Monster / DC Animation

"I am the thing that keeps you up at night, the evil that haunts every dark corner of your mind. I will never rest — and neither will you."

The Flash: It's me you want Thawne, you don't have to kill thousands of innocent people to bring me down.
Eobard Thawne/Professor Zoom/Reverse Flash: No, no I don't. But I choose to, knowing it will make your last moments pure agony.

— Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox

Similar to the comics, DC animated works feature some Complete Monsters.

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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The following have their own pages

• Arrowverse
• Video game-related works

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Other examples

DC Animated Universe

Batman

Examples

• The Animated Series:
  • The Joker is Batman's Arch-Enemy. Before becoming a Monster Clown, the Joker was a mobster and hitman who murdered Andrea Beaumont's father, Carl, over money owed to the latter's employers; a murder he committed even after the debt was repaid. This set in motion Andrea becoming the supervillain Phantasm and took away Batman's one chance of a normal, happy life. Following his transformation into the utterly psychotic Joker, he now commits crimes more often for fun than he does for any profit. Samples of his crimes include repeatedly abusing his girlfriend Harley Quinn; trying to bomb a child's birthday party; setting up Catwoman to go through a grinder; psychologically tormenting Charles "Charlie" Collins for two years, before using him in a scheme to blow up much if not all of the entire Gotham Police Department, which would kill Charlie as well; murdering countless people with Joker venom; using Ace in an attempt to drive 70 million people insane; attempting to nuke Gotham City; and going on a rampage with a Kill Sat. Perhaps his most infamous crime was when he brutally tortured Tim Drake into insanity and implanted a microchip in the child so that the Joker could take over Tim's body and perform a Post-Mortem Comeback.
  • "Deep Freeze": Grant Walker is a seemingly affable theme park mogul who seeks only to prolong his life by way of Mr. Freeze's ice technology, but in truth harbors much darker intentions. Kidnapping Freeze and using his comatose wife as a bargaining chip to convince Freeze to give Walker his icy, undying condition, Walker soon enough reveals his plan to use a massive freeze cannon to plunge the entire world into a new Ice Age for years. Walker hopes to kill off all of humanity except for his "chosen few", then repopulate the planet with his own Garden of Eden, and though his plan is foiled, Walker returns in The Batman Adventures, where he kidnaps several scientists to cure himself of a lethal condition, planning to kill them all and then restart his scheme to wipe out humankind.
• Beyond (The comic book can be found here): "The Last Resort": Dr. David Wheeler is a corrupt child psychologist who uses his rehabilitation "ranch" for teenagers as a moneymaking scheme and to satisfy his controlling personality. Wheeler manipulates parents to send their children to his ranch for even minor pranks, then treats the children like prisoners who Wheeler deprives of sleep, verbally and psychologically abuses, and even refuses to let go to the bathroom for punishments. Wheeler throws any teenagers who step out of line into "ISO"—short for isolation—cells that deprive them of sight and sound for long periods to mentally break them down, with one boy shown to be left a vacant shell for days following a trip to ISO. When Terry McGinnis tries to expose Wheeler's crimes, Wheeler plans to throw him in ISO, then murder the boy to keep him quiet.

Superman: The Animated Series (also appearing later in Justice League)

Examples

• Apokoliptians
  • Darkseid:
    • This top threat of the entire DCAU is the tyrannical ruler of the wasteland planet Apokolips, and ultimately desires total dominion over all life in the universe. To achieve this end, he forever seeks the cosmic power of the Anti-Life Equation to use as the ultimate weapon. Incapable of love or empathy, he abused his loyal son Kalibak, handed over his adopted son Scott Free to be tortured and brainwashed by Granny Goodness, and attempted to murder his other son, Orion, for opposing him. His servants are likewise subjected to torture or death should they fail or even question him. Setting his sights on conquering Earth, Darkseid launched a full-scale invasion, only relenting when the planet was declared off-limits by Apokolips's sister planet, New Genesis. To compensate, Darkseid murdered Dan Turpin solely to spite Superman. He would make numerous more attempts to conquer or annihilate the planet, including attempting to destroy it with a comet and brainwashing Superman into leading an attack on his adopted world. These events led to Superman being taken advantage by Darkseid's Female Furies while in his altered state of mind, and eventually turned Superman into a pariah for years. He later attempted to use Brainiac's programming to collect the Anti-Life Equation, planning to destroy the entire universe and recreate it in his own image, leading to his death in a battle with Superman. Upon his resurrection, Darkseid immediately launched another invasion on Earth, not out of a desire for power, but solely to make Superman suffer. Ruthless and tyrannical, Darkseid is Superman's greatest enemy, and one of the few villains he has outright tried to kill.
    • The Superman Adventures tie-in comic: Darkseid, after failing to conquer Earth thanks to the intervention of New Genesis, respects his treaty with New Genesis despite his desire to torture Superman's friends, until the reveal that it was a distraction to build the Armageddon Cannon and destroy New Genesis without warning. Contacting Lex Luthor to buy a captured Livewire, Darkseid uses Livewire's powers to turn Apokolips's furnaces into fuel. Then, Darkseid orders a test of the Armageddon Cannon on Earth as revenge for their past resistance, with a chained Superman as the first victim. When a shocked Lex asks for explanations, Darkseid calls himself Life and Death and orders him to shut up and become his new general. After Superman and Livewire wreck the Armaggedon Cannon, Darkseid lets them return to Earth, expecting that the explosion of the supercharged Livewire would kill Superman and the people of Metropolis.
  • Granny Goodness, the chief of Darkseid's training camps, is a twisted New God who runs the "Orphanage". Children are taken, tortured, and conditioned until loyal to Darkseid and Granny, while abused horribly should they resist and implicitly disposed of if they fail. Only Scott Free, son of the Highfather and foster child of Darkseid, ever escaped. Vengeful towards Scott, Granny has attempted multiple times to lure him into a situation where he would die with entire cities. To further Darkseid's aims of conquest, Granny attempts to craft a new operation on Earth and even crafts a doom magnet to see a comet wipe out the entire Earth.
  • Kanto is the chief weapons-master and assassin of Apokolips, whose inventions cause havoc throughout the DCAU. Introduced arming Mannheim's Intergang with weapons they use to wreak devastation on Metropolis, Kanto later outfits LexCorp with a robot army and a strategy to "test" Superman's power. Kanto orchestrates the near-flooding of Metropolis; a violent prison riot and breakout from Ryker's that unleashes supervillains onto the city; and the kidnapping of many scientists to force them into work. In the comics, Kanto kidnaps Livewire to use her as a Living Battery for the Armageddon Cannon, a weapon created by Kanto and Desaad to wipe out Earth, New Genesis, and any other worlds Darkseid chooses.
• Brainiac, a threat to the entire DCAU surpassed only by Darkseid, is a Robotic Psychopath and collector of data who views himself as superior to all organic life. Once the supercomputer responsible for running Krypton's day-to-day affairs, Brainiac lied to the Council of Elders about the planet's impending doom, prioritizing saving himself over preserving the lives of his creators. Escaping into space, Brainiac roams from world to world, assembling all of a planet's information, and then destroying the original in order to increase the value of his stolen memories; his objective is to repeat the process across the universe until he has "destroyed all of creation". Along the way, he murders the crew of a spaceship that was investigating his presence, tries to steal Superman's body for himself, and eventually, after fusing with Lex Luthor, tries to wipe out the entire universe in one fell swoop, aiming to rebuild it in his own image. In the future, Brainiac time-travels to the past to try and destroy Superman's existence by killing a teenage version of Clark Kent, solely out of petty spite.

