Great Villians
Hannibal Lector, The Silence of the Lambs
Fiction's most frightening villain is a cannibalistic serial killer whose penetrating psychological insight is just as horrifying as his flesh-eating ways. A true evil genius, Hannibal Lector requires few words to torment his victims.
Alex, A Clockwork Orange
Alex commits violence for violence's sake, and though he plays at repentance, by the end of the novel, he is the same evil, unsympathetic, unforgiving Alex he was at the onset.
The Poet, The Poet
As if Edgar Allan Poe's words weren't scary enough at times, The Poet uses them to craft fake suicide notes for the people he's murdered. A pedophile and a serial killer who specializes in brutalizing cops, The Poet manages to elude the greatest investiagors alive with his cunning, savage crimes.
Fagin, Oliver Twist
Fearful of getting caught himself, the cunning and devilish Fagin recruits poor children to do his dirty work, forming a band of his own personal thieves. With his rat-like fangs and unprovoked fits of vicious rage, Fagin is the stuff of a child's worst nightmare, and Dickens's greatest villain.
Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The original literary "battleaxe", Nurse Ratched rules her asylum ward with an iron fist. Through shame, humiliation, and endless threats, she breaks her patients through a methodical, almost machine-like, dismantling of the human spirit.
Oddjob, Goldfinger
Built like a mountain and nearly as indestructible, Goldfinger's henchman Oddjob can break almost anything with his bare hands and feet, including a stone fireplace mantel! But his deadly talents don't end there: he's handy with bow and arrow, and his metal bowler hat with its razor sharp brim has been known to give men something closer than a close shave. But it's his appetite for kitty cats (served on a dinner plate) that especially qualifies him for our list. Oddjob's ultimate fate at the hands of an exhausted James Bond is a little different than the shocker the film provides, but we won't spoil the fun by mentioning it here.
The White Witch, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Four words for you: always winter, never Christmas. What could be more evil than that? With a team of secret police, a sizable power-hungry streak, and a conniving ability to charm and deceive, Narnia's White Witch is the ultimate villainous dictator.
The Devil, Paradise Lost
Satan is the original villain. From the Bible to Faust to countless horror movies, the Devil is forever reinvented, but maintains that pure evil he has always embodied.
Dracula, Dracula
There is some speculation that Count Dracula was modeled after the real life 15th-century Romanian prince, Vlad the Impaler. In case you're unfamiliar, Mr. Vlad was known for the incredibly brutal punishments he imposed during his reign. Like Vlad, Dracula is driven by his goal for violent world domination. Unlike Vlad, Dracula returned from death as a vampire. Bonus evil points!
Simon Legree, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe is anecdotally credited with causing the Civil War, but you might say it is her villain who is truly responsible. A cruel and murderous slave owner, Simon Legree is not only determined to destroy Tom's person, but his spirit and religious faith as well. Legree is so evil, he's even earned himself a place in the English dictionary.
Iago, Othello
Shakespeare's Iago is the quintessential manipulator. He betrays Othello's trust and tricks Othello into murdering his wife, Desdemona. His motivation may be racism, it may be jealousy, it may be ambition, or it may just be pure evil. But Iago refuses to say, shrouding this malevolent force in a veil of mystery.
HAL 9000, 2001
The red-eyed supercomputer from Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi classic goes on a virtual rampage and racks up a nice body count, earning it the distinction of being the only inanimate entity to make our list of villains. Though we must use our imagination to determine why HAL ingeniously premeditates murder in 2001, the follow-up novel chalks it up to contradictory programming.
Jack Torrance, The Shining
The Overlook Hotel's winter caretaker has a bit of a drinking problem, and every demon haunting its halls knows it, in Stephen King's bone-chilling novel The Shining. Under less paranormal circumstances, Jack might be able to resist his alcoholic tendencies, but he plunges into a murderous rage guided by the demons, and wields a mallet against his wife and the hotel's caretaker.
Count Olaf, A Series of Unfortunate Events
He has the most menacing unibrow, as well as a frightening tattoo of an eye on his ankle and the ability to disguise these distinguishing features so that everyone - except the children he's tormenting - falls under his treacherous spell. In trying to steal the fortune of the Baudelaire orphans, Olaf's early crimes include kidnapping and hanging baby Sunny in a birdcage outside of a tower window, and trying to marry 14-year-old Violet to take control of the children's inheritance...and he only gets more cruel as Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events continues.
Edward Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
When it comes to villains, the most repulsive and formidable are evil for evil's sake. Edward Hyde reaches this extreme in The Strange Case. A poisonous extraction of Dr. Jekyll, Hyde commits his first unconscionable act by trampling a young girl. Later, he strikes out against a man solely for his kindness. Hyde also proves our toughest villain to defeat, as he is an inherent part of the novel's protagonist. How do you destroy something if doing so also means destroying yourself?
Grendel, Beowulf
Grendel is a descendant of the Biblical Cain, but otherwise, his description in Beowulf is decidedly vague. He is simply a monster: a frightening, powerful, disgusting creature whose only desire is to tear apart as many Danes as possible. He is that evil lurking behind the curtain: you're not sure what exactly he looks like, but you know he can tear your head off. Oh, and you don't want to mess with his mother.
Big Brother, 1984
For someone who's always watching us, we never actually see him. This remoteness is at the core of Big Brother's villainy. He is all-knowing and all-powerful in his absolute control of the party which he rules with censorship, torture, and fear. But is he actually real?
Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights
Poor Heathcliff got a raw deal. Born an orphan, Wuthering Heights' central character is swindled by his foster brother and doomed to fall in love with his foster sister, only to lose her to the heir of a neighboring estate. No wonder he's so brooding and vindictive all the time. That said, are these sad circumstances enough justification to destroy the lives of your enemies and their heirs? Heathcliff thinks so.
