The archenemies of Guts in Berserk are Complete Monsters who perform horrible deeds for their own amusement, and it's not exactly helped by the fact that every demon was once a human who sacrificed something or someone dear to them to the Godhand, the primary Big Bads of the series in general, to become that way. Due to the Grim Dark nature of the setting, though, only a very few actually deserve to be on this list.
Wyald is the second Apostle encountered and one of the nastiest pieces of work that Guts and company meet before the Eclipse goes down. He leads a band of mercenaries made up of the worst murderers, rapists, and all around scum that Midland has to offer. When they come across a young family, including a mother and several children, that have aided the Band of the Hawk that they have been hired to track down, they proceed to rape and murder everyone, including the children — and if this wasn't bad enough, they then proceed to dismember their bodies and carry them naked on poles into battle with the Hawks, who are all horrified at the sight. Even his own men, the aforementioned worst scum of the kingdom, follow him mainly because they are utterly terrified of him.
Gambino was probably the closest thing that Guts had to a father, and as a kid, Guts tried everything he could to gain his approval. Unfortunately, Gambino's heart was hardened against the poor kid long ago when Sys, his lover, died from the plague just three years after they first took Guts in, and Gambino blamed Guts for her death because of a superstitious belief about picking up children from corpses (Guts was born from the death throes of his mother when she was hanged, you see). While the Training from Hell that Gambino put Guts through could be viewed as "tough love" and laid the foundations for Guts' future badassery, the same cannot be said for his most despicable act, which was selling Guts to Donovan, a notorious pederast among his soldiers and a complete monster in his own right, as a child prostitute for three measly silver coins, resulting in Guts being raped despite his best efforts to fight the big man off. Things come to a head when Gambino, who lost his leg in battle and can no longer lead his men, gets drunk one night and tries to kill Guts in his tent. He proceeds to Kick the Dog in heartless fashion by not only revealing that he was behind what happened with Donovan, but also calling Guts "disgusting," telling him that the one responsible for Sys's death "couldn't be raised to be loyal like a dog," and that Guts should have died instead. It is all but a relief when Guts finally kills him in self-defense, though given that Gambino was still an important figure in Guts' life, Guts still felt terrible about the whole ordeal.
The unnamed torturer, who spends an entire year doing unspeakable things to Griffith at the order of the king of Midland. Despite his insistence that he was following orders and is therefore not evil, his gloating over what he did to his victim for an entire year leaves absolutely no conceivable way this psychopath could be considered anything other than a monster. Particularly notable is the fact that his evil is indisputable even ignoring the fact that his actions were, to a large extent, the cause of Griffithaccepting the Godhand's offer. On top of all that, the amount of time he's actually seen by the reader is very small, and all of this horror was established with one, fairly short, conversation.
Femto, the fifth member of the Godhand (who, mind some of you fans, is still Griffith); when he first shows up in the manga, he establishes his monster credentials in a big way by ordering the Count, who is dying after having been defeated by Guts, to sacrifice his daughter Theresia — the only person left who he truly loved — to be reborn as an Apostle and keep on living or be sent to Hell like all Apostles when they die. Alas, it's only near the end of the Golden Age Arc flashback with the Hawks, when the Eclipse goes down and we find out how Femto was born, that we find out how TRULY heinous this guy is. Griffith sacrifices everyone in the Hawks in order to become the new member of the Godhand in a crossing of the Moral Event Horizon — a process that not only results in the Cruel And Unusual Deaths of pretty much everyone except Guts and Casca, but condemns their souls to an eternity in Hell. And Griffith's very first act as Femto? He rapes Casca, his former lieutenant and Guts's Love Interest, as well as putting her through supreme agony all the while he's doing this to her because of how her Brand of Sacrifice is reacting to her close proximity to a member of the Godhand, an ordeal that ultimately drives her insane. He does this all right in front of Guts while he's held down by demons mere feet from the act and Forced to Watch. And for what? Because the two of them fell in loveand he wanted to spite Guts. To make things even worse, Guts and Casca's baby was corrupted by what Femto did to Casca, and during the Conviction arc, after the kid is spent from summoning ghosts to protect Casca from Mozgus, it is used along with the Behelit-Apostle as a vessel for Femto to be reincarnated as Griffith again on earth.
But then there is Ganishka, the Emperor of Kushan. Mass executions, ethnic cleansing, using conquered populations as human shields or cannon fodder for his armies, attempting to rape the captive Charlotte, suspending women over a pool filled with hungry crocodiles, dropping thousands of pregnant women into cauldrons with stitched-together Apostles to turn the unborn babies into half-human demons that rip apart their mothers upon birth...this guy isn't beyond the Moral Event Horizon, he's the black hole causing it, and not even the fact that he's doing it all to "transcend the Apostles" and rebel against the Big Bad Godhand is enough to make him sympathetic.
And then you find out about his background, where his mother tried to poison him so his younger brother would become the heir, making him insanely paranoid (both the mother and the brother did not survive, of course) to the point where his own son tries to kill him because he was so afraid his father would see him as a threat. Yeah. We're talking Royally Screwed Up here.
How bad is Ganishka? When Femto went up against him (not because Femto has any standards, mind you, but because, as mentioned, Ganishka was rebelling against the Godhand), the fans rooted for Femto.
No Bishop Mozgus? This guy is just as horrible as all of the other Complete Monsters on this list. How? Because despite all of the atrocious things that he's done to the people (which, to sum it up, involves lots and lots and lots of horrible torture), he thinks it's justifed and that some of the people that he inflicts this torture on actually agree. Mozgus is a reflection of a real life Knight Templar religious zealot who uses his status in the church as well as his fundamentalist beliefs to enact whatever punishments that he sees as necessary in order to "save souls". He's on the same level as Judge Claude Frollo, except he seems too consumed with his fundamentalism to actually think about using it for any hidden agendathat he might actually have, which might actually be even worse when you think about it. Oh yeah. He does appear to care for his torturers, which were shunned by everyone else for being The Grotesque, but it's only inasmuch as he considers their deformities God's will that they are meant to be his instruments - he may speak to them in a kindly, smiling Good Shepherd manner, but as he does the same with his victims (as long as they haven't pissed him off) while they're being tortured to death, it doesn't mean much. And might we add that this is all before he became an actual monster?
The Beast of Darkness is Guts' Superpowered Evil Side, manifested as a terrifying wild Hell Hound monster, which craves murder and cruelty. It acted in concert with Guts back in his Black Swordsman days, but once Guts started to care about something more than revenge against Griffith and killing Apostles, namely Casca, the Beast took over his body and tried to force him to rape and eat her, while giving him a Hannibal Lecture about how he secretly desires to be as bad as Femto. Guts was almost forced to watch the worst thing possible happen to the woman he loves again by his own hands, unable to do anything, all because the Beast wants him for itself. This also ruined whatever emotional bond was beginning to reform between Guts and Casca.