Justice League & Unlimited (see above for Joker & the Superman entries)

Examples

• "Secret Origins": The Imperium is the one behind the genocide of the Martian race. A being that craves lifeless darkness, the Imperium targeted the Martian civilization years ago to conquer Mars and annihilated nearly all life on the planet, leaving J'onn J'onzz as the only survivor. Years later, after being unsealed from a forced stasis, the Imperium sets up plans to repeat the process on Earth and destroy the human race, having its henchman Kill and Replace an astronaut in a plot to disable humanity's nuclear defense systems. A sadist and a coward on top of this, the Imperium gleefully tries to torture J'onn to death when it realizes J'onn is the last Martian, and when its plans go awry, it leaves all of its own loyal soldiers to die, even swatting away its henchman to burn to death in the sunlight.
• "The Enemy Below": Lord Orm is the treacherous and power-hungry half-brother of Aquaman. Resenting his brother for having never wiped out the surface-dwellers, whom Orm despises, Orm seeks to usurp the throne from his brother and wage a war against the surface-dwellers to eradicate them. To achieve this end, Orm hires Deadshot to assassinate Aquaman, blaming the attack on the surface-dwellers and using this as a means to justify war, forcing Aquaman's wife Mera to cooperate by threatening her infant son. When Aquaman returns, Orm reveals his treachery by abducting him and chaining him to a cliff near a volcano. To ensure his place as ruler over Atlantis, Orm attempts to plunge both Aquaman and his son into the volcano, forcing Aquaman to severe his own hand to save his son. Orm then arms an Atlantean thermal reactor to melt the polar ice caps, thus submerging the entire planet underwater and sentencing all surface-dwellers to death.
• "War World" & "For the Man Who Has Everything": Mongul, the cruel dictator of War World, forced warriors to fight to the death in order to take his people's minds off his oppressing them. When Superman refuses to kill the former reigning champion, Draaga, after defeating him, Mongul threatens to destroy Draaga's planet if Superman doesn't allow Mongul to defeat him in his next match. After his efforts were foiled, Mongul returned for revenge against Superman, using a plant called the Black Mercy to trap Superman in a perfect dream world. With Superman out of the picture, Mongul planned on turning Earth into a second War World. Superman was eventually able to free himself from the dream world—but not before Mongul delivered a brutal beatdown to Wonder Woman—but the emotional pain of doing so was enough to make Superman actually try to kill Mongul before returning to his senses.
• "Only a Dream": John Dee, who also made several cameos as a member of the Legion of Doom, started out as a minor convict who only fantasized of killing the Justice League to make a name for himself among super villains, but after an experimental machine gives him ESP, Dee quickly decides to make his fantasy a reality. Becoming Doctor Destiny, his first action is to take revenge on the wife who left him while he was in prison. As she's sleeping, Destiny goes into her dream and begins to torture her for hours. Eventually, the nightmare causes her to have a cardiac arrest and die of terror. Destiny then invades the dreams of each member of the Justice League, trying to use their worst fears to kill them one-by-one. These nightmares include making Superman think he killed his friends with out-of-control superpowers; and burying the claustrophobic Hawkgirl alive.
• "The Once and Future Thing" two-parter: David Clinton was once a weird little man who used time travel to steal artifacts throughout history, but after his sensitive ego takes one too many blows from his dissatisfied wife Enid, David transforms himself into "Lord Chronos". Altering the future to one where he has killed off the Justice League and its hundreds of members, Chronos conquers Gotham City and empowers the Jokerz with technology to run rampant and terrorize innocents. Having trapped Enid's mother in a "cruel thing" where he has kept her for a long, long time to control and abuse Enid, Chronos further showcases how brutal his control of time can be as he transports his snitch minion Chucko to the exact moment the dinosaurs were wiped out to kill him. Though at first merely uncaring that his actions are tearing apart reality, Chronos decides to further gain power by traveling back to the beginning of time, wipe out everything that has ever existed, and recreate time in his own image.

DC Universe Animated Original Movies

Justice League of America continuity

Examples

• Crisis on Two Earths:
  • Owlman was already a criminal and founding member of the Crime Syndicate of America. Upon discovering the existence of the multiverse, Owlman became enraged by the fact that, with every choice a person makes, they create another world in which they made the opposite choice. Determined that his choices had to affect not only his world, but all existence, Owlman journeyed to Earth-Prime, the Earth that supported the existence of all other Earths, planning to destroy all reality in a fit of existential angst. About as selfish as they come, Owlman was reviled even by his compatriots in the CSA.
  • Superwoman is Owlman's sadistic lover, a self-proclaimed "psychopathic murderer" who gets off on hurting others on both personal and grander scales. Reigning alongside fellow Syndicate members in threatening the entire population of their Earth, Superwoman is eager to aid Owlman in his plot to annihilate all worlds across the multiverse, actually aroused at the idea of ending all life across all realities while betraying the rest of their allies. When confronted by Batman, Superwoman goes about beating him brutally and torturing him, threatening him with the fate of either dying at her hand, or becoming her personal "pet" to do whatever she wants with.
• Doom: Vandal Savage is a conqueror with genocidal plans for Earth. He manages to steal the protocols that Batman designed to defeat the Justice League in case one or more members turn evil. Savage makes these protocols more lethal and sadistic and then uses them to take out the Justice League. After his Legion of Doom seemingly triumphs over the Justice League, Vandal Savage informs them he plans to Take Over the World by using a missile that will cause a solar flare that will kill half the world's population. This event will also render the rest of the world's population so weak and helpless that they will naturally accept his leadership.

DC Animated Movie Universe

Examples

• Darkseid, the Lord of Apokolips, seeks to conquer the Earth and add it to his dark empire, having conquered countless worlds and massacred the populations. Having many humans abducted to be agonizingly mutated into his Parademons, Darkseid launches attacks on the Earth, bombing entire cities before being driven back. Later responsible for unleashing Doomsday to run rampant so it will kill Superman, Darkseid killed the wife of Hank Henshaw and corrupted him into the Cyborg Superman, using him to help Darkseid come to Earth where he intends to obliterate Metropolis and then conquer the world in bloody conquest. Later taking over the world and killing most of its defenders, Darkseid converts others into unholy fusions of machine and later orders a brainwashed Batman to kill his own son, stopping at nothing to add Earth to his empire before he moves on to other worlds and continues the slaughter.
• Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox & Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay: Eobard Thawne, aka Professor Zoom, is the Reverse-Flash and opposes everything Barry Allen stands for. Thawne hires the Rogues to break into the Flash museum and straps bombs to them after they defeat Flash, planning to blow up the museum and several surrounding blocks, just so his nemesis will be tormented knowing that innocent people will die with him. After his initial defeat, Thawne mocks Flash over the fact his mother died. When Flash subsequently uses his speed to travel back in time and save his mother, the world is sent to a twisted alternate state, in which a war between Atlantis and the Amazons has caused massive devastation. Thawne delights in Barry's agony at the new world, and when Barry tries to fix the realities, Thawne tries to stop him, meaning he is willing to allow the destruction of nearly the entire planet in the war, solely to satisfy his hatred of Barry. Using the Speed Force to postpone his subsequent death, Thawne searches for a magic "Get Out of Hell Free" card in the new timeline, attempting to kill the Suicide Squad with a bomb and torturing Bronze Tiger to death with small cuts to escape the consequences of his petty, mass murdering ways.
• Son of Batman & Teen Titans: The Judas Contract: Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke the Terminator, slaughtered many League of Assassin members when Ra's al Ghul selected Bruce Wayne as his successor instead of Slade. Taking Bruce's son Damian to keep him in line, Slade torments Damian by making him watch his mother be tortured and later tries to kill Bruce's whole Bat-Family. Saved by Brother Blood and recruited to bring him the Teen Titans to drain their life force for Blood to empower himself, Slade sends Terra Markov—a teen whom he raised as his lover and pet assassin—to infiltrate and betray the Titans, and when Slade's contract requires a Titan sacrifice to replace a lost one, happily tries putting Terra to a painful death.
• Justice League: Throne of Atlantis: Black Manta readily assists Orm with his plan to start a war between Atlantis and the rest of the world, by slaughtering Atlantean civilians in sea craft that is disguised to look like a US military sub. Near the end of the film, Black Manta revealed he has been manipulating Orm into starting a genocidal war with the surface world, claiming that the war was his idea. Black Manta ultimately plans to kill Orm and take the riches of Atlantis for himself.
• Batman: Bad Blood: Talia al-Ghul, the new leader of the League of Assassins, is a Control Freak of the highest order, and Took a Level in Jerkass from Son of Batman. Her ultimate plan is is to use Bruce Wayne's technology to brainwash the world leaders attending his tech summit, in order to expand the League of Assassins' influence over the planet. Talia assembles a team of villains under the command of the Heretic, the adult clone of her and Bruce's Child by Rape Damian Wayne, and orders them to capture Bruce so his mind could be broken with Mad Hatter's machine; Mad Hatter has been forced to cooperate by means of an Explosive Leash. Later, Talia sends Heretic to attack Wayne Enterprises in order to steal technology necessary for her plan, near-fatally wounding Lucius Fox in the assault. When Heretic breaks down and begs for Talia to love him as a mother, and wishing to have Damian's memories, she shoots him in the head for disobeying her orders regarding Damian. As the brainwashing is taking place, she orders a mind-controlled Bruce to shoot Dick Grayson and their son Damian dead, coldly proclaiming that she and Bruce could always "make more".
• Justice League Dark: Destiny is a malevolent sorcerer with a god complex. Creating a magical artifact called the Dreamstone, which would force its victims to live their worst nightmares, often driving them into a murderous rage, Destiny terrorized the land until he was defeated by Merlin and the demon Etrigan, though not before mortally wounding knight Jason Blood, necessitating his merging with Etrigan to save his life. Centuries later, Destiny's spirit would manipulate the dying Ritchie Simpson into spreading the Dreamstone's magic across the world, causing casualties on a global scale, while feeding off the negative energy of the stone's victims. Finally returning to the physical world upon the Dreamstone being united, Destiny possesses Ritchie's body and sets off to continue his global conquest, wreaking havoc in a nearby city and mortally wounding Jason Blood upon his defeat.
• Constantine: City of Demons: Nergal is a depraved and sadistic demon from Hell. When John Constantine summoned him to save the young Astra from being sacrificed by her father Alex Logue, Nergal not only killed the latter and his followers but then slaughtered the people at the club before tossing Astra into a portal to Hell for nothing but his own enjoyment. Unsatisfied with his work in Hell, Nergal, under the identity of Beroul, settles in Los Angeles to run his own hellish dimension where the damned souls are tortured and gruesomely executed in various ways by demons. He gets his supply of souls from comatose patients in hospitals. He's also a man-eater who regularly bathes in a pool of liquefied human bodies. The demon abducts the soul of the young Trish Chandler, keeping it inside his own body in order to compel John into getting rid of his five demonic rivals. After John fulfills his demand, Nergal doesn't keep his words and keeps Trish as a bargaining chip to force the man into working for him. When John turns against him, Nergal strangles Chas Chandler and gloats about his ill intentions for Trish.
• Wonder Woman: Bloodlines: Medusa, upon being freed, murders Dr. Cyber and then kills Dr. Poison before using Poison's serum to strengthen herself. Going on a killing spree, Medusa petrifies and slaughters Amazons, proclaiming her intent to exterminate all of Themyscira, threatening to torture Hippolyta to death before trying to kill Diana in front of her people.

