Of all the baddies ever dreamed up in novels, films, stories, plays, poems, myths and songs, who is the absolute worst? Excluding monsters and real people – imaginary human villains only. Carrie, London

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Readers reply

Francis Begbie [in Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel Trainspotting, later a film]. jesmith78

Harry Lime [from the 1949 film The Third Man, based on Graham Greene’s novella]. Charmingly amoral. TheDeuce

Nehemiah Scudder, the dictator/televangelist in Robert Heinlein’s story If This Goes On –. EricInNewJersey

Just looked him up. Oooo eeee oooo. ClarkGwent

Francis Ewan Urquhart [from Michael Dobbs’ House of Cards trilogy] gets my vote. On the surface, urbane, charming, witty, wise, talented, eminently principled, “one of us”, the right man for the job, a safe pair of hands, and any other positive platitude you’d care to use. Underneath, a bloodstream hovering around absolute zero, with an unseen slight smirk cleanly severing the jugular of the lives and careers of opponents, colleagues and friends alike. All the while narrating to the fourth wall his intentions and misdeeds, relishing the sensuousness of it all. As evil as it gets. bricklayersoption

You might very well think that, I couldn’t possibly comment. minermackem

For my money, the undisputed heavyweight champion of evil villainy must surely be Iago from Shakespeare’s Othello. Iago operates with (in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s words) a motiveless malignity. He delights in the up-close-and-personal suffering of others with an inherent desire to inflict emotional torment. He is a true sociopath, an ice-blooded monster. A brilliant study of pure cynicism and nihilism. Nigel Hoyle

Aunt Norris [from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park]. misterhal

Yes, an absolute monster! KateKingWarwickshire

Captain Ahab of Moby-Dick [Herman Melville’s novel], or, for a more modern retelling, Khan Noonien Singh from the Star Trek franchise. Dorkalicious

Surely the horrific antagonist of [Cormac McCarthy’s novel] Blood Meridian, Judge Holden, must be among the worst of all villains. Enormous, mystic, all-knowing and all-encompassing, he veers between gnostic archon and sadistic cowboy genius. Death and suffering ride his slipstream: from the disappearing children, the scalped Mexicans and the way he casually drowns puppies, violence is a skin he wears. Heis Milton’s Satan, he is Ahab wearing the skin of Moby-Dick, all the desert his ocean. He takes not only through violence but by extracting knowledge from his surroundings. “Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” Asa Williams

Cruella De Vil [from 101 Dalmatians, based on the novel by Dodie Smith]. tyroneshoelaces

One of Mr Tulkinghorn [a lawyer in Dickens’ Bleak House] or Wackford Squeers [the schoolmaster in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby]. I think Tulkinghorn edges it thanks to Charles Dance [in the BBC’s 2005 adaptation]. SimonLegg

Patrick Melrose’s father [in Edward St Aubyn’s five-novel series]. Leoned

The judge in Bob Dylan’s song Seven Curses. hertsbrain

Captain Vidal from [the 2006 film] Pan’s Labyrinth, set in 1944 Spain. He’s the brutal psychopathic stepfather of the protagonist, Ofelia. Nothing is sacred to him. I still shudder thinking of the scene with the rabbit-hunters. What a beautiful heartbreak of a film. SpaceWater

This is exactly who I was going to say. Utterly callous and brutal, and he wasn’t “crazy”. Stone-cold evil. PedroCab

[Shakespeare’s] Richard III. It isn’t just the stuff he does because “that’s what you have to do to be king”, to paraphrase many students over the years. It’s the moments of deliberate cruelty. Look at the way he plays with Lady Anne Neville over her dead father-in-law’s cortege, blaming his love for her for his murder of both her husband and father-in-law. Having conquered her with wordplay and the outrageous offer to kill himself at her command, he sends her off to await him at his house before turning to us to deliver the devastating line: “I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.” Legomaniac

There are few things more horrifying than the personification of pure innocence turning out to be pure evil. The Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life (1961), in which a six-year old Billy Mumy (later of Lost in Space fame) has absolute godlike control over his surroundings and people in it, is a frightening example. After all, if a god-child wants ice cream and candy and attention all the time, who is going to stop them? trp9871

The story on which The Twilight Zone episode is based [by Jerome Bixby] is one of the most truly terrifying I have ever read. The idea of never being able to think anything without appalling consequences is so frightening. The story is available to read for free online. henrythehorse

Donald Trump in Home Alone II. WithoutPurpose

Dick Dastardly [in Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races cartoon]. A man so bitterly malevolent he would rather lose the race every time in order to set (feeble) traps for the other competitors, when, quite clearly, if he had just kept driving he would have won. Menstrielad

I’m going with Pinkie Brown from Brighton Rock [Graham Greene’s 1938 novel, later a film]. Now there’s the very personification of evil, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Poor Rose. Martin_L_H

Steerpike [from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy of novels]. Cold, ruthless, twisted, spiteful, absolutely horrible. lurkernomore

Archimandrite Luseferous from [Iain Banks’s novel] The Algebraist. Utterly absurd ultra-villainy. Banks was clearly having fun with that. TigerRepellingRock

He’s bad … but I reckon the whole of The Affront as a civilisation of evil gits (in Excession). Banks had a talent for dreaming up scumbag societies. wurzelsteve2

I’m pretty sure Banks’ vision for The Affront was “Tories in Space”. TigerRepellingRock

Joiler Veppers in [Iain Banks’s novel] Surface Detail; tech-bro plutocrat and sadist, whose corporation makes money building and running bespoke simulations of hell for religious fundamentalist regimes to upload the minds of their condemned sinners into. GuerrillasInTheMidst

