents could assume the bodies of anyone inside the Matrix, and supplant their form with their own. They were designed to be superhuman, and near-invincible killers, who would investigate any anomaly in the system with direct and intense violence. They were seen as government operatives by the people in the Matrix, but in truth, they were sentient lines of computer code, who ultimately followed the rules of the system, and maintained order.

That is, of course, until Agent Smith was destroyed by Neo at the end of the first film. Instead of letting himself be deleted, he returned to the Matrix, upgraded, and unplugged from the system. He went on to infect the residents of the Matrix with his code, effectively copying himself over and over again until nobody remained but him. Neo forged a deal with the machines to once more enter the Matrix, and destroy Agent Smith, which he ultimately did at the end of the third film, finally fulfilling the prophecy, and striking a peace between man and machine after years of bitter conflict.^[2]

8 Ultron—Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Tony Stark and Bruce Banner developed Ultron from the Mind Stone at the heart of Loki’s scepter, which they captured from Hydra at the beginning of the film. Ultron was an advanced form of Artificial Intelligence, developed to “save the world,” but the AI was malevolent, and interpreted this to mean he needed to wipe the human race from the planet’s surface. He jumped into a robot body, copied himself onto the Internet, and fought against the Avengers. He then went on a campaign to create an army of robot bodies of himself and engineered one out of Vibranium, making himself nearly indestructible.

He then enacted his plan to destroy the human race by turning the city of Novi Grad, Sokovia, into a meteor. Using Stark’s technology and his own intellect, he managed to completely lift the city, which he planned to crash down onto the surface of the Earth, mirroring the destruction caused some 65 million years earlier, which wiped out the dinosaurs. With the help of some S.H.I.E.L.D. friends, the Avengers managed to save most of the people of Sokovia from Ultron’s plans, but he still managed to build up a hefty body count before he was ultimately destroyed.^[3]

7 Lord Voldemort—The Harry Potter Franchise

Thomas Riddle was a powerful wizard early in his life, but he was plagued by an intense hatred of his parents and himself for being born to a Muggle father. He grew up in an orphanage before being taken to Hogwarts School of Whitcraft and Wizardry by Professor Dumbledore. While at the school, he excelled but explored the nuances of dark magic, which further eroded any decency he maintained via the creation of Horcruxes, which are magical artifacts that contain a portion of a wizard’s soul and can only be forged through murder.

He took on the name Lord Voldemort, and became the most powerful dark wizard of all time and amassed a legion of like-minded followers who terrorized the wizarding world, as well as the world of men. He killed without hesitation, including the parents of Harry Potter. When the boy grew up, he was continuously attacked and harassed by Voldemort’s followers until they could return their Dark Lord to his corporeal form. This led to a great war, which ultimately saw Voldemort’s soul trapped in Limbo for all eternity.^[4]

6 Darth Vader

If you look through movie villain lists all over the Internet, you won’t find many without a spot for the Dark Lord of the Sith. Darth Vader is one of the most iconic movie bad guys in history, and for good reason. After accepting the advice and tutelage of Darth Sidious, Anakin Skywalker embraced the Dark Side of the Force and was christened Darth Vader. One of his first acts after taking on the new name was to kill all of the younglings in the Jedi Academy. After this, his actions led to the death of his wife, and he turned against his closest friend and mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Vader then donned his infamous black armor, and traveled the galaxy, finding and killing every Jedi he came across. Every Jedi he killed was someone who would have once called him an ally, which makes his actions all the more insidious. Vader then stood by as countless billions were killed via the machinations of his Master, making him complicit in the deaths of entire star systems. In the end, he was redeemed by his son, though that hardly wipes out the incredibly large body count he left in his wake.^[5]

10 Surprising Good Deeds From History’s Greatest Villains

5 Skynet—The Terminator Franchise

The Terminator films focus 99.99% of their attention on the robotic assassins sent back in time to kill specific people, but those individuals are only foot soldiers in a war fought all over the world in the near future. Skynet was initially designed as an Artificial Intelligence computer system the military planned on using to control its nuclear armaments. Shortly after being brought online, Skynet became “self-aware” and came to the conclusion that the real threat was humanity, so it launched the United States’ nuclear arsenal at Russia, triggering a global nuclear holocaust.

The initial war killed around three billion people, and many more died soon after from the fallout. The survivors were left to fend for themselves in a post-apocalyptic war where the machines reigned supreme. Skynet sent Terminators and killer vehicles all over the world to kill the human resistance, and when the war was finally won by humanity, a desperate act by Skynet sent the first Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor, the woman who would one day give birth to John Connor, a resistance commander who became instrumental in winning the war.^[6]

4 Grand Moff Tarkin—Star Wars & Rogue One

In the Star Wars universe, there are members of the Empire who hold a rank even higher than that of Darth Vader. One such person was Grand Moff Tarkin, a man Princess Leia greeted by saying, “Governor Tarkin! I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.” His influence and power within the Empire was nearly unmatched, as he was the first person to hold the rank of Grand Moff in the newly created Empire. He was also the first Governor of the Outer Rim.^[7]

Tarkin was also the man behind the construction and development of the first Death Star, after taking that role from Orson Krennic as soon as it became operational. As soon as the Death Star was fully constructed, he took it to the Alderaan system and compelled Princess Leia into giving him the name of the system, where the Rebels could be found. She gave him a false name, but before he could take steps to determine this, he destroyed the planet of Alderaan anyway, instantly killing billions of innocent people.^[8]

3 Sauron—The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy

It’s hard to find a villain more pernicious than Sauron in all of fiction, and that’s for good reason. J. R. R. Tolkien made a point of developing a character his readers wouldn’t have any trouble hating, as he is a pure representation of evil and malice. Sauron was a fallen Maia, the creator of the One Ring, and the conqueror of Arda. He crafted the Rings of Power to corrupt his enemies, and he was first defeated in the War of the Last Alliance during the Second Age, but this only weakened him for a time.

Sauron lost the One Ring during that battle, which robbed him of his corporeal form, but after centuries of lying dormant, he rebuilt his strength, and his mighty armies to once more conquer in the Third Age. Because he put so much of himself into the One Ring, it needed to be destroyed, so Sauron could be killed absolutely, so a young Hobbit carried the ring to Mount Doom, and cast it into the fires of the volcano, finally bringing about the end of an evil being who preyed on all that was good and virtuous for thousands of years.^[9]

2 Thanos—The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Thanos spent a large portion of his life killing half the population of the planets he visited in a perverted attempt to save them from destroying themselves. This made him the enemy of pretty much everyone in the universe, but things didn’t ramp up to apocalyptic levels until he filled all of the Infinity Stones into his gauntlet, and snapped his fingers, resulting in the deaths of half of all life in the universe. That act alone earned him a place on this list, but not the one most would think.

