Sword Art Online has boasted an assortment of villains, some of them sympathetic or tragic, some not so much. Here are the nastiest ones with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Aincrad arc
- Kibaou in the anime, with the Hidden Depths he possessed in the Light Novel being Adapted Out. The point of his character is to show that even in a life-or-death situation, people can still be jerks. He is responsible for the ostracization of beta players, branding them as selfish cheaters or outright criminals. Forcing Kirito to shoulder all the blame himself as a Beater, while the rest of the Beta players go into hiding. He only gets worse over time when he extorts taxes from lower level players on Floor 1, sends his men on a suicide mission to gain reputation, and tries to trap Thinker at the mercy of an unbeatable boss under the guise of a peace treaty. He pretty much goes from kind of a jerk to a full-blown criminal, being part of the Big Bad Ensemble with Kayaba and Laughing Coffin.
- Rosalia has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She seeks out and assesses players as potential prey, uses her green cursor to lure them into danger, then either forcibly robs them or has her Titans Hand thugs kill them.
- Atsushi Kanamoto/Johnny Black, even compared to his fellow Laughing Coffin leaders, really stands out with how despicable he is. Johnny Black is far and far the most Ax-Crazy member of the trio, lacking the restraint and cunning of Shouchi Shinkawa/XaXa and Vassago Casals/PoH. He's gleefully sadistic, as he specifically chose to use paralysis poison for the purpose of torturing and killing his victims, and shamelessly boasts about the sadistic games he will play with his would-be victims. Additionally, he's involved in the Death Gun plot, so that he can satiate his desire to kill once more. Upon the Death Gun plot being foiled by Kirito, he attacks him and puts him into a coma, making the Alicization arc possible to begin with, and becomes indirectly responsible for all the misfortune that befalls on Kirito in the Underworld.
- Kuradeel. He's a Stalker with a Crush toward Asuna, but what puts him into "downright loathsome" territory is when he poisons the rest of his party, paralyzing them, and plans on killing them all and claiming that he was the only survivor. When Asuna almost kills him, he cowardly tries to appeal to her conscience, then tries to kill her, only for Kirito to kill him, resulting in Kuradeel dying a pathetic death.
- Grimlock, who hired Laughing Coffin to kill his wife because she was becoming stronger and more assertive in-game. Kirito and Asuna are completely disgusted by his motive for the crime, and declare that he never loved her.
Fairy Dance arc
- Nobuyuki Sugou, the Arc Villain of the Fairy Dance arc. In contrast to Kayaba, it's clear that Sugou is not meant to be liked by anyone, not even in a Love to Hate way. He goes out of his way to be as despicable as possible, being a Smug Snake, Dirty Coward, and Corrupt Corporate Executive who has a long list of heinous deeds such as trapping 300 SAO survivors in ALO to perform inhumane mind control experiments on them, abusing his admin privileges to wipe the floor with Kirito, and going the extra mile to torment him by not only changing the Pain Absorber settings to torture him, but molesting Asuna, tearing her clothes off, groping her, and licking her face all right in front of Kirito. He definitely loses any audience sympathy when Kirito, with help from the spirit of Kayaba, pulls off his Heroic Second Wind and subjects Sugou to a major Humiliation Conga, stripping him of his admin privileges, turning off the Pain Absorber for Sugou, and proceeding to torture him before brutally killing his in-game avatar to the point where Sugou is permanently injured in real-life. His Humiliation Conga continues into the real world, where he attacks Kirito with a knife in revenge, only to be overpowered, reduced to Inelegant Blubbering and pissing his pants, and turned over to the police.
- Sugou's subordinate Yanai isn't much better than him. While Yanai has less direct involvement in much of the carnage Sugou causes in Fairy Dance, he takes an equal amount of perverse pleasure in experimenting on people. Ditto when he sexually harasses Asuna with his slug form's Naughty Tentacles. Additionally, he's an unrepentant smug Dirty Coward who sells out his own allies to save his own skin. All this makes his gruesome death from falling down the shaft in Alicization well-deserved.
Phantom Bullet arc
- Endou and her two accomplices also count, being bullies who use Shino "Sinon" Asada's trauma of guns in order to extort money from her. It's even worse in the light novel, as it's revealed why they did that. The three of them extended an insincere offer of friendship to Shino in order to take advantage of her, since Shino lived alone and they wanted to use Shino's apartment to throw parties. When Shino finally got fed up with being taken advantage of, the other girls researched her past and used it against her out of revenge. The three girls are portrayed completely unsympathetically, and it's very satisfying to watch Shino turn the tables on them.
- XeXeed, the first person Death Gun kills, combines this with Asshole Victim. He lies to other players about the importance of AGI, but puts enough points into STR to equip rare guns, and when he wins the BoB tournament, mocks the others for being gullible enough to fall for it, showing him as a rather arrogant and unpleasant individual. Worse, this act of dishonesty helps push one of the actual people behind Death Gun over the edge, and results in XeXeed and several other players being murdered.
