
The Pirates of the Caribbean series is known for its heinous main antagonists.
Multiple works[]
- Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company serves as the Big Bad of the initial trilogy. Upon his arrival at Port Royal, Beckett assumes illegal control and has the governor's messenger murdered. He later enslaves Davy Jones, forcing him to kill his pet Kraken and making him his personal attack dog of the seas. He later murders Governor Swann when he's deemed to be of no further use to him. It is made abundantly clear that Beckett's prime concern is power and control, and since piracy is a threat to that, he initiates a purge of anyone even vaguely associated with piracy but with all legal proceedings suspended, including the hanging of a 10-year-old boy. In a DISNEY film. Oh, and per supplemental materials, he spent at least some time as a slaver. Values Dissonance aside, Beckett seems overall very apathetic and completely devoid of emotion aside from self satisfaction. Smug Snake, smug smile, smug everything...ugh.
- It should be noted that hanging a child is especially heinous for more than just the obvious reason. Hanging is meant to be a quick death by snapped spinal cord. Children typically don't have enough weight for this to happen from hanging by the neck, so for them it's a slow, painful suffocation instead. Incidentally, there have been stories of similar happenings during the Holocaust.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom by A. C. Crispin: Ian Mercer, the stoically sadistic right-hand man of Lord Cutler Beckett, directly aids his employer in a scheme of mass murder and slavery. A lover of torture who brags of his dozens of successful "interrogations" after a prisoner kills himself rather than face more of Mercer's brutality, Mercer tries to track down a variety of slaves for the express purpose of torturing them for information on their home island of Kerma. Mercer and Beckett intend to find Kerma, raid it for its massive gold supply, and wipe out most of the populace before selling any survivors into their slave trade. When Jack Sparrow thwarts the invasion of Kerma, Mercer giddily takes part in Jack's branding as a pirate before destroying his cherished ship The Wicked Wench just to torment him.
Films[]
- Captain Edward Teach, the ever-infamous Blackbeard from the fourth film prides himself on being one of the most feared men on the high seas. Blackbeard torturing his prisoners and abuses and murders members of his own crew on the basis of "if I don't kill a man every now and then, they forget who I am", incinerating his ship's cook alive just to demonstrate this and resurrecting some of his own slain crew members as mindlessly obedient zombies. On his quest to the Fountain of Youth to avert his prophesied death at the hands of a one-legged man, Blackbeard puts a mermaid named Syrena through hideous treatment for the sole purpose of gaining her tear, first showing her the remains of her own fellow mermaids, and then ordering Phillip, the single man who displays compassion to her, killed in front of her out of spite. While Blackbeard claims to love his daughter, he undersells even this through a risky game of Russian Roulette with his own daughter's life where he orders his chief mook to load two guns with a bullet each, and keep even himself in the dark as to which guns are loaded, and later had the gall to lie to his daughter about knowing which ones are loaded, and later still when he ultimately tried to sacrifice her life to save his own at the Fountain of Youth. Blackbeard even admits he feels closest to God in moments of pain and anguish and calmly tortured and murdered anyone who dared to stand against him. In general, this guy is basically the single most despicable pirate imaginable (much like his Real Life counterpart), and he knows it.
- Captain Armando Salazar in the fifth film is a self-righteous fanatic who seeks nothing less than the total annihilation of all piracy regardless of the level of criminality possessed by his victims. Scourging the seas for years in which he ambushed and slaughtered thousands of unsuspecting pirates and killed even the wounded, surrendering survivors with relish, Salazar was condemned to a life of haunting the Devil's Triangle after his death at the hands of Jack Sparrow. Taking his first opportunity to escape, Salazar massacres vessels across the ocean before forcing Barbossa to ally with him after sadistically killing most of the man's crew. Ultimately possessing Henry Turner to use as a Human Shield, Salazar tries to torturously kill Jack with the Trident of Poseidon and bring about a new wave of decimation to the seas. Despite claiming to be avenging his dead father in his hunt for pirates, supplementary material reveals that Salazar's own deluded ego drove him to kill his father simply for accepting bribes from pirates.
Video Games[]
- Pirates of the Carbibbean Online: Jolly Roger was once a friend of Jack Sparrow, until he became envious of Jack's status as the next Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, and tried to kill him. Cursed to become an undead being by a vengeful witch doctor, Roger attacks towns, intending to slaughter the inhabitants and resurrect them to serve in his undead army to help him conquer the Caribbean and kill Jack. When Roger finds the protagonist with a man who had betrayed Roger, Roger kills the man after he tries to pay Roger to spare him, only allowing the protagonist to live so they can deliver a message from Roger to Jack.
- Kingdom Hearts III: Lord Cutler Beckett is the Chairman of the East India Trading Company in the world of The Caribbean. Sometime between the events of KHII and KHIII, Beckett had assumed illegal control in Port Royal and enslaved the heart of Davy Jones, forcing him to kill his pet Krakken and making Jones his personal attack dog of the seas, which in turn invites swarms of Heartless that Beckett also exploits in his efforts to claim ownership of the sea and eliminate all undesirables so that he may have total control of all oceanic trade routes, using the Heartless/Nobody fleets as a scare tactic to keep other ships off his waters. Showing immense hypocrisy, Beckett offers Captain Jack Sparrow, a pirate, a deal in hopes of getting him to sell out his pirate brethren, also attempting to manipulate Will Turner to his side with the promise of liberating his father's crew aboard the Flying Dutchmen to ensure not only that the deal goes through but that he gets to claim Jack's life and cheat him out of the promised reward as well. At the level's climax, Beckett has declared all out war against the pirates and attempts to blow up the ship where Sora, Donald, Goofy, Jack, Gibbs, Elizabeth, Barbossa and all the rest are on, intent on leaving none spared, while smugly remarking "Nothing personal. It's just good business." What makes Beckett stand out as particularly vile among villains in this series is that in the amount of time he was present, he showed himself capable of accomplishing acts of great evil without any personal connection to the powers of Darkness at all, but merely building his oppressive "business" around it without care for the consequences.