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Norman Osborn, best known as the Green Goblin, is one of Spider-Man's long-time arch-foes, who came to infamy after he threw Gwen Stacy to her death. Seemingly killed afterwards, Norman later resurfaces and totally excises himself of any redeeming traits, becoming one of Spidey's most monstrous enemies. Through his manipulations, Norman has overseen the deaths of countless people; orchestrated The Clone Saga; buried Peter's Aunt May alive; and even murdered Spider-Man's clone Ben Reilly simply to hurt his nemesis. After this, Norman founded the Dark Avengers and kept them in line through horrid abuse and threats to their loved ones. As the Green Goblin, Norman regularly causes untold death and destruction and even tries to replicate what he had done to Gwen with Spider-Man's other loves. As the Goblin King, Norman puts himself on top of a vast criminal syndicate while crushing all of his opposition and vowing to Otto Octavius to kill everything he considers precious to him. Norman is a horrible father to his son Harry, thoroughly damaging the boy with heaps of abuse over the years that culminates in Norman not only attempting to murder his own son to earn public sympathy, but also being revealed to have sold Harry's soul to Mephisto when the boy was a toddler in exchange for Norman's own profit. Norman also triggered a war with Asgard by having the U-Foes attack Volstaag in a football stadium, killing thousands of civilians; and, infusing himself with the Carnage symbiote to become the Red Goblin, Norman attempts to destroy everything Peter loves, bonds the symbiote to his own grandson Normie, and kills Flash Thompson to spite his archenemy even further. Norman's wickedness and sins are so abundant and vile that when they transferred into even the most heroic of souls, be it Ashley Kafka or Spider-Man himself, the hosts are quickly turned into replicas of the Goblin.
CletusKasady, better known as Carnage, was never really sane to begin with. As a child, he killed his grandmother and pet dog, tortured his mother, killed the headmaster of his orphanage with a lead pipe and then burned the orphanage down, and pushed a girl he had a crush on in front of a bus because she rejected him. He became even more insane and murderous after bonding with the symbiote and ran around New York slaughtering thousands of innocent people before being stopped by Spider-Man and Venom who prevented the deaths of so many more, earning the hatred of the both of them. The time where this complete lunatic was at his worst though was during the Maximum Carnage storyline, where he formed a very Charles Manson-esque family with his fellow crazed supervillains and sought to bring down New York in a huge surge of violence and insanity, while also kidnapping Venom who he ruthlessly tortured nearly to death. Absolutely no one is safe from his insanity, not even his so-called family as shown by him almost beating his lovestruck girlfriend Shriek to death while he also murdered Doppelganger when the latter came to the former's rescue. All in all, Carnage is easily among Spider-Man's most vicious enemies, and seems to get even worse as he keeps cheating death again and again, and it definitely puts things into perspective when he was made to be the Evil Counterpart of Venom.
Complete Monsters are hardly exclusive to Spider-Man's mainstream comics. Meet Spider-Man Noir's incarnation of Otto Octavius who is better known as Doctor Octopus. The fact that he flat out worships Nazi philosophy should clue you in on how bad he is, but it gets even worse. Having had to craft his own mechanical limbs to get around, Otto was raised in South Africa and grew jealous and hateful towards the healthy and able Africans around him, coming to view them as inhuman. This hatred led to Otto spiriting away innocent black men off the streets (Including this universe's Robbie Robertson) of New York and performing horrific and unethical experiments that leave them as drooling, mindless vegetables, knowing full and well that he would never be punished as the police wouldn't search for the men thanks to the incredibly racist mindset back then. While he's allied with fellow monster Crime Master, he has no loyalty to him as he ultimately kills him when he feels that he has served his purpose and has to run from Spider-Man and the F.B.I. Unfortunately the bastard gets to walk free thanks to his government connections, but gets his own hilariously fitting comeuppance when he's deported to Germany and meets Heinrich Himmler. Hoping that one of his Nazi idols would accept him as one of their own, Himmler ultimately rejected him because Otto was a cripple, and thus deemed unworthy of the Nazi legacy.
Also hailing from the Noir universe is Crime Master, who manages to be much, much worse than his mainstream counterpart. He gets one hell of an introduction when he has his brutish lackey Sandman squeeze a man's so hard that it explodes, but things only get worse from there. He's a fan of not only murder and extortion, but has Nazi ties as well and to this end assists Otto Octavius in the kidnapping and lobotomization of innocent black men. When the F.B.I and Spider-Man were on their tail, Crime Master opted to burn all the black men in a furnace in order to cover his tracks, deeming them as livestock while doing so. He's also one hell of an abusive boyfriend as well, as he tortures his girlfriend Felicia Hardy when he finds out that she's getting involved with Spider-Man. Thankfully, he gets his when Otto betrays and murders him.
