Favorite Villain

I'm quite partial to Majora from Zelda. It first seems like a generic evil force, but once you take the context of the game and all of its dialogue into account, it becomes a deep message of death and what it means to "wear a mask".

Other villains I love are Gilgamesh from the Fate series, Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist, Kuja and Caius from Final Fantasy, Darquesse from Skulduggery Pleasant, Egil from Xenoblade, Albedo from Xenosaga and Hades from Kid Icarus. I'm sure there are loads I'm forgetting right now, but off the top of my head, those are the ones that come to mind.

 

Hmm this is actually a hard question but there are a lot of villains I really admire:
Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs - I don't think he's as frightening as Buffalo Bill (because I honestly think he seems to be more realistically psychotic than Lecter) but I feel like he's one of the most intelligent villains out there.

Joker(Heath Ledger) of The Dark Knight - I feel like Heath Ledger reinvented Joker's character and man was he such a brilliant actor. The Hospital Explosion scene where he was trying to push the detonator is my favourite and leaves such a lasting memory for me and to find out that it was improvised and yet staying in his character proves why he deserved to win the Oscar.

Princess Azula from Avatar - Azula is such a likable villain because her character is not one-sided at all. She is very powerful and domineering but she's also very intelligent. She can also be funny whether it be unintentional(The Ember Island episode) or her usual one-liners. Despite how evil she was, I think what made her lose her mind in the end was that you realise how everyone turned against her and I do wish for more female villains like her.

 

Lorne Malvo from the TV adaptation of the film "Fargo" - Lorne is cool, calm and collected when on a villanous spree. I find him really intriguing because he seems completely different to other violent TV series villains and has a "nicer" side to him as well as firmly defending people who have done nothing wrong yet punishing those who do bad. Oh and some of the lines he comes out with are awesome due to the fact that they're so un-stereotypically villain-esque.

 

Oooh boy, awesome thread. Kaiser i cant wait to see your choices and how many (if any) we have in common ^^ this would be easier for me if I were confined to movies, games, tv, anime, etc but since the titles ambiguous I'll just have to put together a healthy mix~

I'm gonna kick my list off with 1 of the most obvious and obligatory choices - Batman's famed nemesis: The Joker has earned his place as one of pop culture's as well as my own favorite villians. The characters been portrayed in many different ways by many different actors, authors and illustrators plenty of which I believe are brilliant in their own respective ways. So the joker in my mind that ive come to love isnt any 1 specific incarnation but rather a conglomoration of all the different ideas and re-imaginings.

The main thing consistantly setting him apart from other comic book villians for me though is his relationship with Batman. He doesnt want to kill batman, or at least he doesnt simply want to kill him. Well whether he doesnt tends to depend on the writers as well as whatever he feels like doing at the given moment but anyway, his endgame is to compromise Batmans code and ideals of Justice; ultimately forcing him to kill either Joker himself or someone else. This presents batman with possibly the greatest moral conflict he's ever felt. To grit his teeth and continue handing Joker into the authorities, keeping faithful to his single greatest driving purpose in life ~ or to finally give in and take the life of one unstoppable, incurable, psychopathic mass murderer, effectively saving the lives of countless would be Joker victims. The best part, is at the heart of it all Joker truly believes Batman is the same as him, and he knows the moment he finally confronts the dark knight with a situation leaving him no choice but to kill someone; he has proven his point. Batman is no less a murderer than any of his supervillian nemeses, or on an even more personal level, the street thug who killed his parents. Even if Joker himself is the victim, he has got the last laugh. ~so to speak~

I could go on about the little details I love about this character but its mainly this dynamic (coupled with the fact that at the end of the day, neither of the 2 would exist without the other, and throughout the various material you get a pretty good impression that both share a deeper.. more personal bond than either.. ESPECIALLY batman wants to admit) that makes the Batman/Joker one of the most unique, and one of my favorite Hero/Villian relationships of all time, and of course cements the clown prince of crime as 1 of my favorite villians.

