Everyone has encountered that one antagonist who was especially awesome or did something that made you go

My pick is the long haired "hero" with the impossibly long katana, Sephiroth!

reason 1: look at my avatar.

2:He does the unthinkable and kills the pretty hostage.

3: Ive lost count of how many times he skewered Cloud

4: Hes got (count them) one wing. Yeah. You try flying straight with one wing.

5: His English voice actor also does the voiceover for the Prius commercial. I smell irony!

Hmm, it depends how you see your "Bad Guys", but i've always found the enemies in "Avatar The Last Airbender" being amazingly well throught out, animated and voice acted.

If I had to pick my favourite it would definately be Azula, daughter to the Fire Lord, sister to the heir and exile. Drawn to power and able to get it, highly trained, sophisticated, and not above manipulating people to get her own ways. She's cold, calculated and can shoot fire from her hands.

My favourite aspect of all though has to be her descent into madness through her own scheming, especially her unresolved issues with her mother's dissapearence and her friend's betrayal of her...though it's more of a coming to their senses moment as Azula moves to destroy what they love.

I actually watched that show front to back recently. I was impressed, especially since it's a children's show.

As far as bad guys go, I'm a fan of Bill the Butcher from the movie Gangs of New York.

Also Riviera from my favorite book called Neuromancer. He has 'subliminal' implants. Basically, he can make others see what he imagines, and he's a pure scumbag.

I love Azula and the way the did their characters. THey were so much more than simple good guy/bad guy.

My favorite that I can think of at the moment would have to be Frollo from the Hunchback of Notredame (Disney version, I haven't read the book yet).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyS3weMlxLA

1) Amazing voice.

2) The usual Disney villain sings about how evil (s)he is. His song is torment

Ohh, I know! The current Master, out of Doctor Who, played by John Simm. He's hilarious! And yes. I AM a Doctor Who geek.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lk1kitU4...jr0mro1_100.png

A good choice, but the greatest villain in Doctor Who history (and I've seen all of them) is unquestionably Tobias Vaughn from The Invasion. It's technically a Cyberman story, but he absolutely steals the show.



"They can't harm us, Packer. We're in control...or at least I am."


There are a number of great villains I could go with for my #1, any number of which could conceivably be number one (including several from Doctor Who). I'll go with Frank from Once Upon a Time in the West, one of the best westerns ever made. Henry Fonda goes against type to play an utterly ruthless honoured user, and it may be the best performance of his career.

I'll go with Colonel Quaritch from James Cameron's Avatar on account of his sheer badassness. He didn't need a gas mask in a toxic atmosphere, he just accepted it out of courtesy.

His security briefing is pretty much all you need to know about him. His only concern is what goes on in the trenches, he has a job (protect human interests) and he will go all the way to accomplish it. Quaritch's cardinal sin seems to be his frank, unromantic view of Pandora and the locals. Aside from that, he is easily the coolest human character.

Game villain? Professor Pester from Viva Pinata: Trouble in paradise. When he marched into my garden and destroyed my first ever pinata I was ready to cry.

Movie villain? Sauron from LOTR. No question about it, he is one mean guy. He doesn't even need to appear in person! He just chills in his tower and stares at stuff.

Here are a few more movie villains to consider:

Alonzo Harris, Training Day
Don Emilio Barzini, The Godfather
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs

and what list would be complete without

Dr. Evil!

My favourite game villians are probably the Collectors for ME2.

Simply because I really, really hated them. Most game villians are just your token bad guys, you fight them because thats what you have to do to make the game progress. But in ME2 I found myself so vengeful whenever the Collectors abducted a colony that I actually was playing to defeat them, not simply for the sake of playing.

Yeah, I absolutely hate the collecters. On my first playthrough,*SPOILER* I had to watch my entire crew get pureed in giant blenders because I put off going through the relay for a long time.

If were talking about groups of enemies, its the dragon age darkspawn for me. When you *MORE SPOILERS*return to the battle place (forgot the name) I wanted to take a giant flaming greatsword and decapitate them all, for what they did to the king.

So who would it be for me... hmm...

I think I would have to say Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2. Without a doubt one of the most intelligent and cunning villains ever dreamed up.

Without a doubt, my most hated bad guy is Teyrn Loghain from Dragon Age Origins.

