Big Bad / Video Games R-Z

R

• Radiant Arc: Zardon is the main antagonist of the game, being a rogue Holy Being who wants to enslave his brethren's creation with his army of demonic Morians. While he spends most of the game sealed, it's revealed that he planned around this by separating a part of himself as Seperus, who spends a millennium planning how to best steal the Grand Crystal shards in order to undo the seal.
• Radiant Silvergun: The Stone-Like, a giant crystal that's killing everyone on earth.
  • Ikaruga: Tenro Hourai is the leader of the Horai who intends to Take Over the World, with the Stone-Like as the Greater-Scope Villain who corrupted Tenro.
• Radiata Stories: The situation isn't the fault of any one individual, but the way events escalate can be mostly pinned down to three people driving the world off a cliff with their actions:
  • Zane is the leader of the light elves and, later, the non-humans in general. He is a racist who wants to kill all humans for personal reasons rather than humanity's disruption of the balance. He mostly stays offscreen in the human path and hides his rather bloodthirsty nature when dealing with Jack in the non-human route.
  • Cross Ward is mostly to blame for the war igniting when he slaughters the dwarves. He also was the one who sent the blood orcs to attack the elves, triggering Jack and Ganz's expulsion as well as Ridley's receiving of a transpiritation. He becomes an ally of Jack's in the human route - in theory, anyway - and in the non-human route, he is killed prior to the final confrontation. Also, the results of the second event above were largely out of his control.
  • Aphelion, a.k.a. Lord Lucian, the most competent chessmaster in the game and the only one who really knows what's going on. He's also the Final Boss of both paths. Like the others, in both routes, he's not the only cause of the conflict. He's reacting to a broken situation and trying to run damage control, but his methods bring him into conflict with Jack. In the human route, the player learns just how well-intentioned his plan is, while in the non-human route, he's a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere.
• Rage 2: General Martin Cross, the leader of the Authority who aims to takeover the Wastelands and wipe out those who he considers weak.
• The Ratchet & Clank series gave us a nice selection of Big Bads as well, however the most recurring is Dr. Nefarious.
  • The first game: Ultimate Supreme Executive Chairman Drek, who's out to destroy and loot countless planets in order to make a new Blarg homeworld after delibrately poisoning the old one.
    • Drek also serves the role in the film and 2016 video game that retell the first game's story only for Dr. Nefarious to betray Drek near the end and serve as the real Big Bad.
  • Going Commando: Captain Qwark. After being disgraced due to his actions in the first game, he hijacks Megacorps and the Protopet project before its vicious nature can be fixed, unleashes millions of them across Bogon, and frames Ratchet and Clank for it; with the intent of fixing the crisis he caused and restore his reputation.
  • Up Your Arsenal: Dr. Nefarious, who's out to turn all organic life in the galaxy into his robotic slaves.
  • Deadlocked: Gleeman Vox, the amoral host of Dreadzone who kidnaps Ratchet and forces him to fight to the death on his show.
  • Size Matters: Emperor Otto DeStruct, the leader of the Technomites who intends on using an army of Ratchet clones to collect every intelligent being in the galaxy and assimilate their minds into his.
  • Secret Agent Clank: Klunk, having framed Ratchet for the theft of the Eye of Infinity and planning to use it to endanger the entire galaxy so he can save the day.
  • Tools of Destruction: Emperor Percival Tachyon, the last of the Cragmites who's responsible for the genocide of the Lombaxes. He plans on bringing the Cragmites back and lead them in taking over the universe.
  • Quest for Booty: Captain Romulus Slag and Captain Angstrom Darkwater form a Big Bad Duumvirate, both of whom are after the Vulcum Star that Ratchet needs to find Clank.
  • A Crack in Time: Nefarious returns as the villain, this time planning to use the Great Clock to take over all of time and space. Alister Azimuth takes over the position after Nefarious is defeated, intending to use the Great Clock to reverse the destruction of the Lombaxes, uncaring of the danger that would put the universe in.
  • All 4 One: The Loki Master, the mastermind behind the Collectors that terrorize Magnus.
  • Full Frontal Assault: Zurgo/The Qwark Fanboy, having breached the Planetary Defense Centers, putting the entire galaxy in danger.
  • Into The Nexus: Vendra and Neftin Prog, who aim to unleash the Nethers upon the galaxy. However, the Nether leader usurps the position, as he was the one manipulating them.
  • Rift Apart: Emperor Nefarious, a version of Nefarious who successfully conquered the galaxy. While Dr. Nefarious is largely responsible for the plot happening in the first place, Emperor Nefarious is by far the more prominent threat, with him intending to use the Dimensionator to conquer all dimensions.
• Rave Heart: Count Vorakia Estuuban, the ruler of Niredia, seeks to take over the galaxy of Xerxes and impose his planet's darwinist ideology on everyone so that the strong dominates the weak. He also wants to start another war with the galaxy of Ursula in order to expand his domain.
• In Ravensword: Shadowlands, there's Ul'Thok, a demon that intends to return to Tyreas and presumably Take Over the World.
• Rayman:
  • Rayman: Mr. Dark is a dark sorcerer who steals the Great Protoon and throws the Glade of Dreams into anarchy and chaos.
  • Rayman 2: The Great Escape: Admiral Razorbeard is the leader of the robo-pirates who successfully enslaves most of the Glade of Dreams, with Rayman being the only thing keeping him from total domination.
  • Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc: André is the ruler of the Black Lums who seeks to transform the energy of the Core of the World into Hoodlums and Take Over the World.
  • Rayman Origins: The Magician, a Fanboy of Mr. Dark, instigates a war between Rayman and the Livid Dead, then uses both sides to gather Lums to power his machines that he intends to use to take over the Glade of Dreams.
  • Rayman Legends: The Magician reprises his role as the main villain, having split himself in five and successfully taken over the Glade of Dreams while Rayman and co. were taking a century long nap.
• RealityMinds: Kvena is revealed to be intentionally ruining Silvana's life by mind controlling her into attacking innocents with magic and is also the one who switched Astrake and Silvana's bodies. She wants to make the protagonists hate her and grant her the death she wishes for.
• Rebuild had no designated bad guy for the first instalment, aside from the zombies. The second, however, has Father Kane, the head of the Last Judgement gang that enslave women for their own sexual pleasures and repeatedly attack your settlement. He's therefore the biggest threat aside from the zombies, and killing him and his gang is one of the conditions that allows you to win. The third game has Mr Clark, an intelligent zombie, but he is being manipulated by Senator Davis, who wants to give her people hope, though her real plan is to create stronger zombies to take power.
• Red Dead Revolver has Governor Griffon, who betrayed Red Harlow's father and is responsible for General Deigo's tyrany.
  • Red Dead Redemption has Dutch van der Linde and Edgar Ross. Dutch is the main target, but Edgar is the one who manipulates John and instigated the plot. In control of John Marston for the vast majority of the game, Ross is not actually fought until the very, very end, and not even by Marston himself.
  • Red Dead Redemption 2 has Colm O'Driscoll, Leviticus Cornwall, Andrew Milton, and Micah Bell. Colm is the leader of a rival gang, Cornwall is a wealthy magnate who hires detectives to kill the gang, Andrew Milton (and Edgar Ross) is the leader of those detectives, and Micah Bell is an Opportunistic Bastard out for himself, joining up with Dutch van der Linde to inflame his paranoia and thus break down his gang in exchange for the detectives leaving him alone. Out of all four, O'Driscoll and Cornwall are basically Big Bad Wannabes, though Cornwall is the one who hired the detectives who hound the gang for most of the game. Through most of the game, Arthur Morgan is the player character, but Micah isn't defeated until the very end, and not even by Arthur's hand.
• The Red Faction series has Axel Capek in the first game, the Mad Scientist responsible for the creation of the plague and mutants who the titular Red Faction is uprising against. After he dies halfway through the game, Colonel Masako pulls a Dragon Ascendant and sends her mercenaries to wipe out the remainder of the Red Faction. For the remainder of the series, Capek is a posthumous Greater-Scope Villain. The rest of the series has -
  • Red Faction II has Chancellor Victor Sopot, leader of the Commonwealth who oppresses his citizens with an iron fist. After his is killed halfway through the game, your immediate superior Crate Molov takes over where Sopot left off and declares himself as new Dictator.
  • Guerrilla has a Big Bad Duumvirate between General Roth and Admiral Lucious Kobel of the EDF, who exploit the populace of Mars for the planets resources. Roth leads the EDF forces on Mars against the reborn Red Faction while Kobel controls the aerospace from the EMS Hydra.
  • Armageddon has cult leader Adam Hale, responsible for destroying the Terraformer and leaving Mars uninhabitable and eventually awakening a dormant alien race beneath Mars' surface. Much like Capek and Sopot, he dies halfway through the game leaving the Alien Plague Queen as the Final Boss.
• Redeemer: General Taras Volkov, the leader of the Irbis Unit hunting down Vasily for deflecting from them.
• Rengoku: In the first game, AI Deucalion, the overseer of Purgatory, is enforcing all ADAMs to continue the Gladiator Games despite there be nobody to watch them. It's also training the ultimate fighting machine when there's nobody else to fight, and keeps Gryphus as her guardian. In the second game the last enemy is also Deucalion, further elaborated as being instructed by Virgil to make ADAMs turn on humans when they prove to have grown a will of their own.
• République: Kenichiro Treglazov, the totalitarian founder of the dystopian city of Metamorphosis who's intent on expanding his influence across the globe.
• Requiem: Avenging Angel: Lucifer, who leads the Fallen in taking over Earth and intends on invading Heaven and starting Armageddon.
• The Resident Evil franchise has the Umbrella Corporation led by Ozwell E. Spencer, but Wesker gradually takes over as the main antagonist and puppet master throughout the series.
  • The individual Big Bads of each game are specifically:
    • Resident Evil: Albert Wesker, leader of S.T.A.R.S. who is manipulating his team into gathering experiment data for the Umbrella Corporation.
    • Resident Evil 2: William Birkin, the Umbrella Scientist who unleashed the T-Virus in Raccoon city, he stalks the protagonists throughout the game gradually mutating into the mutant "G". Mr X serves as The Heavy of the B scenario.
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis: The Titular Nemesis; A Tyrant programmed to hunt down the survivng members of S.T.A.R.S.
    • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica: Alexia Ashford, the Noblewoman who desires to control the world as queen of a mutated Hive Mind.
    • Resident Evil 0: Umbrella co-founder Dr. James Marcus, responsible for the mutant leech outbreak. The Marcus we see throughout the game is actually his creation; the Queen Leech which assimilated his memories after his death.
    • Resident Evil 4: Osmund Saddler, the leader of the Los Illuminados cult who had the president's daughter kidnaped, with the goal of using her to spread Las Plagas throughout the United States and eventually Take Over the World.
    • Resident Evil 5: Albert Wesker again, this time planning to spread the Uroboros virus across the world so he can rule it as a god. Wesker murders Ozwell E. Spencer in 2006, solidifying his status as the true Big Bad of the franchise up to that point.
    • Resident Evil 6: Carla Radames, leader of Neo-Umbrella spreading the C-Virus across the world and the one manipulating all parties through the events of the game.
    • Resident Evil: Revelations: Jack Norman, leader of the terrorist group Il Veltro. Except Norman has been trapped at the bottom of the ocean for the entire game. F.B.C. head Morgan Lansdale supplied Il Veltro with the T-Abyss virus and is manipulating the B.S.A.A. to cover his tracks.
    • Resident Evil: Revelations 2: The Overseer, aka Alex Wesker; the one in charge of the Sejim Island facility Claire and Moira are trapped on.
    • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard: E-001 aka; Eveline, who's responsible for kidnapping Mia and brainwashing the Bakers into becoming evil.
    • Resident Evil Village: Mother Miranda, matriarch of the titular village and responsible for kidnapping Ethan Winters' infant daughter. She is also revealed to be the peer of Ozwell E. Spencer, making her the Greater-Scope Villain of the franchise as a whole.
  • The Big Bads of spinoff games include:
    • Resident Evil: Survivor: Vincent Goldman, commander of Sheena Island and responsible for developing the Tyrants.
    • Resident Evil: Dead Aim: Morpheus D. Duvall, a former researcher turned bioterrorist targeting Umbrella Facilities.
    • Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles: Sergei Vladimir, Umbrella's chief of security who fights against Albert Wesker for control over Umbrella.
    • Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles: Javier Hidalgo, a South American drug lord profiteering off of the fallout of the T-Veronica virus outbreak.
• Revenant: Yhagoro, the evil, powerful God worshipped by the cult Locke must defeat.
• Rewind or Die: Slaw, real name Keith Williams, is a sadistic serial killer who stalks and captures Tony to sacrifice him to a pig god.
• Ride to Hell: Retribution: Caesar, the leader of the Devil's Hand and a former friend of Toledo Conway who would murder him and his wife out of jealousy before having his gang hunt down and kill all of the remaining members of the Conway family; putting him into conflict with protagonist Jake Conway.
• Ripper: The titular Ripper, a Serial Killer inspired by Jack the Ripper who investigative reporter Jake Quinlan is working to bring to justice.
• Rise of the Dragon: Deng Hwang, a member of the Chinese Mafia who seeks to awaken the power of the dragon Bahamut and use it to conquer the world.
• Rise of the Third Power: Emperor Dimitri Noraskov is responsible for turning Arkadya into a fascist state where people are purged for dissent and failing to uphold his lofty ideals of strength. He wants to start another world war in order to place all of Rin under his rule, and exploits tensions between Cirinthia and Tariq in order to do so. The protagonists are part of a resistance group, which formed in order to prevent the upcoming war or at least mitigate the damage.
• Risk of Rain and it's remake Risk of Rain Returns: Providence is a mysterious god-like entity who brought many of the monsters survivors encounter to Petrichor V, and is the one directly responsible for crashing the survivors' transport ship, UES Contact Light. He largely remains an overarching antagonist throughout the game, with every monster seemingly subservient to him, but when survivors finally manage to reach their ship again and attempt to use it to escape the planet, he finally decides to intervene and fight them himself, becoming the challenging Final Boss.
