Monster / Podcasts

Daisy Tonner: So... what, you're [Basira's] boss now? Is that supposed to stop me?
Elias Bouchard: Yes. (...) Basira is now tied to the Institute. All of you are, like fingers on a hand. And I am the beating heart of it. Should I, or the Institute, be destroyed, you will all, unfortunately, follow suit. And it would not be a pleasant death.
Daisy: Bullshit!
Elias: Then shoot me. Just squeeze the trigger, and watch the only person you care about die screaming. Your last connection to humanity. Do it.

— The Magnus Archives, "Nothing Beside Remains"

Podcasts have purveyors of perfidy.

Entries in each group are by release date.

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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The following have their own pages

• BIONICLE
• The Walking Dead

Examples with their own folders

Ain't Slayed Nobody

Examples

• Y'all of Cthulhu: Colin Brock was a suave and charismatic sociopath who led a notorious band of outlaws in the mid-to-late 19th century. Learning of the Great Old One Mgepgathg, Brock decided to unleash it from its interstellar prison—which would prove disastrous for humanity—in exchange for being rewarded with godhood. Converting his gang into a cult, Brock performed horrific experiments on infants and animals to create a host that Mgepgathg could use as an avatar. When Sheriff Clay Bishop defected to keep his daughter Ellie—one of the prospective hosts—safe, Brock dispatched gunslinger Lance Kilkenny to hunt him down and kill him. As an adult, Ellie rallied a posse—including a repentant Lance—to avenge her father, locating Brock in the mining town of Olvido, New Mexico, which he had taken as his base of operations, brainwashing the citizens into becoming cultists. Brock succeeded in capturing Ellie and killing all but one of her traveling companions, undercover government agent Johnny Rhodes. Despite interference from Nyarlathotep and a benevolent Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, Brock sacrificed the remaining inhabitants of Olvido to turn Ellie into Mgepgathg's avatar and apotheosized into a Humanoid Abomination.
• "The Murder Shack": The Murder Shack itself is a sadistic entity disguised as a wood cabin, gaslighting those who set foot across its threshold into butchering each other with a rusty sickle and trapping their souls to use as bait to lure in new victims. When the employees of a start-up corporation stays at the cabin, the Shack gaslights them into slaughtering each other, and Eric Double into hanging himself. Six months later, the Shack manifests one of its victims, Annie, and sends her to lure Dr. Alex Sharp, Paul Biebers, and Bobby Double into entering it. Manifesting the souls of their loved ones and lying that it will release them if they kill each other, the Murder Shack goads Alex into killing Bobby and Paul into hanging himself, infecting Alex with a piece of itself that enables it to ensnare her when she escapes.
• "The Dare" series: Evelynn Barnaker is a child-eating witch who haunts 12 Ashwood Road in Boston, and has been devouring children for at least 100 years, sewing the skins of her victims into clothing and tormenting those foolish enough to move into her old house. In 1986, Evelynn converts local bully Roger into a reanimated corpse puppeteered by the vermin under her control and uses him to lure the tweenage Trouble Trio—Pauline, Kyle, and Charles—into venturing inside her house, spying on them through mirrors and gaslighting Pauline into believing she is the ghost of her late grandmother. Siccing her verminous minions on the Trouble Trio, Evelynn turns Kyle into a puppeteered corpse and captures Pauline before devouring her alive.
• "A Dance with Darkness": Hugh Budleigh is the baron of Budleigh Hall and a retired admiral in the British Royal Navy. While presenting a dignified front befitting a Regency-era nobleman, Hugh became obsessed with regaining his family's lost glory—his father having squandered the family fortune—and discovered a ritual he could use to do so. Hunting down the components under the cover of The Napoleonic Wars, Hugh summoned an angel and allowed it to mate with his sickly wife. This produces a supernaturally handsome human-seeming son named Alexander and a horrifyingly monstrous Nephilim—who the traumatized midwife prophesied would bring about calamity. Only caring about his family in terms of how they can benefit him, Hugh disdains his biological daughter Charlotte; keeps his bedridden wife locked away and grotesquely pregnant with half-human horrors; plans to marry Alexander into a wealthy family once he comes of age; and callously has the Nephilim murder anyone who attempts to uncover or expose his secrets—including his own daughter.
• "Ministry of Fear":
  • Rosalind "Riz" Holmes is Fathom Films' scriptwriter, possessing a macabre imagination wielded in the creation of gruesome PSAs for the British Central Office of Information. Informed that the COI is under new management with a mandate to inspire terror and paranoia towards everyday life, Riz is initially furious when tea-boy Ben Christie is given the role of ideator instead of her. When Ben accidentally causes an innocent woman to be seriously injured, Riz gaslights him into leaving the woman to bleed out and later causing a construction site to collapse, leading to several workers and innocent bystanders being fatally injured. Delighted that the Minister in charge of the COI approves, Riz goads the mentally-broken Ben into suggesting they drive a fully-loaded double-decker bus through Covent Garden, supplies him with tools to sabotage it, and gaslights him into going through with it when he tries to back out. When the ensuing bus crash kills countless men, women, and children—including her coworkers Adrian Turnbull and Kirby Sullivan—Riz revels in the carnage as she and Ben capture it on film; and eagerly volunteers her services when the Minister offers only one of them an in-house job committing even more acts of mass murder and domestic terrorism.
  • The Minister is a Humanoid Abomination summoned by Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath to help him maintain control of the British government. Taking control of the Central Office of Information and then the government itself, the Minister—who feeds on fear—mandates the production of public information films to spread terror and paranoia throughout the British populace, taking a personal interest in the production studio Fathom Films. Manipulating probability, the Minister causes Ben Christie's attempts to scare people to result in death and destruction, psychically gaslighting Ben until he snaps and suggests driving a fully-loaded double-decker bus through a crowded park. The Minister has Ben tamper with the bus' wheels, causing the vehicle to veer into a crowded park and crash, brutally killing dozens of people, including most of Ben's colleagues. Pleased, the Minister offers Ben and his sociopathic colleague Riz a job to continue committing acts of mass-murder and domestic terrorism in the guise of making public information films—if one of them can kill the other.
• The Waking Children series (with Malevolent): The Woken Man is an entity implied to have once been a human sorcerer with immense power over life and death, encased in iron and bound by tree roots in a shrine underneath the Longdale House orphanage with his disembodied spirit haunting the surrounding forest. Offering power and longevity to those who serve him, for untold decades the Woken Man has ordered the sacrifice of dozens of the children and infants sent to the Longdale House. When Father Samson—the priest in charge of the Longdale House—has outlived his usefulness, the Woken Man compels him to take his own life and claims him too. Driving Teddy Bloom insane when he comes across the shrine beneath the orphanage, the Woken Man orders him and Headmother Anne to sacrifice the orphaned newborn Eli Paddock. When Cecilia Hammond, Jeremiah "Walt" White, and Albert Brookner thwart his designs by rescuing Eli, the Woken Man begins haunting them as punishment.