Fiction's most frightening villain is a cannibalistic serial killer whose penetrating psychological insight is just as horrifying as his flesh-eating ways. A true evil genius, Hannibal Lector requires few words to torment his victims.
Alex, A Clockwork Orange
Alex commits violence for violence's sake, and though he plays at repentance, by the end of the novel, he is the same evil, unsympathetic, unforgiving Alex he was at the onset.
The Poet, The Poet
As if Edgar Allan Poe's words weren't scary enough at times, The Poet uses them to craft fake suicide notes for the people he's murdered. A pedophile and a serial killer who specializes in brutalizing cops, The Poet manages to elude the greatest investiagors alive with his cunning, savage crimes.
Fagin, Oliver Twist
Fearful of getting caught himself, the cunning and devilish Fagin recruits poor children to do his dirty work, forming a band of his own personal thieves. With his rat-like fangs and unprovoked fits of vicious rage, Fagin is the stuff of a child's worst nightmare, and Dickens's greatest villain.
Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The original literary "battleaxe", Nurse Ratched rules her asylum ward with an iron fist. Through shame, humiliation, and endless threats, she breaks her patients through a methodical, almost machine-like, dismantling of the human spirit.
Oddjob, Goldfinger
Built like a mountain and nearly as indestructible, Goldfinger's henchman Oddjob can break almost anything with his bare hands and feet, including a stone fireplace mantel! But his deadly talents don't end there: he's handy with bow and arrow, and his metal bowler hat with its razor sharp brim has been known to give men something closer than a close shave. But it's his appetite for kitty cats (served on a dinner plate) that especially qualifies him for our list. Oddjob's ultimate fate at the hands of an exhausted James Bond is a little different than the shocker the film provides, but we won't spoil the fun by mentioning it here.
The White Witch, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Four words for you: always winter, never Christmas. What could be more evil than that? With a team of secret police, a sizable power-hungry streak, and a conniving ability to charm and deceive, Narnia's White Witch is the ultimate villainous dictator.
The Devil, Paradise Lost
Satan is the original villain. From the Bible to Faust to countless horror movies, the Devil is forever reinvented, but maintains that pure evil he has always embodied.
Dracula, Dracula
There is some speculation that Count Dracula was modeled after the real life 15th-century Romanian prince, Vlad the Impaler. In case you're unfamiliar, Mr. Vlad was known for the incredibly brutal punishments he imposed during his reign. Like Vlad, Dracula is driven by his goal for violent world domination. Unlike Vlad, Dracula returned from death as a vampire. Bonus evil points!
Simon Legree, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe is anecdotally credited with causing the Civil War, but you might say it is her villain who is truly responsible. A cruel and murderous slave owner, Simon Legree is not only determined to destroy Tom's person, but his spirit and religious faith as well. Legree is so evil, he's even earned himself a place in the English dictionary.
Iago, Othello
Shakespeare's Iago is the quintessential manipulator. He betrays Othello's trust and tricks Othello into murdering his wife, Desdemona. His motivation may be racism, it may be jealousy, it may be ambition, or it may just be pure evil. But Iago refuses to say, shrouding this malevolent force in a veil of mystery.
HAL 9000, 2001
The red-eyed supercomputer from Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi classic goes on a virtual rampage and racks up a nice body count, earning it the distinction of being the only inanimate entity to make our list of villains. Though we must use our imagination to determine why HAL ingeniously premeditates murder in 2001, the follow-up novel chalks it up to contradictory programming.
Jack Torrance, The Shining
The Overlook Hotel's winter caretaker has a bit of a drinking problem, and every demon haunting its halls knows it, in Stephen King's bone-chilling novel The Shining. Under less paranormal circumstances, Jack might be able to resist his alcoholic tendencies, but he plunges into a murderous rage guided by the demons, and wields a mallet against his wife and the hotel's caretaker.
Count Olaf, A Series of Unfortunate Events
He has the most menacing unibrow, as well as a frightening tattoo of an eye on his ankle and the ability to disguise these distinguishing features so that everyone - except the children he's tormenting - falls under his treacherous spell. In trying to steal the fortune of the Baudelaire orphans, Olaf's early crimes include kidnapping and hanging baby Sunny in a birdcage outside of a tower window, and trying to marry 14-year-old Violet to take control of the children's inheritance...and he only gets more cruel as Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events continues.
Edward Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
When it comes to villains, the most repulsive and formidable are evil for evil's sake. Edward Hyde reaches this extreme in The Strange Case. A poisonous extraction of Dr. Jekyll, Hyde commits his first unconscionable act by trampling a young girl. Later, he strikes out against a man solely for his kindness. Hyde also proves our toughest villain to defeat, as he is an inherent part of the novel's protagonist. How do you destroy something if doing so also means destroying yourself?
Grendel, Beowulf
Grendel is a descendant of the Biblical Cain, but otherwise, his description in Beowulf is decidedly vague. He is simply a monster: a frightening, powerful, disgusting creature whose only desire is to tear apart as many Danes as possible. He is that evil lurking behind the curtain: you're not sure what exactly he looks like, but you know he can tear your head off. Oh, and you don't want to mess with his mother.
Big Brother, 1984
For someone who's always watching us, we never actually see him. This remoteness is at the core of Big Brother's villainy. He is all-knowing and all-powerful in his absolute control of the party which he rules with censorship, torture, and fear. But is he actually real?
Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights
Poor Heathcliff got a raw deal. Born an orphan, Wuthering Heights' central character is swindled by his foster brother and doomed to fall in love with his foster sister, only to lose her to the heir of a neighboring estate. No wonder he's so brooding and vindictive all the time. That said, are these sad circumstances enough justification to destroy the lives of your enemies and their heirs? Heathcliff thinks so.