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Monster: Cartoon Network
aka: Adult Swim
Even to be a one-shot villain, he is even worse than Satan In-Universe!

While most villains from Cartoon Network and Adult Swim are mostly jerks at their worst, there are some who take their villainy to the next level.


NOTE: Any changes (additions, removals, edits) should be discussed here.

  • The Lich from Adventure Time, is an Evil Sorcerer who desires nothing less than the extinction of all life. While most of the series’ antagonists have sympathetic moments or funny quirks that add levity to their crimes, the Lich is the only villain to always be played absolutely seriously. After being destroyed by Finn before he could regain his full powers, the Lich hopped into the body of Princess Bubblegum and manipulated Finn into gathering materials the Lich could use to revive himself. Once those materials were obtained, the Lich went One-Winged Angel and started rampaging through the Candy Kingdom. Defeated again, the Lich made a comeback by killing the hero Billy and using Billy's body to once again manipulate Finn in his schemes. Eventually, the Lich manages to open a portal to the center of The Multiverse and get a wish from the Reality Warper Prismo, which the Lich then uses to wipe out all life, not just in Finn’s world, but in all The Multiverse's dimensions. The Lich is also heavily implied to have been involved with the destruction of mankind and one of the reasons why the show takes place in a world After the End.
  • Aggregor from Ben 10 Ultimate Alien was an Osmonian warlord who was wantonly murderous in his quest to achieve omnipotence. Aggregor killed aliens by absorbing their energy and matter to gain their powers. Generally this caused his victims to turn into desiccated husks, but for his plans to become powerful enough to reassemble the Map of Infinity he turned five aliens into energy and absorbed them into himself. Aggregor killed Magister Prior Gilhil by stabbing him in the back, killed two other Plumbers by sucking them out into space, and absorbed the life and powers of a pacifistic alien just because he could. His two most vile crimes, however, were when he nearly destroyed an entire inhabited world by stealing a component from the device that kept the planet from breaking apart, and when he attempted to kill and absorb a baby alien capable of Reality Warping to complete his ascension into godhood.
  • Katz from Courage the Cowardly Dog. Since the show has Negative Continuity, his motives tend to change, but what he does is always horrible. In his first appearance, he ran a Hell Hotel where he fed all his guests to spiders, taking sadistic delight in doing so. In a later episode, he ran a health spa where he transformed his guests into machines and forced them to fight for his own amusement. In both of these appearances, he didn't seem to get much gain for these action, but did them all with a Slasher Smile on his face. In short, he's an Ax Crazy Serial Killer played straight...on a kid's show! What makes Katz even worse is the fact that the family is heavily implied to just be the first in a long line of victims to fall into his clutches.
  • Eddy's Brother from Ed Edd N Eddys Big Picture Show. While there have been many hints throughout the show that this guy was not as nice as Eddy built him up to be, just how horrible he was wasn't seen until the final ten minutes of the movie. It turns out that Eddy's Brother has been abusing Eddy for the latter's entire life. After the cul-de-sac kids had been hurt by one of the Eds' scams, the Eds seek refuge at Eddy's Brother's place to escape their peers' wrath. At first, Eddy's Brother acts nice and helpful, but then shows his true colors by viciously beating Eddy For the Evulz. For the first time on the show the injuries aren't Played for Laughs and it's stressed that Eddy is really being hurt this time. When Double D tries to help Eddy, Eddy's Brother responds by beating up Double D too. Keep in mind this is a fully grown adult who is beating the pulp out of two twelve-year-old boys. The level of abuse Eddy's Brother dishes out and the sheer sadistic joy he takes in it, are enough to get both the cul-de-sac kids and the Kanker sisters, who have frequently abused the Eds themselves throughout the series, to pull an Even Evil Has Standards moment and stand up to him. Once Eddy's Brother has been knocked out, Eddy has an emotional breakdown, and tearfully reveals that his entire life has been shaped by his brother's abuse and corruptive influence and he's the reason why Eddy turned out to be the Jerkass scam artist he was presented as through the rest of the series.
  • Generator Rex:
    • Van Kleiss, the ruthless dictator of Abysus. Though he uses propaganda to claim he's trying to build a better world for EVOs, in actuality Van Kleiss cares only for his dream of world domination, and nothing for his subordinates. Van Kleiss makes a habit of petrifying EVOs by sucking the nanites out of them, or turning regular people into EVOs to act as muscle for him, not caring that such an action could leave them permanently transformed. In his bid for power Van Kleiss murdered Rex's parents, experimented on his Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds follower to amplify her powers while causing her excruciating pain, and threatened a little girl to force her father to turn the people of New York into his zombie army.
    • Hunter Cain is a Fantastic Racist who kills Evos left and right even when Rex is trying to cure them. Then he uses his goon squad to piss Rex off in an attempt in discrediting him, and finally, he clones Evos to lure Rex out, was prepared to sacrifice his own men, and then tried to ''murder'' Rex when he was unarmed. In his next appearance, he tries to slaughter a whole lot of children.
