The Dreaded / Live-Action Films

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• In The 13th Warrior, the Vikings, who are set up as mighty warriors, are visibly frightened of the mysterious creatures called "Wendols". Described as "an ancient evil, a terror that has no name", the Vikings' reaction causes the hero Ahmed ibn Fahdlan to ask, "Look at them. What thing could affect them so?"
• The Alien franchise has the titular creatures, otherwise popularly known as Xenomorphs, as something of a dark subversion. People know about them, and they know of the destructive power they can cause as potential bioweapons, but this makes the greedier business types want to harness and weaponize them for themselves. Those individuals who actually encounter them in the flesh learn extremely quickly that the Xenos are not to be trifled with, with any survivors (who you can count on one hand with fingers left over) flying into a blind panic upon being hunted. This sadly helps reinforce the earlier point; the survivors look like raving lunatics who caused millions of dollars in damages for no reason, and there's nobody around or any evidence to corroborate their story.
• In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz is this. It is at one point mentioned that the Viet Cong in the area appear to be fleeing in terror due to the brutality of his tactics alone.
• Back to the Future Part III: Buford Tannen, Biff's great-grandfather, absolutely terrifies the people of Hill Valley in 1885 thanks to his extremely short temper and quick-shooting, especially if you call him "Mad Dog" (when Marty calls him that, everybody immediately runs away or takes cover). The newspapers stopped keeping track of all his kills after he'd shot an editor who printed an unfavorable story about him.
• The Batman (2022): Two years into his career, Batman has managed to strike terror into pretty much everyone in Gotham. The opening scene shows criminals just giving up and fleeing as soon as they see the Bat-signal, and even when he saves a man from muggers, the man pleads with Batman not to hurt him before running away first chance he gets. However, it's deconstructed as the movie goes on and Batman has to learn to put himself out there as a beacon of hope.
• Blade (1998) pulls this off brilliantly in its opening scene, where his arrival at the vampire rave makes clear that the vampires in attendance know the Daywalker, and that they are terrified of him.
• Blazing Saddles: "Never mind that shit, here comes Mongo!"
• Brimstone: As soon as the Reverend arrives into town, Elizabeth is completely terrified of him. There is good reason for this, since he is in fact a murderer, a rapist, and her father.
• Captive State: The Legislators, obviously. When the human delegation is on its way to meet with them, even the translator—who, presumably, is the most familiar with them—is terrified.
• The Chronicles of Riddick: The Necromonger Empire. Everyone who knows them fears them with good reason, since they are space-faring death-worshiping cult that leave devastation and an ever growing army of converts in their wake, and in just one night, they were able to throughout conquer Helion Prime and that was just onscreen (Imam mentions they destroyed an entire star system prior to their invasion). The Crematoria guards are so scared shitless of them that they can't even say their name and once they realize that Toombs was dumb enough to capture their prisoner and draw their attention to them, a fight breaks out between them and Toombs' mercs.
• In Con Air, Billy Bedlam killed his wife's family when he found her cheating on him. Diamond Dog is a gangster who once blew up an entire hall of people. Johnny-23 brags his number is the number of women he's been proven to have raped. Cyrus Grissom "has killed more men than cancer." Yet every single one of them is scared out of their minds when Garland Greene aka "The Marietta Mangler" is put on the plane. Despite being a seemingly small and quiet man, Greene is dragged on in full straightjacket with mask as the other convicts stare in horror, whispering stories of how he murdered and ate nearly forty people. Diamond Dog in particular is freaked out by someone who's half his size but treated as the biggest monster on a plane full of them.
• The Con is On: Mafiya boss Irina has such a reputation for violence, cruelty and mercilessness that she makes hardened mobsters crap themselves. Learning that Irina is after them makes it almost impossible for Harry and Peter to find any allies among their underworld contacts.
• The Hessians in The Crossing owing to their rigid battle formations and their slaughter of surrendering troops at Brooklyn. Captain Heineman of the Pennsylvania German troops even asks if he can discuss the attack with his men beforehand rather than on the day so they won't be too terrified to attack troops they think of as "devils."
