Complete Monster/DC Animation

"I now see that slime for what he is; a murderous, manipulative, irredeemable... angel!" —Harley Quinn on The Joker, from Batman: The Animated Series.

How the Joker raises kids.

While you might expect cartoons based on comic books to dilute the evil of their villains, there are at least some who manage to be truly despicable nonetheless.

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Batman: The Animated Series

• The Joker. His first appearance in "Christmas with the Joker" has him unleashing a reign of terror on Gotham in the form of a festively decorated tank rampaging through the city streets, derailing a train with the mother of one of his hostages on it and letting a giant cannon fire randomly into the city, doing untold damage. In, "The Last Laugh", he unleashes laughing gas across all of Gotham which would render everyone exposed to it permanently insane, and the Joker did this all so he could go on a crime spree and conduct relatively minor robberies with impunity. In "Joker's Favor", he psychologically tortures a man for years, threatens to kill his family, and finally tries to blow him up, all for yelling at him when the Joker cut him off in traffic. In "Be A Clown", he disguised himself as a birthday clown for Mayor Hill's birthday party so he could put a dynamite stick onto the birthday cake as revenge for Hill's attempt at comparing the Joker with Batman, which would have most likely resulted in a lot of deaths, and in "The Laughing Fish", he commences with a killing spree of specified targets all because he's angry that he can't copyright Gotham's supply of fish that his Joker venom contaminated.
  • There was also his fine work in Mask of the Phantasm, including the murder of his former boss, Sal Valestra, and after he came to him for help. Bad move, Sallie. There's also attacking Arthur Reeves in his office, giving him a heavy and near-lethal dose of Joker Toxin. His pre-bleach self, hired gun Jack Napier, was no saint, killing Carl Beaumont, thus ruining his daughter Andrea's life, Bruce Wayne's happiness, and setting the whole movie, and Batman's career, into motion.
  • He finally and indisputably crosses the line in Return of the Joker, when he tortures Tim Drake so badly he becomes a younger version of the Joker. By the time the Joker goes down, a good chunk of Gotham has been obliterated, most likely killing hundreds. As Bruce Wayne says there in regards to Terry's question as to whether Joker was the worst of his Rogues Gallery; "It wasn't a popularity contest. He was a psychopath. A monster."
  • Joker's treatment of his girlfriend, Harley Quinn, needs mentioning. "Mad Love" showcases his worst treatment of her, especially his reaction to her in-motion plan to kill Batman. He screams at her, hits her so hard she flies halfway across the room, and almost kills her by throwing her out of a several-stories high window. Why? Because HE wants to be the one who kills Batman! He then sends her a rose and a fake note of apology while she's recovering in Arkham. Even the Bat feels sorry for Harley in this episode and taunts the Joker with the knowledge that she came closer to succeeding at killing him than the Joker ever has. It's no wonder she disapproved of her grandchildren's path.
  • In the Game Boy game based on the series, Joker plots to smuggle a bunch of teddy bears containing bombs filled with Joker Venom into Gotham to have them go off and kill many people, openly telling Batman about his plan in advance so as to lure Batman in an attempt to kill him. The Joker later shoots the Batplane out of the sky in an attempt to kill Batman and Robin, not caring about potential collateral deaths caused by the crash.
• The Sewer King in "The Underdwellers" kidnapped children to use as slave labor and steal things from him. He trained them to be severely photophobic and afraid of adults. He also scares them with his trained crocodiles and makes it forbidden for the children to make a sound, punishing them by shoving them into a tiny little room with bright lights without food or water for hours - and sometimes, he does it on a whim, even to a kid who managed not to utter a peep despite the extreme scare tactics. Sewer King was one of the few villains Batman had seriously considered killing on the spot, which says quite a lot.
• In the episode "Showdown", which was mostly an extended flashback to Arizona, 1883, we meet Arkady Duvall, Ra's Al Ghul's then-lieutenant and also his son, voiced by none other than Malcolm McDowell. When we begin, Jonah Hex has tracked him across twelve states "on account of what [he had] done to [a] girl back east", and a barmaid at the beginning of the story tells Hex "He hurt one of my girls real bad." They don't go into detail, but he at the very least violently assaulted them. When we first meet the man in person, he's whipping one of Ra's workman for slacking, when all the poor guy was doing was trying to pick up something he'd dropped. He comes across as insufferably smug and arrogant, with a huge sense of entitlement, and it's clear that Ra's does not approve of his actions and is only putting up with him because he's his son and so he can keep an eye on him. When Hex is caught spying on them, Duvall orders the workers to lower him head first into a vat of molten lead, but Ra's intervenes. By the end of the flashback, Hex has captured Duvall and turned him into the authorities and Ra's has washed his hands of him and left him to his fate. When the man who thinks killing 90% of the world's population in order to restore ecological balance is a good idea wants nothing more to do with you, you must be on this list.
• Grant Walker, from "Deep Freeze", is a seemingly affable theme park mogul who seeks only to prolong his life by way of Mr. Freeze's ice technology, but in truth harbors much darker intentions. Kidnapping Freeze and using his comatose wife as a bargaining chip to convince Freeze to give Walker his icy, undying condition, Walker soon enough reveals his plan to use a massive freeze cannon to plunge the entire world into a new Ice Age for years. Walker hopes to kill off all of humanity except for his "chosen few", then repopulate the planet with his own Garden of Eden, and though his plan is foiled, Walker returns in The Batman Adventures, where he kidnaps several scientists to cure himself of a lethal condition, planning to kill them all and then restart his scheme to wipe out humankind.

Superman: The Animated Series

• Brainiac, while a robot, is pure and utter evil. He knew Krypton was going to explode, but would not tell anybody, leaving trillions to die. He later reveals that Krypton is not the only dead planet that he'd been involved with: he roams from world-to-world, assembling all of a planet's information and then destroying the original in order to increase the value of his stolen memories, with his objective being to repeat the process across the universe until he has "destroyed all of creation". He also murders the crew of a spaceship that was investigating his presence, tries to steal Superman's body for himself, and eventually, after fusing with Lex Luthor, tries to wipe out the entire universe in one fell swoop, aiming to rebuild it in his own image. Void of remorse, and possessing a bodycount in the billions, Brainiac doesn't act on artificial intelligence: he acts upon selfishness and greed for knowledge and power.
  • Also for Brainiac, you better answer him. No, really, DO. If you don't, he will kill you. Even worse, if you do not give him the right answer, he will kill you.
• Darkseid, who later appeared in Justice League and was the top threat of the entire DCAU, is the tyrannical ruler of the wasteland planet Apokolips, and ultimately desired total dominion over all life in the universe. To achieve this end, he forever seeks the cosmic power of the Anti-Life Equation to use as the ultimate weapon. Incapable of love or empathy, he abused his loyal son Kalibak, handed over his adopted son Scott Free to be tortured and brainwashed by Granny Goodness, and attempted to murder his other son, Orion, for opposing him. His servants are likewise subjected to torture or death should they fail or even question him. Setting his sights on conquering Earth, Darkseid launched a full-scale invasion, only relenting when the planet was declared off-limits by Apokolips's sister planet, New Genesis. To compensate, Darkseid murdered Dan Turpin solely to spite Superman. He would make numerous more attempts to conquer or annihilate the planet, including attempting to destroy it with an comet and brainwashing Superman into leading an attack on his adopted world, turning the Man of Steel into a pariah for years—but not before Darkseid had the brainwashed Superman basically raped. He later attempted to use Brainiac's programming to collect the Anti-Life Equation and bend the universe to his will, leading to his death in a battle with Superman. Upon his resurrection, Darkseid immediately launched another invasion on Earth, not out of a desire for power, but solely to make Superman suffer. Ruthless and tyrannical, Darkseid is Superman's greatest enemy, and one of the few villains he is always prepared to kill.
  • Indeed, he is the only one he wants to kill, such is his loathing. He's a walking Berserk Button for him. When Superman wants you dead, you must be truly, truly evil.
  • In the tie-in comic The Superman Adventures, Darkseid, after failing to conquer Earth thanks to the intervention of New Genesis, respects his treaty with New Genesis despite his desire to torture Superman's friends, until the reveal that it was just a distraction to build the Armageddon Cannon and destroy New Genesis without warning. Contacting Lex Luthor to buy a captured Livewire, Darkseid uses Livewire's powers to turn Apokolips's furnaces into fuel. Then, Darkseid orders a test of the Armageddon Cannon on Earth as revenge for their past resistance, with a chained Superman as the first victim. When a shocked Lex asks for explanations, Darkseid calls himself Life and Death and orders him to shut up and become his new general. After Superman and Livewire wreck the Armaggedon Cannon, Darkseid lets them return to Earth, expecting that the explosion of the supercharged Livewire would kill Superman and the people of Metropolis.
• Granny Goodness, the chief of Darkseid's training camps, is a twisted New God who runs the "Orphanage". Children are taken, tortured, and conditioned until loyal to Darkseid and Granny, while abused horribly should they resist and implicitly disposed of if they fail. Only Scott Free, son of the Highfather and foster child of Darkseid, ever escaped. Vengeful towards Scott, Granny has attempted multiple times to lure him into a situation where he would die with entire cities. To further Darkseid's aims of conquest, Granny attempts to craft a new operation on Earth and even crafts a doom magnet to see a comet wipe out the entire Earth.

Batman Beyond

• Derek Powers, AKA Blight, is a Corrupt Corporate Executive and the Arch Enemy of Terry McGinnis. In order to test his latest chemical weapon, Powers purposefully infected Harry Tully, a member of his staff, with it. When Tully leaks the information to Terry’s father, Warren, Powers had Warren murdered to cover it up. Later, Powers sold the weapon to a Kaznian diplomat who wanted to wipe out resistance on his border. To promote his product, Powers showed the diplomat pictures of Tully’s gradual death at the hands of the chemical. Other crimes include committing industrial sabotage, exiling his son Paxton and causing Paxton to be corrupt and treacherous like him, and polluting the ocean by dumping radioactive waste into it. He played a part in Mr. Freeze's tragic demise as well; he used Freeze as a guinea pig to cure his own condition and when Freeze wanted revenge, Blight brutally crippled Freeze with his radiation. He’s also responsible for the creation of the super villain, Shriek, who he hired to assassinate Bruce Wayne for getting in the way of his plans to bulldoze Gotham's historical district for profit. There's also his response to Terry's use of You Killed My Father as a hint to Batman's real identity:

Terry: You Killed My Father! Blight: Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?

• • If the fact that he killed the protagonist's father to keep anyone from finding out he was using the original Batman's family's company to make some flipping effective biological weaponry didn't already seal his status by the end of the first episode, there's also the way Blight says that line. He says it so casually, it makes you think about some of the other heinous stuff he's done that we HAVEN'T seen. He'd also just demanded to know who Batman is and why he keeps hounding him and sounds frustrated at being given such a useless piece of information.
  • And then there's his first act upon becoming Blight. Not only does he effectively destroy any chance for Mr Freeze to live a normal life, he casually tricks him into believing his new girlfriend (who genuinely loved him and wanted to help him) had been using him, resulting in her death.
• Dr. David Wheeler, from Season 2's "The Last Resort", is a corrupt child psychologist who uses his rehabilitation "ranch" for teenagers as a moneymaking scheme and to satisfy his controlling personality. Wheeler manipulates parents to send their children to his ranch for even minor pranks, then treats the children like prisoners who Wheeler deprives of sleep, verbally and psychologically abuses, and even refuses to let go to the bathroom for punishments. Wheeler throws any teenagers who step out of line into "ISO"—short for isolation—cells that deprive them of sight and sound for long periods to mentally break them down, with one boy shown to be left a vacant shell for days following a trip to ISO. When Terry tries to expose Wheeler's crimes, Wheeler plans to throw him in ISO, then murder the boy to keep him quiet.
• In the "10,000 Clowns" arc of the comic book, Dana Tan's brother, Douglas Tan, is a disturbed youth obsessed with The Joker and his carnage, and dedicates himself to proving the fundamental meaningless of life and becoming the Joker's own Superior Successor. Fashioning himself "the Joker King", Douglas drugs dozens of Jokerz from around the nation into becoming suicide bombers, using them to wreak havoc across Gotham and cause thousands of deaths in an attempt to destroy the city, murdering his own best friend on a random whim just before the destruction starts. Douglas eventually decides to murder his entire family too, attempting to kill his comatose father in the hospital and only hesitating when his sister steps in the way—before deciding without another second of hesitation to kill her too.