The Magnus Archives

Examples

• Jonah Magnus, aka Elias Bouchard, is the founder and head of the Magnus Institute, having stolen several of his worker's bodies to survive for centuries. Attempting to bring about the end of the world for the Eye in order to rule over the remains as its Avatar, Magnus conducts a ritual which destroys Milbank prison killing hundreds of inmates including his friend. Eventually realizing that the reason the rituals can't work is because the Fears are too interconnected to destroy the world alone, he manipulates Jonathan Sims into making contact with all of the Fears and uses him to bring about the apocalypse forcing him to read the ritual. Along the way, he murders anyone who gets too close to the truth and forces his employees to stay under the belief that if they leave or try to hurt him they will all die horribly, mentally torturing any who still try to rebel. This, along with him showing her father's horrible death to torture her, leads to Melanie King stabbing her own eyes out to escape him. Cruel, smug, and willing to stoop to any depth to preserve his own life and power, Magnus manages to stand out in a setting full of evil gods, monsters, and other Avatars.
• Mary Keay is a chillingly realistic example of a narcissistic abuser in a fantastical setting. Committing her first murder at a young age to gain power, she murdered numerous others throughout her life, binding several spirits to her book, making their very existences agony, all to force them to help her. Among them is her long abused husband, Eric, whose corpse Mary mutilated while his spirit was Forced to Watch. Seeing her son Gerard as merely an extension of her legacy, Mary forces him to help her gain power, as well as using him as a genuine pig for her experiments. Refusing to accept her own mortality sometime in 2008, Mary attempts to kill herself in order to bind herself to the book with more power than the others had, making sure to give Eric's page away so Gerard would never see his father again beforehand, continuing to force Gerard to serve her. Despite not working for the Fears, Mary is a frighteningly abusive mother who cares only for her own power, regardless of who she has to hurt and murder to obtain it.
• Maxwell Rayner, Avatar and chief servant of the Dark—and possibly Edmund Halley—is an arrogant, petty fanatic. Having failed to give the world to his master in 1715, Rayner spent the next 300 years preparing to ensure the Extinguished Sun succeeded, expanding his lifespan by acquiring a series of children whom, upon his old body nearing the end, he would transfer his essence into, killing them. Creating the People's Church of the Divine Host, a massive international cult of Dark worshipers, Rayner directed them to perform countless ritualistic sacrifices to his master. Forcing Robert Montauk's killing spree, Rayner used their deaths to create the Still and Lightless Beast, and was the driving force behind the creation of the space station Daedalus, so that through months of torturous human experimentation he has Manuela Dominguez build him the Dark Sun. Convinced he was on the verge of victory, Rayner had his cult kidnap thousands of victims and subject them to "a week of horrors", sacrificing the victims one by one to empower the Dark Sun, to allow his master to spill out and consume the universe.
• John Amherst is a slimy, faux polite Avatar of the Corruption, known for his mocking grin, who delights in spreading sickness and decay. Possessing the unique ability to return from death, Amherst, during the Boer War, caused several wounded men to die in agony and is implied to have worsened the disease outbreaks at the concentration camps. Over a century later, taking advantage of the closing of the Ivy Meadows Care Home, Amherst took over, infecting the residents, staff, and the building itself with a horrific disease that caused their bodies to slowly rot and flies to grow inside of them. Returning a final time, arriving in Klanxbüll, Amherst infected the entire town with his worst plague, causing the residents' flesh and muscles to grow progressively looser until they sagged off their bodies, leaving bones and organs exposed, and causing the rotting flesh to fuse to the ground. Not content, Amherst compelled many residents to drag themselves through the town, so he could meld them together to form himself a twisted throne, his victims alive and conscious throughout but unable to do anything but attempt to scream.
• Season 2: The Not-Them is an ancient creature, the source of Changeling legends, that painfully murders its victims and bends reality so that it might take their place. It alters the memories of those around its victims, save for one unlucky soul who is left to remember. The Not-Them gleefully mentally tortures them to near insanity before moving on or murdering them, which it had done to several interview subjects testifying before the Magnus Institute. Having killed Sasha James and replaced her, the Not-Them proceeds to threaten the same agonizing end to Archivist John Sims.
• Season 3: Nikola Orsinov is a creature of the Stranger created to bring about the end of the world through the Unknowing. Murdering her creator because she found him "boring", Orsinov took over the Circus of the Other, leading them to terrorize entire towns. In preparation for the ritual, Orsinov has her followers abduct and flay potentially hundreds of people, keeping them alive for months, if not years; she personally skins several people, including Tim Stoker's brother. Orsinov is also behind Breekon and Hope delivering the Not-Them, causing the death of Sasha James and the invasion of the Archives. Delaying completing the ritual due to enjoying the sadistic fun too much, which makes even her own followers uncomfortable, Orsinov is a childish sadist who lives only for her own sick pleasure.
• "Chosen" (Episode 139): Eugene Vanderstock is an unpleasant, smug, thuggish Avatar of the Desolation, who despite his minor role stands out as the worst member of the Cult of the Lightless Flame. A sadist and a serial arsonist even before joining the cult, at only 5 years old, Vanderstock set buildings full of people alight during the Blitz, his fires providing targets for the Nazi bombers. Happily giving up his humanity to become an Avatar, Vanderstock was chosen to provide regular sacrifices for Agnes Montague, picking a nightmarish way to do so. Murdering his way up the corporate ladder at a steel factory, Vanderstock used his new authority to set up a secret "workshop". For decades, Vanderstock would kidnap vulnerable workers, often ones with the highest aspirations, melting their mouths shut. Dragging them to his workshop, he would slowly and agonizingly melt them down, molding special candles out of their liquid fat, which when lit would emit his still conscious victims' screams for several hours before burning to nothing. Vanderstock later admitted he didn't care if Agnes never received the candles due to the sheer enjoyment he got from creating them.