Tomorrowverse

Examples

• Justice Society: World War II: The Advisor, this universe's Psycho-Pirate, is Aquaman's Evil Chancellor who allied himself with the Nazis. Once a pirate who was rescued by the Atlanteans after his ship sunk, the Advisor thanked them by brainwashing Aquaman, using him to give Atlantean weapons to the Nazis to assist in their world domination scheme, hoping to betray them once they achieve their goal. After luring the Justice Society into a trap in Atlantis, the Advisor sends Aquaman and his Atlantean army to wreak havoc on American soil, hoping to destroy the entire country to make it easier for the Nazis to conquer. Smugly killing Steve Trevor after Aquaman breaks his control and retreats, the Advisor also reveals to have called in some planes to bomb the entire country should Aquaman fail.
• Batman: The Long Halloween: The Joker, unwilling to let the mysterious Holiday Killer replace him as Gotham's most notorious criminal, escapes from Arkham Asylum to conduct his own reign of terror. Beating Harvey Dent in his own house and threatening to murder his wife, the Joker goes on a killing spree through Gotham, targeting members of the mob to show he won't tolerate competitors. The Joker caps off his rampage by hijacking a plane and attempting to fatally gas everyone in Times Square on New Year's Eve, hoping to kill Holiday and as many people as possible in the process.
• Green Lantern: Beware My Power: Sinestro is a former member of the Green Lantern Corps and Hal Jordan's mentor before going rogue. Thriving on chaos and death, he and the Sinestro Corps instigated a bloody war between Rann and Thanagar by staging brutal false flag attacks. To prevent peace between the two sides, Sinestro sabotages Sardath's Zeta-Beam experiment, transporting Thanagar into Rannian space, upsetting both planet's ecosystems and causing millions of casualties, as well as restarting the war. Hoping to bend Hal to his will, Sinestro infects him with the Parallax entity before the two massacre the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps. Having succeeded in corrupting Hal, Sinestro subsequently becomes his main acolyte in his efforts to destroy and remake the universe.
• Legion of Super-Heroes (2023): The original Brainiac is the secret founder of the Dark Circle. A nightmarish villain responsible for countless atrocities, Brainiac attempts to have his minions murder Legion members to manipulate Kara and his clone Brainiac 5 into activating a special device that affects space and time. Having had numerous other clones created to do damage ranging from serial killing to mass destruction, Brainiac has survived by grafting them to his body still alive, conscious and with one still screaming. Seizing control of the Miracle Machine, Brainiac plans to erase every hero from existence along with anyone that could ever possibly threaten his reign over existence, plotting to destroy entire worlds to secure his final goal.
• Justice League: Warworld: Mongul is a tyrant obsessed with conquering the entire multiverse through the use of Warworld, seeking to unlock its full potential and use it as a planet-killer across all dimensions. In the meantime, he boosts its power by imprisoning countless people and trapping them inside terrible fantasies for hundreds of years so that Warworld can feed on their agony. Mongul further clones all of his prisoners to create more puppets meant to do nothing but suffer and die, and he tortures J'onn J'onnz into using his psychic powers to make the prisoners' torments all the more real. When J'onn tries to mount an escape, Mongul plans to torture him to death and broadcast his screams to the prisoners, then attempts to murder his own hired thug Lobo just for speaking out of turn.