The man turns his back on the king, retreats from the battlefield with half the army, and gets the player character killed (temporarily at least), all so that he can try and take power during the darkspawn crisis. He poisons high ranking political figures, tortures innocent people, slanders your name, and hires assassins to kill you all to cover up this betrayal. For me he is the greatest video game villian of all time just because of the sheer hatred that I developed for him during the course of the game.

I agee on Dr. Breen. I would also put Sun Li the Glorious Strategist from Jade Empire up there

Concurred!

I think my top bad guy was "The Jackal" from Far Cry 2. He was a really complex character.

Rowan Atkinson as Toby was really good..

Al Pacino's performance naturally commendable, very.

It's a toss up between Al Pacino and Gabriël Byrne in Arnie's otherwise crap movie.. Al has the drive and raw passion, while Gabe has his devilishly good looks and of course his name going for him..

What Elizabeth Hurley managed to get paid for doing shall forever remain unspoken.. although she is single again. Gotta look in to that, note to self..

And of course Peter Stormare.. who's mere presence blew young Keanu away.

All very sympathetic, yes. I look forward to seeing all of them someday..

My top bad guys are all stupid.

As in, they are too blinded by their own dogma to realise the immorality of what they're doing; any evidence just gets slotted into their world picture of how righteous they are.

So this list includes:

1. Wallace Breen
2. Col. Miles Quaritch
3. That corporate weasel alongside Quaritch who'd have loved Tasmania
4. Tom Marvolo "Voldemort" Riddle
5. Albus Brian Wulfric Percival Dumbledore
6. Petunia and Vernon Dursley
7. Fred Phelps

There are other villains, but they are either transhuman (and therefore do not have human thought patterns), or insane (and therefore do not have rational human thought patterns.)

Mind you, the dividing line is unremarkably fuzzy.

Not my idea of villains.

Can I ask, why dumbledore?

Well, let's see. This man has huge amounts of power: he controls the International Confederation of Wizardry; he's top dog in the Wizengamot; and the headmaster of what appears to be the only wizarding school in Britain - at least one that examines for OWLs and NEWTs.

Yet, as a headmaster, he's bloody hopeless with staff selection. Snape's got bullying issues. Binns is a broken record. DADA professors are, in sequence, possessed, frauds, persecuted, impostors, government toadies, and God only knows what else. Decorated war hero be damned: if I were Minister of Magic I'd forcibly retire the old fart.

And then consider how he treated - or rather, didn't - the Boy-Who-Lived. Just dumps the babe on the doorstep and la-de-das off, thinking all will be fine. No checks, nothing. Almost as though he didn't care a jot about the boy's welfare, as long as he came to Hoggies hungry for belonging and approval...

Moreover he seems to have three mental blind spots: his own infallibility; an idiot faith in the inherent goodness of others (especially with regards to 'road to Damascus'-style conversions.) Many other fanfic writers have attacked his Utilitarian obsession with the 'Greater Good'... which seems to involve subjecting Harry to abuse, either because it suits his purposes, or because he's too damn stupid to contemplate that possibility, or because he's been agreed with for too damn long to let observed facts get in his way.

All this makes me think of this geriatric Gandalf as an idiot villain.

My favourite villain is actually from a fanfic (Aizen Keitarou from Meifu's Gate - it's a Bleach fic.) I mean, you see quite a few villains who do the psychological manipulation thing, trying to confuse the hero or talk them into thinking their actions are justified and they shouldn't be fighting/the hero should join them - but this is the first one I have ever seen that managed to sway me as the reader. He was so good at twisting the truth to his advantage that for the longest time I just couldn't figure out whether I was rooting for him or not even while he went and did horrible things to the protagonists. And later on I'd be shouting "NO!" at the screen anytime another character spoke to him, because engaging in conversation with him was usually the equivalent of laying down their weapons and surrending right then - he was just. That. Good. At the manipulation thing. I've never seen the like.

Other than that I'm having trouble coming up with anyone off the top of my head - I tend to dislike both "I'm evil just. Because. I'm evil, damnit!" and "I'm evil because I'm crazy!" type villains and they are sadly common. Give me believable motivations, please. Hmmm...

One villain who's coming to mind is Jon Irenicus from Baldur's Gate II, who scared me out of my wits when I was playing that.

