Name the most evil character you've ever read/watched! [possible spoilers]

[The Grumpy Celt]

Well, Ranger Wickett and Pirate Cat are clearly the most evil people in the EN World forums. Does that count?

Oh, and when I was eight my nine-year old cousin pushed me into a gully and I landed on my head. He did it out of spite. Does that count?

From Babylon 5, Emperor Cartagia was attempting to coax the Vorlons into incinerating his home world of Centari Prime in homes of this propelling him to godhood. So her was attempting to perpetrate the genocide of his own people for mad dreams of glory.

In a similar “kill my own people” motif, in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit judge Doom is a ‘toon, but it attempting to kill all the other ‘toons for what is ultimately just a land-grab scheme. He’s actively trying to kill all of his own people for money.

American politicians, conservative or liberal tendencies aside, are quite evil. Every few years they deliberately inflict the most horrific act of prolonged sadism known to mankind on Americans – they are known as “election years.”

 

[Staffan]

On a smaller scale than the others... lord Farquaad from Shrek impressed me with his evil during one of the first scenes in the movie. He tortures the Gingerbread Man by dipping him into milk.

 

[orbitalfreak]

I'd say the villian in "Saw" was pretty bad. The movie was atrociously bad, but the villian had great potential. Setting people up to kill themselves while he watches in sadistic pleasure.

One man had to crawl his way out of a maze of razor wire, gutting himself in the process. A woman had a device on her head that was described as a "reverse bear-trap" which would open and split her skull in half at the jaw. She had to remove a key from the stomach of a body in the cell she was in. The body was not a "dead" body. They had two people handcuffed to plumbing in an old bathroom, and they eventually come across a hacksaw... which will not cut through the pipes, or the handcuffs. But hacksaws do cut through flesh.

 

[Jhamin]

Naraku, from the Inu-Yasha manga/anime.

Spoiler that's revealed in the first few episodes

Spoiler

He tricks Inu-yasha and Kikyo into thinking the other has betrayed them, causing them to kill each other. (Well, Inuyasha was merely magically trapped for fifty years, not much of a story if the title character is dead).
He does many other horrible things.

Geoff.

Somehow I don't want a anime/manga by Rumiko Takahashi to contribute to this list.

But I have to admit that Naraku does in fact rate high on the "find out what you love and destroy it just to spite you" scale.

I mean he arranged for a main character's 11 year old brother to kill their entire family (on screen), then killed the brother(on screen), then reanimated him with just enough personality that you can't write him off as a zombie.

Just to mess with the heros.
Not defeat them, not to "win", just to mess with them.

And all this was just to kill time while he worked on his other plots.

 

[Tetsubo]

Teflon Billy's comment in this thread got me thinking -
who is the most evil character you've read about/saw in a movie.

Forget Sauron and his in-the-background glowing eye! Saruman and his
charm-ing voice!

A character you read that was truly despicable, made you sick, got you angry, etc.
A character whose deeds were spelled out, not just "the Evil One" behind the
scenes. Villains who flayed the heroes' loved ones and made him watch.

Zorachus, from Mark E Rogers, for instance, was the answer my friend gave
to the most evil portrayal.

Without spoilers, I would say the antagonist from the Peter Hamilton Neutronium Alchemist
series would be a good candidate.

Or the stumped-antagonist in the Guy Gavriel Kay's Fioanvar tapestry.

Anyone who read/played the module "The Apocalypse Stone" -- there were encounters in
there that put warnings on --- "Only play if your characters are mature enough."

I'm looking for villains that would laugh at the spells in the Book of Vile Darkness.

Books that you had to put down for a second and collect your breath/psyche.

Any takers?

Freaky. I read the subject line and the first thing that popped into my head was Zorachus.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Somehow I don't want a anime/manga by Rumiko Takahashi to contribute to this list.

Not all of Rumiko Takahashi's works are goofy comedies like Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura.

The immortal kid in Mermaid's Scar is also very nasty, finding adoptive mothers, then killing them when he gets bored.

Geoff.

 

[Sado]

Laish Tenedos from The Seer King trilogy by Chris Bunch. There was no limit to what he would do or how many lives he would throw away to fulfill his mad schemes. Much of his magic was powered by blood, and he sacrificed men by the thousands to do so.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Sheriff Lucas Buck and his son Caleb Temple (always thought it was weird that the
actor who played Caleb was Lucas Black ).

http://www.tvtome.com/AmericanGothic/

Gary Cole makes for a terrific bad guy.

 

[shilsen]

My vote goes to Iago from Shakespeare's Othello.

Probably the best literary villain ever. I was teaching "Othello" in my undergrad Shakespeare class a couple weeks ago and the students were simultaneously fascinated and repelled by him.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I think I've read a lot of nasty villains, but for me the one that truly made me cringe - to the point where I had difficulty getting by a certain part of the book where I knew he was going to do something I didn't want to read, was the High Prince Roelstra from Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince. I think the fact that he was portrayed as so human made it much worse. I have fewer problems with magic or "otherworldly" villains.