"Since I couldn't become the hero and obtain the legendary Pokémon myself, I prepared someone for that purpose: N! He's nothing more than a freak without a human heart! Do you think you're going to get through to a warped person like that?!" —Ghetsis in Pokémon Black and White, said about his son, N.
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When all else fails, Ghetsis resorts to straight-up attempted murder!
Despite being kid-friendly, the Pokémon franchise has slid ever further into Darker and Edgier territory with each generation, both in the main series and in the spinoffs, as these abominations demonstrate. Note that we used the word "abomination" - calling these folks monsters would insult Pokémon everywhere.
Core Games[]
- The true leader of Team Plasma and Big Bad of the Gen 5 games, Ghetsis Harmonia Gropius, is known and hated worldwide for being, bar none, the vilest main antagonist of the core game series to date.
- Black and White: As Ghetsis is the leader of Team Plasma's Seven Sages, his scheming is at the heart of every deplorable action taken by Team Plasma and everything wrong that occurs in the game. Though he hides beneath a mask of benevolence, courtesy and good intentions, he is in truth a cruel and narcissistic sociopath who cares for nothing but himself. Ask yourself: what kind of person would take in an orphan child that he allegedly found living in the woods amongst wild Pokémon, treat him with neglect, emotional manipulation, and mental abuse, and have him raised in solitary confinement from the outside world alongside Pokémon that he'd had his Mooks abuse in order to groom the child into an ideal pawn in his plan to Take Over the World, conditioning his mind with a false view of the reality of humans and Pokémon to make him believe all his Pokémon friends need to be liberated from all trainers that would enslave them, but all the while actually planning to enslave all Pokémon for himself? Ghetsis would, and he did. The crux of his plan is that if N could become "The Hero of Legend" and force everyone in the Unova region and the world to release their Pokémon, Ghetsis and his select cohorts would then be left as the only ones who could own and use Pokémon, exploiting their abilities as means of oppressing and enslaving everyone alive. He uses others, his foster son included, as stepping stones in his rise to power, is cruel and abusive to humans and Pokémon alike, relishes the ability to capture hearts and minds with his persuasive speeches and manipulations, and is an unapologetic sadist who shamelessly admits to loving taking away hopes and dreams just so he can see people in that moment where they lose all hope. When his plans to get all of Unova's Pokémon released fall apart, Ghetsis coldly disowns N and even has the audacity to call his foster son a warped, defective "freak without a human heart", even though his plan hinged on him being just that, and threatens to kill the Player Character for knowing the truth of his ambitions. In contrast with other villains in the series who have a Freudian Excuse for their heinous goals and deeds, there's no excuse for the exploitation and abuse that Ghetsis puts countless people and Pokémon through, or all the lies and manipulations he seeded in his selfish quest as the mastermind behind Team Plasma - every horrible thing he does is done to consolidate power for himself and feed his sense of entitlement.
- Black 2 and White 2: Two years later, Ghetsis captures the legendary Dragon Pokémon, Kyurem, and has it tortured inside a power amplifying and extraction machine that fuels his new Weapon of Mass Destruction Freeze Ray. Using a cane embedded with Mind Control technology in order to make it compliant, Ghetsis has Kyurem terrorize and devastate half of Unova against its will (including the attack on Opelucid City where he turns the entire city into a massive popsicle), endangering many lives without any second thoughts or remorse. He wants to put the whole continent on ice, putting a fatal chill over all the inhabitants of Unova until they submit and relinquish all power to him out of fear for their lives, so he takes Kyurem to the Giant Chasm in order to raise its power to its maximum capacity so that it can engulf the entire region in ice. When the Player Character intervenes, he orders Kyurem to use its "Glaciate" attack in order to freeze the Kid Hero to death - the first time anyone in a Pokémon game has ordered a direct attack on another human being, who's the player character and a child no less, without even a proper battle preceding it, all out of spite over being reminded of The Hero who'd thwarted his previous plans. And when N comes to the rescue with Reshiram/Zekrom, Ghetsis seizes the opportunity to use the DNA Splicers on Kyurem without its actual consent in order to force Kyurem and N's Legendary Dragon into a fusion. Furthermore, after he is defeated a second time, he is actually offered a chance to repent by his "son" despite all that he'd done to him. Ghetsis' response? He verbally assaults him as horribly as an E-Rated game would allow, stating he only sees him and Pokémon as tools for his use, before losing all sanity and ultimately going catatonic. Just the final proof that there's not a shred of decency in this guy.
- Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon: Ghetsis' status as being more evil than any of the other evil team leaders is made abundantly clear in the post-game RR Episode, where the bastard actually tops himself. Rocket Boss Giovanni from an alternate reality appears in the Alola region along with his Team Rainbow Rocket, which has taken over the Aether Paradise and transformed Lusamine's mansion into their castle. Opening up Ultra Wormholes that destabilizie the multiverse and has different alternate timeline worlds bleeding into each other, Giovanni inadvertedly summons to Aether Paradise versions of Archie, Maxie, Cyrus, Ghetsis, and Lysandre from worlds in which their plans succeeded. When the Player Character braves the castle alongside Lillie and battles each leader, they all, even Giovanni himself, step down after getting defeated...except for Ghetsis. Ghetsis, inferred to have had trouble keeping his control over N in his world to the point where he'd discarded him and taken Reshiram or Zekrom for himself, had quickly cozied up to Giovanni and assisted him in using Nihilego to put Lusamine into a coma and apply Hypnosis to her, and it was he who set up all the other bosses in the castle, all of whom had their own world-threatening plans they hoped to use Aether Paradise to enact, which Giovanni allowed to happen at Ghetsis' advisory. Ghetsis expresses his ambition is to travel between worlds, in each world making all trainers free their Pokémon so as to consolidate multiple worlds power for himself, and for this he plans to make Giovanni into a Puppet King so that Team Rainbow Rocket can become the ruling regime over the multiverse with an army of Pokémon and Ultra Beasts at their command, with Ghetsis as the true power behind Giovanni's throne reigning supreme above all existence! Not caring of the carnage he's condemning this world to and determined to remove all obstacles to him realizing his twisted ideals, Ghetsis battles the Player Character only to be sent into a Villainous Breakdown when he loses. Refusing to accept defeat and step aside, Ghetsis physically strikes a defenseless Lillie and threatens to murder her with his own bare hand if the Player Character doesn't lay down his/her Poke' Balls and surrender to him. Just as he's ready to kill the girl, his former Dragon-in-Chief, Colress, shows up and uses a modified device to send a panicked, screaming Ghetsis through a portal back to the world from whence he came. Even afterwards, Colress acknowledges how dangerous Ghetsis is, as he once again showed himself to be a man who sees no lines that he should not cross in order to get his way, and whose power-hungry ambitions, selfishness and wanton cruelty know no bounds.
- Pokémon Legends: Arceus: Volo is a seemingly perky and eager-to-please yet dissatisfied member of the Ginko Merchant Guild, but he turns out to also be an enthusiastic and inquisitive Adventurer Archaeologist who's always tracking the movements of the Player Character and willing to give them aid, much like Sinnoh's later Champion Cynthia, who Volo is implied to be the ancestor of. This would point to Volo as a Secret Big Good like his descendent....only for it to turn out that he's concealing a far, FAR darker nature. As a young man who has always yearned to know all the secrets of existence and wants to meet the Creator Pokémon Arceus in order to understand it and his own place in the world, Volo wishes to distinguish himself by subduing Arceus and using its power to destroy all of creation in the universe in favor of playing God by creating his own, "better" world. To this end, Volo allies himself with Giratina, having it create a space-time rift which both drives Pokémon across Hisui into dangerous frenzies and threatens to destroy the entire world. Manipulating the Player Character into collecting Arceus's Plates after the rift is seemingly stopped, Volo, after being found out and defeated in battle at the Spear Pillar, summons Giratina in an attempt to kill The Hero, any respect for them he might've had having soured into petty resentment. When defeated once more, Volo surrenders the final plate and shows that he Know When to Fold'Em, but remains unrepentant and declares his intent to carry on with his evil ways well into the future, no matter what or how long it takes.
- Perhaps the most horrifying thing about Volo is that while he acts friendly even to his own Pokémon, he explicitly states in the post-game climax that he views himself as "the greatest wielder of Pokémon" rather than fight alongside his Pokémon like the Player Character, seeing them as only weapons that he fully intends to throw away were he to wipe out all living things with the Sinnoh Legendaries' power, and unlike Cyrus, Volo had no intention of resurrecting any of those lives.
Spin-off Games[]
- Pokémon Colosseum features the despicable triumvirate of Evice, Nascour, and Ein, the masterminds behind the Cipher syndicate's conspiracy. Evice, the literally monstrous old man posing as the kindly mayor of Phenac City, engineered everything for Cipher (though in the sequel we find out that the syndicate was founded by Greevil, he took mostly a backseat role while Evice was his more involved proxy). Nascour, the demonic looking second in command, kept the other Cipher members in line and oversaw all of their most heinous and underhanded operations, and when faced by Wes at the game's climax, he put him through a succession of battles where Wes' Pokemon weren't even allowed to be healed after each round, all in front of a crowded stadium in order to break his spirit. And worst of all, Mad Scientist Ein is behind the organization's worst crime of all, as he developed the process to create Shadow Pokémon: Pokémon artificially powered by a dark force that does something horrific that makes them not only lose their minds but shuts off their hearts and emotions as well, leaving nothing but unthinking Living Weapons in constant pain, and are so unpredictable that they may even turn on their own trainers. Ein sees Pokémon as nothing but tools to be abused and exploited, and he tirelessly works to improve the process so as to negate any possible way to purify the Shadow Pokémon so they can never be saved from their corrupted states, just to show that he can. He's basically the franchise's answer to Xehanort or Hojo. Cipher is the most abominable organization in the franchise's history, and these three sociopaths blend together into one monstrous leadership: Evice as the heart, Nascour as the muscle, and Ein as the brains.
- Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, the sequel game to the above, gives us Ardos, one of the sons and Co-Dragons of Cipher's leader Greevil, who shows himself to be the most vicious and fanatical member within an already monstrous organization. Ardos is fully involved and supportive of Cipher's worst atrocities, involving the mass corruption of Pokémon into becoming unfeeling Shadow Pokémon — whereupon they'll be rendered unable to be purified and massed into an army through which Cipher will control the world. When Greevil is defeated, Ardos, in a last moment of desperation, attempts to cajole his father into killing the child protagonist by wiping out their base on Citadark Isle — taking all his subordinates in the building with it, to which Ardos merely scoffs "such things can be replaced". Even in the post-game, Ardos is as dedicated to the Cipher agenda as ever even when his father has surrendered himself and most of the other Admins have reformed, coldly informing the protagonist they are now Ardos's top target in a thinly-veiled death threat letter.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Darkrai in Explorers is a much more sinister beast than his core series counterpart. He makes Freddy Krueger look smalltime in terms of what he can do to victims in their nightmares, manipulates gods to his whims, orchestrates a Time Crash, makes the future a very miserable time, drops children in eternal nightmares for kicks, and nearly drives the player characters to suicide by tricking them into thinking their existence is threatening the space-time continuum due to Time Travel shenanigans, which is easily one of the darkest moments in the game. He even stoops so low as to torture an innocent child with violent nightmares to lure out the the player characters and make several attempts to assassinate them so he can try his plans again. Darkrai has no regrets for his crimes and wishes nothing more than to bring about the complete and utter destruction of the world, just so he can rule the tattered remains in everlasting darkness, and his motives are never explained, leaving us to assume that it was all For the Evulz. The guy is a vastly darker villain in any Pokémon work even by E or E-10 standards, and the punishment for his misdeeds seems far too lenient. Then again, his punishment is implied to be the loss of all his memories (a'la Regal), and this basically forces him to be good.
- Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs gives us Purple Eyes. Before we even learn he exists, he's beaten Rand within an inch of his life and kidnapped both his wife and daughter. Later, he beats the daughter up, too! It gets worse, though; he eventually mugs the elderly Societea members (though, admittedly, they deserve it), hijacks the villain's plans, makes himself immortal, pumps up Mewtwo's power higher than it should ever be, and then commands Mewtwo to finish off Dr. Edward. And when Rand takes the shot for Edward, Purple Eyes is simply amused and continues to attack anyway, even taunting Rand's daughter about her father's endangerment. After the Player Character beats him, he points out that the Sky Fortress is now plummeting and will wipe out all of Oblivia. And then he laughs. He later one-ups himself in the last Extra Mission, in which an enraged Arceus is passing judgment on the human race, he arrives in person. His imprisonment and constant questioning has not redeemed him, but instead turned him into a Misanthrope Supreme who no longer wishes to rule over all humans, but instead Kill All Humans. He begins preaching to Arceus that it should go through with the destruction, but to allow himself to act as its Dragon due to their similar beliefs about humans, which only enrages Arceus more. After Arceus is calmed, it leaves back to its home world and drags Purple Eyes with it to pass judgment on him. Yes, even the god of the Pokémon world deems it unsafe for him to be in our plane. Hastings does say that Arceus will send him back eventually when (or if) he really has a change of heart. However, when you consider that Arceus acted on this but not when Cyrus was unmaking the universe right under it, it says something potent about Purple Eyes' capacity for evil.
- Pokémon Masters EX: Debuting in the "Father Or Foe?" event, Ghetsis is ripped from the period of time where he had control over Kyurem onto the island of Pasio, where he enters an alliance with Team Rocket Boss Giovanni and feigns being remorseful for his past crimes to his son N in a ploy to steal his Reshiram from him. While a doublecross by Giovanni forces N and Ghetsis to join together in order to defeat Team Rocket, Ghetsis afterwards proudly expresses his unrepentant attitude and tells N in no uncertain terms that he's disowned him as his child. Calling Team Plasma together on the island during the Villain Arc and having them assault other trainers to assert dominance, Ghetsis captures both Reshiram and Zekrom planning to forcibly fuse them with Kyurem into a single Pokémon whose power he can turn against Pasio's populace, and he has N captured as part of this plan. When attempting to manipulate Hugh's resentment of Team Plasma to pit him against N fails, Ghetsis falls back on a contingency plan: he has the young trainer Tina abducted and threatens her safety so that her friend Paulo can comply with Team Plasma and trade Prince Lear's Hoopa in exchange for Tina, only to reveal he wants to have both Tina and Paulo as his captives to use as "bargaining chips" to their friends while also using Hoopa's power to subjugate all trainers and dominate all that he pleases. In the ensuing scuffle, Ghetsis has Kyurem brutally attack Paulo's Rockruff when it stands defiant against him, believing to have killed the small Pokémon and cruelly mocking Paulo about it, and ordering his grunts to manhandle Tina as leverage over Paulo in an act of desperation when Paulo's gained control over Hoopa's unbound form. Even when joining with other heroes and villains to fight against Giovanni when he enslaves Hoopa, Ghetsis makes it clear that his every action is self-serving and that he will never waver from his desire to enslave Pokémon and Take Over the World.
