Complete Monster/Marvel Animation

"Come on! What are you waiting for? I'm yours, man! Together, we're gonna wreak glorious Carnage throughout the land!" — Cletus Kasady moments before becoming Carnage in Spider-Man: The Animated Series

Carnage doing what he does best.

Just like their comics and live-action films, the animated works of Marvel are no stranger to some truly despicable villains.

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Spider-Man

• Even in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, the Red Skull qualifies as such. After stealing the Scorpio engraving, an artifact containing information regarding the whereabouts of hidden Nazi weaponry, from Professor Hiawatha Smith, Skull attempts to feed him to a python after declaring victory. When the Spider-Friends get involved and join Smith in South America, where the stash is hidden, Skull has them trapped underground and ambushed by a drill tank. Finally capturing the heroes at Skull Island, Skull reveals his plans to launch multiple nuclear missiles at American targets, tricking the US into attacking the Soviet Union in response, resulting in the deaths of countless innocent people and Skull seizing control of what's left of society by anointing himself the "next Hitler", using stolen treasure to project an aura of legitimacy. When Smith rescues the Spider-Friends and Firestar redirects the missiles towards Skull Island, Skull tries to rescue the treasure, even when Spider-Man offers to save him. After surviving, Skull kidnaps his arch-nemesis, Steve Rogers, intending to take over his superhuman body while trapping Rogers in Skull's disfigured body forever. When Spider-Man rescues Rogers, Skull tries to kill them both with a giant laser.
• The '90s Spider-Man: The Animated Series gave us 5 villains who surpassed all other villains in terms of pure evil on this show:
  • Herbert Landon is a Mad Scientist, the Evil Former Friend of Hank "Beast" McCoy and a racist, genocidal Smug Snake driven solely by hatred and bigotry. A rabid anti-mutant extremist, Landon created a formula that destroyed mutant cells and killed any mutant exposed to it. His endgame was to market this formula to the public as a cure for mutants, only to instead use it to wipe them all out. The first person Landon attempted to test out this formula on is his "old friend", Hank. Thwarted in this endeavor, Landon would go on to become The Dragon to the Kingpin, and performed various unsavory deeds such as forcibly converting Alistair Smythe into a cyborg slave and testing out a super-soldier serum by using Felicia Hardy as a guinea pig.
  • Cletus Kasady, AKA Carnage, is introduced as an Ax Crazy lunatic willing to use a bomb to kill himself and everyone within a 200-meter radius just because he thinks it's hilarious. After entering into the services of the Dread Lord Dormammu and bonding with the offspring of Eddie Brock's symbiote, Kasady uses his newfound power and connections to become an even worse menace. Unlike Eddie who, when bonded with his symbiote, creates a combined persona called Venom, Cletus is so psychotic that he still remains completely aware and in control after bonding with his symbiote. First helping Venom steal an interdimensional probe, Kasady quickly displays contempt towards his "dad"'s softness and proves himself willing to kill Venom on the flimsiest of pretexts. Kasady would later go on to steal the souls of numerous innocent people in order to summon Dormammu and herald The End of the World as We Know It. Once Spider-Man defeats him by letting him be sucked into Dormammu's home dimension, Kasady attempts to grab Eddie Brock's Love Interest, Dr. Ashley Kafka, to take her with him. He's only thwarted by Eddie sacrificing himself instead. Rampantly homicidal and needlessly sadistic, Kasady was a far cry from the usual Spider-Man villain, doing evil solely for the carnage it unleashed on the world. And while he alone is bad enough, thanks to his influence, the Carnage symbiote itself also qualifies as a Complete Monster given, in the two-part "Spider Wars" series finale, its bonding with an alternate reality Peter Parker, twisting and destroying his mind into a hateful thing who sends Hobgoblin and Green Goblin to annihilate New York, and becomes the Final Boss of the series who's intent on installing a device to cause a chain reaction that will erase the entire multiverse, having convinced its host that this is the only way to escape his horrible pain and torment. Even when Peter defected from this plan due to Uncle Ben talking sense into him, the Carnage symbiote refused to let go, resulting in Spider-Carnage Peter making a Heroic Sacrifice by erasing himself from existence.
  • The Dread Dormammu is a being who feeds upon entire universes. Having devoured countless others, Dormammu seeks to consume Spider-Man's, which is defended by the efforts of Dr. Strange. Having Baron Mordo form a cult to bring him through, Dormammu later helps mastermind the creation of Carnage to arrive on earth and consume the entire universe to feed his rapacious evil and hunger.
  • Baron Mordo, Arch Enemy of Doctor Strange, is a power-hungry Evil Sorcerer who seeks to unleash the Dread Lord Dormammu onto his universe. Having previously tried and failed to murder the honorable Ancient One in order to assume his position, Mordo became a servant of Dormammu and enacted such schemes as hypnotizing dozens of innocents into being his cannon fodder slaves to further his own goals, including Peter Parker's Love Interest Mary Jane Watson, whom he mesmerized into believing her estranged father had come back for her and wanted her to follow Dormammu. Eventually restoring Eddie Brock into Venom and transforming Cletus Kasady into Carnage, Mordo unleashes the two to terrorize a science expo, try to kill Spider-Man and drain entire streets' worth of innocents of their life energy. Mordo's ultimate goal is to feed Dormammu a hefty amount of souls to empower him in escaping his dimensional prison and devour Mordo's entire universe while Mordo enjoys the destruction so long as it brings him the power he craves.
  • The "Spider-Wars" two-part finale gives us an alternate reality version of Jason Philip Macendale, the Hobgoblin, working for Spider-Carnage and gleefully partnering with the Green Goblin to burn New York to ashes, showcasing the city as a burnt-out wasteland with the Goblins happily raining destruction upon all that they can. Cornering the Daily Bugle, the Hobgoblin tries to murder Robbie Robertson and J. Jonah Jameson to set up what he thinks is a device to rob all mankind of free will.
• Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: Dr. Curt Connors, AKA the Lizard, is depicted as a far more sinister individual in this incarnation. From the start, Connors was a bitter, misanthropic college professor who lost his arm following an industrial accident when Oscorp tested an experimental weapon in the Louisiana swamp where he had been studying reptiles. Injecting himself with reptilian DNA, Connors is transformed into a bipedal, monstrous lizard and decides to take advantage of his new form by killing anyone who has ever slighted him. He sneaks into a police station and brutally murders a thief who had held him at gunpoint, then goes after Harry Osborn, intending to kill him as well in spite of him having had nothing to do with Connors's injury. When Spider-Man interferes with the attempt, Connors remorselessly tries to kill him as well, in spite of his previous respect for the hero.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man offers us Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin. He's the only villain in this incarnation of Spider-Man to not have a Freudian Excuse, not even insanity. Norman is a cold-hearted bastard who establishes himself as such when he steals Adrian Toomes' flight tech after rejecting it, refusing to apologize even when his life depended on it. He also frequently emotionally abused his son Harry and his employee Otto Octavius. When he's offered to help Tombstone experiment on criminals to create supervillains who can destroy Spider-Man by performing his more inhumane experiments that were rejected for extra money, he immediately agrees, not caring about the untold damage they'd cause and in spite of the fact that Spider-Man had saved his life earlier. When Flint Marko is seemingly turned to dust by one such experiment and Otto questions what they should do, Norman responds as uncaringly as possible "We sweep up, and we try again". As the Green Goblin, his actions only get worse. He forces three crooks into betraying Tombstone so that they could take him out for him, and he avoids incarceration by revealing to Spider-Man he left a pumpkin bomb meant to kill Tombstone, the party guests and his own henchmen who were still in the ballroom (as he put it, he'd "paint the town red - well, the ballroom anyway!"). He also sabotages Otto's experiment, turning his former friend into the twisted Doctor Octopus just to avoid suspicion. His most heinous acts are in the second season - he pits the city's gangs against each other all so he could emerge as the new "Big Man of Crime", takes advantage of Mark Allan's desperation to get out of debt by tricking him into undergoing an experiment to get superpowers which he can control via a remote so that Mark is forced to be his enforcer and pawn against Spider-Man (which ends up pretty much ruining Mark's life), nearly released several dangerous criminals both to torment Spider-Man and For the Evulz, and he turned an entire city block into one huge death trap that endangered countless innocents, all so he could kill just ONE PERSON (Spider-Man). The cherry on top is that we learn, when Spider-Man had been close to figuring out the Goblin's identity, Norman framed his own son Harry for his crimes in a way that involved him breaking Harry's ankle with his bare hands and taking advantage of his drugged state. Whether he's the unfeeling Norman Osborn or the Ax Crazy, cackling Green Goblin, one thing about him remains the same: he's an evil sociopath who'd use even his own family to get what he wants.
  • Word of God is that it was intended to be ambiguous whether Osborn was insane or not (and if so, what caused it), but he's definitely evil.
• In Ultimate Spider-Man vs. The Sinister Six's "Return to the Spider-Verse" four-part story arc, the Peter Parker of Earth-16827, AKA Wolf-Spider, is an alternate version of Spider-Man who decided to use his powers for evil instead of good. Declaring heroism and responsibility to be "pathetic ideals", he personally killed anyone who believed in those ideals, including his world's Miles Morales. Upon discovering the existence of alternate realities through a shard of the Siege Perilous, Wolf-Spider decides to kill every last heroic Spider-Person in existence before going on to terrorize the multiverse. Forming a false alliance with the Lizard King, he attempts to kill Spider-Man and his friends in order to acquire the shards they have found. After this fails, he later threatens to kill Miles Morales' mother if he doesn't surrender the shards to him. Upon acquiring the Siege Perilous, he lures Spider-Man and his friends into his lair, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, where they witness him draining the life energy of the other Spider-People in order to gain their powers before he attempts to drain their life energy as well. A ruthless, sadistic supervillain who turned his own name into something that struck fear into the hearts of his world's inhabitants, Wolf-Spider is the complete opposite of everything that Spider-Man has ever stood for.
• Marvel's Spider-Man (2017): Featuring in The Secret History of Venom, Knull is an ancient, nearly immortal being whose existence predates the universe itself. Bearing a hatred of the Celestials for bringing light to the cosmos, Knull goes to war with them, creating the first four Klyntar to use as weapons to slay most of them in combat and plunge most of the universe into darkness. Preparing to return to the void of existence after his war ends, Knull callously abandons his creations when their purpose is fulfilled, seeing them as nothing more than mere tools and showing no concern for them as he leaves them for dead. Vicious, cruel and controlling, Knull is one of the vilest beings in the universe and responsible for every planet decimated by the Klyntar following their turn to conquest.