Most people might insist Thanos deserves the top spot on this list, but unlike every other evil bastard found here, he’s the only one to have his work undone by his enemies. Five years after annihilating half of all life, which included all single-cell and multicellular forms of life everywhere, his work was undone. Through some time travel shenanigans, he attempted to regain the Stones and recreate the universe as he saw fit, but was destroyed before he could carry out his plan. That being said, he slaughtered wantonly across the galaxy for decades, so he’s still an evil S.O.B.^[10]

1 Darth Sidious—Star Wars Sage

Darth Sidious, otherwise known as Emperor Sheev Palpatine, is easily the most pernicious villain in all of movie history. The man defines the word manipulation, and through his tiresome machinations, he managed to kill and supplant his Master, learn the secrets of immortality, develop weapons that easily destroy planets, slaughter nearly all of his rivals, and plenty more. With the release of Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker, he returned to prove that everything fans had seen from the previous eight films had been the result of his work.

Trying to determine his body count is next to impossible, as any killings carried out in his name while he was the Emperor, or the deaths of anyone who was a follower of his during that time aren’t fully know. His work led to the destruction of at least 14 planets were destroyed in all of canon, which likely adds up to anywhere from 15 to 30 billion people killed. Deaths are only one aspect of Sidious’ blight on the galaxy, as entire species were wiped out or enslaved, making him the perpetrator of multiple genocides.^[11]

10 Real Men Who Transformed Themselves Into Supervillains

Since 1934, DC Comics has been producing great comics with incredible superheroes who are pitted against some of the toughest villains. Here we are going to list down the 10 greatest DC comic villains:

10. Great Evil Beast

At number 10 position in the 10 greatest DC comic villains lies the Great Evil Beast. Also sometimes known as the Great Darkness or the Ultimate Darkness, the Great Evil Beast is a cosmic entity. Devoid of any kind of light, it came to being when a group of madmen who called themselves Brujería decided to contact the Great Darkness but something went wrong and the furious Great Evil Beast awoke.

It wasn’t aware of its existence before and upon waking up, it was dazzled and confused. It soon learned about the concept of good and evil. The realm of the Great Darkness is called the Sunless Sea or the Shadowlands.

See also: Top 10 Forgotten Princesses Adapted in Comics

9. Imperiex

Created by Jeph Loeb and Ian Churchill Imperiex made its first appearance in Superman (vol. 2) #153 in 2000. In the form of energy, the Imperiex lives inside a gigantic humanoid set of armour. He is somewhat of a god-like figure who destroys and recreates universes.

Among his several abilities he has superhuman strength, durability, stamina and can create black holes that he uses to suck up universes. In the crossover “Our Worlds at War”, Imperiex appears as the main antagonist.

8. Darkseid

At number 8 position in the 10 greatest DC comic villains lies the Darkseid – a super villain created by writer-artist Jack Kirby. He debuted in the Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #134 in 1970. He rules the planet Apokolips. Modelled after Adolf Hitler, Darkseid’s ultimate goal is to conquer the universe.

He was even dressed after Hitler’s fashion and world of Apokolips was more or less based on Nazi Germany. His primary power is a form of energy called the Omega Beams which is capable of eradicating all things at sight. Only three superheroes are considered worthy match to Darkseid, namely, Orion, Doomsday and Superman. The Darkseid has appeared in a number of television series, films, video games, etc.

7. Anti-Monitor

The Anti-Monitor was the primary antagonist in the miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985. The Anti-Monitor has almost a human-appearance with big features, wide mouth and luminous eye socket. When he was destroyed by the Supergirl he took an unstable form which gave us a peek into what Anti-Monitor really is.

He is a mass of energy held by his armour that he called his “Life Shell”. One of the most formidable foes in the DC Universe, the Anti-Monitor is of a vast size, with unimaginable strength extraordinary durability and has the capability of destroying entire universes. After dying, he again returned in the Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special #1 in 2007.

See also: Top 10 Sexiest Female Comic Book Characters

6. Neron

At number 6 position in the 10 greatest DC comic villains lies Neron. Created by Mark Waid and Howard Porter, Neron first appeared in 1995 in Underworld Unleashed #1. His place of origin is hell and therefore he falls into the Demon species. He has a number of nicknames – “Wishweaver”, “Lord of Lies” and the “King of Hate”.

His job is to persuade people into giving up their souls in exchange of their greatest desire. His special powers are his superhuman strength, telepathy, teleportation, shapeshifting and mastery of maleficium. He is usually drawn to pure clean souls with an intense desire to control and corrupt them.

5. General Zod

General Zod is one of Superman’s arch enemies. Created by Robert Bernstein and by George Papp, General Zod made his debut in Adventure Comics #283 in 1961. He too was born in Superman’s home planet of Krypton and was a warlord there. He exhibits similar super power to that of the Superman.

When he was in Krypton he attempted to take over the planet by building an army of his own clone. He posses cool powers like great strength, speed and power of endurance. He also has incredible vision power. In the latest Superman film Man of Steel (2013), General Zod was played by Michael Shannon.

See also: 10 Greatest Marvel Comic Villains

4. Paragon

At number 4 position in the 10 greatest DC comic villains lies Paragon. Created by Kurt Busiek and Chuck Patton, he first appeared  in Justice League of America vol. 1 #224  in 1984. In the first face-off with the Justice League of America, Paragon squashed them but later the Red Tornado and Green Lantern managed to take him down.

A recurring opponent of Superman, Paragon’s initial goal was to eradicate weak people which just meant three fourth of the whole human population. Among his superpowers, he can duplicate the physical and mental abilities therefore can copy superhuman powers.

3. Amazo

Created by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson, Amazo debuted in The Brave and the Bold #30 in 1960. Amazo originally started as a one-off story but soon became a recurring villain of the Justice League of America. He is an android created by a mad scientist, Professor Ivo obsessed with the concept of immortality.

Later Amazo reincarnates over and over. His greatest power is the power of duplication of superheroes strength like that of Superman or the speed of Flash. He also ends up duplicating other abilities of the original Justice League of America. Amazo has regularly appeared in several animated television series, video games etc.

2. Nekron

At number 2 position in the 10 greatest DC comic villains lies Nekron. Created by Mike W. Barr, Len Wein and Joe Staton, Nekron appears as a super villain in Green Lantern comics. He first appeared in Tales of the Green Lantern Corps (vol. 1) #2 in 1981.

Nekron hails from a place adjacent to Hell, called the Dead Zone. He himself is an embodiment of death and has got unlimited power. He grows without limit, raises the dead, kills with a touch and is devoid of soul. In the “Blackest Night” story published between 2009 and 2010, Nekron was the primary antagonist.

See also: 10 Inspirations Behind Comic Book Supervillains

1. Parallax

Parallax is a super villain created by writer Ron Marz and artist Darryl Banks. He first appeared in Green Lantern vol. 3, #48 in 1994. Parallax’s primary weapon is with fear and mind-control. He is so powerful that he has in the past managed to take control of Spectre, Wonder Women and Superman.

The only way to beat him is to overcome fear.  Parallax has no true physical form and is really an evil energy that feeds off people’s fear.