• The Room (RPG Maker): The Unholy Soul is the entity who trapped the nameless protagonist in his apartment in order to possess him.
• RosenkreuzStilette:
  • In the original game and its bonus mode Grollschwert, Count Michael Zeppelin, fearing that Magi persecution by The Empire is restarting, leads the RKS rebellion against The Empire and has his daughter Iris kidnapped by Talos, sparking ex-RKS member Spiritia Rosenberg's quest to stop him and rescue Iris. Except that Iris was manipulating him all along, and she arranged the war for fun and to become a god.
  • In Freudenstachel and its alternate mode Weißsilber, the Pope of the Orthodox Church is the founder of the Schwarzkreuz, a group of Black Magi whom he orders to persecute and kill Magi in response to the RKS rebellion, sparking Freudia Neuwahl's quest to stop him and rescue Spiritia from his clutches. However, he is eventually revealed to be a homunculus copy controlled by Iris, who wants to absorb the Magi's power to possess Spirita.
• Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins: The cause of the Nightseed attacks is the spirit of Emperor Titus I, who wants to lure the protagonist deeper into the ruins and force them to prove themselves worthy as his vessel. He intends to use the Star Spirits to force everyone to fall asleep and dream of Argadium, keeping his spirit and empire alive forever.
• RUINER: The Boss. He is behind most of HEAVEN's corruption and used you to take care of an attempted coup.
• Rune: Conrack, a rogue Viking who allied himself with Loki in the name of conquest and power, and he'll kill anyone who dares stand in his way.
• Rune Factory
  • ''First game: Ethelberd is the ruler of the Sechs Empire who aims to Take Over the World by controlling the Divine Earth Dragon Terrable.
  • Rune Factory Frontier: Gelwein, who's out to obtain the Runes and use their power to exact vengeance on the Kingdom of Norad for disgracing him.
  • Rune Factory Oceans has the Masked Man, a mysterious man possessing the body of the female protagonist who is trying to awaken the Legendary Golem so he can wage war on the Elder Dragons and become a god.
  • Rune Factory 4: Ethelberd is the villain again, this time planning to destroy Selphia by possessing the Wind Dragon Ventuswill.
• RuneScape has several, usually at least one in each of the various multi-part storylines. For example; The Sliske quest series has the titular Sliske, who is holding a contest between the gods over the Stone of Jas; in order to distract the gods from Zaros' return. Sliske is arguably this for the Sixth Age in general, having caused the God series by killing Guthix, which allows the gods to return to Gielinor and continue their wars against each other. Although Sliske is nominally subservient to Zaros, his actions are unsanctioned, and Zaros clearly disapproves of his actions to the point of excommunicating him. Sliske is also more clearly villainous than Zaros.
• Rusty: Bloody Mary, the Queen of Bloodthorne Castle, is the one behind the monsters attacking villages and kidnapping women, in an effort to revive her master, Marquis de Monte-Carlo, who ruled and terrorized a part of Europe until a hero defeated him, so he can began his reign of terror again.
• RWBY: Grimm Eclipse: Dr. Merlot is behind the communication network going down and the appearance of mutated Grimm.

S

• The Saboteur: Kirk Dierker, an SS-Commandant overseeing the Nazis' occupation of Paris who murdered Sean Devlin's best friend Jules, leading to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to avenge him.
• The Saints Row series:
  • First game: Alderman Richard Hughes, who uses the gang violence caused by the Saints to justify destroying the Saints Row district.
  • the second game: Dane Vogel, who spends the game maniuplating the gangs of Stilwater into a full-blown gang war so he can send his private militia in to defeat them, before using it as the reason to gentrify the neighborhood of Shivington.
  • The third game presents Phillipe Loren as this, but he's killed in the first act of the game. From then on it becomes a Big Bad Ensemble with Killbane and STAG leader Cyrus Temple, both of whom are out to destroy the Third Street Saints.
  • Saints Row IV: Zinyak, the leader of the Zin Empire who had Earth destroyed and trapped the Saints in his virtual reality simulator.
  • Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell: Satan, who kidnaps the Boss and forces them to marry his daughter, with Johnny and Kenzie having to journey to Hell and save them.
  • Agents of Mayhem: The Morningstar is the mastermind of L.E.G.I.O.N.'s attacks across the world that M.A.Y.H.E.M. is fighting against, with Doctor Babylon acting as The Heavy.
  • Saints Row (2022): Atticus Marshal, The Founder and CEO of Marshall Defense Industries and the Boss' former employer attempts to take control of the Saints. Although the Nahualli he ends up being the Final Boss after pulling a last-minute betrayal.
• The Sakabashira Game: The titular Deadly Game is run by an unseen, Affably Evil Eldritch Abomination. It has no apparent goal from doing this and picks the players at random.
• Sally Face: The Red-Eyed Demon, the evil entity that the Devourers of God cult worships who wants to eradicate humanity, and Dogman/Kenneth Pheleps, the leader of the cult seeking to summon the Red-Eyed Demon and the one responsible for Sal's disfigurement and the death of his mother.
• Salt and Sanctuary: The Nameless God is the cause of your shipwreck on the island and many of the island's supernatural phenomena. It's also implied he may have a hand in the constant wars that plague the world's nations.
• Samuria Western: Franklin Goldberg, a tycoon whose private army enslaved the entire town.
• Sands of Destruction has Lacertus Rex, the one controlling the tyrannical beastlords and manipulating everyone so he can become a god and remake the world in his own image.
• Sara is Missing: The one responsible for Sara’s disappearance is Irizu, who is the leader of the sinister cult that has kidnapped Sara, and may or may not be controlling the phone through IRIS.
  • SIMULACRA: The one responsible for Anna’s disappearance is the titular Simulacra, a digital abomination residing in the Internet which is killing and absorbing people into itself.
  • Simulacra: Pipe Dreams: The one who is responsible for Teddy’s strange behavior and is out to get him is the FlapeeBird Simulacrum, which controls the FlapeeBird game and seeks to kill and assimilate victims into it’s consciousness, much like the original Simulacra. It’s not clear what relationship they have.
  • SIMULACRA 2: "The Ripple Man" is the Simulacrum of this game who preys on Kimera's influencers desperate to get rid of the controversial posts they've made to boost their reputations. It is the one responsible for killing Maya, and seeks to make her friends into its next victims.
• Scarface: The World Is Yours has Alejandro "Alex" Sosa, Tony's primary target and Arch-Enemy.
• Scooby-Doo video games:
  • Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights: The Mastermind, Holly Graham, having brought back past foes of Mystery, Inc. to try and defeat our heroes.
  • Scooby-Doo: Mystery Mayhem initially sets up Travis Sherman, sketchy owner of ShermanTech, as the main villain by using the monsters summoned by the Tome of Doom to assist in illicit land acquisition, but his employee Dr. Selena Drake is revealed to be The Man in Front of the Man when she reveals her intentions to use the alpha wave modulator to assist in her goal to Take Over the World.
  • The main conflict of Scooby-Doo, Who's Watching Who? is the Mystery, Inc. gang appearing on the reality show Ghost Scene Investigation and having to capture and unmask their rivals the Ghost Scene Investigation team's archenemy the Ghost Hunter Haunter, who turns out to be the show's producer Mace Middlemost terrorizing his show's stars to boost ratings.
• SCP – Containment Breach has a Big Bad Ensemble, due to the large variety of SCPs on the loose. The main enemy on the gameplay front is SCP-173, whose chamber D-9341 is assigned to at the start of the game, and with lightning fast speed, is the most persistent threat of the SCPs roaming the facility, with SCP-106, able to pass through solid matter and take the player to his Pocket Dimension, being a secondary antagonist. Ultimately, the story's main villains are the Chaos Insurgency, who are behind the titular breach, having used mole operatives Agent Skinner and Doctor George Maynard as an Inside Job to orchestrate the events leading up to it, including putting SCP-079 in control of the facility.
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has Genichiro Ashina, who's not only the top commander of the Ashina clan's military, but the very samurai who personally kidnapped Kuro and cut off Wolf's arm.
• Senran Kagura:
  • Burst: In Skirting Shadows, the Hanzo storyline, Homura is the leader of the Hejibo squad sent to steal the Super Secret Ninja Scroll from Hanzo Academy in preparation for an all-out war against them. In Crimson Girls, the Hejibo storyline, Headmaster Dōgen and Orochi are revealed as the true villains, the former being the man who runs Hejibo and orders Homura around, and the latter being the powerful yoma whom Dōgen wants to use to Take Over the World.
  • In Shinobi Versus, Yumi is the villain of the Hanzo and Gessen storylines as the leader of Gessen Girls School who wants to destroy Hanzo for befriending the Crimson Squad, while Miyabi is the villain of the Hejibo and Crimson storylines as the new squad leader of Hejibo who wants to destroy the Crimson Squad for betraying the school. Until both of them are revealed to be pawns of Dōgen, who manipulated them into fighting as part of his revenge plot.
  • In Deep Crimson, Dōgen and Orochi are once again the villains as they are the leaders of the yoma invasion of Japan.
  • In Estival Versus, Sayuri/Jasmine, while by no means evil or villainous is revealed to have masterminded the events of the story in an attempt to force the girls to accept and adopt her beliefs that a Shinobi must cast off her bonds with others and her emotions in order to become a "true" Kagura.
• Septerra Core: Chosen Lord Doskias starts a crusade to open the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven and save the world, no matter who dies in the process.
• Seraphic Blue: Ende is the Practitioner and leader of the Gaia Cancers, and he has the most active role in the story by antagonizing the party at every turn. Eventually, it turns out he and his human followers were secretly in communication with Er, the goddess of evil. It's revealed that she's the one directing them to stay one step ahead of Vene's party, which allows them to manipulate Vene into becoming the complete Seraphic Blue and unwittingly allowing Er to scale to her power. In the end, Er becomes Refuse Seraphic Blue, a being who will destroy Gaia in order to fulfill the desires of all nihilists who despise life.
• Serious Sam: The Evil Overlord Tah-Um, called Mental by humanity, is an Ancient Evil that has been wiping out or enslaving any intelligent civilizations across the universe for millions of years. Every single conflict in the series can be traced back to him, but because he has never been properly seen in the 20+ years since the first game, he usually acts more akin to a Greater-Scope Villain. There are several games where a servant of his fills the role directly though.
  • Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Serious Sam: The Random Encounter and I Hate Running Backwards: Ugh-Zan III is the grand admiral of the Horde forces and the Final Boss throughout all three titles. He's the overseer of the final cleansing of Earth in the first game, reconstructed as a Cyborg and sent to protect Mental's future in I Hate Running Backwards and in Random Encounter he just kinda shows up because the game needs a final boss.
  • Serious Sam: Next Encounter: The Evil Serious Sam Clone is an imperfect clone of Sam created by Mental. Unlike other villains, he is actually going against Mental's orders, since he's causing mischief in the past despite Mental explicitly telling him not to touch his Time-Lock.
  • Serious Sam Double D: General Maxilla is carrying out some odd scheme involving crystal beacons throughout three different time periods.
  • Serious Sam's Bogus Detour: Director Doppler is the head of Risk Assessment in the Mental-Altani Corporation, being in charge of Mental-Altani's experiments with a Mutagenic Goo.
  • Serious Sam 4: Lord Achriman directs Mental's forces in their invasion of Earth, personally trying to snuff out human resistance and interfering with Sam's search for the Holy Grail. General Howard Brand is also secretly working against humanity, intending to offer the Holy Grail to Mental in the hopes of joining the Horde.
• Seven Mysteries:
  • In the original game, The Headmaster is the one behind the mysterious deaths, as he blackmailed Sang and Linh into killing anyone who got too close to the hauntings of the school- though Sang himself is behind the curse as he killed the first few students and framed Thuy, resulting in her angry ghost cursing the school.
  • The Last Page remake: The Demon is the one behind the curse and the mysterious deaths of students this time around. Sang and the Headmaster are his pawns in this version of the story, and Neal's goal is to save Sang from the demon.
• Shade: Wrath of Angels: The Angel of Faith, secretly the Dark Angel, spends the game manipulating the Player Character into giving her the Holy Angels' souls and granting her the power to takeover the world of both mortals and Gods.
• Shadow Hearts has Albert Simon, who seeks to summon the Seraphic Radiance to destory the world after seeing how cruel and wicked it is.
  • Shadow Hearts: Covenant has Masaji Kato, who attempts to take the world back in time a hundred years — long before those who had ruined it had been born, and aims to lead humanity into prosperity himself..
• Shadow of the Beast (2016): Maletoth, an Evil Sorcerer who brainwashed Aabron into acting as his own personal killing machine to further his global conquest. Once Aabron's freed from his control, he spends the game hunting Maletoth down to exact his revenge.
• Shadow Ops: Red Mercury: Daniels, the mastermind the plot to steal the titular nukes and use them to kill numerous world leaders.
• Shadow Warrior (1997): Master Zilla, the president of Zilla Enterprises who summons an army of monsters from the netherworld with the intent of using them to Take Over the World and sends them after Lo Wang in retaliation for quitting his job as his bodyguard.
• Shantae:
  • Risky Boots is the main villain of the series as a whole; being Shantae's archenemy with ambitions of taking over the world.
  • Pirate's Curse has the Pirate King, Risky's former mentor, who takes over her crew and spreads curses throughout Sequin Land and its neighboring islands; forcing Shantae and Risky Boots to work together.
  • Seven Sirens has a Big Bad Duumvirate between Risky Boots and Empress Siren, the leader of the Seven Sirens. The two of them work together to capture the half-genies, restore Risky's ship, and Take Over the World — at least until their mutual betrayal in the final battle.
• Shadow Man: Legion, an ancient demon who rules over Deathside and unites a team of Serial Killers to bring about the Apocalypse.
• Shining Resonance: Georg Zalbard, the Captain of "Beowulf" who works to revive Deus, with the intent of fusing with him and ending the world; using Excella to distract the Dragoneers from his true goals until he has no further use of her.
• Shinobi (2002): Hiruko, who killed the Oboro Clan and summoned the Hellspawn.