Other Continuities, by release date

Examples

• Superman: Doomsday: Toyman is a criminal with an unhealthy obsession with children who views the entire world as his plaything. Taking advantage of Superman's death, Toyman uses a giant robot spider to rob banks, then uses the robot to take a school bus full of children hostage, threatening to drop the bus off a building if the cops don't let him keep the money. Lois Lane manages to save most of the kids, but a robot toy on the bus prevents her and one of the children from leaving. Seeing that most of the children he kidnapped have escaped, Toyman attacks Lois and the child. Toyman's robot throws the bus off the building with Lois and the child on board before being captured. Toyman quickly escapes from the police and attacks a day care center, where he kills a four-year-old.
• Justice League: The New Frontier: The Centre is a malevolent Eldritch Abomination and one of the first living beings to emerge from the Earth. Growing paranoid of the danger humanity presents to it in the wake of the atomic bomb, the Centre decides that they must be "cleansed" from the planet and begins reaching out with its Psychic Powers, radicalizing numerous innocents into crazed murderers or doomsday cults who worship the Centre and sacrifice children to the monstrosity. Upon finally revealing itself to the world, the Centre unleashes unending hordes of mutated dinosaurs to bring about mass death and carnage, and after being exposed to Ray Palmer's fatal Shrink Ray, makes a mad charge to take as many "lesser beings" out with it as possible in the ensuing explosion.
• Superman/Batman: Public Enemies: Lex Luthor ends up becoming the president of the United States after an economic recession. Luthor then orders Major Force to kill Metallo and use his death to frame Superman as a psychopath, despite Metallo's loyalties to him. Failing to stop a kryptonite meteor from impacting the planet, Luthor snaps and decides he's going to allow the meteor to crash, risking the lives of billions so he can rebuild a "new Earth" with him as its ruler. Luthor repeatedly attempts to stop the heroes from trying to destroy the meteorite, purely out of spite that he wasn't the one that saved the planet and his megalomania.
• Batman: Under the Red Hood: The Joker opens up the film by brutally beating the young Jason Todd, the second Robin, to a bloody pulp with a crowbar, before leaving him to die in an explosion he sets off. After Joker is released by a reluctant Black Mask from Arkham Asylum to kill Red Hood, Joker demonstrates his propensity for random violence by slitting the throat of one of his guards and shooting the other four dead, and soon after backstabs Black Mask by gagging him and the members of both his and Red Hood's gang, intending to burn them all alive for the purpose of getting Red Hood's attention. Once it's revealed Red Hood is in fact a resurrected Jason Todd and Batman turns the tides against Red Hood in the final confrontation, Joker tries to pin Batman down for the purpose of dying with both his arch-rival and Red Hood in an exploding building, absolutely ecstatic that he gets to die getting everything he wants.
• All-Star Superman: Solaris the Tyrant Sun is a gigantic computer that wanders the cosmos, consuming stars for fuel and leaving the inhabited planets to die. Contacted by Lex Luthor to assist him in his master plan to defeat a dying Superman, Solaris turns the Sun red in an attempt to depower the Man of Steel. Supes counteracts this and leads an army of sapient robots to battle Solaris, but he destroys the army in one blast before announcing his plan to betray Luthor, consume the Sun and force the Earthlings to worship him as a deity or freeze to death in eternal darkness. Superman then tries to feed the Tyrant Sun to a Sun-Eater, but Solaris destroys it. Before Superman destroys the mad machine, Solaris turns the Sun blue to spite Superman by destroying his people.
• Green Lantern: Emerald Knights: Atrocitus is a terrorist who has been imprisoned on an abandoned world for 700 years. Killing the first person who crash lands there, he commences a killing spree of Green Lanterns by making them overuse their power rings so he can butcher them at his leisure. When his fourth target, Abin Sur, manages to defeat Atrocitus, Atrocitus tries to smash the Lantern's power battery to take the planet with him. After Atrocitus is captured, he tries to break Abin Sur by prophesying his best friend's fall to evil.
• Batman: Year One: Commissioner Gillian Loeb is the ultimate representation of Gotham's corruption. Under Loeb's purview, crime runs rampant and crooked cops populate the streets, flooding the city with drugs while the police engage in routine brutality against even children to quell protests. When Batman begins disrupting Loeb's criminal enterprises, the latter corners the hero in a derelict building and firebombs it with no care for the homeless people inside who burn alive; citizens note this kind of overkill is par for the course for Loeb's administration. In his attempts to silence Gordon's investigations into his corrupt ways, Loeb has the man viciously beaten; threatens his pregnant wife; and works with Carmine Falcone to kidnap Gordon's wife and newborn baby to use as hostages and, eventually, kill them all to silence them.
• Superman vs. the Elite: Atomic Skull, a psychopath with a grudge against Superman, starts to murder civilians to lure Superman out. Atomic Skull is about to kill 2 women and a baby when Superman attacks him. Superman defeats Atomic Skull and he is arrested, later escaping and starting to kill more civilians. Superman and the Elite team up to defeat the Atomic Skull, but not before he kills Professor Baxter, a prominent Superman supporter. Atomic Skull is so vile, that he helps the Elite gain support for their brutal tactics from the public.
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
  • Part 1: The Mutant Leader is a vicious gang boss who uses his "mutants" to terrorize Gotham City for the sheer sake of violence. Having his mutant gang commit all sorts of massacres, slayings, and crimes across Gotham, the Mutant Leader eventually has his men begin kidnapping young children for ransom, then brutally murder the kids even when the ransoms are paid. The Mutant Leader's ultimate plan is to march on Gotham and kill countless people in a quest to decapitate Commissioner James Gordon and parade his head through the streets. When captured by Batman, the Leader responds by ordering his mutants to raze the entirety of Gotham to the ground while he personally tears out the throat of the city's mayor when he tries to negotiate peace talks with the Leader.
  • Part 2: The Joker is Batman's greatest nemesis, already a mass murderer responsible for the deaths of over 600 people before he fell into a catatonic state with the Dark Knight's retirement. Awakening after his obsession returns to disband the mutants, the Joker manipulates his way onto a popular talk show where he proceeds to murder his psychologist on live television before gassing the entire audience, agonizingly killing over 200 people with his deadly Joker Venom. After brainwashing a Congressman to his death, the Joker attacks the Gotham fair, where he has his minions attempt to bomb a roller coaster ride when Batman arrives. The Joker delights in causing wanton violence as Batman gives chase, from assaulting random people to taking a teenage girl and a young boy hostage, before escalating to simply shooting whomever he comes across. When his horrific massacres drive Batman to partially snap his neck in a rage, the Joker merely delights in how they'll meet again in Hell and finishes the job himself, laughing all the while over how the authorities will kill the Dark Knight for his "murder".
• Superman Unbound: Brainiac is a galactic-scale Control Freak and genocidal conqueror who seeks the knowledge of the universe, shrinking and stealing the city of Kandor for his goal while allowing the rest of Krypton to be destroyed by natural disaster. Later attacking another planet, Brainiac takes its capital before using a Solar Aggressor missile to cause its sun to explode, killing the rest of the population. Brainiac also has his drones come to each planet he invades and instructs them to kill inhabitants at random. Stealing Metropolis from Earth, Brainiac tortures Superman for information about Kandor before attempting to massacre the rest of Earth's population.
• Justice League: Gods and Monsters:
  • Prequel comic: Jackson Alpert, better known as Dr. Psycho, is an egomaniacal madman who seeks to evolve humanity to the next stage so he may lord over it as a god. Having taken part in the CIA's MKUltra experiments, Psycho performed extra tests on his subjects to turn them into rampaging mutants who wreaked death and havoc. Years later, Psycho keeps a group of superhumans as his enslaved experiments, threatening to agonizingly end their elongated lives at a moment's notice if they dare question his orders. After a failed attempt to torturously experiment on Superman, Dr. Psycho transforms himself into "Imperiex" and lays siege to Earth with his evolved humans, letting them run rampant while he controls the Justice League in his plan to eradicate the minds of all life on Earth and impose his own will onto them. Uncaring for the dozens who he tortures and experiments on and even less for the hundreds who die by his schemes, Psycho is called out by the League for disguising his blatantly self-serving goals as "peace" for humankind.
  • Chronicles' "Twisted" short: Harley Quinn stands in stark contrast to her mainstream portrayal. An utter psychopath, Harley abducts civilians before mutilating and killing them, making "toys" out of their mangled corpses. When Batman rescues a teenage girl Harley kidnapped, she tries to kill them both. During their fight, Batman comes across a makeshift "family" of the people Harley has murdered, including a young boy.
• Batman: Gotham by Gaslight: Jack the Ripper—in reality Commissioner James Gordon—is a psychotic Knight Templar and Serial Killer who believes in ridding Gotham of the "filth" of the streets, especially women. Kicking off a murder spree where he hunts down and slaughters numerous innocent women on the streets, the Ripper later tracks down and kills the kindhearted nun Sister Leslie. When he learns Dr. Hugo Strange has discovered his identity, the Ripper ambushes Strange and throws him to his own asylum's patients, who tear Strange apart. The Ripper then murders an old woman to frame Bruce Wayne for his crimes, and when Selina Kyle tries to prove his innocence, the Ripper targets her as well. The Ripper even regularly tortures his wife by burning the latter to "burn the sin away", until the latter has been utterly Driven to Madness. Utterly consumed by misogynistic fervor and a fanatic devotion to bloodshed, the Ripper showcases the true evil on Gotham's streets hiding within a human being.
• Superman: Red Son:
  • Brainiac is an alien artificial intelligence who comes to Earth to miniaturize and collect the city of Stalingrad before supposedly being defeated by Superman. In truth seeing an opportunity to gain control over not just a city but an entire world, Brainiac pretends to have been successfully reprogrammed, going on to serve as the Premier's most trusted ally in overseeing the Soviet Empire for over a decade. With the Kryptonian as his Unwitting Pawn, Brainiac lobotomizes dissidents into loyal servants of the USSR and constantly attempts to goad his supposed master into an invasion of the United States that will result in millions of deaths, all while never once bringing up his ability to restore the shrunken city. Upon Superman finally deciding to attack President Luthor only to have a change of heart, Brainiac destroys Stalingrad and proceeds with the invasion anyway, throwing away any façade of subordination in his mad designs. The logical conclusion of Superman's subconscious desire to put the whole world in a bottle, Brainiac is a spiteful narcissist desiring to control everything to sate his egomania, with his ship rigged to self-destruct and wipe out the entire planet even after his ultimate destruction.
  • Joseph Stalin is the initial Premier of the Soviet Union. Acting as a benevolent father-figure to the well-intentioned Superman, Stalin is truthfully a horrible dictator with millions of deaths to his name, having any dissidents mowed down in mass executions or sent to disease-ridden gulags where they are worked to death. Upon being confronted by Superman, who has discovered both the existence of these prison camps and that his childhood friend Lana was sent to die in one of them simply because she knew the Kryptonian before he joined the USSR, Stalin maintains that these atrocities were necessary to weed out the weak and elevate the Soviet Union—and himself—to greater heights.
• Batman: Soul of the Dragon: The Great Nāga is an ancient, powerful demon desiring to lead his fellow Nāgas to spread death and destruction across the world. Influencing the Kobra cult to perform sacrifices in order to free himself, the Great Nāga abandons Jeffrey Burr to perish upon being freed instead of using him as an Avatar, as he planned to use Richard Dragon as a vessel instead. Brutally beating down Batman, Lady Shiva, Richard Dragon, and Bronze Tiger, the Great Nāga openly desires to lay waste upon Earth and tries to take over Richard Dragon's body by force.
• Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons: Starro is an alien parasite that ended up trapped in space, where it grew to a massive size and began desiring domination over the universe. Taking control of nearly all superheroes on Earth, Starro sent its offspring to take over the minds of every human they can find, as it planned to drain the life out of the entire planet and then move to repeat the process on other worlds. Furious at Jon Kent and Damian Wayne for attacking it, Starro ordered the possessed heroes to kill them.
• Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham:
  • Ra's al Ghul is a dark priest and a servant of an Outer God, Iog-Sotha. Uncovering the secrets of the ancient Serpents, Ra's desired to unleash Iog-Sotha upon the world, which would have resulted in the planet's destruction. Spreading a horde of reptiles across Gotham, Ra's had the brainwashed Grendon killed, using his remains to create Poison Ivy, whom he used to painfully mutate Harvey Dent into "The Door". Performing a ritual to release Iog-Sotha, Ra's turned into a monster to kill Bruce Wayne, before using his last strength to keep the portal open to ensure that Iog-Sotha will cross over to Earth and annihilate humanity.
  • Talia al Ghul is the last remaining member of the Cult of Ghul, who wants to help her father destroy the world. Killing Kirk Langstrom and leaving his corpse in Wayne Manor to manipulate Bruce Wayne to locate the Testament of Ghul for her, Talia also painfully murdered Professor Munford by having a Djinn to devour him from the inside. Sending Killer Croc to retrieve Grendon, which resulted in him brutally tearing apart Dick Grayson, Talia resurrected her father and assisted him in his rituals, openly desiring to cause the end of humanity out of fanaticism.
• Justice League × RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen: Dr. Arthur Watts is a genius scientist who escaped his death by uploading his mind into cyberspace, and Kilg%re is an AI determined to kill the Justice League; the two team up to kill both their respective enemies. Watts trapped both Team RWBY and the Justice League in a digital world with Kilg%re to kill them, trapping Kilg%re there as well to ensure he finishes the job while Kilg%re possesses the Flash and forces him to try to kill his own friends. After this fails, they then launch a Grimm invasion on Earth, attacking cities all around the world with Watts intending to conquer the Earth and rebuild it according to his vision, while Kilg%re possesses several other heroes to kill their friends, before the two turn on each other after Kilg%re learns the truth about Watts trapping him in the simulation.