From Marvel's 2099 universe:
This universe's incarnation of the Vulture has been reimagined as a cannibalistic thug. Having saved Spider-Man 2099 from the Public Eye with the intention of recruiting him in order to give his gang of Freakers some extra muscle, Spider-Man soon finds out that Vulture is a cannibal who actually cooked up the men he saved Spider-Man from and rejects his offer out of disgust, after which he defeats him handily. When Vulture later stumbles upon a group of people who worship Thor, he tried to get them to burn a person who worshipped Spider-Man alive purely out of spite for the webhead. And when he found out that Spider-Man was really Miguel O'Hara, he decided to make things personal by going after a friend of his, and went on to blow Miguel's workplace Alchemax sky high with the intention of killing all the innocents he could after being defeated again. All in all, his cannibalism and savagery combine to make this incarnation of Vulture one of the most disgusting pieces of work that the hellish dystopian 2099 universe has to offer.
We also have the 2099 universe's answer to Venom: a vicious family hating lunatic by the name of Kron Stone. Kron was a former childhood tormentor of Miguel O'Hara's who grew into the role of a Serial Killer who targets happily families and slaughters all members except for one survivor. He allows the survivor to live so they can feel the pain of losing their family, and he is shown doing this to Jake Gallows' family, prompting him to become The Punisher 2099. Thanks to having tons of money to burn due to his father Tyler Stone being of high social standing, Kron can always get away with these heinous crimes with no more than a slap on the wrist. When Jake comes after Kron with the intent of ending his life, he finds him at a restaurant prepared to murder a group of children and gets in a brutal fight with him, eventually fatally wounding Kron and leaving him to die in a sewer. However, this was not the end of Kron's reign of terror as he happened to find the Symbiote in the sewers which bonded with him and dubbed him the new Venom. As Venom 2099, Kron decides to murder his father before being interrupted by Spider-Man. In their resulting clash, Kron slaughters scores of innocent people, including doctors, nurses, and police officers and eventually murders Miguel's girlfriend Dana in order to hurt him emotionally before finally being beaten to a pulp by the web-slinger. While Kron does have a bit of a Freudian Excuse in regards to his hatred for families due to being abused by a robotic nanny while his father refused to spend time with him, Kron goes beyond the pale with the abominable actions he partakes in against families, and as his other actions show, he's a monstrously sociopathicbrat who'd be a complete bastard even if his dad loved him.
In Spider-Man: Reign, Edward Saks is Mayor Water's chief assistant and the real power behind the Reign regime, with Waters just being a puppet. Under Saks' guidance, Mayor Waters turns New York into a Police State, where elections are suspended and armed troops arrest, beat or just kill those who protest against the government. When Spider-Man returns, Saks releases the Sinister Six and sends them after Spidey, threatening to blow them up with micro bombs implanted under their skin if, they fail. Jameson confronts Saks and Mayor Waters over their actions and manages to reveal that Saks is in fact Venom. Venom then proceeds to devour almost everyone in a room occupied by his prisoners and his underlings. Mayor Waters announces the creation of the WEBB shield generator, designed to keep super criminals out of New York, but Venom altered it to deliver an army of symbiotes to the people of New York, killing some civilians and turning others into his slaves.
The Gentleman from the Spider-ManSinister Six Trilogy is this, hidden behind a facade of being Affably Evil. On one occasion, an agent was sent to apprehend him during the Tet Offensive (which he helped plan). The agent was sent back blind, with his tongue cut out and addicted to heroin. He also brainwashed Pity after killing her parents so she'll be forced to do anything he tells her to do without question. However, he made sure that she kept her conscience so she'll be tormented by the atrocities she's forced to commit. And that was just to get back at her parents, who were dead most of her life anyway. Most of what he's done can be summed up with his own explanation of himself: an investor in chaos; find fertile ground, start wars, assassinations, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or whatever else and profit from the fallout.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man: Anthology: In the short story "Deadly Force", Spider-Man has to deal with a sadistic Serial Killer named the Rooftop Ripper, a few weeks after Gwen Stacy died. Spider-Man is enraged at the Ripper due to his M.O of kidnapping young blonde women, torturing them to death and then throwing their bodies off of a rooftop. Spider-Man confronts the Ripper, who brags about killing a woman earlier in the night and describes how he gruesomely murders his victims. The Ripper then states he will kill another woman, if Spider-Man fails to stop him. The Ripper uses his super strength and fighting skills to defeat the exhausted and emotionally distraught Spider-Man. When Spider-Man awakens, he finds the mutilated body of a blonde woman draped over him. Later Spider-Man meets a cop at the scene of another of the Ripper's gruesome murders, with the cop saying this the third victim this week. Spider-Man believes the Ripper is such a vile foe, he considers breaking his oath against killing and using lethal force on the Ripper. However Spider-Man ultimately decides against that and is better prepared for the Ripper when he kidnaps another woman. Ripper threatens to rip apart the woman and throw the body parts at Spider-Man. Spider-Man saves the woman and has the Ripper on the ropes, so he breaks away and tries to throw the woman off the roof to get Spider-Man off his tail.