• Shogo: Mobile Armor Division: Ryo Ishikawa, the president of Shogo Industries who manipulates the UCA and the Fallen to fight each other in the hopes that the two sides kill each other so he can take control of Kato for his company.
• The Shore: Nyarlathotep, who manipulates Andrew into helping him destroy humanity, as well as numerous planets across the galaxy, by implanting false memories of a daughter he never had into him.
• Shovel Knight has the Enchantress, an evil witch rules over the land with her subordinates, the Order of No Quarter. She's the Big Bad for all three campaigns, however, she's only the Final Boss in Shovel of Hope (the base game). In Plague of Shadows, the final boss is the Corrupted Essence. In Specter of Torment, the final boss is Nightmare Reize. In King of Cards, the final boss is The Grand Triumvirate. All of which are influenced by the Enchantress herself based on the protagonists' personal desires.
  • Shovel Knight Showdown: The Mirror of Fate, a large magical mirror that suddenly gained sentience after an attempt at trapping the Enchantress inside Goes Horribly Wrong.
  • Shovel Knight Dig: Drill Knight, an infamous criminal who's responsible for committing and pulling off robberies using his digging abilities. He leads his crew, the Hexcavators, as they dig throughout the Valley's ground for unknown reasons.
• Sid Meier's Pirates!: The Marquis de Montalban, the man behind your family's enslavement and your main nemesis.
• Silent Debuggers: Charles Smith is the one responsible for creating the Biroids and unleashing them upon the OHME station; intending on eventually mutating all of humanity into Biroids.
• Silent Hill usually has the God but is more of a Greater-Scope Villain in It's appearances:
  • First game: Dahlia and Alessa Gillepsie. While Dahlia's plans to use Alessa to birth the "God" is the pinnacle of the game's plot, Alessa lures Cheryl to Silent Hill so they can be merged, before she tricks Harry Mason into crashing his car, and then intends to use the Seal of Mettaton to destroy the town; granting herself "a complete death" and prevent the God's birth.
  • Silent Hill 2: Pyramid Head and Maria. Pyramid Head spends the game hunting down James so he can find out the truth of his and Maria's nature, while Maria tries to distract James from coming to terms with his wife's death by being everything he wanted her to be.
  • Silent Hill 3: Claudia Wolf, who's out to birth the God through Heather.
  • Silent Hill 4: Walter Sullivan. He's the one behind the latest string of murders, and wants also to kill Eileen and Henry to complete the 21 Sacraments ritual.
  • Orgins: Dahlia, with the game giving further detail into her plans to birth the "God" in the first game.
  • Homecoming: Judge Margaret Holloway, the one who revived the Order in an attempt to save Shepherd's Glen from Silent Hill's corruption, kidnapping and brainwashing the citizens into following the "true faith".
  • Shattered Memories: Michael Kauffman. At least in the sense that he's trying to break Cheryl out of her fantasy world where her father is a perfect man, also making him the game's Big Good.
  • Downpour: George Sewell, being directly responsible for the conflict between Murphy and Anne, though Anne Cunningham and the Wheelman are The Heavy.
• Silver: Silver, the cruel ruler of Jarrah who intends on sacrificing David's wife to the evil god Apocalypse in order to gain even greater power.
• The SiN series has Elexis Sinclaire, who plans to turn humanity into destructive mutants as a way to unlock mankind's ultimate genetic potential.
  • The Wages of Sin Expansion Pack has Gianni Manero, who desires the destruction of Freeport city.
• Sin and Punishment: Achi, is actually an alien lifeform who wishes to mold Saki into the ultimate warrior in order to fight an unspecified enemy. However, her plans involve destroying much of the Earth and reshaping it to her liking.
  • Sin and Punishment: Star Successor: Deko Gekiso, the leader of the Nebulox group that aims to kill Kachi. He doesn't show up until the penultimate level, but still establishes himself as the strongest threat across two multi-phase boss fights.
• Skeleton Krew: Dr. Moribund Kadaver, the owner of DEAD Inc. responsible for the mutant outbreak that the Skeleton Krew are hired to deal with.
• In Skies of Arcadia, the Valuan empire is led by Empress Teodora, although her head admiral, Lord Galcian, has his own ulterior motives and serves as the true Big Bad. Incidentally, his Dragon, Ramirez, is the actual final boss, taking over after Galcian is killed, and changing the plan from rule the world to destroy the world.
• Sleeping Dogs (2012): Henry "Big Smile" Lee in a Big Bad Ensemble with Superintendent Thomas Pendrew, who engineered the events of the game for his own benefit while conspiring to murder anyone who went against him or threatened his standing, to the point of murdering his old collaborator Uncle Po, leaving the elite Sun On Yee members for dead at the hands of a rival triad, and tipping off Lee about Wei Shen's true identity in a bid to have him killed, triggering the final confrontation.
• All Sly Cooper games feature Big Bads though they were not always who they appeared to be.
  • Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus featured Clockwerk, an owl that traded his flesh and feathers for robotic immortality, all to wipe out the Cooper family.
  • Sly 2: Band of Thieves saw the return of Clockwerk, but in pieces, so it disqualifies him from Big Bad status. Arpeggio was resembling the Clockwerk pieces to reform the mechanical bird and fuse with him to gain immortality, but at the end of the game, Neyla quadruple-crosses him and fuses herself with the frame, dubbing herself Clock-La.
  • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves' Big Bad is a Mad Scientist named Dr. M who has his own vendetta against Sly and the Cooper family.
  • Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time features Cyrille Le Paradox, a museum owner who uses time travel to interfere with the Cooper ancestors so he could have his revenge on Sly's father who indirectly caused Le Paradox's own father to be arrested.
• Smile for Me: Dr. Boris Habit, owner of the Habitat, is the main obstacle to Flower Kid making the Habitaticians happy and is responsible for a lot of the unhappiness, because he wants to make everyone happy himself by stealing everyone's teeth and brainwashing them.
• Sniper Assassin: Mr. Johnson is the CEO of FFG Corp that Shawn is hired to kill and the man responsible for his wife's death.
• Sniper Elite:
  • Sniper Elite V2: Dr. Wolff, the leader of a group of scientists and officers closely involved in the V2 rocket program. What makes him special is that, unlike a lot of other scientists in the same field, he is willing to sell his secrets and expertise out to the Soviet Union in exchange for his life.
  • Sniper Elite III: General Franz Vahlen is a high-ranking officer in the Afrika Korps, and the brains behind Project Seuche, a top-secret project for the German Army intent on helping to win the war in the Axis favor.
  • Sniper Elite 4: General Heinz Böhm, one of the Nazi leaders responsible for the weapons program producing the Nazi Anti-Ship missiles.
  • Sniper Elite 5: SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Abelard Möller. He's the man responsible for Operation Kraken, a top secret German weapons project said to be able to turn the tide of war back in Germany's favor. In addition, he's also responsible for killing hundreds of civilians and French resistance fighters in a brutal campaign of slaughter in the French countryside.
• Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley: The Park Keeper is responsible for all of the main problems in the story. He builds many parks all over Moominvalley (which Snufkin hates, as he's all about nature and freedom, so he can't stand the rules that parks have), as well as a dam which is causing a drought. He also locks Moomintroll in jail and takes the treasure Little My was hunting for.
• Soaring Machinariae: The Desire System of the Tower of Desire is revealed to grant wishes by manipulating cause and effect. Unfortunately, the trials are designed to be deadly so that the energy of the dead are used to fuel the successful wishes. The very legend of tower itself is bait designed to lure people to die for the sake of fueling the Desire System. The system itself is also sentient and tries to kill the protagonists when they refuse to make a wish.
• Sofia?: Icarus is the masked stranger who broke into the Jenkins house and is out to kill Crow and Fio.
• Solatorobo: Red the Hunter:
  • First half: Bruno Dondurma is the leader of the Kurvaz Hunter Guild who chases after the medallion to awaken Lares and Take Over the World.
  • Second half: Baion plans to summon Tartaros and use CODA to purge the planet of its "failure" species.
• SongBird Symphony: The Masked Bird leads the trio of Magpies in opposing Birb's quest to get the four notes to power the Owl's artifact and find Birb's parents. The Masked Bird is actually Birb's mother and a good bird trying to stop the Owl, who killed almost every songbird in the past, from finishing the job and conquering the forest.
• Soma duology:
  • Soma Spirits: Dissonance, one of two Great Beings and ruler of the World of Sorrow, turned against his sister Form and is disrupting the balance between his world and the World of Joy by trying to steal all the joy, believing that it makes people weak, and is trying to convince Heart and Soul to help him create a world without happiness. However, in certain endings, Form is revealed to be just as malevolent, as she and her brother want to wipe out each other's respective world and emotion, and in the Balance path, when the worlds are merged together, they team up to destroy all of Soma because they hate the new world that does not satisfy either of them.
  • Soma Union: Professor M is trying to stop Zero from putting the prices of the planet Soma back together, and sends his three minions to seize the four orbs that hold the key to repairing Soma. He is revealed to be Mason from the previous game, who is trying to stop the return of Absolution and needs Zero to contain the orbs which hold the entity- however, he is superseded by Absolution itself, who shattered Soma in the first place and has been using Captain Guidance/Zeta to manipulate the heroes into restoring it and aims to return the world to nothingness.
• SongBird Symphony: The Masked Bird leads the trio of Magpies in opposing Birb's quest to get the four notes to power the Owl's artifact and find Birb's parents. The Masked Bird is actually Birb's mother and a good bird trying to stop the Owl, who killed almost every songbird in the past, from finishing the job and conquering the forest.
• Soul of the Samurai: Ryu Oda is scheming together with Lord Gendo Tohjo to rule Japan.
• Soul Series: The evil (and sentient) sword Soul Edge, whose main goals is the harvest of souls and creating unending chaos on the world.
  • The sword acts through possessing its wielder, using Cervantes in the first game (Soul Edge/Blade) and Siegfried (under the Nightmare persona) in the first and second SoulCalibur.
  • In the third game, Soul Edge gains independence and assumes the Nightmare identity for itself. Zasalamel, however, is the true big bad of the game, having not only granted Nightmare his new body, but also manipualting him, the now-free Siegfried and other characters as part of his own agenda.
  • Although Algol is the Final Boss in SoulCalibur IV, he's technically more of an Outside-Context Problem, as he was just recently awakened from a deep slumber, no character ever saw him coming and he's simply seeking the swords to sustain his new energy-based body. The one behind the whole conflict, the reason every character gathers at Osthreinsburg Castle and the one who opens the rift to the Astral Chaos (setting Algol free) is actually Soul Edge/Nightmare.
  • Finally, SoulCalibur V has the new Nightmare, "Graf Dumas", as the primary instigator during most of the story, with Soul Calibur's own spirit (Elysium) taking over during the end game. While Algol is working behind the scenes using the conflict as a distraction, he himself has no actual hand on the plot.
• Soul At Stake has X'iE, a ghost who put together the game and set up a phony Urban Legend to lure "gamblers" in to claim their souls.
• South Park:
  • The Stick of Truth: Several characters fulfill the role of Big Bad at one point or another. Elf King Kyle is the leader of all the elves the New Kid fights throughout the first part of the game. This role can be switched to Cartman should the New Kid choose to join the elves at the last minute. Both characters abandon this role once Clyde, wielding the Stick of Truth and a vat of alien chemicals, takes over the role. Finally, Big Bad Government Guy is the head of all the government opponents of the game and the biggest threat by the game's end. Even he ends up in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Princess Kenny, with the latter as the Final Boss.
  • The Fractured but Whole has Eric Cartman in his alter ego Mitch Connor, the kingpin of the missing cat conspiracy.
  • Snow Day!: Everyone thinks that Stan is responsible for causing the blizzard engulfing South Park after getting sick of the game's rules and going mad with Dark Matter. In truth, the true culprit is Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo.
• Space Yandere: Luna is the titular Space Yandere who, after seeing her crush Alex kissing Eden, masterminds a plot to kill Eden and everyone else on the ship to get Alex to herself, until Melvin, the engineer who she manipulated, turns on her for using him and tries to kill her and everyone else for not returning his love.
• Spec Ops: The Line has John Konrad, commander of the "Damned 33rd" Infantry Battlion and the cause of the insurgency in Dubai. However, it turns out Konrad was Dead All Along, and the Konrad taunting the protagonist Martin Walker is actually a product of his mind, subconsciously created to justify his war crimes and put the blame on someone else. The real villain is actually Walker himself, whose attempt to be a hero and dodge responsibility for his actions cause far more harm than good.
• Splatoon:
  • First game: DJ Octavio, the leader of the Octarians who steals the Great Zapfish so he may power his Great Octoweapons and conquer the surface.
  • Splatoon 2:
    • Hero Mode: DJ Octavio is back to his old tricks. But this time, he also brainwashes Callie in order to use her talents to power his Octobot King mech.
    • Octo Expansion DLC campaign: Commander Tartar, an AI and CEO of Kamabo Co. who wants to destroy all Inklings and Octarians so to make way for a new dominant species.
  • Splatoon 3: Mr. Grizz, one of the last surviving mammals and CEO of Grizzco Industries who manipulates the player in helping him manufacture his Fuzzy Ooze, which he intends to use to transform all of the sea creatures into mammals.
• The first three entries in the Splinter Cell series lean towards Big Bad Duumvirate, though this is dropped later on:
  • First game: Kombayn Nikoladze and General Kong Feirong, who ally themselves to commit acts of terror against the U.S.
  • Pandora Tomorrow: Suhadi Sadono and Norman Soth, with Sadono being the leader and face of Pandora Tomorrow and Soth handling the planning and doing most of the legwork.
  • Chaos Theory: Douglas Shetland and Admiral Toshiro Otomo, who work together to cause a war between North and South Korea, though ultimately for different reasons.
  • Double Agent: Emile Dufraisne, the leader of John Brown's Army out to destroy and rebuild the United States under the belief that it has become corrupt.
  • Conviction: Tom Reed, who attempts to murder President Caldwell when she attempts to cut the power of Third Echelon, although he is also working on the behest of Megiddo.