• Cut to the Chase: The Man, real name John Mansfield, is the most powerful crime boss in Shreveport, Louisiana. Everyone who speaks of him does so in trepidation or at least a healthy respect over how dangerous he is.
• Dad's Army (1971): Captain Mainwaring is seen as one by General Fullard, who knows him only as "that damned bank clerk" and seems to always catch him after he's done something incredibly stupid on accident, such as covering a road with oil or destroying a line of Home Guard kits with a steamroller.
• One villain per movie in The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Ra's al Ghul is a name criminal elements know well, and when mob boss Falcone hear he's coming to Gotham, he reacts with terror.
  • Batman has cemented his status as this to Gotham's underworld by the beginning of The Dark Knight, to the point that the mob has been put wholly on the defensive within a mere year's time, and the mere sight of the Bat-Signal is enough to deter many from criminal activity.
  • The Joker in The Dark Knight is feared by the mob, the cops, and the politicians for being an Ax-Crazy Magnificent Bastard. Even at the beginning of the film, his own goons are telling each other legends about him.
  • Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, he has already got the overthrowing of a small country to his name prior to the movie, Selina Kyle is afraid of him, Alfred, after hearing rumors about him and seeing footage of him at the Stock Exchange, is convinced that Bruce doesn't stand a chance against him. And as the film progresses, he traps nearly the entire police force in the tunnels beneath Gotham, then takes over the city, but before he did that, he seemingly killed the Batman. For months he is the terror of the city, and the few remaining police officers don't try to face him, they just try to stay out of his way.
  • Batman becomes this himself even to Bane judging by Bane's reaction to seeing the Bat-Signal on the bridge.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Krypton's Council considered creatures like Doomsday too monstrous and dangerous to even be allowed to exist. Too bad Lex Luthor ended up creating one on Earth. Speaking of Luthor, his frightening words at the end of the film imply the Earth would have very good reasons to fear the cosmic threat he witnessed while looking in the Kryptonian archives.
    Luthor: He's hungry, he's found us, and HE'S COMING!
  • Said threat turns out to be Darkseid, the Evil Overlord of Apokolips, in Zack Snyder's Justice League, and he does live up to the hype. Diana/Wonder Woman shivers when looking at the ancient Greek fresco depicting him, the very same Diana who fearlessly took on an Olympian god and the aforementioned Doomsday.
• In Deadpool 2, we got The Juggernaut and this ain't the one who showed up in X3. He's locked away in his own cell in the Ice Block and when he gets out, he causes people to double think their idea of facing him — Domino, whose power is Born Lucky, catches sight of him, mouths "no", and quickly runs away; X-Men Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio know they aren't up to the challenge and Cable is forced into an Enemy Mine situation with Deadpool once he gets involved with him. Even after the X-Men put him down via knocking him into the water while he has an electric wire shoved up his ass, he still gets back up from the attack, groggy at the very least.
• Lawrence Makaore's character from The Dead Lands is feared by the Big Bad Wirepa.
• Stalin himself in The Death of Stalin. Nobody dares anger him, everyone laughs awkwardly at his jokes, nobody wants to be the first to stop clapping. It comes back to bite him; when he's dying of a stroke, his own guards won't enter his room to check on him because they're terrified they'll get killed for disturbing him.
• Death Race: Warden Hennessey is a female correctional officer presiding over a prison filled with murderers and rapists. Her first scene has her take an unguarded walk through the yard, with not a single convict daring to lay a hand on her. One of them declares to his buddy his love for how ruthless she is.
• Dr. Grimsdyke from Doctor in Clover is one to his cousin, Miles, who wants nothing to do with him:
  Miles: It's my idiot cousin, Gaston Grimsdyke! You don't think he's coming to work here, do you?