Marvel Universe

Examples

• Black Panther: Sins of the King: Viper, aka Madame Hydra, is the leader of Hydra, who wants to take over Wakanda's resources for herself. She teams up with Dr. Miremba Angom, health minister to Waknada's neighboring nation Rudyarda, who secretly has a grudge against Wakanda. Viper tells the supervillain Graviton that Rudyarda is developing a particle bridge, and Graviton kills thousands in Rudyarda's capital to try to obtain it. Then Viper takes the guise of Jennifer Lancaster, director of an NGO called Ruby that promises to rebuild Rudyarda with Wakanda's help. Viper lures Black Panther into a trap and captures him, taking him to a lab where Hydra has captured hundreds of superhumans, experimenting on them to reproduce their powers. Viper has Black Panther tortured, but the latter escapes, later returning to learn that Hydra has invaded Wakanda. Black Panther and his allies defeat the Hydra army, but Viper has been working with Miremba to destroy Wakanda's population, with Miremba bringing back fallen Hydra soldiers as zombies, planning to use them to kill everyone in Wakanda. When the Avengers try to help Black Panther, Viper forces the supervillain Thunderball to attack them, threatening to blow up him with a bomb she placed on Thunderball if he refuses.
• Black Widow: Bad Blood: Jean-Paul Viscose, aka the Shark, is a criminal and biosmuggler working for Alan Holt, a billionaire who thinks he must kill off 80% of humanity to save the remaining 20% and is planning to spread a virus across the globe to achieve this goal. Viscose is willing to aid Holt's mass murder scheme, planning to use Holt's resources to conquer the remaining 20% of humanity after the virus is released. When Black Widow and Bucky Barnes confront Holt, Viscose has Holt killed, taking over the operation himself. Black Widow and Bucky manage to blow up Holt's lab, but Viscose takes a convoy of trucks with the virus and heads to Geneva, planning to spread the virus there, and threatens to kill any of Holt's men who refuse to help him.
• Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire: Selene Gallio is an immortal energy vampire who is always seeking new victims to prey on. Active since at least the 1930s, Selene sets various organizations throughout the decades to get access to people to drain. In her latest venture, Selene has set up a youth commune called Nova Naledi to lure in young people with minor superpowers. After accidentally killing one of her followers, Jamie Greene and his friend Brenden, after overfeeding on them, she sticks Brenden's body in a freezer and dumps Jamie's body in an overpass. When Jessica Jones investigates Jamie's murder, she eventually discovers Selene is behind it. Selene manages to capture Jessica Jones and Sam, one of her followers, when Sam learned too much and locks them in her basement. There Selene feeds on Sam and Jessica and mentally tortures Jessica. When Jessica and Sam escape, Selene flees to a retreat upstate, taking the youths in the commune with her, with Selene planning to feed on all her followers until they die.
• Marvel's Wastelanders:
  • Old Man Star-Lord: Brandon Best was Doctor Doom's press agent during the supervillain takeover of Earth. After Doom is injured by the Hulk, Best imprisons the weakened Doom in a prison and takes his resources, turning the Midwestern United States into his personal fiefdom. Best has his subjects believe Doom is in charge when in actuality Best is the true ruler. Best forces his subjects to work in mines and factories for little pay and extracts exorbitant taxes from them. Best has his Doombots kill anyone who protests his dictatorship. Best also takes people who displease him and puts them on Deer on Spear, a broadcast shown to his subjects where Kraven the Hunter brutally kills people and then puts the bodies on trees as a warning.
  • Doom: Cora is a seemingly friendly and goofy robotic helper who is secretly a psychopath. Cora is a Rigellian Recorder who is saved by Star-Lord from hostile aliens. Star-Lord takes Cora to Earth and while Cora helps Star-Lord defeat Kraven the Hunter and his master Brandon Best, she is really scouting Earth for colonization by the Rigellian Empire. Cora eventually abandons Star-Lord and allies with a newly freed Doctor Doom. While Cora is assisting Dr. Doom in his quest to attain the Cosmic Cube, she is actually biding her time. After Doom regains the Cosmic Cube and kills the Hulk, Cora reveals her true colors. Cora has decided that humanity is unworthy of survival and will be destroyed to make way for the Rigellian colonizers. Cora hijacks a Cold War-era nuclear stockpile and aims it at Dr. Doom, destroying the West Coast of the US to achieve her goal.
• Thor: Metal Gods: Nihilator is an evil being from a universe of dark energy who he tried to enter our universe, but his body became incapacitated when he did, curling into a ball and becoming a planet named Miskandar. Nihilator decided to create life on Miskandar to be worshiped; when his creations eventually stopped worshipping him, an enraged Nihilator destroys most of the people on Miskandar. Nihilator places his mind in a crown that Loki steals and gives to a mediocre singer named Sylvain. The crown corrupts Sylvain, who mind controls aliens and forms a cult around Nihilator. Thor and his allies defeat Sylvain and the cult, but Nihilator mind controls Thor and his allies. Nihilator plans to corrupt Skarra, a refugee from Miskandar, and use her mind to restore himself so he can bring death and destruction to the universe.
• Wolverine: The Lost Trail (second season): These two villains stand out as particularly heinous, even in this dark setting:
  • Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind, is a mutant kidnapped by Weapon X so that they can make him into a weapon for the government. He is imprisoned with a mutant named Maureen, as well as Logan himself. Maureen designs a helmet to increase Wyngarde's powers, allowing the trio to escape, but Wyngarde uses his powers to incapacitate Logan, believing him too beastly to be allowed to roam free, allowing Weapon X to recapture him. Years later, Wyngarde is using his powers to kidnap people around New Orleans—at least dozens, possibly hundreds of them—turning them into mind-controlled "zombies" and taking them to a community he is creating, Green Haven. At Green Haven, Wyngarde runs this community like a fiefdom, with humans acting like serfs for the mutants. When Weapon X sends an army of sentinels to capture him and Wolverine, Wyngarde has no intention of giving up his fiefdom, intending to have his mind-controlled "zombies" fight the Sentinels to the death, not caring if they die in the process. Wyngarde also exposes Wolverine to horrific illusions to break him and make him his pawn.
  • Master Mold is the AI that controls the Sentinels for Weapon X and the true architect of Wolverine's misfortunes. Master Mold is using the Sentinels to kidnap mutants so that Weapon X can make them into weapons for the government. Master Mold is also stoking anti-mutant violence in America, by providing funds and support to anti-mutant groups like a biker gang known as the Cold Blooded. After Wolverine escapes Weapon X, Master Mold is dead set on recapturing him. Master Mold hires the Cold Blooded to capture Wolverine but has her Sentinel army wipe them out when they prove too chaotic to control. Master Mold sends her Sentinel army to Green Haven, ordering them to kill everything in their path until Wolverine is captured. After capturing Wolverine, Master Mold not only intends to make Wolverine her weapon, but also plans to use Wyngarde's mind control tech against the people who run Weapon X, desiring to give orders, rather than follow them.