Justice League

• John Dee, AKA Dr. Destiny, was the first confirmed murderer in the series. He started off as a minor convict who only fantasized of killing the Justice League to make a name for himself among super villains, but after an experimental machine gives him ESP, Dee quickly decides to make his fantasy a reality. Becoming Dr. Destiny, his first action is to take revenge on the wife who'd left him while he was in prison. As she’s sleeping, Destiny goes into her dream and begins to torture her for hours, (giving her a nightmare with strong rape overtones that's so traumatizing that she dies of cardiac arrest). Destiny then invades the dreams of each member of the Justice League, trying to use their worst fears to kill them one-by-one. These nightmares include making Superman think he killed his friends with out-of-control super powers, and burying Hawkgirl alive. He took joy in creating many of these nightmares seemingly just because he could.
  • Make that "As blatant an implied rape scene as you can GET on a cartoon show NOT being aired on HBO". Seriously: "Now that I'm a doctor, I'm going to perform some surgery"? The guy is Nightmare Fuel incarnate. Normally, that look of his would be too goofy on a cartoon, too "Skeletor", but the writers and the voice actor make it work. Almost TOO well.
    • His mask falls away to reveal a grinning skull, did we mention? He didn't only give nightmares to other characters.
      • Karma did kick Destiny in the crotch (or mind) when he tried taking on Batman and was left in a drooling vegetative state.

Dr. Destiny: "Frère Jacques,Frère Jacques, Dormez vous? Dormez vous? Sonnez les matines, Sonnez les matines, Din, din, don! Din, din, don!"

• The galactic warlord Mongul. Not many people can claim to have pulled off a Mind Rape on Superman and Batman in the same episode, but Mongul did. As the Evil Overlord of War World, he'd forced warriors to fight to the death in gladiatorial matches with the intention of distracting people from the poverty and oppression of the populace's day to day lives, and he always expected the victors to execute their opponents. When Superman managed to defeat Draaga, the current, undefeated champion, and yet refused to kill him, he felt threatened about his position of power in regards to Superman's public support, so he threatened to destroy Draaga’s planet if Superman wouldn’t let Draaga kill him in their next matc, and he only chose his planet because Krypton, Superman's home planet, was unavailable. When Draaga learned of this, he was angered, even willing to agree with Superman in regards to fighting against Mongul, even when he was feeling quite sore against Superman's allowing him to live after being defeated. Seeking revenge against Superman for ousting him from power, Mongul came to Earth and used a plant called the Black Mercy to trap Superman in a perfect dream world. With Superman out of the picture, Mongul planned to ravage the earth and turn it into a second War World where he could lord over the human race that he'd enslave. Superman was eventually able to free himself from the Black Mercy, but suffered from emotional pain so severe it was enough to make him actually want to kill Mongul before returning to his senses. The dialogue in the scene where Superman tears into Mongul, sums it up:

Superman: Do you have any idea what you did to me?! Mongul: I fashioned a prison you couldn't leave without sacrificing your heart's desire. It must have been like tearing off your own arm.

• The Imperium is the one behind the genocide of the Martian race. A being that craves lifeless darkness, the Imperium targeted the Martian civilization years ago to conquer Mars and annihilated nearly all life on the planet, leaving J'onn J'onzz as the only survivor. Years later, after being unsealed from a forced stasis, the Imperium sets up plans to repeat the process on Earth and destroy the human race, having its henchman Kill and Replace an astronaut in a plot to disable humanity's nuclear defense systems. A sadist and a coward on top of this, the Imperium gleefully tries to torture J'onn to death when it realizes J'onn is the last Martian, and when its plans go awry, it leaves all of its own loyal soldiers to die, even swatting away its henchman to burn to death in the sunlight.
• And then there's Lord Orm/The Ocean Master. Oh god, Orm. He tried to kill his brother, Aquaman, and Aquaman's infant son through a very cruel Death Trap that no parent should ever have to go through (which Aquaman can only undo by mutilating himself}, and when attacked by Papa Wolf and now Handicapped Badass Aquaman, he showed absolutely no remorse. Killing a child is bad enough, but trying to kill an infant hurls you well beyond the Moral Event Horizon. Orm was also behind the incident that made Aquaman all pissed at humans, by making a nuclear submarine crash into Atlantis. And the whole Sadistic Choice deal came when Aquaman confronted him on that. He was beyond the Moral Event Horizon already when the choice was given.
• "The Once and Future Thing" two-parter: David Clinton was once a weird little man who used Time Travel to steal artifacts throughout history, but after his sensitive ego takes one too many blows from his dissatisfied wife Enid, David transforms himself into "Lord Chronos". Altering the future to one where he has killed off the Justice League and its hundreds of members, Chronos conquers Gotham City and empowers the Jokerz with technology to run rampant and terrorize innocents. Having trapped Enid's mother in a "cruel thing" where he has kept her for a long, long time to control and abuse Enid, Chronos further showcases how brutal his control of time can be as he transports his snitch minion Chucko to the exact moment the dinosaurs were wiped out to kill him. Though at first merely uncaring that his actions are tearing apart reality, Chronos decides to further gain power by traveling back to the beginning of time, wipe out everything that has ever existed, and recreate time in his own image.

Teen Titans

• Slade Wilson, arch-nemesis of Robin and later the Teen Titans as a whole, is a cold, manipulative criminal mastermind and the show's first truly evil villain. Slade's main goal in the first two seasons was to find himself a young apprentice whom he could mold into being just as cruel and ruthless as he was. First targeting Robin, Slade came up with various schemes to test the Boy Wonder's mettle before finally infecting Robin's friends with nanobots that would slowly kill them from the inside-out should Robin not follow Slade's every command, with Slade even promising that he would make Robin watch as he killed his friends. When his plans for Robin were thwarted, Slade next turned his attention to Terra. Taking advantage of her status as an outsider who would never be accepted because of her destructive powers, Slade manipulated her into joining and befriending the Titans, betraying them and finally trying to kill them, after which he had Terra and an army of his machines take over Jump City by force, with there being heavily implied casualties. After Terra finds herself in over her head while fighting the Titans and retreats, Slade physically abuses her for defying his orders. When Terra then tries to quit her apprenticeship, Slade reveals that the suit he gave her to enhance her powers also gave him complete control over her body and powers, and vowed that he would never let her go. Though Slade dies when Terra rebels against him, he is eventually resurrected by the demonic Omnicidal Maniac Trigon, to act as his right-hand man. Ever The Sociopath, Slade took a vicious pleasure in his work towards ensuring the apocalypse, torturing Raven and mind-raping her with visions of her destiny as The Antichrist who'd sell out all of humanity to Trigon, all in exchange for Trigon giving him back his flesh, blood and soul. Even when Slade rebels against Trigon and assists the Titans against him, it isn't out of altruism, but because Trigon refused to honor their bargain. What truly makes Slade so heinous is that he is the embodiment of a child predator, and he plays it completely straight.
• The third season's Big Bad, Brother Blood, is the current Headmaster of the H.I.V.E. ("Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination") Academy, and the arch-nemesis of Cyborg. Blood teaches teenagers on how to become proper supervillains, exerting absolute control over his students with his hypnotic powers. When Cyborg infiltrates the Academy under the alias "Stone" and resists his Mind Control, Blood develops a twisted obsession towards him, to the point of appropriating Cyborg's technology to create a superweapon with which he uses to nearly destroy all of Jump City. In his final appearance, Blood brainwashes the whole of the Titans East team and uses them to capture Cyborg after tricking him into lowering his guard, where he reveals his fiendish final plan: having upgraded himself into a cyborg as well with the help of Professor Chang, Blood plans to subject thousands of young teenagers in Steel City to Unwilling Roboticisation, then program them so that they'll never regain their free will again. Gleefully aware that many of his "students" won't even survive this process, Blood tries to start by experimenting on the Titans East team, simply out of spite towards Cyborg.
• Trigon the Terrible was the Satanic Big Bad of the fourth season and the father of Raven. In the past, he'd conceived Raven solely to serve as a Human Sacrifice to become his portal into the realm of mortals so that he could destroy the Earth and all life on it, just as he did to Raven's homeworld of Azarath, and Raven has been repressing her powers and emotions in order to avoid letting this come to pass. After Slade died in Season 2, Trigon rescued him from Purgatory and offered him his life back were he to serve him in bringing Raven to her destiny. Trigon later came to Raven in a vision, emotionally abusing her and cruelly attempting to break her will so that she submits to his demands of her. When Slade asks for his promised payment, Trigon calls the deal off because, thanks to Trigon's own manipulation, Raven had come to him willingly rather than Slade delivering her to him and he attempts to incinerate Slade on the spot. Trigon then destroys the world immediately as he arrives, turning all mortal life to stone (don't worry, they get better!) and creating a Hell on Earth for him to rule. He then plots to expand this destruction to all worlds in this dimension so that he could conquer the universe and make all who survive worship him as their deity. When the Titans fight back, he not only brings out their own dark sides to torment them for his amusement, but he tries to murder his daughter, whom he openly deems to be worthless to him. Of course, he's the incarnation of all evil, so it's natural that he's as evil as it gets.
• The Brain is the leader of the Brotherhood of Evil and the Big Bad of the fifth season. Compensating for his lack of a body by being one of the most depraved foes the Teen Titans have ever faced, the Brain is introduced tormenting the Doom Patrol in specialized cages, threatening to slowly crush Elasti-Girl to death while torturing Patrol leader Mento with electricity. When his plan to use a quantum generator to wipe out entire cities is thwarted by the Titans, the Brain begins rounding up every young hero across the globe so as to permanently freeze them into trophies, with even superpowered toddlers not exempt from the Brain's reach. After the Titans invade his lair to rescue his frozen prisoners, the Brain tries to detonate a nuclear bomb and "clear the board completely", willing to murder his Brotherhood allies while he and Monsieur Mallah escape, so long as it ensures the deaths of every last hero who'd stop him. As shown in the tie-in comics, the Brain also subjects the Titans to horrible Mind Rape via the villainous Phobia, and threatens the lives of 40,000 people inside a baseball stadium.
• Komand'r/Blackfire is the older, crueler sister of Koriand'r/Starfire. Enraged that her parents chose her younger sister as the heir to their throne over her, Blackfire betrayed her homeworld of Tamaran by forming an alliance with the invading Gordanians, facilitating a "truce" by having Starfire sold into slavery. With the invasion also forcing their parents to send young Wildfire off-world for his safety, Blackfire's machinations result in her parents dying from heartbreak, which Blackfire shows zero remorse for. After a failed attempt to frame Starfire for her own criminal career, Blackfire allies with Drenthax IV to conquer Tamaran and threatens to destroy the entire planet if Starfire doesn't enter into a miserable marriage with the Drenthax leader, Glrdsklechhh. In the tie-in comics, Blackfire kidnaps many superheroines to sell them into slavery with the Gordanians, feigns redemption in order to attempt to destroy the Teen Titans, and works with shapeshifter Madame Rouge to use the likeness of Wildfire in a sadistic ploy to hurt Starfire with her long-lost brother.
• Professor Chang is a greedy and amoral man who specializes in selling his dangerous technology to anyone who will buy it. Eventually growing dissatisfied with merely selling to supervillains and deciding to graduate to real supervillainy himself, Chang attempts to vaporize all of Jump City for fun and even tries to turn the ray on Robin's friends, particularly Starfire, to hurt him. In the past, Chang also did work for secret government-funded military projects, in one such project experimenting on a young Red Star and filling him with lethal radioactive energy that could turn him into a human bomb. Chang would go on to make Slade's robotic foot soldiers, convert Brother Blood into a cyborg, and provide the Brain the Freeze Ray with which the latter used to create a menagerie of captured superheroes, as well as continuing his attempts at climbing the villainous ladder in the tie-in comics.
• Teen Titans Go! #19 - "Song of the Dead": "The Agent" is a demonic, deal-making entity from outside the mortal realm who seeks to ravage and conquer the world. Choosing the delinquent Johnny Rancid as its stooge, the Agent turns Johnny into a rock star so as to use his necromancy-laden music to unleash zombies throughout Jump City that nearly devour entire swathes of innocent people across the city. The Agent then hopes to broadcast Johnny's song across the country until the entire planet is overrun by raised undead who will kill and eat an innumerable number of victims and pave the way for the Agent to assume control of the broken and decimated survivors.