Nogbad the Bad [from the BBC children’s series Noggin the Nog]. willgo

John Huston’s depraved, greed-riddled evil patriarch in [the 1974 film] Chinatown makes my flesh crawl. Paddy_Benham

The Bishop of Bath and Wells [in the BBC sitcom Blackadder II] wasn’t called the baby-eating bishop for nothing. Jonnywonny

Catherine Ames/Kate Trask/Kate Albey in [John Steinbeck’s novel] East of Eden. She has no shred of human feeling and sees the world as a dark reflection of her own twisted amorality, which justifies murder, manipulation and deceit. Chilling. Julie

Chancellor then Emperor Palpatine [from the Star Wars franchise]. He overthrows a democracy by orchestrating a war while being in charge of both sides in the conflict. Plus: excellent evil laugh, blowing up several inhabited planets, able to use own lightsaber, natty evil villain hoodie outfit … I could go on. And very often do. DarthSaddius

Undone by his own hubris. Seriously, who puts a bottomless shaft with no guard rails in their own throne room? Alex42

Was going to suggest [Orwell’s] Big Brother for the number of deaths to his name, but few bad guys can match Palp’s tallies. Fanoftheinvisibleman

Hands down Carter Burke from [the 1986 film] Aliens. He wiped out an entire colony on LV-426 and was then prepared to kill and contaminate the rescue party to get a sample back to Earth. SgtPinback

I’d go for Jack Lint, the torturer in [1985 film] Brazil, played by Michael Palin. He’s just a nice guy who loves his kids and takes pride in his work. Alex42

“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.” Terry Pratchett in Small Gods got it. brainstuck

Mrs Coulter [in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels]. Kwant

Medea’s pretty awful. Murdering and cutting up her own brother so she can throw the bits overboard so Aeëtes had to pick them up, thus slowing him down so she could escape from him with Jason. It’s not all about quantity; sometimes it’s about the quality, and the motivation. getomov

Newman from [US TV sitcom] Seinfeld. AssaultonPG13

Mr Noseybonk [from 1980s BBC children’s programme Jigsaw]. If ever there was the stuff of nightmares … DroleNoel

I’m going to throw Harry Flashman [from the novels Tom Brown’s School Days and The Flashman Papers] into the mix. A murderer, rapist, thief, bigot, cheat – a man without any redeeming qualities at all. And yet despite all of this, you end up rooting for him. Now that’s evil. robinc

Davros, the creator of the Daleks [from the BBC TV programme Doctor Who]. I was petrified by him when I was a kid. MonsieurMadeleine

Eric Cartman [from US animated sitcom South Park] is, without doubt, the most evil character in fiction. WindyM

The Child Catcher from [1968 film] Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. RichardY

I would go for Gabbar Singh in the [1975] Bollywood classic Sholay. What makes him singularly evil is not just his brutality, but the theatre that comes with it. Every line is delivered with menace, a showman’s performance made to disarm the viewer. Unlike sleek franchise villains, he lacks technology, armies, or a mythic backstory; his terror is handmade, intimate. He is evil without apology, motive or mercy. And at times, despite your love for the heroes, you still want to stand up and root for the villain. nijmakesbeats

Livia Soprano, Tony Soprano’s bone-chillingly cruel and calculating mother, portrayed to perfection by the late Nancy Marchand [in US crime drama The Sopranos]. The way her character completely distorts everything a mother is supposed to be is genuine nightmare fuel. You’d think that conspiring to murder her own son would be compelling enough, but what really strikes me about her is that even in death, the damage she did to Tony continues to loom over him throughout the rest of the series. I can’t think of any other character that haunts the narrative in the very particular way she does. bridnimaol

General Woundwort [in the 1972 novel Watership Down by Richard Adams, later a film]. Philustrate2

Hannibal Lecter [in Thomas Harris’s novels and related films]. DavidBowieisGod

Obadiah Hakeswill from the Sharpe books [by Bernard Cornwell] and TV show. Pete Postlethwaite played him perfectly – he’s utterly monstrous. MrLeopard

In [George Orwell’s novel] Nineteen Eighty-Four, O’Brien’s threat to release hungry rats to eat Winston Smith’s face gave me nightmares for weeks. robsandiego

Supposedly a hero (but isn’t that often the case?) – I wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley (or a lit alley, or anywhere else) with Odysseus. PeculiarPotato

Not completely fiction because it’s loosely based on historical fact, but Livia in I, Claudius [Robert Graves’s novel, later a BBC TV series] takes some beating. salfordexile66

My all-time favourite is Balzac’s Jacques Collin/Vautrin [in La Comédie Humaine series] – perhaps not the most “evil” in literature, but definitely one of the most brilliantly drawn. Evan1

Few villains are truly evil, but Joffrey Baratheon [from George R R Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire book series] is so irredeemably awful that he conjured up feelings of hatred and rage in me whenever he appeared on the page. Charlie Oldnal

A dishonourable mention for the John Doe character in the film Se7en. Jonathan Small

Victor Frankenstein. As with all the best villains, you can empathise and identify with him. You can see his point of view and maybe share it. You may think he’s the victim or even the hero. But that’s what all great narcissists want you to think. In reality, he is motivated only by ego and lust for power. He creates without a single thought to the consequences of his actions. When the project of creation is finished, he is incapable of nurturing the results, or taking responsibility. He blames his failures on his creation and not the shortcomings of the creator. He kicks open Pandora’s box, then blames the box instead of his own foot. Jay W

Worst man in the world: Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) in Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Worst man in the universe: Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan) in David Lynch’s Dune [based on Frank Herbert’s novel]. Tony