Pokémon Anime[]
- Pokémon: The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon (TV special): Dr. Yung, AKA the Mirage Master, was a sociopathic Mad Scientist who specialized in creating Mirage Pokémon because he hated the imperfections of real Pokémon. His experiments were deemed too cruel by his peers (he would forcibly scan a Pokémon's memory to create a new Pokémon), and he was shut down. Vowing revenge, he dons the Mirage Master alter-ego after faking his own abduction, and he also kidnaps Professor Oak. He tried to emotionally torture him into giving him his password to his PC database in the hopes of hacking into worldwide Pokémon centers. He also abuses, and eventually kills, his Mew Mirage for being a "flawed specimen", and he forcibly scans Pikachu's memory, thus injuring him gravely. After he had finally gotten Oak to crack, he tries to kill him with his newly made Mirages because he was no longer of use to him. Yung later planned on deploying missiles so that he could have a larger field for his Mirages to demonstrate their flawless strength, and he fully intended on releasing Mirage Mewtwo's power unto the world. After he's been defeated, he shows he'd rather die than face justice for his wicked deeds as he walks back into his burning castle before it collapses to a flaming rubble. They Never Found the Body afterwards.
- Diamond and Pearl series:
- Pokémon Hunter J, as her title implies, hunts rare Pokémon to sell on the black market and has no qualms with stealing them from other trainers, her trademark being to petrify the Pokémon into solid forms, still alive but immobile. She is willing to go to any length in order to capture these Pokémon for her clients, including attempted murder on her fellow humans. In her first appearance, she drops a section of her airship containing several of her own men, and the Pokémon that she’d stolen, just to get rid of 10-year-old protagonist Ash Ketchum, who was in the same section of the ship. She shows absolutely no hesitation nor remorse for this action, and Ash had only been a slight inconvenience to her at that point. In later appearances, J continues to demonstrate her sociopathic, greedy, ruthless nature, as well as her total disregard for any form of life, by setting fire to a large section of densely populated forest, ordering her Salamance to attack humans directly, commanding her Drapion to squeeze the life out of Ash before dropping him out of her airship, and abandoning one of her clients to the police the second after she got paid. In her last appearance, she's willing to bomb Lake Valor and capture the three mythical Lake Pokémon for Team Galactic, who is planning on wiping out the universe, all for the sake of lining her own pockets. As she’s one of few characters who has proven to be purely evil with no redeeming qualities, J winds up being one of the few anime characters to actually die, having her airship sink to the bottom of Lake Valor and destroyed with her still inside.
- Cyrus, the boss of Team Galactic, is a candidate for this trope in the same series. Unlike his game and manga counterparts, who have a few sympathetic qualities present or at least a legitimate Freudian Excuse and possible Heel Face Turn, anime Cyrus is presented as a completely evil villain with no redeeming qualities or excuse for his actions. A wealthy architect who runs an energy business, Cyrus wants to exploit the powers of time and space in order to destroy the entire universe and remake it in his own image, and contrary to what he initially claims, he has no intention of sharing it with his followers - he wants everyone and everything to die so that he alone can have his new world, and he's engineered multiple domestic terrorist attacks to advance his scheme. When Mars and the Galactic Grunts finish scanning Mt. Coronet in their search for the Spear Pillar, Cyrus has Mars utilize a machine which sends out sound waves that cause Steel Pokémon living there agonizing pain and cause them to fly out of control. He then orders Mars to blow up the still inhabited Iron Island simply because he had no further use for it and to rid himself of Ash and his friends, sporting a Slasher Smile as he does. He later hires the abovementioned Hunter J to capture the three Lake Pokémon and has them torturously experimented on in order to produce the Red Chain, which he uses to mentally enslave the three Pokémon and painfully bind Dialga and Palkia to force out their power. On top of his extreme Lack of Empathy, Cyrus also shows immense hypocrisy by condemning emotions such as rage even while expressing such emotions himself, and attempting to use the time-space powers of Dialga and Palkia to kill three kids (Ash, Dawn, and Brock) despite claiming to have a distaste for needless violence and strife. His fate is sealed when he attempts to enter his de-expanding new universe, which leaves him Deader Than Dead.
- Best Wishes series: Lord Ghetsis is the enigmatic leader of Team Plasma who desires to rule the Unova region and put all its Pokémon under his control so that he may then pursue total world domination, and is another evil team leader devoid of any redeemable features. In the unaired "Team Rocket VS Team Plasma" episodes, Ghetsis is established as the man behind the Plasma grunts who seize the Meteonite from Team Rocket. When the Meteonite starts to unleash unstable heat energy and radiation waves that threatens to utterly destroy Castelia City, Ghetsis expresses no concern for the amount of lives that would be lost by ordering his oblivious grunts to try to unlock its power anyway even at risk of Unova's destruction, ultimately having them withdraw only because "the Hero doesn't need the Meteonite". The "Hero" in question turns out to be N, a pure hearted young man who Ghetsis raised in solitary confinement and groomed to be Team Plasma's king by lying to him about trainer and Pokémon relationships and of Team Plasma's true objectives. When N learns the truth and abandons Team Plasma, Ghetsis comissions Dr. Colress to create a Mind Control system for brainwashing Pokémon with and use it for conducting experiments on various Pokémon, with the trials Mind Raping many Pokémon into frenzies that cause them to attack humans, even if the humans are their own trainers. Ghetsis had also approved "Project G", which revived five fossils into Genesect Pokémon that made up a Genesect Army which went rogue and sought to bring destruction to a heavily populated city and park. At the climax of the Episode N arc, Ghetsis, upon reviving and Mind Controlling the legendary Pokémon Reshiram at the White Ruins, actively tries to kill N, Anthea, and Concordia (all his adopted children), and commands Reshiram to engulf the ruins in flames, not caring if his own soldiers get caught in the crossfire, an act that even Team Rocket finds appalling.