Doctor Octopus gets hit with this trope again in Spider-Man: Global War. He starts his plot to Take Over the World by stealing parts of a secret Department of Defense program which will allow missiles to be launched without revealing the location, and uses a rocket to cause an EMP to hit much of the Western Hemisphere, something in itself likely causing countless deaths. This is only for starters, as Doc Ock plans to use a second rocket—nuclear-tippled—to strike near the capital of Latveria. Doc Ock has also been secretly aiding Latveria's own nuclear program, and, with the help of a Latverian spy whose family he had kidnapped, had been feeding Doctor Doom's paranoia. Once the second rocket strikes near the Latverian capital, Doc Ock predicts Doom (who is unable to discover where the rocket was launched from) will respond by firing nukes in all directions, and that the rest of the world (which, thanks to the EMP, won't be able to communicate with Doom) will be forced to counter-attack. Doom will ultimately lose, but the rest of the world will be devastated in the process. From this, Doc Ock (having taken refuge underground) will emerge as the savior of mankind and its supreme ruler. Standing in stark contrast to his occasionally noble 616 counterpart, this version of Doctor Octopus was willing to cause tens of millions of deaths just so he could rule the world.
In the Spider-Man Unlimited tie-in comic book to the late 90's animated series, the Chameleon is a monstrous Beastial capable of changing his appearance to those he has murdered. To use this to his advantage, Chameleon systematically stalks and murders over a dozen innocent people, then uses their identities to commit crimes. After being stopped by Spider-Man during a bank robbery that nearly leaves several people dead, Chameleon boasts his plans to ruin Spider-Man's name and crush the hope of his people by framing Spider-Man for the killings. Even in a world of dictators and monstrous symbiotes, the Chameleon stood out as a vile Serial Killer who disgusted Spider-Man more than any other villain he encountered.
In Spider-Man: The Manga (which has only a loose connection to the Marvel comic series), the Kangaroo is a bloodthirsty, brutish American wrestler with super strength that he abuses with absolute glee. After being blacklisted by his home country's wrestling association for the way he'd horrifically brutalize his opponents, Kangaroo travels to Japan to extend his special brand of cruelty to the locals. Landing on Spider-Man's radar by brutalizing four Japanese wrestlers, Kangaroo proceeds to cause chaos all over the city by assaulting people, stealing, and inciting panic among the masses. After stealing a canister of highly lethal bacteria with the power to kill thousands of innocent people should it go airborne, Kangaroo uses it as a shield to gain an edge over Spider-Man in combat. Once bested by the webslinger, a smug Kangaroo decides to fling the canister to the ground which, had it not been for Spider-Man's intervention, would have condemned thousands to die purely out of rage and spite towards the masses for hating him. Despite appearing before the manga's infamous Darker and Edgier tone shift, Kangaroo stands out as being among the most heinous foes that this incarnation of Spider-Man has fought.
Spider-Man J: General Wasperus is the vicious, arrogant second-in-command of the mysterious Lord Beastius' forces, and the series' Starter Villain. Tasked with enslaving millions of Tokyo's citizens, Wasperus uses creations of his called Stealth Bees to do his bidding, which latch on to their hosts and turn them into prisoners of their own mind, aware and helpless while Wasperus is free to use them as soldiers and as slaves to carry out his bidding. He demonstrates this on Detective Flynn, a friend of Spider-Man's who he forces to fight to the death, smugly mocking Spider-Man about his predicament while stating that he picked this method of fighting Spider-Man solely for the sake of the look on his face when forced to kill a close ally. When Spider-Man hesitates to hurt Flynn, a bored Wasperus tries to butcher Spider-Man's young friends Harold and Jean-Marie before threatening to hurt other innocent civilians as well. After freeing Flynn from Wasperus' control and chasing him to his lair, the general fights the heroes himself and states that he intends to keep Spider-Man alive just long enough to live with the guilt of not saving millions of innocents from enslavement before squashing him like a bug. A dark, serious foe in an otherwise lighthearted and funny comic, Wasperus proves to be this continuity's nastiest villain by far.