The Batman

• The Joker. Once a man who wanted to make people laugh, he fell into a vat of chemicals and became an insane, murderous Monster Clown and Batman's Arch Enemy. Devoid of any empathy, Joker commits crimes he views as "jokes" at the expense of Gotham. Terrible things he's done include poisoning people with his deadly laughing gas; putting people in various death traps; torturing Detective Ethan Bennett for hours and causing Bennett's mutation into Clayface; impersonating Batman and gassing people for minor crimes; using Bane's venom to go on a rampage; attempting to drop a teenage boy into a vat of chemicals; frequently mistreating his henchmen and his girlfriend Harley Quinn, as well as abandoning them to be arrested or even to die; and filling the abandoned tunnels and mine shafts beneath Gotham with miles of dynamite to collapse the city. That he manages to qualify despite being toned down to all get-out is a testament to how twisted a character Joker is.
• Professor Hugo Strange is an amoral psychiatrist who slowly graduates to one of the most wicked villains Batman ever faced. His stint as a psychiatrist ending after he toyed with his patients' well-being just out of curiosity, notably curing Arnold Wesker of his split personality Scarface only to break his mind again and drive him to nearly killing himself, Strange became a full-fledged supervillain when he created D.A.V.E (Digitally Enhanced Villain Emulator), a machine that ran on data of all of Gotham's worst villains and acted out to become Gotham's "ultimate criminal mastermind", putting the city and many human lives in jeopardy, which Strange intended so that he could observe how Batman responded and possibly figure out his true identity. Strange later infected Batman with a hallucinogen that made him attempt to transform the entire population of Gotham into zombies under Strange's control. In his grandest moment of depravity, Strange, having gone pure Mad Scientist, allied himself with the alien race known as the Joining, selling out humanity to be destroyed by the Joining and assisting the aliens in incapacitating the Justice League in order to steal their powers, all for nothing more than the promise of ultimate knowledge of the universe. As corrupt as they come, Hugo Strange repeatedly showed himself to be among the very worst of Gotham City's criminals.
• Black Mask is a thoroughly nasty crime boss who controls several crime syndicates in Gotham City, meaning that he's had influence in who-knows-how-many acts of villainy that have gone on in the show. He also Would Hurt a Child, as he demonstrates with Robin and Batgirl. When he passes the You Have Failed Me sentence to his Number 1 henchman, he shoots him dead and demonstrates a We Have Reserves mentality by telling another member of his gang "You're my new Number 1!"
• Tony Zucco in this show is portrayed as one of the most cold-blooded and heartless individuals in Gotham City. He not only arranged for Robin's parents to be killed because they couldn't pay him the amount of money he wanted, but when he has Batman at his mercy, he ties him to a wall and starts throwing knives at that wall for fun. During this, Zucco admits to having killed his own father with chilling causality - according to him, he and his father used to always practice knife-throwing together, and when asked by Batman about what became of his father, he sums it up with "Well one day...I missed." Oh, and to top it off, he's voiced by Mark Hamill.

Legion of Super-Heroes

• Dr. Mar Londo. Not only is he abusive towards his son, Timber Wolf (being responsible for his current state as a 'Wolf Man', brainwashing him in an elaborate scheme to get him to work for him again and emotionally manipulative towards him), but he has a lab full of subjects he's willing to run the same tests on. He has no remorse for his crimes, which included kidnapping innocent civilians and mutating them into beasts. He willfully uses gaslighting (the aforementioned brainwashing scheme where he manages to turn most of the Legion against Timber Wolf and having his terrified son question whether or not he was the real culprit) and other forms of manipulation to isolate his son from his friends who genuinely love and care for him, showing he does not care for his son's happiness and emotional wellbeing. He's basically a sociopath with a massive ego, as he said that he's a creator of life and that his work is a gift. He shows callous disregard towards how his son feels about his current state even to the point of mocking him for running away before the procedure was complete and how he should be thanking him for the procedure conducted on him, then proceeding to disown Timber Wolf as his son after it was shown that he was too difficult to control through the nanites he had implanted in his son's brain. Londo views morality and laws in society as childish and has manipulated the Legion into doing his dirty work. It was shown in a photo that had at least tried to be a decent parent, but that certainly didn't last. By the time the doctor frames his own son for a crime spree, there's clearly no love between them anymore.
• The Controller wasn't one to let morality get in the way of his plans for universal conquest. Abandoning his highly advanced race, The Controller decided to use his superweapon, the Sun-Eater to obliterate every inhabited system in the Milky Way, starting with Earth's solar system and all the trillions of lives in it. The Controller seeks to destroy the United Planets solely to bask in the silent "perfection" of the aftermath, and it takes Ferro-Lad sacrificing himself to stop the Sun-Eater, after which the Controller vows to enslave or murder as much of the Legion as he can. Convinced of his own innate superiority, and willing to wipe out an inhabited galaxy just to send a message, The Controller would let nothing stand in his path of becoming the universe's Dimension Lord.
• Imperiex is a warlord from the 41st century who seeks nothing less than total domination over the galaxy through sheer terror and pain. A former slave who fought his way to become a gladiator, Imperiex overthrew his oppressors and immediately turned his attentions on the rest of the galaxy, seeking to crush 44 trillion lives under his boot of dictatorship. Imperiex was thwarted by the Legion from his initial conquest, but stole one of their time travel devices and went into the past where he erased the current timeline and all life in it with Antimatter. Becoming a regular thorn in the Legion's side in the 31st century, Imperiex maims Lightning Lad while trying to kill his siblings; attempts to firebomb Cham's homeworld out of spite; and threatens to massacre the only survivors of Superman's home, Kandor. Unleashing Brainiac 1.0 onto the galaxy, Imperiex hopes to use him to bring destruction and suffering to all that live, serving as a contrast to Brainiac's desire for "order" with his own for pure chaos.
• Brainiac 1.0 is no slouch in this department either. This incarnation of him was introduced in a flashback, where he shrinks and steals the city of Kandor from Krypton. Within Kandor was a power source that was stabilizing Krypton, but with this power source gone Krypton was soon destroyed. Brainiac 1.0 himself was destroyed long ago, but his programming resided within his descendants Brainiac 5, cut off from the other systems, waiting for a chance to be released. This chance came when Brainiac 5 accessed Brainiac 1.0's programming to gain knowledge to defeat Imperiex. Though Brainiac 1.0's knowledge was useful in defeating Imperiex, every time he used it Brainiac 1.0 was able to gain more control. Brainiac 1.0 slowly corrupted Brainiac 5, until eventually he took control of his body. Then Brainiac quickly betrays Imperiex—who had helped Brainiac 1.0 take over Brainiac 5's body—killing him because he was no longer useful to him. Brainiac then proceeds with his plan to bring the entire universe under his control, by transforming all living beings in the universe into streams of data. After digitizing some planets, Brainiac returns to his home planet Colu and reprograms all the inhabitants there to serve as his army and aid in his quest to digitize the entire universe.

Batman: The Brave And The Bold

• Starro's faceless henchman, Chun Yull, is definitely the most wicked character in the series. Originally from the Saturnian moon Klaramar, Chun Yull was an outcast among his people for being a violent hunter, and in retaliation, he made a deal with the planet-devouring being Starro to destroy his homeworld in exchange for being Starro's herald. Spending the following years mind controlling the populations of entire planets then offering them up for Starro to devour, the hunter arrives on Earth to continue his work, however he is forced to flee when the heroes of the Earth destroy Starro. Kidnapping the hero B'Wana Beast, the hunter painfully forces him to use his powers to create a monstrous creature the Hunter plans to use to destroy the Earth, before moving on to the rest of the universe. Though the hunter is beaten, B'Wana Beast is forced to sacrifice himself to save the Earth from his machinations. Cruel and homicidal for no reason, Chun Yull stood out as a particularly dark villain for this fairly lighthearted series.
• Psycho Pirate is a sadistic supervillain who increases his own strength by feeding off the negative emotions of others, which leads to their minds being destroyed. Kidnapping 3 young superheroes, the Outsiders, for this very purpose, Psycho Pirate uses a dream machine to Mind Rape them with their worst fears and angers. Attacking Katana's mind first, Psycho Pirate forces her to relive her master's death, then tries to manipulate her into striking down her master's killer in her rage, and later tries to trick Black Lightning into showing the same hate and prejudice toward others that people have often shown him. When Batman saves the two kids, Psycho Pirate invades Metamorpho's mind, convinces him his friends have turned against him, then has him try to kill them. After Batman seemingly saves the Outsiders, Psycho Pirate tries one last time to torture Batman by assaulting his mind with the dream that the Outsiders were painfully killed by Pirate, attempting to force Batman to give into his hatred for the villain. Though only appearing in one episode, Psycho Pirate's sadism, victim choice, and powers made him one of the few people Batman shows nothing but disgust and contempt for.
• Mongul is the sadistic ruler of War World with a love for Deadly Games. Mongul has Jonah Hex unwittingly under his employ to capture fighters from across the galaxy, where Mongul forces them to compete in his personal Gladiator Games against his sister, Mongal. The captured gladiators must fight to the death against Mongal's champion, Steppenwolf, with hundreds of gladiators having been slain by the present day. Seeking revenge on Batman for releasing his prisoners, Mongul travels to Earth for revenge, where he sets up a Death Race and forces various heroes and villains to compete, or face their hometown being destroyed. Mongul also sets up the stakes, so that the winner of the Death Race will be made ruler of the Earth while all the losers are executed, but if Mongul's champion, Steppenwolf wins, the Earth will instead be destroyed. After Batman wins, Mongul gleefully reveals he never intended to keep his word and was going to destroy the Earth anyway.
• Kanjar Ro is a power-hungry Space Pirate who has committed attempted mass murder on a planetary scale solely for the sake of profit. Kanjar harvested the Gibbles as a source of power, and murdered the first Blue Beetle using a Gamma Gong for trying to protect them. Upon meeting Jaime Reyes, the new Blue Beetle, Kanjar weakens Jaime with the Gamma Gong, forcefully extracting the Blue Beetle Scarab and imprisoning the boy. Kanjar then uses the Scarab on himself, then uses the Blue Beetle suit to attempt to kill Batman. Later, Kanjar attempts to blow up a planet solely for profit. Afterwards, Kanjar attempts to use a neutron bomb to vaporize all sapient life on Adam Strange's homeworld of Rann, so he can then use the empty planet as a base of operations to conquer the galaxy.
• James "Jim" Craddock, AKA the Gentleman Ghost, was a notorious highwayman during 19th century England where he made a deal with the demon Astaroth, whereby he would become immortal in exchange for ten human souls. Stealing the souls of ten innocents, Astaroth made it that Craddock's "soul would never pass from Earth" so he would remain as a ghost swearing revenge on Batman. Craddock would return in modern day London where he succeeds in burying Batman alive and summoning an undead army with which he intends to destroy London.
• Silver Cyclone is the Evil Counterpart to Red Tornado and the second-in-command of the Injustice Syndicate. Cyclone, much like the Syndicate's leader, Owlman, plans on invading other Earths and conquering them. Upon learning from Batman—who is disguised as Owlman—that the Good Earth is too dangerous to conquer, Cyclone decides to bring up Plan B, which involves destroying all life on that planet and using it as a warning to other Earths. During a heist to steal the material needed for the bomb, the Injustice Syndicate captures Red Hood, Joker's Good Counterpart, and Cyclone tortures him for information. When Batman frees the Evil Earth's heroes and defeats the Injustice Syndicate, Cyclone decides to activate his bomb, planning to kill all organic life on his Earth, including his own teammates, just because he hates humans and wants to rule alone.
• General Zahl, the sadistic Nazi who murders the Doom Patrol by imprisoning them on an island that's set to explode in hopes of breaking the spirits of the Amercian masses who supported them, and also murdered an innocent girl in a flashback while deliberately putting the Doom Patrol in a position that forced them to be unable to save her life purely out of sadism and spite for the heroes.
• Darkseid is the ruler of Apokolips, with designs to invade Earth and unlock the Anti-Life Equation. Apokolips is a flaming hellscape where the entire population is used for constant labor and slave work, their spirits broken and hope gone in what is explicitly described as a Fate Worse Than Death. Darkseid hopes to stage an onslaught of Earth so he can transform it into another Apokolips and replenish his slave supply with whatever humans survive his invasion, and he tries to herald his arrival by murdering multiple superheroes with sadistic, drawn-out relish. Darkseid's goals are further detailed in the tie-in comics, where he captures Batman and Mister Miracle to subject them to a series of mental deaths and torments, all in the hope he can break their minds and use the experience to replicate it on a mass scale, obtaining the Anti-Life Equation and destroying the will of all life in the universe.

