Curated playlist

Fictional mass murderers

Jean GreyJean Grey is a Marvel Comics character who has died and returned many times. Her tie to the cosmic force that defines her keeps being rewritten. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created her, and she first appeared in The X-Men #1 in September 1963.…
Joker (character)The Joker was nearly killed off in his second comic appearance. An editor saved him with a hastily drawn panel.
Darth VaderThe actor inside Darth Vader's suit never knew his voice would be replaced. James Earl Jones voiced him instead.
Kylo RenKylo Ren kills his own father, Han Solo, on Starkiller Base. He later turns back and becomes Ben Solo again.
Revolver OcelotRecurring character in Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear video game series published by Konami
PalpatinePalpatine's first name stayed off screen for decades. Fans learned it was Sheev only in the 2014 novel Tarkin.
Gus FringGustavo Fring sells fried chicken in the American Southwest, and the chicken is the least dangerous thing he sells. He is a fictional character played by Giancarlo Esposito in the Breaking Bad franchise. He is one of the main antagonists…
Lex LuthorLex Luthor has no superpowers, no secret identity and no alien heritage, yet he has outlasted nearly every other enemy of Superman. Writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster created him, and he first appeared in Action Comics #23 in April…
Jacen SoloJacen Solo, Han and Leia's son, became the Sith Lord Darth Caedus. His twin sister Jaina killed him in a duel.
Boba FettBoba Fett first appeared in public on the 24th of September 1978, at the San Anselmo Country Fair parade. The armor was worn by Duwayne Dunham, then an assistant film editor and later a film and television director. Fett is a Star Wars…
Darth MaulDarth Maul was cut in half in his first film, yet he came back. George Lucas chose to bring him back.
SithThe Sith began as rebellious members of the Jedi Order itself. They believed passion was the true path to power.
UltronUltron first showed up in Marvel Comics in The Avengers #54, dated July 1968, and nobody reading it could have known his name. He appeared only under a borrowed title, the Crimson Cowl, in a brief and unnamed cameo. Within a single issue…
Albert WeskerAlbert Wesker begins the original Resident Evil of 1996 as an ally. As captain of a police special forces unit, he hands the player supplies and useful information. That helpfulness is a disguise. Wesker was created by the Japanese game…
Venom (character)Venom, the alien symbiote of Marvel Comics, began as a $220 purchase. In 1982, a Marvel reader from Norridge, Illinois, named Randy Schueller received a letter from Jim Shooter, the company's editor-in-chief. The letter said Marvel liked…
Jason ToddJason Todd, the second Robin in DC Comics, had his life or death decided by a telephone poll in 1988. Readers of the Batman comics were handed two 1-900 numbers. One meant the boy would live. The other meant he would die. They had only a…
Juri (Street Fighter)Capcom's team went through 400 to 500 ideas before settling on Street Fighter's Juri Han.
Sabretooth (character)Sabretooth, the Marvel Comics villain whose real name is believed to be Victor Creed, makes a point of finding Wolverine on his birthday. Writer Chris Claremont described the ritual in his own words. On every one of his birthdays, he said,…
DarkseidDarkseid, the stone-skinned tyrant of the planet Apokolips in DC Comics, has a name that fans have never fully agreed how to say. Mark Evanier spent several years as assistant to the character's creator, Jack Kirby. Evanier says the name…
DeathstrokeDeathstroke wears a mask split between black and orange, and it covers a right eye that is missing. He is Slade Joseph Wilson, a mercenary and former U.S. Army soldier. Within the DC Universe he is regarded as the greatest and deadliest…
Walter White (Breaking Bad)Walter Hartwell White is the protagonist of the American crime drama Breaking Bad, and his story begins with a diagnosis. The day after his 50th birthday, he learns he has Stage III lung cancer. Walter teaches high school chemistry in…
HomelanderGarth Ennis, who created Homelander together with the artist Darick Robertson, offered a blunt way to picture him. In Ennis's words: "It might help to think of the Homelander as having all the self-control of… let's say… a…
Doctor DoomDoctor Doom is a comic book villain who answers to no court outside his own country. He rules the fictional eastern European nation of Latveria, and his status as head of state has historically shielded him from prosecution for crimes…
Two-FaceTwo-Face, the coin-tossing enemy of Batman, makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #66, published in August 1942. Late in that issue, Batman chases him down and corners him. The hero offers a simple deal: give up and start over.…
Billy ButcherBilly Butcher hunts gods, and he does it with no superpowers of his own. He is a fictional character, one of the two main protagonists of the comic series The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. He leads a group of…
ThanosThanos first appeared on a comic book cover dated February 1973, in The Invincible Iron Man #55, and Marvel's heroes have not been rid of him since. He is a warlord from Titan, a moon of Saturn, born into two branches of a superhuman…
Bullseye (Marvel Comics)Bullseye, the Marvel Comics assassin, once killed a man with a toothpick thrown through a window from a hundred yards away. No gun was involved, and no bomb. His menace comes from an eerie gift for turning almost any ordinary object into a…
Pyramid HeadPyramid Head, the Silent Hill 2 monster, exists to punish one man: James Sunderland. He grows from James's guilt.