• Dredd has the titular Judge Dredd, but actually downplays it compared to both the source material and the 1995 film adaptation - the Batman Cold Open shows that common street perps don't necessarily fear Dredd more than they do any other Judge, as does Ma-Ma's early attempts to take out Dredd and his rookie partner Anderson after they stumble across her drug operation. His reputation within the Hall of Justice does fully embody this trope, though, as shown when Ma-Ma is hiring corrupt judges to take him out, incredulous that they want a million dollars for it.
  Lex: You got a problem with a Judge. Do you know who he is?
  Ma-Ma: No...
  Lex: I do. One million.
• Played for laughs in The Freshman (1990), with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando. When an attractive young woman (played by Penelope Ann Miller) interrupts Clark Kellogg's (Broderick) film studies class looking for Clark, the teacher is less than impressed. When she announces herself as the daughter of Carmine Sabatini (Brando, channeling Vito Corleone), the teacher just about shits a brick; "Jimmy the Toucan?!?"
• The Godfather: Luca Brasi. Mostly an Informed Attribute elaborated on in the books, but he's a particularly brutal enforcer in a world that has plenty of them. His eventual murder is an indication of how high the stakes have gotten.
• Godzilla has time and time again become this by somehow beating monsters that are even stronger, faster, or smarter than him, largely by virtue of being the Determinator. He's not (quite) the most powerful kaiju, but due to him overcoming seemingly impossible odds and almost invincible enemies, he has earned himself the title of King of The Monsters. He rarely loses, but when he does it's a shock for onlookers, to put it mildly. Virtually anyone who can fight with him on equal ground is seen as just as bad as him, and any who can beat him are seen as worse than a nuclear bomb going off. He's not the Trope Namer for the Godzilla Threshold for no reason.
  • Of special note is Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, where not only does Godzilla rise to the level of "super monster" himself, but his power is so out of control that when he dies his death threatens to release enough energy to light the planet on fire and melt through to the core of the Earth. And this is going on the same time as a new super monster, Destoroyah, shows up and proves it is equal in power to the now-super monster Godzilla (at least until his power rises when he is near meltdown). Keep in mind that his "Burning" form is already strong enough to easily dispatch most past monsters who gave him hell without even being near meltdown. Dread does not even begin to describe what G-Force is feeling when they have two super monsters who are super even to other super monsters along with The End of the World as We Know It to deal with all at once.
  • "Listen, kid. There are two things you don't know about the Earth. One is me, and the other is... Godzilla." The Xilian leader in Godzilla: Final Wars quickly learns that Godzilla isn't something to be taken lightly.
  • Anytime the Mutos showed up in Godzilla (2014) , you can bet it was a scary moment. Even when they were just shown on the news, such as the female one running through Vegas, was pretty creepy. Little wonder that the military attempted to use nukes on them, albeit in a rather unconventional way.
    • Godzilla himself is an interesting variation. While he doesn't deliberately cause any damage, he's so huge that the simple act of getting out of the ocean is enough to cause a tsunami. Not to mention that the military tried to nuke him back in the 1950s and it failed to kill him. He's also one of the few things the aforementioned MUTO react to with genuine fear and hatred, since he's one of the few (if not only) things that can kill them. It's little wonder that people quickly learn to get out of his way when he's approaching and that people refer to him not as a monster but a "god".
  • Exceeding even Godzilla, however, is King Ghidorah. Everyone, from Monarch to Rodan to entire ancient civilizations to Godzilla himself fear Ghidorah, which ancient civilizations actively trying to forget him because they were that terrified of him. And for good reason, as Ghidorah is not only the only genuinely evil Titan so far introduced, but both willing and capable of bringing about the end of the world. This is continued into Godzilla vs. Kong, where his mere skull is enough to make Team Godzilla terrified. Apex is the only ones who don't seem to fear him, until they realize he's now possessing MechaGodzilla.
• Goodfellas: Tommy De Vito is by far the most feared mobster in the entire film, even to his own partners. "Funny how? Like a clown?".
• Hamburger Hill: A place as opposed to a person: the A Shau Valley. Spoken of with obvious dread and respect by the veteran members of the squad, with one expressing his outright fear of being sent back into it. When one of the replacements asks "What's the A Shau Valley?" he only gets a cold stare as a reply.