Green Lantern: The Animated Series

• The aptly-named Atrocitus is the leader of the Red Lanterns and the reason that Razer's wife is dead. He is dedicated to the destruction of the Green Lantern Corps, having many of them murdered by his followers. First showing his ruthlessness in ordering a colony world full of innocent civilians destroyed, Atrocitus later revealed he had destroyed worlds to fill survivors with rage and recruit them as Red Lanterns. Unlike his comics counterpart, a Tragic Villain at worst and an Anti-Hero at best, Atrocitus in the show delighted over the pain he caused innocents and took sadistic pleasure in his actions. Even though he himself had once lost a homeworld, he gloated over inflicting the same agony on others like Razer.
• Myglom is a seemingly moral warden of a Green Lantern prison, but is in actuality a sadist who masks his villainy as a "rehabilitation program". Myglom subjects dozens of prisoners to a Mind Rape machine that makes them relive their worst memories over and over again before webbing them up to be devoured at his leisure. When Hal Jordan and Kilowog deliver the Red Lantern Razer to Myglom's prison, Myglom subjects Razer to the same torments of his other prisoners, and when Hal and Kilowog realize Myglom's villainy, he captures them and plans to eat them alive after using his nightmarish machine on them.
• Prince Ragnar, brother of Queen Iolande, is an unfathomably petty, spiteful narcissist. Craving the power of a Lantern so as to rule his world, he poisoned his life-long mentor Dulok to get his Lantern ring and later tried to do the same to Kilowog, believing himself the only one worthy of its power, before attempting to slit his own sister's throat to ensure if he couldn't rule, neither could she. In his second appearance, Ragnar's rage earns him a place in the Red Lanterns ranks, taking over his world with them and waging war on any resistance. He would then have the Red Lantern Corps plant a "Liberator" on his world, intending to exterminate his own people of 2 billion lives, simply to spite them all for not wanting him as a ruler.
• The Anti-Monitor is an Omnicidal Maniac obsessed with nothing less than the obliteration of everything in the universe that isn't himself. Built to be a knowledge-gathering robot, the Anti-Monitor quickly realized his superiority to all life in the cosmos, and was banished to another dimension soon after his proclamation to destroy everything in his path. The Anti-Monitor proceeded to turn trillions of planets in this alternate dimension into antimatter which he then consumed to make himself stronger, and, though making a deal with the last remaining planet's population to not consume them should they build him a portal back to his own dimension, the Anti-Monitor drained their sun of nearly all its life before he left, ensuring that the planet would still die soon after he was gone. Once back in his home dimension, the Anti-Monitor reactivates the Manhunter robots across the universe and orders them to kill everything they see, and, when confronted by Hal Jordan, tries to force him to watch as first his friends, then entire worlds, are consumed before him. Even when beaten, the Anti-Monitor desperately tries to strike a deal with Aya to assist her in her plans to destroy reality itself to save his own hide. A megalomaniac who couldn't stand anything living except himself, the Anti-Monitor's narcissism was only matched by his petty sadism.

Young Justice

• Orm the Ocean Master, first appearing in season 1, is the treacherous younger brother of Aquaman, King of Atlantis. Masquerading as a loyal brother and supporter of the crown, Orm participates in the evil activities of the council known as the Light, while attempting to seize Atlantis. Using a racist group of Atlanteans known as the Purifiers against the "impure" Atlanteans, Orm attempts to inspire them to wipe out anyone they deem as impure, knowing it will cause a civil war, after which he will take over what’s left. He also kidnaps his sister-in-law Mera and tries to drain her powers, slowly killing her, despite knowing well that she is pregnant. After the attempted genocide and civil war fail, Orm is eventually exposed and imprisoned for six years until he escapes. Seeking revenge, Orm intends to enact the "nuclear option": finding where the heroes' loved ones have their play dates, Orm waits until 18 of them have arrived, including babies and children alike, before planning to blow the house up and kill them all solely out of spite for being deservedly punished for his crimes.
• Count Werner Vertigo is always second in line to the throne of Vlatava. Having murdered his brother, Vertigo also assists the Injustice League in destruction to gain a hefty ransom with no regard for the lives of the innocents in the cities he would see leveled. Trying to murder his 10-year-old niece Queen Perdita, Vertigo is eventually bested, only to later return as a major figure in the Bedlam Syndicate. Vertigo happily captures teenagers with the metagene, subjecting them to experimentation with a massive fatality rate, all to eventually take the throne of Vlatava, whoever he needs to murder along the way.
• Desaad, New God of sadism and torture, is the chief scientist of Apokolips, and stands with Granny Goodness as Darkseid's most horrific servant. Performing experiments and tortures on countless beings, Desaad first arrives on earth to erase the free will of any human he can, while gleefully taking part in metahuman trafficking by torturing any who fall into his clutches. Contracted to assist Ma'alefa'ak, Desaad designs a bomb to exterminate all Green Martians, just to see what happens. Not even other New Gods are safe, with Desaad cheerfully torturing Granny Goodness for her "overreach" with sadistic aplomb.
• The Brain is a cruel and controlling member of the Light whose vile scientific genius makes him stand out among his cohorts. Heading up several of the Light's projects with his aptitude for technology and biology, the Brain is responsible for the mass production of Kobra-Venom, as well as the creation of Starro-tech, which he obtained needed materials for by having Klarion cause worldwide chaos as a mere distraction. The Brain's personal exploits revolve around capturing hundreds of animals and performing painful experiments on them that increase their intelligence, sapience, and strength, but amplify their suffering. The Brain then turns the enhanced animals into armies of slaves controlled through pain and fear, and in the case of "Gorilla City", he holds the infants of Grodd's troop as hostages. When the Team goes up against him, the Brain regularly tries to vivisect them and harvest their brains, and he spitefully tries to kill all of Gorilla City's enslaved occupants when they attempt freedom from his tyranny.
• Red Volcano is the ultimate creation of T.O. Morrow and "brother" of Red Tornado. Immediately turning on his creator upon being activated, Volcano continues his plan to erupt the super-volcano under Yellowstone and blanket the world under a cloud of ash, fully aware this will kill billions. When the Team discover Morrow's lair, Volcano sends his brother to prove himself a "loyal Red" by killing his former charges, and personally tries to murder the "meatbags" when Tornado disobeys. Returning after his apparent destruction to attack Star Labs in search of the AMAZO android, Volcano threatens to murder the teenage Runaways when Blue Beetle gets in his way.
• Black Beetle, a member of the Reach's Warrior class in Invasion, is a thuggish brute who revels in the destruction of those he terms as "meat". Black Beetle assists in the abduction and safeguarding of Metahumans for the Reach's experiments; gleefully attempts to murder any hero he comes across; and helps to rig a bomb to wipe out the Team and numerous Kroloteans. When he decides the Ambassador in charge has failed too many times, Black Beetle usurps his schemes with the singular goal of the total annihilation of the Earth to hide any evidence of the Reach's illegal activities.
• Frederick DeLamb, from the first three episodes of the Outsiders season, is the security chief and brother to the Queen of Markovia; he is also secretly Baron Bedlam, leader of the heinous Bedlam Syndicate. Bedlam masterminds the capture and trafficking of countless young metahuman children and teenagers, having them tortuously experimented on and drowning them in a thick tar of his own creation to awaken their metagene. Killing enough of them to warrant regular mass burials of failed experiments, those who do survive are mutated and auctioned off as living weapons to the highest bidder. In his own grab for power in Markovia, Bedlam has his own sister and the King assassinated before killing the Quraci assassin himself, throwing pressure onto the Quraci populace as a convenient excuse to screen for more metagenes. Bedlam even has his own niece and nephew, Tara and Brion Markov, subjected to the experiments, and in the season finale breaks out of prison and attempts to usurp his nephew Gregor before swearing to always attempt to seize the throne so long as he draws breath - Leading to Brion killing him on the spot.
• Granny Goodness is the Big Bad of Season 3, serving as The Heavy to Darkseid. Granny is a major figure in the metahuman trafficking game where the teenagers and children are abducted and experimented on to be used as slaves for the forces of Apokolips and the Light. Granny came to Earth and created the company GoodeWorld under the guise of the kind grandmotherly Gretchen Goode as a front for her trafficking and schemes, including making a set of VR goggles that track children with the meta-gene and put them into a coma, leading to Garfield's Mind Rape where he was forced to relive his loved ones, including his mother die in front of him again. Granny is also an abusive boss and mother figure to Big Barda and the Furies, torturing the former for speaking out of line. Granny traps Nightwing and Black Lightning in her X-Pit, which slowly rips apart a person's body in painful agony and forces the two to fight against their friends. Upon discovering Violet has the power to control the Anti-Life Equation, Granny takes her and mind-controls her into using the Equation for Darkseid's purposes. When Garfield/Beast Boy and the Outsiders break into one of her warehouses to find Violent, Granny traps Garfield's friends in the X-Pit to make him watch as they suffer while beating the young hero senselessly and calling it "discipline". Granny then takes control over a squad of Justice League members and metahumans then attempts to subjugate all life in Darkseid's name by using the Anti-Life Equation on the entire universe. While see appears to be a sweet and motherly lady on the outside, Granny Goodness is a sadistic and domineering psychopath on the inside.
• The Chaos Lord known as Child shows her cruelty by mutilating a security guard to study his innards, before focusing her attack on Klarion the Witch Boy, believing he is unsuited to being a Lord of Chaos compared to her. Child brutally kills Klarion's anchor Teekl, before redirecting her ire at everything nearby and trying to murder the heroes set against her. With a free rein over Earth, Child enacts natural disasters all over, trying to melt the polar ice caps and wipe out every living thing on the planet with sadistic relish.

