Planet Freedom

A brief explanation before we begin. There have already been countless lists of the best villains in video games in the past, and chances are there are no two that are alike, but I like to think that my list is different in some aspects because I haven't let things like popularity of the character or the game it's in influence my decisions.

Here are some stipulations I set:

- The character cannot be evil by any sort of outside forces influencing him. If they had a rough childhood, if they're out for revenge, if they're being forced by a more powerful villain, he's disqualified from being on the list.
- The character cannot at some point have assisted the protagonist.
- The character cannot show any sort of remorse, guilt, shame, or otherwise any sort of human traits towards their misdeeds.
- If the character believes they are doing good, they are off the list. I offer some compromise to that rule with any robotic, or computerized characters, who generally don't believe in good or evil, but "necessity."

So as you can see from these guidelines, I wasn't just looking for evil.

I was looking for EVIL.

Anyhow, let's have a look at the list, shall we?

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20. Sirrus (Myst)

The younger of the two brothers imprisoned in books on the island of Myst, Sirrus and Achenar became obsessed with obtaining wealth and power at an early age, inciting civil wars between all the myriad ages (Different realms) in the game's setting, until their greed led them to unwittingly get trapped in book-prisons.

In the first game if you help Sirrus or Achenar escape their prisons, how do they repay you? Forcing YOU into the books, and tearing out the pages, leaving you powerless with no contact to the outside world.

So why not include both of them? In Myst IV, (Where the two brothers have escaped from their respective tomes.) Achenar has repented his evil ways, while Sirrus's incarceration has only served to make him more malevolent and more greedy.

19. Conroy Bumpus (Sam & Max Hit The Road)

A posh British gent masquerading as a country western star (Which itself is evil enough.) who enjoys collecting animals and either killing them or making them do kitschy country music floor shows at his ranch, Bumpusville.

Pretty douchebaggy to be sure, but what really seals the deal is the fact that much of the animals he's butchered have been converted into animatronics for his stage show. It matters not if you're a fan of animals or not, using a carcass as a supporting character in a Disney attraction is far past douchebagginess.

Yes, that's right. It's evil.

18. Mr. Burns (The Simpsons Arcade)

In the TV series, Mr. Burns has shown time and time again that he's not the heartless, vicious dickhead that he makes himself out to be, expressing genuine emotion and humanity several times. Technically he shouldn't be on the list.

But this isn't TV Burns we're talking about. We're talking Arcade Game Burns, who wouldn't think twice to endanger the life of an infant in order to get a gemstone, despite ALREADY being rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams anyway.

What a dickhead.

17. Carmen Sandiego (Carmen Sandiego)

Few people comprehend just how evil this character is, because her particular brand of villainy doesn't come from causing any sort of physical suffering or any of the other typical villain traits.

Her brand of villainy is a more psychological vareity, wherein she defies all physical laws by stealing a monument, or a wonder of the world, etc, then proceeds to taunt the player mercilessly throughout the game about how she will never be caught.

And y'know what? She never DOES get caught. (Except on the rare occasion you finally DO catch her...and it only takes about 5 minutes for her to break out again.) She doesn't even bother to hold on to the item she pilfered. She just stole it to make you run around in circles for her amusement.

As if that wasn't enough, she also treats her minions like scum, demanding they steal national landmarks as if they'd be easy to hide, and then never even bothering to lift a finger when they're finally caught.

Evil.

16. Hitler (Wolfenstein 3D)

If we were aiming for historical accuracy then technically Hitler should be disqualified from this list, since he thought he was doing the right thing by committing atrocities. Obviously we're not, so we're including what has to be one of the most hilarious (But no less evil) depictions of Hitler imaginable.

Cybernetic suit? Check.
Head in a jar? Check.
4 Ass-large chainguns? Check.

Go nuts.

