Emperor Mateus Palamecia, the warmongering leader of the Palamecian Empire and the main villain of the second game. Although he does not appear frequently in the story, his influence can certainly be felt through the incredibly dreary and hopeless atmosphere. Using the powers of Hell itself, he unleashed hordes of demons into the world and forced it into a state of constant desparation. And because this apparently wasn't enough for him, he continued to ravage the world with an incredibly powerful airship and a destructive Cyclone. What makes it even worse is that if you take the time to talk to the villagers, you can see just how badly he shattered their lives.
Dissidia goes to great lengths to show how much of a bastard he is. Whereas most of the other villains are at least humanized in some fashion (even Kefka, the insane monster clown!), everything he does is aimed to make the player hate him more. He intends to be the only one to survive the current cycle after Chaos and Cosmos are defeated, leaving him the master of creation. Keeping this a secret from his allies, he shamelessly manipulates them into serving his own agenda, making it seem like his plan is for their common good.*
Although, ironically, his plan, whether he intended for it to be the case or not, really did end up being for his allies' common good as well as his enemies, given Scenario 000 in Duodecim and what would have happened had Chaos flat out won the 13th Cycle.
In the Dawn of Souls edition, his light side appears and ask the heroes for forgiveness and promises to grant them eternal life if they accept. The heroes don't buy it, and they turn out to be right. Yes, the Emperor is so evil that even his light side is a bastard.
What makes him more hateful is that he wasn't made to be evil (Like Exdeath or Cloud of Darkness), and nor was he insane (like Kefka). He's just an asshole.
, more so in the SNES version than in the GBA version]], his actions are portrayed in a horrific and often tragic light. The poisoning of Doma and the impact it had on the character of Cyan was a major example of this. He embodies despair, hatred, and death and believes that life is meaningless, finding destruction fun because "precious lives" are lost...and commits his atrocities laughing. Even when he met his end at the hands of the returners, he still managed to destroy all magic and bring the espers toextinction.
Kefka's atrocities:
Testing Terra's deadly magical abilities on his own soldiers.
Burning Figaro Castle and ordering his soldiers to kill everyone.
Poisoning Doma Castle's water supply which leads to the mass death of innocents as well as his own troops, and tricking his fellow general and foil, Leo, in the process.
Brutalizing weakened Espers in the Magitek Facility.
Ruining the world and remaking it in his image. He then rules over a dying broken world full of suffering, killing anyone or any city that rebels against him with the Light of Judgement, and then deciding to destroy everything in a "monument to non-existence".
Orphaning the children of Mobliz by murdering their parents with the Light, leaving the kids to die.
He thinks it's funny to trap a child in a building with monsters that slowly burn it down and put more monsters inside that petrify anyone who goes to help.
The first Dissidia, however, subverts it by painting Kefka Palazzo in a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds type, as noted above.
However, it is to be noted that he nonetheless barely qualifies even in that, seeing how some of the other villains (even the Emperor) were implied to be quite disgusted with Kefka's actions, going by their pre-battle quotes.
That said, Kefka's basically a mad dog - an Axe Crazy psychopath who has no place in this world, or in any world for that matter. It's not entirely his fault, but that doesn't mean he should be excused, either - while it's sad that he only finds meaning in destruction, he still needs to be stopped.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy also heavily implies that the only person that Kefka cares for, if at all, is himself, to the point of extreme narcissism, even more so than in the original Final Fantasy VI, evidenced when the player fights a mirror Kefka:
Kefka: Oh, who's THAT handsome devil?!"
But think of it this way: his personality (minus the extreme narcissism), is more or less The Joker taken Up to Elevenand beyond.
Professor Hojo, the Mad Scientist from Final Fantasy VII. While he isn't the primary antagonist, he is responsible for nearly everything bad in the game and is generally thought of as one of the most evil villains in the entire franchise. While his atrocities are too numerous to list completely, here are some of the most notable:
His worst offense takes place prior to the game proper, when he injects Jenova cells into the womb of his wife, Lucrecia, in order to turn their son Sephiroth into a supersoldier. He later murders Aerith's father and experiments on both her and her mother, his research leading to the latter's death (he also had a hand in Aerith's as well, considering that he was the one who screwed up Sephiroth in the first place); tries to mate Aerith and Red XIII; experiments on the survivors of the Nibelheim massacre; murders Vincent and experiments on him; and finally, he attempts to help his son destroy the world at the end of the game. Yikes.
It's also heavily implied that he was manipulating most, if not all, of Sephiroth's actions for no other reason than to see his research blossom, and if the novellas were anything to go by, he even possessed Sephiroth to grant him more power and, more importantly, bear final witness to the results of his research after he was killed. Heck, until Crisis Core had placed the implications of Genesis doing this act, it was also implied that Hojo was the one who wrecked one of the mako generators at the Nibelheim Reactor to lure Sephiroth to the reactor and receive his first clue about his possible origins.
