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Names to Run Away From Really Fast which inspire fear because they are fearsome adjectives: Vicious, Grim, Sinister, Nefarious, Horrible, etc.
Or they inspire mistrust because they sound "false", like "honest".
Examples of Names to Run Away From Really Fast/Adjectives include:
Vicious[]
Anime and Manga[]
- The villain from Cowboy Bebop.
- The main antagonist of Pokémon 4 Ever is named Lord Vicious the Mask (Vicious-sama no Kamen). He's also rumored to have been named for Sid Vicious, but evidence is hazy.
Comic Books[]
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, there was a villain called Vid Vicious (obviously named after Sid Vicious).
Literature[]
- Vishous from J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood novels, mercifully shortened to 'V'. Most of her male characters have bizarrely spelled "badass" names, including Torhment, Phury, Zsadist, Rhage, Rehvenge, and Wrath (well, that last one is spelled correctly). John Matthew doesn't fare any better with his warrior name: Tehrror; as does Butch when he's revealed to be a half-breed and gets saddled with a vampiric name of legend: The Dehstroyer.
Music[]
- Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Sid was actually not that violent, nor was he particularly good in a fight; the pose of being a "moral danger" was certainly deliberate.
Western Animation[]
Grim — special thanks to The Grim Reaper.[]
Anime and Manga[]
Comic Books[]
- Grimjack of Grimjack.
- Mr Benjamin Grimm, otherwise known as The Thing of the Fantastic Four.
- The Grim Hunter, who shares this with his father Kraven (see below).
Film[]
- The hero of the Doom movie, John Grimm.
Literature[]
- In the Harry Potter series, a black dog known as "the Grim" is an omen of death.
- Grim Tuesday from the Keys of the Kingdom series.
- Grimhild, the Evil Matriarch of the Gjukung clan in the Old Norse Volsunga Saga.
Toys[]
- Grimlock of Transformers.
Video Games[]
- Mr. Grimm of Twisted Metal.
Western Animation[]
- Grimhilde, better known as the Evil Queen from Disney's Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs.
Sinister:[]
Comic Books[]
- Sinestro from Green Lantern.
- Mr. Sinister from X-Men.
Literature[]
- Subverted with Professor Sinistra, Astronomy teacher at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series, who is actually a good soul, if an inveterate alarmist.
- Sinistrad from The Death Gate Cycle.
Music[]
- Synyster Gates from Avenged Sevenfold.
Video Games[]
Western Animation[]
Nefarious:[]
Comic Books[]
- Count Nefaria, a long-running Marvel Comics villain.
Film - Animated[]
- Dr. Nefario from Despicable Me.
Live-Action TV[]
- Nefaria is the right hand of the Big Bad in Saban's Masked Rider.
MMORPGs[]
- World of Warcraft: Lord Victor Nefarius AKA Nefarian the Black Dragon.
Video Games[]
- Dr. Nefarious, a Big Bad in the Ratchet and Clank series (Up Your Arsenal and A Crack in Time).
- Crash Bandicoot: Dr. Nefarious Tropy. Bonus points for having a sinister name even when it's shortened (N. Tropy = entropy). And he sounds like Peter Lorre.
- Count Nefarious from the PC game Toonstruck.
- One of Water Mages from Gothic. Subverted Trope, as he is mostly harmless.
Shady:[]
Music[]
- Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
Newspaper Comics[]
- Shady Shrew from Slylock Fox. This trope is usually extrapolated to other bit criminals like Reeky Rat or Slick Smitty — it's surprising that name profiling hasn't been implemented yet.
Tabletop Games[]
- Sid Shady from the riddle game Mind Trap.
Greedy:[]
Anime and Manga[]
- Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist, an Anthropomorphic Personification of that sin.
Film[]
- Greedo from Star Wars — who did not shoot first.
Video Games[]
- And Greedy from Ristar.
Western Animation[]
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers foe, Hoggish Greedly.
Dastardly:[]
Western Animation[]
- Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races.