• Hellraiser: Inferno: The Engineer is a near-legendary figure in the criminal world and tales of his insane depravities abound. Every time Joseph asks around for information on him, his informants recoil in terror.
• I Shot Jesse James: To most people in the West, Jesse James is this, being a brutal outlaw that robs and kills people with impunity. However, amongst the James clan itself, Jesse's older brother Frank is actually more feared. Both Bob and Charles Ford worry about him taking revenge on them for killing Jesse, and part of Bob’s motivation to move to Creede is to put distance between him and Frank.
• James Bond:
  • Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the notorious head of SPECTRE, has earned a reputation amongst his henchmen as a Bad Boss, as he runs SPECTRE like a tyrannical dictator, besides the fact that he's willing to condemn the world to chaos just for profit. Organizational discipline within SPECTRE is notoriously draconian with the penalty for failure or insubordination being an automatic death sentence, as he demands total and unquestionable loyalty from his minions, and rarely gives them a second chance. Furthermore, to heighten the impact of the executions, Blofeld often chooses to focus attention on an innocent member, making it appear his death is imminent, only to suddenly strike down on the actual target when that person is off guard — and he does it as a warning to others that are planning to do such things. Here are some ways he kills his minions: Fail your tasks or dare to question him? Get a poisoned dagger to your leg or be tossed into a piranha-infested water pool. Thinking of double-crossing him? Get electrocuted in a chair. Try to defect from him? A goon squad will be sent to hound you down no matter where you're hiding. The interactions Bond has with Mr. White and Rosa Klebb shows that they are truly terrified of his wrath, with Mr. White choosing to kill himself to deny Blofeld the chance, while Klebb enters Villainous Breakdown mode when Blofeld gave her a 2nd but final chance to get the LEKTOR decoding machine.
  • The World Is Not Enough: Renard the Anarchist has his mooks utterly shit-scared of him. In a classic case of The Mob Boss Is Scarier, his henchwoman in the pre-titles sequence chooses Better to Die than Be Killed rather than turn informant on him.
  Bond: Don't do it! Don't blow us up! I can protect you, listen to me, I can protect you!
  Cigar Girl: Not from him!
• John Wick is this to practically everyone who knows of him by reputation. When it is learned that his dog was killed by the son of the local head of The Mafiya, the mob boss treats it with all the severity it entails, even trying to initially appease Wick. When that fails, he goes all out in protecting his son.
  Viggo: He isn't exactly the boogeyman, he's the guy you send to kill the fucking boogeyman.
  • Winston is another, particularly for the second film. He has enormous influence in practically the entire criminal underworld and can steer it to his whims as a result, so even John himself is a little put off by the thought of offending him.
• El Indio from For a Few Dollars More. Ax-Crazy bandit, and paranoid.
  • Angel Eyes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
  • Frank from Once Upon a Time in the West is a similar case like Angel Eyes.
  • Ramon Rojo from A Fistful of Dollars.
• Jurassic Park:
  • The Velociraptors are this. Remember that dark little tune that plays at the opening of the first film? It becomes their leitmotif, to the point that you'll hear it at the mere mention of Velociraptors, shortly followed by a barrage of Oh, Crap! and Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? reactions from everyone... including people who don't even know what a Velociraptor is. By the time of Jurassic World, even operators of the newly opened park have decided to keep the raptors out of tourist-accessible attractions; for comparison, it's perfectly okay for tourists to observe the infamous T. rex, highly aggressive Pteranodon, and a shark-eating Mosasaurus in the main park. Even after some success with training, it's still made clear by Fluffy Tamer Owen that his four imprinted raptors will happily kill anyone, including him if given the chance. They do.
  • The T. rex herself also counts in the first film. Even before the power goes out, Muldoon orders silence in the control room while the tour passes her paddock and all the park personnel watch the tour nervously. Then after she breaks out she proves so dangerous that the mere sound of her roaring in the distance is enough to send Grant and the kids into a panicked flight over the perimeter fence.