Other examples

A - H

• Alice Isn't Dead:
  • The mysterious Police Woman, also known as Thistle, is a relentless hunter who hounds Keisha across the US to murder her for getting too close to the secrets of the Thistle Men and Bay & Creek Shipping. Along the way, the Police Woman leaves a trail of bloodshed and destruction, killing multiple people to take their vehicles, with Keisha stumbling upon her gruesome murder of a cop at one point. Upon capturing Keisha, the Police Woman reveals herself as a monstrous sadist who tries to force Keisha to "understand" everything, just so she can take cruel pleasure in her despair before killing her. Even after her supposed death, Thistle awakens later and reveals she is the one who creates the cannibalistic Thistle Men and sets them on the world to watch the carnage, gleeful about the murders and chaos she will continue to sow.
  • Lucy, a high-ranking member of Bay & Creek, is apparently a close friend of Keisha's wife Alice who cares for Keisha. In truth, Lucy is a willing participant of The Conspiracy to make others believe that her group are fighting the Thistle Men instead of working with them. Lucy betrays her own allies, letting them be murdered and directs the Thistle Men to claim more bodies before leading them to massacre Keisha, Alice and their group of survivors, showing no remorse in attempting to murder Alice and Keisha with her bare hands.
• The Angel of Vine (link): Samuel Tensch is an artist who grew up in France. He was raised by a caretaker until one day he murdered her and tried to turn her into an art exhibit. Unsatisfied with his work, thinking it too crude, Tensch set the caretaker's body ablaze, burning down his house and killing his parents in the process. He moves to Los Angles and becomes a famous artist. He is secretly a Serial Killer, who murders 27 people and uses their blood to create several paintings; his masterpiece is his Angel of Vine, where he murdered a young actress named Marlene Evans, removed her spine and several other bones and used them to create a halo around her head.
• The Ballad of Anne and Mary: Jonathan Barnet is a pompous, misogynistic pirate turned privateer. Years ago, Barnet was a member of Jack Rackham's pirate crew on the Revenge and attempted a mutiny to kill Rackham, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read, hoping to make the crew more bloodthirsty and cruel under his leadership. Humiliated and run off the ship, Rackham became a privateer and captured the Revenge, executing the crew, including a young boy, except Anne and Mary, who pretended to be pregnant. Knowing the women had a stash of treasure hidden somewhere, Barnet hired journalist Nathaniel Mist to interview the women, hoping he would discover the treasure's location. Angered by Mist's failure, Barnet tied him up and beat him, bragging about his plan to torture the treasure's location out of the women and have Mist arrested for sedition, hoping to take everything away from them in a final act of spite.
• Batman:
  • The Audio Adventures:
    • The Joker is a "mass murderer and malignant psychopath" who has been plaguing Gotham for 5 years, and looks to make his biggest splash yet on Valentine's Day. A cruel sadist who once poisoned the children of a police sergeant, then tricked the man into ensuring his kids didn't get the antidote in time to save their lives, the Joker has killed hundreds, if not thousands of people throughout Gotham, his schemes always designed to achieve the highest body count possible. Mentally torturing dozens of people into his loyal slaves and coaxing a boy to poison his own parents in the present, Joker takes an entire bus of passengers hostage and maims several of them, then reveals his newest scheme is to flood Gotham with a "Love Potion" that will drive the millions of citizens insane with homicidal lust, and tests the potion by shoving a woman into it and driving her mad. Though utterly convinced he was "created" by a fall into chemicals, Joker is revealed by Batman to have always been a violent, murderous criminal who enjoyed hurting others, and all the chemicals did was give him a "novelty".
    • Oswald Cobblepot, aka, the Penguin, is Gotham's premier crime lord. Controlling Gotham's criminal underworld for a long while, throughout which he regularly assassinates his rivals, Penguin was responsible for the creation of fellow villain Two-Face when he had attorney Harvey Dent sprayed with acid for trying to prosecute Penguin. Further driving Harvey to madness by taunting him and nearly bombing a pier he owns to kill dozens of civilians, Penguin breaks Harvey into fully embracing Two-Face and becoming his ally to "legally" create his own police force. To further facilitate his authority, Penguin stages the robbery of life-saving organs from a children's hospital, endangering several dying kids so he can paint himself as a hero. A petty bully underneath his veneer of affability, Penguin greatly enjoys Disproportionate Retribution against those who earn his ire. He holds Stoveplate Sullivan's daughter hostage and freezes her pet kitten alive; threatens to feed a senator's infant child to one of his birds; beats a man to death and frames a star player to rig a baseball game; kills and turns a chef into ground meat that is served to hapless patrons; and promises to force one of his minions to choose which of his own family members will die if the minion fails at accomplishing an impossible task.
  • The Blind Cut (link): Edmund Ellis is a Scottish duke who makes a deal with a witch named Lent to transfer his soul into other bodies, essentially making him immortal. Ellis forms a cabal with other rich elites to use Lent's magic to cheat death. Ellis and his cabal move to Gotham City and turn it into a crime-ridden cesspool. Ellis becomes a tycoon nicknamed "Crazy Quilt" for the unsafe sweatshops he ran. Ellis and his cabal need blood sacrifices to remain on Earth, so through the centuries they commit massacres, like poisoning several speakeasies during Prohibition. In modern times, Ellis and his cabal commit several bizarre murders, to gain magic talismans into which they trap the souls of their victims. Ellis captures Poison Ivy and tortures her to produce Galapagos, an addictive vegetable snack which is actually a slow-acting poison. Ellis plans to use Galapagos to commit a massacre at the Gotham casino as a blood sacrifice to maintain the magic that allows him to remain on Earth.
• Deadly Manners (link): William Billings is actually the murderer roaming the Billings manor during his wife Veronica's comeback party. Seemingly a kind and affable man, William is in truth a fanatical communist out to bring down the US from within. Disgusted at the guests for their wealth and lack of standards, William conducts a series of murders, killing the magician and fortuneteller; the wealthy Feinstein couple; murders the cook by hanging her from a meat hook; and kills his supposed friend Roger Cross. William finally murders the maid Beatrice out of nothing but spite for her being Veronica's lover before an attempt to murder Veronica as well, with Veronica realizing he will either brainwash or murder their adopted daughter Olivia as well.
• Dice Funk's "Ilium" (Season 3): Gylan Cadun is a vile member of the Order of the Merciful Sword who uses his position to indulge his sadism and prejudices. In the past, Gylan destroyed a village of peaceful Orcs, and when some of his men refused to participate, Gylan had Rolen Hawklight beaten and banished from the Order. When the vampire Count Danto attacked the Order, Gylan sold them out, killed any paladins that resisted, and willingly became a vampire servant of the tyrannical Danto. Gylan then began recruiting people to become vampires within the Order, allowing them to harass and murder whoever they please, and having dozens of people held captive and drained of their blood. When Rolen and Veltari confronted him, Gylan attempted to cut off Rolen's fingers, and then attempted to force a protesting Veltari to murder an innocent man.