Horrible — Just silly enough that it's (as far as is recorded here) never used seriously.[]
Literature[]
- Horribin the Clown from Tim Powers's The Anubis Gates. An adept of Ancient Egyptian sorcery, who runs a crew of beggars that he crippled himself.
Web Comics[]
- Lord Horribus in Sluggy Freelance.
Web Original[]
- Dr. Horrible from Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog' is a ... horrible example.
Evil[]
Anime and Manga[]
- Tekkaman Evil, The Dragon from Tekkaman Blade.
Film[]
- Dr. Evil, Austin Powers arch-enemy.
- The titular Serial Killer in Evilenko.
Live-Action TV[]
- Avery Schreiber played a villain named "Mr. Evil" on The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine.
Video Games[]
- Berzerk has Evil Otto.
- Pokémon Colosseum: It may be an unwritten rule that the leaders of Cipher (listed far below) have some part of Evil in their name. First was Evice, and second was Greevil. For added evil points, Greevil's Japanese name translates into 'Deathgold'.
- Evil Marie in Carn Evil.
- Evil Crash in the Crash Bandicoot series.
Western Animation[]
- One Hundred and One Dalmatians: Cruella de Vil. Triple whammy, because you have "cruel", "evil", and "devil" in her name, if you ignore the word breaks.
- Evil-Lyn from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
- Evil The Cat from Earthworm Jim.
Craven[]
Comic Books[]
- Kraven the Hunter, a Spider-Man villain.
Film[]
- Kraven, from Underworld
- Wes Craven makes a lot of horror movies.
Literature[]
- The Craven family from The Secret Garden.
Insidious[]
Film[]
- Darth Sidious of Star Wars. Double points for rhyming with "hideous". There is a certain in-story justification, as Sith 'names' are not technically names, but titles given after they've purposely started down the road of evil.
Dark[]
Anime and Manga[]
- Yu-Gi-Oh has several instances:
- Yami (= Dark) Yugi, whose early punishments for people who attacked or threatened his friends included tricking people into yoyoing themselves through a roof to fall several stories, getting people stung by their own scorpions and subjecting people to illusory torture by Eldritch Abomination.
- Yami Bakura, who loves trapping people in game-based objects (such as, in the manga, storing souls in a pair of dice so they always rolled high).
- Yami Marik, who unlike the other two has no ancient Egyptian backstory, he just kills people.
- D.N.Angel's phantom thief, Dark Mousy. Also of note is his evil counterpart, Krad.
Comic Books[]
- Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips. Pretty clearly deliberate.
- X-Men: Raven Darkholme, Mystique's real name.
- The Dark Rider
Film[]
- A common misconception surrounding Star Wars is that Darth is Dutch or German for dark, when neither of these statements are accurate. Dark would be donker and dunkel, respectively. Vader, on the other hand is Dutch for father, though it is pronounced differently in Dutch.
Literature[]
- Then there's G. M. Dark from Something Wicked This Way Comes.
- Darken Rahl from Sword of Truth.
Video Games[]
- Joe Darke, a serial killer from Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
- The Evil "Mr. Dark" in Rayman
- Dark Fact from Ys.
- Dark Sol from Shining in the Darkness.
Slick — Both the meaning and the snakelike pronunciation have connotations of being sly, manipulative, scheming, smug.[]
Video Games[]
- Slick, the Big Bad of River City Ransom.
Web Comics[]
- Spades Slick, the heartless gangster from Homestuck.
- Slick from Waterworks, though he's an Anti-Villain at worst.
Honest[]
- Honest John from Pinocchio
- Honest John's Dealership
- Garfield had one manned by some "Honest Ed".
- MGR-1 Honest John nuclear or nerve gas missiles.
Other Adjectives[]
Anime and Manga[]
- Subtly, several names translate to disabilities, though that's not always bad. On the good side, Cecile from Code Geass ("Blind"). On the bad side, Claudia from The Vampire Chronicles ("Lame"). "Cecile" comes from "caecus", which means "blind" in Latin. In olden times it implied powers of prophesy as well, since many famous seers (Tiresias for example) were blind.