  • Blacklist: Majid Sadiq, the leader of the Engineers and the mastermind behind the "Blacklist" plot against the United States.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Licensed Games have a few. Most games will have the recurring series antagonist Plankton as the primary Big Bad since he's the most iconic, but some games will also feature other characters from SpongeBob's large cast and even original characters as Big Bads to create some variety.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman: The titular Flying Dutchman kidnaps all of SpongeBob's friends to serve in his crew as punishment for disturbing his slumber.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom: Robo-Plankton is the leader of the rampaging robot army causing chaos in Bikini Bottom.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab: The mutant Krabby Patty is revealed as the source of everything going wrong in SpongeBob, Patrick and Plankton's dreams. As it turns out, all those strings of dreams belong to Gary the Snail, who ate a Krabby Patty before going to sleep which caused an Acid Reflux Nightmare.
  • Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition : DoodleBob from the Frankendoodle episode, after being drawn by Patrick, steals one of the two Magic Pencils and creates his own army of rampant doodles to cause havoc throughout Bikini Bottom. Later, it is revealed that he's an Anti-Villain who only wanted to create a whole community of doodles on the moon as his friends.
  • SpongeBob's Boating Bash: Seymour Scales turns out to be a con man who pretends to be a boating instructor and takes advantage of SpongeBob's misfortune, only to reward him with a fraud license and steal his money.
• Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion: The titular Spooky runs the haunted mansion and is responsible for creating and gathering the Specimens that inhabit her house and spreading the rumors that caused the hero to be so curious, to create an army and Take Over the World.
• Spyro the Dragon: While the franchise has had a number of villains, Ripto is easily the closest thing the original continuity had to a central villain. A dragon-hating Evil Sorcerer who wants nothing more than to conquer and enslave all he sees, Ripto acts as the main villain of half of the games in the original continuity and Spyro's de facto Archenemy.
  • Spyro the Dragon (1998): Gnasty Gnorc, a brutish gnorc who casts a spell to trap every dragon, save for Spyro, in crystal after hearing Spyro call him simple, nonthreatening, and ugly.
  • Spyro: Year of the Dragon: The Sorceress, the wicked ruler of the Forgotten Realms who's responsible for having all the magic in the land fade away. She sends Bianca and various monsters to stop Spyro, with her ultimate plan being to kill dozens of baby dragons and extract their wings for a spell that will grant her eternal life.
  • Spyro: Season of Ice has Grendor, a two headed rhynoc who plans to steal the wings of 100 fairies to use for a potion that can cure his chronic headaches.
  • Spyro: A Hero's Tail has Red, a former dragon elder that seeks to use Dark Gems to overthrow the Dragon Realsm.
  • Spyro: Shadow Legacy has The Sorcerer, a dark wizard dragon responsible for corrupting Red, who seeks to plunge the Dragon Realm and other homeworlds into the Shadow Realm so that he may drain their magic.
  • The Rebooted trilogy The Legend of Spyro had the Dark Master Malefor as it's main villain. His Co-Dragons Dark Cynder and Gaul serving as the main villains in the first two games respectfully due to their master being Sealed Evil in a Can they're trying to free at the time, but it's ultimately Malefor manipulating everything from behind the scenes. He's finally let out at the end of The Eternal Night and causes havok and destruction for three years while the heroes are Sealed Good in a Can before serving as the direct villain of Dawn Of The Dragon.
  • Skylanders always has Kaos as the Big Bad. Subverted in Trap Team, when the Doom Raiders abandon Kaos as the focus shifts over to their leader, the Golden Queen, but immediately averts that with Kaos absorbing the Traptanium from the ultimate weapon.
• The Stanley Parable: The Narrator is the constant, godlike entity who tries to force Stanley to follow his story and, in one ending, is revealed to have been the one who erased Stanley's coworkers. If Stanley rebels against him, he will do everything in his power to stop Stanley from achieving freedom.
• The Star Fox team have faced these threats:
  • Star Fox, Star Fox 64, and Star Fox Zero: Emperor Andross is the leader of the forces attempting to conquer the Lylat system.
  • Star Fox Adventures: General Scales leads the Sharpclaw tribe in conquering Dinosaur Planet, though he is later revealed to be a pawn of Andross.
  • Star Fox: Assault: The Aparoid Queen is the leader of the Aparoids who intends to assimilate all life in the Lylat System into herself.
  • Star Fox Command: The Anglar Emperor rules over the Anglars and wants to conquer the Lylat System.
  • Star Fox Guard: Pigma Dengar turns out to be the boss of the Astro Mine corporation that's been antagonizing Corneria Precious Metals.
• Star Gladiator has Dr. Edward Bilstein: an Emperor Scientist who takes his malevolent experimentations and universal conquest into high monstrous levels.
• Star Shift Series: Kern was once a Terran Republic scientist, but in the alternate timeline that he created, he became the dictator of the Earth Systems Alliance, the main antagonistic faction. His goal is to defeat not only the opposing factions and nations, but to monopolize any time-related technology, even if he has to enact the genocide of entire species to do so.
• The various Star Wars games have multiple Big Bads, with Emperor Palpatine typically serving as the Big Bad or Greater-Scope Villain:
  • The Force Unleashed:
    • The first game has Palpatine, with Vader acting as The Heavy. It was his plan to use Starkiller to root out his political enemies and destroy them once and for all. Canonically, he's also the game's Final Boss.
    • Darth Vader is this for the second game, acting completely independent of the Emperor to clone Starkiller for his own purposes and hunting him down when he flees. Unlike the previous installment, Vader is the only Final Boss option this time.
  • Knights of the Old Republic has Darth Malak, the current Dark Lord of the Sith.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has the Lord of Betrayal aka; Kreia/Darth Traya, who plots to reignite her crusade against the Force once more.
  • The Star Wars: The Old Republic spin-off MMORPG consisted of multiple story arcs each featuring a different Big Bad, though the crux of many conflicts was ultimately the Sith Emperor Darth Vitiate. In the original base game, there were eight individual class storylines that were largely unconnected with one another, and each featured their own main antagonist. Additionally, each major expansion pack released after the main game comprised a different story arc and had their own Big Bad:
    • Vitiate himself was the central villain of the Jedi Knight storyline, seeking to eradicate all life in a mad quest for godhood.
    • Despite never physically appearing, Vitiate also acts as the driving force behind the main conflict in the Jedi Consular arc, engineering the madness plague and the Children of the Emperor caste of dark siders that the final boss Syo Bakarn is a part of.
    • The Smuggler storyline has a Big Bad Duumvirate consisting of the pirate Skavak, who gradually becomes less of a threat and more of an annoyance to the player; and Harridax Kirill, aka the Voidwolf, an Imperial Grand Admiral and leader of an expansive network of informants and privateers that are manipulating the various crime syndicates that are giving you a hard time.
    • The Trooper storyline is noted for not having a singular Big Bad, as the storyline consists of various missions that usually end with a major Imperial figurehead being executed by the trooper. None of which have any real personal connection to them.
    • Darth Baras is this for the Sith Warrior. He at first seems to be training you up to be his enforcer for his gradual rise to power in the Dark Council, but his goals are revealed to be of greater reach than that, as he seeks to supplant Darth Vitiate himself. And when he promptly tries to toss you aside, Vitiate gives you a chance for revenge.
    • The Sith Inquisitor storyline has Darth Thanaton, a high-ranking Sith Lord who you begin to compete with for a seat on Vitiate's Dark Council.
    • The Imperial Agent storyline has the player going up against the Star Cabal, a secret society dedicated to eradicating the Jedi and the Sith in order to rid the galaxy of the repeated interstellar wars that have stemmed from the two factions' eternal feud. While they are led by a ruling council of elders, they mainly work through their agents, the most prevalent being the mysterious Hunter.
    • The Bounty Hunter, like the Smuggler, is faced with two diametrically opposed antagonists that each have their own reason for wanting the player dead: Tarro Blood, a Mandalorian extremist and your main rival in the pan-galactic "Great Hunt" championship; and Jedi Master Jun Seros, who wants to punish you for carrying out a hit on one of his fellow Jedi.
    • The Illum arc, which acts as an epilogue to each of the eight base class storylines, features Big Bad Wannabe Darth Malgus. He wants to replace the current Sith Empire with his own group that comprises both human and alien subjects, but all he does is inspire the Republic and the Sith to form an Enemy Mine against him.
    • As one would guess from the title, Rise of the Hutt Cartel has the renegade Hutt Cartel going against both the Republic and the Sith. They are led by Taborro, who wants the Hutts to be the master race of the galaxy.
    • Shadow of Revan has franchise legend Darth Revan as the main antagonist, having seemingly returned to the dark side, and seeking genocide against the entire Sith species. We find out later that it's not the true' Revan, but rather an alternate version of him that came from a very unusual case of Literal Split Personality.
    • Knights of the Fallen Empire had the Big Bad Duumvirate of Darth Vitiate's children, Arcann and Vaylin, who are in charge of the Eternal Empire, an enormous military powerhouse that Vitiate had secretly been building behind the scenes.
    • The follow-up, Knights of the Eternal Throne, continues the story but has Arcann being supplanted by SCORPIO, who works with Vaylin to lead the Eternal Empire to glory... though she clearly has her own personal goals in mind.
    • Darth Vitiate's disembodied spirit is working behind the scenes throughout both expansions, and as the one who corrupted Arcann and Vaylin and founded the Eternal Empire, is the Greater-Scope Villain.
    • Onslaught and Legacy of the Sith see the return of Darth Malgus, who wants to take advantage of the chaos left behind by the Eternal Empire to assert control over the Sith. Much like his last attempt, neither the Republic nor the Sith want that.
  • The Dark Forces Saga has a different antagonist for each game:
    • Dark Forces has General Rom Mohc, Mastermind behind developing the Dark Trooper project who answers directly to Darth Vader himself.
    • Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II has Jerec, leader of the Seven Dark Jedi who intends to absorb the powers of fallen Jedi that are stored in the Valley Of The Jedi to make him a god.
    • Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast has Desann, a Fallen Jedi who intends to wipe out the Jedi Order and replace it with his own army of "Reborn" warriors.
    • Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy has Tavion Axmis who plots to resurrect the legendary Sith Lord Marka Ragnos.
• Steambot Chronicles has Dandelion, aka Elder the White Phantom, the leader of the Bloody Mantis who plans to destroy Happy Garland.
• Steel Assault: General Magnus Pierce, who started a hostile takeover of the entire city and became the country's supreme dictator.
• Stella Glow has Hilda, the Witch of Destruction who seeks to crystallize the world through her Song of Ruin. However, it turns out she was trying to protect the world from the real threat of Mother Qualia, an ancient system powered by negative emotions and designed for the sole purpose of destroying humanity. She exists in the form of Eve, her human self, Cartesia, the source of her corruption, and her agent, the corrupted Klaus/Xeno, who manipulates the 9th Regiment into gathering the 4 witches, defeating Hilda, and enacting the Anthem Program to unleash Mother Qualia's destruction upon the world.
• Stellar 7: Gir Draxon, the leader of the Arcturus Empire out to conquer the Sol system.
• In the Strange Men Series, the titular Strange Men are the antagonists of each title.
  • The Crooked Man: The titular Crooked Man is the monster that David must evade in his journey to find the former tenant of his apartment. The Crooked Man is revealed to be a part of the spirit of the tenant, Duke Mac Gahan, who hates David for reminding him of his failures in life.
  • The Sandman (2014): The titular Sandman is the one who puts everyone in the world into an eternal sleep, forcing Sophie Grundler to stop him. It later turns out that he is an Anti-Villain who is tired from having to stay up to put everyone to sleep, and just wants some sleep himself.
  • The Boogie Man: The titular Boogie Man is the one who hijacks the tour of Livingstone Castle to force Keith into a Deadly Game where he must explore the castle to save the other tourists from various Death Traps. However, this Boogie Man is actually Brendon Dumont, the castle owner and host of the tour, who is pretending to be the real Boogie Man.
  • The Hanged Man: The killer that Keith is chasing haunts the hospital where William Morton is exploring, and plots to make Will his next victim. It turns out to be Edward Hayes, the homeless guy that Will befriended, who killed his abusive father and is the last remaining member of the cult behind the Happy Murders.
• The Street Fighter franchise has M. Bison as its Big Bad, although in the III series, Gill serves as this, even though he may actually qualify as a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Gill's younger brother, Urien, could somehow be considered the real Big Bad of the III series as he seeks to overthrow his brother and plunge the entire world into a state of chaos and destruction. Seth serves as this in the IV series.
• Streets of Rage: Mr. X, the leader of the Syndicate and Final Boss of every game. With Mr. X Killed Off for Real at the end of 3, 4 has a Big Bad Duumvirate of Mr. Y and Ms. Y, Mr. X's heirs and the new leaders of the Syndicate.
• Strider:
  • The series' Big Bad is the Grandmaster, an intergalactic being out on a quest for godhood. He's the main antagonist in the first, second and remake games.
  • The manga (and its loosely-adapted NES version) had the vice-director of Striders, Matic, as the primary antagonist, playing up both sides (Hiryu and the Enterprise corporation) in order to have everyone killed so he can claim both organizations for his own goals.
• String Tyrant: Pygmalie fits this role, having created all of the monsters and being directly antagonistic towards Mary. The fact that she's obviously mad doesn't help her case either
• Styx: Master of Shadows, As it turns out, the main villain is the original Styx, who wishes to use the Amber Heart to turn himself back into an Orc. a fraud license and steal his money]].
• Suikoden:
  • First game: Windy is the main antagonist of the game, as she controls the Scarlet Moon Empire because of her brainwashing Black Runes and Barbarossa's love for her. Her pursuit of the Soul Eater Rune also triggers most of the plot.
  • Second game: Luca Blight, Highland's prince and military commander. He's responsible for the False Flag Operation that instigates the game's plot, and remains the primary threat until his death in the mid game, after which Jowy Atreides / Jowy Blight becomes the new king of Highland and takes the position.
  • Third game: The Masked Bishop, who is later revealed to be Luc, is the leader of the Destroyers and orchestrates the war in order to obtain the Five Elemental True Runes in order to prevent a Bad Future.
