When The Shadow King isn't hatching some diabolical plot that the X-Men have to stop, he likes to use his telepathic power (nearly equal to Xavier's) to alter people's priorities, amplifying their dark impulses and suppressing their conscience, so they do awful, ghastly things of their own free will, at least, in a sense. Murder, adultery, anything, and he sometimes reverses the effects and leaves him or her remembering doing those things, remembering enjoying them, and wondering why they did it.
A good portion of the Marauders have been this. Riptide is an Ax Crazy sadist who loves nothing more than indiscriminately slaughtering everything in sight, Scalphunter is a ruthless sociopath who will do anything if the pay is good, Blockbuster is a bloodthirsty brute who relishes torture, Scrambler is a narcissistic psychopath with a love for chaos, Malice is a sadistic incorporeal spirit who is second only to Mystique in Manipulative Bitchery, and Sabretooth is, well...what hasn't Sabretooth done? Makes sense when you consider that Sinister, who commissioned the team, is one of the most despicable individuals in the MU.
Mr. Sinister was the one who commissioned the Marauders to slaughter a bunch of innocent Morlocks. He then callously played upon the feelings of Cyclops, creating Madelyne Pryor as a clone so she and Cyclops could produce a child for his experimentation. He's spent decades performing horrible experiments on mutants and was a key figure in Nazi human experimentation. Perhaps Sinister's most vile act is promising to free those enslaved in the Weapon X concentration camp. In reality, he merely took them as his own test subjects.
Cassandra Nova, who kicks off her first appearance by murdering sixteen million mutants, entirely for the purpose of inflicting pain on Professor X. And then there's her Mind Rape of Kitty Pryde... Apparently she was a Complete Monster since birth, too. She's Xavier's half-sister who tried to strangle him while still in the womb when they were just sperm! And despite being an Ass Pull by Chuck Austen to try explaining the huge OOC Ball that she was given, Nova forcing Polaris to witness the already mentioned massacre wasn't the kindest action either.
Dr. Zander Rice, one of the lead scientists of Weapon X's X-23 project. He has X-23 kept in a padded room except during training sessions or assassination missions, almost kills her with radiation poisoning to trigger her healing factor at the age of seven, and surgically removes her natural claws one at a time, coats them with adamantium, then re-implants them (all of this without anesthesia) at the same age. He develops a pheromone "trigger" that activates her berserker rage and uses it to get X-23 to kill her martial arts instructor, and leaves her behind on a mission to be killed after he murders the other members of the team so he can claim they were taking fire and had to retreat. After X-23 shows back up alive, Rice then manipulates the head of the X-23 project, who had raised Rice after his father's death, into granting Rice control of the project, at which point Rice then sends X-23 to kill the man, his wife, and son - even though Rice knows the boy is his son, from an affair between Rice and the wife before her marriage (X-23 leaves the child alive). Upon taking over the project, he begins the development of embryos X-24 through X-50, which he intends to sell to the highest bidders, and then taints the one remaining person X-23 cares about, the project scientist who was her surrogate mother, with the trigger pheromone, which causes X-23 to fatally injure the woman - just as she was about to take X-23 and disappear after destroying the project complex. Rice's reasoning for all of this? His father, who worked on the original (Wolverine) Weapon X project was killed by Wolverine when he escaped, and Rice held X-23, who is Logan's genetic double, responsible for Wolverine's killing of his father. Somehow, X-23 kicking the shit out of him and his dying doesn't quite balance the scales...
Fabian Cortez was part of the defunct Upstarts, a group of rich, bored dilettante mutants that hunted and killed other mutants for points and bragging rights (the competition was set up by Selene to test possible recruits for the Hellfire Club). In his first outing, he puts together the Acolytes and seeks out Magneto in order to sway him back towards taking an antagonistic stance against humanity again. When Magneto is wounded, Cortez uses his own powers to seemingly heal him and boost his power at the same time whilst making Mags dependent on the “treatments” like a drug (and possibly making Mags more emotionally unstable, which would account for much of his behavior during “Fatal Attractions”). His machinations lead to the U.S. and Russia destroying Asteroid M with a plasma cannon, and the deaths of his entire first group of Acolytes (what makes that worse is that one of them was his own damn sister, and yet he never acknowledges that, nor does he show any signs of remorse or grief), whilst he flees with a triumphant smile on his face. When Magneto turns out not to be dead and he loses his top spot in the Upstarts competition, his response is to go to Genosha and inspire the mutants there to rise up against their oppressive human government, causing a bloody civil war. At the same time, he kidnaps Magneto’s infant granddaughter (and replaces her with a shapeshifting mutant suicide bomber in an attempt to kill as many of the Avengers as possible) so he can use her as a human shield against her parents and grandfather, the X-Men, the Avengers, and Exodus. When Magneto is given rule of Genosha, he grants Cortez a place on his cabinet in exchange for regular rejuvenating treatments (Magneto’s powers are in decline at this time). As soon as Mags learns of hidden technology in Genosha that can restore his power levels again, Cortez predictably betrays him again by amping up ex-Acolytes to send against him. This fails, and as soon as Magneto restores his full powers, he grants the weasel a messy, but long overdue death. Not only was Cortez an extreme mutant supremacist, a terrorist, a coward, a user, and a backstabber, but he also committed his most despicable crimes to score points in a competition.
Victor Creed, aka Sabretooth, the Evil Counterpart and formerArch Enemy of Wolverine. He may be the only person in the 616 Marvel Universe who enjoys killing people more than Bullseye. In one issue of Deadpool, he killed a bunch of people for fun. Bad enough. Then it was revealed that he had kept a little girl in a closet that he was saving for later. Even the possibility that his homicidal nature might be part of his mutation doesn't excuse his actions. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Sabretooth embodies everything ordinary humans hate and fear about mutants. Thankfully, he receives a very Karmic Death. First, he gets Mind-Raped by Romulus and made into his bitch. It's so bad that Sabretooth ends up begging Wolverine to kill him. Wolverine gladly does so, beheading him with a magical katana that negates his Healing Factor, killing him for good.