• Kelly's Heroes: Tiger tanks. Kelly is the only one who isn't scared shitless by the mention of a Tiger, and Oddball's immediate reaction on hearing there are Tigers in the Op Area is calling the entire escapade "a wasted trip". In fact, the only time in the film Oddball is completely serious is when explaining in excruciating detail how badly outmatched his Shermans are.
• Last Man Standing: Hickey is widely feared by the Doyle and Strozzi gangs for being a Psycho for Hire.
• The Last Witch Hunter: The hero Kaulder is the terror of the witch community. It's said that mothers use him in their tales as a boogeyman for their children, and when he arrives at Chloe's club, the entire place empties in panic by the time he reaches the bar.
• The Legend of Frenchie King: Both protagonists, to varying extents.
  • Louise is Frenchie King, the most fearsome, successful and slippery outlaw in the West.
  • Maria is feared among the inhabitants of Bougival Junction, where she lives, because of her easily soured temper and a reputation for trigger-happiness.
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: Liberty Valance and his gang of outlaws. Everyone in Shinbone is terrified of Liberty, and chattering crowds instantly go silent whenever he shows his face.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Avengers (2012):
    • Nearly every character treats the transformation from Bruce Banner to The Hulk as a threat comparable to that of a nuclear bomb. Especially notable in the case of Black Widow, who thus far had been one of the most unflappable people in the MCU. An encounter with a rampaging Hulk aboard S.H.I.E.L.D.'s helicarrier leaves her a shuddering and trembling mess until a call for backup brings her back to her senses. Another notable case is Loki, after being ragdolled by Hulk. By the time Loki sees Hulk again the first thing he tried to do is abandon the planet.
    • The Stinger of the movie shows that humans have reached this status among the Chitauri (who, according to Thor, have this reputation themselves) by beating the crap out of their invasion force in short order before nuking their mothership. Hawkeye (2021) shows that the Avengers' reputation made even people like The Kingpin look nervous to have one in the vicinity, even if the Avenger in question is Clint Barton.
    • Thor (to an extent) and the rest of the Asgardians are also this to S.H.I.E.L.D., causing them to use the Tesseract and the remains of the Destroyer to create super-weapons in order to fight them, along with other extra-terrestrial beings. Loki's actions also make Fury desperate enough to assemble the Avengers in the first place.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier has the Winter Solder. Black Widow is even more apprehensive of him than she is of Loki and the Hulk, and it becomes clear early on that the only person capable of stopping him is Steve. His own support staff are afraid of him. Which makes it something of a villainous Moment of Awesome when Alexander Pierce walks in to one scene and casually backhands him.
  • Thanos however, is the ultimate Big Bad. Though we have only seen him briefly and have set to witness his power, he is widely feared throughout the entire galaxy if not the Nine Realms. When he finally takes center stage in Avengers: Infinity War, he thoroughly backs up his reputation.
  • Captain Marvel:
    • Played for laughs in a scene where Goose the cat triggers this reaction from the aliens. Turns out they're right; Goose is not a cat at all but a kind of Eldritch Abomination called a Flerken, and she eats several of the enemies in the climactic battle.
    • Carol Danvers picks up this reputation after unlocking her binary state. She blows up a bunch of Kree warheads that were deployed to bomb Earth, annihilates Ronan's entire fighter screen, and destroys an Accuser battleship with ease by flying through it. Seeing this, Ronan to decides to flee, and despite knowing Earth has no planetary defense system (other than Carol), the Kree have not tried to attack it since. Carol's reputation is such, that, in Avengers: Endgame, Thanos' ship prioritized her over the rest of the targets (The rest of the targets including Wanda Maximoff, see below), shooting at Carol immediately at the very moment they detected her. And we have to take note that this Thanos came from 2014, while the movie happens in 2023, meaning that Carol had been feared for at least a decade.