    • Branden Moses who announced a breakthrough in nanite research that allowed him to dramatically reverse E.V.O. mutations and gave a faux demonstration using an E.V.O. and either an actress with a set of prosthetic tentacles or an E.V.O. with tentacles, playing the part of the "cured E.V.O." Having convinced hundreds, possibly thousands, of people (including Dr. Holiday, who added her sister Beverly Holiday to Brandon's ranks) that he had made a breakthrough, dozens of intelligent but physically deformed, incurable E.V.O.s lined up to be cured. Instead, they were kidnapped and brought to a lab in the Arctic circle where their mutations were amplified and were ready to be auctioned off to the warlord with the deepest pockets.
  • The aptly-named Atrocitus from Green Lantern The Animated Series. He is the leader of the Red Lanterns and the reason that Razor's wife is dead—causing the civil war that led to her death, just so he'd become a Red Lantern. While he still has the same tragic backstory as his comic counterpart, any sympathy ends with the fact that he has hypocritically been responsible for many of his converts.
  • Krytus, the 3rd Big Bad from Hot Wheels Battle Force 5. He's known as the most malicious being in the entire multiverse (this was said by another Big Bad!) and evil incarnate. He restarted a eons old war between the Red and Blue Sentients simply because he saw the Blues as weak and inferior and desired to conquer the entire multiverse. When Sage froze the Red Sentients, the war continued and Krytus carried out a genocide on the Blues. At one point, it's revealed that he had several thousand Blue Sentients tortured to death and the one who managed to enter hibernation to escape him was punished by having his body sabotaged, dooming him when he woke up. Krytus's first action after being freed from his prison is to throw the one who released him off a cliff! He then spends most of the series trying to kill Sage (his own sister), who is a pacifist who only wants peace. At one point, after being forced into an Enemy Mine with Vert to escape the Shadow Zone, he sets up an ambush for Vert the moment they're out of it, unlike previous villains who normally had the honor to let the Battle Force 5 go after an Enemy Mine. Not even the other villains are safe from his wrath, as he starts an Enemy Civil War among the Vandals through Grimian. But what solidifies this is at the season finale, when he and Sage finally have a confrontation. After asking Sage Was It Really Worth It? to imprison the Red Sentients, she replies that if she hadn't, Krytus would've endangered not only the Blue Sentients, but the entire multiverse. Krytus actually agrees with her, fully admitting that not only does he know what he's doing is evil and wrong, he doesn't care so long as he can conquer the multiverse. The only reason he tried to free the Red Sentients was because he wanted an army to conquer the multiverse with, not out of concern for them. He's also the sole Big Bad to earn a Fate Worse Than Death, being imprisoned in ice on another world for all eternity.
  • Professor Dick Hardley from The Powerpuff Girls. Introduced as the sleazy college roommate of Professor Utonium, Dick quickly sees the potential of the Powerpuff Girls as a way to get rich quick. Getting the girls to supply him with Chemical X, Dick makes his own knock-offs of the girls and starts a business selling these copies as superheroes. Due to Dick's greed, however, these knock-offs have been created with minimum materials and Chemical X, meaning that, even though they are aware, they are mentally stunted and physically deformed. When the effort of superheroing causes the knock-offs to literally fall apart, Dick's happy because it means he gets to sell even more copies. At one point Dick notices one of his knock-offs is a perfect Buttercup copy, his response is to order the girl melted down for her "excessive" Chemical X. The episode's climax has Dick capturing the real Powerpuff Girls and killing them slowly by draining them of their Chemical X. When Utonium offers to be a slave, making Chemical X for Dick for the rest of his life, if Dick will let the girls live, Dick only laughs and says he'll kill the girls and keep Utonium as a slave. Greed incarnate, Dick Hardley was notable for being the only villain on the show to be played completely seriously, with no humorous quirks to detract from his viciousness.
  • Scooby-Doo:
    • Jacques from Zombie Island stands out as a stark contrast with his two Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds co-conspirators. While his partners had no idea that praying to their cat god for help in their pursuit of vengeance would lead to their transformation into monsters, Jacques was a normal man who willingly became a monster to make himself immortal. For years he's been using his ferry to escort people to Moonscar Island, only for him and his partners to drain the life from them. Afterwards their victims are left to wander the island as zombies, aware but unable to move on to the afterlife.