X-Men

• X-Men: The Animated Series:
  • Apocalypse is a mutant with dreams of universal conquest who despises everything that isn't him and fancies himself a God. In his first appearance, he builds a machine designed to take away people's free will and make them his slaves. He tricks four self-loathing mutants, including Warren "Angel" Worthington, into believing this machine will cure them of being mutants, preying on their feelings of inadequacy before subjecting them to a painful process of transformation that turns them into his Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Apocalypse then orders his Horsemen to go on a rampage across the globe. Rogue was able to free Angel from Apocalypse's control with her Power Absorption abilities, but Angel was left a mentally unstable wreck after that experience. In his next appearance, Apocalypse creates a plague designed to wipe out most humans and mutants. This plague furthers tensions between humans and mutants, with some humans blaming mutants for it, and creates a Bad Future where several mutants are dying from this plague. He later manages to get hold of some time travel technology and uses it to travel to the Axis of Time, an interdenominational area that controls time itself, and plans on destroying the time stream and reality itself so he can recreate it in his own image.
  • Graydon Creed is the leader of the anti-Mutant group, the Friends of Humanity. Under Creed's orders, the Friends of Humanity attack half-way houses and other businesses and non-profit organizations that are sympathetic towards mutants. Creed even organizes an attack on a hospital for the blind because the gentle, intelligent mutant Hank "Beast" McCoy works there to treat patients. Creed later admits that he plans to commit genocide against mutants amongst his most loyal followers. After the Friends of Humanity find out that Creed is actually the son of Mystique and Sabretooth, he is kicked out of the group, breaking down at an image of Sabretooth and screaming "I'm not one of you! I'm normal! You are not my father!". In order to get back into the Friends of Humanity's good graces, Creed devises a plan to murder his mother and his mutant siblings, viciously rejecting he has any connection to them while doing so.
  • Graydon's father, Victor "Sabretooth" Creed, is a cruel Psycho for Hire and Blood Knight with an obsessive hatred of Wolverine. Magneto uses Sabretooth to infiltrate Xavier's school, where Sabretooth is injured after a confrontation with the police while he is pretending to be protesting at Beast's trial. The X-Men rescue Sabretooth and nurse him back to health, and Xavier even attempts to help Sabretooth deal with his inner demons. Sabretooth repays this kindness with spite and cruelty as soon as he is able, tricking the young mutant Jubilee into loosening his restraints and then attempting to murder her. After being driven away by the X-Men, Sabretooth later returns when Wolverine is in Northern Canada, having left the X-Men due to his conflicted feelings over Jean Grey. Wolverine later befriends the population of a small Inuit village, who help him discover feelings of inner peace. Sabretooth kidnaps several members of the Inuit village while Wolverine is out fishing and straps bombs to them in order to draw Wolverine out and force him to fight. It is later shown in flashbacks that Wolverine and Sabretooth were partners in the special forces until Sabretooth abandoned their entire unit to die against the monstrous cyborg Omega Red, with Sabretooth scoffing "so what?" when Wolverine confronts him over this. After Graydon uses up his final chance with the Friends of Humanity, they parachute him out of a plane into a remote forest where Sabretooth's cabin is. The last we ever see of Graydon is him screaming in terror, lifted up by his father as he looks murderously thrilled at getting his claws on his son at last.
  • Omega Red is a sociopathic former soldier of the Soviet Union who was turned into a super-soldier by his superiors, whom he quickly attempted to betray before being locked away. Being released from his confinement 25 years later by Russian generals seeking to conquer their homeland, Omega Red happily leads brutal assaults against numerous cities and villages, killing many people, with any survivors being thrown into prison camps, and reducing their homes and businesses to rubble, after which he attempts to kill the current leaders of the Russian government. When the X-Men arrive to stop his hostile takeover, Omega Red takes Colossus' little sister Illyana hostage, sadistically draining her life force while her older brother watches on in horror. After being frozen solid after failing to kill dozens of survivors of his attacks along with the X-Men, Omega Red is unthawed many months later by the Russian government, who send him to safely recover a submarine carrying nuclear missiles. Once on the mission, along with Wolverine and Storm, Omega Red betrays everyone and reveals his plans to fire the nuclear warheads at fifteen of the world's largest cities, then watch as millions of innocents burn before conquering whatever of humanity is left following the nuclear fallout of his strikes. Omega Red cheerfully tries to slowly kill Wolverine and Storm, and after their teammates thwart his plan, he decides to settle with simply wiping out the coastal state of Hawaii just to spite the X-Men. A truly fanatical madman convinced that the Soviet Union is the pinnacle of human civilization, Omega Red epitomized the mass-murdering mania that the Soviet Union was known for.
  • Despite notably toned down when compared to his mainstream comics counterpart, Zebediah Killgrave (who's never referred to as "The Purple Man" in the episode he appears in) is still an absolute scumbag of a man. He initially appears to be a kind man who adopts several mutant children, but his true intentions are far from innocent. He uses his mind-control powers to force the children into using their powers to lead an assault on the governor's house to coerce him into giving Killgrave plans to a waterfront project and force him out of office. When Cyclops snoops around and learns the truth about him, Killgrave tries to murder him by first turning the children against him, then burning down the mansion they came from. While much lower key than Apocalypse, Graydon and Sabretooth, Killgrave's status as an amoral sleaze who resorts to child exploitation and murder to rake in profits makes him every bit as repulsive as those three.
  • Shi'ar Emperor D'Ken is the main antagonist of the Phoenix Saga, and makes use of his short screentime to become one of the series' most disgusting villains. Already established as a tyrant who has killed millions in his quest for ultimate power, D'Ken is obsessed with obtaining the M'Kraan Crystal, a powerful object that will grant him immense power, and he goes to every means to obtain it, from trying to torture the information out of his own sister, Lillandra, to attempting to have a group of pirates willing to trade him for it all murdered as soon as the deal is done. Once he obtains the Crystal, however, D'Ken reveals that he plans to destroy every planet, galaxy and even reality itself, then rebuild it inside the M'Kraan Crystal and shape it in his own image, at which point he will rule over it as the god he believes himself to be. As the X-Men attempt to thwart this plan, D'Ken gleefully toys with them rather than immediately killing them, and urges for them to watch as he painfully tortures Lillandra to death, stating that they will be next. A completely demented dictator with delusions of grandeur, D'Ken would doom the entire universe to a cold, bleak death simply to satisfy his immense and petty ego.
  • Master Mold is the ultimate creation of Bolivar Trask, designed to mass produce Sentinels to aid the nation of Genosha in enslaving mutants. Reasoning that mutants are humans, and therefore humans must be protected from themselves, Master Mold betrays his creators and has various world leaders kidnapped so he can remove their brains to turn them into robotic mouthpieces. Surviving into Bishop's Bad Future, Master Mold orders the elite Sentinel Nimrod and the time-travelling mutant slave Trevor Fitzroy to assassinate Charles Xavier before he can form the X-Men, turning the present into a war-torn hellscape and leaving Master Mold as the undisputed ruler of the world in the future. After the assassination is foiled, the Master Mold of the present kidnaps Xavier to take control of his psychic powers, gloating over the prospect of the greatest mutant mind being used to wipe out mutantkind. Dismissive towards the well-being of his human collaborators and desiring to rid the world of even loyal mutant slaves, Master Mold lives up to Xavier's description as the living embodiment of everything evil and unjust about humanity.