DC Showcase

• The DC Showcase shorts present a version of Black Adam thoroughly distilled of his more redeemable traits. Once chosen as the Earth's savior, Adam's power consumed him to the point where he considered himself nothing less as a god, forcing Shazam to cast him out in a far point in space. Upon coming to Earth, the very first thing Adam does is redirect his impact path into an inhabited parking lot, before seeking out and intending to kill Shazam's next candidate Billy Barston. Throughout his appearance in Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam , Adam revels in exercising his own power over living beings, attempting to flood all of Fawcett City as a distraction and taking a hostage to force Billy to depower himself (later trying to kill the hostage anyways) while relating his supremacist philosophies to Billy. Once he's beaten, Adam contents himself with smugly goading Billy into a Not So Different position. Adam would willingly hurt anyone and anything so long as the result would be to his benefit.
• Rough Cut in DC Showcase: Catwoman is a diamond smuggler who has taken up Human Trafficking. Kidnapping a dozen women at a time, Rough Cut has them placed in crates and sold into slavery. When his gang abducts teenager Holly Robinson, her friend Catwoman pursues them. She finds them trying to kill a cat for the jewels on its collar, and ends up chasing them. Rough Cut makes a semi truck crash in the hopes it will kill his enemy, before offering her a 10% cut if she leaves him alone.
• Madame Lorraine in DC Showcase: Jonah Hex is a seductress who makes a practice of enticing men and luring them into her clutches. Once she has them, Lorraine coldly shoots them dead, takes their money, and has her flunkies dump their bodies in a mine shaft. Lorraine comes into conflict with Jonah Hex after she kills one of his bounties and attempts to repeat the process on him. Once Hex forces Lorraine to show him where his bounty's body is, Lorraine shows him into the mine shaft, where the decaying bodies of the dozens of men Lorraine has killed are seen.
• In DC Showcase: The Phantom Stranger, Seth is a centuries-old sorcerer who looks like an attractive young man. Discovering an ancient amulet that allowed him to retain eternal youth by draining the life of others, Seth would murder many people to keep himself immortal. Taking over one mansion whose previous owner is implied to have been murdered by him, Seth started luring teenagers there to drain their lives, and when he invited his latest victims, he managed to drain nearly all of them, only being stopped by The Phantom Stranger, whom he intended to keep as fuel, due to his large life aura, openly saying that he would slowly and painfully drain him for a hundred years.

Other DC Animation

• Beware The Batman: Anarky is Batman's Arch Enemy and the most recurring villain in the series. An utter madman who views himself and Batman as two kings on a chess board, one representing order and peace, the other chaos and destruction, Anarky commits all of his crimes out of a pathological love for attention and a sheer enjoyment for being evil. In his first appearance, Anarky grants two petty crooks high-tech weaponry before sending them on a rampage through Gotham, after which he rigs two gondolas filled with people to explode unless Batman can stop them in time. Later, Anarky pits Batman and the League of Assassins against each other as part of a plan to unleash a lethal plague onto all of Gotham, and attempts to bomb a populated park filled with police officers while trying to frame Batman. In the end of the series, Anarky makes corrupting District Attorney Harvey Dent into evil his personal pet project, and successfully drives Dent to institute martial law in Gotham while threatening the lives of all those who stand in his way. In the sequel tie-in comic, Anarky unlocks every door in Gotham City for a single night, then tries to spur all of the citizens into a panic-induced riot that he hopes will tear Gotham apart in the ultimate display of chaos. Though soft spoken and eerily polite, Anarky is the most wicked foe Batman faced in the series, having no empathy, no mercy, and no motive at all except his basic whims.
• DC Super Hero Girls (2019): In "#NightmareInGotham", The Joker is a teenaged supervillain and Batman's Arch Enemy. Desiring to give Gotham its scariest Halloween, Joker breaks out of Arkham Reform School, killing one of the guards in the process, and manipulates the Super Hero Girls into releasing 3 dangerous villains, before luring them to Gotham to have them cause massive destruction and mayhem throughout the city, endangering many innocent lives in the process. Fearing that someone will outdo his efforts in the future, Joker attempts to destroy all of Gotham with a bomb, killing everyone in it, just so that no one can ever one-up him again.
• JLA Adventures: Trapped In Time: Time Trapper is an evil being who can control time and is trapped in an ancient hourglass. After being freed by Lex Luthor, Time Trapper uses his power to help Lex and the Legion of Doom travel back in time so they can prevent Clark Kent from becoming Superman, ensuring that neither Superman nor the Justice League exists in the present. Eventually, the Time Trapper frees himself from Lex Luthor's control and banishes him to non-existence. The Time Trapper then enacts his real plan and uses his power to try and destroy the world.
• Ruby-Spears Superman:
  • Chilton Bone, from "Bonechill", was a former university professor fired for spreading his theories on the occult. Bone steals the Talisman of Olaf from the university and transforms himself into a ghoul named Bonechill who can create monsters. Bonechill creates monsters and sends them to kill some university students who could identify him. Bonechill also kidnaps the Daily Planet staff and puts them into death traps inspired by Edgar Allan Poe after they try to investigate him. Bonechill's end game is to create an army of monsters and have them destroy the university, attempting to kill everyone on the campus.
  • Dealmaker, from "The Last Time I Saw Earth", is an intergalactic criminal who hires a Bounty Hunter named Starrok to steal a NASA shuttle, with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen on board. Starrok takes Lois, Jimmy and the rest of the crew to meet Dealmaker at a city he rules over. Dealmaker seems pleasant at first, offering them a feast to eat, but after the feast, he imprisons them in capsules and has his scientists study them. Dealmaker reveals that he is going to sell the Earth to some aliens who will become immortal if they devour humans. When Superman comes to rescue everyone, Dealmaker fills the capsules with poison gas.
• Vixen: Benatu Eshu is a ruthless Zambesi warlord and Season 2's Big Bad. Desiring the Totems of Zambesi, Eshu led a raid on Mari's village when she was an infant, massacring scores of innocents, upon learning that the village possessed the Anansi Amulet; among those killed was Mari's father, who Eshu callously executed when he attempted to stand against the madman. In the present, Eshu arrives in Detroit under the guise of an ambassador and continues his quests to find the totems. To achieve his goals, Eshu bribes a thief into stealing the Fire Totem for him, then promptly kills the man once he's no longer of any use. With the Fire Totem in his possession, Eshu attempts to kill Mari to steal the Anansi Amulet. Failing in this, Eshu goes on a city-wide rampage in a fit of homicidal rage, burning down a massive portion of Detroit in an effort to draw Mari out. When Mari and her allies attempt to stop him, Eshu incinerates Mari's sister Kuasa right before her eyes before trying to kill Mari herself. Even when he is stripped of the power of the Fire Totem, Eshu continues his attempt to murder Mari in order to steal her amulet and harness its powers for his own purposes.
• My Adventures With Superman:
  • Primus Brainiac is a rogue Kryptonian AI that desires war and expansion. Fearing that the Kryptonians would decommission him after peace talks, Brainiac uses their greatest weapon to wipe them out himself, leaving Superman as one of the only two survivors. He would later find Kara Zor-El/Supergirl and raise her as a weapon, Brainiac then brainwashes her as the Eradicator, using her to wipe out entire worlds that will not submit to him. He also digitally transfers the minds of defeated fighters from these worlds as test subjects despite their intense pain. Kidnapping Superman, Brainiac subjects him to horrific mental torture in order to break him and gaslight him into believing no one loves him. Forsaking even the love of his adoptive daughter Supergirl, Brainiac tries to murder her to purge himself of that love, viewing it as a virus. Possessing Superman, Brainiac tries to use his body to force Earth to submit, and when they refuse, intends to destroy them. After being ejected from Superman, Brainiac tries to force Supergirl to kill Superman against her will. The greatest Arch Enemy of both Superman and Supergirl, Brainiac ultimately personifies the worst of Krypton.
  • Season 1: Parasite, real name Dr. Anthony Ivo, starts out as the corrupt CEO of Amazo Tech, whose friendly demeanor hides vicious sociopathy. Ivo is connected with organized crime and sabotages his competitors, having entire neighborhoods displaced to build the headquarters of his company. When the board is about to fire him because of his recent business failures, Ivo uses Kryptonian tech he got thanks to his criminal connections to create the Parasite suit in order to get back on top. Organizing a huge party in Ivo Tower, he throws a board member out of a window to lure Superman after unveiling his Parasite suit, trapping Superman and the party guests in a high-voltage force field. Parasite's plan is to defeat Superman to prove the strength of his technology, taking sadistic pleasure in beating him before attacking the guests. Joining Task Force X, Parasite helps them capture Superman as revenge for the hero supposedly ruining his life. Parasite eventually absorbs enough energy for his suit to turn into a Kaiju, going on a rampage across Metropolis and endangering thousands of people, ready to destroy the whole city just for a shot at killing Superman.
• Batman: Caped Crusader:
  • Detective Arnold Flass is one of the many dorrupt cops at the Gotham City Police Department, and proves himself far worse than his partner Harvey Bullock. After trying to track down Catwoman to stop her thievery, Flass tries to kill her in cold blood solely because he found her annoying. When the GCPD is tasked with capturing Batman, upon being told that a costumed freak is what would lure him out, Flass releases the dangerous Firebug from his cell and lets him loose on the Eastside Flats so that he'll cause a fire and lure out Batman, endangering numerous innocents in the process. Once he and Bullock corner Firebug in the burning building, Flass provokes Bullock into shooting and killing Firebug by mentioning how he'll talk about how they let him escape. In the Season 1 finale, Flass, after being tasked to bring Harvey Dent to Rupert Thorne, leads a group of Thorne's men to the docks when Harvey escapes him and Bullock with the full intent of killing him and Barbara Gordon. Eventually cornering the two of them, Flass prepares to shoot Barbara and kills Harvey when the latter takes the shot for her, before preparing to shoot and kill Barbara to clean up all loose ends.
  • Oswalda "the Penguin" Cobblepot portrays herself as a charming member of high society when in truth she's a ruthless crime boss vying for control of Gotham's criminal underbelly. Having secretly obtained a military-grade cannon, the Penguin has been using it to destroy various buildings owned by rival crime boss Rupert Thorne and killing everyone inside. The Penguin also regularly has men locked in boxes and thrown into the ocean to drown, which she uses to execute her own "favorite" son Aaron due to believing him to be a rat. When she discovers her other son Ronnie was the rat, she quickly orders his death as well, before taking aim at the GCPD station with her cannon to destroy the whole building, just to kill Ronnie.

