Villain

--- Mephisto, in The Silver Surfer no. 3 (Marvel Comics, 1968)

A villain is a bad person, especially in fiction. Villains are the fictional characters, or perhaps fictionalized characters, in drama and melodrama who work to thwart the plans of the hero. As such, villains are an almost inevitable plot device, and more than the heroes, the villains are the crucial elements upon which plots turn. The etymology of word is from Old French[?] villein, in turn from Late Latin villanus; it literally means a serf or a peasant, someone who dwells in a villa, which is to say, worked on a plantation.

Usually the word villain suggests that the villain's scheme stem from their own moral indifference or perversity of character. Supervillains are found in the melodramatic environs of superhero comic books, where an evil person with super powers is needed to be a realistic foil for the mighty heroes. These supervillains usually have recurring roles; some villains in more down to earth literature have become so popular that they have been reused in later works as well.

Are villains inherently more interesting than the heroes who oppose them? They are at least as indispensible to the stories they appear in, probably more so. Those who stand on the side of righteousness and goodness seldom have much choice but to respond, and little choice in how; for villains, all paths are wide open. Many believe that Satan, for Christians perhaps the ultimate villian, is the most interesting character in John Milton's Paradise Lost, for all that he is the embodiment of evil. Perhaps in the nefarious acts of many villains there is more than a hint of wish-fulfilment fantasy, which makes some people identify with them as characters more strongly than they do the heroes. Still, the writer's task in creating a villain is not an easy or a trivial one; a convincing villain must be given a characterization that makes his motive[?] for doing wrong somewhat more convincing that Mephisto's gleeful but seemingly pointless mischief.

See also: anti-hero; antagonist

Some well known villains are:

Fictional villains:

• Angelo[?], in Measure for Measure
• Ambrosio[?], in The Monk[?]
• Autolycus
• Bluebeard
• Bluto
• Claudius, from Hamlet
• Moll Cutpurse[?]
• Count Dracula
• Edmund[?], in King Lear
• Fagin
• Fu Manchu
• Don Giovanni
• Dorian Gray[?]
• Grendel
• Uriah Heep
• Mr. Hyde
• Iago, in Othello
• Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs
• Simon Legree[?], in Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
• Macheath[?]
• Mephistopheles
• Professor Moriarty
• Napoleon the pig[?], in Animal Farm
• Mr. Pecksniff[?]
• Raskolnikov[?]
• Saruman
• Sauron
• Shylock[?], in The Merchant of Venice
• Long John Silver
• Steppenwolf
• Baron Scarpia[?], in Tosca
• Tartuffe[?]
• Darth Vader
• Valmont[?]
• Lord Voldemort
• Volpone[?]
• Wringhim[?], in Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner[?]

Historical villains that often figure in fiction:

• Alcibiades
• Pope Alexander VI
• Attila the Hun
• Benedict Arnold
• Billy the Kid
• Blackbeard
• Captain William Bligh
• Lizzie Borden
• Cesare Borgia
• Brutus
• William Burke[?]
• Cain
• Caligula
• Al Capone
• Catiline
• Draco the law-giver
• Guy Fawkes
• Genghis Khan
• George IV of the United Kingdom
• Lord Haw-Haw
• Adolf Hitler
• Judas Iscariot
• Ivan IV of Russia
• Judge George Jeffreys
• Captain William Kidd
• Leopold and Loeb
• Charles Manson
• Messalina
• Benito Mussolini
• Nero
• Richard Nixon
• Titus Oates[?]
• Pope Pius XII
• Gilles de Rais
• Cardinal Richelieu
• Rasputin
• Jack the Ripper
• Maximilien Robespierre
• The Sheriff of Nottingham[?]
• Dick Turpin
• Boss Tweed