Omega Red. The man was a Soviet soldier stationed at a small town who started murdering from sheer boredom. His fellow soldiers shot him in the back of the head when they caught him. The Russian government learned he survived and recommended him for the Soviet supersoldier project, which he apparently only survived due to his evil and mean nature. To survive carbonadium poisoning, he drains the life forces of those around him, even when a cure is available. It was at one point implied that he was a pedophile, though thankfully, writers seem to have forgotten it (Red was, by this point, developing into too dark a figure). He later turned on and killed several of his employers working for the Hand for the reason that they irritated him. In his final issue, he ends up in a regular Russian prison and taunts a prisoner dying of HIV/Aids by calling him worthless. He later casually kills Wildchild by impaling him through the chest and dumping him in molten lava.
The X-Men honestly have a ton of these to contrast with a Magnificent BastardAnti-Villain like Magneto. There's the Marauders and Sinister mentioned above, but one of the worst is Sinister Minister William Stryker, the founder of the Purifiers who believes that mutantkind is an affront to God and undeserving of life. Years ago, Stryker stabbed his newborn for being a mutant, broke his wife's neck for giving birth to a "monster", then became convinced that God had chosen him to wipe out all mutants. To this end, Stryker founded the fanatical Purifiers, and uses them to kill any and every mutant they come across, in just one instance gunning down two young children. After kidnapping Charles Xavier and subjecting him and his friends to brutal Mind Rape, Stryker plans to use Xavier's psychic powers to exterminate every mutant in the world, and later coldly murders his Dragon when she shows signs of being a latent mutant. Though later seemingly turning over a new leaf, Stryker went back to his genocidal crusade when he stumbled across the mutant-killing machine Nimrod, who he uses to found a new Purifier group that he reveals to the world by bombing a school bus full of de-powered mutants, killing over 40 innocent children. Stryker murders the mutant Icarus's lover to make him easier to turn into his spy for the X-Men, before callously murdering the young mutant when he outlives his usefulness, after which Stryker leads an all-out assault on the X-Mansion, specifically hoping to kill the dozens of children residing there. Even in death, Stryker's crimes continued, as his stabbed newborn, while spared by Stryker, was used in genetic experiments and brainwashed into becoming a fanatic like his father, going on to continue his father's psychotic plans. With a mutant body count of over 400 and a sadistic streak to match, William Stryker is the perfect representative of the bigotry and racism the X-Men have worked so hard to overcome over the years, made all the worse by his constant claims that he's just doing "the Lord's work".
Donald Pierce, the cyborg leader of the Reavers. Pierce was a member of the Hellfire Club for a time, but is really a psychotic, raving bigot who's also a serial killer of mutants. His hatred motivated him to turn people into Cyborgs to kill more mutants. What makes Pierce the worst, though? Pierce knows if he goes after guys like Wolverine, Cyclops, Magneto, or Havok, he's going to get his ass kicked...so he targets baby and child mutants who can't fight back like they can. Pierce is a vile, spiteful, cowardly bully so filled with hate, his last words before Cyclops kills him is to say he's just sorry he won't be around to see the Mutant Race destroyed. Though Pierce actually did go after Wolverine the one time, with the help of Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers; they ambushed Wolverine, beat him down, then crucified him in the Australian desert and tortured him. If not for Jubilee, Logan would surely have died; as it was, the ordeal severely taxed his healing factor and screwed up his mental state for months of Comic Book Time (but years of our time). Pierce can actually claim to be among those who have come closest to killing Wolverine, and in such a horrific way that the son of a bitch belongs on this list.
Vulcan, the savage, insane third Summers brother. Vulcan starts with an almost sympathetic motivation, wanting vengeance on the mad Shi'ar Emperor D'ken who killed his mother (and D'ken can easily fit this trope), but soon enough, it becomes clear Vulcan is a savage beast. He kills anyone in his way, innocent or no. When he kills D'ken and assumes control of the Shi'ar throne, his first act is to brutally murder his own father. He takes vicious delight in torturing his elder brother Havok and seeks to break him mentally at every opportunity. He then expands the Shi'ar into a brutal dictatorship who conquer all they can, losing himself completely to madness.
Reverend. Craig. The father of The Woobie Rahne Sinclair. He spent thirteen years being a horrific, abusive monster on par or worse with Brian Banner, to the point Rahne thought she was a horrible person who deserved to die - and that's BEFORE she found out she was a mutant. When he found out, he shot her and tried to have her burned alive. He later helped the Purifiers brainwash Rahne into a killing machine.
Two queens of the Hellfire Club. The White Queen Adrienne Frost, sister of the more famous Emma. Adrienne is ruthless, manipulative, and most well known for setting a bomb in a school to kill the students. She later admitted she would only keep doing more and kill every student she could. And the Black Queen, Selene, the most ancient mutant alive who survives by sucking the life force from people. And recently, she showed her worst by reviving the dead of Genosha - to enslave their souls to her. She also killed Eli Bard, her loyal aide who showed her that he truly loved her.
Believe it or not, there was a New Mutants miniseries in which Selene was an ally. This premise was so silly they had to bring in the Red Skull (see below) to be the villain in order to make Selene having the moral high ground make any sense at all. Perhaps her cruelest action? Manipulating Wither, a good kid with bad powers who had recently lost everything, into becoming an Omnicidal Maniac by simply being the only one to provide him with any companionship. It's heavily implied the she'd have discarded him (as she did Bard) as soon as her plans were successful.
APOCALYPSE, people. The man is one of the oldest mutants in the universe and lives by a very Darwinist principle, which he is not above judging himself by. He planned to kill the world with a super virus - even Sinister was a bit disgusted (albeit due to issues of efficiency and NOT ethics). He's an out-and-out one, albeit when he was recently reincarnated as a kid, he was genuinely and potentially redeemable.
The man had an alternative reality crossover (Age of Apocalypse) in which most of the world, except for parts of North America, Western Europe, and North Africa, became an irradiated wasteland. He ruled North America by callously killing thousands, and to make things worse, his son from that reality, Holocaust, was implied to be worse. Holocaust was so dark, they even changed his name to Dark Nemesis, after he struck uneasy chords with those all too familiar with World War II (and because it's impossible to sell a toy or trading card with the name "Holocaust" on it.)
The Gauntlet, a group of mutant businesspeople in X-Man #63-66. Nate initially defends them from a monster from an Alternate Universe, but ultimately turns on them after learning why the monster's after them: They're a group of Corrupt Corporate Executives who, while using their powers to explore The Multiverse, happened upon a Death World version of Earth whose natives -- the monster's species -- managed to survive the harsh, rapidly changing environment through their capacity for rapid adaptive mutations. Seeing the potential profit, the Gauntlet proceeded to steal a number of the natives' children, bring them back to Earth to harvest their highly adaptable organs, and create a barrier around the Death World to try to prevent the parents from following them. In the end, as Nate informs the Gauntlet that he knows what they did and prepares to execute them, he sees in their minds that they're not guilty about it, just afraid of being punished. To them, what they did was just a sensible business decision.