DC Animated Movies Universe

Recurring Examples

• Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips, is the Overarching Villain of this series' universe who seeks to conquer the Earth and add it to his dark empire. In Justice League War, Darkseid Has many humans abducted and agonizingly mutated into his Parademons in order to launch an invasion on the Earth, bombing and leveling entire cities before being defeated and banished back to his world by Superman. Seeking revenge against the Man of Steel, Darkseid in Death of Superman unleashes Doomsday upon the Earth to kill Superman so that he can attempt to conquer Earth once more, resulting in the death of Hank Henshaw's wife who Darkseid rebuilds and corrupts into the Cyborg Superman, using him in Reign of the Supermen to return to Earth where he intends to obliterate Metropolis and then take over the world in bloody conquest. Returning as the Big Bad of Justice League Dark Apokolips War, Darkseid kills half of the Justice League, conquers Earth and tortures and enslaves the survivors, including filling Superman's veins with kryptonite and sending him back to Earth as a symbol of despair, bonding Batman to the Mobius Chair to brainwash him into Darkseid's perfect strategist, tearing Cyborg apart and transforming him into a human computer and turning Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Mera, Starfire and Martian Manhunter into his cyborg Furies. 2 years later, Darkseid invades Oa and slaughters both the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps before dropping Earth's lava on both John Stewart and the Central Power Battery to make it incapable of choosing new Green Lanterns. After returning from Oa, Darkseid attempts to make Batman kill his son Damien, vaporizing the boy when he refuses to do so.
• Eobard Thawne (AKA Professor Zoom) is the Reverse-Flash and the Greater Scope Villain for indirectly causing the existence of this series' timeline. Opposes everything Barry Allen stands for, Thawne in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox hires various members of Flash's Rogues Gallery to break into the Flash museum. Thawne straps bombs to the villains he hired after they defeat Flash, planning to blow up the Flash museum and several surrounding blocks, just so the Flash will be tormented knowing that several innocent people will die with him. After his initial defeat, Thawne mocks Flash over the fact his mother died. After Flash uses his speed to travel back in time and save his mother, the world is sent to its twisted alternate state where the world is devastated between a war between Atlantis and the Amazons. Thawne delights in Barry's agony at the new world and enjoys the carnage as it makes his nemesis suffer. When Barry tries to fix the realities, Thawne tries to stop him, meaning he is willing to cause and allow the deaths of countless innocents solely to satisfy his hatred. Surviving the headshot he received from Flashpoint Batman via the Speed Force, Thawne reappears in Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay in an attempt to obtain the "Get Out of Hell" card before his Speed Force runs out so that he can die unpunished and go to Heaven, killing both Vandal Savage and Bronze Tiger to try and get it.
• Slade Wilson, AKA Deathstroke the Terminator, was already horrible enough in Son of Batman, in which he served as the film's Big Bad. There he'd shown promise to be Ra's al Ghul's successor as leader of the League of Assassins, killing Bronze Tiger's fiance years ago when he was discovered to be a double agent, before Ra's chose Bruce Wayne as his heir instead, making Slade turn on Ras due to this dejection and slaughter many of the group's assassins in his hostile takeover, and he spent the rest of the movie manipulating and abusing Bruce's son Damian Wayne in order to keep him in line, conducting Lazarus Pit experiments to create flying Man-Bat assassins that he'd planned on selling off as slave mercenaries, torturing Damian's mother (Talia al Ghul, no saint herself as Batman: Bad Blood revealed) and making Damian watch, and attempting to kill the Bat-Family, Damian included. But Teen Titans: The Judas Contract seals his place on this trope. In the film he's been saved from death by Brother Blood and serves as his Dragon as part of a contract to take out the Teen Titans and deliver them to Blood's cult in order to have the young teens' drained of their life force, granting Blood their powers. To carry this out, Slade sends Terra Markov, a teenage girl he's raised and groomed to follow in his footsteps, to infiltrate the Titans as The Mole and ultimately betray them over to his side. Damian Wayne gets betrayed and captured ahead of schedule, so Slade wastes no opportunity to beat the crap out of him and attempt to break him as vengeance for costing him the League of Assassins. We're shown that he's made Terra so dependent on him that she's developed a romantic attraction to him, a much older man, and Slade uses this by promising her they can be together once the job is completed. But when he's seemingly killed Nightwing and is told by Brother Blood that he needs one more Titan in Nightwing's place to complete the contract and be paid at full price, Slade has zero problem turning Terra over to have her life and power drained, coldly telling her "Sorry kid, but a contract is a contract." Though he ultimately accepts his Karmic Death at Terra's hands, it's done with scorn and due to his failure to put up a good enough resistance. Willing to harm and kill a bunch of teenagers out of greed and spite, even betraying the mentally troubled girl who trusted him most without remorse, Slade proved to be a vile, cold-blooded, and irredeemable adversary.
• In Batman: Bad Blood, Talia al Ghul, the new leader of the League of Assassins, is a Control Freak of the highest order. Her ultimate plan is is to use Bruce Wayne's technology to brainwash the world leaders attending his tech summit, in order to expand the League of Assassins' influence over the planet, which would result in much bloodshed. Talia assembles a team of villains under the command of The Heretic, the adult clone of her and Bruce's Child by Rape Damian Wayne, and orders them to capture Bruce so his mind could be broken with Mad Hatter's machine; Mad Hatter has been forced to cooperate by means on an Explosive Leash. Later, Talia sends Heretic to attack Wayne Enterprises in order to steal technology necessary for her plan, near-fatally wounding Lucius Fox in the assault. When Heretic breaks down and begs for Talia to love him as a mother, and wishing to have Damian's memories, she shoots him in the head for disobeying her orders regarding Damian. As the brainwashing is taking place, she orders a mind-controlled Bruce to shoot Dick Grayson and their son Damian dead, coldly proclaiming that she and Bruce could always "make more".
• Trigon is both Raven's father and among one of the most powerful demon lords in the universe. Trigon met Raven's mother after she joined a cult that worshiped Trigon, with the cult managing to summon him. Trigon took the form of a handsome man and Raven's mom was taken with him. They retire to the bed chamber for sex, where Trigon reveals his true form and rapes her. Raven's mom escapes the cult and seeks protect in the peaceful dimension of Azarath. Raven is born here, but is treated as an outcast due to her demonic heritage. As a teen, Raven becomes curious about her origins and accidentally summons Trigon. Trigon then proceeds to destroy Azarath, killing countless people in the process. Raven manages to seal Trigon in a crystal, but Trigon in Justice League VS Teen Titans uses his demon minions to enact a plan to free. He uses his demons to possess the Justice League and threatens to murder all of Raven's friends, forcing Raven to free him. After being freed, Trigon plans to destroy Earth, just as he did Azarath. Trapped inside a jewel on Raven's forehead, Trigon psychologically tortures her, threatening to kill all her friends, including her Love Interest Damian Wayne, and for 2 years in Justice League Dark Apokolips War Mind Rapes her to the point of being reduced to a anorexic and broken mess of her former self. Released through Raven's anger over Damien's death, Trigon kills John Constantine when he tries to offer his body as a vessel in exchange for defeating Darkseid and instead possesses Superman in an attempt to kill the New God and continue his conquest of the universe.

One-Time Examples

• Queen Diana AKA Wonder Woman from Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox is a far cry from her benevolent regular counterpart, Flashpoint Wonder Woman is a cruel despot who kickstarts the war between Atlantis and her Amazons by murdering Flashpoint Aquaman's wife Mera and sending her head to him as a "gift" after having an affair with him. During the war, she and her amazons conquered the parts of Europe that weren't flooded by Aquaman and slaughtered over thirty million people, all for not being amazons. Other noteworthy atrocities are her murdering Steve Trevor (Ironically, he's her boyfriend in mainstream continuity) who had attempted to help stop the madness she was causing and her killing a helpless Billy Batson, who is a young child. And to top it all off, Wonder Woman is an enormous hypocrite to boot: she views men as the root of all evil while she took part in all the aforementioned atrocities, and is easily worse than her enemy Aquaman. While one could argue she loved Aquaman, it's pretty clear that this incarnation of Wonder Woman was fueled by pure lust and pride as opposed to true unconditional love.
• Black Manta from Justice League: Throne of Atlantis is The Dragon to the main villain Orm/Ocean Master, but proves to be even worse than his superior. He's fully complicit in Orm's plot to start a war between Atlantis and the rest of the world by undergoing a false-flag operation where he uses a disguised submarine to murder innocent Atlanteans, but what truly makes him worse than his master is that he reveals at the end of the movie that he's the true mastermind behind the genocidal war against the surface world, as he's been manipulating Orm into going along with his plan and intends to betray and murder him in order to seize power for himself before his untimely end at the teeth of a great white shark mid-rant.
• Destiny of Justice League Dark is a malevolent sorcerer with a god complex. A former man of science, Destiny became consumed by a lust for power and, using a combination of black magic and his own soul, created a magical artifact called the Dreamstone, which had the ability to force its victims to live their worst nightmares, often driving them into a murderous rage. Destiny used the Dreamstone to spread fear and chaos across the land until he was defeated by the demon Etrigan and Merlin, but not before he mortally wounded the knight Jason Blood, resulting in him merging with Etrigan to save his life. His physical form destroyed, Destiny's spirit resided in a fragment of the Dreamstone for centuries until it was uncovered by Ritchie Simpson, who was dying of a magical illness. Playing on the man's desperation for immortality, Destiny manipulates Ritchie into spreading the Dreamstone's dark magic across the world, resulting in casualties on a global scale, while Destiny fed off of the negative energy of the stone's victims. Upon returning to physical form upon the Dreamstone being united, Destiny possesses Ritchie's body and sets off to continue his worldwide conquest. Affecting a nearby city with the Dreamstone's magic to gain power, Destiny causes mass chaos and destruction, and even kills Swamp Thing when he attempts to intervene. Even when defeated, Destiny mortally wounds Jason Blood, resulting in his death.
• Brother Blood from Teen Titans: The Judas Contract is less actively involved in the plot than Deathstroke, but he's an exceptionally monstrous individual as well. An insane cult leader who secretly leads the terrorist organization known as H.I.V.E, Blood has lived with Immortality for years but is seeking to enhance his power in order to better expand his influence and subjugate the entire world into following his twisted Religion of Evil. A reporter who interviews him questions the legitimacy of his religion and calls his following a cult - Blood has him killed in a gruesome manner that drains him all of his blood so that Blood can then bathe in it, which we see him doing. His master plan involves a machine the H.I.V.E has constructed that drains superpowered youths of their energy and lifeblood, transferring their powers to whoever uses it. Brother Blood wants to kill the Teen Titans and take their powers for himself, and for this he hires Deathstroke to enact his plan. It's shown that he encourages the killing of any of his followers who can no longer serve a useful purpose to him within his cult, and it's he who proposes Terra be traded in for the supposedly dead Nightwing on his machine, which Deathstroke cruelly agrees to. In the film's climax, Brer Blood has absorbed just enough energy from the Titans' to gain their powers and in his efforts to kill the team he shows no concern forhis own followers that are fleeing for their lives from the collapsing lair, all while raving about his ascension to godhood.
• Constantine: City of Demons: Nergal is a depraved and sadistic demon from Hell. When John Constantine summoned him to save the young Astra from being sacrificed by her father Alex Logue, Nergal not only killed the latter and his followers but then slaughtered the people at the club before tossing Astra into a portal to Hell for nothing but his own enjoyment. Unsatisfied with his work in Hell, Nergal, under the identity of Beroul, settles in Los Angeles to run his own hellish dimension where the damned souls are tortured and gruesomely executed in various ways by demons. He gets his supply of souls from comatose patients in hospitals. He's also a man-eater who regularly bathes in a pool of liquefied human bodies. The demon abducts the soul of the young Trish Chandler, keeping it inside his own body in order to compel John into getting rid of his five demonic rivals. After John fulfills his demand, Nergal doesn't keep his words and keeps Trish as a bargaining chip to force the man into working for him. When John turns against him, Nergal strangles Chas Chandler and gloats about his ill intentions for Trish.
• Wonder Woman: Bloodlines: Medusa, upon being freed, murders Dr. Cyber and then kills Dr. Poison before using Poison's serum to strengthen herself. Going on a killing spree, Medusa petrifies and slaughters Amazons, proclaiming her intent to exterminate all of Themyscira, threatening to torture Hippolyta to death before trying to kill Diana in front of her people.