DC Showcase shorts, by release date

Examples

• Jonah Hex: Madame Lorraine is a seductress who makes a practice of enticing rich men and luring them into her clutches. Once she has them, Lorraine coldly shoots them dead, takes their money, and has her flunkies dump their bodies in a mine shaft. Lorraine comes into conflict with Jonah Hex after she kills one of his bounties and attempts to repeat the process on him. Once Hex forces Lorraine to show him where his bounty's body is, Lorraine shows him into the mine shaft, where the decaying bodies of all the men—at least 15 victims—Lorraine has killed are seen.
• Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam: Black Adam is presented here without any of his more redeemable traits. Once chosen as the Earth's savior, Adam's power consumed him to the point where he considered himself nothing less than a god, forcing Shazam to cast him out in a far point in space. Upon coming to Earth, the very first thing Adam does is redirect his impact path into an inhabited parking lot, before seeking out and intending to kill Shazam's next candidate, the young Billy Batson. Throughout his appearance, Adam shows glorification in exercising his own power over living beings, attempting to flood all of Fawcett City as a distraction and taking a hostage to force Billy to depower himself—later trying to kill the hostage anyways—while relating his supremacist philosophies to Billy. Once he's beaten, Adam contents himself with smugly trying to goad Billy into killing him. Adam would willingly hurt anyone and anything so long as the result would be to his benefit.
• Catwoman: Rough Cut is a diamond smuggler who has taken up human trafficking. Kidnapping a dozen women at a time, Rough Cut has them placed in crates and sold into slavery. When his gang abducts teenager Holly Robinson, her friend Catwoman pursues them. She finds them trying to kill a cat for the jewels on its collar, and ends up chasing them. Rough Cut makes a semi truck crash in the hopes it will kill his enemy, before offering her a 10% cut if she leaves him alone.
• The Phantom Stranger: Seth is a centuries-old sorcerer who looks like an attractive young man. Discovering an ancient amulet that allowed him to retain eternal youth by draining the life of others, Seth would murder many people to keep himself immortal. Taking over one mansion whose previous owner is implied to have been murdered by him, Seth started luring teenagers there to drain their lives, and when he invited his latest victims, he managed to drain nearly all of them, only being stopped by The Phantom Stranger, whom he intended to keep as fuel, due to his large life aura, openly saying that he would slowly and painfully drain him for a hundred years.

Young Justice (2010)

Both series

Examples

• Orm the Ocean Master is the treacherous younger brother of Aquaman, King of Atlantis. Masquerading as a loyal brother and supporter of the crown, Orm participates in the evil activities of the council known as the Light while attempting to seize Atlantis. Using a racist group of Atlanteans known as the Purifiers against the "impure" Atlanteans, Orm attempts to inspire them to wipe out anyone they deem as impure, knowing it will cause a civil war, after which he will take over what's left. He also kidnaps his sister-in-law Mera and tries to drain her powers, slowly killing her, despite knowing that she is pregnant. After the attempted genocide and civil war fail, Orm is eventually exposed and imprisoned for six years until he escapes. Seeking revenge, Orm intends to enact the "nuclear option": finding where the heroes' loved ones have their play dates, Orm waits until 18 of them have arrived, including babies and children alike, before planning to blow the house up and kill them all solely out of spite for being deservedly punished for his crimes.
• Count Werner Vertigo is always second-in-line to the throne of Vlatava. Having murdered his brother, Vertigo also leads the Injustice League in causing global destruction to gain a hefty ransom with no regard for the lives of the innocents in the cities he would see leveled. Trying to murder his 10-year-old niece Queen Perdita, Vertigo is eventually bested, only to later return as a major figure in the Bedlam Syndicate. Vertigo happily captures teenagers with the metagene, subjecting them to experimentation with a massive fatality rate, all to eventually take the throne of Vlatava, whoever he needs to murder along the way.
• Desaad, New God of sadism and torture, is the chief scientist of Apokolips, and stands with Granny Goodness as Darkseid's most horrific servant. Performing experiments and tortures on countless beings, Desaad first arrives on earth to erase the free will of any human he can, while gleefully taking part in metahuman trafficking by torturing any who fall into his clutches. Contracted to assist Ma'alefa'ak, Desaad designs a bomb to exterminate all Green Martians, just to see what happens. Not even other New Gods are safe, with Desaad cheerfully torturing Granny Goodness for her "overreach" with sadistic aplomb.

Original series

Examples

• The Brain is a cruel, controlling member of the Light whose vile scientific genius makes him stand out among his cohorts. Heading up several of the Light's projects with his aptitude for technology and biology, the Brain is responsible for the mass production of Kobra-Venom, as well as the creation of Starro-tech, which he obtained needed materials for by having Klarion cause worldwide chaos as a mere distraction. The Brain's personal exploits revolve around capturing hundreds of animals and performing painful experiments on them that increase their intelligence, sapience, and strength, but amplify their suffering. The Brain then turns the enhanced animals into armies of slaves controlled through pain and fear, and in the case of "Gorilla City", he holds the infants of Grodd's troop as hostages. When the Team goes up against him, the Brain regularly tries to vivisect them and harvest their brains, and he spitefully tries to kill all of Gorilla City's enslaved occupants when they attempt freedom from his tyranny.
• "Humanity" & "Runaways": Red Volcano is the ultimate creation of T.O. Morrow and "brother" of Red Tornado. Immediately turning on his creator upon being activated, Volcano continues his plan to erupt the super-volcano under Yellowstone and blanket the world under a cloud of ash, fully aware this will kill billions. When the Team discover Morrow's lair, Volcano sends his brother to prove himself a "loyal Red" by killing his former charges, and personally tries to murder the "meatbags" when Tornado disobeys. Returning after his apparent destruction to attack Star Labs in search of the AMAZO android, Volcano threatens to murder the teenage Runaways when Blue Beetle gets in his way.
• Season 2 (Invasion): Black Beetle, a member of the Reach's Warrior class in their invasion of Earth, is a thuggish brute who revels in the destruction of those he terms as "meat". Black Beetle assists in the abduction and safeguarding of Metahumans for the Reach's experiments; gleefully attempts to murder any hero he comes across; and helps to rig a bomb to wipe out the Team and numerous Kroloteans. When he decides the Ambassador in charge has failed too many times, Black Beetle usurps his schemes with the singular goal of the total annihilation of the Earth to hide any evidence of the Reach's illegal activities.

