Curated playlist
Male film villains
- Magneto (Marvel Comics)In 2014, IGN ranked Magneto first on its list of the top 100 comic book villains. Six years earlier, Stan Lee, the writer who co-created him, said in an interview that he never thought of Magneto as a villain at all. Magneto is a Marvel…
- Grand Moff TarkinGrand Moff Tarkin wears a rank that baffled even the actor who first gave it a face. Peter Cushing joked that he had no idea what a "Grand Moff" actually was, and that the phrase sounded like "something which infests a clothes closet". The…
- 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.
- Stormtrooper (Star Wars)In 2019, biologists named a Colombian spider genus after Star Wars stormtroopers.
- IagoIago has more lines in Othello than Othello himself. The play's villain speaks 1,097 lines.
- PalpatinePalpatine's first name stayed off screen for decades. Fans learned it was Sheev only in the 2014 novel Tarkin.
- SarumanTolkien did not know Saruman existed when he began The Lord of the Rings. He grew out of a plot problem.
- 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…
- Gríma WormtongueGríma Wormtongue was captured by the Nazgûl and told them where the Shire was.
- Darth MaulDarth Maul was cut in half in his first film, yet he came back. George Lucas chose to bring him back.
- Captain AhabCaptain Ahab's ivory leg fits into small holes drilled in his ship's deck. He is the whaling captain of Moby-Dick.
- 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,…
- 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…
- SauronSauron, the villain of The Lord of the Rings, never speaks in the novel. He is almost never seen.
- Supreme Leader SnokeAndy Serkis first played Snoke without knowing what Snoke looked like. He stood on a 25-foot podium for his first day.
- Doctor EggmanDoctor Eggman, the scheming roboticist of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog games, once refused to answer to his own name. In Sonic Generations, Classic Tails calls Classic Eggman "Dr. Robotnik." The older villain snaps back, "Nobody calls me that…
- Shadow the HedgehogShadow the Hedgehog speaks his first line in Sonic Adventure 2, released in 2001 for the Dreamcast. The line is “Hmph, aren't you the fake one here?” It lands in a scene where Sonic confronts a black hedgehog who has been posing as him.…
- Vega (Street Fighter)Street Fighter II's Vega never removes his mask, and a Shakespeare character helped explain why.
- Tony SopranoTony Soprano, the New Jersey mob boss at the center of the HBO series The Sopranos, was nearly named Tommy. In the pilot, the name honored Tom Powers, the gangster James Cagney played in The Public Enemy. Clearance to call the character…
- PeliasAn oracle warned King Pelias to beware a man wearing one sandal. Then his nephew Jason arrived wearing one.
- GollumGollum began as Sméagol, who strangled his relative Déagol for a golden ring.
- Juggernaut (character)Juggernaut, the Marvel Comics villain whose real name is Cain Marko, made his debut in X-Men #12, dated July 1965, without ever showing his face. For most of that issue he was an unseen force tearing through the X-Men's headquarters.…
- Red SkullThe Red Skull was dead by the final page of his first appearance, in Captain America Comics #1, cover-dated March 1941. The man under the mask, a businessman named George Maxon, rolled onto his own hypodermic needle in what looked like…
- Jigsaw (Marvel Comics)Jigsaw made his first full appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #162, published in November 1976. Writer Len Wein and artist Ross Andru created the character for Marvel Comics. The name fits the man. His face was shattered into pieces, and…