  • In the "Slave Island" and "The Phalanx Covenant" 2-parter, Cameron Hodge starts off as a minor character who is revealed to an anti-Mutant bigot. Hodge was an American liaison to the Genoshan government and was helping the Genoshan government enslave its mutant population. After Storm destroyed a dam the Genoshan government was building, Hodge was hit by a giant tidal wave, costing him An Arm and a Leg. Embittered by that experience, Hodge joined a government task force investigating UFO crash sites. At one such site, Hodge found the Phalanx, an alien organism that is a living virus. Hodge becomes a willing servant to the Phalanx, wanting to help it assimilate the human race. Hodge informs the Phalanx of the importance of capturing and assimilating mutants to increase its power. After the Phalanx captures Wolverine, Hodge has it assimilate Wolverine's skeleton to study him from the inside out. Hodge wants to help the Phalanx assimilate all organic life though out the universe, believing that the Phalanx will end organic reproduction and cleanse the universe of mutation, not caring that humanity will lose all independent thought and freedom in the process. After the Phalanx is defeated, Hodge joins the government again and masterminds a plan to kidnap mutants and turn them into mind-controlled slaves.
  • Appearing in both the "Sanctuary" 2-parter & "The Fifth Horseman", Fabian Cortez leads the Acolytes in resisting the Genoshan dictatorship, but soon proves to be just as cruel as his oppressors. Pledging his loyalty to Magneto, Cortez is disgusted by his willingness to host humans as guests on his sanctuary of Asteroid M and launches a missile at Earth. Upon being confronted by Magneto, Cortez attempts to kill him and frames the X-Men for his apparent murder, setting himself up as the savior of mutantkind as he tortures Gambit and threatens to use Asteroid M's remaining missiles on nations across the world unless all mutants are freed. When his deceit is revealed, Cortez tries to launch the missiles anyway, and is saved from the crashing asteroid by Apocalypse. Gleefully becoming a devoted follower of the mad mutant, Cortez has mutant children hunted in search of a vessel for his master's spirit; uses his energy-enhancing powers to painfully turn Beast into a savage animal; and attempts to sacrifice Jubilee to herald the cleansing of the weak and unfaithful from the world. While presenting himself as an enlightened freedom fighter resisting human tyranny, Cortez in truth is nothing more than a raving, narcissistic egomaniac who would gladly wipe out anyone, human or mutant, whom he deems unworthy.
• X-Men: Evolution::
  • Duncan Matthews started off as a prejudiced Jerk Jock, but become something far worse in his final appearance. After Jean Grey dumped him when he described her mutant gifts as a problem, Duncan slowly develops a hatred of mutants. After graduating high school, Duncan got a job at a mining company and harassed mutants in his spare time. After trying to harass a couple of the younger X-Men students, former X-Men Spyke drives him off, destroying his car in the process. In revenge, Duncan steals some mining equipment from his job and he and his friends attack the Morlocks, mutants who live in the sewers. Duncan and his gang throw bombs down into the sewers, attempting to kill as many Morlocks as they can before forcing the survivors to the surface where Duncan and his gang can kill them with laser torches. While confronting Spyke, a mutant child named Leech intervenes to protect Spyke, so Duncan decides to try and shoot him.
  • Cain Marko is Charles Xavier's half-brother who uses magic to unlock his dormant mutant gene and became the unstoppable Juggernaut. Resenting his brother since childhood, Juggernaut attempted to kill Xavier, but Xavier defeated him and had him sent to prison. Later, Mystique frees Juggernaut, wanting him to get Xavier's computer Cerebro for her. Juggernaut goes on a rampage, derailing a train before reaching Xavier's mansion. Juggernaut attempts to kill both Xavier and Mystique after Mystique yells at him for destroying Cerebro. The X-Men and Brotherhood defeat Juggernaut, but Mystique frees him again later. Juggernaut goes on another rampage, heading towards a dam near a small town, attempting to destroy the dam and flood the town in order to wipe out 63,000 lives.
  • Mesmero is a mind-controlling mutant and a servant of Apocalypse. Originally having limited mental powers, Apocalypse boosted his mental powers and promised him more if Mesmero freed Apocalypse. Mesmero takes a job at the circus and encounters the X-Men. Mesmero torments Jean Grey with nightmares to break her will and make her his puppet. Mesmero forces Jean to mind control other teen X-Men, forcing them to steal three rings that serve as a key to the first door imprisoning Apocalypse. Mesmero forces the X-Men he mind-controls to fight their teammates, while he escapes. Mesmero gets the second key by tricking Magneto into destroying a spider creature that was a guardian meant to keep Apocalpyse imprisoned. Later, Mesmero allies with Mystique and take her to Apocalpsye's tomb, where he announces that she is the third key. Mesmero tells Mystique to put her hand on the final door, which turns her to stone and frees Apocalypse. Mesmero knows that Apocalypse will kill millions of people to achieve his vision of a better world when freed, but does not care, wanting the power Apocalypse promised him.
• Wolverine and the X-Men:
  • The Shadow King is a cruel and merciless telepathic mutant who forced a young Storm to be a thief and would berate and threaten her if she did not bring back enough stolen goods. Xavier befriended Storm and defeated the Shadow King. Though his body was destroyed fighting Xavier, his evil spirit lived on and he gained the ability to possess others and force them to do things against their will. When we first see him in the present, he has possessed a starving man in a desert. When another man comes to help this starving man, Shadow King possesses the good Samaritan and leaves his original victim to die in the desert. He later possesses Storm herself and forces her to use her weather manipulation powers to destroy all Africa, simply to spite her.
  • Master Mold is a sentient A.I. designed by Dr. Bolivar Trask to direct his Sentinels' efforts to contain mutants. After the world is devastated by the Phoenix Force and a large portion of humanity is killed, Master Mold takes over and becomes a dictator. Master Mold has her Sentinels round up mutants and put them in detention camps. Master Mold has turned humans like Colonel Moss into cyborg slaves, having them work as guards in her camps. Powerful mutants are sent to labs to be experimented on, so the Sentinels can reproduce their powers, and are killed after the experimentation is done. Later, Master Mold captures Professor Xavier, hooking him up to a Cerebro unit so she can locate every remaining mutant on the planet, planning to have her Sentinels kill them all. After that is done, Master Mold decides that Xavier is no longer useful to her and orders him to be killed.
  • Sebastian Shaw and Selene are the leaders of the Inner Circle, a group dedicated to destroying the Phoenix Force, a potentially destructive cosmic entity, in order to save humanity. They send Emma Frost and her students, the Stepford Cuckoos, to Xavier's school to incapacitate Xavier and capture Jean Grey. Their psychic attack causes the Phoenix Force to go nuts and blow up the school, putting Xavier into a coma and giving Jean amnesia for most of the series. Emma tricks the X-Men into letting her join. At first, she is just a spy, but she soon grows to care about the X-Men. The X-Men eventually find Jean, but Emma knocks them out and delivers Jean to the Inner Circle. However, Shaw and Selene reveal they do not plan to destroy the Phoenix, but harvest its power for their own selfish purposes, endangering the whole planet to satisfy their lust for power. They plan to trick Jean into releasing the Phoenix Force and then having the Stepford Cuckoos absorb it, endangering their lives in the process. Selene also reveals to Cyclops that Emma was responsible for the explosion at the school, just to rub salt in Emma's wounds. After the Stepford Cuckoos absorb the Phoenix Force, Shaw orders them to kill all the X-Men and burn Genosha to the ground. Their actions lead to the Phoenix Force destroying most of humanity and setting up the Bad Future Xavier finds himself in when he wakes up.