Victor Creed, the first Arc Villain in MAX's Wolverine, very much resembles his canon counterpart in being a sadistic beast of a man obsessed with killing. Having spent his near-immortal life killing everything in his path, notably a peaceful monk monastery where he drank the blood of the head monk, Creed eventually carved a path to become second-in-command of the Yakuza. Using his position to search for the Yashida clan's prized sword, Creed convinces a woman to suicide bomb a jumbo plane, killing nearly 400 people, in exchange for Creed giving her family a good life, something Creed was lying about. Confronting Logan after needlessly decapitating two cops, Creed mutilates Logan and proclaims his intent to begin downing numerous airplanes over and over again until he finds the Yashida sword, and reveals he plans to murder the head of the Yakuza and take over first the organization, then the entirety of Japan.
The aforementioned Romulus from Wolverine. The man may have been a Villain Sue and had some elements of Magnificent Bastard or Manipulative Bastard, but still, he counts on some level. He manipulated several of Wolverine's ancestors in an attempt to get the perfect killing machine, eventually leading him to Wolverine himself. He mind-rapes Sabretooth into raping and seemingly killing Silver Fox (Sabretooth is also a complete monster, true, but if you can make an asshole like him beg for death to escape you, you must be fucked up beyond belief). He then recruits an assassin to kill Wolverine's pregnant wife on the small chance that the child will inherit Wolverine's factor and survive. Because he was never raised by his proper parents, Daken had a seriously dark and depressing childhood that may never have happened if not for him. He then moves Omega Red into a regular Russian prison, where he ends up killing all the guards and seriously injures, if not outright kills, most of the prison.
The lackey of Romulus, Cyber, is definitely one, having been found guilty for twenty-two murders BEFORE he meets Wolverine. When Wolverine was still relatively young, he willingly murdered Wolverine's then-love interest Janet before gouging his eye out. This leaves him with a deep, psychological fear of him. He finds domestic abuse fun, protesting against it only for the reason of impracticality. He's also got no qualms about brutally beating some recruits he trains simply because he hates them, and not for the purpose of toughening them up. At one point, his employer notes he's in it for the hurting people and not the money, It was implied he took part in the West Port murders in 1828. He also uses child soldiers so Wolverine won't kill all his mooks, and he does a Grand Theft Me on a young, mentally-handicapped mutant. Thankfully, he ends up dying twice for double the karma.
The CEO of Blackguard qualifies, as do most of his Wolverine-style special ops team (except the leader of said team, who will not kill a child or fight in front of them for fear of traumatizing them). He casually states that for the cost of a very rare wine bottle, he could feed most of Africa for a year, stating that the bottle of wine is a much better spend of money. He willingly lends the Wolverine style ops team to Roxxon as protection for the mining facilities, but the lengths they go to are extreme and cruel - they end up killing a village of innocents before they find the sole survivor, stuff a grenade in his mouth, then kill a resistance movement. And then he ends up trying to kill a journalist who was going to reveal his activities. And to try and prevent further discovery, he ends up killing off an executive who was completely uninvolved. Because of a few minor people resisting, they killed A VILLAGE. Most of the team is made up of disgraced military operatives, including those discharged for rape, friendly fire, and unauthorized killing. Wolverine comments that the youngest of the group he finds either had all his humanity removed from him by Blackguard or had none to begin with.
Potentially viler than all of the above is incredibly minor villain Johnston Coffin, featured in four obscure issues of Generation X. He's wanted by SHIELD for crimes against humanity, but instead somehow finds himself employed by the US Government. With the government's blessing, he builds a Hellhole Prison where he "fixes" disobedient teenagers, many of which had only said or thought something disobedient. What really puts him over the line, though, are his "Special Children" - kids from his first Hellhole Prison in the '70s, whom he's wired up to huge cyborg bodies and uses as security. They've been that way so long, it's implied in perpetual agony, that their bodies have actually begun to rot. He also has half a human mounted on his wall, is implied to be a rapist, and carries around the skull of a child he shot in the head everywhere he goes.
While Francis Klum, better known as the third Mysterio, is nothing more than an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain in his own canon, the alternate-reality of Old Man Logan warps him into something far worse. He only appears in the backstory, but has more than enough to establish himself as a truly twisted individual when he tricked this universe's Wolverine into slaughtering the other X-Men, only to drop the illusion just in time for Logan to see and hear Jubilee, the X-Man he's always been closest to, gasping and choking out her final words. Lacking any of his canon depiction's redeeming features or any good excuse whatsoever, this incarnation of Mysterio proved himself to be Wolverine's most devastating opponent, as his actions sent Wolverine into a suicidal depression and made him (briefly) give up his decades-long fight against oppression and fear.
Brimstone Love of X-Men 2099 is a mutant with a demonic appearance and a personality to match. He runs of a group called the Theater of Pain, which kidnaps people, tortures them and sells the torture footage to rich people for a profit. Brimstone claims to be an artist, but is really driven by sadism and greed. Brimstone enslaves a mutant named La Lunatica, using a Shock Collar to control her and forces her to Mind Rape the Theater of Pain's prisoners. Brimstone kidnaps some of the X-Men and has La Lunatica torture them, during a fight with the X-Men La Lunatica manages to get free of her collar and escapes the theater. Brimstone tries to recapture her, put quickly becomes interested in the X-Men's leader, Xi'an, who is dealing with a Split Personality. When Xi'an's evil personality takes over, Brimstone convinces him to join the Theare of Pain. Brimstone mentally tortures Xi'an in attempt to destroy his good side. Brimstone and Evil Xi'an quickly devise a scheme to take the Theater of Pain to new heights. Brimstone and Xi'an have of one of the X-Men foes, Master Zhao hooked to a giant machine, which uses Zhao's Psychic Powers to torture over a thousand people at once.
