For me, it would be GLaDOS.

Portal 2 spoiler

She deleted the one remaining human part of herself because it was just too much to deal with. She releases you at the end of Portal 2 as a path of least resistance measure because “killing you is hard.”

What about you, what is your favorite media villain?

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4·
      5 天前

      It’s actually why I listed the James Bond villain Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies because he was an analogue for Murdoch, a media magnate who wanted to control the world through disinformation. It was a prescient character, because that was still during 1997, long before FOX News had become the danger it actually is. Yet Carver is pretty on-the-nose for what actually ended up happening and we didn’t have a James Bond to save us.

  • Quazatron@lemmy.world
    168·
    6 天前

    Here are the test results: You’re a horrible person. That’s what it says. A horrible person. We weren’t even testing for that.

  • Naz@sh.itjust.works
    18·
    5 天前

    There’s something genuinely compelling about SHODAN.

    They’re malignant, objective evil, yet when they talk about their goals and ambitions, they seem almost benevolent, which makes them even more unsettling.

    It’s like something telling you to calm down while it’s sawing off your legs to replace them with mechanical versions because it’s “improving you”.

    You didn’t ask to be improved.

      • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
        13·
        6 天前

        My vote as well.

        He constantly finds the piece of humanity within whoever hes talking to and then tries to manipulate it.

        Its hard to top Gul Dukat.

        • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          5 天前

          The great thing about Dukat is that he frequently finds his own humanity. You keep thinking that this time he’ll do the right thing and start his path to redemption, but he never does. He always chooses to do the wrong thing even though there’s clearly good in him and you’re always disappointed and even surprised when it happens. He’s like the anti-Zuko.

        • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
          5·
          5 天前

          They’re both excellent at being different kinds of evil.

          Winn is prideful and ambitious above all else. She sides with good and evil both at different times in service to her own goals. She deludes herself into believing anything that pursuit of personal power is also what serves Bajor.

          Winn commits evil in service to her ambitions.

          Dukat has the same vices, but with added elements of narcissism and wrath. He briefly tries being good, and almost reaches it when he finds genuine love for and from his daughter, but when his actions lead to her death he lashes out at the universe and becomes entirely consumed by wrath and megalomania.

          Dukat’s ambition in the end is to commit evil.

          • okwhateverdude@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 天前

            I am looking for the like and subscribe buttons for this long-form video essay dissecting Star Trek antagonists, but I don’t see any. 😉

        • Lupus108@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          5 天前

          It’s been ages I saw a ytp and I never was quite the fan, but this right there is a fucking masterpiece.

          I was about to just check it and ended up watching the whole thing.

          “Attention bajoran workers! My wife left me” had me wheezing.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      6 天前

      I think the counter to that is that:

      Tap for spoiler

      they completely dropped the ball with her toward the end of the show. She went from, I think, a great allegory for a religious radical right wing capitalizing off her people’s suffering but in a way she could genuinely warp her beliefs into thinking was for the greater good…

      … to, I mean, come on… Having her go totally crazed with power and disavowing the Prophets wasn’t the problem; it’s that it was stupid, egregiously paced, totally unearned MacGuffin power without grounded stakes that only served to make an already-rushed resolution to the show feel even more rushed.

  • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
    52·
    6 天前

    Prince Arthas Menethil from Warcraft.

    [Quietly sweeps WoW:Shadowlands under the rug]

    Dudes villian arc is perfect, his fall is entierly of his own making. Playing as him in Warcraft 3, you follow his reasoning and by the time the corruption sets in, its far too late. In the expansions, you play as him in full BBEG mode. Lastly, WoW:Wrath of the Lich King had him as the capstone boss of one of the best expansions and 15 years of buildup.

    And they never expanded on his character ever again…

  • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
    20·
    5 天前

    One of my favorites as an adult, and one that scared the living shit outta me as a kid. Jude Doom from who framed Roger Rabbit.

  • FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world
    462·
    6 天前

    Sorry for such a “capeslop” answer, but:

    Kingpin from Netflix Daredevil

    He definitely gets a mention. I wish they actually explored what Kingpin wanting to “change the city” meant, though, because the disney+ shows make it seem like he just wants to sell weapons and be rich. They really took a crap on his character after endgame / season3 of Daredevil.

    All the netflix DD villains were just golden. What a ride.

    Primal Fear:

    Aaron Stampler, and his defence attorney Martin Vail.