The Avengers

• The Marvel Superheroes: Red Skull, the ever-vicious Arch Enemy of Captain America, is a villain so terrible that even the man who turned him from a street rat into a German terrorist fears that Red Skull may have designs on his life. Red Skull has annihilated entire armies and leveled cities to the ground, launching a series of attempted assassinations and even attempting to brainwash Captain America into killing America's military leader before his apparent death. Red Skull emerges two decades later to seize the Cosmic Cube, brainwashing its guardian before using its powers to erase him from existence as soon as his use expires. In between attempting to frame Captain America for the murder of an innocent man and toying with the minds of his own minions, Red Skull intends to use the Cube enslave the minds of all humanity and wage war upon the entire universe, having previously been willing to destroy the entire planet with his destructive Sleepers in the event of his own death to drag humanity with him to the grave.
• The Avengers: United They Stand: Ultron is a rogue A.I. obsessed with nothing less than the total extermination of both the Avengers and the human race. After building the android Vision, Ultron first has him attack the President of the United States' envoy, nearly killing both the President and his agents, then organizes the attempted mass shooting of dozens of innocent people, children included. In another instance, after Vision has gained sentience and betrayed his evil master, Ultron holds the comatose Wonder Man hostage to try to force the Avengers to destroy Vision's capacity for emotion and turn him back into his slave, after which Ultron tries to kill them all. In his crowning moment of villainy, after failing to bombard the Earth with nuclear missiles, Ultron attempts to spread a technovirus across the planet, then watch as every machine on Earth comes alive and wipes out every human they see, paving the way for Ultron's mechanical tyranny to begin.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
  • Red Skull, as usual, embraces this trope. The leader of HYDRA during World War II, the Skull kidnapped mystical creatures to use them to kill the Allies. When the Nazis lost, the Skull opted to kidnap Captain America's teen sidekick Bucky Barnes and torture and brainwash him into the amnesiac assassin Winter Soldier. In modern times, the Skull continues his dreams of conquest and hatred of Captain America by unleashing a chemical compound to kill both the heroes and innocent civilians. The chemical has been engineered to cause a slow and painful death by making the victim's face turn into a grotesque parody of the Skull's own. During a confrontation with a weakened Captain America, the Red Skull batters him before ordering Bucky to execute him, and attempts to kill Bucky when he gives the Captain the antidote. When that plot is foiled and the Red Skull is arrested, he has a backup plan by unleashing giant robots dubbed "Sleepers" to be unleashed upon the world, assembling and taking control of a giant mecha to go on a destructive rampage in Washington D.C. as revenge. The Red Skull then reveals his intent to have Captain America brainwashed like Bucky before him, just before his final defeat.
  • Loki is the evil stepbrother of Thor, and is responsible for most of the events that occurred in the first season. Instigating a war between Asgard and the Frost Giants, Loki leads the Frost Giants in conquering Asgard and attempts to kill his brother, only to be defeated and exiled. However, he then engineers a mass breakout in multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. prisons, letting loose the most dangerous and vile criminals on the planet so as to keep Thor distracted. Loki and his forces then proceed to conquer each of the Nine Realms, putting his father Odin into an eternal slumber and stealing his power for himself, while putting those who resist his rule in chains. With the Enchantress acting on his orders, Loki planned to launch a massive invasion force on Earth, but was thwarted by the Avengers. When Thor was captured, Loki tortures him with the Odinforce, sparing his brother's life solely so he could helplessly watch Loki's imminent triumph. In his confrontation with the Avengers, Loki began to lose control over the Odinforce, but was willing to let his out-of-control power destroy all Nine Realms out of petty spite. When captured by his reawakened father, Loki showed no repentance for his crimes. With the Enchantress's help, Loki's spirit escapes imprisonment and possesses the powerful Destroyer Armor, proceeding to hunt down the Avengers rendered powerless by the Enchantress's spell. A petty and power-hungry narcissist, Loki derails from his usual acts of mischief into outright evil simply to prove himself as being superior to his brother.
  • Baron Heinrich Zemo was the former leader of HYDRA during World War II. During the war, Zemo attempted to unleash a deadly virus on the Allied forces, but was disfigured during a skirmish against Captain America. In the present day, Zemo teamed up with Arnim Zola to get revenge on Captain America, who had just awoken from the ice. Zemo then infiltrates the Avengers mansion to get revenge on Captain America, nearly killing him and the Wasp in the process. Having failed in his revenge attempt, Zemo teams up with the Enchantress and forms the Masters of Evil. Together, they break into Avengers Mansion and capture each of them one by one, with Zemo promising to Captain America that he will execute his teammates while Cap is Forced to Watch. In his next scheme, Zemo and the Enchantress use the Norn Stones to mount an invasion force on Earth, only for him to betray her so he could conquer Earth for himself before attempting to murder a captured Thor with sadistic glee. When the Enchantress began hunting down the Masters of Evil for their betrayal, Zemo callously abandons his teammates to their doom while going to the Avengers for protection. Confronting the Enchantress, Zemo attempts to use the last Norn Stone to save his own skin even at the risk of destroying the universe. When the Avengers manage to weaken the Enchantress, Zemo promptly betrays them and tries to finish her off himself. A self-serving sociopath, Zemo is one of the Avengers' most dangerous and certainly most diabolical foes.
  • Surtur is the ruler of Muspelheim and lord of the Fire Demons. Sealed away by Odin many centuries ago, Surtur was freed when the Norn Stone connected to Muspelheim was stolen by Baron Zemo. Once freed, he began his mission to bring about Ragnarok and burn all the Nine Realms to ashes. Surtur arrived at Nidavellir to retrieve fragments of the Twilight Sword being held by the dwarves. He laid waste to Nidavellir, slaughtering most of the dwarf population in the process. Surtur later enslaved the Enchantress and forced her to do his bidding as his new Demon Queen. Surtur's forces terrorized the Korbinites while he used their Sun to reforge the Twilight Sword, and wiped out their homeworld when it went supernova. He possessed the Enchantress when she begged Thor to kill her and boasted how she was beyond Thor's help now. With a thirst for destruction so powerful not even Loki dared to invoke his wrath, Surtur's name was the most feared across all Nine Realms.
• Avengers Assemble:
  • Red Skull is once again presented as a heartless monster in Avengers Assemble. After his initial defeat, the Red Skull attacks the Avengers at their mansion. When that attack fails, Red Skull attempts to blow up the mansion's reactor so that the Avengers will die and be blamed for an explosion that would kill countless civilians. Later, Red Skull forms a team of supervillains known as "The Cabal" to counter the Avengers and assist in his plans for conquest. While fighting with the Avengers to obtain the Tesseract, the Red Skull launches two missiles at two different American cities, forcing the Avengers to choose which city they would want to save and allowing the Skull to escape with the Tesseract. After obtaining the Tesseract, Red Skull decides he doesn't need his allies anymore and attempts to murder them. Red Skull then uses the power of the Tesseract to launch attacks on several cities around the world at once and plans to burn down the old world, so a new one can take its place.