15. Dr. Wily (Mega Man)

The evil version of Albert Einstein gets in for sheer obsessiveness, and persistency alone. If that wasn't enough here's the most awesome quote I've heard regarding Wily, compliments of Zeph:

"And the fact that he lost doesn't even phase him. 'Hell, he's not even going to let the future go well. He's like "fuck you guys, here's a virus. Holograms. Bam, dude."

14. "Through The Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce (Guitar Hero III)

I sense some of you are confused by this choice. Allow me to explain. Of all the songs in the entire Guitar Hero series, there has been no other song as popular, and yet so beastly and evil in its nature.

It is an impossible song that noone will ever be able to defeat in their lifetime. It is an insatiable rancor that feasts on players resolve and causes carpal tunnel syndrome. And thanks to its appearance in the video game it has inspired thousands of inspid, ill-conceived AMVs, and numerous fake "My 9-Year Old Beat TTFAF On 5-Star" videos to clog up the ALREADY clogged arteries of YouTube. For these it is become an evil entity all its own.

Do you know how many Guitar Hero Footage videos of the song popped up on ONE search for Through The Fire and Flames on Youtube? TWELVE. On a website that only allows 20 videos per page normally. More than the ACTUAL VIDEO.

13. M. Bison (Street Fighter)

He's the head of an international crime syndicate hellbent on world domination, (Who isn't?) he's responsible for the deaths of both Guile's pal Charlie and Chun Li's father, he brainwashes Ryu into a psychotically evil version of himself, posesses and burns out the body of Rose, (Who was a manifestation of his "Good" energies.) and of course as all evil dictators do, he had an enormous doomsday device.

But the kicker is that nothing could bring him down, so it took an arguably MORE evil villain (Who is disqualified for having an honor code.) to finally kill the bastard.

Oh yeah, and extra points for him and whoever programmed Street Fighter 2, for having/giving him that annoying-as-hell headstomp.

12. Adrian Ripburger (Full Throttle)

Ripburger makes the list for his complete total disregard for anything other than the bottom line. (Which pretty makes him a typical business major in college.) In a post-apocalyptic Mad-Max style world, where the only form of previous culture people have left to hold on to is motored vehicles in a world where hovering transportation is becoming more and more common, Adrian does all he can to force Corley Motors, the last motorized vehicle company in existence of which he is the vice president of, to make the more profitable switch.

That includes murdering the previous president, (A revered figure in motorcycle gang culture.) pinning it on the protagonist, Ben, and later attempting to run him and Corley's remaining daughter over with a truck.

Not the most evil acts you can think of, but Ripburger makes it onto the list since he's cut from the same cloth as other corporate douchebags like Kenneth Lay. Oh yeah...and he's voiced by Mark Hamil, who has a real knack for voicing really evil cartoon characters. (The Joker & Hobgoblin in the Batman & Spiderman animated series respectively.)

11. Mortimer McMire (Commander Keen)

Pretty much the sum extent of his character is wanting to blow everything that exists up for no reason and rubbing SAT scores in Keen's face. Rope that in with the superiority complex and the fact that he was willing to enslave an entire species for the express purpose of killing his archrival Commander Keen (Just in case he shows up.) and you've got a recipe for evil.

Be sure to keep an eye on people who brag about test scores and grades. You may just have another potential McMire waiting to erupt.

10. Hojo (Final Fantasy 7)

Yes, yes, it's oh-so-obvious to put Sephiroth on this list isn't it? After all he tops just about every goddamn evil villain list you can find. Well beans to that, I say. Sephiroth's not on this list, instead we've got the evil scientist responsible for putting that god complex into Sephy's mind in the first place.

And that's just the icing on the cake for this guy, not to mention his contempt for his fellow man, (Shrugging off countless Sephiroth clones that killed themselves to make it to the Northern Crater) lack of scientific ethics, (Mercilessly experimenting on Red XIII, attempting at Aeris, and near the end of the game even himself.) and that creepy slumping forehead of his that makes him look like Mr. Burns.

9. The Overmind (Starcraft)

It should be enough that the Overmind was once the helm of a race so powerful and bloodthirsty that it took two other races to squash it (And the dramatic death of a beloved character.) in the first game.

