For me, it would be GLaDOS.
Portal 2 spoiler
She deleted the one remaining human part of herself because it was just too much to deal with. She releases you at the end of Portal 2 as a path of least resistance measure because “killing you is hard.”
What about you, what is your favorite media villain?
Andrew Scott as Moriarty he was so fun
robby rotten
Galactus. Not good, not evil. Just a big, hungry boy.
isnt he exactly like ULTRON from transformers, both somehow needs to eat planets to survive. but movies did both villians so dirty, barely give them any screentime.
First Steps gave Galactus plenty of screen time. Definitely did him justice in my opinion.
probably Junko Enoshima because she’s so unmatchedly fucking bonkers batshit kookoo bananas unhinged
insanebut keeps it together just well enough to cause an apocalypse by shitposting really hard
Tied between Handsome Jack and Javert. Both misunderstood in their own ways.
Sand dan Glokta from the First Law series of gritty fantasy novels by Joe Abercrombie.
He is a crippled, razor-tongued former war hero turned inquisitor: physically ruined by torture but mentally sharp, cynical, and ruthlessly pragmatic.
Handsome Jack.
Best hero to villain in a game yet. Plus dude had charisma for days so even though he was a clear cut asshole you couldn’t help but love his antics.
Butt Stallion is an amazing throwaway joke, just so much thought put into even the stupid stuff.
Final Fantasy XIV has some good ones. The most signature would be Emet Selch, from Shadowbringers. The big challenge on his part was that the “Ascians” were seen as these cringey, Kingdom Hearts-style grimdark villains for a long time, and Shadowbringers had the challenge of turning them into complex characters.
His voice actor, René Zagger, isn’t even known for much more than that role and he plays it very well - achieving both jesting Kafka-esque mocking and jesting, as well as earnest, righteously-driven rage.
Another one, I’ll only refer to as The Mastermind, from Ace Attorney Investigations 2. The whole game structures its 5 cases towards that pinpoint much better than you’d realize, while still telling a great story up until then. The Mastermind themselves acts in a somewhat melodramatic way before you identify them, but has some appreciable complexities to them that add to the character journey Edgeworth is getting in that game.
Shigaraki Tomura, Boku no Hero Academia.
For starters, he’s this regular emo kid (about 19-20), except he’s got like a dozen disembodied hands grasping him from his torso and arms to his head and face.
The reason for the hands is pretty bizarre. Spoilers for the second half of season 5:
Tap for spoiler
He killed his whole family, including his sister, parents, and grandparents, and was adopted by the world’s greatest villain, who preserved the hands and attached them to him to remind him where he came from.
Oh, his super power? “Decay.” Anything he lays all five fingers on turns to ash. It’s as awesome and terrible as it sounds. What’s worse? Final season spoilers:
Tap for spoiler
Decay wasn’t originally his power. The greatest villain can steal and give out powers. He actually took Shigaraki’s original power and replaced it with Decay. He set him up for failure and then adopted him to turn him into a monster.
The author, Horikoshi Kohei, is a huge Star Wars nerd. If Shigaraki Tomura sounds like “anime Darth Vader,” that’s intentional. Except when “anime Luke Skywalker” tried to turn him back to good, final season spoilers:
Tap for spoiler
It doesn’t work. Shigaraki tells Midoriya he’s too far gone and gives him a message to tell his best friend, another, minor, villain he played League of Legends with — I’m not kidding, they drop that name — and Midoriya delivers the message. Which is basically that right up to the end, he wanted to destroy everything. The message has the intended effect of showing the younger man that he was wrong.
And the kicker? Minor season 5 spoiler:
Tap for spoiler
Shigaraki Tomura wasn’t even his name. Shigaraki was the family name of the villain who adopted him. His birth name was Shimura Tenko — he was also the grandson of Midoriya’s mentor’s mentor.
Note that all names use the Japanese naming convention of giving the family name before the given name (e.g. “Lincoln Abraham”), and the show is known outside of Japan as My Hero Academia.
Edit: I also like GLaDOS. YSK she’s also in Cyberpunk 2077, if only in spirit. Ellen McLain reprises her role and reuses some lines while voicing a psychotic robotaxi. I assume, with permission from Valve (who probably loved the cameo).
Genuinely the scariest movie villain
The washroom beating was brutal.
sega killer
Sneaky, invasive advertising.
Hans Landa because Christoph Waltz is just such a good actor
the swarm from stanisław lems “invincible” (not the invincible show, this is a completly unrelated sci fi novel) (also the swarm is not really a villian its more like defending its territory