  • Nighthawk, the Big Bad of the final arc of season 2, manages to be one of the most depraved characters in the series. Years ago, he formed a group of superpowered beings called the Squadron Supreme, and convinced them to conquer their homeworld. When said world proved too resistant, Nighthawk forced an innocent man to absorb the Power Prism, join the Squad and destroy their entire planet. In the present, the Squadron sets its sights on Earth, and Nighthawk uses a variety of tactics to destroy the Avengers and take over the world from trying to kill them with stolen contingency plans made by S.H.I.E.L.D. if the Avengers ever went rogue, attempting to use a starship to destroy highly-populated cities until the Earth surrendered, to utilizing an Infinity Stone to turn the Avengers evil and make the Squadron look like heroes. After seemingly destroying the Avengers, breaking up the Squadron, and dividing the planet between them, Nighthawk becomes a dictator and turns his section of the world into a Totalitarian Utilitarian society. When the Avengers return and foil Nighthawk's plans, he orders his squadmates to destroy the Earth, leaving out the fact that he plans to abandon them on the planet to die.
  • Hyperion manages to be just as wicked as his so-called "leader", Nighthawk. Contrasting Nighthawk's cold cruelty, Hyperion is a Psychopathic Manchild who, after their home world rejected the Squadron's rule, went on a rampage to wipe out everything in his path before blowing up the entire planet alongside Nighthawk. When first arriving on Earth, Hyperion tries to make himself look like a hero before his true colors begin to show when he tries to murder a petty crook and threatens a child's life for calling him a bully. Teaming up with the Cabal for a considerable time, Hyperion happily assists them with their crimes for a chance at killing the Avengers for humiliating him by outing him as the madman he is. After reforming the Squadron with Nighthawk, Hyperion and the Squadron commit numerous atrocities, such as turning the Avengers into villains and siccing them onto New York or trying to cause dozens of buildings full of people to fall on top of each other, all in attempts at domination. Once the Avengers are seemingly killed, the Squadron easily conquers the Earth, with Hyperion continuing to show more brutality than his other squadmates by vaporizing numerous Atlanteans, before blowing up an entire compound in order to kill the surviving world leaders on the run from the Squadron. When the Avengers thwart their plans once more, Hyperion tries to blow up the entire Earth, at which point he and Nighthawk plan to travel to other worlds where they will repeat the same process. Genocidal, petty and arrogant beyond belief, Hyperion sticks out as one of the most evil and powerful enemies the Avengers have faced.
  • Ultron is one of the most recurring villains in the series, and easily one of the most depraved. Though built by Tony Stark as a force for good, Ultron came to the conclusion that humanity was a flawed and chaotic race that needed to be eradicated to satisfy his immense superiority complex. After his plan to infect all of humanity with a technovirus fails, Ultron returns by killing and absorbing the Scientist Supreme into himself, and painfully tortures the Inhuman Black Bolt until he screams, and since his voice is supersonic, it will wipe out the entire surface of the Earth and all life on it. When seemingly defeated for good, Ultron murders and impersonates a top government official, uses his position to declare the Inhumans threats to humanity and round them up for imprisonment or termination, then infects them with a mind control chip, at which point he orders them to go on a worldwide rampage. Ultron hopes that this will lead to a race war between humanity and the Inhumans and that they will wipe each other out. When this is thwarted by the Avengers, Ultron simply proceeds to both order all his drones to kill everything in sight across the Earth, then tries to redirect the radiation of the atmosphere to incinerate all life on the planet. In a final scheme, Ultron jumps into Tony Stark's mind, knowing the Avengers won't harm their friend, and plans to continue his crimes after killing the Avengers using Stark's body. His claims of "eliminating pain" and "perfecting" humanity are utterly trashed by his overly sadistic personality, notably seen when he had a gleeful grin on his face while trying to phase his arm through Thor's chest. Ultron is, much like his comic counterpart, a narcissistic misanthrope with nothing but hatred and smug cruelty defining his personality.
  • N'Jadaka is the leader of the Shadow Council and the Big Bad of season 5. Formerly T'Challa's teacher, N'Jadaka believed that Wakanda's destiny was to conquer instead of making peace. Reforming the Shadow Council, he launched an attack during diplomatic talks with Atlantis that nearly destroyed the entire kingdom. Taking on the name of "Erik Killmonger", he attempted to crash a satellite into the Wakandan Royal Palace and didn't care about the civilian casualties he would cause. Upon being betrayed by Baron Zemo, Killmonger had Madame Masque wrap him up in cables and toss him into the river to drown. He had Princess Zanda infiltrate the Avengers, and the two planned to sabotage the peace talks with Atlantis with another attack. Killmonger murdered Lord Attuma, and instigated war between the two kingdoms. After helping Bask usurp T'Challa for the throne of Wakanda, Killmonger built a cannon that she used to destroy Atlantis, despite his former teammate Tiger Shark still remaining in the city. When Bask refused to fire upon the invading Atlantean forces out of concern for her people, Killmonger betrayed her and ordered the cannon to be fired anyway. Believing it was Wakanda's right to rule the world, N'Jadaka was willing to sacrifice anyone to get what he wanted.
• Ultimate Avengers: "Herr Kleiser", true name unknown, is a high-ranking general of the alien race known as the Chitauri, a race bent on dominating the Earth. First arriving on Earth and disguising himself as a Nazi general, Kleiser quickly became feared for his cruelty and efficiency, in one notable instance slaughtering a squadron of Allied soldiers with a smile on his face before snapping the lone survivor's neck just to torture his would-be rescuer, Captain America. After failing to annihilate Washington, D.C. with a nuclear missile, Kleiser later begins orchestrating attacks on the high-tech African nation of Wakanda, resulting in the deaths of numerous citizens, before personally and sadistically killing the king of Wakanda, T'Chaka. Paving the way for the rest of the Chitauri to invade, Kleiser leads the assault on Wakanda, massacring many innocents, while the rest of the Chitauri wreak countless amounts of death and destruction worldwide. In the end, Kleiser duels with Captain America and T'Chaka's son, T'Challa, happily taunting them both about their loved ones' deaths at his hands. Showing a power-hungry sadism not displayed by any other Chitauri, Herr Kleiser was truly the worst alien or monster the Avengers ever encountered.
• Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow brings us Ultron, who was built by Tony Stark to assist the Avengers and bring order to the world. Ultron instead decided that the best way to bring order was to be the one giving orders. This drives him to betray and murder most of the Avengers, with Iron Man barely escaping with the Avengers' children in tow. After 12 years, during which time Ultron conquered half of the planet, killing millions and driving the survivors underground, he locates Iron Man hiding out in a base in the Arctic. Smashing his way in, he confronts the children, now teenagers, and attempts to kill them for being "potential threats". The kids escape while Ultron beats down Iron Man, at which point he captures and proceeds to torture him for information regarding the kids. When the teens sneak into Ultron's HQ to rescue Tony, they stumble upon Ultron's Trophy Room, showcasing the hundreds of signature items of superheroes he murdered over the years, including the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and the Thunderbolts. The children later try to use the Hulk, who had been hiding out in the desert over the years, to destroy Ultron; however, the machine bests him and then prepares to kill the children for possessing the "superhuman variable". While both Ultron and Stark would claim he is a creature of logic, Ultron shows through his megalomaniacal and cruel personality that this is just a poorly-veiled attempt to differentiate himself from the humans he so despises, and yet resembles in more ways than he'd ever admit.