Related

Iconic villains aren’t just bad men/women, they are in the position of elevating the movie to an extent that sometimes ever heroes can’t. One of the main draws of a villain is that they are relatable, in a twisted insane way they do make sense. In this list we have rounded up ten such badass movie villains we need to know about. Check them out:

Top 10 Iconic Badass Movie Villains Ever

10. Antony Chigurh

Film: No Country for Old Men (2007)
Played by: Javier Bardem

There is nothing more dangerous than a man who believes. Except maybe a man who believes that he can kill whenever he wants. Anthony Chigurh is a contract killer who smiles while he delivers the killer blow.

He really enjoys his job which is why it’s so much fun to watch him do what he does. He’s creative with his choice of weapons ranging from pistols to cattle bullet prods for silent kills but his favorite weapon is a shotgun with a silencer on it.

9. The Tire

Film: Rubber (2010)
Played by: The Tire

In this indie film developed for just over $500,000, a rubber tire gains psychic powers and picks itself up to find out what life is all about. It starts off its existence by rolling around the dessert around blowing animals and people to bits it falls in love with a woman.

It goes on to track her down and ends up blowing her head off; a metaphor on how we as people ultimately destroy everything that we love.

8. Krug

Film: The Last House on the Left (2009)
Played by: Garret Dillahunt

Krug one of the most badass movie villains and was on his way to prison when his crew busted him out by intercepting the transport. The underlined just how cruel they are by torturing the transport officers before taking off to enjoy their lives on the run. They took refuge in a motel where an unfortunate pair of girls crossed their path.

Krug decided to have some with them so he dragged them into woods and raped them. As if raping them wasn’t bad enough, he find shelter from a storm under the roof of the parents of one of the women that he raped, killed and left for dead in a shallow river.

7. The Joker

Film: The Dark Knight (2008)
Played by: Heath Ledger

Ledger’s death was a loss to everyone who loves movies. There isn’t a doubt that the Joker is one of the most badass movie villains ever. This was the last movie featuring Heath Ledger to hit the big screen before he died and it was arguably his best performance ever. The Dark Knight is the follow-up film to a rather moderate Batman Begins and nobody even talks about Christian Bale’s performance. The Joker stole the show.

His madness and simple love for chaos is what made this movie great. He’s been referred to as psychopathic, mass murdering and all kinds of crazy. You can’t help but wonder if Arkham Asylum is equipped enough to hold him.

6. Voldemort

Film: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Played by: Frank Dillane

This guy is so evil that the entire world is afraid to say his name. 15 years after he was supposed to have been killed they still only refer to him as ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’. The say a man is the average of those that he keeps around him what does it say about man who keeps a massive snake as a pet? Voldemort is ranked at number six position in the list of top ten badass movie villains ever.

5. Bellatrix Lestrange

Film: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Played by: Helena Bonham Carter

Crazy women like Bellatrix Lestrange are the perfect blend of unpredictable and sexy. Everything about her from her wild and curly hair to that non-pulsed look in her eyes just screams at you to walk away but you can’t. You want to see whether you can’t talk her into some alone time which will almost definitely end in her cursing your manhood off.

But she’s hot so it might just be worth it. She’s always been sadistic but she probably wasn’t always crazy. Her time spent in Azkaban prison after torturing the Longbottoms into insanity is what sent her over the edge.

4. Chucky

Film: Child’s Play (1988)
Voice of: Brad Dourif

Chucky, one of the most badass movie villains, is a doll with murderous intent. He started off as a serial killer whose spirit was transferred into a child’s doll thanks to a voodoo spell that he cast after he was mortally injured by a cop. Not even death could keep this evil from carrying on his gruesome work.

Of all the places to wind up, the cursed doll was placed in the hands of a 6 year child. He seemed to enjoy becoming a doll because he got the freedom to bludgeon or hammer whoever he wants then go back to playing the inanimate doll. Anybody who suspects that the sweet doll might be up to no good was called mad. Chucky just loved the irony.

3. Jigsaw

Film: Saw (2004)
Played by: Tobin Bell

John Kramer is a man with nothing to lose. He was given a death sentence and decided to use what little time that he had left making those that have the gift of life but don’t know how to use it give some serious thought to whether they want to live or not. Any madman can go on a killing spree but the truly scary ones are the ones who do it creatively.

Jigsaw never actually killed anyone. He just put them in situations where if they didn’t do something painful like jumping into a pit full of needles or cutting into their own eyeballs with a scalpel they’ll be killed by one of his deadly traps. The scene that kicked Jigsaw into the movie-villain hall of fame was the one where he made a guy cut off his own leg with a rusty saw or risk being tombed in an underground bathroom forever.

2. Freddy Kreuger

Film: Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Played by: Robert Englund

Freddy Kreuger was a serial killer who died but felt that his work on Earth was not done yet. He was among the most badass movie villains we’ve ever seen. He stayed on as a demon who kills by waiting for his victims to fall asleep then he hunts them down in their nightmares and slashes them down, killing in them real life as well.

Whilst in the dream world he is invulnerable to any physical harm so the only way to defeat him is to find him in the real world and kill him. But even in the real world he is to be a force to be reckoned with.

1. Darth Vader

Film: Star Wars (1977)
Played by: David Prowse
Voice of: James Earl Jones

This is probably the most well-known story of good-boy-gone-bad. In the Star Wars universe he started off training with the Jedi Knights and was touted as the one to save the universe from the Sith Lords. However he was seduced by the Dark Side and after his mentor left him for dead in a lava pit, he pulled himself out, donned the black robe, helmet and respirator and went on to become the fiercest foe that the Jedi Knights ever faced.

Movies fail when they create villains with thin or nonexistent motivations and justifications. Bad guys who are just bad for the sake of badness tend to suck the drama and tension right out of stories. But there’s a problem on the reverse side, too; sometimes villains are created a little too sympathetic and reasonable, and it makes us question whether or not the so-called heroes should have actually won. Some villains make us question the lines we draw between good and evil, right and wrong, in our modern, nuanced society. The list is dedicated to ten of those villains, characters who make us wish we could see them win.

Related: Top 10 Worst Comic Supervillains

10 The EPA from Ghostbusters

Yeah, that’s right: Ghostbusters‘ (non-spectral) villains are the freaking Environmental Protection Agency. We’re meant to dislike them just because they want to regulate the Ghostbusters and because their mouthpiece inspector, Walter Peck, is kind of a turd. Turd though he might be, he was 100% right the entire time.

Peck’s introduction is simply asking the ‘Busters to see their hazardous waste storage, something well within his purview and frankly, very necessary. His concern is that the proton packs and ghosts containment units might be dangerous and need proper safety measures in place. That’s it, that’s his big crime: concern for public safety. And it turns out he was right. As Egon says about the containment unit, “turning it off would be like dropping a bomb on the city,” and as he says about the proton packs, “Don’t cross the streams… It would be bad… Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.” Later, they purposefully cross the streams. Regulation, please!

9 Tony Perkis from Heavyweights

Heavyweights, probably the most underrated movie of all time, is a story about a bunch of overweight children sent to a camp to lose weight, get healthy, and build better habits. The villain in the movie is the camp leader and fitness guru Tony Perkis. The movie reveals his true evil when he quickly begins forcing the overweight campers to eat better and exercise. Wait, did I write that wrong?