  • In Spider-Man: No Way Home, five villains from the different universes cross over to the MCU thanks to Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. One of them is Norman Osborn / the Green Goblin. Peter's Spider-Sense considers him (or more specifically, the Goblin) simply being there as much more dangerous than the other four villains combined. To be specific, when the Goblin persona takes control, the Spider-Sense starts going apeshit crazy in a way that hasn't been seen since Avengers: Infinity War, where Peter was literal seconds way from dying. Doctor Octopus and the Peter Parker of Goblin's world are as scared of him as the MCU Peter is.
  • The Scarlet Witch aka Wanda Maximoff. Everyone that knows about her legend is scared shitless of her. And for good reasons, considering she's established to be able to either rule or destroy the Multiverse.
  • The High Evolutionary from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is hardly the most powerful (or even competent) villain the MCU has given us and he's not that big of a threat in comparison to villains like Kang. Yet, courtesy of the great Chukwudi Iwuji, he's quite possibly the scariest villain in the MCU to date (to the point even fans and movie-goers admit to being genuinely terrified of him). In-universe, everyone who knows him is terrified of him; Rocket has lived in constant fear and hatred of him, the other races and societies he's created over the centuries (including the Sovereign - even Ayesha and Adam Warlock) all meekly submit to him out of fear of his invoking his wrath and even his Mad Scientist henchmen and employees are utterly petrified of him.
• The Agents in The Matrix serve as this, at least in the first one, where Morpheus advises Neo to simply run away if he sees one. Displayed in the first 10 minutes in the Agents' Establishing Character Moment. Trinity effortlessly destroys a whole squad of cops in the tiny room the movie opens in. Upon leaving and encountering an agent, she takes one look and sprints away at top speed.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The Knights who say Ni! appear to have a terrifying reputation, considering the fact they inspire fear within nearby villages, maybe even the whole country, cause the shrubbery-economy to collapse and make a fearful king Arthur do their bidding.
• The Newsies ain't afraid of Brooklyn. ...But Spot Conlon, he makes 'em a little nervous...
• Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. A Scarily Competent Tracker Psycho for Hire with his own moral code that could lead to you being killed merely for making small talk with him. When someone asks if he's dangerous, Carson Wells responds, "Compared to what? The bubonic plague?"
• No Kidding: After Vanilla tries to seduce him, she becomes this to Will, who is terrified of her.
• In No Name on the Bullet, when Professional Killer John Gant arrives in town, the locals are terrified by his reputation and surprised by how young he is. Every person with a guilty conscience assumes he is after them, and one person even commits suicide rather than face him, and two others try to kill each other, each convinced that the other hired Gant to kill them.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Davy Jones (and his pet, the Kraken) in the second and third films.
  • Succeeding him in the fourth film is Blackbeard, "The Pirate All Pirates Fear".
  • And of course is Captain Teague, Keeper of the Code. All the Pirate Lords go silent and meekly sit in his presence, and nobody has the courage to even blink when calmly he shoots a pirate dead for suggesting they break the code. Thankfully he's on their side and for the most part a Reasonable Authority Figure — Just don't even hint at breaking The Pirate Code.
• The Princess Bride invokes, discusses, and parodies this trope with the Dread Pirate Roberts.
• In The Proposition, the outlaw Arthur Burns is talked up a fair bit before we actually meet him. In one scene, Cpt. Stanley asks a group of captured Aborigine rebels if they know anything about Burns, since he's been lurking somewhere in the hill country where they live. They're terrified of Burns, believing him to be an evil spirit or some kind of werewolf. This all becomes very hard to reconcile with Arthur's apparent kindness and love for his family when we finally do meet him.
• Chesney from Raising the Wind is to the other students as they can't stand his snobbery. When he tries to sit with Jill, Malcolm, and Alex in the canteen, they urge Mervyn to take his place at the table to save them from his presence.
• The mere mention of Victoria in Red (2010) brings on a mixture of fear, admiration, and dread in all the other characters. Once we meet her, she lives up to her reputation.
• Don Logan in Sexy Beast. His very name inspires an Oh, Crap! reaction not because he is physically strong or imposing (quite the opposite), it's because he is a completely unhinged psychopath with a terrifying Hair-Trigger Temper.