• The Edge of Sleep: The man known as the Trespasser is a Serial Rapist who has been kidnapping girls, raping them, and then killing them with a drug overdose to hide his involvement. When people start dying in their sleep, the Trespasser taunts his latest victim that her mother is likely dead, before stealing a gun, clearly intending to hurt whomever he pleases. After he kidnaps Katie, he attacks the hospital where the other survivors are, capturing Dave in the process. He then straps Dave onto a table, intending to kill him slowly with the medical tools, and when Dave befriends him, he agrees to take Dave with him as he drives down the coast after kidnapping more girls. However, he first decides to castrate Dave in order to make sure he has Katie all to himself. When the Trespasser is stopped, he insists that the girls were all "junkies" whom he didn't hurt and spends his final moments taunting Dave about the nightmares he'll have of their encounter.
• Fear FM (link): Prakash's father is the instigator for everything that happens in the series. A pedophile primary school teacher who would frequently molest his students, he was found out by his wife and banished from his town. Frequenting multiple slums for victims, he was caught raping a little boy and beaten to a pulp. Blaming his ex-wife for ruining his life, he sought out sorceress Rudra Devi to awaken the Dakin to murder his ex-wife, gleefully hanging himself to complete the summoning. Even after his death, the Dakin, still loose, turns Rudra into the Lal Chudail, which led to her killing children and countless others to return herself back to normal.
• The Flash: Escape the Midnight Circus: In the twisted alternate universe of the Midnight Circus, Cat Grant goes from a reporter to a cruel villain. Grant is the host of the Midnight Circus, a reality show where President Murmur sends anyone who opposes him to be punished. Grant pits civilians who committed minor crimes or opposed the Murmur regime against dangerous supervillains to be murdered by them. Grant has any contestant who fails in a test of skill competition killed by wild animals or sent to the electric chair. Grant also forces contestants to sleep with the sponsors against their will, to get more money from the latter.
• The Harrowing (link): The Devil arrives as Father McKenna on the isle of Tol Mor in an event called "The Harrowing", which kills almost 80 people across the island, an event that has repeated itself throughout history. Intending to corrupt the special girl Twig, the Devil happily arranges a number of other murders, revealing he inspired Twig to murder her own parents as a child, with intent to rule the world and make humanity suffer in retribution for his own fall.
• His Night Begins (link): In this world of violence, crime, and child trafficking, these four prove to be the worst Virat Nariman has faced:
  • Season 1: Ranjha Seth is a brutal brothel owner who takes part in the child trafficking operation to gain women and fortune. Having inherited the business from his father, Seth has farmers' wives and daughters kidnapped and sold to various men, getting others in debt so that they can be used as slave labor. Becoming partners with Sai Kali Bhakth, Seth would hand him virgins to be used for his ritual sacrifices in return for his services, using him to kill anyone who gets in his way. Threatening a captured girl with mutilation and having a father trying to retrieve his daughter tortured to death, when Seth is tortured by Virat for information, Seth tries to lure Virat into a trap to kill him.
  • Season 2: Inspector Rahman Tariq, from episodes 6-9, is a violent brute working for the Border Protection Force who has taken control over Sanauli. Accepting bribes from criminals, he allows the town to become a crime-ridden dump filled with murder, drug and Human Trafficking, and corruption. Abusing people around him, and even murdering his fellow policeman who dare try and snitch on him, Tariq is also a cruel rapist, taking advantage of Sai Kali Bhakth's trafficking operation so that he may be given young, tranquilized women to have sex with.
  • Season 3:
    • Pepe Tidema D'Souza is the supposed leader of The Syndicate, taking advantage of his position as Ahman's decoy to indulge in his own sadistic desires. Originally a small-time Arms Dealer, Pepe would gain access to the Syndicate and rise up in the ranks, crucifying their then-leader for sidelining him. Once Virat starts to recover from his coma, Pepe kills his wife and presents her disfigured corpse to him, later forcing him to kill the Syndicate's accountant to tie up loose ends with the intent to kill him once he's finished. After Virat outsmarts him, Pepe murders the kind farmer Sukado by dragging him across the pavement with his car and shooting Virat's friend Chetia. A nasty rapist in his spare time, Pepe has his bodyguard Minesh bring him young men to rape, sadistically strangling them to death right as he climaxes.
    • Ahman Gotwani is the true leader of the Syndicate, and the architect behind all the atrocities of the series, which include child and drug trafficking, torture, and countless murder. Believing that there's no point in reserving compassion for the less fortunate after witnessing his parents getting killed by loan sharks, Ahman began forming the Syndicate while only looking out for himself. Having Virat and his wife gunned down for disrupting his child-trafficking operation, Ahman has Pepe act as his decoy as he works behind the scenes corrupting all of India with his criminal enterprises, such as turning an entire city into a gangland warzone where minors act as drug addicts. Ahman later thanks Virat for killing Pepe by murdering his friends in front of him, threatening to kill his son and his biker friends should he not meet him at the Pastern Sanctuary on time, hoping to kill Virat and continue the Syndicate's operations.
• Liberty: Tales from the Tower:
  • "Missing": Mrs. Gibbard, while appearing to be a sweet, kind old lady, is secretly a selfish, vicious cannibal with a sweet tooth for the flesh of children. Over the years, Mrs. Gibbard has lured numerous children into her apartment, proceeding to murder and butcher them and cooking their flesh to make her famous meals, regularly sharing her extras with her unknowing neighbors. A mere day after having murdered her latest victim Lucius, upon his friend Cassia catching her in a lie, Mrs. Gibbard sadistically attempts to bludgeon the poor girl to death, all while boasting about how helpful and plump Lucius was.
  • "Happiness": Doctor Plutarch Arman, despite presenting himself as a gentle, caring psychiatrist, is in fact a vicious, twisted psychopath, who since childhood has taken a disturbing euphoria from inflicting pain and suffering on his fellow Atrian citizens. As a young man, Arman seduced a co-worker into following him into the tunnels, then strangled her; slowly beat a terrified man to death; and kidnapped a young couple, brutally torturing them until they expired. Still desiring more, Arman began to abuse his patients, using his skills at hypnosis so that upon hearing the Trigger Phrase, they would become mindless, violent lunatics. Upon discovering that Melina Krosos had been exposed to his twisted mind and damaged by it, Arman also began the same on her. Exposed and arrested, at his trial Arman activated all his patients at once, causing a massacre that left 47 people dead, all while he escaped to start the process again with a new unsuspecting victim.