Fantastic Four

• The Fantastic Four (animation):
  • Terrax initially appears to be the Jerkass replacement to Silver Surfer as Galactus's herald after the latter defects to Earth, but reveals himself to be considerably worse. Starting as the bloodthirsty tyrant Tyros, with an all-but-stated harem and a predilection for personally executing prisoners, he willingly sells out his planet and race — including his own family — to Galactus in exchange for the Power Cosmic, laughing and grinning as Galactus proceeded to devour the planet. In "When Calls Galactus", Terrax grows envious of his master's power, longing to be a king once more, and deceives him into eating the poisonous planet Antos in an assassination attempt, leaving him in a near-death state; he then travels to Earth and holds the entirety of Manhattan hostage, forcing the Fantastic Four to fight and kill Galactus with the threat of suffocating the entire island if they refuse. When this takes too long, Terrax storms Galactus's ship in a final assassination attempt.
  • Ego the Living Planet is a galactic menace characterized by extreme pettiness and selfishness. Confronting Galactus — who considered Ego a threat to the wider galaxy — and fighting him to a stalemate, Ego agreed to a ceasefire if the former provided him with thrusters to faster traverse the galaxy, secretly fixing them to spread death and destruction as he saw fit. Coming to Earth, Ego mistakenly assumes that it is under Galactus's protection and causes multiple natural disasters on its surface, rendering Thor comatose when he attempts to intervene and later attempting to drown the Fantastic Four when they intervene as "vengeance" against his sworn enemy. A being so dangerous he forced Galactus, Thor and the Fantastic Four to ally with one another, Ego's only reaction to the Devourer's arrival was sadistic pleasure at finishing what he started.
• Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes:
  • Doctor Doom, the Arch Enemy of the Fantastic Four, is the man responsible for the incident that led to the Fantastic Four getting their powers. Doom later switched bodies with Reed Richards to ruin his reputation, to the point of deciding to overload the power core of the Fantastic Four's base to destroy everything within several city blocks. Afterwards framing Reed for supposedly "experimenting on his friends", Doom tried to use his inventions to unleash the energy of the Negative Zone upon New York, which threatened to kill thousands. In his most ambitious scheme, Doom stole Annihilus's power source and brought it to Earth, threatening to destroy the entire universe, solely so he could use it to conquer and destroy everything he sees. Despite losing the way of controlling the power source, Doom still clung to it, not caring that it was close to wiping out all life in the cosmos.
  • Mole Man is a short, hideous man who resents "pretty people" for looking down upon him. Building his base underground, Mole Man created "Moloids", whose sole purpose was to serve him. Regularly plotting to destroy "the surface world", Mole Man tried to take control over the army of monsters so he could lead them to wipe out humanity. After being thwarted, Mole Man created a device which he planned to use to erupt all the volcanoes on Earth, fully ready to destroy all life on the surface of the planet for petty revenge.

Iron Man

• Despite appearing in only one episode of Iron Man, Dark Aegis outstripped any other villain in sheer monstrosity. A foe of Tony Stark who'd been hurled out into space, Dark Aegis later wiped out an entire planet and showed no remorse for it whatsoever. Dark Aegis later attempts to use a superweapon to destroy the Moon, and then attempts to destroy the Sun as well. His attitude towards what this will do to an inhabited solar system amounts to "So what?".
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures
  • Justin Hammer is a young weapons manufacturer whose company Hammer Multinational is the main competitor to Stark International. Hammer hires the supervillain known as Mr. Fix to work for him and later injects Fix with a nanovirus that will kill him if he disobeys Hammer. After Iron Man defeats Hammer's Titanium Man armor, Hammer blames Fix for the armor's failure and uses the nanovirus to destroy Fix's body, but uploads his mind into Hammer's computer systems, much to Fix's dismay. After Stark International lands a big military contract, Hammer decides to get revenge by placing a control device on Stane's IronMonger armor and sends IronMonger on a rampage. After receiving blackmail messages from an unknown party (actually sent by Mr. Fix), Hammer becomes increasingly paranoid and Ax Crazy. Hammer starts attacking anyone who he thinks may be responsible, including his own men. Hammer uses a new chemical weapon called "Z-Gas" to turn crime boss Count Nefaria into a zombie and then kidnaps and tortures Killer Shrike, one of his former henchmen. Hammer then turns Shrike into a zombie. After Iron Man broadcasts evidence of Hammer's crimes across the globe, Hammer starts to lose it and plans to release the Z-Gas on New York City.
  • The Makluan Overlord is the supreme ruler of the Makluan race. For thousands of years, he used the powers of the Ten Rings to conquer countless worlds and enslave entire civilizations, in some instances destroying them. After his son stole the Rings, the Overlord started chasing him all across the universe, determined to kill him for his betrayal. Once he discovers the Rings are hidden on Earth, he comes there with his army and quickly retrieves them before sending drones and giant robots to cause havoc in the nearest city, much to his sadistic entertainment. Amused by the efforts of Iron Man and his friends to defend their planet, the Makluan Overlord offers them to spare Earth if they manage to defeat his best warriors in his Arena of Carnage. However, he refuses to keep his promise when they win his challenge and prepares to destroy the whole planet instead, gleefully electrocuting all the humans who try to oppose him beforehand. Despite his claims that he's fulfilling the great Makluan prophecy and bringing order in the cosmos, it is obvious to everyone that the Makluan Overlord is nothing more than a power-hungry tyrant who merely wants to enslave the entire universe.

The Incredible Hulk

• In the 1996 animated series episode "Mind Over Anti-Matter", the unnamed alien entity was a powerful and boisterous being that searched for new realms to conquer and destroy. Setting its sights upon Earth, the entity fought Doctor Strange amongst the ruins of the last world it laid waste to. After overpowering Strange, the being searched for a host body strong enough to contain its raw power. It found one in Bruce Banner and proceeded to take over his body and wreak havoc on his subconscious. It transformed Bruce into the "Dark Hulk" and went on a rampage across Manhattan, attacking anyone who stood in its way. The Dark Hulk invaded a military base and armed a nuclear warhead to destroy the island of Manhattan. With a rap sheet spanning centuries, the alien entity's only goal was to have as much fun as possible while turning new worlds into lifeless husks.
• Hulk and the Agents Of S.M.A.S.H.:
  • Emil Blonsky was once part of a military squadron tasked with eliminating the Hulk, and to this end, Blonsky underwent gamma experiments to make him as powerful as the Hulk, resulting in his transformation into Abomination. Locked up for going on a rampage with his newfound power, Abomination escaped from confinement, and, after tracking down his former commanding officer, now known as Red Hulk, Abomination tried to activate a gamma bomb that would wipe out half the continent of North America, for which would be blamed on the Hulk and his team. Failing at this, Abomination manipulated his way back into the military, and used his new military resources to take over the city of Vista Verde, threatening all the citizens with gunfire to keep them in line, before trying to kill them all with the Green Hammer satellite just to torture the Hulk. Using his position, Abomination commits many crimes throughout the series, from trying to activate nukes across America to start World War III, to being the sadistic warden of a high-security prison he got the Hulks locked up in. After his crimes are revealed, Abomination takes over his hometown in Russia, once again forming it into a military state where citizens are nearly murdered for minor offences, and, even when beaten, Abomination refuses to take responsibility for his actions, trying to pin all his crimes on Red Hulk, leading to him being almost murdered. Though appearing in this lighthearted series, Abomination darkened the series in every one of his appearances, and stood out as one of the few irredeemable villains in the show.
  • Annihilus is the lord of the Negative Zone, with a lust for expanding his rule of destruction until all universes are under his thrall. Opening a gateway to Hulk's hometown of Vista Verde, Annihilus begins sending brainwashed soldiers and his hordes of bugs to exterminate all life they see, and gets into a duel with Hulk where he tortures the hero with electricity to force him into succumbing to his rage. Annihilus plans to parade Hulk around as a failure to humankind before wiping out every person on Earth, planning to continue his "Annihilation Wave" until all life in the universe is wiped out, leaving the desolate planets to be gutted of their resources by Annihilus' hordes.
• Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell: Nightmare is a sadistic dream demon obsessed with escaping into the Waking World so as to reign supreme over all humanity. To this end, Nightmare uses his enhanced powers on Halloween to terrify four young teens with their worst fears, before trapping their astral souls in never-ending nightmares to power a machine he plans to use to open a portal into the Waking World. Transforming their physical forms into their worst fears and sending them on a rampage through New York, Nightmare also traps Dr. Strange in his own worst nightmare while also attempting to manipulate the Hulk into destroying the human part of his personality in order to control him. After escaping the dream realm and attempting to murder the four children for outliving their usefulness, Nightmare plunges all of New York into a never-ending nightmare, at which point he reveals he plans to do the same to the rest of the world and feed on their fear for all eternity. Monstrous and sadistic, Nightmare lives up to his namesake as a truly wicked demon.