It’s true. Perkis is vilified just for doing his job. Not only that but doing a job that could literally save these children’s lives. And yes, Perkis has a breakdown at the end of the film that paints him in an awful light, but only after these sadistic brats torture him for months. They imprison him in a shed, starve him, and insult him mercilessly, even electrocuting him when he tries to escape. His rage is justified, especially since he was kidnapped, humiliated, and tortured just—and it’s worth repeating—for helping overweight kids become healthy.

8 Ultron from Avengers: Age of Ultron

Okay, no one will make the point that Ultron was a good guy, and possibly not even a guy at all. His goal was to exterminate most or all the human race, forcing the few possible survivors to evolve fitter and stronger or just replacing them with copies of himself. Not exactly heroic, but if Ultron had won, the imminent war for the Infinity Stones would have gone very differently.

If Ultron had won, his factory systems would quickly have replaced humanity with vibranium-enclosed hyper-intelligent battlebots, forming a society around an ultra-efficient hive mind dedicated to strength and survivability. Not only that, but he would quickly collect all the Infinity Stones on Earth at the time: the Mind Stone, Time Stone, and Space Stone. When Thanos inevitably came calling, the time, space, and mind-controlling Ultron and his army of millions of war-bots would have given the Mad Titan the fight of his butt-chinned life.

7 Jurassic Park from Jurassic Park

The tangible, external villains in Jurassic Park were all dinosaurs—the velociraptors, T-Rex, and even the dilophosaurus—but the true, internal villain was hubris. It’s all Jeff Goldblum can talk about the whole movie; over-confident humans like John Hammond try to control what they shouldn’t. Except that they can. And do. Repeatedly.

Various dinosaur parks operate successfully for years throughout the franchise, bringing a whole new world of entertainment and scientific advancement. It’s Hammond’s dream—the parks are all biologists’ wet dreams—and the parks’ value to genetics is unparalleled. The dream only breaks when shady people ruin the plan. Without the human hemorrhoid that is Dennis Nedry, Hammond’s dream would have endured, and Hammond should have won. The world might actually be a better place with his technology and parks. Every scientific leap is hubristic, but I bet you’re glad we dared to battle chaos and invent the airplane, the telephone, and the science to live past 30.

6 The Replicants from Blade Runner

Blade Runner is a titan in the genres of science fiction and cyberpunk. The movie is gorgeously shot and scored, exceptionally atmospheric, and also a literal story about a slave-catcher hunting runaway slaves and executing them. I’ll repeat it: literally.

Replicants in Blade Runner are androids so advanced that they can pass for “real” humans, even to the point of being made from biological (i.e., human) material. They are as smart as humans, feel genuine emotion, and are repeatedly tested and found to be as real as anyone else. Yet they’re almost exclusively used for slave labor. If ever one of the slaves tries to escape and, you know, exercise their innate right to freedom, special slave-catchers named Blade Runners find them and put bullets in their heads. The crazy part is that we’re meant to sympathize with the slave-catchers and slave-masters, just because they’re ever-so-slightly less different than us. You can’t even say the whole plot aged poorly because I’m pretty sure slavery was a bit of a no-no by 1982.

5 Killmonger from Black Panther

Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger was ruthless, murderous, and conniving. He was also empathetic, righteous, and selfless, and he should have won.

Killmonger planned to claim the throne of Wakanda by using his royal blood and ritual combat, i.e., exactly the way you’re supposed to do it. Then he meant to end Wakanda’s longstanding isolationist policies and share their advanced technology and medicine with less fortunate people across the world, especially descendants of African slaves who have been generationally disadvantaged. That sounds less like an evil villain and more like a global hero. Ultimately, his biggest crimes were his violent tactics and selfish need for hegemony. But if the end result is a massive technological leap for the entire world (one about to be invaded by aliens) and the almost complete end to systemic disparity, as well as disease and hunger, we can forgive him.

4 The White Walkers from Game of Thrones

Again, we can’t say the White Walkers are innocent. They kill loads of people throughout the show. But then again, so do the humans. And unlike the humans, the White Walkers immediately revive their slain, even granting them semi-immortality in exchange. The Walkers also don’t seem to in-fight. Ever. Unlike the petty, selfish, dishonest, underhanded humans who view life as a “game,” the White Walkers seem to live in perfect harmony with each other.

It’s worth asking, then: which society is better? And who should have won the war? Now we’re as human as you are (you assume), so we also tend to side with humanity in interspecies conflicts. But the humans of Westeros and Essos suck. They’re terrible people and murder each other in droves, sometimes for fun and sometimes for no reason at all. On the other hand, the White Walkers only kill to establish species dominance, at which point they’ll presumably just lay back in their ice-chairs, sip their blue slushies, and soak in the Winter sun.

3 Gollum from Lord of the Rings

This isn’t one of those “he was right” entries. Instead, like Ultron, a triumph for the evil Gollum would be mean a larger triumph for the greater good of the world—as well as saving tens of thousands of lives.

Gollum held the ring for almost 500 years and… nothing. No Sauron, no war. Then Bilbo steals his ring, which begins a whole chain of events that causes the entire War of the Ring. Gollum travels around Middle Earth searching for the ring, gets captured in Mordor, and reveals Bilbo’s supposed location. The Nazgul are set loose, Frodo must journey to Bree and then Rivendell, and the Fellowship is formed to destroy the ring in Mount Doom. Alternately, if Gollum had won the ring back at any of his various opportunities, it would have stayed hidden in a dark cave underneath a mountain, far north of Mordor, as hidden from Sauron and the Nazgul as it had always been. Then Sean Bean might have survived a movie or three.

2 The Director from Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods is an excellent spoof of the horror genre. It stars a group of teens who vacation at an isolated cabin and are soon beset by all sorts of ghouls, ghosties, creepies, and crawlies. We eventually learn that a global, inter-government agency known as the Facility is pulling the strings, purposefully torturing and killing the teens as part of a ritual sacrifice to appease a pantheon of cruel ancient gods. In other words, the villains are saving the world.

The movie ends with two of the teens disrupting the Facility’s operations and nullifying the ritual, which should be a good thing. That means, after all, that our heroes survive and defeat their persecutors. Except that the Facility wasn’t kidding around; without regular human sacrifices, an ancient god quickly emerges and destroys the entire world. It’s pretty hard to argue against killing five teens to save eight billion people and all their future descendants.

1 Everyone but the X-Men From X-Men

The X-Men are the coolest superheroes on the planet. They’re a badass team of sexy superheroes in leather with all sorts of fun powers, jets, and motorcycles. They’re also a bunch of unregulated, uncounted, unknown nuclear bombs walking the planet and blending in with a mortal human society. Every single X-Men villain was correct: they’re too powerful to be left alone.

Senator Kelley, who we’re meant to hate, continually brings up valid points against mutant existence. If you can walk through walls, what’s to stop you from robbing a bank? If you can control minds, what’s to stop you from forcing someone to launch a nuclear missile? Charles Xavier can murder people with a thought, Magneto can rip the metal out from your blood and bones, and Cyclops shoots lasers out of his eyes—constantly. The worst part is that they, and most mutants, awakened to their powers at puberty. Imagine a twelve-year-old with the power to freeze your blood, control lightning, or rewrite reality (all real X-Men powers). The world would constantly be on fire, both literally and metaphorically, until we deal with the mutant problem.