Films[]
Colonel William Stryker from X2: X-Men United brainwashes Nightcrawler into attempting to assassinate the President of the United States, and was also implied to have brainwashed Magneto into helping Stryker capture Professor X. He later deliberately conducts a raid on aschool, kidnapping several of the students for experimentation, brainwashes Xavier and Cyclops, and uses Xavier in an attempt to wipe out Mutants across the world with a Cerebro clone. His brainwashing method? His own son. He is also the reason why Wolverine was imbedded with an adamantium-plated skeleton, the exact same procedure he subjected his second-in-command, Yuriko Oyama, through. In addition, he brainwashed the latter. In one scene, we see Yuriko start to wake up from the brainwashing, only for him to grab her and dose her up again before she can do anything. There's also the fact that the brainwashing serum leaves the victims conscious, but unable to control their bodies, which means that he was abducting innocent people and making them do horrible things and in a state to watch themselves do it! Nightcrawler even thinks that he was possessed by a demon when it's done to him.
The noncanonical version of William Stryker in X-Men Origins: Wolverine also qualifies for this trope. Shortly after assigning James Howlett and Victor Creed into Team X, Stryker led them to a village where a mysterious meteorite was located. He had the chieftain killed when he refuses to give the location, and had some of the team attack the villagers as a result, disgusting James enough to have him quit Team X immediately. The same film also shows how Stryker is no different from his father. The latter kept a mutant unlawfully detained and wanted to bomb the island with mutants who just saved the day even while a fellow agent was also there. The so-called justification being that the law doesn't apply to mutants and the agent was "collateral damage". Like father, like son is so true in William's case, seeing how he has no scruples, as we see from his various heinous actions. Having Victor Creed kill off his former unit, blackmailing Kayla (Logan's girlfriend) into keeping tabs on Logan, faking her death at the hands of Victor Creed via capturing her sister (Emma Frost), getting Logan into participating in the Weapon X program to give him the adamantium skeleton, having Creed round up and experiment on mutants to produce Weapon XI (Deadpool) and having Zero kill a farming family who took Logan in after his escape (framing him with the deed), just to recapture him. Murdered a general when the man called Stryker out on the fact that he was motivated by prejudices. Kidnaped innocent mutants other than Kayla's sister just for experiments. The Three Mile Island incident only doesn't count because it was unintentional on his part. Not that it matters on the list of deliberate malice this long already. Talk about a well deserved death.
Even Stryker is nothing compared to Dr. Klaus Schmidt/Sebastian Shaw from X-Men: First Class: In case you're wondering why he has a German name, it's because in the beginning of the movie, he worked as a Nazi scientist for Auschwitz, and then had Erik try to move a concentration camp-coin, feeling that he had a lot of potential after witnessing him wreck a gate. It is in this scene that he also mocks the Nazi belief that blond hair and blue eyes are the superior race. Yes, that's right, he actually MOCKS what would have been considered the most heinous crime in history because he felt that the Nazi belief on a master race was purely superficial. It gets even worse in the same scene: he has some Nazi guards bring Erik's mother in, not to reunite her with her son, but to use her as leverage to make him move the coin, stating that at the count to three, if he doesn't move the coin with his abilities, he'll kill her. Erik fails to move it before three. Erik is so enraged at it that he ends up crushing everything metallic in the room, even the soldier's helmets while the soldiers are wearing it, with Schmidt actually congratulating him for this action, even when his office and lab lay in shambles. In addition, flashbacks that were seen via Emma Frost's telepathic abilities implied that Schmidt also subjected Erik to experimentation afterwards. It also becomes apparent later on that he plans on instigating what history will later know as the Cuban Missile Crisis to start a thermonuclear war so that the mutants will grow stronger and decimate all of the normal humans, abducting an Army Colonel and then having him to agree to the U.S. to place American nuclear missiles in Turkey, and then proceeds to blow the colonel up by absorbing a grenade blast and reflecting it back at him (then again, considering the fact that the Colonel was preparing to blackmail him via grenade and apparently was bribed to do so given his statements, the guy kinda deserved it), and he planned to manipulate the Soviet general. Later, after he learns that Xavier was recruiting mutants to his side, he and his Hellfire group attack the CIA building used to research mutants, recruiting Angel to his side, and also managing to murder Darwin by absorbing Havok's disc energy and force-feeding Darwin the ability, causing him to self-destruct after the latter attempted to fake defection to stop them. He then successfully manipulates (or rather, forces) the Soviet general into delivering nukes to Cuba and later to deliver them past the embargo line, even arranging for the crew to be murdered in order to ensure that it crosses, in case the crew decided to turn back. He then follows the Soviet transport tanker and planned that should something go wrong even after these anticipations, he'll attempt to absorb all of the energy from his sub's nuclear reactor to destroy Cuba and then pin the blame on the U.S., to follow through with his plans to instigate World War III. Not only that, but he's also directly responsible for Erik's conversion into Magneto and his Start of Darkness, when the latter manages to murder him with the very coin he'd tried to have him move.
En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse from X-Men Apocalypse rivals Schmidt in pure evil. The most ancient mutant in existence, he is depicted as a warped, cold hearted Social Darwinist who cannot ever be satisfied until things evolve to their highest level. If any people or entire civilizations were not evolving to his liking or worse in danger of regression, En Sabah Nur wiped them out. He desires to have all inferior weaker beings purged from the world so that it is populated only by the strong. As such, he plans to destroy the planet before remaking it and to bring about the complete extermination of the human race, humans with mutant genes included, intending to repopulate the Earth with mutants whom he deems fit to live under his reign. While he talks about building a better world, he also intends to take Professor X's telekinetic powers and use them to take over the minds of all mutants so that they'll act according to his will and not rise up against him, making it clear that he only wants a better world for himself.
Both of the main villains in Logan qualify as such:
Dr. Zander Rice is the head of the X-23 experiment and a cold-blooded, xenophobic mad scientist. Before heading the X-23 experiment, Rice orchestrates the near-total genocide of mutantkind with a sterilizing virus that eradicates the X-gene, with survivors butchered by his second-in-command Pierce and his Reavers to be used for raw material. To create a perfect killing machine afterwards, Rice has numerous women forcibly impregnated with the X-gene afterwards, taking their mutant children afterwards and murdering the women once their use expires. Rice conducts torturous experiments on the children afterwards to breed them into mindless assassins, with full emphasis on treating the children as “things” – a mindset which leads to some of the children committing suicide. Rice ultimately breeds a clone of Logan he dubs X-24 to serve the project's purpose and orders the children all killed, dispatching Pierce to commit further atrocities in his pursuit of the children once they escape. Once Rice himself comes into the fray, Rice looses X-24 onto an innocent family and callously watches as it butchers the entire family and Xavier himself, later rounding up all the children just short of the Canadian border and threatening to kill them all before Logan. Completely devoid of any compassion or feeling towards the subjects of his horrific experiments, Rice ultimately becomes one of the most deplorable characters in the series, mutant or otherwise, in his pursuit to control mutantkind.