Mother's Rosario Arc
- The Mother's Rosario arc has No Antagonist, and while part of the story is the dispute between Asuna and her mother, Kyoko is a sympathetic character who makes legitimate points and eventually changes for the better. Instead, the main Hate Sink in this arc is the rival guild that seeks to kill the boss. They use a familiar to spy on Asuna and the Sleeping Knights during their first attempt on the boss, and then show up to kill the boss before Yuuki and the others try again, refusing to let them make another attempt despite the fact that the guild isn't fully ready yet. They basically serve as nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome, and receive no sympathy from the narrative.
Alicization arc
- Raios Antonious and Humbert Zisek. The two of them, both high-ranking nobles, look down on Kirito and Eugeo for being commoners, belittle their flashy sword techniques and even sever the buds of Kirito's flowers just to get back at him for daring to score a tie against a high-ranking Noble, but that isn't the worst of it. Humbert gives his page Frenica completely inappropriate orders, such as having her give him a massage while naked, and Raios lets this happen. When Kirito and Eugeo's pages, Ronie and Tiese, confront the two over their actions, they go flying over the Moral Event Horizon by tying both of them up and trying to rape them while making Eugeo (as well as Kirito) watch, hoping that their enemies will be driven to break the rules. When Humbert gets more than he bargained for and Eugeo cuts off his arm, Raios has no sympathy for him, gleefully relishing the process of killing Eugeo personally until Kirito intervenes and cuts off both Raios' arms, at which point Raios demands that Humbert risk his own life to save Raios. No one feels much sympathy when Raios' Fluctlight collapses, resulting in his death, although Eugeo has a brief My God, What Have I Done? moment over his first violation of the Taboo Index.
- Prime Senator Chudelkin who rivals Sugou as the most detestable character in the whole series. Aside from the fact he's an evil Monster Clown, he's also smarmy, manipulative, and betrays his own allies without a second thought after coming upon someone more useful. In stark contrast to Quinella who is seductively Faux Affably Evil, he's downright abusive and condescending to the Integrity Knights and outright calls them puppets to do his bidding. He's a Dirty Coward who flees the second he's in danger and will not hesitate to reducing himself to grovelling. He also reveals he's just as sickly perverted as any of the other SAO villains before him (if not worse), lusting for Quinella and requesting he spend a night with access to her body if he were to dispose of the rebels.
- Dee Eye Ell, the sadistic and depraved leader of the Dark Mage Guild. After being devastated that her Dark Mage Guild couldn't cast a Sacred Art due to Alice absorbing all the energy, she reports to Vecta who suggests performing a sacrifice of 3000 in place of this. While surprised at first, she gleefully orders the Orcs to offer the sacrifices from their people, not caring for their lives in the slightest due to viewing them as lesser beings. Then when Alice comes after a Roaring Rampage of Revenge she kills her own mage underlings to Life Drain them and secure her own life. Later she reveals herself as immensely racist towards all non-human sentient beings, calling the Orcs animals as she did to Rirupirin. The anime also portrays her Life Drain on Leafa as rape via Naughty Tentacles.
- Emperor Cruiga Norlangarth appears in Moon Cradle to remind readers of why exactly the Nobility system is corrupt as hell. A prideful, holier-than-thou man, Cruiga is introduced mocking the loyal Captain of his Royal Guard for losing to Ronye and Tiese while drinking a wine that he effectively forced his people to starve to make, since the vineyard he had it grown in could have been used to grow a years supply of wheat for his people, earning him the instant contempt of Ronye. He then proceeds to show absolutely no regard for the commoners or lower-Nobles who died in the War of Underworld, claiming it's their duty to die to prolong his life and those of the other high-ranked Nobility. He gets even worse after he's revealed to have been brought Back from the Dead as a Minion; after Ronye and Tiese discover the dungeon in his private estate and he captures them, he recounts how he had multiple commoners tortured to death in the cells, having used his Judicial Authority to outlaw commoners fishing a golden trout from the lake near his estate, knowing that their starvation would force them to take the risk, even saying he enjoyed listening to their screams over a glass of wine. Then he reveals that the torture was for the purpose of researching a way to achieve eternal life, something he conspired with the other Emperors for, showing that this was another case of his self-entitlement and lust for power. Then there's his role as the Big Bad in the arc, having former servants of his killed, framing Dark Territory residents for it, and kidnapping three mountain goblins to turn them into a hybrid minion to attack Human Empire citizens to incite a war, seemingly out of nothing more than spite.
Video Games
- Genesis from Hollow Realization is a Smug Super who cheats using substance abuse, Kill Steals from his fellow players, wants to end the world of Ainground For the Evulz, and treats his AI goddess like a slave.