And we shouldn't even have to mention the evilness in and of itself of a Phalanx-like race that scours the galaxy for species it particularly likes, and assimilates them into themselves, effectively owning them forever, but....well.....we just did.

8. Smithy (Super Mario RPG)

It's one thing for a person to just want to take over whichever world the video game is set in, (If we were to include every single generic megalomaniacal villain in video gaming on this list, it would stretch for miles.) but you have to be pretty damn evil to take the pleasant topic of wishes, and want to replace them all with weapons.

There's no better metaphor for it: It's akin to setting baskets full of kittens on fire.

7. Lavos (Chrono Trigger)

Pretty much any villain whose bread and butter is killing entire civilizations to feed their own appetite is a shoe-in for this list. I've racked my brain for ways to best describe this spiny interdimensional butcher, and I've finally settled on this metaphor:

The Zerg Overmind with a time machine.

6. GLaDOS (Portal)

You know you've got cred when Jonathan Coulton writes a song about you.

If I had to guess just what the scientists were thinking when they programmed her, they were thinking of a sort of calm and matronly personae to put the Aperture guinea pigs at ease, and more calm towards their inevitable doom. Instead she is a cold and heartless abberation who casually muses about deadly neurotoxins and nearly tosses you in a furnace. (And we love her for it.)

Her worst crime by far, though? Reneging on a pledge to give the protagonist cake.

Which is BEYOND unacceptable.

5. The Elder God (Legacy of Kain)

A nightmarish Cthulhu-like creature, it's debatable whether the Elder God is in fact a god, but he's managed to convince a whole lot of people that he is. Whatever the case, he whets his appetite for evil throughout the series by driving the humans and vampires of Nosgoth to war against each other, parasitically feeding off of Nosgoth's Wheel of Fate, (A supernatural lifecycle) leads the naive protagonist Raziel on every which way, basically sending him after anything that could possibly be forseen as a threat to him...

Pretty much every event that led up to Nosgoth's downfall into an apocalyptic wasteland can be traced back to the Elder God.

It's at this point now that I'd like to submit forth my theory that any villain that's voiced by Tony Jay is a complete badass.

4. SHODAN (System Shock)

The blueprint of what future villains like GLaDOS would become, SHODAN would torture you before you even get to face her in combat. Taunting you over PA systems, cutting off friendly radio transmissions, and watching you from the computer monitors with a cold, and unfeeling stare.

Oh, yeah...And she hates humans....well not necessarily, being a computer program she's incapable of real emotion, so she doesn't necessarily HATE humans...it's just that her infallible internal can't comprehend how something so pathetic and worthless can exist.

3. Kefka (Final Fantasy 6)

Are you confused about just how evil a villain could be considered? Look no further than Kefka, because he is one of the pinnacles, one of the standards to which truly evil villains should be measured by. Among other terrible acts, he poisoned the waters of Doma castle and killed everyone inside of it...for FUN.

He doesn't have a backstory, he isn't out for revenge, he hasn't experienced any childhood trauma. He's just one evil goddamn bastard.

2. Hector LeMans (Grim Fandango)

It's one thing to do a lot of deplorable stuff in life, but apparently that wasn't enough for Grim Fangando's antagonist, who was based off of Sydney Greenstreet's character in Casablanca. During one of the final confrontations with Manny, Hector admits that when he was alive he'd been a "Very bad boy." Which we can only assume means he killed a crapload of people.

It's later heard that in the afterlife he's already managed to "sprout" (The equivalent of shooting someone in Grim Fandango, which causes the already dead residents of the Underworld to literally push up daisies.) over 500 people. As if it wasn't enough that his master plan was to steal tickets to heaven from otherwise deserving people and sell them to rich people. (Which he still did, even after learning that the tickets wouldn't work for the rich people.)

Even after death Hector kept on being an evil evil guy...Geez. Isn't time for a break or something?