  • Fourth game: Graham Cray, who orchestrated the entire Kooluk invasion in order to get his hands on the Rune of Punishment.
  • Tactics: Iskas, who plans to use the power of the Evil Eye to take over the Kooluk Empire.
  • Fifth game: Gizel Godwin and his father, Marscal Godwin. Marscal is the ruthless head of the House of Godwin, while Gizel is the one who orchestrated the coup in Sol Falena and oposes the Prince during most of the game.
• The Super Robot Wars games tend to have many Big Bads, because they're made up of multiple mecha series in a single game. The result is that said game will (usually) have each and every Big Bad the series included did. Still, they tend to add an extra-big Big Bad unique to that game, often the Final Boss.
  • The greatest example in the series is Keisar Ephes, who turns out to be The Man Behind the Man for every single original villain in the Alpha sub-series, and, by extension, is more or less responsible, at least in part, for many of the Big Bads belonging to the various anime included. It also helps that he presents himself as the anti-Ide, making him an indirect Alternate Universe big bad for Ideon. Not bad for a guy who never shows up until the final battle.
  • In Super Robot Wars V, Embryo pops up a lot to further his plans and manipulates the various factions to help him with his goal.
  • In Super Robot Wars Z, The Edel Bernal is a bit of a twist on this, but not that much of a subversion. We technically see him around occasionally, but he doesn't reveal his nature and part of the plot until, like Keisar Ephes, the final battle. He's just a Psychopathic Manchild with ridiculous levels of power that organized the entire situation for his sick pleasure and let his unwitting Dragon do all the dirty work with a simple utterance of "I love you" once in a while.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl:The "Subspace Emissary" Adventure Mode has Tabuu, a being who wishes to drag the World of Trophies into Subspace and manipulates several villains into furthering this goal.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has a Big Bad Ensemble between Galeem, who seeks to create a world of order, and Dharkon, who seeks to create a world of chaos, in the "World of Light" Adventure Mode.
• The Surge has the Rogue Process, an insane AI driven by the fear of death to kill off humanity.
  • The Surge 2 has Major General Ezra Shields, the leader of a group of mercenaries doing whatever it takes to keep order within the city and to control the nanites, and Matriarch Celeste, a cult leader who wants to merge humanity with the nanites to become god-like.
• Sweet Home (1989): The ghost of Lady Mamiya trying to kill 5 members of an investigation crew.
• Sword of Paladin: Loquius Ragnarek is the main villain in the context of Gaiastir, since he's a former emperor who seeks to destroy the world out of spite for Charlemagne overthrowing his tyrannical rule. He is also the one backing Berienstahl and is the one responsible for corrupting Augustus into a genocidal emperor. However, he turns out to be a pawn of the source of Miasma, Anguis, who commands several villains of the same tier as Ragnarek in order to destroy the multiverse.
• Swords and Sandals:
  • Swords and Sandals 1 has HeChaos the Scourge, a powerful conqueror and tyrant who owns Doomtrek Arena. He's the last threat you have to face before you can claim your freedom.
  • Swords and Sandals 2 has Emperor Antares, a sinister necromancer and tyrannical ruler who seized control over Doomtrek after HeChaos's defeat in the first game. Antares' main goal is to use Doomtrek's Gladiator Games as a cover for building an undead army in preparation for world conquest, resurrecting the gladiators who die in combat as soldiers and powerful lieutenants; he also attempts to sway the Nameless into his service in pursuit of this goal.
  • Swords and Sandals Crusader switches to a overall Big Bad Ensemble of Antares and his lackeys, HeChaos and Arglaxx (Doomtrek's arena master). The three of them initially work together to fight against the forces of good, only for internal differences to break the villainous alliance and send them spiralling into infighting. By the end of the story, Antares is dead and his soul trapped in a grail, HeChaos is imprisoned, and Arglaxx is on the run from the vengeful forces of good.
  • Swords and Sandals V: Grail of Antares has HeChaos take center stage as the Big Bad, seeking out the eponymous Artifact of Doom to empower himself and resurrect the now-dead Emperor Antares so that HeChaos can steal his power. At the very end of the game, he's displaced by the newly-reborn Antares, who effortlessly crushes him and forces the protagonist into battle against him. Furthermore, depending on the choices you make throughout the story, you can become the new Big Bad at the end of the game by stealing Antares' power for yourself and swearing to serve the Malevolence.
• System Shock: SHODAN, with the game centering around stopping her from conquering the Earth.

T

• T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger: The Dragon Master, the tyrannical overlord ruling China who destroyed the White Dragon Clan after they threatened his rule and attempts to finish the job by killing its final member, Tai Fu.
• Taiko no Tatsujin: Dr. Waruru from Dodon~! to Nidaime! is responsible for the creation of the Waru Robots that wreak havoc on the festival.
• Tails of Iron: Green Wart, the frog warchief who united all of the frog tribes to lay waste to the Rat Kingdom. He's also Redgi's final threat to face and the one who personally killed his father.
• Tak and the Power of Juju: Tlaloc is an evil shaman who transformed most of the Pupanunu people into sheep.
  • Tak: The Great Juju Challenge: Travis the Dark Juju who helped the Black Mist cheat.
• The Tale of ALLTYNEX trilogy have the titular Master Computer Alltynex OS where almost everything that goes wrong in the series can be traced back to it. Altough in reality it can be traced back to the Senate, the ones that caused Alltynex to turn rogue in the first place.
• The Tales Series has its fair share of Big Bads, who are often Anti Villains, although in many of them you don't learn that they are the Big Bad until much later in the game, while the supposed baddie is a Disc-One Final Boss.
  • Tales of Phantasia has Dhaos the Demon Lord, a man from another world who is wreaking havoc on this world and needs to be stopped, even though he is really trying to use the mana of the World Tree to save his homeworld, Derris-Kharlan.
    • Tales of Symphonia, a distant prequel to Phantasia, has Lord Mithos Yggdrassil, leader of Cruxis and the Desians and the Church of Martel; he is trying to use the power of the World Tree to revive his sister Martel and create a world where all people are stripped of free will and therefore are equal.
    • Its sequel, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, has Lord Brute, who is the leader of the Vanguard, until it is later revealed that Richter Abend was pulling the strings behind the Vanguard the whole time in an elaborate scheme to revive his long deceased friend Aster, with said plan involving killing Ratatosk and making a Deal with the Devil to unleash the demons from Niflheim in order to do so. Granted, his motives were for a good cause, and he never planned on selling the world out to demons in the first place, since he had a back-up plan to double-cross the deal to prevent the demon invasion from happening. This makes him more of a Noble Demon Anti-Villain. The closest this game has to a Big Bad would be Ratatosk himself, since he cares very little about humanity, and his true intentions aren't revealed until the bad ending.
  • Tales of Destiny has Lydon Bernhardt, a high priest who steals the Eye of Atamoni and sends the heroes on a manhunt for him, until he’s defeated and the Eye is stolen by Hugo Gilchrist, Leon Magnus' father and the president of the Oberon Corporation, except he's being controlled by the Swordian of Darkness Berselius, who himself is being possessed by Evil Overlord Kronos/Miktran, who aims to revive the Aetherian race by wiping out the Er'thers.
    • Tales of Destiny 2 has Barbatos Goetia, an Ax-Crazy man who was wiped from history for his many crimes and seeks revenge. He is actually working for Elraine, a holy priestess who wants to create a world of peace and order by resurrecting her goddess... which can't be done unless everyone believes in her. So she decides to brainwash everyone to worship her. The goddess, Fortuna, is at first the Big Good but becomes the Greater-Scope Villain after going insane when told humanity doesn't need her.
  • Tales of Rebirth has Queen Agarte Lindblum, who has all the most beautiful Huma girls imprisoned in her castle so she can possess one of them and, in doing so, gain the affections of her general, Milhaust Selkirk. Her Evil Chancellor, Zilva Madigan, manipulated her as part of her plan to kill all Humas, however the Final Boss is the Greater-Scope Villain and Anthropomorphic Personification of racism, Yuris.
  • Tales of Legendia has Vaclav Bolud, third prince of the Crusand Empire who wants to Take Over the World as the Disc-One Final Boss during the first half. The game then switches it up a bit; Maurits Welnes takes over the spotlight, attemtpting to revert the world to it’s original state as an endless ocean, but he's subordinate to the water god Nerifes, the real Big Bad. Afterward, the Character Quests' overarching plot involves the black mist, and Schwartz, the strange masked woman generating it.
  • Tales of the Abyss: Grand Maestro Mohs, second-in-command of the Order of Lorelei, plans to instigate war between the Kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear and the Malkuth Empire because the Score says it will happen. Though it turns out that Commandant Van Grants, his boss, has been using him for his own plan to destroy the world and create a new one where people are no longer dependent on the prophecies of the Score.
  • Tales of the Tempest has Pope Vincent Bridges, the leader of the church of Janna, who ordered the campaign to exterminate the Leimorneans in order for him to use their life energy to resurrect his dead wife. Except he's working for King Areulla VIII, a child from another planet who accidentally ended up in the game world and wants to use the life energy to return home- and conquer both worlds.
  • Tales of Innocence has Mathias, the mysterious masked leader of the influential Avatar cult Arca that seeks to capture the Manifest. She is the evil side of Asura, formed from his grief and anger after Inanna's betrayal, and seeks revenge.
  • Tales of Vesperia has Barbos, head of the powerful mercenary guild Blood Alliance, as the initial antagonist, but he's working for Alexei Dinoia, Commandant of the Imperial Knights, who wants to reform The Empire and guilds by becoming a military dictator, though the last act of the game involves cleaning up his mess, and the Adephagos, which threatens to destroy the world, and Duke Pantarei, who wants to save it by sacrificing humanity, are the final threat.
  • Tales of Hearts has Creed Graphite, a descendant of the world of Minera and the one sucking away everyone's heart and emotions in order to fix his world of Gardenia, which he created as a refuge from Minera until it ended up calcifying everyone.
  • Tales of Graces, for the main story, initially has Cedric, Richard’s Evil Uncle who kills the King of Windsor to usurp the throne of himself, with the party aiming to restore Richard to the throne. Once he is defeated, the party must deal with the mysterious Lambda, a being (immortal Energy Being, to be exact) that wants to Kill All Humans because they (specifically Emeraude) treated him like crap and experimented on him his whole life. Then comes Little/Fodora Queen, the antagonist the Future arc, who also wants to kill all humans for similar reasons.
  • Tales of the World series:
    • Narikiri Dungeon technically has Norn be the central antagonist and Final Boss, as the one who makes protagonists Mel and Dio battle the spirits of Aselia, and various enemies, in order to escape their “doomed destiny”- but she is the Big Good who wants them to repent for their past crimes. The closest thing to a true Big Bad would be Meltia and Dios, the protagonists’ dark sides who embody their evil past selves.
    • Narikiri Dungeon 2 has Thanatos, who can possess the heroes through the use of black crystals and wants to cleanse the world of humans (and the two goddesses) for betraying him and his mother.
    • Narikiri Dungeon 3 has the two thieves Ponnie and Clyte, who steal a time machine and decide to go cause trouble in the various time periods.
    • Radiant Mythology has Widdershin, who seeks to fuse every world into his own creation, a world with eternal life.
    • Radiant Mythology 2 has Goede, the Anthropomorphic Personification of humanity's negative emotions who wants to destroy the world so he won't suffer anymore.
    • Radiant Mythology 3 has Lazaris, who wants to rebuild Luminascia into her own world of Jildea, as Jidea's star crystal was consumed by Luminascia to create it's humanity.
  • Tales of Xillia has King Nachtigal I. Fan, who seeks to use the forbidden power of Spyrix and the Lance of Kresnik to conquer Auj Oule and the world, but he's being manipulated by Gilandor Yul Svent (Giland), his own second-in-command who betrays him and wants to save Elympios by sacrificing Reize Maxia; he in turn is competing with King Gaius/Erston Outway, ruler of Auj Oule who wants to save the realm of Rieze Maxia by destroying Elympios, and his partner Muzét, a Great Spirit and Milla’s Ax-Crazy sister, as well as the real Maxwell, creator of both worlds who just wants to save one or the other (preferably Maxia). Ultimately, Gaius and Muzét betray Maxwell after Gilland’s defeat, leaving them as the Big Bad Duumvirate.
    • Tales of Xillia 2 has Humanity's Savior/Origin, the Great Spirit of the Void who serves as the judge of the Trial, except he's actually the Big Good; the real villains are a Big Bad Ensemble. Bisley Bakur, Ludger Kresnik's father, CEO of Spirius Corporation, and Final Boss wants to make all the spirits into tools for humans. His enemy is Humanity's Judge/Chronos, who hates humanity and wants humans to become spirit food.
  • Tales of Zestiria has Heldalf, the Lord of Calamity, who is the source of the Hellions. He hates goodness and light and so wants to destroy the world and make it anew. He also remains the Big Bad all the way through, unlike the villains in other games of the series. Not that he really wants to- a curse is forcing him to.
    • Tales of Berseria, a distant prequel to Zestiria, has Artorius Collbrande, the leader of the Abbey, whose actions are responsible for triggering Velvet Crowe's Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Later in the game, it's revealed that the purpose for his actions was to awaken the Fifth Empyrean, Innominat, and both share the same goal of purging humanity of emotions and free will for the sake of "reason". They team up once Innominat is woken from his sleep.
  • Tales of Link has Caesar, Sara's brother and an ex-first class adventurer who suddenly had a change of personality and is planting Seeds of Ruin all over the place. The reason for his abrupt Face–Heel Turn is that he was brainwashed by Zephyr, who is actually Evil Overlord Lillium- but he was manipulated by Nidhogg, who made a deal with him to resurrect his loved one Kana in exchange for power.
  • Tales Of The Rays has Phantom, who is an exoflected version of Phillip Reston and seeks to Restart the World (all of them) to make a new one where he can live happily with Mileena.