Revival series

Examples

• Granny Goodness, aka Gretchen Goode, is one of Darkseid's most powerful followers and a savage sadist underneath her kindly, grandmotherly facade. With a love of "discipline," Granny abuses and tortures her followers, conditioning them by forcing them to bear the conditions of her agonizing X-Pits, while operating a massive trafficking business that steals hundreds of young metahumans across the universe to be twisted into slaves for Darkseid. Gretchen uses her persona as Gretchen Goode to further this agenda on Earth by peddling a series of VR goggles that scan wearers for the metagene, repeatedly attempting to torture and break the heroes with a pleasant, cheery smile. Granny, upon discovering Halo is the living personification of the Anti-Life equation, attempts to use her to spread Anti-Life all across the universe, horribly killing off all non-meta life and utterly enslaving the metahuman survivors to Darkseid's will.
• Season 3 (Outsiders): Frederick DeLamb is the security chief and brother to the Queen of Markovia; he is also secretly Baron Bedlam, leader of the heinous Bedlam Syndicate. Bedlam masterminds the capture and trafficking of countless young metahuman children and teenagers, having them torturously experimented on and drowning them in a thick tar of his own creation to awaken their metagene. Killing enough of them to warrant regular mass burials of failed experiments, those who do survive are mutated and auctioned off as living weapons to the highest bidder. In his own grab for power in Markovia, Bedlam has his own sister and the King assassinated before killing the Quraci assassin himself, throwing pressure onto the Quraci populace as a convenient excuse to screen for more metagenes. Bedlam even has his own niece and nephew, Tara and Brion Markov, subjected to the experiments, mocking them later for how he's orphaned them. Bedlam attempts a coup in the season 3 finale, attempting to have his nephew Gregor's loyalists killed while snidely vowing never to stop trying to kill his family and take Markovia's throne—a sentiment that prompts Brion to kill him.
• Season 4 (Phantoms)'s Zatanna arc^note "Odnu!" through "Kaerb Ym Traeh!": The Chaos Lord known as Child shows her cruelty by mutilating a security guard to study his innards, before focusing her attack on the Witch Boy Klarion, believing he is unsuited to being a Lord of Chaos. Child brutally kills Klarion's anchor Teekl, before redirecting her ire at everything nearby and trying to murder the heroes set against her. With a free rein over Earth, Child enacts natural disasters all over, trying to melt the polar ice caps and wipe out every living thing on the planet with sadistic relish.

Others

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

Examples

• Kanjar Ro is a power-hungry Space Pirate who has committed attempted mass murder on a planetary scale solely for the sake of profit. Kanjar harvested the Gibbles as a source of power, and murdered the first Blue Beetle using a Gamma Gong for trying to protect them. Upon meeting Jaime Reyes, the new Blue Beetle, Kanjar weakens Jaime with the Gamma Gong, forcefully extracting the Blue Beetle Scarab and imprisoning the boy. Kanjar then uses the Scarab on himself, then uses the Blue Beetle suit to attempt to kill Batman. Later, Kanjar attempts to blow up a planet solely for profit. Afterwards, Kanjar attempts to use a neutron bomb to vaporize all sapient life on Adam Strange's homeworld of Rann, so he can then use the empty planet as a base of operations to conquer the galaxy.
• James "Jim" Craddock, aka Gentleman Ghost, was a notorious highwayman during 19th century England where he made a deal with the demon Astaroth, whereby he would become immortal in exchange for ten human souls. Stealing the souls of ten innocents, Astaroth made it that Craddock's "soul would never pass from Earth" so he would remain as a ghost swearing revenge on Batman. Craddock would return in modern day London where he succeeds in burying Batman alive and summoning an undead army with which he intends to destroy London.
• "Deep Cover for Batman!": Silver Cyclone is the Evil Counterpart to Red Tornado and the second-in-command of the Injustice Syndicate. Cyclone, much like the Syndicate's leader, Owlman, plans on invading other Earths and conquering them. Upon learning from Batman—who is disguised as Owlman—that the Good Earth is too dangerous to conquer, Cyclone decides to bring up Plan B, which involves destroying all life on that planet and using it as a warning to other Earths. During a heist to steal the material needed for the bomb, the Injustice Syndicate captures Red Hood, Joker's Good Counterpart, and Cyclone tortures him for information. When Batman frees the Evil Earth's heroes and defeats the Injustice Syndicate, Cyclone decides to activate his bomb, planning to kill all organic life on his Earth, including his own teammates, just because he hates humans and wants to rule alone.
• "Duel of the Double Crossers!" & "Death Race To Oblivion!": Mongul is the sadistic ruler of War World with a love for Blood Sports. Mongul has Jonah Hex unwittingly under his employ to capture fighters from across the galaxy, where Mongul forces them to compete in his personal Gladiator Games against his sister, Mongal. The captured gladiators must fight to the death against Mongal's champion, Steppenwolf, with hundreds of gladiators having been slain by the present day. Seeking revenge on Batman for releasing his prisoners, Mongul travels to Earth for revenge, where he sets up a Death Race and forces various heroes and villains to compete, or face their hometown being destroyed. Mongul also sets up the stakes, so that the winner of the Death Race will be made ruler of the Earth while all the losers are executed, but if Mongul's champion, Steppenwolf, wins, the Earth will instead be destroyed. After Batman wins, Mongul gleefully reveals he never intended to keep his word and was going to destroy the Earth anyway.
• "Inside the Outsiders!": Psycho Pirate, real name Roger Hayden, is a sadistic supervillain who feeds on the emotions of his victims until he destroys their minds, standing out even among world conquerors and city destroyers as a despicable predator. Kidnapping three young, rookie superheroes, the Outsiders, as his latest victims, Psycho Pirate invades their minds and mentally tortures them with their worst fears and bad experiences. Forcing Katana to relive her master's death over and over, subjecting Black Lightning to constant hate and prejudice from everyone around him, and convincing Metamorpho that his supposed friends see him as a freak, Psycho Pirate severely harms the teenagers' psyches and even gets them to nearly snuff one another out. When Batman arrives, Psycho Pirate subjects him to a horrid illusion of the Outsiders dying, hoping to force the hero to give in to his murderous hatred so Psycho Pirate can devour his emotions and mind for good. In the tie-in comics, Psycho Pirate drives a city to anarchy via making its civilians try to kill each other, with Billy Batson nearly getting mauled by Tawky Tarny before Batman saves him.
• Season 2's "Starro Invasion" arc: Chun Yull is known exclusively as the Faceless Hunter. Originally from the Saturnian moon Klaramar, the Hunter was an outcast among his people for being a violent hunter, and in retaliation, the Hunter made a deal with the planet-devouring being Starro to destroy his homeworld in exchange for being Starro's herald. Spending the following years mind controlling the populations of entire planets then offering them up for Starro to devour, the Hunter arrives on Earth to continue his work; however, he is forced to flee when the heroes of the Earth destroy Starro. Kidnapping the hero B'Wana Beast, the Hunter painfully forces him to use his powers to create a monstrous creature the Hunter plans to use to destroy the Earth, before moving on to the rest of the universe. Though the Hunter is beaten, B'Wana Beast is forced to sacrifice himself to save the Earth from the Hunter's machinations. Cruel and homicidal for no defined reason, the Faceless Hunter stood out as a surprisingly dark villain for this fairly lighthearted series.
• Darkseid is the ruler of Apokolips, with designs to invade Earth and unlock the Anti-Life Equation. Apokolips is a flaming hellscape where the entire population is used for constant labor and slave work, their spirits broken and hope gone in what is explicitly described as a Fate Worse than Death. Darkseid hopes to stage an onslaught of Earth so he can transform it into another Apokolips and replenish his slave supply with whatever humans survive his invasion, and he tries to herald his arrival by murdering multiple superheroes with sadistic, drawn-out relish. Darkseid's goals are further detailed in the tie-in comics, where he captures Batman and Mister Miracle to subject them to a series of mental deaths and torments, all in the hope he can break their minds and use the experience to replicate it on a mass scale, obtaining the Anti-Life Equation and destroying the will of all life in the universe.