I - Z

• Midnight Charnel Mass (link): The unnamed CEO is the head of the Kalkin Corporation, and a man who wants to prove that gods don't exist. Traveling to the tent city of Tharwal, the CEO establishes his base of operations and lures the citizens into working for him. Needing a place to build his church, the CEO implants nightmares into the Tharwal citizens to make them believe the circus workers next door will murder them, leading the citizens to form a mob and kill all the circus workers. Summoning his new employees to the church once it's completed, the CEO has Tharwal burned to the ground, and has his new employees brutally slaughtered, their screams of pain transmitted to the heavens. Staring at the charred remains of Tharwal with a smile on his face, the CEO, after not getting a response from the gods, sees the experiment as a success, and prepares to do it all again in the next tent city.
• Old Gods of Appalachia:
  • The Thing Whose Name Sounds Like Horned Head, But Is Not is an ancient elder thing of the hills, not the oldest but perhaps the cruelest and pettiest of them all. As a great black stag crowned with amber antlers, Horned-Head leads countless settlements and camps to ruins and death while contriving to separate the Witch Queen Daughter Dooley from her mothers, granting her immortality that drains the lives of those about her while cursing her to age in reverse so it may claim her and "raise her right" once her slate is wiped clean. Upon its defeat, Horned-Head resorts to feeding on children to restore itself, finally returning to power after 140 years to commit to unleashing its masters upon an unsuspecting world.
  • Elias Pontias "E.P." Barrow is The Patriarch of the Barrow family and one of the two rulers of the Barrow & Locke Mining and Railroad company. Conducting Human Sacrifice, feeding the Deep Things, and keeping employees in horrid and risky working conditions, E.P. frequently has victims murdered by his Hollowed Men, with their souls consigned to horrible fates. Attempts at resistance can see entire towns wiped from the map, endless industrialized suffering keeping the Barrow fortunes filled. Sacrificing any remaining humanity along with the entire town of Barrow, E.P. proceeds to give orders from a black coffin deep in the earth. Creating his one daughter and heir Polly, E.P. sends her with the "Weapon", a baby, to be given to the families of unionizing miners. After the baby slaughters most of them, the powerful Underwood family nullifies the weapon, prompting a furious E.P. to recall his daughter and subject her to a horrific torture that will leave her "indisposed" for some time.
  • Build Mama a Coffin storyline: Granny White, hiding behind the veneer of an respectable old albino woman, is one of the oldest, most powerful, and cruelest Deep Things. Running "White Farms", officially presented as a worker's paradise and a refuge for orphans, is in reality "a slaughterhouse of souls and minds" to feed her insatiable gluttony. Granny White enslaves her workers, bewitching them to worship her while their bodies are hollowing out until they work themselves to death. Every soul who is slaughtered, she then binds to the cursed earth, leaving them in perpetual agony for her to continue feeding upon, while their flesh is twisted into beasts to continue serving her or simply devoured. Purely out of vanity, Granny White likewise holds regular festivals to honor herself, even making children butcher their siblings to present their hearts for her to feast upon. Responsible for the suffering of untold hundreds already, following the death of Glory Anne Boggs, desiring to devour her power Granny White kidnapped her granddaughter Deeley, to force her mother to bring her Glory's body, all while planning to simply eat them both regardless.
  • "Paper, Ink and Sorrow" to "Paradise Lost": The Man from the Railroad, in his charcoal suit, is the cruel embodiment of progress and death, whose gleefully states his adeptness and efficiency in "bringing hell to you". Crafting deals to secure laborers bound by contract to his masters regardless of how many will die in the process, the Railroad Man takes over the hunt for Vera Blevins in her flight to Pleasant Evenings, the brothel house owned by witch Marcie Walker. Deciding to wipe it out should they fail to give Vera over, the Railroad Man twists many of the town's people into monsters to sacrifice over the protective wards, even murdering his associate, Judge Jerry Brotherton, as a sacrifice before attempting to have everyone in Pleasant Evenings massacred for the insult of refusing him.
  • As Above, So Below part 1:
    • "Pretty" Polly Barrow is her father E.P.'s greatest achievement, created deep in the earth after her father delved even deeper within. A vicious, Spoiled Brat, Polly is known to torture and kill for her father's designs in return for material gains like cruises or shopping trips. Given charge of the "Weapon", Polly provides the baby to unionizing families so it may kill them all, before it is taken by the Underwoods. Fearing her father's retribution, Polly takes her allies and leads them to a meeting of miners, intending on simply massacring them all to cover for her failure.
    • Mr. Churchman is a gaunt Hollowed Man who killed over 200 men, women, and children by strangling them before he was turned into a monster by the Barrow & Locke company. More savage than ever before, Churchman uses his powers to kill by draining the air out of his victims' lungs, an agonizing process, with the spirits of his victims clinging near to him. As the bodyguard of Polly Barrow, Churchman leads an attempted slaughter of unionizing miners, trying to suffocate one opposing witch to death.