Donald Pierce is the smug, psychopathic cyborg in charge of the Reavers, Transigen's primary military might. As the head of security for Trabsigen, Pierce took full part in not only the hunting down, butchering, and vivisecting of many mutants for their raw materials, but also assisted in the X-23 experiments alongside the aforementioned Zander, entailing the forcibly impregnantion of numerous women with mutant genes, murdering them after they give birth, then raising the resulting children as tortured lab rats to be turned into submissive slaves and assassins in adulthood. When the children began rebelling, either through violence against their captors or by killing themselves, Pierce was tasked with putting them all down, and proceeded to execute several of the children. After many of the kids escape with the help of the nurses, Pierce tracked down the head nurse, Gabriela, brutally murdered her, then went on to begin hunting down the escaped children, primarily focusing on the young Laura. During his hunt for the girl, Pierce forces the mutant tracker Caliban into submission by searing his flesh, tortures and likely murders a gas station attendant who spotted Laura, and eventually unleashes the Wolverine clone X-24 onto a small family housing Logan, Laura, and Professor Xavier, showing nothing but amusement as the family and Xavier are cut down. In the end, Pierce lays a trap for all the escaped children, rounding them up for a mass execution, beats and holds one of them at gunpoint to force Logan to stand down, and ultimately releases X-24 one last time to kill Logan. Motivated only by power, cruelty, and xenophobia, Donald Pierce may be one of the few non-mutant villains Logan has faced, but he is easily one of the most depraved.
Ajax, real name Francis Freeman, is the Big Bad in the first film and proves to be a surprisingly serious villain for the darkly comedic film. The leader of an operation that purports to create superheroes, Francis uses his recruiter to lure in people with nothing to lose before he implants the potential for mutant genetics into them. However, to awaken the mutant gene, Francis subjects them to hideous, around-the-clock torture to produce the necessary stress to awaken it. Wade Wilson himself is eventually placed in a chamber that alters air levels to always make him feel that he is asphyxiating. After this awakens Wade's mutant gene, Francis comments he could fix Wade's ruined looks, but mocks that would be no fun and shuts him back in the device anyways. When Wade escapes, Francis impales him and leaves him to burn alive in the ruins of the lab, along with any other prisoners remaining. The superhero operation is also revealed to be a front: the victims are fitted with collars to turn them into slaves and sold to the highest bidder for the remainder of their lives. When Wade, now Deadpool, is hunting him, Francis tries to lure him out by kidnapping his former girlfriend Vanessa and then locking her in the asphyxiation device right in front of Wade.
Deadpool 2: The Headmaster of the Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation is a deeply prejudiced zealot who runs his orphanage like a conversion therapy camp for mutant children, constantly torturing the children as a means of trying to force out their abilities, having abused Russell Collins to the point of leaving scars on his neck, and it's heavily implied that the Headmaster has sexuall abused him and other vulnerable children as well. Russell's deep-seated anger and mistrust caused by all this risks resulting in him burning the Headmaster and the orphanage to the ground, killing all the other kids trapped inside, and becoming the supervillain Firefist. In the last timeline Deadpool and his X-Men friends end up in, the Headmaster emerges from the rubble of the building loudly proclaiming all mutatnkind to be "abominations before God" before he is unceremoniously ran over to his death by the taxi-driver Dopinder.
Deadpool & Wolverine: Cassandra Nova is the gleefully sadistic Mummudrai—Mutant twin sister of Professor Charles Xavier, who allegedly tried to strangle her brother to death while the two were still in the womb. While still young and barely able to walk, Cassandra was captured by the Time Variance Authority and dropped into the "waste bin of the Multiverse" known as the Void. Cassandra came to enjoy using her powers freely in this realm, striking a deal with the TVA to assert conmmand over all the variants disposed of into the Void, keeping the ones who pledge loyalty to her or who seem useful or amusing to her while letting others be consumed by the entity called Alioth. Capturing Wade Wilson and Garfield Logan, Cassandra gruesomely kills Johnny Storm before their eyes before showing herself to be a vicious Mind Rapist and attempting to feed Wade and Logan to be consumed by Alioth. When the two mutants return with the last survivors of a resistance group Cassandra's been wiping out, Cassandra attempts to Mind Rape Logan into obedience, preying on the guilt he feels over all those he'd let down and all the lives he took. Despite agreeing to let Wade and Logan return to Earth-10005 in exchange for her life, when Cassandra learns of the TVA's treachery from Pyro, who she promptly kills, she comes to Earth-10005 in order to extract knowledge of how to use the TVA's Time Ripper from Mr. Paradox and intends on using it to destroy all timelines in the Multiverse, leaving only Void that she can reign over like a god.
Apocalypse is a mutant with dreams of universal conquest who despises everything that isn't him and fancies himself a God. In his first appearance, he builds a machine designed to take away people's free will and make them his slaves. He tricks four self-loathing mutants, including Warren "Angel" Worthington, into believing this machine will cure them of being mutants, preying on their feelings of inadequacy to subject to them to a painful process of transformation them into his Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Apocalypse then orders his Horsemen to go on a rampage across the globe. Rogue was able to free Angel from Apocalypse's control with her Power Absorption abilities, but Angel was a mentally unstable wreck after that experience. In his next appearance, Apocalypse creates a plague designed to wipe out most humans and mutants. This plague furthers tensions between humans and mutants, with some humans blaming mutants for it, and creates a Bad Future where several mutants are dying from this plague. He later manages to get hold of some time travel technology and uses it to travel to the Axis of Time, an interdenominational area that controls time itself, and plans on destroying the time stream and reality itself so he can recreate it in his own image.
Graydon Creed is the leader of the anti-Mutant group, the Friends of Humanity. Under Creed's orders, the Friends of Humanity attack half-way houses and other businesses and non profit organizations that are sympathetic towards mutants. Creed even organizes an attack on a hospital for the blind because the gentle, intelligent mutant Hank "Beast" McCoy works there to treat patients. Creed later admits he plans to commit genocide against mutants amongst his most loyal followers. After the Friends of Humanity find out that Creed is actually the son of Mystique and Sabretooth, he is kicked out of the group, breaking down at an image of Sabretooth and screaming "I'm not one of you! I'm normal! You are not my father!". In order to get back into the Friends of Humanity's good graces, Creed devises a plan to murder his mother and his mutant siblings, viciously rejecting he has any connection to them while doing so.