- XYZ series: Lysandre, CEO of Lysandre Labs and leader of Team Flare, starts off with some well-meaning intentions behind his actions only to end up crossing the line into this trope. Having hired Alain to work for his business under promises of strength enhancement and manipulating him into aiding Team Flare's illegal activities when Mairin's Chespin is poisoned by radioactive energy from the escaped Zygarde, Lysandre has the second Zygarde, Z-2, captured and tortured repeatedly to extract its Z Cells, which creates energy to power his Weapon of Mass Destruction. After a few test runs by Team Flare, Lysandre gleefully unleashes his weapon upon Lumiose City in the wake of the Kalos League, endangering the population and decimating the city with overgrowth, also evolving Z-2 up into its strongest form and having it Mind Controlled into going on a rampage. Lysandre has Ash and his Ash-Greninja captured so that he can electrically torture their shared life energy out of them, telling Alain that he plans on reducing the planet's population so that only the "chosen ones" can live on to dictate the course of society, and when Alain betrays him and frees Ash, Lysandre battles them with the intent to kill them both. Completely losing his faith in the world and his grip on sanity, Lysandre orders the activation of a contingency plan once Z-2 is freed from his control: using Mairin's Chespin as a Living Battery for the Megalith Stone, he has the stone turned into an artificial Zygarde and intends to have it overload the Sundial with enough power to obliterate all organic life on the planet, being even willing to kill off his underlings and Pokémon, purely out of spite that he wasn't allowed to make anything in the world better. When a large band of trainers fight back against the Megalith Zygarde and Chespin is saved from within, Lysandre personally commands his weapon to kill them all, raving that he will bring about the end of the world, only for he himself to perish when the fused Zygardes blow up the giant rock and he is completely atomized in the explosion. Ultimately, Lysandre in the anime was as monstrous as Cyrus and Ghetsis before him.
- Pokémon Generations: In Episodes 13 to 15, which cover Gen 5, Ghetsis Harmonia Gropius is again a cruel, utterly selfish man seeking total world domination, and serves as the driving force behind all the evil acts committed by Team Plasma. In Episode 13, "The Uprising", he's had N's Castle bludgeon its way into the Unova League building and engulf it as a show of strength, and has ordered his six chosen Sages to lead an attack on the League where they attempt kill the young Iris and all the other Gym Leaders who oppose Team Plasma's effort to take Pokemon away from trainers by force, which is actually just a bid to conquer Unova and rule over a disarmed populace. In Episode 14, "The Frozen World", in order to seize the DNA Splicers, he has Sage Zinzolin and his forces launch a terrorist attack on Opelucid City during which Colress uses his machine that's torturing the captive Kyurem to draw out its maximum power into the Plasma Frigate's "Kyurem Cannon" and freeze the city solid, shown here to endanger civillian lives and create massive collateral damage with likely perishing in the attack. Finally, Episode 15, "The King Returns", has Ghetsis at his most deranged as he aims to make Kyurem desecrate and freeze over all of Unova, and even makes one of his most notoriously despicable deeds even worse than in the games; instead of ordering Kyurem to directly attack the Player Character and freeze them to death, he orders Kyurem to do that to his own son, N. And in this version, Kyurem has already been forcibly fused with Reshiram via the DNA Splicers, so its icy blasts are combined with fire from Reshiram's "Fusion Flare". Had he not been saved (twice, the second being part of Ghetsis' Redemption Rejection), N could have been annihilated by his own father, all to remove any obstacles to his insatiable lust for power.
- In Episode 4 of the later web animation series, Pokémon Evolutions, we're given more context to how Ghetsis planned out everything that led to the uprising at Unova's League, and how much of it hinged on the grooming, brainwashing, and subtle corruption of his adopted son N, who Ghetsis crowned king of Team Plasma and set out to become the Hero of Ideals who'd win the legendary dragon Pokémon Zekrom, and the masses of Unova, to Team Plasma's side. He also manipulated many trainers into releasing or surrendering their Pokémon with his speeches on "Pokémon liberation", a ruse for his selfish ambitions to seize control over Unova and then Take Over the World. The entire episode is basically a look into the mind of a depraved, cold-blooded, power-hungry monster... and it isn't pretty.