Supreme Leader SnokeAndy Serkis first played Snoke without knowing what Snoke looked like. He stood on a 25-foot podium for his first day.
Guts (Berserk)Guts, the hero of the manga Berserk, was born from his hanged mother's corpse. His adoptive father later sold him.
PunisherIn 2011, an editor at Marvel Comics revealed that the Punisher had killed 48,502 people on the page since the mid-1970s. That body count belongs to a character whom writer Gerry Conway meant as a second-tier figure. Conway has said the…
Vecna (Stranger Things)Vecna kills by making his victims relive the worst moments of their lives. He is the main antagonist of the Netflix series Stranger Things, played by Jamie Campbell Bower. The character debuted in the show's fourth season as a malevolent…
Griffith (Berserk)Griffith, a mercenary leader in Berserk, sacrifices his entire band at the Eclipse.
Soldier BoySoldier Boy is a superhero name worn by three different men in the comic series Herogasm and The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea. On television, the name belongs to a single man who combines all three. One comic version is a…
Kratos (God of War)Kratos, the scarred, ash-white Spartan at the center of Santa Monica Studio's God of War series, began as a set of rough drawings on restaurant napkins. Charlie Wen had forgotten his sketchbook, so he drew on whatever the table offered.…
Psycho MantisPsycho Mantis, a Metal Gear Solid boss, tells players to set their controller on the floor.
Judge HoldenJudge Holden may have been a living man, a borrowed name, or only a rumor that one soldier wrote down. The proof that he existed at all rests on a single memoir. More than a century after that memoir was finished, the novelist Cormac…
HAL 9000HAL 9000 sang "Daisy Bell" as astronaut David Bowman pulled out his memory modules.
Black NoirBlack Noir is the name shared by three characters in The Boys, a story created in comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Eric Kripke later developed it for television. In both versions, Noir belongs to the Seven, a hedonistic and…
Ra's al GhulRa's al Ghul, the DC Comics supervillain best known as Batman's immortal rival, once admitted that he could not keep track of his own age. In Azrael #6, from July 1995 and written by Dennis O'Neil, he tells the young hero Jean-Paul Valley:…
Kang the ConquerorKang the Conqueror, the Marvel Comics supervillain whose birth name is Nathaniel Richards, first appeared in Fantastic Four #19, dated October 1963. In that issue he wore the crown of a pharaoh and went by Rama-Tut. He was a criminal from…
Daenerys TargaryenDaenerys Targaryen stepped into her husband's funeral fire and walked out unburned.
Ghostface (Scream)Ghostface is the disguise worn by the killers of the Scream films, and it first announces itself through a telephone. In the opening scene of Scream in 1996, the teenager Casey Becker, played by Drew Barrymore, takes a call from a…
Bane (DC Comics)Bane, the DC Comics supervillain, got his name from an insult. At the age of eight, a boy inside the Peña Duro prison on the Caribbean island of Santa Prisca stabbed a criminal who was trying to use him to learn the prison's secrets. It…