Graydon's father, Victor "Sabretooth" Creed, is a cruel Psycho for Hire and Blood Knight with a obsessive hatred of Wolverine. Magneto uses Sabretooth to infiltrate Xavier's school, where Sabretooth is injured after a confrontation with the police while he is pretending to be protesting at Beast's trial. The X-Men rescue Sabretooth and nurse him back to health, and Xavier even attempts to help Sabretooth deal with his inner demons. Sabretooth repays this kindness with spite and cruelty as soon as he is able, tricking the young mutant Jubilee into loosening his restraints and then attempting to murder her. After being driven away by the X-Men, Sabretooth later returns when Wolverine is in Northern Canada, having left the X-Men due to his conflicted feelings over Jean Grey. Wolverine later befriends the population of a small Inuit village, who help him discover feelings of inner peace. Sabretooth kidnaps several members of the Inuit village while Wolverine is out fishing and straps bombs to them in order to draw Wolverine out and force him to fight. It is later shown in flashbacks that Wolverine and Sabretooth were partners in the special forces until Sabretooth abandoned their entire unit to die against the monstrous cyborg Omega Red, with Sabretooth scoffing "so what?" when Wolverine confronts him over this. After Graydon uses up his final chance with the Friends of Humanity, they parachute him out of a plane into a remote forest where Sabretooth's cabin is. The last we ever see of Graydon is him screaming in terror, lifted up by his father as he looks murderously thrilled at getting his claws on his son at last.
Omega Red is a sociopathic former soldier of the Soviet Union who was turned into a supersoldier by his superiors, whom he quickly attempted to betray before being locked away. Being released from his confinement 25 years later by Russian generals seeking to conquer their homeland, Omega Red happily leads brutal assaults against numerous cities and villages, killing many people, with any survivors being thrown into prison camps, and reducing their homes and businesses to rubble, after which he attempts to kill the current leaders of the Russian government. When the X-Men arrive to stop his hostile takeover, Omega Red takes Colossus' little sister Illyana hostage, sadistically draining her life force while her older brother watches on in horror. After being frozen solid after failing to kill dozens of survivors of his attacks along with the X-Men, Omega Red is unthawed many months later by the Russian government, who send him to safely recover a submarine carrying nuclear missiles. Once on the mission, along with Wolverine and Storm, Omega Red betrays everyone and reveals his plans to fire the nuclear warheads at fifteen of the world's largest cities, then watch as millions of innocents burn before conquering whatever of humanity is left following the nuclear fallout of his strikes. Omega Red cheerfully tries to slowly kill Wolverine and Storm, and after their teammates thwart his plan, he decides to settle with simply wiping out the coastal state of Hawaii just to spite the X-Men. A truly fanatical madman convinced that the Soviet Union is the pinnacle of human civilization, Omega Red epitomized the mass-murdering mania that the Soviet Union was known for.
Despite notably toned down when compared to his mainstream comics counterpart, Zebediah Killgrave (who's never referred to as "The Purple Man" in the episode he appears in) is still an absolute scumbag of a man. He initially appears to be a kind man who adopts several mutant children, but his true intentions are far from innocent. He uses his mind-control powers to force the children into using their powers to lead an assault on the governor's house to coerce him into giving Killgrave plans to a waterfront project and force him out of office. When Cyclops snoops around and learns the truth about him, Killgrave tries to murder him by first turning the children against him, then burning down the mansion they came from. While much lower key than Apocalypse, Graydon and Sabretooth, Killgrave's status as an amoral sleaze who resorts to child exploitation and murder to rake in profits makes him every bit as repulsive as those three.
Shi'ar Emperor D'Ken is the main antagonist of the Phoenix Saga, and makes use of his short screentime to be one of the series' most disgusting villains. Already established as a tyrant who has killed millions in his quest for power, D'Ken is obsessed with obtaining the M'Kraan Crystal, a powerful object that will grant him immense power, and he goes to every means to obtain it, from trying to torture the information out of his own sister, Lillandra, to attempting to have a group of pirates willing to trade him for it all murdered as soon as the deal is done. Once he obtains the Crystal, however, D'Ken reveals that he plans to destroy every planet, galaxy and even reality itself, then rebuild it inside the M'Kraan Crystal and shape it in his image, at which point he will rule over it as the god he believes himself to be. As the X-Men attempt to thwart this plan, D'Ken gleefully toys with them rsther than immediately killing them, and urges for them to watch as he painfully tortures Lillandra to death, stating that they will be next. A completely demented dictator with delusions of grandeur, D'Ken would doom the entire universe to a cold, bleak death simply to satisfy his immense and petty ego.
Master Mold is the ultimate creation of Bolivar Trask, designed to mass produce Sentinels to aid the nation of Genosha in enslaving mutants. Reasoning that mutants are humans, and therefore humans must be protected from themselves, Master Mold betrays his creators and has various world leaders kidnapped so he can remove their brains to turn them into robotic mouthpieces. Surviving into Bishop's Bad Future, Master Mold orders the elite Sentinel Nimrod and the time-travelling mutant slave Trevor Fitzroy to assassinate Charles Xavier before he can form the X-Men, turning the present into a war-torn hellscape and leaving Master Mold as the undisputed ruler of the world in the future. After the assassination is foiled, the Master Mold of the present kidnaps Xavier to take control of his psychic powers, gloating over the prospect of the greatest mutant mind being used to wipe out mutantkind. Dismissive towards the well-being of his human collaborators and desiring to rid the world of even loyal mutant slaves, Master Mold lives up to Xavier's description as the living embodiment of everything evil and unjust about humanity.