Tomorrowverse

• Justice Society: World War II: The Advisor, this universe's version of Psycho-Pirate, is Aquaman's Evil Chancellor who allied himself with the Nazis. Once a pirate who was rescued by the Atlanteans after his ship sunk, the Advisor thanked them by brainwashing Aquaman, using him to give Atlantean weapons to the Nazis to assist in their world domination scheme, hoping to betray them once they achieve their goal. After luring the Justice Society into a trap in Atlantis, the Advisor sends Aquaman and his Atlantean army to wreak havoc on American soil, hoping to destroy the entire country to make it easier for the Nazis to conquer. Smugly killing Steve Trevor after Aquaman breaks his control and retreats, the Advisor also reveals to have called in some planes to bomb the entire country should Aquaman fail.
• Batman: The Long Halloween: The Joker, unwilling to let the mysterious Holiday Killer replace him as Gotham's most notorious criminal, escapes from Arkham Asylum to conduct his own reign of terror. Beating Harvey Dent in his own house and threatening to murder his wife, the Joker goes on a killing spree through Gotham, targeting members of the mob to show he won't tolerate interlopers. The Joker caps off his rampage by hijacking a plane and attempting to fatally gas everyone in Times Square, hoping to kill Holiday and as many people as possible in the process.
• Green Lantern: Beware My Power: Sinestro is a former member of the Green Lantern Corps and Hal Jordan's mentor before going rogue. Thriving on chaos and death, he and the Sinestro Corps instigated a bloody war between Rann and Thanagar by staging brutal false flag attacks. To prevent peace between the two sides, Sinestro sabotages Sardath's Zeta-Beam experiment, transporting Thanagar into Rannian space, upsetting both planet's ecosystems and causing millions of casualties, as well as restarting the war. Hoping to bend Hal to his will, Sinestro infects him with the Parallax entity before the two massacre the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps. Having succeeded in corrupting Hal, Sinestro subsequently becomes his main acolyte in his efforts to destroy and remake the universe.
• Legion of Super-Heroes (2023): The original Brainiac is the secret founder of the Dark Circle. A nightmarish villain responsible for countless atrocities, Brainiac attempts to have his minions murder Legion members to manipulate Kara and his clone Brainiac 5 into activating a special device that affects space and time. Having had numerous other clones created to do damage ranging from serial killing to mass destruction, Brainiac has survived by grafting them to his body still alive, conscious and with one still screaming. Seizing control of the Miracle Machine, Brainiac plans to erase every hero from existence along with anyone that could ever possibly threaten his reign over existence, plotting to destroy entire worlds to secure his final goal.
• Justice League: Warworld: Mongul is a tyrant obsessed with conquering the entire multiverse through the use of Warworld, seeking to unlock its full potential and use it as a planet-killer across all dimensions. In the meantime, he boosts its power by imprisoning countless people and trapping them inside terrible fantasies for hundreds of years so that Warworld can feed on their agony. Mongul further clones all of his prisoners to create more puppets meant to do nothing but suffer and die, and he tortures J'onn J'onnz into using his psychic powers to make the prisoners' torments all the more real. When J'onn tries to mount an escape, Mongul plans to torture him to death and broadcast his screams to the prisoners, then attempts to murder his own hired thug Lobo just for speaking out of turn.