Don't forget Dirge of Cerberus, where Hojo is revealed to have copied his mind into the body of an experimental supersoldier and used him to order other experimental supersoldiers to commit mass kidnappings and murders, with the ultimate goal of awakening Omega and fusing with it.
To sum up the depravity of Hojo, as well as his direct responsibility for virtually everything bad that happened in the game barring the things Jenova caused years before he was born, he's basically the Final Fantasy equivalent of Dr. Josef Mengele.
There's this other guy named Fuhito in one of the prequels, acting scientist for the original AVALANCHE. Let's just describe his mindset in a single expression: Hojo's his hero. The kicker? Hojo likes him. A lot. Enough to seriously consider leaving Shinra to work with the guy. Yup. He found a way to copy part of Shinra's SOLDIER program. What did he do with the data? Invent his own variant. Complete with monstrous degradation of the mind and turning the subject into monsters. He takes two of the SOLDIERs Zack later remembers and turns them into abominations on par with Hojo's aberrations. And worst of the lot, he found an ancient Ultimate Summon that had been broken long, long before. So he implanted a piece in an innocent girl and transformed her into a weapon to be AVALANCHE's spearhead against Shinra, while the piece started sucking out her life to rebuild itself and he established a firm powerbase to release the Summon to burn the entire freaking world. In the end, he wound up taking it all and merging with it. We all know what happens when you do that.
Final Fantasy Tactics has several antagonists in the story that at least have some sympathetic qualities, like Delita Heiral. Not so for Folmarv Tengille, who is responsible for all of the bloodshed in the conflict just to revive the fallen Ultima, an abusive father who murdered his own son and massacred an entire castle, kidnapping Alma so that he could use her as a host body for Ultima. At this point, he's already one of the most despicable characters in the game, but then he decides to resurrect the recently deceased Zalbaag and force himto fight Ramza.What.The.Hell.
Argath/Algus might have a Freudian Excuse, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a smarmy little git who treats low-born people like chattel simply because they were born in that station, is an ingrate towards Delita and Ramza, and repays them for their help by slaughtering the former's little sister, which, despite being a pragmatic order, he was implied to really enjoy doing. Thank god you get to kill the slimeball immediately after that. And again in the PSP remake, where he's brought back as a Death Knight - partly to flesh him out more, but mostly so you can kill him again.
Dycedarg Beolve turns out to be one, so much that it's not funny. He murdered his own father for power and, along with his childhood friend, Duke Bestrald Larg, he plunged Ivalice into civil war against Duke Goltanna. Then he backstabs Larg as well, and when his brothers Zalbaag and Ramza call him out on his actions, he has the audacity to be offended. And when he merged with Adrammalech, he murdered Zalbaag as well. This all arguably makes him worse than Folmarv/Vormav, who might not have initially been a CM.
Final Fantasy XII features Judge Bergan, who decides, on a whim, to slaughter half the population of Mt. Bur-Omisace, including Gran Kiltias, who was the in-game equivalent to the pope, the Occuria, who decide that, because of the actions of Vayne, Dr. Cid, and Venat, the entire Empire (innocent civilians included) should be obliterated off the face of Ivalice, and Ba'Gamnan, who killed possibly dozens of hunters trying to lure out Balthier, and he only killed them because they weren't Balthier!. These guys are sick individuals.
Final Fantasy XIII is fairly sympathetic with some of its antagonists, but a few stand out as being truly loathsome:
Barthandelus/Galenth Dysley: Easily one of the least sympathetic main villains in the series. His goal is to kill everyone in Cocoon so that their deaths can bring the Maker back to the world. And he makes it very, very clear that he has absolutely no remorse for the mass slaughter he seeks to bring about and has not the slightest bit of care for human life. When the characters first encounter him, he brutally murders his personal guards and Jihl. His worst offence is probably when he shatters the crystallized Dajh and Serah at the end of the game (even though those weren't actually them, but imitations, in an attempt to break the Party's spirit). The fact that he absolutely reeks of Nightmare Fuel at times doesn't help. Even before killing the personal guard, he gives a brief hint at his true nature when she first encounters him:
Jihl Nabaat: We didn't expect to see you here in person, Your Eminence.
Galenth Dysley: This crisis threatens the entirety of Cocoon, my child. You agree that standing in the fore is a leader's charge?
Jihl Nabaat: Wholeheartedly.
Galenth Dysley: It also affords a splendid view of the impending execution. (chuckles)
The quote above indicates that the main reason he came over was because he wanted to see the main characters die. Dysley goes on to slaughter his own soldiers, Jihl included, instead of killing the heroes, meaning that he most likely had a different "execution" in mind.