In the "Slave Island" and "The Phalanx Covenant" 2-parter, Cameron Hodge starts off as a minor character who is revealed to an anti-Mutant bigot. Hodge was an American liaison to the Genoshan government and was helping the Genoshan government enslave its mutant population. After Storm destroyed a dam the Genoshan government was building, Hodge was hit by a giant tidal wave, costing him An Arm and a Leg. Embittered by that experience, Hodge joined a government task force investigating UFO crash sites. At one such site, Hodge found the Phalanx, an alien organism that is a living virus. Hodge becomes a willing servant to the Phalanx, wanting to help it assimilate the human race. Hodge informs the Phalanx of the importance of capturing and assimilating mutants to increase its power. After the Phalanx captures Wolverine, Hodge has it assimilate Wolverine's skeleton to study him from the inside out. Hodge wants to help the Phalanx assimilate all organic life though out the universe, believing that the Phalanx will end organic reproduction and cleanse the universe of mutation, not caring that humanity will lose all independent thought and freedom in the process. After the Phalanx is defeated, Hodge joins the government again and masterminds a plan to kidnap mutants and turn them into mind-controlled slaves.
Appearing in both the "Sanctuary" 2-parter & "The Fifth Horseman", Fabian Cortez leads the Acolytes in resisting the Genoshan dictatorship, but soon proves to be just as cruel as his oppressors. Pledging his loyalty to Magneto, Cortez is disgusted by his willingness to host humans as guests on his sanctuary of Asteroid M and launches a missile at Earth. Upon being confronted by Magneto, Cortez attempts to kill him and frames the X-Men for his apparent murder, setting himself up as the savior of mutantkind as he tortures Gambit and threatens to use Asteroid M's remaining missiles on nations across the world unless all mutants are freed. When his deceit is revealed Cortez tries to launch the missiles anyway, and is saved from the crashing asteroid by Apocalypse. Gleefully becoming a devoted follower of the mad mutant, Cortez has mutant children hunted in search of a vessel for his master's spirit; uses his energy-enhancing powers to painfully turn Beast into a savage animal; and attempts to sacrifice Jubilee to herald the cleansing of the weak and unfaithful from the world. While presenting himself as an enlightened freedom fighter resisting human tyranny, Cortez in truth is nothing more than a raving, narcissistic egomaniac who would gladly wipe out anyone, human or mutant, whom he deems unworthy.
Duncan Matthews started off as a prejudiced Jerk Jock, but become something far worse in his final appearance. After Jean Grey dumped him when he described her mutant gifts as a problem, Duncan slowly develops a hatred of mutants. After graduating high school, Duncan got a job at a mining company and harassed mutants in his spare time. After trying to harass a couple of the younger X-Men students, former X-Men Spyke drives him off, destroying his car in the process. In revenge, Duncan steals some mining equipment from his job and he and his friends attack the Morlocks, mutants who live in the sewers. Duncan and his gang throw bombs down into the sewers, attempting to kill as many Morlocks as they can before forcing the survivors to the surface where Duncan and his gang can kill them with laser torches. While confronting Spyke, a mutant child named Leech intervenes to protect Spyke, so Duncan decides to try and shoot him.
Cain Marko is Charles Xavier's half-brother who uses magic to unlock his dormant mutant gene and became the unstoppable Juggernaut. Resenting his brother since childhood, Juggernaut attempted to kill Xavier, but Xavier defeated him and had him sent to prison. Later, Mystique frees Juggernaut, wanting him to get Xavier's computer Cerebro for her. Juggernaut goes on a rampage, derailing a train before reaching Xavier's mansion. Juggernaut attempts to kill both Xavier and Mystique after Mystique yells at him for destroying Cerebro. The X-Men and Brotherhood defeat Juggernaut, but Mystique frees him again later. Juggernaut goes on another rampage, heading towards a dam near a small town, attempting to destroy the dam and flood the town in order to wipe out 63,000 lives.
Mesmero is a mind-controlling mutant and a servant of Apocalypse. Originally having limited mental powers, Apocalypse boosted his mental powers and promised him more if Mesmero freed Apocalypse. Mesmero takes a job at the circus and encounters the X-Men. Mesmero torments Jean Grey with nightmares to break her will and make her his puppet. Mesmero forces Jean to mind control other teen X-Men, forcing them to steal three rings that serve as a key to the first door imprisoning Apocalypse. Mesmero forces the X-Men he mind controls to fight their teammates, while he escapes. Mesmero gets the second key by tricking Magneto into destroying a spider creature that was a guardian meant to keep Apocalpyse imprisoned. Later, Mesmero allies with Mystique and take her to Apocalpsye's tomb, where he announces that she is the third key. Mesmero tells Mystique to put her hand on the final door, which turns her to stone and frees Apocalypse. Mesmero knows that Apocalypse will kill millions of people to achieve his vision of a better world when freed, but does not care, wanting the power Apocalypse promised him.
The Shadow King is a cruel and merciless telepathic mutant who forced a young Storm to be a thief and would berate and threaten her if she did not bring back enough stolen goods. Xavier befriended Storm and defeated the Shadow King. Though his body was destroyed fighting Xavier, his evil spirit lived on and he gained the ability to possess others and force them to do things against their will. When we first see him in the present, he has possessed a starving man in a desert. When another man comes to help this starving man, Shadow King possesses the good Samaritan and leaves his original victim to die in the desert. He later possess Storm herself and forces her to use her weather manipulation powers to destroy all Africa, simply to spite her.
Master Mold is a sentient A.I. designed by Dr. Bolivar Trask to direct his Sentinels' efforts to contain mutants. After the world is devastated by the Phoenix Force and a large portion of humanity is killed, Master Mold takes over and becomes a dictator. Master Mold has her Sentinels round up mutants and put them in detention camps. Master Mold has turned humans like Colonel Moss into cyborg slaves, having them work as guards in her camps. Powerful mutants are sent to labs to be experimented on, so the Sentinels can reproduce their powers, and are killed after the experimentation is done. Later, Master Mold captures Professor Xavier, hooking him up to a Cerebro unit so she can locate every remaining mutant on the planet, planning to have her Sentinels kill them all. After that is done, Master Mold decides that Xavier is no longer useful to her and orders him to be killed.