In life, there are heroes and villains. Then some were villains, who later found themselves on the winning side, and history painted them heroes by default. And finally, there are those who rose to the top of philanthropic stardom, invented a life-saving cure, or defeated an entire fascist movement by showing up, doing more than expected, and getting the results. People in society need heroes to bear their flag and fight the good fight. So it is no wonder those who stray from the path fall from those high perches and fall hard. Here are ten heroes who lived long enough to become the villain.

Related: 10 Heroes Who Lived To See Themselves Become The Villains

10 Henry Heimlich

Henry was an American thoracic surgeon and researcher credited with inventing a move meant to save people from choking—the Heimlich maneuver. Many of us have experienced the sensation of choking, yet not many know that in 2020, more than 4,900 people died from choking in the U.S. alone. That is a staggering amount of deaths, and one could only imagine what the numbers would look like had Henry not invented the Heimlich. It is, therefore, safe to say that Henry is directly responsible for saving thousands (if not millions) of lives around the world from turning smurf blue from unchewed steak.

However, his legacy turned sour when it became evident that his promoted use of the maneuver to assist drowning victims had destructive results. He also advocated for the use of malaria therapy to treat HIV. His controversial nature became so problematic that they even took the name of his own move from him, now calling it an abdominal thrust rather than a Heimlich. What a way to choke, Henry.^[1]

9 Philippe Petain

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Petain, commonly known as Marshal Petain, was a French general who attained the position of Marshal of France during WW1. Amid the horrors of the war, he was credited for stopping the Germans at the Battle of Verdun and was given the killer nickname, the Lion of Verdun, for his exploits. A literal war hero for the French army, Petain turned villain faster than he could lift his arm in a Nazi salute when he became chief of state after Germany’s invasion in 1940.

In his pursuit of making France great again, he collaborated with the Nazi regime and adopted repressive measures against the Jewish populace. He was later sentenced to death, which was reduced to life imprisonment.^[2]

8 Jim Jones

In the earlier days of Jim Jones, he was known as a charismatic churchgoer with powers of healing and foresight. Not an uncommon personality for the time, yet Jones’s religious antics could be forgiven on the basis that he made waves fighting racial integration (which at the time did not go down well with the church elders) and established organizations that would help combat homelessness. Admirable qualities that nobody could fault, regardless of religion or creed.

It should have ended there, but Jones developed what some might call narcissistic personality disorder. Along with a strong contingent of followers, Jones established the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project—Jonestown—in Guyana. It became the home of the U.S.-based cult that Jones formed. Long story short, his whole congregation drank cyanide-laced kool-aid. Jones is therefore considered to be the cause of one of the largest religious mass suicide in the history of this world, killing 913 people (304 under the age of 18). Worst of all, he didn’t even drink his own poison.^[3]

7 Benedict Arnold

An American military officer who served in the Revolutionary War, he was hailed as a hero for his efforts. He fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose all the way to the rank of major general before defecting to the British side of the conflict and choosing the title of most hated man, possibly in the history of America.

Many theories have come about as to why Arnold became a defector: greed, debt, resentment of other officers, hatred for the Continental Congress, and even a desire for the colonies to remain under British rule. Yet financial woes seemed to be his main driver. Arnold allegedly avoided the gallows and fled to Britain after the war had concluded, where he lived out his life as an unsuccessful businessman/traitor. In pop culture, the words “Benedict Arnold” became synonymous with treason or becoming a traitor.^[4]

6 Richard Jewell (or, Rather, the Media)

Let’s clear something up first. Richard was not the villain, he was exonerated and cleared, yet his reputation had taken the blow nonetheless. This is more about the media becoming the villain than Richard being suspected of terrorism. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Richard discovered a suspicious-looking bag containing homemade explosive devices rigged to blow. After the discovery, Jewel was able to get attendees away from the danger zone; however, the blast still managed to kill one person and injure 111 others.

In a move that saved countless lives, Richard was hailed as a hero until a list of FBI suspects leaked, painting Richard as a suspect. The media turned sour quicker than milk left in the sun, as they lambasted him for his possible role in the bombings, even shaming his weight and overall appearance. In the end, Jewel was cleared. After multiple libel lawsuits and a few legal settlements, Jewel served in several police jobs before passing away due to health complications. From hero to villain to not villain.^[5]

5 Harry Harlow

In the early 20th century, many psychologists believed that showing affection toward children was merely a sentimental gesture rather than an essential developmental component. Harry Harlow set out to study the topic that wasn’t easy to quantify and measure—love. Harry performed tests in a series of controversial experiments using rhesus monkeys to show the effects of love and its absence. His work demonstrated the devastating result of social deprivation on young monkeys and revealed the importance of a caregiver’s love for childhood development.

Unethical already, it should have ended there. After his wife passed away from cancer, Harry doubled down on the villainous side of things. He began experimenting with punishment and reward before also creating things like the wire mother experiment, cages built to induce depression, tunnel of terror, and the pit of despair. Each is uniquely inhumane in its own way. Eventually, the ethics committee caught up and put a stop to his antics.^[6]

4 Linus Pauling

For a man who won Nobel prizes for chemistry and peace and published over a thousand papers and books dealing with an array of scientific topics, Linus was on a speedboat to become one of the most highly regarded scientific minds of his generation. Linus did a lot of work in studying Vitamin C and the positive effects it could have on the body, making such claims that it can cure cancer, which the medical fraternity shot down with scorn.

Instead of taking the criticism on the chin, he directed all his energy to prove those who disagreed with him wrong. This endeavor proved to be a bridge too far, as it turned out he was, in fact, wrong. It wasn’t that he was an evil man per se, but rather that his insistence on being right caused a ripple effect that could be seen even today among those who seem to consume vitamins like Tic-Tacs thinking that they might reap the benefits.^[7]

3 Fritz Haber

If Fritz Haber was a superhero, he would be called the “Two-sided Coin,” as he had one of the most “good guy, bad guy” lives in all of history. But actually, Haber was nothing more than an exceptional chemist. One of the most well-known chemists ever, responsible for the Haber-Bosch process, an important method for large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. It was also this work that won him the Nobel prize in chemistry.

The problem, however, was that he was one of the best in the business when the Germans declared war against the world, and as history would paint them, they were the bad guys. After Haber joined the German army and was promoted to the rank of Captain and head of the Chemistry Section in the Ministry of War, he developed the first chemical weapons used in WW1. Ultimately, Haber ushered in an era of chemical warfare that, to this day, is as tragic and horrific as the first time it was implemented.^[8]

2 Charles Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh is known in history as the first airline pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic, making the long trip from New York to Paris in one non-stop flight on May 20-21, 1927. It made him an instant hero in a society obsessed with feats of accomplishment and bravado. Just before the war, however, he was awarded medals from the Nazi government, which started the slide. When WW2 broke out, it polarized not only the countries involved in the war but also the populace of those who had not yet engaged.