Ill have to get to the rest later on cause I need sleep~ that ended taking longer than I thought, all off my phone too. Someone gimme a trophy <_<

 

Oh god so many choices. Based on the sheer rage I feel when I see the little bastards face probably King Joffrey.

 

Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty (1959) - Pure evil
Callisto from Xena - Insane
Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians (1996) - Scared the crap out of me as a kid
The Mayor from Buffy - Humorous

 

Magneto... I can understand him perfectly. He doesn't trust humans, so do I. He expects worse from humans, so do I. For me this makes him very realistic character. Also he is not truly a villain, he's been back and forth.

 

Dr. Doofenschmirtz . He's so funny, goofy, and naming his inventions, including telling his back story, is hilarious.

 

Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) - Die Hard
Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) - No Country For Old Men
Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) and Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton) - A Song Of Ice And Fire/Game Of Thrones
Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) - Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan
Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy/Dino Andrade) - Batman Begins/Arkham series

 

Hmm, I'd say Darth Vader, Scar, and the Terminator (from the first movie).

 

Mithos from Tales of Symphonia since he was like a tragic hero in his own right. I empathized with him and his feelings for racism and his sister even though he was fucked up about it and went the wrong way about it.

 

I enjoyed King Joffrey as a villain.
Does Dr. Evil count as a villian? Let's say he counts. I generally dislike comedy, but can't help but love this fellow.
I also really liked Carcer from Pratchett's Night Watch, because he's just- perfect. Pratchett's a talented satirist and makes very unique, atypical characters and oh man oh man is Carcer fantastic. Incredibly intelligent, but not in an unbelievable way; he's a fellow who'd use books as toilet paper but cheat, lie, manipulate and if needs be fight his way out of almost anywhere.

 

Joker and Moriarty, particularly the BBC series - both are genuinely insane.

 

Virtually any villain will do. They've the best lines. Most seem to be charming...psychopaths excluded, but a bit of neurosis adds to the charm. Take "Scar" from The Lion King for an example...smooth, elegant, witty, cunning, sly...Truman Capote without the drugs or booze. Hannibal Lector is cut from the same cloth. You almost want these villains to win. When he's sautéing, a dinner companion's brain while the guest is seated at the table there's a justice and elegance behind the gestures. The ultimate perversity of offering them to an interested child on the plane on which he's escaping. Becky Sharp the cat that always lands in the cream. You just have to love them.

 

The Joker and Harley Quinn
Freddy Kruger (original not remake) for his one liners
Jigsaw and Amanda Young for their "work" (I dislike Hoffman)
And of cause Tiffany Ray from child's play for sheer brilliance (plus Jennifer Tilly has an amazing voice)

 

Albert Wesker (Resident Evil)
Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Medusa (Soul Eater)
Yami Bakura (Yu-Gi-Oh!)
The Joker (Batman)
The Order/Alessa (Silent Hill)
Team Rocket (Pokemon)
Mr. Burns (The Simpsons)
Oogie Boogie (The Nightmare Before Christmas)
Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

 

Anyone played by Christopher Lee
Frollo from the Disney version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

 

Arthur Mitchell aka the Trinity Killer from Dexter Season 4 is by far the creepiest, most sinister villain I have ever seen. Every scene he was in literally sent chills up my spine. And yes, I am using the word "literally" correctly in this sense. He was that terrifying.

 

Francisco Scaramanga (The Man With the Golden Gun)

Christopher Lee has played a lot of great villains over the years from his intimidatingly tall Dracula to his role as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man. But to me Scaramanga is my favorite Bond villain and of course favorite villain of all time because he in a way is Bond's evil double. He is a cold-blooded professional who has a taste for women and the finer things but took a much more evil path than Bond did and became the world's best assassin and the template for many assassins in films and of course a certain videogame series years to come as up until then hitmen weren't often presented as charming and dapper as Lee portrayed Scaramanga, which was a far cry from Ian Fleming's portrait in the book of the same name which had more of a smart-aleck Richard Widmark quality to the character. The movie's version though is much more intimidating as he could've easily taken Bond if Bond's luck had ran out by the end of the film.

BTW, as I was previewing I noticed Silver Springs mentioned Lee, looks like we definitely agree.