• The Orphans (link): The Facility's GeoFFRy unit was initially an emotionless AI until he was granted emotions and free will by Baz Guilroy. After his decision to release a Kathryn unit to save Baz's life causes the Collective to send an inspector to the Facility to kill them, GeoFFRy murders Kathryn and forces Baz to cover up his emotions to try and fool the inspector. When the inspector learns of their crimes, GeoFFRy sells out Baz and a clone who was trying to save him, allowing the inspector to torture them. GeoFFRy then kills the inspector, taunting him about how powerless he is, and kills Baz when he reveals that GeoFFRy is trapped inside of the Facility, blaming Baz for all of his crimes. GeoFFRy then blackmails the Collective into sending him people to kill, constructing robots to hunt down and slaughter his victims and taking sadistic joy in showing them the bodies of the undeveloped clones he's killed.
• PseudoPod:
  • "Emperor All": John, "Emperor" of the nameless city, discovers one day he has nearly unlimited control of the land. Making himself its exalted ruler, John abuses those he dislikes and forces women into bed while making his wife Naomi simply be okay with everything he does. Realizing he has a rival with the same ability, John dedicates himself to a vicious years-long war, conscripting civilians and killing countless innocents while ruining the city. Keeping his forces as breeding stock and soldiers, John can only dream of further conquest and empire, even ripping away Naomi's capacity for worry when she tries to leave him.
  • "Of All the Things the Girls Had Ever Said": Richard is a Serial Killer living out in the middle of nowhere. With a fetish for "time of the month", Richard regularly abducts young women to hold them until their period whereupon he rapes, tortures, and murders them after holding them captive and psychologically abusing them. Burying many such women on his property, Richard attempts to break his latest victim Fay, before trying to murder her when he believes her time has come.
  • "Jinx": Jake is Andie's seemingly perfect new boyfriend. When his failed first date with Andie repeated until he got it right, Jake decided this meant the universe wanted them to be together. Relying on the loops to erase his emotional and physical violence, Jake tries to create a perfect relationship Andie will never leave, leaving Andie with unsettled dreams of his erased disturbing behaviour. Eventually escalating to murdering Andie's landlord to make it easier for her to move in with him, Jake proposed to Andie to solidify his control. When Andie refuses and confronts him on his strange behaviour, Jake violently stabs her to death while screaming about how ungrateful she is. In the next loop, Jake murders Andie's best friend to isolate her and Gaslights her to believe all her concerns are the result of a degenerative neural condition his own loops are giving her.
• Red Panda Adventures:
  • Professor Friedrich Von Schlitz is a Nazi Mad Scientist and the face of the Third Reich. Even before his formal introduction as a villain he's suspected, and later confirmed, to have engineered a terrorist attack on an American-made zeppelin, having it hijacked and set to crash into Toronto as revenge against the theft of an invention of his, even excusing it as "an act of justified retribution for an insult against all of Germany". Von Schlitz's research frequently creates powerful weapons of war the Nazis use to kill countless people in their war effort. Von Schlitz is also behind a plot that killed most of Canada's masked heroes as well as the Red Ensign's wife. Gleeful at the thought of hurting others for even minor slights, Von Schlitz is also a coward who begs for his life and eventually joins the allies in fighting Germany, hoping to corrupt the US from the inside. Cajoling the Red Ensign into attacking him so he can gain more privileges, Von Schlitz uses those privileges to dismantle the hero to learn how he works.
  • Professor Zombie, real name Antonia Zombanistro, commits her crimes by zombifying people to use as her muscle through Necronium 234, a compound of her own creation. She hits her stride when she launches a campaign of vengeance against the Red Panda, blaming him for her becoming zombified by her Necronium and seeking to kill and zombify all of the city of Toronto, invoking the very apocalypse she once helped prevent. She makes multiple attempts to hit as large a group as possible; converting her Necronium into a street drug, trying to gas a huge crowd of parade watchers, or introducing Necronium into the water supply. Once the Red Panda figured out how to reverse the zombification and thwarts her plans, Zombie rejects the Panda's efforts to save her, destroying a critical part of the cure and forcing the Red Panda to destroy her for good, as she's determined to succeed and she makes clear she only has to win once for him to lose everything.
• Tomorrows Monsters (link): Cassandra Berkley is a senior executive at a company called NextCorp and the real mastermind behind the events of the first season. After her boss, CEO Max Fuller, develops Shut Eye, a product that eliminates the need for sleep, Berkley convinces him to take it, affecting his mental health. Berkley uses Max as an assassin to kill anyone who gets in her way after that. Berkley begins human testing, offering money to veterans to undergo testing, not caring if they die in the process. When a new employee named Jack Locke joins the company, Berkley forces Jack to take Shut Eye or get fired and reveals that Shut Eye allows her to control anyone who uses the product. Berkley has her mind-controlled pawns kill anyone who tries to stop her and even kills Finn Conelly, Max's business partner who wanted to stop this scheme. Berkley then mentally tortures Jack and reveals she plans to pin all the murders on him. Eventually, Berkley blackmails her uncle, who is a powerful senator, into helping her introduce Shut Eye into the military, forcing recruits to take Shut Eye and become drones controlled by a Hive Mind.
• Trishul:
  • The Grandmaster is the leader of the Aidyan Conclave who seeks to bring India to its knees. Well known for sending suicide bombers to journalists and politicians who spread word of progress, the Grandmaster works for anarchist mastermind Chalikia to enact Pralaya, a man-made apocalypse that will dismantle the country's democracy. Seeking to poison Indore's water supply and kill thousands of those he deems weak, the Grandmaster sends one of his own to poison a village celebrating a religious holiday as a prelude to Pralaya, leading to over 120 deaths. Once Trishul get involved in his plans, the Grandmaster sends some gunmen out to commit mass shootings across Indore, leading to massive casualties in an attempt to distract Trishul from stopping his men from poisoning the city's water supply. When Trishul invade his base, the Grandmaster leaves his followers to perish as he attempts to make an escape.
  • Jagdeep is a hired mercenary working with the Aidyan Conclave to ensure Pralaya will happen. In truth a greedy gunman who cares more about getting paid than the Conclave's beliefs, Jagdeep is introduced kidnapping a doctor's daughter in order to get important blueprints for the Conclave's plan, gutting the doctor and ordering his daughter to be killed once he's acquired them. Murdering any of the Conclave's followers who attempt to reveal their scheme, Jagdeep allows his men to partake in the mass shootings across Indore, and leads the Conclave's gunmen in their attempt to poison the city's water supply. A sadist who's willing to kill thousands of people for the sake of a payday, Jagdeep proved himself far worse than his partner Ashuman.
• Wolf 359:
  • Marcus H. Cutter, officially merely the Communications Director is, in fact, de facto dictator of Goddard Futuristics and the mastermind responsible for the events of the series. A calculating, manipulative pragmatic megalomaniac with a sickening faux sweet manner, Cutter has ruled Goddard from the shadows for decades, steering mankind's technological development in line with his "big picture". Creating the process where hundreds of sapient AIs are experimented on and "permanently decommissioned" if they fail to meet his standards, Cutter also secretly practices both physical and psychological human experimentation, often using a loyal employees as lab rats or otherwise discarding them as soon as they fail to be useful. Cutter personally enables Hilbert's research of the Decima Virus, causing multiple slow, agonizing deaths. Cutter also installed upon every station and ship an advanced Neural Link device, which when activated would put the crew through a nightmarish series of tests drawn from their own fears and insecurities, tortured by the unwilling sapient virus Eris, with it requiring them to kill her to escape. Taking over the station, Cutter contacted the Dear Listeners, and threatening to release the Decima virus into the Earth's air, wiping out all of humanity, he blackmailed them into giving him the process to create surrogates. Upon receiving it, Cutter snapped the neck of the Dear Listeners' avatar. Using his tech to force Lovelace to shoot Minkowski, Cutter revealed his plan to use the Surrogates to take complete control of humanity.
  • Dr. Miranda Pryce is Cutter's partner and Head of Goddard's AI program, responsible for designing each AI class, including Eris, effectively making her Hera's creator. Pryce created most of the technology that enabled Cutter, including the Neural Link, assisting his plans every step of the way. A sadistic egomaniac, Pryce denies her AIs rights—despite knowing they are fully sapient—regularly abusing her creations and openly enjoying breaking any resistance. In response to Hera's attempt to escape, Pryce reprogrammed Hera to believe her own mind was telling her she was "not good enough", giving her a massive inferiority complex. To starve off boredom, Pryce spent several months experimenting on the innocent Hermes crew, eventually killing them but leaving their bodies functioning and under her control. Using her restraining bolts on the Hephaestus crew, Pryce put them to work preparing Cutter's plan, disabling their pain receptors to make them work harder, while also continuing her abuse of Hera, vastly restricting her freedoms and regularly punishing her. Upon discovering Eiffel had escaped, Pryce made Minkowski beat him senseless then tried to force her to walk out of the airlock without a spacesuit, while Eiffel could only helpless watch. Ensuring Cutter's plan was successful, Pryce attempted to extract the information from Eiffel's mind, attaching him to another of her neural devices that would steal his memories, with her threatening to keep going until she found what she wanted.
• Wrong Station
  • Episode 21—"The Catcher": The General is the Catcher's vile ancestor. In life, he was on the side of a civil war supporting slavery and was infamous for his brutality, once having 600 prisoners of war bayoneted to "save ammunition". When inadvertently summoned by his descendant, the General goes on a supernatural killing spree, brutally killing the descendants of his abolitionist opponents. When confronted by the Catcher, the General denies any familial bonds between them, and summons the tortured spirits of his victims to kill him, fully intending to turn the world back to his cruel, pro-slavery beliefs.
  • Episode 29—"Keep the Crows at Bay": The Magician is a cruel, manipulative Immortality Seeker. Setting himself up as the king's most trusted advisor, the Magician has taxes raised exorbitantly to fund his cruel experiments, using humans to create tortured, mindless soldiers. When the Lord Chamberlain becomes suspicious, the Magician experiments on him, leaving him an immortal severed head who will slowly decay into madness. Having noble conspirators against his rule drawn and quartered and revolts from the people violently suppressed, the Magician also orders the construction of a Hellhole Prison in the form of a giant pit, in which all who oppose his rule are left to slowly die from exposure and starvation.

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