Teen Titans (2003)

Examples

• Slade was a manipulative mastermind who sought an apprentice he could mold into being just as cruel and ruthless as him. First targeting Robin, Slade tested him with various schemes before 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 switched to Terra, taking advantage of her as an outcast with uncontrollable powers. Slade got her into the Titans' ranks to betray and finally try to kill them. When Terra retreats after being overwhelmed, 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 to never let her go. Though dying when Terra rebels, he is eventually resurrected by Trigon to act as an aide in exchange for getting his soul back. Slade took a vicious pleasure stoking the ensuing apocalypse, mind raping Raven with visions of her destiny and selling out all of humanity to Trigon. Even when Slade rebels against Trigon, it is solely because he refused to honor their bargain.
• Trigon the Terrible fathered Raven solely to have a human portal into the mortal realm, invade Earth, and destroy all life on it as he did Raven's homeworld of Azarath. Despite Raven's attempts to repress her powers and emotions to avoid this fate, Trigon haunts her in visions, emotionally abusing her in cruel attempts to break her will. Resurrecting Slade to serve as a proxy for his conquest, Trigon ultimately betrays Slade because he manipulated Raven into submitting willingly, incinerating him on the spot. His arrival heralds a Hell on Earth with human life petrified and desolation amok, and Trigon plots to expand his destructive campaign to the rest of the universe. A conqueror and devil in one, Trigon torments the Titans with their dark sides for his own amusement and openly deems his daughter worthless.
• Professor Chang is an amoral man who specializes in selling his dangerous technology to anyone who will buy it. Chang made Slade's robotic foot soldiers; experimented on a young Red Star; converted Brother Blood into a Cyborg; and provided the Brain the Freeze Ray with which the latter used to create a menagerie of captured superheroes. Unsatisfied with merely selling to supervillains and deciding to graduate to real villainy himself, Chang attempts to vaporize all of Jump City for fun and even tries to turn the ray on Robin's friends to hurt him.
• Season 5: The Brain is the leader of the Brotherhood of Evil and the final Arc Villain of the series. Compensating for his lack of a body by being one of the most depraved foes the Teen Titans face, the Brain is introduced tormenting the Doom Patrol in specialized cages, threatening to slowly crush Elasti-Girl to death while torturing Patrol leader Mento with electricity. When his plan to use a quantum generator to wipe out entire cities is thwarted by the Titans, the Brain begins rounding up every young hero across the globe so as to permanently freeze them into trophies, with even powered toddlers not exempt from the Brain's reach. As shown in tie-in comics, the Brain also subjects the Titans to horrible Mind Rape via the villainous Phobia, and threatens the lives of 40,000 people inside a baseball stadium. After the Titans invade his lair to rescue his frozen prisoners, the Brain tries to detonate a bomb and "clear the board completely", willing to murder his dozens of Brotherhood allies while he escapes so long as it ensures the deaths of every last hero who could stop him.
• Teen Titans Go! issue #19—"Song of the Dead": "The Agent" is a demonic, deal-making entity from outside the mortal realm who seeks to ravage and conquer the world. Choosing the delinquent Johnny Rancid as a stooge, the Agent turns Johnny into a rock star so as to use his necromancy-laden music to unleash zombies throughout Jump City that nearly devour entire swathes of innocent people across the city. The Agent then hopes to broadcast Johnny's song across the country until the entire planet is overrun by raised undead who will kill and eat an innumerable number of victims and pave the way for the Agent to assume control of the broken and diminished humanity.