In the first film of the Spider-Man Sam Raimi series, Norman Osborn is introduced as a cold, ruthless billionaire businessman and scientist who emotionally abuses his son Harry for not meeting his high standards (and shows more fondness to Peter Parker for meeting them), but he begins a downward spiral into madness when he experiments on himself with a super strength formula needed for making the glider weapon his company was devising for the military to work. It enhances his strength, stamina, and agility, but also drives him insane, and in a moment of pure insanity he murders his co-worker, Dr. Stromm. The madness eventually takes shape as a full blown Split Personality that removes all of Norman's inhibitions and taking on the identity of the Green Goblin, which controls him to kill his military sponsors and his board of directors that voted to remove him from the company. While Norman always blacks out after his outings as the Goblin, he soon confronts his darker nature and is manipulated by the Goblin persona into succumbing to his darker impulses because its power can get him anything he's ever wanted. The Goblin bombs an entire building during the Macy's parade and puts countless innocent lives in danger, puts J. Jonah Jameson in a chokehold while demanding he give information about which of his employees takes Spider-Man's pictures, offers Spider-Man to either join him in his crime spree or die, and then attempts to kill Spider-Man after luring him to a populated burning building that he's implied to have set fire to in the first place. If this wasn't bad enough, upon learning that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, he flies his glider into Aunt May's house and wounds the defenseless old woman just to emotionally compromise Peter. ("ATTACK HIS HEART!" as he puts it) At the film's climax, the Goblin abducts Peter's Love Interest Mary Jane and drops both her and a bus full of children off the Brookyln bridge to force Spider-Man into making a Sadistic Choice. When Spider-Man ends up saving both, the Goblin gives him a merciless No-Holds-Barred Beatdown while suggesting that he now plans to rape and torture MJ before killing her in order to make her death nice and slow, just to spite Peter. After Peter turns the tables, when Norman has seemingly come back to his senses and shows remorse, the Goblin persona is actually preparing to literally stab Peter in the back with his glider. The glider ends up impaling and killing Norman instead, but even in death his evil presence corrupts Harry and tears him and Peter apart in the following two sequels. In this sense, the Green Goblin was the Bigger Bad of the trilogy. Making him even worse is the reveal in the Spider-Man 2002 film novelization that, after the Goblin persona was born, he viewed himself as a "dark god" and wanted the entire world at his whim, viewing himself as superior to everyone else and wanted to rule over the ones in his world that would worship him, or kill them otherwise, and that he was forcing the Norman persona to do whatever he wanted him to do.
In Spider-Man 3, Edward "Eddie" Brock Jr. is introduced as a slimy rival to Peter Parker for the Daily Bugle job, but evolves into something truly wicked as the film goes on. Established as a selfish, creepy jerk who is obsessed with Gwen Stacy after just one coffee date, Brock is nonetheless eager to photograph her near-death experience to make a profit. After a failed attempt at framing Spider-Man as a criminal and praying for God to kill Peter for exposing this, Brock stumbles across the symbiote and merges with it to become Venom. Immediately trying to devour an entire street of civilians and cops in the tie-in comic The Black, Venom stalks and nearly attacks Gwen in an attempt to make her "love" him, then kidnaps Mary Jane Watson to molest, torment, and use her as a hostage to lure Spider-Man out, planning to decide via coin flip whether he kills her while forcing Spider-Man to watch, or does the inverse. Having met with Flint Marko aka the Sandman and used the safety of his young daughter as leverage to get him to agree to a Villain Team-Up against Spider-Man, Venom leads Sandman into slaughtering multiple teams of cops who try to rescue Mary Jane, and when Spider-Man finally shows up, Venom brutally beats him, tries to murder Mary Jane, and kills his best friend Harry as he watches. In a trilogy populated with tragic, misguided antagonists, Venom is a petty psychopath concerned only with himself.
In David Koepp's unused script draft titled Amazing Spider-Man, Doctor Otto Octavius AKA Doctor Octopus, unlike the more tragic and complex character in Spider-Man 2, is presented as a complete psychopath driven by his ego. Having murdered Richard and Mary Parker years ago for hiding the image refractor from him so as to prevent the completion of Octavius's dangerous fusion machine, Octavius takes their son Peter under his wing and manipulates the young man into the handing the refractor over before trying to kill him as well. After having his metallic tentacles fused with his torso, Octavius uses them kill his way out of a hospital and goes on a rampage through New York City, murdering several people and endangering dozens more. Octavius hopes to ally with foreign powers to complete his fusion reactor, fully willing to then hand it over to terrorists to use as a WMD so long as he gets to see it in use, and raids the wedding of Harry Osborn to obtain the final missing component to the machine, threatening the hundreds of guests with death if he doesn't get what he wants.
Spider-Man: Far From Home: Quentin Beck, AKA Mysterio, is the true master of the Elementals, orchestrating their attacks around the world to paint himself as a hero. Fired by Tony Stark years ago for being unstable, Beck concocts a scheme to both spite Stark and bring himself the attention he has always craved, entailing the destruction of a variety of villages and cities world-wide via the Elementals, then arriving on the scene as "Mysterio" to save the day, hoping to be a better hero than Iron Man ever was. Upon befriending and manipulating the young Spider-Man into handing over the E.D.I.T.H. glasses, Beck viciously Mind Rapes and tries to kill him, threatening to execute his entire staff for a failure immediately beforehand as well. Beck plans to "stop" an Avengers-level threat by using his illusions to destroy London, causing maximum casualties to gain more coverage, and schemes to murder Spider-Man's entire class of high school friends just to eliminate three potential witnesses to his true nature before basking in the glory as Mysterio. An attention-craving lunatic defined by his petty and treacherous nature, even trying to appeal to Spider-Man's sympathy only to try to blow his brains out once beaten, Beck even gets the last laugh as he frames Spider-Man as a villain and exposes the teenager's identity to the world as a final move to secure his claim to fame.