Pokémon Films[]
- Pokémon 4Ever: The Iron Mask Marauder of Team Rocket is a punk bruiser with no remorse and a sadistic streak a mile long. In his first scene, he tortures and perhaps even murders an elderly former Pokémon poacher after forcing information out of him. He brainwashes all his Pokémon with his Dark Balls, including forest legendary Celebi, which he electrocutes before capturing, and afterward uses the forest legend to go on a rampage in said forest as a show of power, not even caring which Pokémon he kills in the process. He later catches Suicune and attempts to drain the life out of it with his Celebi powered destruction machine. He has no qualms with physically harming and possibly even killing kids like Ash and young Sammy Oak, as shown when he crushes Ash's hands until he passes out and later tries to murder Ash and Sammy by blasting them with his Celebi Destruction machine, and he uses Jessie as a captive audience for the reveal of his plans--to eliminate Giovanni and take over Team Rocket to conquer the world himself. The Marauder is also notable as using the first instance of what would later be called Shadow Pokémon.
- Pokémon Zoroark Master of Illusions: Grings Kodai is a Corrupt Corporate Executive of the Sinnoh Region who owns a network company in Crown City that controls the city's media. Kodai kidnapped a mother and child Pokémon from their homeland and blackmailed the mother into doing his bidding by threatening to kill the child all to cause the evacuation of a large city so that he can find an energy cluster left behind by time-traveling Pokémon Celebi and absorb it, renewing his ability to see the future, which he acquired twenty years prior at the cost of annihilating the city's plant life. He's willing to destroy the city's ecosystem a second time, and despite already being a wealthy and powerful businessman,he's doing it for more money. Kodai later forces Zoroark to allow him to obtain the Time Ripple by electrocuting her child right in front of her to the point that Zorua actually says he thinks he's going to die! Then, to make things worse, Kodai has his Pokémon try to kill Zoroark, since he's got Zorua in the palm of his hand and Zoroark is defenseless so long as he does, meaning he does this for no reason except he CAN, and he even goes so far as to say that he thoroughly enjoyed doing it! Later on, to gain information about the Time Ripple, Kodai captures and strangles Celebi to an almost fatal extent before Zorua saves the forest legend. And he manages to one up himself by trying to murder Zorua and Zoroark in cold blood when they trick him, despite the fact that he could've just went on ahead and ignored them to absorb the Time Ripple or flee, and he actually succeeded in killing Zoroark - though Celebi saved her, it doesn't change the fact that Kodai committed, thus far, the only successful cold-blooded murder of a Pokémon (all other times were accidental or just a side effect of what the villain was doing, but Kodai killed Zoroark intentionally, directly in front of the child she was in the middle of being reunited with!). With all that said, his Humiliation Conga and arrest (or his Karmic Death in the film's manga adaptation) is immensely satisfying to witness.
- Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel: Chancellor Alva follows in Kodai's footsteps when it comes to cold-hearted depravity. The prime Cabinet Minster of the Azoth Kingdom, Alva is a cruel, ambitious, scheming man who seeks to usurp control of the kingdom through force. Emotionally exploiting the young prince Rali to the point of brainwashing the boy into being loyal to and dependent on him, and plotting sinister machinations beyond the view of Azoth's rulers, Alva experimented with Neo Arcane Science, a fusion of science and the mystic arts, to devise a technique known as the Mega Wave, which forcefully locks a Pokémon into its Mega Evolution but puts it under mental torture and Mind Rape in the process until it's under Avla's control - pure enslavement of the Pokémon's body and mind. Seeking to exploit the power of the clockwork Pokémon known as Magearna, Alva launches an attack on the Nebel Plateau and tortures Ash and Magearna's friends to force Magearna's compliance in his scheme. Once he has Magearna, Alva tears out its heart, effectively killing it, with the distraught, protesting Prince Rali being Forced to Watch. Alva then has his Mega Gengar put Rali to sleep, planning to dispose of him once he's taken over Azoth. He discards Magearna's body and utilizes it's heart to transform the walls around Azoth into a flying fortress at his command, using it to begin his attack, directly attempting to wipe out all opposition to him and potentially killing some humans and Pokémon populating the Plateau below. When Magearna's lingering spirit keeps his arsenal from firing off, he attempts to break Magearna's spirit by forcing it to obliterate its own home, while it's still aware of it's actions but powerless to stop them. Then when Ash, Volcanion, and the others try to derail his plans, he has them tortured with electric volts again and this time intends on dispatching of them all. Once his plan is ruined, Alva remains defiant and instead locks the fortress so that it's set for a collision into the Plateau itself to obliterate everything and everyone in it's path as an act of spite, while he attempts to escape on a jet pack. By the end, Alva cements himself as an ambitious megalomaniac willing to crush anything and anyone so long as he benefits in the end.