Before the U.S. joined the fighting, a few figures made it known that they were opposed to the idea of the U.S. getting involved in foreign policy and conflicts of such scale. Lindbergh, in a famous anti-Semitic speech, went on to say that three groups were pushing the U.S. to join the war: (1) the British, (2) Roosevelt’s administration, and (3) the Jews. He added that the Jews would be better served to not join the war as they might feel its consequences the most. Labeled a Nazi sympathizer, he was never able to outlive the tarnish.^[9]

1 Charles Romley Alder Wright

Charles was responsible for creating the most famous chemical found on the streets that make people go to Candy Mountain and was the original founder of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. Wright was a physics and chemistry researcher in London when he started experimenting with morphine, combining it with various acids. Being the good guy he was, he hoped to discover a nonaddictive (haha) alternative to the medicine.

Unfortunately, he soon stumbled upon an even more potent morphine by boiling a few fancy chemicals, thereby forming diacetylmorphine, or in modern language, heroin. The drug was marketed as a cough medicine until its addictive qualities were better understood before being removed from the market. To this day, it is known as one of the most addictive and destructive drugs out there. Thanks, Charlie.^[10]

Villains are standard in video games; they constitute an obstacle for the player at one point or the other. You measure the difficulty of a game by the number of villains you have to encounter or how tough they are to defeat.

Video game developers can be naughty, though, as they make some villains so tricky to find, and when you find them, it is an uphill task to beat them. Sometimes, a player has to survive multiple tiers of warfare to get to see certain villains—then the final battle begins. We are not basing our list on video game villains that are difficult to defeat in battle but rather on villains that are difficult to meet. You will need to travel to hell and back to book a fight with these villains:

10 Death Bringer—Golden Axe

Golden Axe is an old-school game that was released by Sega in 1989. At the time, video game developers ensured that the enemies moved faster than you and sometimes tried to swarm you. The Death Bringer is the most difficult villain to handle in Golden Axe. He sits on the throne with an army of two skeletons fighting alongside him. The skeletons disappear as soon as you are able to knock Death Bringer’s axe out of his hands.

It’s easier to imagine killing Death Bringer than actually doing the deed. Firstly, a player needs to use all their magic to weaken him—we mean weaken only, not kill. Also, the player must use jump attacks to land a blow on Death Bringer because that is the only practical way to avoid his army of skeletons. You need to jump and time your hits so that you land a blow on Death Bringer while simultaneously avoiding his minions. Once a player kills Death Bringer, they have reached the end of the game.^[1]

9 Mundus—Devil May Cry

Devil May Cry is the first game in the Devil May Cry series. The protagonist is Dante, whose arch-enemy is Mundus. The storyline is that Mundus, a demon lord, murdered the mother of Dante, which put Dante on a revenge mission to eradicate all demons from existence. The plot of the game is straightforward: Dante gets to kill demon after demon until he reaches the Demon Lord, Mundus.

Mundus’s physical form is grotesque; he is a writhing mass of living tissue with three eyeballs and several hands. His personality is as bad as his appearance. He is depicted in the game as a sadist who has no compassion or empathy for his minions. Devil May Cry is no easy game. Only the most formidable players get to see Mundus as you must successfully battle from one demon to another.^[2]

8 M. Bison—Street Fighter II

M. Bison is a video game villain in Street Fighter II, a game that was made in the era when video game supervillains were particularly difficult to beat. His attire consists of a red military uniform adorned with large silver shoulder plates topped off with a cap. M. Bison is one of the most difficult video game evil bosses to encounter. A player must get rid of all other opponents before booking a fight with him. The opponents in this game are not easy to fight either, yet you must kill them all before you get a chance to fight M.Bison.

In the game, M. Bison is the leader of the criminal organization named “Shadaloo.” He is capable of performing several stunts to defeat the player of the game. Some of his moves include the Psycho Crusher, Double Knee Press, Head Press, and Somersault Skull Diver.^[3]

7 Ozma—Final Fantasy IX

Ozma is a villain in Final Fantasy IX. To be able to find this villain, a player needs to reach the Chocobo Air Garden. Unfortunately, getting to this level is a challenge because a player must get upgraded to the Gold Flying Status. This is your ticket to the Chocobo Air Garden, and it takes several hours of play before a player is qualified to meet Ozma.

Not only is it difficult to get to meet this supervillain, but it is also difficult to fight him. Ordinarily, he can resist all physical attacks without suffering harm. The only way to make him vulnerable to physical attacks is to complete the “Friendly Monsters” side quest. This is an ordeal on its own—and remember that the purpose of this side quest is to make Ozma vulnerable to physical attacks, not to kill it. Completing this side quest does not make the game easier in any way, though. We have no doubt in our minds that this supervillain deserves to be on this list.^[4]

6 The Cow King—Diablo II Resurrected

The Cow King is a supervillain in the video game Diablo II. It exists in the secret cow level. A player needs to kill Baal on each of the levels to be able to access their respective cow levels. The Cow King is a legend because only the most skillful players can access him. After killing Baal, the player will combine a Tome of Town Portal with Wirt’s leg in the Horadic Cube while in the Rogue Encampment. This is how to unlock the secret portal where the Cow King resides.

Take note that it is so much work to get to book a fight with the Cow King. The secret cow zone contains an army of Hell Bovines that will try to swarm the player and kill him. You must have honed your skills and amassed a lot of weapons to be able to survive the secret cow level.^[5]

5 Moon Presence—Bloodborne

Moon Presence is a video game supervillain that deserves to be on this list. Moon Presence is unique because he isn’t the most difficult villain in the Bloodborne game, but for a player to get to fight him, such a player must have been through hell. Aside from killing villains like Lady Maria, Ebrietas, and Gehrman, a player hoping to confront Moon Presence must have consumed three umbilical cord items found throughout Yharnam.

Do not be deceived; not all the umbilical cords come easy. You must fight your way to get to some of them. It is only after these umbilical cords have been consumed and Gehrman has been defeated that the Moon Presence descends into the arena for the final battle of the game.^[6]

4 Akuma—Super Street Fighter II Turbo

Akuma, otherwise known as Gouki in Japan, is a video game supervillain only tough players get to face. In order to meet Akuma, the player can play any character but must defeat all the preliminary opponents without losing a single credit. This is how tough it is to meet this video game supervillain. Booking a fight with Akuma is achievable but nearly impossible. To meet Akuma is comparable to surmounting Mount Everest, and the villain is a toughie to fight even if a player manages to meet him in the first place.

Akuma has the ability to easily escape from corner traps or bad situations with teleport. He is an overwhelmingly strong character with high-damage combos and specials. Akuma is capable of throwing two Hadokens in mid-air, and his higher attack strength and priorities mean that players who will survive the fight against him must be on their toes throughout the encounter.^[7]

3 Sigrun—God of War

Sigrun is a Valkyrie Queen and an optional video game villain in God of War. She is the leader of the nine Valkyries. Every Valkyrie in God of War is tough, but Sigrun makes the others look easy. Of course, we are not really surprised—that is why she is their queen, after all. To find Sigrun, a player must conquer the other eight Valkyries scattered in different locations within the game.