Spider-Man: No Way Home: Transported to the Marvel Cinematic Universe prime reality during his final battle with Spider-Man from the 2002 Sam Raimi film, the Green Goblin returns, being even viler than before. Confirmed to be the dark side of Osborn's psyche that corrupts and takes control of regular Osborn here, the Green Goblin rejects any chance of redemption and refuses to be cured, convincing Sandman, Electro and Lizard to return to villainy along with him, even attacking the repentent Otto Octavius while doing so. The Goblin launches a devestating battle inside Peter and May Parker's new apartment complex, delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Peter before cruelly murdering his Aunt May for teaching him "weak ideals" of morality and responsibility. Refusing to be sent back to his universe and planning to do as he pleases in the MCU, the Green Goblin detonates the bomb he placed on the box Doctor Strange uses to contain a corrupted spell that would let the entire multiverse collapse, deliberately plunging it all into devastating chaos while attacking the three Spider-Men, caring not that Peter's Love Interest MJ and even his own fellow villains might have their lives endangered. Even after the Spider-Man from the Goblin's own universe protects him from the glider that MCU Peter threatens to kill him with, the Goblin stabs him in the back before taunting MCU Peter that it was ultimately his fault that his aunt died in a final attempt to evoke a vengeful, murderous rage in Peter before Osborn is cured, eradicating the Goblin persona once and for all. Embodying and gleefully embracing all the worst traits of Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin will be known for being the only villain to bring the dark side of the MCU Spider-Man, and one of the most destructive versions yet.
In the first film, both halves of the Big Bad Duumvirate qualify as such:
Dr. Carlton Drake is the CEO of Life Industries who possesses a god complex. Coming into possession of the Symbiotes, Drake experiments with homeless people by having them attached to and devoured by the Symbiotes in massive numbers to learn how to control them, even using the Symbiote to murder a doctor who assists Eddie Brock. When he merges with the Symbiote Riot, Drake eagerly embraces his newfound power and assists Riot in killing all in his path, intending to bring the Symbiotes to devour all humanity just to satisfy his ego.
The Riot Symbiote is the "team leader" of the planned Symbiote invasion force coming to Earth, and one of the four Symbiotes brought back to Earth by the Life Foundation. Riot escapes, surfing from host to host and eating them alive from the inside-out — with two of his hosts being an old woman and a little girl — while leaving a slew of slaughtered innocents behind him. Riot bonds to Carlton Drake in the climax to send out a probe to bring the rest of his kind to Earth and allow them to feed on all humanity, massacring the entirety of Drake's staff when he's informed there may be a delay. Riot is apathetic to the death of even the other Symbiotes who died in Carlton Drake's care, and decides to even kill Venom when he goes renegade.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage: The Carnage Symbiote, after being born from a distillation of Eddie Brock/Venom's blood within the body of the psychotic Serial Killer Cletus Kasady, comes to bloody life by massacring a prison's worth of guards in order to break out. As sadistic and homicidal as Cletus but with none of his redeeming features, Carnage murders and eats dozens of innocents on the streets of San Francisco, including those who plead they have innocent families, a stranger he kills so Cletus take his clothes, and even random passerbys in vehicles he hurls off the road. Using help from Cletus and his beloved partner-in-crime, Frances "Shriek" Barrison, Carnage kills everyone in Ravencroft Institute as he razes it to the ground, and it gleefully intends to slaughter the rest of San Francisco to consummate Cletus and Shriek's marriage. In the climax, the Symbiote tries to murder its "father" Venom alongside Eddie's captive ex-girlfriend Anne, munches the head off of a priest for a cheap Power-Up, and callously attempts to kill Shriek out of sheer annoyance with her powers and the effect they have on it, even against the protests of Cletus himself.
Venom: The Last Dance:Knull, God of Symbiote is the one responsible for causing all of the events, Currently imprisoned in the dark world that is Klyntar, Knull seeks to retrieve the newly-made Codex in order to free himself to resume where he left off, Knull has created the Symbiotes to do his every bidding and led them into war against countless civilizations from the moment "light" itself brought onto his sacred domain of total darkness, such place assumed to be what was once his kingdom. Despite this, Knull still sees this as a setback and that with Venom dead, he still finds confidence to break free from Klynthar somehow while making his intentions clear that he'll resume his planetary conquest of destruction and target Earth first thing on his list... and considering a small piece of Venom is still lurking around in the MCU multiverse strongly suggests what would become of Knull's next move in the future.
Animated TV Shows[]
Even in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, the Red Skull qualifies as such. After stealing the Scorpio engraving, an artifact containing information regarding the whereabouts of hidden Nazi weaponry, from Professor Hiawatha Smith, Skull attempts to feed him to a python after declaring victory. When the Spider-Friends get involved and join Smith in South America, where the stash is hidden, Skull has them trapped underground and ambushed by a drill tank. Finally capturing the heroes at Skull Island, Skull reveals his plans to launch multiple nuclear missiles at American targets, tricking the US into attacking the Soviet Union in response, resulting in the deaths of countless innocent people and Skull seizing control of what's left of society by anointing himself the "next Hitler", using stolen treasure to project an aura of legitimacy. When Smith rescues the Spider-Friends and Firestar redirects the missiles towards Skull Island, Skull tries to rescue the treasure, even when Spider-Man offers to save him. After surviving, Skull kidnaps his arch-nemesis, Steve Rogers, intending to take over his superhuman body while trapping Rogers in Skull's disfigured body forever. When Spider-Man rescues Rogers, Skull tries to kill them both with a giant laser.