- Pokémon: Secrets of the Jungle: Dr. Zed is a cruel, egomaniacal scientist seeking the healing power within the Sacred Tree of the Zarude, all to glorify his own ego. With no regard to any life, human or Pokémon, but his own, Dr. Zed was so mortified by his colleagues Chrom and Phossa Molybden telling him that his approach to pursuing the healing spring, which had a high risk to the Pokémon and wildlife around it, was wrongheaded and that he needed to be patient, that he attempted to murder the two by running them off the road, barely missing their infant son Al in the process. When he had a clear chance to rescue the parents from the burning car wreckage, Zed instead simply took the water sample he'd been after and abandoned them both to die in a fiery explosion. Al is left orpahned and alone in the jungle, cut off from human civilization for 10 years, thanks to this man's callousness. When he learns Al survived years later, Zed tracks him to the Sacred Tree, lays waste to the forest, and attempts to desolate the entire colony of Zarude so he can rip the healing power right from its source, and uses his Humongous Mecha to try to kill the jungle Pokémon and humans who are opposing him, even the members of his own research team who are horrified at his actions. When his plans fall apart, Zed shows that he would rather risk his own demise than be made to face up to the consequences of his deeds by the very boy he'd orphaned 10 years ago.
Pokémon Manga[]
- Pokémon Adventures:
- Yellow Chapter: Agatha of the Kanto Elite Four was the brains behind the Elite Four's operation and the group's one truly vile member. In addition to her relentless sadism, she's guilty of spurring Lance towards his Kill All Humans plan, coaxing young Lorelei into becoming her protege and joining her cause by playing on her trauma, Mind Controling the honorable Bruno into being Brainwashed and Crazy, using Super Nerd Miles and even nearly killing him to keep him silent, attempting to drain the life energy out of Blue Oak and threatening to kill an innocent child just for tagging along with him, mentally enslaving armies of Pokémon into being living weapons for terrorist attacks on the good Gym Leaders' cities in Kanto, and trying to torture both Blue and Koga to death on at least two different occasions. Why? All to settle a petty grudge against Professor Oak and prover her point that only the truly strong "elite" trainers can lead the way to the future of Pokémon, regardless of how many humans or Pokémon she has to wipe out to do so! Unlike her comrades, her motives are entirely self-centered. Gleefully plotting the total demise of her hated foes and never playing fair in a fight, Agatha was ultimately an unrepentant Misanthrope Supreme who even spends her last moments gloating about how the Elite Four's vision of reducing the human population is soon to be realized.
- Fire Red/Leaf Green, Emerald, & Diamond/Pearl Chapters: Sird, the vampiric looking commander in Team Galactic, most likely qualifies. She's first seen working undercover as a member of Team Rocket's Beast Trio and unlike her comrades she is shown to commit atrocities For the Evulz, culminating in her attempting to petrify Deoxys with an attack from her Darkrai only for it to end up hitting the five young dexholders Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Silver, turning them to stone. Sird showed no remorse for this and even took satisfaction in it. We later find out that after the she ended up saving Archie and Maxie from certain doom only to make the two men duel to the death for a special armor that grants eternal life to whoever wears it. Archie ended up murdering Maxie for the armor, an act of evil that Sird flat out commended. However, it turned out that if the armor was to be removed, it would drain the life from the one wearing it and kill them, which ended up befalling Archie. Sird later reveals her fixation on the Poke'Dex, which is so great that she hijacked Charon's Mind Control program to override one Galactic grunt's mind with her own, effectively brainwashing him into doing her bidding and trying to steal a Poke'Dex from Dia, Pearl, or Platinum - an end to which he'd attempt anything, even risking the three kids' lives in the process. If her latter appearances are any indication, Sird is a Hidden Agenda Villain with probable Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. According to Riley, her aura is one of pure malevolence and evil.
- Black/White & Black 2/White 2 Chapters: Ghetsis Harmonia Gropius stands responsible for all the evil committed by Team Plasma across the Unova region, and comes off even worse than his gameverse counterpart. Posing as a kindly and benevolent individual who seeks Pokémon liberation from trainers, Ghetsis is in truth a habitually sadistic, self serving, narcissistic sociopath who looks to disarm all trainers and exploit Pokémon's power so that he can dominate Unova and from there Take Over the World. He raised his son N in isolation and groomed him to be The Hero of legend by making him believe his Pokémon friends needed to be freed from captivity, but Ghetsis actually planned to enslave all Pokémon for himself, and had no love for N, viewing him only as a usable and ultimately disposable "decorative ornament" for his Evil Plan. He also used Hypnosis to violate other humans' minds to make them release their Pokémon companions, and it's heavily suggested that he's used this on N too. After manipulating masses of people, having his Eelektross electrocute Black into a paralysis, and ordering his underlings to pursue mythical Pokémon to be used as test subjects, Ghetsis fully reveals his true colors when he has his team attack Unova's League Tournament site and place many spectators in harm's way, capturing six of Unova's Gym Leaders to have them beaten down and tied to crucifixes as a show of power, even getting Brycen to surrender by threatening the life of an innocent hostage, readying his Hydreigon to kill Black on the spot, and when some trainers stand against him, ordering to have them all killed to make further examples. Facing Black in battle, Ghetsis attempts to kill the boy by sending out a team of Pokémon specifically trained to counter Black's team so he'd have Black burned alive by Hydreigon's flames, even stating this would kill Black's Pokémon too. When Ghetsis loses the battle, he spitefully uses his