• Invoked by Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes (2009), who deliberately cultivates an image of himself as a devil-worshipping Evil Sorcerer and Antichrist figure because his plans hinge on using fear to control others. Judging by the terrified crowd of Doomsayers that gather outside Parliament on the day when his plan reaches its climax, he did pretty well in that regard.
  • Professor James Moriarty from the sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. He is feared by the criminal underworld and many influential politicians and businessmen all over Europe. Even Sherlock Holmes gets terrified when he has a first-hand look at his plans for causing a war that is capable of engulfing all of Europe.
• Brick Top in Snatch. Merely poking his head through a door is enough to make hardened killers soil themselves. When asked, "Do you know who I am?" the bad-boy yardie Lincoln simply lowers his head and meekly replies that yes, he does.
  • Boris also fits, albeit in a different way. Brick Top is feared because he is vicious and sadistic, Boris is a man not messed with lightly because he is resilient, tough, well-armed, and unpredictable in both behaviour and loyalties.
• After Sonic knocks out the power in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), a general in the military recommends that Dr. Robotnik investigates the cause of the outage. The other members of the board immediately don't like the idea of having him onboard. But they're not actually afraid of him, Robotnik's just a major asshole.
• Star Wars:
  • The deliberately melodramatic opening crawl for the movies always refers to something as "dreaded" — the "dreaded Imperial Starfleet", the "first dreaded Death Star"...
  • Darth Vader in particular, who is a six-and-a-half-foot-tall, caped Black Knight with magical powers and super strength. He makes a triumphant entrance to the film's famous soundtrack, cape swirling, and lifts a captive soldier up and snaps his neck with one hand as an Establishing Character Moment. It just goes from there.
    • Vader became this long ago to the Tusken Raiders, back when he was still Anakin Skywalker. His rampage through the Tusken camp after his mother dies in his arms from the torture they subjected her to left no survivors: years later, Tuskens all over Tatooine hang up charms and perform ritual sacrifices to keep who they view as a vengeful, unstoppable desert demon away.
    • In the new Expanded Universe Darth Vader is still viewed as an example of pure evil many years after his death, and prior to The Force Awakens the First Order viciously destabilized the Republic and Leia Organa's influence by merely revealing she was Vader's daughter. The man really left an impression on the Galaxy it would seem.
    • And Imperial officers, Vader included, used the Emperor's name to scare their co-workers.
      Vader (to the commander of the second Death Star): ...the Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.
      (The commander of the second Death Star soils himself)
  • Boba Fett has this reputation, all the more impressive since he's a Badass Normal in a galaxy dominated by lightsaber-swinging sorcerers. Unfortunately, with the exception of seeing him capture Han Solo, he mostly stands around being intimidating before he is knocked into a monster's mouth on accident by a blind Han Solo.
    • The Expanded Universe rectified George Lucas' short use of him, something he even regretted, by bringing Fett back to life by blasting his way out of the monster that swallowed him. That would only further his reputation as one of the biggest badasses in the galaxy, where even Jedi Knights and Masters are very apprehensive of confronting him. George Lucas himself confirmed that Boba Fett survived the Sarlaac Pit.
    • Don't forget that Boba Fett was also a badass because he may be the only person in the galaxy with the stones to stand up to Vader and demand, "What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a lot to me." Even Vader shows him respect and offers to compensate him for that loss.
    • Boba Fett's reputation as this is finally backed up in live-action with The Mandalorian which depicts him initially brutalizing stormtroopers with a gaffi stick, utterly shattering their armor with his blows. When he gets his armor back, he becomes a full One-Man Army, taking out over a dozen stormtroopers without breaking a sweat. By the end, half a platoon of stormtroopers are frantically retreating to their dropships to escape his rampage.
  • Parodied (along with just about everything else) with Dark Helmet in Spaceballs. Everyone is afraid of him (and his method of punishing his mooks somewhat justifies that), but having Rick Moranis under that helmet kinda ruins his aura of terror.