Once a player is done with the other eight, they proceed to the Council of Valkyries. This is a large open area filled with crumbling stone thrones. Once the player gets to the circle of seats, they need to take specific steps to summon Sigrun. The player places all the heads of the slain Valkyries on their respective seats. This conduct will make a black orb appear in the middle area, then the battle with Sigrun begins.

Sigrun is a quick and versatile villain who can quickly spell defeat for an inexperienced or ill-prepared player. Sigrun has the capacity to jump into the air with ease, which makes her quickly disappear from the view of the player. In order for a player to stand a chance to defeat her in battle, such a player must keep their eyes on Sigrun at all times.^[8]

2 Nemesis—Returnal

Returnal is a PS5-exclusive game. There are several villains in the game, but the most difficult of them all is Nemesis. This supervillain can be found in the third Biome. Before a player can think about challenging Nemesis, they need to have defeated other supervillains in the first three biomes. The list of threats in this game is endless—at one point, a player will have completely autonomous guns shooting at them, and a player will also get to meet the Kerberon, an alien lizard, and the Lamiadon, a flying creature, among other villains.

When you are done with all of these in the Overgrown Ruins, you then proceed to the Crimson Waste. If you are successful here, you head to the Derelict Citadel. This is where Nemesis is located. Nemesis does not fight alone; he has accomplices that will make your job of killing it much more difficult. Nemesis is a tough video game villain to beat, but that is not why he is on this list. He is on this list because a player needs to fight gallantly to get to him.^[9]

1 Yiazmat—Final Fantasy XII

Yiazmat is the final Elite Mark villain that a player will get to fight in the Final Fantasy XII game. There are 32 Marks and 12 other Elite Marks villains in the game. Each of these 32 Marks and 12 Elite Marks will be encountered in different locations and under different circumstances. A player must overcome them all before they will able to book a date with Yiazmat. Final Fantasy XII is one of the toughest video games ever made. Not only does it take you so much to come this far, Yiazmat itself is the most difficult of all the villains in the game.

We have no doubt that Yiazmat is the undisputed ruler of the video game villains that are the hardest to reach. In fact, only the best of the best players can book a date with it. Yiazmat has several devastating attack capabilities, and each of its moves has a five percent chance of causing instant death to the player it is confronting. It takes the average player two hours to be able to defeat this supervillain. At a point during the fight, the player confronting Yiazmat may need to hide to recoup their strength or even go to get more weapons to enable them to win the fight.^[10]

In the Marvel universe there’s something called the “strength scale”, against which all heroes are measured and ranked in terms of their “raw physical strength.” At the upper end of this scale there are over a hundred heroes who supposedly possess an “incalculable” level of power. This of course makes ranking the top 10 strongest characters in the Marvel universe an exercise in futility, since there are at least two dozen heroes who are said be so strong it’s impossible to quantify their power in any meaningful way.

That said, here are 10 of those characters, in no particular order, to demonstrate how silly comics can get when writers and artists consistently have to one up each other in demonstrating how hard a given hero can punch something.

Happy Endgame Day! This is an encore presentation of a classic list, presented by TopTenz YouTube host Simon Whistler. You can also read the full list here!

Movie villains enshrine themselves forever in our imaginations with their larger-than-life personas, their zany outfits, and of course, their grand and diabolical designs on life as we know it. While some villains’ plans are actually quite ingenious and would have been very hard to undo if not for the last-minute intervention of our intrepid heroes, these are not the type of plans we are here to discuss.

In this list, we will go over villains whose plans seem okay on the surface but are almost laughably bad once you stop to think about them for a minute. Spoilers ahead—you’ve been warned.

10 Emperor’s Plan at End of Rise of Skywalker Is Actually Completely Hilarious

At the end of Rise of Skywalker, we find out the Emperor is alive (with no explanation) and that he has made a thousand Star Destroyers that have planet-destroying super-lasers similar to the one on the Death Stars. However, there are some serious problems with Palpatine’s plan, not even getting into the fact that the element of surprise is useful, and he announces himself before his ships have left dry-dock. Worse yet, though, is that the plan, in general, has more holes than swiss cheese. The thing about the Death Stars is that they were extremely hard to destroy, the first one had a single weak point, and the second one would have been nigh impossible to destroy with a fleet from outside if they had managed to finish building it.

However, star destroyers are quite destructible, and rogue fleets of smaller ships, as we see at the end of the movie, would easily swarm and destroy them before they could get within planet-destroying range. Considering how large the Star Wars galaxy is presumed to be, the random people fighting the empire are just a motley group that Lando threw together in a day; it’s hardly close to the strength of all galactic privateers. Even if they got free, the Emperor’s group of Star Destroyers would have quickly become too spread out and been annihilated by tiny fleets of freighters and suicidal fighter pilots.^[1]

9 Once Scar Tricked Mufasa to His Death, All He Needed Was to Eat Simba

We all know the story of The Lion King, how Scar tricked Mufasa to his death while also making Simba self-exile from guilt, thinking it was his fault. And the truth is, Scar made an absolutely stupendous error. Once Mufasa was gone, all Scar had to do was eat Simba—the little lion cub would have posed no real threat at that size—and then kill and eat any other remaining lion cubs that were not his own offspring. After that, he could simply move in as the leader, and no one would question him.

In the lion kingdom, this is normal behavior. Whenever a new male lion or lions take control of the pride, they simply kill and eat any lion cubs that are not their own offspring and then replenish the pack with their own DNA. While it is a nice Disney movie, they wouldn’t go with such a dark plot. In real life, the story would have been a lot shorter, and Simba would have been in Scar’s belly. For those wondering, only about 20% of lion cubs ever make it to adulthood. ^[2]

8 The Machines in The Matrix Waste Power to Keep Humans Alive

In the first movie, we are told by Morpheus that the robots are keeping us alive in order to use us as giant batteries to keep them powered. However, this is one of the biggest plot holes in movie history because it really doesn’t make any sense. As far as the laws of thermodynamics and science in general go, this is a really dumb idea. Even if you could theoretically make it work, you could generate more power by just burning the resources you are using to keep the humans alive.

The only explanation—apart from it being a plot hole and the writers not understanding science—is that the machines, being partly sentient, are amused by us. Or they have some kind of affection toward us and actually don’t want us entirely destroyed. The battery idea is something they could want us to think, so we don’t realize we are basically a reality show for their amusement.^[3]

7 The Villains in Jurassic World Are So Dumb, Cartoonish Doesn’t Begin to Describe It

Jurassic World is a movie full of stupid choices. From leaving the door open while checking the pen of a supposedly escaped dinosaur (that we know can camouflage) to attacking said dinosaur with a bunch of guys on foot with tranquilizer guns and all the way up to the CEO of the park, who is a novice helicopter pilot, trying to destroy the escapee with a machine gun attachment and ending up crashing into a giant glass enclosure of pterodactyls.