The '90s Spider-Man: The Animated Series gave us 5 villains who surpassed all other villains in terms of pure evil on this show:
Herbert Landon is a Mad Scientist, the Evil Former Friend of Hank "Beast" McCoy and a racist, genocidal Smug Snake driven solely by hatred and bigotry. A rabid anti-mutant extremist, Landon created a formula that destroyed mutant cells and killed any mutant exposed to it. His endgame was to market this formula to the public as a cure for mutants, only to instead use it to wipe them all out. The first person Landon attempted to test out this formula on is his "old friend", Hank. Thwarted in this endeavor, Landon would go on to become The Dragon to the Kingpin, and performed various unsavory deeds such as forcibly converting Alistair Smythe into a cyborg slave and testing out a super-soldier serum by using Felicia Hardy as a guinea pig.
Cletus Kasady, AKA Carnage, is introduced as an Ax Crazy lunatic willing to use a bomb to kill himself and everyone within a 200-meter radius just because he thinks it's hilarious. After entering into the services of the Dread Lord Dormammu and bonding with the offspring of Eddie Brock's symbiote, Kasady uses his newfound power and connections to become an even worse menace. Unlike Eddie who, when bonded with his symbiote, creates a combined persona called Venom, Cletus is so psychotic that he still remains completely aware and in control after bonding with his symbiote. First helping Venom steal an interdimensional probe, Kasady quickly displays contempt towards his "dad"'s softness and proves himself willing to kill Venom on the flimsiest of pretexts. Kasady would later go on to steal the souls of numerous innocent people in order to summon Dormammu and herald The End of the World as We Know It. Once Spider-Man defeats him by letting him be sucked into Dormammu's home dimension, Kasady attempts to grab Eddie Brock's Love Interest, Dr. Ashley Kafka, to take her with him. He's only thwarted by Eddie sacrificing himself instead. Rampantly homicidal and needlessly sadistic, Kasady was a far cry from the usual Spider-Man villain, doing evil solely for the carnage it unleashed on the world. And while he alone is bad enough, thanks to his influence, the Carnage symbiote itself also qualifies as a Complete Monster given, in the two-part "Spider Wars" series finale, its bonding with an alternate reality Peter Parker, twisting and destroying his mind into a hateful thing who sends Hobgoblin and Green Goblin to annihilate New York, and becomes the Final Boss of the series who's intent on installing a device to cause a chain reaction that will erase the entire multiverse, having convinced its host that this is the only way to escape his horrible pain and torment. Even when Peter defected from this plan due to Uncle Ben talking sense into him, the Carnage symbiote refused to let go, resulting in Spider-Carnage Peter making a Heroic Sacrifice by erasing himself from existence.
The Dread Dormammu is a being who feeds upon entire universes. Having devoured countless others, Dormammu seeks to consume Spider-Man's, which is defended by the efforts of Dr. Strange. Having Baron Mordo form a cult to bring him through, Dormammu later helps mastermind the creation of Carnage to arrive on earth and consume the entire universe to feed his rapacious evil and hunger.
Baron Mordo, Arch Enemy of Doctor Strange, is a power-hungry Evil Sorcerer who seeks to unleash the Dread Lord Dormammu onto his universe. Having previously tried and failed to murder the honorable Ancient One in order to assume his position, Mordo became a servant of Dormammu and enacted such schemes as hypnotizing dozens of innocents into being his cannon fodder slaves to further his own goals, including Peter Parker's Love Interest Mary Jane Watson, whom he mesmerized into believing her estranged father had come back for her and wanted her to follow Dormammu. Eventually restoring Eddie Brock into Venom and transforming Cletus Kasady into Carnage, Mordo unleashes the two to terrorize a science expo, try to kill Spider-Man and drain entire streets' worth of innocents of their life energy. Mordo's ultimate goal is to feed Dormammu a hefty amount of souls to empower him in escaping his dimensional prison and devour Mordo's entire universe while Mordo enjoys the destruction so long as it brings him the power he craves.
The Green Goblin is one of Spider-Man's worst villains. Created as an entity inside Norman Osborn's mind by a dangerous combination of chemicals exploding, the Green Goblin regularly torments and bodyjacks Norman to use his body to "punish" those who have crossed Norman. The Green Goblin tries to drown Oscorp's board of directors; drops Felicia Hardy and her mother at the same time to force Spider-Man into a Sadistic Choice; attempts to melt the Hobgoblin and Felicia alive in acid; and plans to decimate the city with a "one man crime wave", all for petty vengeance over slights. In the moment that solidified him as Spider-Man's most hated foe, Green Goblin kidnaps Mary Jane, almost doing the same to Aunt May while she's sleeping, and tries to kill the girl to torment Spider-Man, ultimately trapping Mary Jane in limbo for the rest of the series. Even when he himself is sucked inside limbo, Green Goblin reaches out and drives Norman's son Harry insane, turning him into a new Goblin to use him against Spider-Man. Green Goblin abuses Harry into arming Silvermane for a gang war, attacking Harry's friend Liz, and nearly bombing Spider-Man's wedding ceremony. While Norman is portrayed in a surprisingly sympathetic light, the Green Goblin is nothing but an Ax Crazy supervillain driven by hatred for Spider-Man and his own ego.