    • Mystery Incorporated has one in the form of the Nibiru Entity. A member of a normally benevolent interdimensional alien race called the Anunnaki, his own kind considers him the most evil member of their entire species. He's spent untold centuries corrupting and manipulating the people around him, especially the Team Pets of mystery solving teams, by perverting his species' ability to use animals as mediums to communicate, all working towards freeing him from his prison. In the process he's ruined and ended countless lives through his Unwitting Pawns (including Professor Pericles, who the Entity turned into a murderous psychopath) without a second thought. When he's finally released in the Series Finale, he proceeds to gleefully eat his loyal minions alive along with Mr. E. He follows this by turning Crystal Cove into Hell on Earth and devouring the entire town with sadistic glee, planning to move on to the rest of the universe when he's done, all for the sake of power. When Mystery Inc finally kill him, erasing him from time in the process, we see what Crystal Cove would've been like without his influence; a normal town with everyone living good, happy lives, showing just how much pain and misery he was truly responsible for.
  • V.V. Argost from The Secret Saturdays is the Faux Affably Evil nemesis of the Saturday family and, in actuality, a cryptid himself. As the Himalayan Yeti, Argost murdered people for pleasure, preying upon the humans who wandered through the mountains and taking "souvenirs" off their bodies. Two of his victims were Drew and Doyle Saturdays' parents. When confronted with this, Argost only says he can't be bothered to remember all of the people he's killed. Throughout the series, Argost was obsessed with finding Kur, a god who had the power to control all cryptids. Eventually Argost discovered that Zak Saturday, was Kur himself, and so Argost began plotting to steal the boy's power. Eventually Argost managed to succeed in this by draining the god power out of Zak Monday, the evil alternate dimension counterpart of Zak Saturday. This had the side effect of killing the boy. With his newfound powers, Argost ordered his cryptid army to wage war against every major human capital city, with the ultimate goal to Kill All Humans! and rule all cryptids. Though already possessing a god's power, Argost craved more power still, and so he killed Zak Saturday to drain his power as well, just as he did to Monday. Ever the showman, Argost took to committing atrocities with a theatrical flourish and dry humor, relishing the screams of his victims and considering the destruction of mankind as just another one of his grand performances.
  • General Modula from Sym-Bionic Titan. Originally a reasonable, heroic man, all of the good traits Modula once had withered and died when his former best friend, the King of Galaluna, mistakenly left him for dead. Possessing now only a lust for vengeance against his former comrade, and a thirst for conquest, Modula betrayed his homeworld to the Mutradi monsters and slaughtered and enslaved its inhabitants. Fearing that only the princess of Galaluna, Illana, can restore the hopes of the planet's people and have them rally against him, Modula sends countless monsters to ravage the planet where she's hiding out. It's made clear in the show that the buildings and cities his monsters destroy are not conveniently empty, and at one point Modula goes so far as to send a living bomb capable of wiping out an entire planet to earth all so he can kill one girl. While seemingly stoic on the outside, in actuality Modula is utterly Axe Crazy and is willing to kill anyone, even his own minions, at the drop of a hat. Instances of this can be seen when he smiles as he snaps the neck of a resistance fighter and when he casually vaporizes a minion who had failed him without even getting up from his chair.
  • Slade was one of the Big Bads of Teen Titans and was a cold, manipulative criminal mastermind. Slade's main goal throughout the series was to find himself an apprentice whom he could mold into being just as cruel and ruthless as he was. First targeting Robin, Slade came up with various schemes to test the Boy Wonder's mettle before finally infecting Robin's friends with nanobots that would destroy them from the inside out should Robin not follow Slade's every command. When his plans for Robin were thwarted, Slade next turned his attention to Terra. Taking advantage of her status as an outsider who would never be accepted because of her destructive powers, Slade manipulated her into joining and befriending the Titans, betraying them and finally trying to kill them. After Terra finds herself in over her head while fighting the Titans and retreats, Slade physically abuses her for defying his orders. When Terra tries to quit her apprenticeship, Slade reveals that the suit he gave her to enhance her powers also gave him complete control over her body and vowed that he would never let her go. Though Slade dies when Terra rebels against him, he is eventually resurrected by the demonic Omnicidal Maniac, Trigon, to act as the demon's dragon. Slade took a vicious pleasure in his work towards the ensuring the apocalypse, mind raping Raven with visions of her destiny as the Anti Christ and selling out all of humanity to Trigon in exchange for Trigon giving him back his soul. Even when Slade rebels against Trigon, it isn't out of altruism, but because Trigon refused to honor their bargain.
  • Would you believe Totally Spies! had one? Helga Von Guggen is a greedy fashion designer who, to save money on materials, decides she'll start making "seamless" fur coats. How does she go about this? By kidnapping innocent people, injecting them with a serum that turns them into Petting Zoo People, then skinning them alive in what appears to be a giant industrial crusher. Is it any wonder that she became one of the show's main villains? Seriously, how's this for an Establishing Character Moment?
    Helga: Do you like the coat? It's genuine lawyer.


    Monster/Western AnimationDCAU

alternative title(s): Adult Swim
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