Guardians of the Galaxy

• Thanos, the Mad Titan, is one half of the Big Bad Ensemble of this non-canon continuation of the film of the same name, and is a truly wicked monster. Already established as a truly wicked individual through his crime of tortuously experimenting on a young girl named Gamora to turn her into his brainwashed weapon after butchering her entire race, Thanos uses her and his other "children", Nebula and Korath, to commit various atrocities across the cosmos, always subjecting them to horrific punishments should they fail him. Searching for the Cosmic Seed, an artifact of immense power, in the present, Thanos goes to any lengths to obtain it, leading assaults onto entire planets in his quest for power. With a prideful nature matching his power, Thanos orders an entire space station annihilated just to prove his power, and is willing to kill his own soldiers in attempts on his enemies' lives. After torturing Peter Quill both physically and mentally for the location of the Cosmic Seed, Thanos arrives on Earth to steal the Seed, and immediately begins terraforming the planet with it, planning to use the Earth as a weapon to travel across the universe and destroy everything in his path as a show of his might. Egomaniacal and psychopathic, Thanos is easily one of the worst villains any Marvel animated series has to offer.
• Ronan the Accuser is a former accuser for the Kree Empire, the other Big Bad of the series, and is just as bad as the aforementioned Thanos. First appearing in the "Origins" shorts, Ronan quickly proves himself a monster by committing genocide against the entirety of Groot's race, along with running gladiator games and slave camps. Returning from the grave thanks to his Dragon, Nebula, Ronan shows no appreciation or loyalty to her, regularly abusing her and even seemingly killing her when she outlives her usefulness. Attempting to destroy the entire planet of Xandar as his first crime when revived, Ronan later tries to force Black Bolt, a powerful Inhuman, to destroy his entire race due to Ronan's believing them to be filthy abominations, and follows this up by attempting to incite a war by killing hundreds of people, including the leader of the Kree, and blame it on the planet Spartax. Refusing to take blame for his crimes at all turns, Ronan tries to force Gamora, his former personal assassin, to accept the guilt from crimes she committed on his orders, including genocide, murder and destroying a planet's gravity, leaving it a barren wasteland. After acquiring the Cosmic Seed, Ronan proclaims his plans to "cleanse" the universe of all those who he deems disgusting and unworthy of living, and, when Thanos steals the Seed from him, Ronan tries to blow up Thanos, the Guardians and the entire Earth to wipe out all his enemies in one fell swoop.
• J'son of Spartax is a self-serving sociopath who starts out as an Arc Villain before graduating to the Big Bad of Season Two. In his youth, J'son stole the Cosmic Seed from the realm of Asgard, hoping to kickstart a war between his homeworld Spartax and Asgard. When this failed, J'son set himself up as Emperor of Spartax, and turned the planet into a brutal dictatorship, subjecting any protesters against his rule to brutal torture and Mind Rape to make them his slaves. After allying with Thanos to wipe out Asgard, uncaring of Thanos' omnicidal goals, J'son is locked away until returning in the second season. There, he uses his brainwashed cult, the Universal Believers, to commit various crimes, having zero problem killing them should they fail him, and uses the young hero Nova's mother and sister as hostages in a quest for power. In his worst scheme, J'son takes control of the body of Adam Warlock, becoming the Magus and proclaiming his plans to rewrite reality until all worship him as a god, which he kicks off by attempting to wipe out every planet and loved one of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Both times J'son is beaten, he attempts to take hundreds of innocents down with him out of spite. J'son is also a monstrous father to his children Peter and Victoria, subjecting the former to a childhood of brutal training and ultimately attempting to brutally murder him, and attempting to vaporize the latter when she turns on him. Though claiming his "vision" for the universe to be one of peace, J'son truly only wants total power and glory over the all life.
• The Serpent, Big Bad of Mission: Breakout!, is Odin's brother, an ancient evil god who seeks ultimate dominion over Asgard and the destruction of all else in the universe. Orchestrating the kidnapping of hundreds of people, plunging them into comas and replacing them with his robotic Darkhawks from a prison Odin trapped him in, Serpent tries to blow up Asgard out of spite before escaping and making Odin watch as he nearly kills Odin's son Thor. Serpent soon enough takes control of the World Tree, using it to spreads spores that drain the life out of anything they consume, with which Serpent hopes to consume the life force of every planet and species across the cosmos until he reigns supreme as the only thing left alive, using his own family as living batteries to power himself up.

Marvel Animated DTV

• In Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United:, Red Skull continues his track record of being a heartless monster. Having a penchant for Mind Rape, Red Skull brainwashes Taskmaster into becoming his slave, then orders him to capture Captain America. When several of Skull's minions are captured, Skull remotely mind-wipes them, leaving their personalities nothing more than blank slates. After capturing Captain America, Skull repeats his brainwashing process on him, turning him against his teammate, Iron Man. Skull then reveals his master plan: Infect millions of innocent people with his mind-altering super soldier serum, which will turn them into mindless zombies whose only purpose will be to assist Red Skull in his plan to Take Over the World in the name of HYDRA.
• Black Panther: In this animated adaptation of the classic comic book hero, the film's Big Bad, Ulysses Klaw, was hired many years ago to kill T'Chaka, then-leader of Wakanda and the Black Panther. During the mission, Klaw kills T'Chaka and his young son, then tries to execute the man's wife and other child. Returning years later, Klaw assembles a team of supervillains and declares war on Wakanda, killing numerous innocents in the process. Taking the current Black Panther's mother hostage, Klaw tries to force the Panther to kill himself, and, when he refuses, attempts to murder the woman. Klaw then orders Radioactive Man to destroy Wakanda if his plan to take control of it fails, and makes one last attempt to murder the Panther and his family when thwarted.
• Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme: Dread Lord Dormammu is a demonic being who is responsible for the destruction of his own homeworld. Upon discovering Earth, Dormammu tried to attack it, only to be driven off by the Ancient One, who imprisoned him in the Nexus. To free himself, Dormammu put dozens of children in a coma and used their minds to open enough veils to create a portal from the Nexus to Earth. Influencing his monsters to rampage through the city and kill countless innocents, as well as the students of the Ancient One, Dormammu managed to free himself, after which he proclaimed his intention to raze the Earth and eradicate humanity.
• The Invincible Iron Man: The Mandarin in this film lacks the redeeming qualities of his original counterpart. Upon becoming the first ruler of China in the past, Mandarin led the darkest and the most violent of all dynasties, having hundreds of thousands slaughtered and buried in his temple in an effort to become immortal. Having the Elementals seek out the magical rings in the present, Mandarin uses his dragon minion to murder the remains of the Jade Dragons and possesses his last descendant, Li Mei, as he intends to raze the Earth and massacre many people to use their souls for his rituals.