The "Spider-Wars" two-part finale gives us an alternate reality version of Jason Philip Macendale, the Hobgoblin, and Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, working for Spider-Carnage and gleefully acting to burn New York to ashes, showcasing the city as a burnt-out wasteland with the Goblins happily raining destruction upon all that they can. Cornering the Daily Bugle, the Goblins take Robbie Robertson hostage to force J. Jonah Jameson to help them set up what they think is a device to rob all mankind of free will. Even when Jonah complies, the Goblins drop Robbie off a building.
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: Dr. Curt Connors, AKA the Lizard, is depicted as a far more sinister individual in this incarnation. From the start, Connors was a bitter, misanthropic college professor who lost his arm following an industrial accident when Oscorp tested an experimental weapon in the Lousiana swamp where he had been studying reptiles. Injecting himself with reptilian DNA, Connors is transformed into a bipedal, mostrous lizard and decides to take advantage of his new form by killing anyone who has ever slighted him. He sneaks into a police station and brutally murders a thief who had held him at gunpoint, then goes after Harry Osborn, intending to kill him as well in spite of him having had nothing to do with Connors's injury. When Spider-Man interferes with the attempt, Connors remorselessly tries to kill him as well, in spite of his previous respect for the hero.
Phineas and Ferb: The lighthearted nature of this show's world makes finding a true example of this trope impossible, but there was that one time they brought over the Red Skull in the "Mission Marvel" special. While at first reduced to being The Comically Serious partner to Dr. Doofenshmirtz, Red Skull soon has enough of his antics and takes charge of the current evil plan himself. So what does he do then? He reworks one of Doof's inators so that it would suck the energy out of everything and everyone in the Tri-State area, meaning he was going to kill billions just to get rid of the currently de-powered Marvel heroes. He also showed no qualms in trying to have Phineas and Ferb and all their friends, all children, killed.
The Spectacular Spider-Man offers us Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin. He's the only villain in this incarnation of Spider-Man to not have a Freudian Excuse, not even insanity. Norman is a cold-hearted bastard who establishes himself as such when he steals Adrian Toomes' flight tech after rejecting it, refusing to apologize even when his life depended on it. He also frequently emotionally abused his son Harry and his employee Otto Octavius. When he's offered to help Tombstone experiment on criminals to create supervillains who can destroy Spider-Man by performing his more inhumane experiments that were rejected for extra money, he immediately agrees, not caring about the untold damage they'd cause and in spite of the fact that Spider-Man had saved his life earlier. When Flint Marko is seemingly turned to dust by one such experiment and Otto questions what they should do, Norman responds as uncaringly as possible"We sweep up, and we try again". As the Green Goblin, his actions only get worse. He forces three crooks into betraying Tombstone so that they could take him out for him, and he avoids incarceration by revealing to Spider-Man he left a pumpkin bomb meant to kill Tombstone, the party guests and his own henchmen who were still in the ballroom (as he put it, he'd "paint the town red - well, the ballroom anyway!"). He also sabotages Otto's experiment, turning his former friend into the twisted Doctor Octopus just to avoid suspicion. His most heinous acts are in the second season - he pits the city's gangs against each other all so he could emerge as the new "Big Man of Crime", takes advantage of Mark Allan's desperation to get out of debt by tricking him into undergoing an experiment to get superpowers which he can control via a remote so that Mark is forced to be his enforcer and pawn against Spider-Man (which ends up pretty much ruining Mark's life), nearly released several dangerous criminals both to torment Spider-Man and For the Evulz, and he turned an entire city block into one huge death trap that endangered countless innocents, all so he could kill just ONE PERSON (Spider-Man). The cherry on top is that we learn, when Spider-Man had been close to figuring out the Goblin's identity, Norman framed his own son Harry for his crimesin a way that involved him breaking Harry's ankle with his bare hands and taking advantage of his drugged state. Whether he's the unfeeling Norman Osborn or the Ax Crazy, cackling Green Goblin, one thing about him remains the same: he's an evil sociopath who'd use even his own family to get what he wants.
Word of God is that it was intended to be ambigious whether Osborn was insane or not (and if so, what caused it), but he's definitely evil.