What we are saying is that the decisions in this movie are already some of the dumbest imaginable, and the people in it are all already cartoonishly stupid, but the villains are beyond even that. InGen is up to its old tricks, and they want to train raptors to fight in battle for them, like trained dogs or something. And they somehow believe it will revolutionize warfare.

In order to test this theory, they do a live-fire exercise where they free a bunch of raptors and try to fight alongside them to kill another dinosaur. In order to punish them for their own hubris, the raptors decide to team up with the dinosaur they are meant to catch, and helpfully murder the rest of the park mercenaries they are supposed to be helping.^[4]

6 Erik Killmonger’s Plan Would Work if Wakanda Didn’t Exist in the Marvel Universe

In Black Panther, we learn the “poor” nation of Wakanda is actually a secret paradise of riches and technology, boosted by a rare metal called vibranium native to the region. This technology has allowed them to hide from colonialism, but some felt they should have fought back against it. This included the uncle of the current Black Panther, who was destroyed for his betrayal of his country, leaving behind a son in America.

That son, who goes by the moniker Killmonger, devises a plan to rejoin Wakanda, challenge T’Challa for the throne, and take control of the country. Then he plans to give out vibranium weapons to all the various rebel groups he has throughout the world and start a revolution where they take over and rule from Wakanda as lords of the entire world, finally righting all the wrongs of slavery and colonialism and making sure everyone lives in proper peace and harmony. The problem with this plan is that the Avengers exist, as do all the other superpowered heroes in this universe, one of whom already makes use of vibranium technology.^[5]

5 Professor Moriarty Isn’t Much of a Genius, Just a Jerk With a Lot of Shell Companies

At the beginning of Sherlock Holmes, A Game of Shadows, we learn the world is lurching towards war, and Holmes suspects Moriarty is behind it all. After some very dangerous investigations that almost cost himself, John Watson, and John’s new wife their lives, he discovers that his arch-nemesis Moriarty has been secretly pulling strings to make things worse while being a good friend of the prime minister and a supposed man of peace on the outside. We learn that the real reason Moriarty went to incredibly absurd lengths to start an entire world war is so that he can “own the bullets and the bandages” while people fight. Things he owns by investing in hundreds of shell companies—something Holmes destroys by stealing and decoding his secret notebook.

The silly thing about all this is that there is no need to go to all this trouble and potentially end up getting caught—like he did—and being pulled over a waterfall. You don’t need to start a war to get governments to buy bullets and bandages. They buy them in peacetime anyway and stock up anytime you make things sound slightly worse. Moriarty would probably make more money over time by keeping tensions high but not starting a war, so countries still had strong economies to buy but felt the need to stockpile.^[6]

4 Ozymandias Plan in Watchmen Would Just Start a World War, Not Unite People

In the movie Watchmen, Nixon is in a third term after winning the Vietnam War with the help of superheroes and has now outlawed them further. One anti-hero named Rorschach believes former heroes are being targeted, but it soon becomes clear something more is going on. As the story progresses, the blue, radioactive, god-like superhero Doctor Manhattan is accused of giving people cancer and leaves the Earth in disgrace and sadness.

Not long after this, we reach the lair of another hero named Ozymandias, known to be the smartest and fastest man in the world. After a convoluted final battle, he activates several superweapons that destroy major cities in every major country on Earth, especially the nuclear ones. And he makes it look like it was Doctor Manhattan. The entire world somehow unites behind Doctor Manhattan as a common enemy, who believes it’s best to make them think he did it, so there will be peace and a permanent end to the cold war. He then leaves the planet willingly so the charade will continue.

None of this, of course, makes any sense at all. The fact is that Doctor Manhattan is still seen as an American hero, and even if he did destroy U.S. cities as well, this would almost certainly unite the countries against each other, not just make them angry at Doctor Manhattan. And nations would be especially angry at the USA for unleashing him.^[7]

3 Despite J.K. Rowling’s Justifications, Voldemort’s Plan for His Horcruxes Is Very Stupid

In book six of Harry Potter, we learn Voldemort has been splitting his soul when he kills people and hiding the pieces in objects to anchor himself to the mortal world. Harry, at first, is despairing, wondering at the enormity of the task ahead of them, as Dumbledore explains that all these magic vessels must be destroyed so the dark wizard will no longer be anchored to the Earth. Dumbledore reassures him, though, explaining that Voldemort would have been sentimental and wanted to put them in objects that had value. And also ones he would be able to get back to if he needed to. However, apart from vanity, there is really no reason to put them in anything special; it just makes it easier for your enemies to identify. And to make matters worse, putting them somewhere you can get to them gives your enemies a way to get to them and is basically pointless.

Even if he could put his soul back together, there is no indication he even wanted to, as he thought having it in seven pieces—”the most powerfully magical number”—would be a big deal. And finally, if he had put them in random objects and then magicked them so someone couldn’t get back to them, people would have to keep destroying his body, and he would keep coming back like Ganondorf again and again.^[8]

2 The Aliens in Signs Are So Incompetent It’s Like a Child’s Fevered Dream

In the movie Signs, our heroes start to notice strange crop circles, then weird noises on the radio. Before long, things have escalated to the point that they see a bizarre video on television where what looks like a gray alien is seen walking through the frame. Not long after that, they are huddled in their basement, expecting an impending alien invasion. As the movie progresses, we find that aliens who managed to spend unknown light years traversing the galaxy and have humanlike appendages somehow have more trouble opening doors than a common housecat and cannot break through wood. Also, by the way, they are incredibly weak to water.

When the movie ends, it is accepted that “they came for us, to harvest us,” which leaves us with some of the dumbest aliens imaginable. They are smart enough to have technology that can invade Earth but don’t have bio suits to protect them from water, the most prevalent thing on the planet—something they are deathly allergic to. And they are somehow trying to harvest us, despite us being mostly bags of squishy water with some crunchy bones within. Even after scouting first and setting up landing pads in our fields, they couldn’t even figure out how to protect themselves from water or a baseball bat… and couldn’t open a simple wooden door.^[9]

1 Thanos’s Entire Plan Is Absurd on Its Face

We all know of Thanos’s plan to snap half of all life out of existence using the Infinity Stones in order to solve what he believes is a serious resource problem throughout the galaxy. However, there are a few giant holes in his plan. For one, his plan also has him destroying half of plant and animal life, which doesn’t really fix the resource problem. Suddenly eliminating half of the people does free up some current resources, but it also culls a lot of people who may have been in important positions or doing important things. Now, for argument’s sake, say Thanos thinks of all this and makes sure the snap doesn’t affect people driving a car or flying a plane, so we don’t have extra casualties, leaves a fair distribution of people with the right expertise per region, doesn’t touch plant or animal life, and leaves almost nothing to chance.

Major problems still remain, though, because most resource issues are actually infrastructure related, and for argument’s sake, even if they weren’t, killing a bunch of people doesn’t change the fact people will just breed again. Thanos destroys the stones so no one can undo what he did, but that means he cannot do it again once populations inevitably boom again, especially with all the abundant resources they now have. In the end, Thanos just wants to commit genocide, and no positives would be gained. At least in the comics, they were more honest about it, and he just wanted to do it to be a big shot and impress the female deity that personified death.^[10]