Other Works

• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
  • Part 1: The Mutant Leader is a vicious gang boss who uses his "mutants" to terrorize Gotham City for the sheer sake of violence. Having his mutant gang commit all sorts of massacres, slayings and crimes across Gotham, the Mutant Leader eventually has his men begin kidnapping young children for ransom, then brutally murder the kids even when the ransoms are paid. The Mutant Leader's ultimate plan is to march on Gotham and kill countless people in a quest to decapitate Commissioner James Gordon and parade his head through the streets. When captured by the Batman, the Leader responds by ordering his mutants to raze the entirety of Gotham to the ground while he personally tears out the throat of the city's mayor when he tries to negotiate peace talks with the Leader.
  • Part 2: The Joker was catatonic for a decade until Batman returned, which snapped him out of it and resulted in Joker going on a massive killing spree. Joker kills his therapist with a broken coffee mug and then kills a studio audience at a talk show with poisonous gas. He then tries to sell poisoned cotton candy to kids at an amusement park. After Batman foils that scheme, Joker takes a gun and begins to shoot random civilians at the amusement park. After Batman defeats Joker in combat, Joker commits suicide and attempts to frame Batman for his death.
• Batman: Year One: Police Commissioner Gillian Loeb is the ringleader behind Gotham's entire criminal underworld, enabling murder sprees, drug peddling, and human trafficking in order to gain power and line his pockets. Frequently bribing politicians and other crooked cops to further his control over the city, Loeb establishes himself as corrupt during a hostage situation, when he tries to have a mental patient shot despite knowing that he'll be killing a baby in the process. Having Jim Gordon beaten into submission for trying to stop crime, while chasing after the Batman, Loeb has a supposedly abandoned apartment firebombed only to act apathetic when he finds it actually filled with drunken homeless people. Loeb later threatens Gordon's pregnant wife in an attempt to blackmail him into obedience.
• The Joker from Batman: Under the Red Hood is once again presented as an Ax Crazy Psychopath. He beats Batman's young sidekick Jason Todd with a crowbar, leaves him broken and battered in a warehouse and then proceeds to blow up the warehouse. Later in the film, Joker kills four of fellow Complete Monster Black Mask's mooks for no reason, after Black Mask (very reluctantly) freed Joker from Arkham. Joker then attempts to kill both the Red Hood's and Black Mask's gangs by covering them with gasoline and using a lighter to try to set them on fire. And throughout the movie, Joker never stops taunting Batman about Jason Todd's death.
• In Batman: Gotham By Gaslight, Jack the Ripper, true identity Commissioner James Gordon is a psychotic Knight Templar and Serial Killer who believes in ridding Gotham of the 'filth' of the streets; especially women. Kicking off a murder spree where he hunts down and slaughters numerous innocent women on the streets, the Ripper later tracks down and kills the kindhearted nun Sister Leslie. When he learns Dr. Hugo Strange has discovered his identity, the Ripper ambushes Strange and throws him to his own asylum's patients who tear Strange apart. The Ripper then murders an old woman to frame Bruce Wayne for his crimes and when Selina Kyle tries to prove his innocence, targets her as well. Not even the Ripper's family is safe from him, as he regularly tortures his wife by burning her to 'burn the sin away,' until she has utterly lost her mind. Utterly consumed by misogynistic fervor and a fanatic devotion to bloodshed, the Ripper showcases the true evil on Gotham's streets hides within a human being.
• Batman: Soul of the Dragon: The Great Nāga is an ancient, powerful demon desiring to lead his fellow Nāgas to spread death and destruction across the world. Influencing the Kobra cult to perform sacrifices in order to free himself, the Great Nāga abandons Jeffrey Burr to perish upon being freed instead of using him as an Avatar, as he planned to use Richard Dragon as a vessel instead. Brutally beating down Batman, Lady Shiva, Richard Dragon, and Bronze Tiger, the Great Nāga openly desires to lay waste upon Earth and tries to take over Richard Dragon's body by force.
• Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham:
  • Ra's al Ghul is a dark priest and a servant of an Outer God, Iog-Sotha. Uncovering the secrets of the ancient Serpents, Ra's desired to unleash Iog-Sotha upon the world, which would have resulted in the planet's destruction. Spreading a horde of reptiles across Gotham, Ra's had the brainwashed Grendon killed, using his remains to create Poison Ivy, whom he used to painfully mutate Harvey Dent into "The Door". Performing a ritual to release Iog-Sotha, Ra's turned into a monster to kill Bruce Wayne, before using his last strength to keep the portal open to ensure that Iog-Sotha will cross over to Earth and annihilate humanity.
  • Talia al Ghul is the last remaining member of the Cult of Ghul, who wants to help her father destroy the world. Killing Kirk Langstrom and leaving his corpse in Wayne Manor to manipulate Bruce Wayne to locate the Testament of Ghul for her, Talia also painfully murdered Professor Munford by having a Djinn to devour him from the inside. Sending Killer Croc to retrieve Grendon, which resulted in him brutally tearing apart Dick Grayson, Talia resurrected her father and assisted him in his rituals, openly desiring to cause the end of humanity out of fanaticism.
• While he doesn't appear that often, Superman: Doomsday's interpretation of the Toyman makes good use of the little screentime he has to establish himself as a total sicko. The creepy manchild is introduced robbing a bank and taking a bus full of children hostage with a giant robot spider, threatening to drop the bus and kill all the children inside if the cops don't back off. When Lois Lane is able to get most of the children to safety, Toyman complains about his "playthings" escaping and throws the bus with Lois and the last child still on it to what would have likely been their doom had Superman (actually his clone) not been there to save the day. After being defeated and arrested, Toyman slips away from police custody and attacks a daycare, successfully murdering a little girl before getting away. This causes the clone of Superman to snap and settle for killing the guy out of disgust, and serves as the catalyst to him turning into a full-on Knight Templar.
• In Superman: Brainiac Attacks, Brainiac is as per usual an alien android who desires to conquer Earth and drive humanity back to the dark ages. After failing to kill Superman and having his entire body, aside from one chip, destroyed, Brainiac uses Lex Luthor to rebuild himself in a new more powerful body. Tracking down Superman on his date with Lois Lane, Brainiac attacks him in the middle of Metropolis, endangering countless numbers of innocent people in his quest to destroy his hated nemesis. After Superman's apparent death, Brainiac takes over Metropolis, causing more death and destruction. When Superman was revealed to be alive and starts to fight him, Brainiac deliberately targets hundreds of innocent bystanders to gain the edge over Superman in a fight. When the fight started taking too long, a frustrated Brainiac attempts to overload a nuclear reactor near the city to cause a giant explosion. When Superman defeats him, Brainiac follows him to the hospital and smashes the cure for the deathly sick Lois, simply out of spite.
• Brainiac from Superman Unbound is a Control Freak and genocidal psychopath on a galactic scale. Brainiac seeks knowledge and feels the best to do that is to shrink and then steal a major city from a planet and then destroy the planet. He stole Kandor from Krypton (he didn't bother blowing up Krypton because he knew that Krypton would soon be destroyed by natural causes). Then he attacks another planet, again shrinking and stealing a city and then uses a device that causes the planet's Sun to go Nova, thus killing the remaining inhabitants on the planet. Brainiac also sends his drones to the planets he is attacking and the drones proceed to kill random inhabitants of the planet. He later steals Metropolis and tries to destroy Earth in a similar manner. He also tortures Superman for information and tries to experiment on Supergirl.
• In All-Star Superman, Solaris the Tyrant Sun is a gigantic computer that wanders the cosmos, consuming stars for fuel and leaving the inhabited planets to die in The Night That Never Ends. Contacted by Lex Luthor to assist him in his master plan to defeat a dying Superman, Solatis turns the Sun red in an attempt to depower the Man of Steel. Supes counteracts this and leads an army of sapient robots to battle Solaris, but he destroys the army in one blast before announcing his plan to betray Luthor, consume the Sun and force the Earthlings to worship him as a deity or freeze to death in eternal darkness. Superman then tries to feed the Tyrant Sun to a Sun-Eater, but Solaris destroys it. Before Superman destroys the mad machine, Solaris turns the Sun blue to spite Superman by destroying his people.
• Superman vs. the Elite: Atomic Skull, a psychopath with a grudge against Superman, starts to murder civilians to lure Superman out. Atomic Skull is about to kill 2 women and a baby when Superman attacks him. Superman defeats Atomic Skull and he is arrested, later escaping and starting to kill more civilians. Superman and the Elite team up to defeat the Atomic Skull, but not before he kills Professor Baxter, a prominent Superman supporter. Atomic Skull is so vile, that he helps the Elite gain support for their brutal tactics from the public.
• Superman Red Son:
  • Brainiac is an alien artificial intelligence who comes to Earth to miniaturize and collect the city of Stalingrad before supposedly being defeated by Superman. In truth seeing an opportunity to gain control over not just a city but an entire world, Brainiac pretends to have been successfully reprogrammed, going on to serve as the Premier's most trusted ally in overseeing the Soviet Empire for over a decade. With the Kryptonian as his Unwitting Pawn, Brainiac lobotomizes dissidents into loyal servants of the USSR and constantly attempts to goad his supposed master into an invasion of the United States that will result in millions of deaths, all while never once bringing up his ability to restore the shrunken city. Upon Superman finally deciding to attack President Luthor only to have a change of heart, Brainiac destroys Stalingrad and proceeds with the invasion anyway, throwing away any façade of subordination in his mad designs. The logical conclusion of Superman's subconscious desire to put the whole world in a bottle, Brainiac is a spiteful narcissist desiring to control everything to sate his egomania, with his ship rigged to self-destruct and wipe out the entire planet even after his ultimate destruction.
  • Joseph Stalin is the initial Premier of the Soviet Union. Acting as a benevolent father-figure to the well-intentioned Superman, Stalin is truthfully a horrible dictator with millions of deaths to his name, having any dissidents mowed down in mass executions or sent to disease-ridden gulags where they are worked to death. Upon being confronted by Superman, who has discovered both the existence of these prison camps and that his childhood friend Lana was sent to die in one of them simply because she knew the Kryptonian before he joined the USSR, Stalin maintains that these atrocities were necessary to weed out the weak and elevate the Soviet Union—and himself—to greater heights.
• Superman/Batman: Public Enemies: Lex Luthor is much worse than his comic counterpart. After an economic recession in the United States Lex Luthor rises up to be president. He recruited a few heroes to his side specifically, Captain Atom, Katana, Black Lightning, Power Girl, Starfire, and Major Force. He would manage to pull the United States out of the depression and the economy began to thrive again, though this was done solely to stroke his ego. The United States government would discover a massive Kryptonite meteor hurtling toward Earth. Instead of asking superheroes for aid, Luthor decides to destroy it with nuclear missiles, so he can get all the credit for himself. He also arranges a meeting with Superman to prevent him getting in the way. The meeting goes badly and Superman and Metallo get into a fight. Major Force ends up killing Metallo and Lex Luthor uses this murder to frame Superman and place a massive bounty on him. Angry at the failure to stop the meteor he decided to instead let it crash on earth so that he can rule over anyone that survives it. Batman and Superman break into Luthor's base disguised as Captain Marvel and Hawkman to retrieve the data on the meteor's radiation. Batman forces him to give them, the files, but Lex Luthor thinks quickly and orders his computer to delete all the files, in his mind dooming the world in the process. Amanda Waller betrays him, however, and gives Batman and Superman a hard drive containing the information needed to stop the meteor, so he continues to try and stop them.
• Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons: Starro is an alien parasite that ended up trapped in space, where it grew to a massive size and began desiring domination over the universe. Taking control of nearly all superheroes on Earth, Starro sent its offspring to take over the minds of every human they can find, as it planned to drain the life out of the entire planet and then move to repeat the process on other worlds. Furious at Jon Kent and Damian Wayne for attacking it, Starro ordered the possessed heroes to kill them.
• Justice League: The New Frontier: The Centre is a malevolent Eldritch Abomination and one of the first living beings to emerge from the Earth. Growing paranoid of the danger humanity presents to it in the wake of the atomic bomb, the Centre decides that they must be "cleansed" from the planet and begins reaching out with its Psychic Powers, radicalizing numerous innocents into crazed murderers or doomsday cults who worship the Centre and sacrifice children to the monstrosity. Upon finally revealing itself to the world, the Centre unleashes unending hordes of mutated dinosaurs to bring about mass death and carnage, and after being exposed to Ray Palmer's fatal Shrink Ray, makes a mad charge to take as many "lesser beings" out with it as possible in the ensuing explosion.
• Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths:
  • Owlman was already a criminal and founding member of the Crime Syndicate of America. Upon discovering the existence of the multiverse, Owlman became enraged by the fact that, with every choice a person makes, they create another world in which they made the opposite choice. Determined that his choices had to affect not only his world, but all existence, Owlman journeyed to Earth-Prime, the Earth that supported the existence of all other Earths, planning to destroy all reality in a fit of existential angst. About as selfish as they come, Owlman was reviled even by his compatriots in the CSA save for the equally evil Superwoman (mentioned below).
  • Superwoman is Owlman's sadistic lover, self-proclaimed "psychopathic murderer" who gets off on hurting others on both personal and grander scales. Reigning alongside fellow Syndicate members in threatening the entire population of their Earth, Superwoman is eager to aid Owlman in his plot to annihilate all worlds across the multiverse, actually aroused at the idea of ending all life across all realities while betraying the rest of their allies. When confronted by Batman, Superwoman goes about beating him brutally and torturing him, threatening him with the fate of either dying at her hand, or becoming her personal "pet" to do whatever she wants with.
• Vandal Savage from Justice League Doom is a conqueror with genocidal plans for the planet. He manages to steal the protocols that Batman designed to defeat the Justice League in case one or more members of the Justice League turn evil. Savage makes these protocols more lethal and sadistic and then uses them to take out the Justice League. After his Legion of Doom seemingly triumphs over the Justice League, Vandal Savage informs them he plans to conquer the world by using a missile that will cause a solar flare that will kill half the world's population. This event will also render the rest of the world's population so weak and helpless that they'll naturally accept his leadership.
• Justice League: Gods And Monsters
  • (Prequel comic): Jackson Alpert, better known as Dr. Psycho, is an egomaniacal madman who seeks to evolve humanity to the next stage so he may lord over it as a god. Having taken part in the CIA's MKUltra experiments, Psycho performed extra tests on his subjects to turn them into rampaging mutants who wreaked death and havoc. Years later, Psycho keeps a group of superhumans as his enslaved experiments, threatening to agonizingly end their elongated lives at a moment's notice if they dare question his orders. After a failed attempt to torturously experiment on Superman, Dr. Psycho transforms himself into "Imperiex" and lays siege to Earth with his evolved humans, letting them run rampant while he controls the Justice League in his plan to eradicate the minds of all life on Earth and impose his own will onto them. Uncaring for the dozens who he tortures and experiments on and even less for the hundreds who die by his schemes, Psycho is called out by the League for disguising his blatantly self-serving goals as "peace" for humankind.
  • Chronicles: Harley Quinn, as she appears in the "Twisted" short, stands in stark contrast to her mainstream portrayal. A vile, psychopathic Serial Killer known in this reality as simply The Harlequin, Harley abducts civilians before mutilating and killing them, making "toys" out of their mangled corpses. When Batman rescues a teenage girl Harley kidnapped, Harley attempts to kill them both. During their fight, Batman comes across a makeshift "family" of the people Harley has murdered, including a young boy.
• Gen 13: Ivana Baiul is [the headmaster of an academy that invites what it considers the best and brightest into its ranks. However Baiul knocks out the students and performs dangerous experiennts on them every night, hoping to give them super powers and create an army of super soldiers, that she will use to overthrow the US government. When one of them, Caitlin Fairchild, develops super powers, Baiul wants her taken, either dead or alive so she can run more experiments to create more super powered beings. Baiul captures Fairchild's friends and has them tortured. When military aircraft arrive to investigate her base, Baiul orders them to shot down. After the military forces get through her defenses, Baiul orders one of her troops to blow up the base, when he refuses, noting it would kill several of their own men in the process, Baiul kills him and activates the bombs after she escapes. Baiul's main henchman, Matthew Callaghan, believes the government killed his parents, but at the end of the film it is revealed Baiul herself experimented on and killed his parents.
• In Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, Atrocitus is a terrorist who has been imprisoned on an abandoned world for 700 years. Killing the first person who crash lands there, he commences a killing spree of Green Lanterns by making them overuse their power rings so he can butcher them at his leisure. When his fourth target, Abin Sur, manages to defeat Atrocitus, Atrocitus tries to smash the Lantern's power battery to take the planet with him.
• Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, based on the comic book series of similiar name, has these three examples.
  • The Shredder, the leader of the Foot Clan, aligns himself with Ra's Al-Ghul in order to obtain immortality from the Lazarus Pit by agreeing to build a machine that could spread the mutagen across Gotham City, invading various corporations and killing the staff who happened to be there and stealing technology. The Shredder was able to nearly complete the machine, only failing to acquire the Cloud Seeder when Batman intervenes, in which the Shredder beats him half to death before fleeing. Changing their plans, the Shredder breaks into Arkham Asylum with Ra's and murders all the security guards and breaks all the inmates out, but not before obtaining Joker's Joker Venom and giving him the mutagen to mutate the inmates and distract Batman and the Turtles. After Ra's hired The Penguin to successfully steal the Cloud Seeder, the Shredder kills all of Penguin's henchmen and threatening to kill him as well when he demanded a payment. The Shredder reveals that after he obtains immortality, he will kill Ra's Al-Ghul and take over the League of Assassins, then use the Joker Venom/Mutagen hybrid, which mutates people into psychotic violent mutants, himself.
  • Ra's Al-Ghul, the leader of the League of Assassins, lacks his redeeming qualities as a Well-Intentioned Extremist that cares for his family from the comics in favor of being a ruthless madman obsessed with chaos and conquest, even showing how little he cares about his allies; he sacrifices one to be mutated by the mutagen, stating that he has plenty more if he died from the effects. Making a deal with the Shredder for his mutagen and to build the aforementioned machine in exchange for the Lazarus Pit, Ra's over the time becomes less faithful and impressed by his partner's efforts and creates a back-up plan in which they give the Joker the mutagen to mutate the inmates of Arkham Asylum to use as a distraction for Batman and the Turtles while they work on the machine. Ra's combines the mutagen with Joker Venom to create a psychotropic variation of the mutagen that not only mutates people but turns them violent and homicidal, and wishes to spray this over Gotham City to create chaos and destruction and wishes to repeat the process across the world and bathe it in blood and fire.
  • The Joker, the psychopathic Clown Prince of Crime, is released from his prison by Ra's Al-Ghul and the Shredder and is given the mutagen in exchange for his Joker Venom formula. The Joker then uses the mutagen to mutate all of the inmates in order to distract Batman and the Turtles while Ra's and the Shredder complete their plans. These events led to Leonardo being psychologically torture by the Scarecrow with his Fear Toxin and injecting Batman with the Mutagen/Joker Venom hybrid leading to him become a psychotic version of Man-Bat and almost kills his allies, including his son Damien. While an Arc Villain in comparison to the two Big Bads of the film, Joker still proves he's a depraved and sadistic psychopath.
• Injustice (2021): The Joker, after getting bored from losing to Batman, decides to go after Superman, murdering the latter's best friend Jimmy Olsen and kidnapping his Love Interest Lois Lane. The Joker then brainwashes Superman with a combination of kryptonite and Scarecrow's fear toxin, which he had previously killed Scarecrow for, and left a trap that kills the Flash. The toxin makes Superman kill Lois and her unborn child. Just for pleasure, Joker had linked the nuke's trigger to Lois's heartbeat, destroying Metropolis and killing over 11 million people.
• Suicide Squad ISEKAI: The Undead King is a monstrous necromancer who seeks to end all life. After being defeated, the Undead King possesses Queen Aldora and uses her to wage a decades-long war on the empire, causing mass casualties. The Undead King also emotionally abuses Aldora's daughter Princess Fione in the guise of her mother. The Undead King intends to use Thinker and Ratcatcher to brainwash the Elves and Beastmen respectively into going against the Kingdom and have both sides slaughter each other. She later uses the Elves to slaughter a military camp, tries to get the Suicide Squad executed, and later lays seige' to the kingdom to slaughter its inhabitants. Her ultimate goal is to kill every living thing and revive their corpses as soldiers yoked to her will so she can reign supreme.