Norman Osborn is the ruthless head of Oscorp, and though he presents himself as a kindly businessman, he is actually nothing but a self-serving abuser. In his quest to make Oscorp's school the best in New York, Norman unleashes a lycanthropy plague onto rival Horizon High; forces his students to fight each other for advancement; and ruins the life of one of Horizon's best students so that he'll join Oscorp instead. Norman horribly experiments on Dr. Curt Connors, forcing the man to become the Lizard against his will, culminating in Norman turning Connors into a kaiju that threatens New York. Later claiming he can cure Connors of the Lizard for good, Norman strings him along with a temporary cure, only to cruelly reveal there is no permanent cure and Norman never intended to help him once Connors was no longer useful. Norman abuses his son Harry to mold the boy into his perfect successor, and when Harry repeatedly chafes against his father's wishes, Norman finally tries to kill Harry for being a "disappointment." After a failed attempt to murder civilians and ruin the heroics of Spider-Man and Harry, Norman orchestrates the unleashing of the Technovore and turns multiple civilians into mutants to force them into Gladiator Games. Becoming the Dark Goblin, Norman uses the loved ones of the Spider team against them so he can begin a new plot to Take Over the World.
Featuring in The Secret History of Venom, Knull is an ancient, nearly immortal being whose existence predates the universe itself. Bearing a hatred of the Celestials for bringing light to the cosmos, Knull goes to war with them, creating the first four Klyntar to use as weapons to slay most of them in combat and plunge most of the universe into darkness. Preparing to return to the void of existence after his war ends, Knull callously abandons his creations when their purpose is fulfilled, seeing them as nothing more than mere tools and showing no concern for them as he leaves them for dead. Vicious, cruel and controlling, Knull is one of the most vile beings in the universe and responsible for every planet decimated by the Klyntar following their turn to conquest.
Video Games[]
Spider-Man 3: Luke Carlyle is a former industrialist whose business crumbled after the Daily Bugle uncovered his corrupt practices. Seeking revenge against the city that ruined him, Carlyle adopted the identity of the Mad Bomber and led a series of terrorist attacks across Manhattan. After destroying his old building, Carlyle had his men plant explosives throughout the city, focusing mostly on locations that would cause civilian casualties. When Spider-Man foils his plans, Carlyle launches an attack on the Daily Bugle and kidnaps J. Jonah Jameson. Carlyle places an explosive collar around Jameson's neck and tosses him out of his helicopter in an attempt to kill him and Spider-Man. Carlyle ultimately escapes after Spider-Man takes out his helicopter, but not before setting off the explosives he had rigged in his henchmen's suits.
CletusKasady/the Carnage Killer from the tie-in game for the Amazing Spider-Man 2 qualifies asusual, though he's characterized a lot differently than his mainstream counterpart. Instead of a giggling lunatic who merrily butchers tons of innocents, this incarnation of Kasady is a nihilistic, death obsessed, serial killing vigilante who hunts down and murders tons of killers not because of any hatred towards them or having any standards, but because he feels that nobody understands death better than them. When Spider-Man and Kraven the Hunter track Cletus down, Spider-Man rescues a wheelman involved in a drive-by shooting from Cletus, who tries to corrupt Spider-Man during their resulting clash by explaining his mindset and convincing Spider-Man that all he needs to do is give in to his hatred for criminals. When Cletus is bought to justice, his reign of terror is hardly over, as he's taken to Ravencroft Asylum where he's subjected to experiments involving the symbiote that turns him into the powerful, rampaging Carnage, who infects multiple inmates with the symbiote and turns them into psychotic feral monsters with the intent of escaping the asylum and infecting the world with it so he can turn Earth into a chaotic hellhole with only the beloved Webhead standing in his way.
Hailing from Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Big Bad Mysterio shows what happens when you give a megalomaniacal B-Lister baddie far too much power for his own good. He opens up the game by trying to steal the Tablet of Order and Chaos in order to sell it for a profit on the black market, which unbeknownst to him is a highly dangerous artifact capable of enabling those who use it with godlike power. After shattering it in a fight with Spider-Man, Mysterio gets away with a fragment and finds that its given him an enormous power boost, and thus goes on a rampage with it all over New York. When Spider-Man finds the other tablet shards with the help of three other Spider-Men from alternate universes, Mysterio takes his advisor Madame Web hostage and tortures her, threatening to kill her if Spider-Man doesn't hand over the shards he's gathered. When Mysterio reassembles them, he annihilates the multiverse itself with his endgame being to recreate it all in his image and rule it as a god before being soundly trounced by all four Spider-Men working together.
Eddie Brock/Venom is at his worst in the PS2 and PSP versions of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. After making a deal with his fellow villain Jackal, Venom allows the scientist to experiment with his symbiote, and amplify its power to where it becomes a powerful, all-consuming plague that corrupts whatever it wraps its tendrils around. Venom then orchestrates the destruction of Manhattan by turning it into a twisted alien wasteland, with hundreds upon thousands of innocent people mutated into mindless monsters against their will by it, including Spider-Man's allies who he's forced to fight once the infection hits them as well. And unlike the next-gen versions of the game where Venom is a mindless vessel through which the alien symbiote imposes its will through, in these games Eddie makes it perfectly clear that he's in control and that he doesn't care about ruling the world: he doesn't give two shits about the symbiote infecting the planet, as long as he gets to kill Spider-Man, it's all worth it to him.