Orphan: The Final Boss of the game only appears at the very end, but boy does he make good use of his screen time. He transforms most of the party into Cie'th Corpses and proceeds to repeatedly kill and revive Fang in front of Vanille. At first, the party seems to think he's a good Fal'cie and presumably an enemy of Barthandelus, but it turns out they were working together from the start.
Jihl Nabaat: Initially, she is portrayed as a kind woman, consoling Sazh after his son is made a l'Cie. It doesn't take long for her to shed the facade: it's made abundantly clear that she was always a heartless bitch and only ever using Dajh for his l'Cie powers. She watches coldly as the boy turned to crystal and his father wept. It took a LONG time for Dysley to cross the Moral Event Horizonafter all the good will he earned by killing her.
ExDeath certainly qualifies as such. For one thing, his castle was heavily implied to be made out of his enemies' remains, some of which give off the sense that they are alive. He sunk an island with possible innocents just to demonstrate what happens if they try to go against him and his plans, After tricking the characters into breaking the seal, he thanks them by torturing them with the crystals, and then tortures Galuf's grandchild. He also ends up shattering the remaining crystals so the two worlds would fuse back together just to get his hands on the void, and upon gaining it, his first acts are to have Lenna's kingdom sucked into the void, as well as having her possessed by a demon just to spite the party. It gets even worse when, after gaining some more control over the Void, he actually goes as far as to suck up nearly every small village on the planet, including Bartz Klauser's hometown, Lix. Suffice to say, Bartz does not take this well at all, even going so far as to drive the airship quite dangerously in his rage and grief.
In Final Fantasy IV, there are guys like Quirky Miniboss Squad member Cagnazzo, a monstrous shapeshifter who has been spending months impersonating Baron's beloved king and using his trusted (at the time) Dark Knight Cecil to deliver a ring to a far-away city, which happens to have a massive bomb enchantment on it, leading to the deaths of most of the villagers, just because they were summoners and therefore were dangerous to his master's plans. Insulting Cecil's assumptions that he is the king, he even screws over the party after his defeat, activating a trap designed to crush them to death. Palom and Porom's temporary Heroic Sacrifice only serves to drive the point home. On the other hand, it's also strongly implied that the only reason he committed such atrocitites was because Zemus, via Golbez, brainwashed him alongside the other four essences of the Crystals. Indeed, when he next appears in The After Years, he was shown to be somewhat nice.
Far worse than him (almost reaching Hojo's level) is fellow depraved Mad Scientist Doctor Lugae, a guy so monstrous (transforming one of the party's members' parents into chimerae as well as gleefully altering his composition into a monster himself) that he disgusted Noble Demon Rubicante to the point where he had to explain to the party he was as offended with Lugae's behaviour as them. Remarkably, he has himself very little screen time, but hoo boy, does he make good use of it.
The trueComplete Monster of this entry? Zemus. According to his wiki, he was the only voice among the Lunarians, same bloodline as Cecil and Golbez/Theodor, who kept pushing for world domination, but was forced by his own people to fall into a millennium-long coma to allow humanity to evolve until the two could coexist peacfully together. Even in this state, he was still capable of manipulating Golbez to carry out his Final Solution-esque dreams of an all-Lunarian utopia, which involved not only committing the atrocities listed above, but also using the artificialabomination Giant of Babil, which was capable of dealing massive amounts of racially-based genocide on a global scale. And it wasn't just Golbez who was manipulating Kain during his fight with Paladin!Cecil; it was Zemus, but it was done indirectly and unintentionally. Probably. Let's just say that Omnicidal Maniac doesn't even begin to cover this guy's psychological diagnosis. Also, it is also strongly implied that he was also responsible for the brainwashing of the four essences incarnations, including Cagnazzo, and thus was also responsible for the atrocities committed by Cagnazzo.
Shinryu from Dissidia willingly turned Chaos into a Nigh Invulnerable, Ax Crazy force of destruction, knowing full well that this will likely destroy the world he's supposed to be watching over, purely out of spite.
Not only that, but Scenario 000 reveals that pretty much everything in the Dissidia series is entirely his fault! To wit, he took advantage of Cid's grief and rage over his wife's death and tricked him into a Deal with the Devil under the guise that he would help make Chaos strong enough to defeat the nation of Onrac. However, what happened instead was that Shinryu stripped Cid of his body so he could never die and forever witness the cycle of death, created Cosmos as a direct mockery of Cid's wife, and kept the War going for untold centuries. Why? All so he could increase his own power by draining the warriors from both sides of their memories at the end of each cycle, and sometimes, he doesn't revive one of the warriors, instead leaving their spirits to rot in the Void for eternity. Why? Simply because they no longer have any strength for him to steal.