My favorite villain is... *drum roll* Richard Moreau/Grey/The Master of Fallout I

Favorite villain you ask? Well now, that is quite the question as I have a great number of favorites! If I were, however, to pit them against each other to see who would win.... I'd guess that would be Ganondorf. After a battle against my top ten, Ganondorf would win, I think.

I suppose there are three for me.

#1 - Londo Mollori from Babylon 5, specifically seasons 2-4. What I love about him is that he is not your typical sociopathic bad guy. He's not insane, or the living embodiment of evil, or any of that. Instead he is actually a very sympathetic figure. In the first season we come to know him in a positive light. He is a screw-up, a loser, a washed up diplomat in a backwater post. At one point he describes himself as "the odd man out", and it sums him up to a tee.

But as the first season ends, the Big Bad makes him a deal, an opportunity not only for his own personal power, but also to return his now weak and decrepit nation to its once great status as a powerful empire. He takes it. He knows what he is doing is wrong, he feels guilty for the millions who die because of him. But he just cannot stop himself. This is his chance, and he is going to take it, no matter what it costs his soul.

I also like that Londo is not a super-powered tough guy. He is a thinker. When he puts his mind to it, he is simply a genius. Ironically he is at his best when it comes to murdering his allies. No one manipulates people like he does, and he does it with such style that you cheer for him. It also helps that his allies are much further along the true evil scale then he is. And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place, is a wonderful example of this. Not to mention what he does to Morden and the Shadows.


#2 - Scorpius from Farscape. Wayne Pygram (who also had a minor appearance as Governor Tarkin at the end of Revenge of the Sith) plays the stock evil overlord to perfection. I think what ticks for him are his motivations. He is a half-breed Sebecean/Scarran, the two biggest, evilest races in the galaxy. Also the most physically incompatible. The Sebeceans are very similar to humans, but have a serious problem with heat, which can kill them. The Scarrans on the other hand, are made for extreme heat. So the hotter he gets, the more raw power Scorpius gets from his Scarran side. And the more he comes to death thanks to his Sebecean half. Because of this he has to wear a special cooling suit, and even worse, cooling rods inserted into his skull, which have to be replaced on a regular basis.

He came about from a genetic engineering experiment by the Scarrans, and spent his early life as a Scarran lab rat. Until he eventually killed his keeper and escaped. He joined the Peacekeepers - a Sebacean mercenary empire - to get his revenge on the Scarrans. His interest in the protagonists is the wormhole technology that John Crichton has. The Sebaceans are vulnerable, and the Scarrans on the verge of finding out and launching an all out war to annihilate them. Scorpius needs the wormhole tech to turn the tide. He will do anything to get it, even putting a clone of himself inside John's brain.

He is tons of fun, because while being very powerful and ruthless, he has some serious weaknesses as well, along with some good motivations.


#3 - Darth Vader. Pretty much a cardboard supervillain. But he is the first bad guy I ever saw who was cooler than the heros. He wins for me simply on that coolness factor. James Earl Jones' voice is of course a big part of it. But his lines are just priceless. "Apology accepted, Captain Needa." is still one of my all time favorites. Along with "I find your lack of faith disturbing." I think he killed more Imperial soldiers than the Rebellion ever did! Which I liked, because it showed the real face of the dark side: unbridled destruction.

SubRosa: what you wrote about Londo Mollari, it makes me want to watch B5 all over again, front to back. And you're spot-on with your description of his character. Let me just add that I think another very telling episode where his character is concerned is the one where he nearly dies of guilt, The very long night of Londo Mollari I believe it is called.

Lord Vader. The guy has it all: Awesome suit check, cool weapon check, intimidating voice check, half mechanical body check, has people who are despicable and terrifying in their own right shaking in their boots check, cool powers check, and a complete disregard for all of his underlings check.

All in all it is very difficult to beat Darth Vader in an evil overlord contest with how Ralph Fiennes manages to sell the role, just awesome

Ahh...Subrrrossa, my goood and deearr frriend...*Points to self*...Meee, a baad guyy?...

I miss Mollari sooo much...Bless him...

My fave villain is Cardinal Richlieu from The Musketeers...True twirly moustache bad guy...Beaten at every turn but still comes out with a smile on his face...

Lord Harkon from the Dawnguard add on for skyrim, Thee Joker from batman, and Loki from Thor