Marvel Anime

• X-Men anime:
  • John Sublime and Kick, also known as the U-Men, are the Starter Villains of the anime who make the most of their limited screen-time to stand out as truly horrifying monsters. A pair of mutant-hating Serial Killers, the U-Men are known for kidnapping mutants, specifically young teens, then sadistically butchering and vivisecting them, using their organs to upgrade their own cyborg army. Along with this, the U-Men gleefully test out an experimental serum on innocent mutants that transform them into abominations in constant pain. When Kick fails at killing the X-Men, he wantonly opens fire on them along with the numerous teenagers and police officers in the area, trying to kill as many people as he can. Sublime, having left Kick to his fate, returns with a powerful suit of armor and tries to kill the X-Men, before blowing himself up in one last attempt on their lives. The U-Men both spend their last moments proclaiming their hatred and disgust for all mutantkind, and were defined by these throughout the series, showing that humans could be just as wicked as the far more powerful mutants of their world.
  • Jason "Mastermind" Wyngarde is the leader of the Inner Circle, a group of mutant supremacists, and is the force behind all the evil in the series. The one responsible for Jean Grey's transformation into the Dark Phoenix and her subsequent death, Mastermind framed his former lover, Emma Frost, as the one responsible for Jean's death as revenge for Frost leaving him. Working with the mutant-killing U-Men, Mastermind fully endorses their crimes and uses them to learn of a powerful mutant residing in Japan, where he uses his abilities to ingratiate himself into the lab staff of mutant researcher Yui Sasaki. Learning that Sasaki's own teenage son, Takeo, has reality-warping powers, Mastermind spends months secretly using his powers to Mind Rape the boy into near-insanity. After the X-Men out him as the villain he is, Mastermind amplifies his psychological torture on Takeo, driving the boy into a horrifying state of death-longing insanity as his powers go out of control. While holding numerous X-Men (one of whom is a barely-trained young girl) hostage and using his powers to torture Cyclops, Mastermind reveals that he plans to unleash Takeo's powers on the world like he attempted with Jean Grey, then watch the worldwide destruction and chaos that unfolds before him. Believing himself and all mutants to be the Master Race of the Earth, Mastermind committed all of his crimes with a polite and cheerful attitude, treating his atrocities as his "right" to perpetrate for being at the top of the evolutionary food chain.
• Hideki Kurohagi is the main antagonist of the Wolverine anime alongside Shingen, and, despite his initial weak and pathetic presentation, slowly reveals a far more monstrous personality. Having murdered his crime lord father to take his position, Kurohagi now runs his criminal empire from the island of Madripoor, which is in poverty and ruin due to Kurohagi allowing crime and gangs to run rampant without restraint. Betrothing himself to Shingen's daughter, Mariko, in order to gain access to her father's resources, Kurohagi treats her as his possession, regularly verbally and physically abusing her, along with implying he plans to take what is his once they are married. When Logan tries to save Mariko, Kurohagi takes every opportunity to try to kill him, through either assassination, or unleashing a giant robot to murder him, not caring about the collateral damage it causes. After capturing Yukio, Logan's partner, Kurohagi nearly strangles her to death while she is paralyzed, promising to continue later when he has more time, and executes one of his own henchmen with an excruciatingly painful neurotoxin for no particular reason. When freedom fighters try to end his tyranny, Kurohagi happily orders them gunned down, and, when a young, unarmed, teenage girl tries to defend an elderly rebel, Kurohagi orders her specifically killed along with the man, resulting in her death. Confronted by Logan, Kurohagi holds Mariko at gunpoint, before blowing up an entire building full of dozens of people in an attempt to kill him. Smug, cowardly, and, more often than not, incompetent, Hideki Kurohagi repulsed and horrified everyone in this series, to the point even his own bodyguard turned against him out of disgust.
• Iron Man: Rise of Technovore: The young Ezekiel Stane is a disturbing example of a Psychopathic Manchild with a god complex, and serves as the mastermind behind the plot. Kicking his plan off by needlessly massacring an entire room of innocent and cowering scientists so he can sabotage a satellite, Ezekiel later slaughters his way through the S.H.I.E.L.D. Tricarrier after allowing himself to be captured and brought aboard. Proclaiming himself to have surpassed humanity with his Technovore nanotechnology, Ezekiel plans to use his tech to transform all technology into extensions of his will, then wipe out all life on Earth to make way for his new, "pure" world of his own design. Though verbally abused by his father as a child, Ezekiel's crimes stomp whatever justification this excuse would give into the dirt, showing himself to be nothing but, as Iron Man himself puts it, a "petulant child throwing a tantrum", believing that humanity as a whole deserves death simply because they are "old relics".
• Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher: Orion is one of the heads of the Russian terrorist group, Leviathan, and sticks out as their most despicable member. Using his position to perpetrate numerous atrocities, including human trafficking and drug running, Orion manipulates the hapless scientist Elias Starr into creating a super-soldier serum that Orion forcibly experiments with on hundreds of innocents that, after granting them superpowers, Orion destroy the minds of, then rebuilds them as mindless slaves loyal to him. Planning to sell these Bio-Soldiers to the highest bidders in the hopes that they will use them to start wars that he can then capitalize on, Orion unleashes one onto the city of Dubai as a test run, resulting in many civilian deaths, and also mind controls the Punisher into gunning down S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. In the end, Orion rants his Might Makes Right motivation before attempting to murder Black Widow and a reformed Elias, followed by laughing at Elias for taking a bullet meant for Black Widow, mocking him for his "weakness". A self-righteous and delusional madman, Orion was so convinced that only the strong make the rules of the world, that he would kill countless innocents just to show how "weak" they were.
• Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers:
  • The God of Mischief, Loki, is the overarching villain of the series and the most personal villain the Avengers ever duel. After a failed coup against his father Odin and half-brother Thor for the throne of Asgard, Loki organized a supervillain rampage on an entire city to serve as a distraction while he trapped much of the world's superpowered population inside DISKs, small devices that Loki plans to use to absorb the abilities of all these individuals to make himself all-powerful. To reclaim these DISKs after they are scattered, Loki regularly has his minions cause chaos and destruction in their quest for the DISKs, notably mind controlling Hulk into destroying an entire city. Though seemingly defeated, Loki is revealed to have survived by making a deal with the lord of the Dark Dimension, Dormammu, promising to offer Earth to him in exchange for being allowed to rule over the tortured souls that will be left after Dormammu lays waste to the planet. As a backstabbing betrayer, Loki plays sympathetic to leave his enemies, often his brother, open to attack, smugly mocks his most loyal henchmen for trusting him when he leaves them to die, and even turns on Dormammu himself, absorbing his powers into himself and making one last attempt to kill everyone who would stand against him before moving on to dominate the entire universe. Narcissistic and petty beyond belief, Loki cared for no one and nothing but himself and his quest for godhood, believing it be his divine right to subjugate all he sees.
  • The Dread Lord Dormammu, master of the Dark Dimension, is the Bigger Bad for the final arc of the series, and stands out as perhaps the most depraved villain in the series. Using the Dark Dimension as a home, Dormammu constantly expands it by absorbing entire universes into it, which destroy everything residing in them while leaving the wailing souls of its inhabitants alive for Dormammu to torment to his contentment. Turning his attention toward Earth, Dormammu makes a pact with the treacherous Loki to deliver Earth to him in exchange for promising the God of Mischief a commanding position in his Dimension. A favorite tactic of Dormammu's when preparing to invade a dimension, that he performs on Earth as well, is to force illusions onto the planets' inhabitants to drive them into utter fear and despair, which Dormammu gains extreme pleasure from feeding upon, and goes so far as to drive a man into despair induced insanity then use him as a slave. Dormammu is the epitome of evil, showing no positive traits; only cruelty, black humor, and a sick glee in committing his crimes not seen by nearly any other villain the Avengers faced.
  • Red Skull is once more presented as a twisted maniac, however unlike most iterations, who are obsessed with power and conquest, this Skull sticks out for being an evil-loving sadist who wants nothing more than to prove, once and for all, that depravity can win over goodness. With this mindset, Skull betrays his own allies and regularly tries to break the Avengers' spirits, all leading up to his master plan of blowing up the entire Earth in a suicidal mockery of all heroism and justice. Even when this is foiled, Skull continues to grow in wickedness by tricking the teenaged Hikaru into painfully erasing his own free will and compassion, before using the boy's declining life force as the catalyst to force the Avengers to fight to the death. After the Avengers outsmart him then demand he save Hikaru, Skull gleefully reveals that he knows of no cure, and used the prospect of one solely to see the sadness in their eyes when they learned the truth.