1. The Enemy Paddle (Pong)

Cold.

Lifeless.

Unthinking.

Emotionless.

Inhuman.

And it only has one primary directive in mind: Your crushing defeat.

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Do you disagree? Do you have a comment about one of my picks? Post your comments about them here, because I bet some of you aren't gonna disagree. But hey, that's what makes these kinds of lists great.

What? No Ganondorf?

It's nice to see Hojo on the list and not Sephiroth. It seems like most people who obsess over him haven't even played the game, or at least a good amount of it to realize he's nothing more than a puppet for Jenova.

Though Kuja and Kefka were better villains in my opinion.

SuperYoshi wrote:It's nice to see Hojo on the list and not Sephiroth. It seems like most people who obsess over him haven't even played the game, or at least a good amount of it to realize he's nothing more than a puppet for Jenova.

Though Kuja and Kefka were better villains in my opinion.

Not sure Kuja qualifies for this list, since his evil was the result of some trauma (though it's been a while since I played FF9 and can't remember how exactly. Something to do with souls?). Kuja was a great villain though.

Can't say about Kefka, since I never played FF6.

RabbitSnore wrote:Can't say about Kefka, since I never played FF6.

Well, you should.

SuperYoshi wrote:

RabbitSnore wrote:Can't say about Kefka, since I never played FF6.

Well, you should.

Retro told me that as well.

I'll have to look into it.

RabbitSnore wrote:What? No Ganondorf?

Doh. I had a feeling that I might have left somebody off. Hadnt even considered him. -_- ;

SuperYoshi wrote:It's nice to see Hojo on the list and not Sephiroth. It seems like most people who obsess over him haven't even played the game, or at least a good amount of it to realize he's nothing more than a puppet for Jenova.

Indeed. I originally was going to put Scarlet and Heidegger onto the list (Who are also still technically evil-er than Seph) until I considered Hojo, and since he had a direct connection to the antagonist it seemed more appropriate.

Hojo might have been Evil, and you're forgetting he "killed" his own wife after stealing her away from her first love by shooting him, than using his body to expirment on before telling her that he'd just left her. Not to mention he only wanted her to create Sephiroth.

Than there was Rufus. All he wanted was money and power. He didn't care about anything else. Even when Scarlet tried hitting on him, he didn't care.

Than there was Jenova. Who was the baddest out of all of them, hands down.

Great list, anyways. One of the few video game lists I don't feel was written by some acne-ridden dork who's never gotten a date in his life because he was too busy writing for some dumbass magazine.

Twisted Metal's Calypso would have been a good choice.

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MelvanaInChains wrote:Twisted Metal's Calypso would have been a good choice.

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He wasn't evil, though.

Dracula from the early Castlevanias? You never hear him speak and all you know is that this purple vampire rises from the dead every 100 years bent on destroying humans. EVERY 100 YEARS. PRECISELY.

JimPaladin wrote:

MelvanaInChains wrote:Twisted Metal's Calypso would have been a good choice.

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He wasn't evil, though.

...oh yeah, before that whole car accident anyway.

MelvanaInChains wrote:

JimPaladin wrote:

MelvanaInChains wrote:Twisted Metal's Calypso would have been a good choice.

[/shock]

He wasn't evil, though.

...oh yeah, before that whole car accident anyway.

He gave the winners just what they'd ask for, even sometimes warning them about their wish. It's not HIS fault they didn't make themselves specific. And then in some games character's had unlockable endings where they got exactly what they wished for.

And then he even hugs his robotic-daughter when she's going to blow up (I can't remember which one that was in, I think the second) instead of getting away himself. So there he'd shown signs of being humain, which makes him unable to get onto this list, anyways.

JimPaladin wrote:Great list, anyways. One of the few video game lists I don't feel was written by some acne-ridden dork who's never gotten a date in his life because he was too busy writing for some dumbass magazine.

Groovy. Thanks.

I considered making a list of "Close-But-Not-Quite" Villains to go with it, but that seemed a bit excessive.