Well, that’s what I opened to thread to discuss. Obviously answers may vary.
Characters from any medium and genre are eligible. However, I do have one request in the interests of civility. If you feel the answer is Yahweh, Jesus Christ, Allah, or Paul of Tarsus, please express such opinions in a GD or Pit thread.
That said: I will nominate Medea from Greek myth. Admittedly her total body count isn’t as high as even Cobra Commander’s, but murdering and dismembering your own brother to help your new boyfriend escape from your father, and then, when said boyfriend tosses you aside for a younger and hotter honey, murdering the new girlfriend AND your own children to get back at him, is something that even Mephistopheles would balk at.
Anyway, that’s just me. Anybody else have a nomination?
According to my roommate’s English professor, the most pure evil character in literature (I assume this only includes canonical Serious Literature) is Iago from Othello. The second worse is Abby from The Crucible.
I nominate Randal Flag the reoccurring embodiment of evil in Stephen King’s books. He is just evil for the sake of being evil. If its a shit bag thing to do he does it even if if screws his evil plans to hell.
Semi-random question: haven’t they gone back and forth (way back and way forth) on C. Montgomery Burns? As in, haven’t they have him in six different things during WW2? I can’t recall quite clearly, so I can’t give him my vote… yet.
I think body count needs to be excluded, as sci fi characters often kill billions.
Even though he kills nobody, for simply the most shockingly unpleasant, sociopathic monster ever depicted on screen (Iago excepted), see Ben Kingsley’s character ‘Don Logan’ in Sexy Beast.