  • Tales of Arise: Vholran Igniseri is the leader of the despotic Renan Lords who rule the planet Rena and Dahna, and who the heroes are trying to overthrow. It turns out he's a pawn for the Helganquil, servants of the Great Spirit of Rena, which seeks to fuse with all the astral energy of its neighboring planet Dahna through any means necessary including kidnapping, manipulating, experimenting on and enslaving its native species. However, Vholran eventually turns on the Helganquil and becomes the Final Boss of the game, making him one of the few antagonists who doesn't end up as a Disc-One Final Boss.
• Tamashii: Feucirl the witch is the source of The Corruption targeting the Patriarch's sacred temple, or so it seems until it turns out she is trying to save the temple's inhabitants from the Patriarch, Augustus Michael Yahweh, who is keeping them in eternal agony to lord his superiority over them.
• Target Acquired (2016): Cammy is a Jewel Thief Mouse Girl who escaped from jail. Yura has to chase her down and catch her.
• Team Fortress 2 has the Administrator who is the mastermind behind the RED and BLU conflict, though in-game, you don't get to fight her. That is until Gray Mann came along.
  • During Scream Fortress (Halloween), the Big Bad is Merasmus, a magician who antagonizes the mercenaries simply because he wants revenge on the Soldier for being an awful roommate.
• Team ICO Series:
  • ICO has the Queen, who acts as the primary obstacle in Ico and Yorda's escape from the castle.
  • Shadow of the Colossus has, depending on your interpretation, either Dormin, the one who tasks Wander with killing the colossi, or Lord Emon, who killed Mono to begin with.
  • The Last Guardian has The Master of The Valley, who controls the Possessed Armor that attempts to capture The Boy.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The vast majority of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games has series antagonist, The Shredder, as the main villain.
• Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys has the Big Brain, leader of the alien brain thingys, and the one behind their invasion of Earth.
• Tekken:
  • Tekken 1, 3 and 4 have Heihachi Mishima serving as the host of the tournament, using it as steps on his plans for the world.
  • Tekken 2 has Kazuya, corrupted by his time as the CEO of the Zaibatsu and the influence of Devil, The Man Behind the Man.
  • Tekken 5 has Jinpachi Mishima, although he's only trying to find someone that'd stop him before the demon inside him takes over and brings destruction to the world.
  • Tekken 6 has Jin Kazama/Devil Jin.
  • Tekken 7 has Heihachi Mishima and Kazuya Mishima as Villain Protagonists, so the Big Bad is Kazuya for Heihachi and Heihachi for Kazuya.
  • Chessmaster-style villains such as Ogre (Tekken 3) and Azazel (Tekken 6) serve as demonic final bosses.
• Tenchu:
  • Tenchu: Stealth Assassins has Lord Mei-Oh, seeking to plunge the land into chaos and death.
  • Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins has Lady Kagami of the Burning Dawn, a ninja seeking to free herself and her group from the shadows of servitude.
  • Tenchu 3: Wrath of Heaven has the Dark Wizard Tenrai, seeking to increase his powers for his own ambitions.
  • Tenchu: Fatal Shadows has Jyuzou of the Kuroya, seeking to break free of the traditional life of a ninja and is responsible for burning down Rin's village.
  • Tenchu: Time of the Assassins has Onikage as the Big Bad in all characters' stories except his own and Tesshu's; whose old friend Jinai takes the role.
  • Tenchu: Dark Secret has Lord Kagemasa of Hakkaku who is possessed by the demon Kubira; and plots to open the gateway to the underworld so demons may take over the land of the living.
  • Tenchu: Shadow Assassins has Onikage pulling the strings of everyone once again to destroy the house of Gohda and the Azuman ninja.
• Terra Cresta has Mandler, who seeks to conquer the moon and the Earth. It's also the Big Bad of Sol Cresta, where it plans on using the Vaikun to absorb the energy of every planet in the solar system to revive and take over the galaxy.
• Terranigma: Dark Gaia, the spirit of destruction who manipulates Ark under the guise of the Elder to further his goal of casting the world into chaos.
• Terror of Hemasaurus: Richie Hoarderson, CEO of PollutaCorp and the man behind the Church of the Holy Lizard who created Hamsaurus and manipulates him into rampaging across the world.
• Their Eyes: The Stranger is the cult leader who brought the monsters to Lockwood, and a part of the protagonist's soul who split off from him when he wanted to stop doing evil.
• Thief: The Dark Project has Constantine aka the Trickster, who's out to wipe out all urban and technological civilization and replace it with a return to the primordial, untamed chaos of wild nature.
  • Thief II: The Metal Age has Father Karras, who founded and leads the Mechanist offshoot of the Hammerites, plotting to kill the entire world and live surrounded by machines singing his praises.
  • Thief: Deadly Shadows has the Hag aka Gamall, a Wicked Witch who intends to ascend the ranks of the Keepers to expand her own power.
  • Thief (2014) has Orion, leader of the Graven; who plans to combat the plague the city is suffering from by turning its citizens into homicidal mutants.
• Threads of Fate has Valen. The most powerful of the Aeons, he created the Dewprism in order to gain control of every aspect of the universe. This made the other Aeons uneasy, and so they put a stop to him. He also created the dolls, including Rue and Ruecian, as his agents for his resurrection.
• The Tiamat Sacrament: Ry'jin overthrew King Khytiel in order to take over Ildria. He also waged a war against dragons, harvesting their DNA, eggs, and souls to gain military power while wiping out the rest. The protagonist's goal is to defeat Ry'jin and recover his unhatched siblings, as well as to save the humans he befriended from Ry'jin's tyranny.
• Time Crisis:
  • First game: Sherudo Garo, with his kidnapping of the President's daughter being what drives the plot. However, unlike most Time Crisis Big Bads, you actually deal with him first before fighting Wild Dog.
  • Second game: Ernesto Diaz, the leader of NeoDyne Industries who plans on launching a Kill Sat in order to Take Over the World.
  • Third game: Giorgio Zott, the leader of the Zargorias Federation who the heroes must stop from wiping out all of Lukano. Jake Hernandez takes up the role in the Rescue Mission mode though.
  • Fourth game: Gregory Barrows, the leader of the Hamilton Battalion and the creator of the Terror Bites out to nuke the US .
  • Fifth game: Robert Baxter, who plans to deploy a drug across the planet that turns people into ravenous zombies so he may reset the world and put himself on top.
  • Project Titan: Ricardo Blanco, who assassinates the Caruban president and frames Miller for the act. However, Wild Dog betrays him halfway through the game for reasons unknown and becomes the Big Bad.
  • Crisis Zone (1999): Derrick Lynch, the original URDA leader in the Garland Square storyline out to destroy London by operating the nuclear reactor known as Geyser 1. Jared Hunter takes over as leader in the Grassmarket District storyline.
  • Razing Storm: Paulo Guerra, a revolutionary who intends to nuke the US.
• TimeShift: Dr. Aiden Krone, who created the Alpha Suit and used it to travel back in time to establish a global dictatorship under his control.
• TimeSplitters Future Perfect: Jacob Crow, creator of the titular TimeSplitters, who also serves as the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire franchise.
• Today Is My Birthday: Dr. M. Richards and the county sheriff, who have various town citizens murdered in service of their organ harvesting ring and attempt to have Thomas killed once he stumbles upon their operation.
• Tokyo Xanadu plays with this trope and zig-zags it. Initially starting with a Monster of the Week plot for each chapter with the occasional Arc Villain, by Chapter 6, all fingers are pointed at Mikuriya because he was responsible for the events of both Chapters 5 and 6. However, by the end of the chapter, he gets defeated and detained by the party, and Chapter 7 points fingers instead at Gorou Saeki, who plans on unleashing the Breed of Dawn on Morimiya City. Then it gets subverted when it's revealed that Gorou is a Red Herring who only wanted to wake up the Breed just so he and his troops can destroy it. Chapter 8 then reveals the Big Bad to be Shiori Kurashiki, Kou's Childhood Friend who is actually Dead All Along and plunges all of Morimiya into an Eclipse called Pandora's Box. The Updated Re-release called Tokyo Xanadu eX+ eventually reveals the true Big Bad to be the Twilight Apostle, the strongest Grim Greed and the one pulling the strings behind the whole plot.
• Tomb Raider:
  • Tomb Raider I and Tomb Raider: Anniversary: Jacqueline Natla, the former ruler of Atlantis who Lara must stop from obtaining the pieces of Scion and causing The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Tomb Raider II: Marco Bartoli, the leader of Fiamma Nera who competes with Lara to obtain the Daggar of Xian and the "power of a dragon" that comes with it.
  • Tomb Raider III: Dr. Mark Willard, who manipulates Lara into getting him pieces of a meteorite to speed up human evolution.
  • Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation: Werner Von Croy except he's actually possessed by the Egyptian God Set, who Lara accidentally released and is out to spread chaos across the world.
  • Tomb Raider Chronicles: Lacks an overarching Big Bad, but each chapter features a different Arc Villain.
  • Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness: Pieter Van Eckhardt, the founder of the Cabal out to who desires to revive the Nephilim so he may bring ruin to the world. Except Joachim Karel has been using him all along.
  • Tomb Raider: Legend: Amanda Evert, who races against Lara in pursuit of Excalibur.
  • Tomb Raider: Underworld: Amanda initially continues to play the role continuing from Legend, only to be forced into an Enemy Mine with Lara, and leaving the true villain as Jacqueline Natla.
  • Tomb Raider (2013): Sun Queen Himiko, who caused the storm that strands Lara and co. on Yamatai and wants to use Sam as a vessel so she may spread her influence across the world, and Father Matias, the leader of the Solarii who acts as Himiko's Dragon-in-Chief so he may escape the island himself.
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider: Konstantin, a battalion leader of Trinity out to get the Divine Source, with his sister Ana being The Woman Behind The Man, using him to obtain immortality.
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Dr. Pedro Dominguez, the leader of Trinity who manipulates Lara into getting him the Key of Chak Chel and the Silver Box of Ix Chel so he may remake the world how he sees fit.
• Tonight We Riot: Chet Whippleton III, the CEO of Whipple Co. and the despotic ruler of an island nation dominated by his corporation who the workers are rebelling against.
• Toraware no Shoujo: Jugo in both versions is Ai's sexually abusive father who wants to keep her trapped inside the house forever.
• Tormented Souls: Father Noah Morissette, the leader of the Pollux Sect who lures Caroline to Wildberger Hospital in order to sacrifice her and summon his cult's god.
• Touhou Project has very few real villains in its setting. Still, each game generally has at least one character who could be considered the main antagonist, even if they're usually more oblivious or irresponsible rather than "evil".
  • Touhou Reiiden ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers has whoever wrecked the Hakurei Shrine, presumably either Sariel or Konngura, although the lack of dialogue in the game makes it very unclear.
  • Touhou Fuumaroku ~ the Story of Eastern Wonderland has the evil spirit Mima, who is responsible for the Hakurei Shrine being overrun by Youkai.
  • Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream has Yumemi Okazaki, a human college professor determined to prove magic exists, even at the expense of Gensokyo and its inhabitants.
  • Touhou Gensokyo ~ Lotus Land Story has Yuuka, who sent Youkai to attack the Hakurei Shrine.
  • Touhou Kaikidan ~ Mystic Square has Shinki, ruler of Makai and the one behind the demons coming into Gensokyo, although it turns out what she was plotting was less an invasion and more just a way to give her demons a tour of Gensokyo.
  • Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil has Remilia Scarlet, who is behind the mist blocking out the sun, but only did so because she's a vampire and wanted to be able to travel during the day.
  • Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom has ghost princess Yuyuko Saigyouji, who unwittingly instigated the ongoing winter in her efforts to resurrect the body beneath Saigyou Ayakashi.
  • Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night has Eirin Yagokoro, who instigated the events of the game by attempting to seal off Earth from the moon, in order to prevent herself and her fellow Lunarian fugitives from facing retribution.
  • Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View technically has Komachi Onozuka, whose slacking is what led to the spirits flowing out into the human world and causing the unusual springtime. It would be a hard press to call her evil though, and the actual Final Boss of the game is her boss Eiki Shiki, though she's not evil either so much as very judgmental.
  • Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith has Kanako Yasaka, the new goddess of the Moriya Shrine, who instigated the game's events with her efforts to gather faith.
  • Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism has Utsuho Reiuji, who is quite a step from previous villains in that her goal is to raze Gensokyo with the power of nuclear fusion. It turns out though that the real instigator is Kanako, who empowered Utsuho and unwittingly drove her crazy in an effort to bring electricity to Gensokyo and improve the lives of its residents.
  • Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object has Shou Toramoru, who set off the events of the game with her plan to resurrect Byakuren Hijiri.
  • Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires has Toyosatomimi no Miko, who sets off the game's events with her plan to fully revive herself.
  • Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character has Seija Kijin, who orchestrated the chaos in the game as part of her plan to have the weak overthrow the strong and turn the status quo on its head. Her appearance marks the series' transition into having more outright malevolent characters as the main villains, as opposed to simply misguided ones.
  • Touhou Kanjuden ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom has Sagume Kishin, head of the Lunarians' relocation efforts, as the villain at first. It later turns out the real villain is Junko, who deliberately forced the Lunarians out of the Lunar Capital as part of her plan to get revenge on Chang'e.
  • Touhou Tenkuushou ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons has Okina Matara, one of the sages who create Gensokyo, and who deliberately caused the mix-up of the seasons as part of a gambit to find new replacements for her servants.
  • Touhou Kikeijuu ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature has a toss-up between Yachie Kicchou and Saki Kurokuma, who are responsible for the beast spirits' preying upon the humans in the Animal Realm, and Keiki Haniyasushin, who seeks to stop their actions even if it means disrupting the balance of things.
  • Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers has Megumu and Chimata, who are responsible for the spread of the Ability Cards over Gensokyo.
• The Big Bad of the Trails Series overall is the enigmatic Grandmaster of Ouroboros. However, despite being somewhat frequently mentioned and her influence often felt throughout the series, she has only appeared onscreen once and appeared in voice a few more times, and almost nothing is known about her or her ultimate goals. Every game in the series has its own Big Bad who are the more direct villain of that story:
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky First Chapter has Colonel Alan Richard, head of the Intelligence Division, who turns out to be behind several seemingly-unrelated antagonists, but is himself the Unwitting Pawn of Professor Alba, who is actually Georg Weissmann, one of the Pillars of Ouroboros.