Sebastian Shaw and Selene are the leaders of the Inner Circle, a group dedicated to destroying the Phoenix Force, a potentially destructive cosmic entity, in order to save humanity. They send Emma Frost and her students, the Stepford Cuckoos, to Xavier's school to incapacitate Xavier and capture Jean Grey. Their psychic attack causes the Phoenix Force to go nuts and blow up the school, putting Xavier into a coma and giving Jean amnesia for most of the series. Emma tricks the X-Men into letting her join. At first, she is just a spy, but she soon grows to care about the X-Men. The X-Men eventually find Jean, but Emma knocks them out and delivers Jean to the Inner Circle. However, Shaw and Selene reveal they do not plan to destroy the Phoenix, but harvest its power for their own selfish purposes, endangering the whole planet to satisfy their lust for power. They plan to trick Jean into releasing the Phoenix Force and then having the Stepford Cuckoos absorb it, endangering their lives in the process. Selene also reveals to Cyclops that Emma was responsible for the explosion at the school, just to rub salt in Emma's wounds. After the Stepford Cuckoos absorb the Phoenix Force, Shaw orders them to kill all the X-Men and burn Genosha to the ground. Their actions lead to the Phoenix Force destroying most of humanity and setting up the Bad Future Xavier finds himself in when he wakes up.
Anime & Manga[]
X-Men anime:
John Sublime and Kick, also known as the U-Men, are the Starter Villains of the anime who make the most of their limited screen-time to stand out as truly horrifying monsters. A pair of mutant-hatingSerial Killers, the U-Men are known for kidnapping mutants, specifically young teens, then sadistically butchering and vivisecting them, using their organs to upgrade their own cyborg army. Along with this, the U-Men gleefully test out an experimental serum on innocent mutants that transform them into abominations in constant pain. When Kick fails at killing the X-Men, he wantonly opens fire on them along with the numerous teenagers and police officers in the area, trying to kill as many people as he can. Sublime, having left Kick to his fate, returns with a powerful suit of armor and tries to kill the X-Men, before blowing himself up in one last attempt on their lives. The U-Men both spend their last moments proclaiming their hatred and disgust for all mutantkind, and were defined by these throughout the series, showing that humans could be just as wicked as the far more powerful mutants of their world.
Jason "Mastermind" Wyngarde is the leader of the Inner Circle, a group of mutant supremacists, and is the force behind all the evil in the series. The one responsible for Jean Grey's transformation into the Dark Phoenix and her subsequent death, Mastermind framed his former lover, Emma Frost, as the one responsible for Jean's death as revenge for Frost leaving him. Working with the mutant-killing U-Men, Mastermind fully endorses their crimes and uses them to learn of a powerful mutant residing in Japan, where he uses his abilities to ingratiate himself into the lab staff of mutant researcher Yui Sasaki. Learning that Sasaki's own teenage son, Takeo, has reality-warping powers, Mastermind spends months secretly using his powers to Mind Rape the boy into near-insanity. After the X-Men out him as the villain he is, Mastermind amplifies his psychological torture on Takeo, driving the boy into a horrifying state of death-longing insanity as his powers go out of control. While holding numerous X-Men (one of whom is a barely-trained young girl) hostage and using his powers to torture Cyclops, Mastermind reveals that he plans to unleash Takeo's powers on the world like he attempted with Jean Grey, then watch the worldwide destruction and chaos that unfolds before him. Believing himself and all mutants to be the Master Race of the Earth, Mastermind committed all of his crimes with a polite and cheerful attitude, treating his atrocities as his "right" to perpetrate for being at the top of the evolutionary food chain.
Hideki Kurohagi is the main antagonist of the Wolverine anime alongside Shingen, and, despite his initial weak and pathetic presentation, slowly reveals a far more monstrous personality. Having murdered his crime lord father to take his position, Kurohagi now runs his criminal empire from the island of Madripoor, which is in poverty and ruin due to Kurohagi allowing crime and gangs to run rampant without restraint. Betrothing himself to Shingen's daughter, Mariko, in order to gain access to her father's resources, Kurohagi treats her as his possession, regularly verbally and physically abusing her, along with implying he plans to take what is his once they are married. When Logan tries to save Mariko, Kurohagi takes every opportunity to try to kill him, through either assassination, or unleashing a giant robot to murder him, not caring about the collateral damage it causes. After capturing Yukio, Logan's partner, Kurohagi nearly strangles her to death while she is paralyzed, promising to continue later when he has more time, and executes one of his own henchmen with an excruciatingly painful neurotoxin for no particular reason. When freedom fighters try to end his tyranny, Kurohagi happily orders them gunned down, and, when a young, unarmed, teenage girl tries to defend an elderly rebel, Kurohagi orders her specifically killed along with the man, resulting in her death. Confronted by Logan, Kurohagi holds Mariko at gunpoint, before blowing up an entire building full of dozens of people in an attempt to kill him. Smug, cowardly, and, more often than not, incompetent, Hideki Kurohagi repulsed and horrified everyone in this series, to the point even his own bodyguard turned against him out of disgust.
GeneralWilliamKincaid is the Big Bad of the first game who, despite being a mere Canon Foreigner, is an amazingly vile piece of work. His hatred of mutants is so great that he commits numerous crimes: re-activating the destructive Sentinels despite this being a very bad idea; kidnapping innocent mutants (such as the Morlocks from the sewers), in order to experiment on them; creating human-Sentinel hybrids which may not have been made just from mutants; and as the icing on the cake, his ultimate plan is to collapse Asteroid M upon New York City in order to obliterate it and all its inhabitants, just so that humanity blames mutants for it and eradicates them from the face of the Earth! While he does have a Freudian Excuse (revealed in conversation with an NPC) - a mutant with poor control over their power killed his wife - this is far too weak to justify his genocidal hatred, particularly since he's willing to kill millions of humans just to get his revenge. Thankfully, the X-Men put a stop to his plans and in the end, he's ultimately arrested and tried for his crimes against humanity.
The sequel has Apocalypse as it's Big Bad and he is once again presented as a extremely cruel Social Darwinist. Apocalypse starts the game by conquering Genosha, locking all the Genoshan mutants in a makeshift prison so he can test them for harmonic DNA, a particular DNA type that will increase his own power. When the X-Men come to liberate Genohsa, Apocalypse attempts to destroy the Genoshan Sea Wall, which kills almost every mutant in Genosha. After Genosha is liberated, the X-Men track Apocalypse's forces to the Savage Land, where they attempt to destroy the technology that keeps the Savage Land in tropic temperatures; this would result in the inhabitants of the Savage Land freezing to death. Later Apocalypse manages to conquer New York City, dropping a bomb that flattens several neighborhoods, just to make room for his tower. Apocalypse again imprisons the mutants and tests them for harmonic DNA, while having his forces attempt to drive the human refugees into the sea, setting up anti-aircraft guns to prevent anyone from rescuing them. Apocalypse is such a powerful and cruel foe that the X-Men and the Brotherhood team up to put a stop to his madness.