    Aaron Stampler and Martin Vail in Primal Fear

    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      10·
      6 天前

      Dude thanks for the reminder, he was a compelling villain. I loved his romance arc. I don’t really remember what happens

      • FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world
        4·
        5 天前

        I don’t really remember what happens

        A brief recap of the character Wilson Fisk for anyone interested (TW: gore descriptions) part 1
        • When he was a boy, lived in Hell’s Kitchen. 70s or 80s. It was rough, because most people there were poor.
        • His dad, Bill, was an abusive lunatic who took money from the mob to fund a campaign for the city council. He beat Wilson Fisk and his mom.
        • One day Bill Fisk, frustrated with how Wilson was treated by other kids, attacks a teenager who bullied him. He brought Wilson along for this and insists that Wilson kicks the shit out of this teenager when he’s on the ground.
        • They go home, Bill Fisk is yelling at and attacking his wife. Wilson kills him with a hammer. Keeps hitting him, yelling “Keep kicking him!” To himself, just as he was ordered earlier.
        • Wilson and his mom cut up the body to dump it in the river, then leave New York to evade mafia.

        Cut to 2014

        • Fisk is now a financier funneling money into fake companies to hide criminal profits
        • works with 3 armed criminal groups in an alliance, basically managing their united business interests
        • Completely non-public figure, you get the impression he prefers controlling things from the shadows - commanding other organisations and other individuals to do his will.
        • These groups are into really shady things. The Russian mob kidnaps and trafficks people, the chinese mob has brainwashed slaves that process opium(?) for distribution across New York/the USA

        Kingpin, the big heartless bastard, meets a woman. He falls in love.

        • They both love fine things
        • he’s trying to hide his criminal life from her
        • in a devation from the source material, fisk is forced to admit to her (Vanessa) that he’s a gangster.
        • Now, because the criminaks groups are being hounded by Daredevil, they’re starting to rebel against Kingpin. So he chooses to turn on them, one after another.
        • He presents this to Vanessa from a moral high ground, citing that he ia destroying the Russian mob because they kidnapped a child.
        • She thinks this is reasonable, and stays with him.

        So eventually Fisk is thwarted by Daredevil, even though he has an intricate system in place with many failsafes, and kills anyone who might release the truth about him.

        He goes to jail.

        part 2

        Fisk finds himself in a corrupt Jail where different gangs rule different cell blocks. After being threatened by the “Kingpin” of his block, he uses his (very liquefied) financial assets to do favours for a number of people who aren’t out to kill him, eventually buying himself a prison gang. Fisk uses them to kill the Kingpin of his cell block, and eventually becomes the new Kingpin of the entire prison, even controlling some, roughly half, of the guards there.

        • Kingpin, from prison, still has enough people employed outside of prison that he can blackmail members of the FBI in new york.

        • He pays someome to stab him, then negotiates with the FBI that he needs enhanced protrction and will rat on various criminals

        • This allows him to clear out organised criminal competition in New York and live in… a penthouse, for some reason. Not enough new yorkers question why he gets such nice digs. It’s because he took control of the local FBI branch

        • he expands his control over the remaining agents and is getting ready to marry Vanessa in the hotel where he is “incarcerated.”

        • a bribed coerced FBI agent who went against Kingpin’s wishes creates a confession tape, listing all of Kingpin’s crimes, before he gets killed. This dying confession is strong evidence in court because “a dying person has no reason to lie.” (Real legal mechanic for new york or america, apparently)

        • Fisk goes to prison… this time, for GOOD

        But then here's where disney+ ruins that
        • Kingpin is now out of jail for good, as if ray nadeem’s sacrifice wasn’t worth anything (unrealistic)

        I would not have even minded his presence in Echo and Hawkeye, if they’d just explained that there was a prison break and he was completely in hiding now. Taking control of prisons is literally what he does best and why he has the nickname “Kingpin” in the MCU

        • Fisk for 2 more seasons? Going through the same old motions as before? With not a singlee daredevil season with other characters as pallate cleanser? Nah. It doesn’t work.

        • He’s publically a criminal and people still vote for him. You’ve got to understand this is way more significant than Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, various real world figures. Fisk took over the police and the FBI and is associsted with opium pushers and human traffickers. Why would anyone vote for him?

        What really makes kingpin special is just, all the littke things though. It’s an amazingly cohesive and poetic narrative. Nowadays villains are rarely treated as poetic characters, like heroes are.

  • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    4 天前

    Blaine from iZombie. He’s 100% bastard, and the show tries to humanise him by showing us origins and “how could he be any different” and so on, but he’s always great on screen.