associates' Beheeyem to send Black towards Reshiram as it's reverting back to the Light Stone so that Black ends up sealed inside the Inter-Dream Zone, cruelly mocking him as he does so. Ghetsis later captures Kyurem, has it put into a power amplification and extraction device that tortues it, and uses its icy power as a destructive Freeze Ray to decimate many cities, freezing populated areas solid and endangering countless lives, intent on putting the entire continent on ice to extort total control, and when N and four other young trainers try to stop him, he uses the DNA Splicers on Kyurem and Zekrom to boost Kyurem's power, even having N temporarily caught in the Dark Stone to be used along with Zekrom as a Living Battery for Black Kyurem and afterwards showing he was perfectly willing to try and kill his own son without shame. Even with the tides turned against him, Ghetsis refuses to yield, opting to self-destruct the Plasma Frigate and kill every other person and Pokémon on board, and when N saves his life while admitting to the feelings of love and gratitude he still had for his father in spite of everything he'd done, Ghetsis violently rejects N's efforts, savagely beating him with his cane in a raving mad homicidal rage against him, unrepentant to the very end. (Pictured above)
- The Electric Tale of Pikachu: The Black Fog is a giant, malevolent Haunter that resides within Pokémon Tower. Once revered as a God, the Black Fog was angered when it stopped being worshipped, and so took to terrorizing both Lavender Town and Saffron City, devouring the souls of humans and Pokémon alike using Dream Eater. The Black Fog's victims include all of Sabrina's childhood Pokémon, and when Sabrina confronts it during one of its rampages in the present, the Black Fog captures her soul before returning to Pokémon Tower. After being weakened in battle by Ash, Brock, and Sabrina's Abra, the Black Fog spitefully commits suicide using Self-Destruct rather than yield and be captured like any other Pokémon. The explosion nearly kills Ash, who is narrowly saved by a recovered Sabrina.
- Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure: Charon of Team Galactic was a money-obsessed Jerkass in Platnum. But his method of introducing himself in this manga is to order his agents to suicide bomb a crowded stadium, which would potentially set fire to the whole town. Of course it fails, but his intent is clear. He holds no regard for the lives of others and plans to control the world with money made from selling legendary Pokémon, as well as extort more money from the masses by threatening them with the powers of Giratina. He also does nasty experiments on Pokémon that put them under a painful form of Mind Control and essentially turns them into Shadow Pokémon that he can use as living weapons even at the expense of the Pokemon's own lives and well-being, Koya's Growlithe being among his victims. This means that whereas the games version of Charon has Team Rocket's mindset, DPA!Charon is every bit as evil and depraved as Cipher. Two of his organization's top officers leave to find the previous leader- Charon tries to kill them, even physically abusing one of them. Which becomes even worse when you find out that said previous leader is being held captive in Charon's base. And as a capper, that previous leader, who goes on to rally the remaining agents against Charon, had previously tried to destroy the UNIVERSE. Thinking only of himself the whole way through, Charon ends the series the sole character to reject The Power of Friendship as a concept and thus ends up as a thoroughly irredeemable individual.
- Phantom Thief Pokémon 7: Team Galactic member Io, the manga's Big Bad, is a repellent piece of work. Depicted as a cold, ruthless woman who won't hesitate to eliminate anyone standing between her and what she wants, even her own subordinates, Io showed no loyalty to her organization's cause and sought to Take Over the World by exploiting the powers of the Pokémon Darkrai, whose powers she'd use to ravage the planet and cover it in darkness and then use it's Hypnosis technique to enslave the minds of every living human so that they'd all do her bidding. She's also the one who kidnapped the protagonists' young sister Lily five years ago and brainwashed her into serving Team Galactic. When Lily turns against Team Galactic, Io takes her frustration out of her Number Two by attacking him and calling him worthless before attempting to kill both Lily and her brother. If her treatment of others wasn't bad enough, she's also shown to treat Pokémon as little more than weapons that she can hurt and use to hurt, even forcibly enhancing them to make them serve her purposes better. Thanks to Laser-Guided Karma, she ends up getting Hoist by Her Own Petard when Darkrai breaks free of her control and puts her into a sleep coma with it's Dark Void.
- In the movie Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life, Marcus's motivation for killing Arceus is due to a misguided belief that if Arceus leaves with the Jewel of Life, his hometown would be doomed to rot. In the manga adaptation, he's a completely self-absorbed asshole who wants to steal the jewel in order to become that era's god and wants Arceus dead so he won't interfere with his grand plans. And to that end, he uses his Bronzong to hypnotize Damos to lure Arceus into a trap then have all of his Electric-Type Pokemon electrocute it to death, all of whom he's got under his control via special armor. The initial plan failed and Acreus retaliates by obliterating everyone in the temple, Marcus included, but when the heroes of the present travels to this era to prevent the event from taking place, Marcus decides to manipulate them into helping him and improve on his trap. He would pour Silver Water onto Arceus while his Pokemon would carry out their usual commands. When the heroes learn of this, they tried to warn Marcus that his action will damage the space time continuum, only for him to say he doesn't care, glad even to see that happen as it made him feel like a god, and has his Pokemon and soldiers are set to kill them when they try to stop him. When they manage to foil his plan, he kills himself activating a mechanism when upon death the temple would collapse and kill everyone inside it, meaning his last act would cause the deaths of possibly hundreds (if not more), Pokemon and human alike.