Comic Books[]
- Vandal Savage, DC Comics supervillain. Though he's a terrible person overall, he's not particularly savage.
Fan Works[]
- My Immortal: Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way: Darkness, insanity, corvoids...Wait, this may be the best name ever.
- The Tainted Grimoire: Dread Raven.
Film[]
- General Grievous from Star Wars.
- Count Vile from Press Start.
- Not a character, but the sinister pub in An American Werewolf in London is called "The Slaughtered Lamb". Can any good come of that?
- Lord Humongous from the Mad Max series.
- Mr. Sardonicus: Baron Sardonicus (sardonic) and his servant Krull (cruel).
Literature[]
- Vendacious from A Fire Upon the Deep is one letter off from "mendacious". Perhaps not the best name for the head of your intelligence agency.
- Dire Wily, the villain to the also significantly named Halcyon Blithe in the series of the same name.
- Ras the Destroyer from Invisible Man.
- Many villains in the Redwall series have such names as Cluny the Scourge, Slagar the Cruel, Ferahgo the Assassin, and Gulo the Savage.
- Lord Foul the Despiser from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, who doubles as Titles as well as Narm.
Live-Action TV[]
- Robbie Rotten from LazyTown.
- Sgt Gross in the Blakes Seven episode "Moloch" is one of the lesser known villains of the show, but notably nasty.
- Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has Master Vile, Rita Repulsa, her brother Rito Revolto, Maligore (combination of Gore and Malevolent), General Havoc, Dark Specter, Darkonda, Ecliptor, Treacheron, Villamax, Deviot, Furio, Captain Mutiny, Hexuba, Diabolico, Jinxer, Onikage, Toxica/Necronomica, and Mesogog (from Magog, as in "Gog and Magog").
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Does anyone really want a hernia exam from a doctor named Crusher???
Video Games[]
- Horrendous, the jock/big chunk of meat who ruled the warrior city from the video game Nox.
- The original Japanese name of Mega Man Zero's Big Bad is Vile, fittingly. There was also a Vile in Mega Man X, X3, and X8.
- The main antagonist from Sigma Star Saga was a guy named Tyrannical Overlord.
- Iosa the Invincible in Iji. How did she earn her title? By surviving a planet-buster completely unscathed.
- All of the Soulless Gods of Lusternia get this treatment: Kethuru the Almighty, Illith the Leviathan, Crazen the Greedy, Great Muud and Zenos the Insubstantial. And yeah, they should all be ran away from very fast.
- Dr. Wily, from the Mega Man series.
- BadBad in Secret of the Stars.
- King K. Rool ("cruel") in Donkey Kong Country.
- Feral Chaos in Dissidia Final Fantasy 012.
Web Comics[]
- Last Res0rt: Gabriel the Maskless.
Web Original[]
- The Spoony Experiment: Dr. Insano.
Western Animation[]
- Clandistino from the cartoon The Bluffers.
- McNasty from the Pound Puppies movie.
Real Life[]
- Johnny Rotten (real-life: John Lydon), band leader of the Sex Pistols. Given that 'Johnny' is British slang for 'condom', that verges on Squick, too.
- Adam Savage from Myth Busters: His job involves smashing, blowing up, or otherwise destroying various items in big and spectacular ways (and he is very enthusiastic about his work). Also, in episodes where the crew play out character roles, Adam often plays villainous characters with "Savage" somewhere in their name (i.e. Baron von Savage, Captain Redbeard the Savage).
- Colm Meaney an Irish actor who is actually by many accounts a pretty nice guy. Doesn't help that outside of Star Trek fandoms he's mostly known for playing villains or at the very least hard-assed Anti-Hero types.
- Ivan the Terrible. He was a good ruler early on, defeating many enemies of the Russians, earning him the nickname which could also be translated as "formidable" or "fearsome". Later on, he became The Caligula, making his name scary but appropriate on a whole different way.
- There is is a Zimbabwean footballer (soccer player) called Danger Fourpence.