  • Luke Skywalker has become a heroic example of this as of The Force Awakens. He is so revered and apparently is so powerful that the First Order lives in fear of the potential of his return, especially Supreme Leader Snoke, who outright admits that Luke is powerful enough to defeat them. Snoke orders Kylo Ren and Hux to obtain the map if they can, but is fine with the map being destroyed if necessary if it can keep Luke lost forever.
    • In The Last Jedi, when Snoke learns Luke's location, his first instinct is to NUKE THE ISLAND FROM ORBIT to kill Luke. Later, Kylo Ren has a very similar assessment of how dangerous Luke is: when Luke unexpectedly appears at the battlefield on Crait, he orders for "every gun we have to fire on that man." it doesn't work, forcing Kylo to engage Luke hand-to-hand, and his old master thoroughly embarrasses him. The ending implies that Luke has become further entrenched in legends across the galaxy for his heroics on Crait prior to his death.
  • Back in the Legends continuity the Hutt were very much this, able to openly control a galaxy-spanning criminal empire because the rest of the galaxy knows this is their way to hold back and not risk wiping out themselves and/or trillions of sentients in a war. The theories about the fate of their original homeworld of Varl say everything one needs to know: according to the Hutt it was the result of a black hole swallowing one of their home system's twin suns and the other expelling its external layers, shattering the other worlds of the system and leaving Varl as a wasteland, but the prevailing theory in the galaxy is that the Hutt themselves did it by accident during their last civil war, after which they established the system that led to their criminal empire to avoid a repeat (they did destroy many worlds during that war).
• Downplayed in Stroker Ace by the fact that Clyde Torkle isn't really evil; he's just a Bad Boss. Still, his introductory scene shows drivers ducking out of his way and generally trying to avoid him. The contract Stroker signs with him later explains why.
• Surrounded: Tommy Walsh is known and feared as a notorious outlaw.
• Terminator: The T-800 in the first film. In the sequel, Sarah Connor reacts with horror when she sees the new T-800 for the first time. By the time the T-1000 comes along, she's better prepared for it. Indeed, the first time she sees the T-800 in T2 is the only time in the entire movie when she absolutely panics.
• Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead: Mr. Shush is a notorious hitman reputed to always get his target. Critical Bill dies in a Mutual Kill though against him.
• Played for laughs in The Three Musketeers (1993), when some Mooks run into one of the title characters.
  Mook: It's Porthos the Pirate!
  (A few Mooks scream and run for it)
  D'Artagnan: Pirate?
  Porthos: I told you I was famous.
• Unforgiven: Clint Eastwood's character of William Munney is well known to everyone who hears his name, causing them to nearly soil themselves when they hear it.
• The Usual Suspects: Keyser Soze, a Shrouded in Myth mob boss who isn't actually seen on screen for the majority of the movie. (Or...is he...?) The mere mention that he's involved in the plot elicits an Oh, Crap! from almost every character. From what we see of his actions, it's completely justified. Though given that almost everything we know about him comes from an Unreliable Narrator, this might be heavily exaggerated.
  Verbal Kint Keaton once said, "I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him." Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyzer Soze.
• Rebel Leader Te Wheke in Utu due to his vow to kill every white person in New Zealand. He is particularly feared by The Gunslinger Williamson who witnessed the rebels' brutality first-hand.
• Winter's Bone:
  • Thump Milton is a meth kingpin with a bare minimum of scruples and a Chest of Medals that hint his bite is worse than his bark. No one risks pissing him off unless they're truly desperate, and his own granddaughter says that she's scared he'll kill her if she does too much to help Ree.
  • Ree's uncle Teardrop is a violent, intimidating felon who even Thump is hesitant to pick a fight with.
• Ichi in the Zatoichi series is a case of Beware the Nice Ones, and pretty much makes a lot of Yakuza quake in their boots upon realizing who he is. Doesn't stop a lot of them from making the mistake of Bullying a Dragon...much to their detriment later on.

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