Others

Examples

• The Batman:
  • The Joker was once a man who wanted to make people laugh, but after he fell into a vat of chemicals, he became an insane, murderous Monster Clown and Batman's Arch-Enemy. Devoid of any empathy, Joker commits crimes he views as "jokes" at the expense of Gotham. Terrible things he's done include poisoning people with his deadly laughing gas; putting people in various death traps; torturing Detective Ethan Bennett for hours and causing Bennett's mutation into Clayface; impersonating Batman and gassing people for minor crimes; using Bane's venom to go on a rampage; attempting to drop a teenage boy into a vat of chemicals; frequently mistreating his henchmen and his girlfriend Harley Quinn, as well as abandoning them to be arrested or even to die; and filling the abandoned tunnels and mine shafts beneath Gotham with miles of dynamite to collapse the city to oblivion.
  • Professor Hugo Strange is an amoral psychiatrist who worked at Arkham Asylum; during his time there, he toyed with his patients' well-being just out of curiosity, in one instance curing Arnold Wesker of his split personality Scarface only to break his mind again. Strange became a full-fledged supervillain when he infected Batman with a hallucinogen that made the latter attempt to flood Gotham with fear toxin—hallucinating that it was the antidote for a Zombie Apocalypse—just so Strange could witness the results. In his grandest moment of depravity, Strange allies himself with the alien race known as the Joining, selling out humanity to be destroyed by the Joining and assisting the aliens in incapacitating the Justice League, all for nothing more than the promise of ultimate knowledge of the universe.
• Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder and Ra's al Ghul are the leaders of the Foot Clan and League of Assassins, respectively, who struck a deal in the past. Shredder would help Ra's build a machine, capable of spreading dangerous mutagen across Gotham City, while Ra's in return would provide Shredder with the location of the Lazarus Pit, which would grant Shredder immortality. Shredder, invading various corporations and killing the staff who happened to be there and stealing technology, was able to nearly complete the machine, only failing to acquire the Cloud Seeder. Hearing about the failure, Ra's Al Ghul changed their plans and took Shredder with him to invade Arkham Asylum, killing all the guards there and freeing prisoners, but not before taking the formula for Joker Venom from The Joker and giving him mutagen, so that he could mutate the inmates to distract Batman and the Turtles. After Ra's hired The Penguin to steal the Cloud Seeder, he and Shredder take it away, killing all of Penguin's henchmen and threatening to kill him as well when he demanded a payment. Hoping to combine Joker Venom with mutagen and create a far more dangerous virus, that would not only painfully mutate people, but make them homicidal and extremely aggressive, Ra's and Shredder prepare to spread this to thousands of citizens of Gotham, to create chaos and destruction, before repeating this process around the world.
• Beware the Batman: Anarky is a far cry from his comic version. An utter madman who views himself and Batman as two kings on a chess board, one representing order and peace, the other chaos and destruction, Anarky commits all of his crimes out of a pathological love for attention and a sheer enjoyment of being evil. In his first appearance, Anarky grants two petty crooks high-tech weaponry before sending them on a rampage through Gotham, after which he rigs two gondolas filled with people to explode unless Batman can stop them in time. Later, Anarky pits Batman and the League of Assassins against each other as part of a plan to unleash a lethal plague onto all of Gotham, and attempts to bomb a populated park filled with police officers while trying to frame Batman. At the end of the series, Anarky makes corrupting District Attorney Harvey Dent into evil his personal pet project, and successfully drives Dent to institute Martial Law in Gotham while threatening the lives of all those who stand in his way. In the sequel tie-in comic, Anarky unlocks every door in Gotham City for a single night, then tries to spur all of the citizens into a panic-induced riot that he hopes will tear Gotham apart in the ultimate display of chaos. Though soft-spoken and eerily polite, Anarky is the most wicked foe Batman faced in the series, having no empathy, no mercy, and no motive at all except his basic whims.
• DC Super Hero Girls (2019): "#NightmareInGotham": The Joker is a teenaged supervillain and Batman's Arch-Enemy. Desiring to give Gotham its scariest Halloween, Joker breaks out of Arkham Reform School, killing one of the guards in the process, and manipulates the Super Hero Girls into releasing 3 dangerous villains, before luring them to Gotham to have them cause massive destruction and mayhem throughout the city, endangering many innocent lives in the process. Fearing that someone will outdo his efforts in the future, Joker attempts to destroy all of Gotham with a bomb, killing everyone in it, just so that no one can ever one up him.
• Gen¹³: The Movie: Ivana Baiul is the headmaster of an academy that invites what it considers the best and brightest into its ranks. However Baiul knocks out the students and performs dangerous experiments on them every night, hoping to give them superpowers and create an army of Super Soldiers, that she will use to overthrow the US government. When one of them, Caitlin Fairchild, develops super powers, Baiul wants her taken, either dead or alive, so she can run more experiments to create more superpowered beings. Baiul captures Fairchild's friends and has them tortured. When military aircraft arrive to investigate her base, Baiul orders them to be shot down. After the military forces get through her defenses, Baiul orders one of her troops to blow up the base. When he refuses, noting it would kill several of their own men in the process, Baiul kills him and activates the bombs after she escapes. Baiul's main henchman, Matthew Callaghan, believes the government killed his parents, but at the end of the film it is revealed that Baiul herself experimented on and killed his parents.
• Green Lantern: The Animated Series:
  • The Anti-Monitor, the Big Bad of the second arc until Aya takes over, is a machine obsessed with nothing less than the obliteration of everything in the universe that isn't himself. Built to be a knowledge-gathering robot, the Anti-Monitor quickly realized his superiority to all life in the cosmos, and was banished to another dimension soon after his proclamation to destroy everything in his path. The Anti-Monitor proceeded to turn trillions of planets in this alternate dimension into antimatter which he then consumed to make himself stronger, and, though making a deal with the last remaining planet's population to not consume them should they build him a portal back to his own dimension, the Anti-Monitor drained their sun of nearly all its life before he left, ensuring that the planet would still die soon after he was gone. Once back in his home dimension, the Anti-Monitor reactivates the Manhunter robots across the universe and orders them to kill everything they see, and, when confronted by Hal Jordan, the Anti-Monitor tries to force him to watch as first his friends, then entire worlds, are consumed before him. Even when beaten, the Anti-Monitor desperately tries to strike a deal with Aya to assist her in her plans to destroy reality itself to save his own hide. A megalomaniac who couldn't stand anything living except himself, the Anti-Monitor's narcissism was only matched by his petty sadism.
  • "Razer's Edge": Myglom is a seemingly moral warden of a Green Lantern prison, but is in actuality a sadist who masks his villainy as a "rehabilitation program". Myglom subjects dozens of prisoners to a machine that makes them relive their worst memories over and over again before webbing them up to be devoured at his leisure. When Hal Jordan and Kilowog deliver the Red Lantern Razer to Myglom's prison, Myglom subjects Razer to the same torments of his other prisoners, and when Hal and Kilowog realize Myglom's villainy, he captures them and plans to eat them alive after using his nightmarish machine on them.
  • "Heir Apparent" and "Regime Change": Prince Ragnar, brother of Queen Iolande, is an unfathomably petty, spiteful narcissist. Craving the power of a Lantern so as to rule his world, he poisoned his life-long mentor Dulok to get his Lantern ring and later tried to do the same to Kilowog, believing himself the only one worthy of its power, before attempting to slit his own sister's throat to ensure if he couldn't rule, neither could she. In his second appearance, Ragnar's rage earns him a place in the Red Lanterns ranks, taking over his world with them and waging war on any resistance. He would then have the Red Lantern Corps plant a "Liberator" on his world, intending to exterminate his own people of 2 billion lives, simply to spite them all for not wanting him as a ruler.
• JLA Adventures: Trapped In Time: Time Trapper is an evil being who can control time and is trapped in an ancient hourglass. After being freed by Lex Luthor, Time Trapper uses his power to help Lex and the Legion of Doom travel back in time so they can prevent Clark Kent from becoming Superman, ensuring that neither Superman nor the Justice League exists in the present. Eventually, the Time Trapper frees himself from Lex Luthor's control and banishes him to non-existence. The Time Trapper then enacts his real plan and uses his power to try and destroy the world.
• Legion of Super Heroes (2006):
  • "Sundown" two-parter: The Controller, defying the other Controllers' wishes for peace with the rest of the universe, breaks out one of their ancient weapons, the "Sun-Eater". The Controller intends to use the Sun-Eater to go on a rampage, desolating first an unpopulated solar system to illustrate what he plans to do to Earth's solar system and all the trillions of lives in it. The Controller seeks to destroy the United Planets solely to bask in the silent "perfection" of the aftermath, and it takes Ferro-Lad sacrificing himself to stop the Sun-Eater.
  • Season 2:
    • Imperiex is a warlord from the 41st century who seeks nothing less than total domination over the galaxy through sheer terror and pain. A former slave who fought his way to become a gladiator, Imperiex overthrew his oppressors and immediately turned his attentions on the rest of the galaxy, seeking to crush 44 trillion lives under his boot of dictatorship. Imperiex was thwarted by the Legion from his initial conquest, but stole one of their time travel devices and went into the past where he erased the current timeline and all life in it with Antimatter. Becoming a regular thorn in the Legion's side in the 31st century, Imperiex maims Lightning Lad while trying to kill his siblings; attempts to firebomb Cham's homeworld out of spite; and threatens to massacre the only survivors of Superman's home, Kandor. Unleashing Brainiac 1.0 onto the galaxy, Imperiex hopes to use him to bring destruction and suffering to all that live, serving as a contrast to Brainiac's desire for "order" with his own desire for pure chaos.
    • "Message in a Bottle" & "Dark Victory" two-part finale: Brainiac 1.0 was a menace from the past who quickly became one of the most dangerous foes the Legion has ever faced. Brainiac 1.0 was introduced in a flashback, where he shrinks and steals the city of Kandor from Krypton. Within Kandor was a power source that was stabilizing Krypton, but with this power source gone Krypton was soon destroyed. Brainiac 1.0 himself was destroyed long ago, but his programming resided within Brainiac 5, cut off from the other systems, waiting for a chance to be released. This chance came when Brainiac 5 accessed Brainiac 1.0's programming to gain knowledge to defeat Imperiex. Though Brainiac 1.0's knowledge was useful in defeating Imperiex, every time he used it Brainiac 1.0 was able to gain more control. Brainiac 1.0 slowly corrupted Brainiac 5, until eventually he took control of Brainiac 5's body. Then Brainiac quickly betrays Imperiex—who had helped Brainiac 1.0 take over Brainiac 5's body—killing him because he was no longer useful to him. Brainiac then proceeds with his plan to bring the entire universe under his control, by transforming all living beings in the universe into streams of data. After digitizing some planets, Brainiac returns to his home planet Colu and reprograms all the inhabitants there to serve as his army and aid in his quest to digitize the universe.
• Ruby-Spears Superman:
  • "Bonechill": Chilton Bone was a former university professor fired for spreading his theories on the occult. Bone steals the Talisman of Olaf from the university and transforms himself into a ghoul named Bonechill who can create monsters. Bonechill creates monsters and sends them to kill some university students who could identify him. Bonechill also kidnaps the Daily Planet staff and puts them into death traps inspired by Edgar Allan Poe after they try to investigate him. Bonechill's end game is to create an army of monsters and have them destroy the university, attempting to kill everyone on the campus.
  • "The Last Time I Saw Earth": Dealmaker is an intergalactic criminal who hires a Bounty Hunter named Starrok to steal a NASA shuttle, with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen on board. Starrok takes Lois, Jimmy and the rest of the crew to meet Dealmaker at a city he rules over. Dealmaker seems pleasant at first, offering them a feast to eat, but after the feast, he imprisons them in capsules and has his scientists study them. Dealmaker reveals that he is going to sell the Earth to some aliens who will become immortal if they devour humans. When Superman comes to rescue everyone, Dealmaker fills the capsules with poison gas.
• Superman: Brainiac Attacks: Brainiac is an alien android who desires to conquer Earth and drive humanity back to the dark ages. After failing to kill Superman and having his entire body, aside from one chip, destroyed, Brainiac uses Lex Luthor to rebuild himself in a new more powerful body. Tracking down Superman on his date with Lois Lane, Brainiac attacks him in the middle of Metropolis, endangering countless numbers of innocent people in his quest to destroy his hated nemesis. After Superman's apparent death, Brainiac takes over Metropolis, causing more death and destruction. When Superman was revealed to be alive and starts to fight him, Brainiac deliberately targets hundreds of innocent bystanders to gain the edge over Superman in a fight. When the fight started taking too long, a frustrated Brainiac attempts to overload a nuclear reactor near the city to cause a giant explosion. When Superman defeats him, Brainiac follows him to the hospital and smashes the cure for the deathly sick Lois, simply out of spite.

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