  • Trails in the Sky Second Chapter has Weissmann take center stage as the main villain.
  • Trails in the Sky The 3rd has the Lord of Phantasma, who is revealed to actually be Anima, the AI core of Phantasma, fused with Kevin's Stigma.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero doesn't have a clear big bad through most of it, until the end, where it's revealed the real villain is Doctor Joachim Gunter, who's actually the last survivor of the D∴G Cult, an organization that was originally created by Ouroboros but even they now want to destroy now that it's no longer under their control.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure at first appears to be setting up Dieter Crois as the main villain, but is later revealed to actually have a Big Bad Triumvirate consisting of Mariabelle Crois, Ian Grimwood, and Arios MacLaine, who are working for, you guessed it, Ouroboros.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I has the leader of the Imperial Liberation Front, known only as C. He turns out to be Crow Armbrust, and to actually be in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Vita Clotilde, aka Misty, another Pillar of Ouroboros.
  • Trails of Cold Steel II appears at first to have a competing Big Bad Ensemble between Duke Croire de Cayenne and the aforementioned Crow & Vita. However, Cayenne turns out to be more of a Big Bad Wannabe. By the end, though, Crow has pulled Heel–Face Turn before dying and its been revealed that there is another villain who can compete: the thought-dead High Chancellor Giliath Osborne, who becomes the first person in the series to ever completely Out-Gambit Ouroboros.
  • Trails of Cold Steel III sees Osborne finally become the real main villain by the end.
  • Trails of Cold Steel IV -The End Of Saga- continues to have Osborne, until the end where it's revealed that he was actually Good All Along (to an extent) and the whole time was trying to get rid of the Curse of Erebonia caused by the Great One, which is housed in his Divine Knight, Ishmelga. Ishmelga-Loge, the recreated Great One, serves as the True Final Boss of the game.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie: Ishmelga-Rean, resurrected as a simulation of Cold Steel IV's Normal Ending, through Project BABEL and Elysium.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak: The mafia organization Armata, lead by Gerard Dantès, with atrocities and kill count overshadowing all the other Big Bads so far, all to implant the ultimate Fear into the hearts of mankind.
  • Kuro no Kiseki II -CRIMSON SiN-: The Garden-Master, who uses the Eighth Genesis to wreak havoc across Calvard. After his defeat, Dingo Brad/Grendel-Zolga takes over as the Final Boss.
• Trauma Center (Atlus):
  • Trauma Center: Under the Knife: Erick Von Raitenau, aka Adam, Delphi's president and the creator of the GUILT virus that Derek Stiles combats.
  • Under the Knife 2 has Patrick Mercer and Reina Mayuzumi; with Mayuzumi providing Mercer with funds and data on the healing touch so he can develop GUILT to be injected into HOA doctors. In exchange, he allows her company to sell the parasites as steroids and develops Aletheia to give her a youthful appearance.
  • New Blood has Kidman, who shows up about halfway through the game, though only to be killed in the next chapter and revealed to be working for Master Vakhushti, also known as Ray Kerensky.
  • Trauma Team has the Raging Bomber in Naomi's storyline who Naomi's aiming to catch.
• Turtle Head: The titular Turtle Head, really Principal Dale's son Simon Dale, haunts Smithlane High and tries to kill Harriet, Emma, and Mason when they break into the school at night.
• Twisted Metal series has Calypso, a demonic Jackass Genie that hosts the Twisted Metal races.
• Ty the Tasmanian Tiger: Boss Cass, a cassowary bent on destroying all mammals and taking over Australia, is the primary villain of every game; save for Night of the Quinkan, which has the Quinking, the leader of the Quinkan bent on destroying and enslaving all life.

U

• Ubersoldier:
  • First game: The Nazi Mad Scientist, Dr. Schaeffer, whose research in the titular project leads to Karl's predicament and have goals to usurp leadership from his superiors.
  • Ubersoldier II: Crimes of War: Commander Dietrich, who leads the rogue Ubersoldier unit who turns out to be Maria's brother and merely a pawn of Dr. Schaeffer, who survived getting shot by Karl in the first game. And subsequently Ganon-ed when Schaeffer resumes the lead antagonistic position.
• Two thirds of the main Ultima series had Big Bads:
  • In Ultima I it was Mondain the Wizard, who was using the Gem of Immortality to take over the world.
  • In Ultima II, his lover Minax tries to take revenge.
  • Ultima III had their offspring/creation Exodus take its turn at world conquering.
  • Ultima IV - Ultima VI VI had no Big Bads. A case could be made in Ultima V for the Shadowlords.
  • Ultima VII - Ultima IX had The Guardian as their Big Bad, trying to conquer Britannia from without.
• Ultra ADHD: The evil God is the one who brought the END TIMES, and the protagonist is recruited by Fatherland and Motherland to slay him and save humanity. He is actually the game developer himself, DancingEngie. Interestingly played with in that, according to Engie, Motherland and Fatherland were originally supposed to serve as the Big Bad Duumvirate, but went against their programming and decided to rebel against him.
• Uncharted:
  • Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: Gabriel Roman, who commands the army that opposes Drake in the first game, only for his Dragon, Atoq Navarrao, to betray him late in the game and take over as the Final Boss.
  • Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: Zoran Lazarevic, a ruthless criminal who seeks the secret of Shambhala and brutally murders any who stand in his way.
  • Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: Katherine Marlowe, the leader of an ancient order that aims to control the world through fear.
  • Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: Rafe Adler, a ruthless treasure hunter willing to go to extremes in order to obtain the treasure of Libertalia.
  • Uncharted: The Lost Legacy: Asav, who forces Chloe to bring him the Tusk of Ganesh to trade for a warhead he plans to use to kickstart a civil war.
  • Uncharted: Golden Abyss: Roberto Guerro, who plans to find the treasure of the Golden Abyss and use it to fund his warmongering.
• Undercurrent: Mr. Moray, the head of Development at Undercurrent Incorporated who wants to make the protagonist his next test subject.
• Undertale:
  • King Asgore Dreemur is the ruler of the Monsters, and the one who put out the decree demanding the SOULs of any human who entered his realm (which is why a lot of other monsters, most notably the Royal Guard, are out to kill the Player Character) so he could become a god and wipe out mankind. To get home, you'll have to go through him. But he never does much personally to impede your progress, because the only reason he put out the decree was out of grief over the death of his son, and he's long since regretted that decision. It's just that the promise of freedom is all that gives his subjects hope anymore, so he can't stop. The true villain is Flowey the Flower, who kills Asgore in the Neutral Ending and steals the SOULs of Frisk's predecessors afterwards, becoming Photoshop Flowey and trying to kill Frisk so he could get the final human SOUL needed to break the Barrier that seperates monsters from humans, which would allow him to shows both species "the true meaning of this world". If the player goes for the Golden Ending, he is revealed to be Asgore's reincarnated son Asriel, who mistakes Frisk for their long lost sibling Chara, and tries to reset the entire timeline so that he and Frisk / "Chara" could "play" together for all eternity.
  • If one would go for the Genocide Run, there will be a Big Bad Duumvirate between Flowey, the reborn Chara, and the player, who become Villain Protagonists hellbent on wiping out all of monsterkind. The player does the killing by controlling Frisk, Chara becomes the narrator that counts your kills, while Flowey helps you by solving all the puzzles so you could proceed further. Eventually, this turns into a Big Bad Ensemble when Flowey realises Chara and the player will kill him if he stays in their way, and tries to warn Asgore before it's too late. Once those two are dealt with, Chara becomes Unseen No More and talks directly to the player, telling them to "erase this pointless world" and move on to the next. Regardless of what you choose, Chara will destroy the world of Undertale, and you need to make a Deal with the Devil and give them your SOUL to play the game again.
• Until Dawn: The killer terrorizing the protagonists on the mountain, eventually revealed to be Josh Washington, who wasn't a real killer but an elaborate and vindictive prankster. After this is revealed, it turns out the real threat are the Wendigo, which haunt the mountain. Incidentally, the "main" leader of the wendigo, is Josh's sister Hannah, who disappeared a year earlier. In the unlockable "Events of the Past" video, we learn that the wendigo that hunted Hannah a year earlier is the biggest and most dangerous, Makkapitew, who is implied to be the one who possessed Hannah and transformed her.
  • The prequel, The Inpatient, has Jefferson Bragg being a subversion. While he does run the hospital and conduct the experiments, he has nothing to do with the Wendigo besides their inevitable breakout, and is shown to have become The Atoner. The Makkapitew, on the other hand plays this straight, being responsible for the player or Anna/Gordon's slow Sanity Slippage as it possesses one of them.
• Urban Chaos: Mack Bane, the leader of the Wildcats gang who plans to become the tyrannical mayor of Union City, with the intent of destroying it in order to fulfill a prophecy.

V

• Valiant Hearts has Baron Von Dorf, a German officer who serves as the primary threat to the cast.
• Valkyria Chronicles:
  • First game: Prince Maximilian, the leader of The Empire who masterminds the invasion of Gallia.
  • Valkyria Chronicles II Count Gilbert Gassenarl, the leader of the Gallian Revolutionary Army before being killed and usurped his eldest son, Baldren Gassenarl.
  • Valkyria Chronicles III has Dahau, leader of Calamity Raven.
  • Valkyria Chronicles 4 has Heinrich Belgar of X-0, who's behind the Valkyria experiment and the death of Riley's parents.
  • Valkyria Revolution has Klaudiusz Powlovich Kiev, the emperor of the Ruzhien Empire who's responsible for starting the war and kidnapping Maria.
• Vampyr (2018): The Red Queen is the source of the Skal Epidemic in London; she's also been trying to wipe out the entire population of England on a fairly regular basis over the millennia. Dr. Swansea might have started the Skal plague, but she is the Blood of Hate that flows within all vampires, and England can only be saved by appeasing her.
• Vanguard Bandits: Faulkner, who wants the power of the Ultragunner for himself to rule Eptina.
• Vanquish: Victor Zaitsev, the leader of the Order of the Russian Star who's taken over Russia and uses a weapon of mass destruction to destroy San Francisco; threatening to do the same to New York City if the US doesn't submit to him.
• Varth: Operation Thunderstorm: DUO took over DELTA-7 and orchestrated a two-stage plan to exterminate all humans on Varth. First it manipulated mankind into war then orders the remaining 20% to be exterminated.
• Viewtiful Joe
  • The first game has Almighty Leader Captain Blue Lumiere, having gone insane from losing his co-star and being trapped in Movie Land for so long.
  • The second game has Emperor of Gedow Jet Black, having been corrupted after taking the Black Film and Black V-Watch for himself.
  • Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble has Queen Heinderealla who instigates the events of the game. Although it's actually Junko, Joe's deceased mother, who was merely testing her children.
  • Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble has Tsukumo, an amalgamation of spirits inhabiting film equipment who wreaks havok on the set of Captain Blue's new movie due to the public overlooking the importance of props.
• Verge: The soul stealers are the primary obstacle the protagonist encounters in his quest to regain his memory, as they seek to devour his soul, are in every level, and are the only enemies that can kill you for real.
• Virtua Cop series:
  • In the first two games and Elite Edition/Re-birth, Joe Fang is the international terrorist who leads EVL Inc and intends to take over Virtua City.
  • In the arcade only release Virtua Cop 3, Joe Fang returns and is the leader of the ECM terrorist organization.

W

• Wadanohara: Princess Totsusa is leading Totsusa Kingdom in a war against the Sea Kindgom to take the throne from Princess Uomi, as she tried long before. Except she's not the mastermind; Sal/Syake-san, the traitor, is the one who manipulated her into attacking as part of his plan to unseal his master. In the third act, Princess Mikotsu, Uomi's real sister and Sal's boss, takes this position upon becoming unsealed.
• The Walking Dead:
  • Season 1 has The Stranger, a mysterious figure who talks to Clementine through her supposedly-broken walkie-talkie, and later abducts her. To be fair, he is something of a subversion, since he isn't a mastermind or even particularly villainous - in the end he's just another survivor pushed past his Despair Event Horizon by Lee's own group no less a fact that he is more then willing to comment on.
  • Wyatt's story in 400 Days has Nate from Russell's story.
  • Season 2 has William "Bill" Carver, who unlike The Stranger, is a truly evil being. He imprisons the entire group eventually, and is by far the main threat for the first three episodes. He directly causes the deaths of several main characters, is heavily implied to have raped Rebecca, and isn't even given an Alas, Poor Villain moment when he dies. However, he is brutally murdered by Kenny at the climax of Episode 3.
  • The rest of Season 2 is a bit more complicated. Depending on who you side with, which ending you get, and what you believe of the characters, either Kenny, Jane or both fall into this category. They cause the main conflict and Downer Ending of the season. If Kenny dies, however, he realises the error of his ways and tells Clementine that she made the right choice.
  • For A New Frontier, the leaders of the titular New Frontier serve this role specifically Joan who has been secretly raiding peaceful communities behind the others backs for her own sense of satisfaction and David whose jealousy towards Javi and taking AJ away from Clementine make him a much more personal antagonist towards the heroes. That said David can be redeemed if the player plays their cards right and will tell Clem AJ's location so he is still better then Joan.
  • In The Final Season, the main antagonist is revealed to be Lilly, a former member of Clem's original group before she was exiled, who in the years since has joined up with the Delta Raiders. On orders by her superiors Lilly is gathering new recruits to combat the Delta's Hopeless War and her raid party has come to kidnap the members of Erickson's which now includes Clem. She and her group are responsible for corrupting Marlon, kidnapped Minerva and Sophia, brainwashed the former to make her their loyal soldier, and intend to do the same for the rest of the Erickson kids.
• Wandersong: Audrey Redheart is revealed as the one trying to destroy the world by killing the Overseers, to fulfill her destiny as the Hero and so that a new, perfect world may be created by Eya.
• Sargeras is the ultimate Big Bad of the entire Warcraft universe, but because he's usually on his throne or out of commission, his various minions tend to take over the roles. Out of several characters, Gul'dan and Medivh probably counted as a Big Bad Duumvirate during the First War (or game), while Gul'dan took over the role alone for the Second (since he was using the orcs and fighting the humans). In the expansion, the job got handed off to Ner'zhul. In the Third War, Sargeras's Dragon, Archimonde, filled the role, while the other Dragon Kil'Jaeden and the Lich King both held it in an Evil Versus Evil situation in the Frozen Throne expansion.
  • World of Warcraft.
    • In the original game, there were multiple story arcs, not all of which tied together and some of which had their own Big Bads, such as VanCleef (the final boss of one of the first dungeons), the Diabolical Mastermind behind the Defias who were behind everything until then in the human quests, right from the kobolds at the beginning. The closest to an overall Big Bad was dependent on the continent, with the final boss being C'Thun in Kalmindor and Nefarian in Eastern Kingdoms, respectively. Everything in Kalimdor was very obviously leading up to the Battle of Kalimdor, with the Silithid being woven in through multiple quest lines, culminating in the Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest chain, and everything in the Eastern Kingdoms was leading up to the final assault on Blackwing Lair, as Nefarian was behind Onyxia's motivations, which also led to the Defilas Start of Darkness. Neither C'Thun or Nefarian were quite the final boss before the first expansion, but those who came after them weren't behind so much of everything.
    • In Wrath of the Lich King, as the name implies, it's very clear who the Big Bad is. The Lich King is a typical Evil Overlord bent on world conquest, and makes sure to appear several times along the story to make the point.
    • The Big Bad for Cataclysm is Deathwing the Destroyer, an ancient dragon who sought to destroy the world, who also qualifies as a Greater-Scope Villain for Vanilla WoW as well, as he is the father of Nefarian and Onyxia and was the driving force behind their motivations the whole time.
    • In Mists of Pandaria, there's no overall Big Bad, but there are several smaller ones that each affect large swaths of the story. The Sha might seem like the expansion's Big Bad, they are being fueled by all the infighting going on between the various races and factions of Pandaria, which includes the Yaungol, Mantid and Mogu (to name only three of many); and then there's the recent helpful arrival of the Horde and the Alliance, who instantly proceeded to bring their own war to Pandaria, which made the Sha problem even worse.... The Sha's progenitor, the Old God Y'Sharaaj, also has a lot to answer for. Another more major source of strife is Garrosh Hellscream, who inflames and effectively embodies the Horde—Alliance conflict until he pisses off everyone and they team up against him. There's also the Thunder King Lei Shen, who has set the stage for much of the events in Pandaria millenia ago.
    • Warlords of Draenor is complicated in a different way. The beginning of the plot is run by Grommash Hellscream, but when he is turned into a Big Bad Wannabe by Gul'dan, the result is that neither of them is behind everything, so basically there are two characters taking turns at being the Big Bad for the first and second part.
    • Legion has the Burning Legion again, but this time, things go so far that their leader Sargeras takes an active role and is the Big Bad.
    • Battle for Azeroth has N'Zoth, the last remaining Old God.
• Watch_Dogs:
  • First game: Dermot "Lucky" Quinn and Damien Brenks. Quinn is the one who ordered the hit on Aiden, while Damian drives much of the plot by his kidnapping of Nicky and by attempting to seize control of ctOS. The DLC Bad Blood has JB "Defalt" Markowicz, who's out to get revenge on Kenny for causing his brother's death via the Northeast blackout.
  • Watch_Dogs 2: Dusan Nemec, the mastermind behind Blume's plots to profit off of private information.
  • Watch Dogs: Legion: Nigel Cass, the leader of Albion willing to go to destructive extremes to achieve his iron-fisted idea of "peace" in London, Mary Kelley, leader of the strongest crime organization in the city, and Zero Day/Sabine Brandt, the hacker responsible for bombing London and framing DedSec.
• The Way of Cinnamon has Wu-Long, the snow leopard who invaded his village and locked up everyone there.
• Welcome to the Game:
  • First game: The Kidnapper and The Breather are after the player and stalk them at their house, serving as the enemies the player must evade while finding the Red Room.
  • The Waiting Room DLC: The Executioner takes full reign as the one running the Red Room, and the protagonist must escape him to avoid being murdered live.
  • Welcome to the Game II: The Noir cult as a whole is the antagonistic faction. They are a cult on the Deep Web that uses The Prey, a misogynistic Hunting the Most Dangerous Game-fueled community, as a front, and are the ones behind Amalea's abduction. Specifically, the leader turns out to be Adam, the tutorial guy, who set up the whole Deadly Game in the first place all for the sake of his entertainment.
• The Well Speaks To Me:
  • Original game: Alice herself is revealed as the one who killed Alice's family and stranded her in the forest.
  • They Watch Through the Walls: Mr. Pumpkin lures Carrie into his haunted house, trapping her inside, so he can play sadistic games with her and sell her and the other kids.
  • Like Veins Beneath the Tide: The Suturer is the monster kidnapping girls and dragging them underneath Ishinakku Village to turn them into dolls.
• What Lies In The Fog: The titular Fog is an evil entity attacking the town and seeking to devour everyone within, and you are tasked with sheltering the townspeople from it.
• Whiskers: Mr. Whiskers, a killer who kidnaps numerous people and forces them to play a Deadly Game for his own amusement.
• White Knight Chronicles has Grazel, emperor of the new Yshrenian, or so he thought. In actuality, he was actually the pawn of Sarvain, priest of Magoras.
• Who's Lila?: The titular Lila is the killer of Tanya Kennedy and the one possessing William Clarke.
• Wild ARMs:
  • Wild ARMs: Mother is leader of the Metal Demons who invaded Filgaia and intends to destroy it. Then Seigfried, leader of the Quarter Knights, turns on another and intends on conquering Filgaia to make it a new home for his race, making him an equal threat.
  • Wild ARMs 2: Vinsfeld Rhadamanthus is the leader of Odessa who aims to Take Over the World. Except Irving Void Valeria is the true leader of Odessa who formed it to fight the Kuiper Belt, which threatens to devour Filgaia, by creating a threat that would engender a movement with the capacity to mobilize the resources needed to drive it off or destroy it- and Lord Blazer, the demon possessing Ashley, also wants to destroy the world. Ashley has to defeat all three of them to save Filgaia.
  • Wild ARMs 3: Beatrice, a demonic entity incapable of existing outside of Hyades who seeks to create a new world she can live in by stealing memories.
  • Wild ARMs 4: Lambda Zellweger is the leader of Brionac who plans on using the Divine Weapon to recreate the world.
  • Wild ARMs 5: Volsung is the leader of the radical movement out to preserve the Veruni race at any cost, aiming to Kill All Humans to preserve the Veruni, except he is possessed by The Hatred, a being made up of the spirits who failed to make peace between the humans and Veruni.
  • Wild ARMs XF: Weisheit seeks revenge against Felius and a way back to Elw Borea so he can conquer it, with Fear Cylsmian being the Greater-Scope Villain.
• Wild Blood: While the insane King Arthur is presented as the game's main villain, as the game goes on the actual main villain is made clear to be Morgana, who's pulling the strings behind plunging Albion into chaos after taking advantage of Arthur's state of mind.
• Wintermoor Tactics Club: Principal Enfield seems a shoe-in for the position at first, pitting clubs against each other in a Snowball Fight competition and threatening to disband them if they lose. He's not. The Gatekeeper and its master, Ilemauzar, are the real villains of the piece.
• The Witch and the Hundred Knight has Mani the fairy, who is revealed to be the witch Aguni, lover of Niike who seeks to free him from his prison and take revenge on the Land of Medea.
  • The Witch And The Hundred Knight 2 has Theodore, supreme leader of the Weiss Ritter who has been conducting unethical experiments in order to gain the power of the Greater-Scope Villain, Rangda, and recreate the world in his image.
• Witch Hunter Izana: The primary antagonist is Verand, an evil vampire who who is invading the island Izana has been sent to investigate. She even introduces herself in the first three minutes of the game to drive it home.
• The Witch's House: The titular witch is the one who traps Viola in her Haunted House and has killed tons of children before her. It's actually Ellen, Viola's False Friend, possessing Viola's body all along, making her the real protagonist. Viola, in Ellen's body, is the Hero Antagonist trying to stop Ellen from killing her. However, Ellen turns out to be a puppet for the true villain, the Black Cat Demon who made her his witch and gets her to kill people so he can eat their souls.
• The early Wolfenstein games have Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis that Blazkowicz fights against.
  • Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein (2009) & Wolfenstein: The New Order: Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse, whose experiments with super soldiers and the Black Sun dimension make him the most dangerous figure in the Third Reich.
  • Wolfenstein: The Old Blood: Helga von Schabbs intends to summon King Otto's Monster to bring about total victory for the Third Reich in WWII.
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus: Frau Irene Engel returns from The New Order to crush the Kreisau Circle for their repeated victories against the Third Reich.
• The World Ends with You: Megumi Kitanji and/or Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu. The latter is a god-like figure trying to destroy Shibuya because he believes people are incapable of change or self-improvement, while the former is attempting an Assmilation Plot in an attempt to convince his superior otherwise.
  • Final Remix's plot has Coco Atarashi, the creator of the Shibuya Noise.
  • NEO: The World Ends with You has Shiba, a Shinjuku Reaper who becomes both the Game Master and the Conductor of the new Reaper's Game, who seeks Shibuya's destruction. However, it turns out he was the Unwitting Pawn of his subordinate Tanzo Kubo, who is revealed to be an angel who manipulated both him and the protagonist Rindo so he can destroy Shibuya for the sheer pleasure of causing death and destruction.
• World's End Club initially has Pielope, a Killer Robot Monster Clown who presides over the Game of Fate the Go-Getters Club are trapped in. However, it turns out the Game of Fate was masterminded by Vanilla to free her friends from the clutches of the true villain MAIK, a malovolent A.I. that seeks to take away humanity's emotions and turn them into "sheep".
• World of Mana:
  • Secret of Mana: Emperor Vandole is the ruler of The Empire who's trying to Take Over the World, except his general Thanatos later kills him and takes his place as the true Big Bad.
  • Trials of Mana puts an interesting twist on this: there are actually three different main villains, the Dragon Lord, the Dark Lich/Masked Mage, and Dark Majesty. The three fight among each other as well as against you throughout the first half of the game, but at the halfway point, one of the three will annihilate the other two and become the main antagonist for the second half of the story. Which one wins depends on which of the six characters you've selected to be your main character.

X

• XCOM series:
  • X-COM: UFO Defense: Initially, the Ethereals are suspected of being the leaders behind the Alien Invasion, but it turns out that the real leader is the Alien Brain that commands the invasion from its base Cydonia on Mars. Without it, the alien assault of Earth immediately crumbles.
  • XCOM Terror From The Deep: The creatures from the ancient underwater city of T'Leth are led by a being simply known as the Ultimate Alien or the Great Dreamer, essentially X-COM's version of Cthulhu. It supposedly arrived on Earth via the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs and is currently sealed in a coffin in T'Leth, but on the cusp of breaking free.
  • XCOM Apocalypse: The invaders this time are creatures from another dimension that make heavy use of Organic Technology and threaten Mega-Primus, one of the last remaining cities on Earth after the events of Terror from the Deep. Their leader this time differs greatly from previous antagonists, as you actually meet them fairly early on in the game. That goo that Brainsuckers inject into your soldiers to control them? That's the Micronoid Aggregate, miscroscopic psychic organisms that live in the bloodstream of every enemy you encounter here, controlling their minds from the inside via a Hive Mind.
  • The Bureau: XCOM Declassified: The Planet Looters the "Outsiders" are led by a Zudjari named Origin, who true to XCOM form is controlling the other Zudjari via a Hive Mind induced by a machine he calls the "Mosaic".
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown: In the remake of the original UFO Defense, among the numerous changes made is that the Ethereals actually are the masterminds behind the invasion this time and led by one of their own: the Uber Ethereal.
  • XCOM 2: Set 20 years after Enemy Unknown, the Ethereals have successfully conquered Earth and installed the ADVENT Coalition to control the planet. The Uber Ethereal is completely absent and not even mentioned for reasons unknown, as the Ethereals are instead led by the female-sounding Angelis Ethereal. The War for the Chosen expansion also adds the titular Chosen, three siblings that serve as the Angelis' Co-Dragons and personally lead her forces against the revived XCOM.
  • XCOM: Chimera Squad: 5 years after the fall of ADVENT, humans and aliens are finally free from the tyrannical reign of the Ethereals, but peace is still strenuous at best. The game takes place in City 31, a former ADVENT city center that serves as a beacon of hope through the many different species living there, but this fragile peace is threatened when Mayor Nightingale is assassinated by the Shrike, a mercenary network led by a former XCOM agent called Sovereign, who seeks to prepare for what he sees is the inevitable return of the Ethereals by spreading chaos and forcing XCOM to become more authoritarian.
• Xenoblade Chronicles series:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: The Mechon in general drive the plot, but Shulk is in pursuit of "Metal Face," a Mechon war leader for whom It's Personal. Later, it's revealed that he's The Dragon to Egil, the millennia-old creator of the Mechon, who is the game's real Big Bad. But the real real antagonist turns out to be Zanza, one half of a duo of creator deities and a Jerkass God extraordinaire, who is also the Monado itself and has been inhabiting the main character all along.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has Jin, the masked leader of Torna. Until it's revealed that his supposed Dragon Malos is the true Big Bad, and Jin is actually carrying out his will. And then it turns out that Malos never had a choice in the matter, and that his omnicidal desires are actually Praetor Amalthus's.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The Queen of Keves and the Queen of Agnus are the leaders of their respective sides of the Forever War that Aionios is locked in. However, the two of them are actually Evil Doppelgängers of Melia and Nia respectively created by Moebius/The Counsuls, The real group pulling the strings behind the Game's Crapsack World, Particularly Z, an entity created from humanity's obsession with maintaining the status quo.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X has Grandmaster Luxaar, the leader of the Ganglion. He's the figurehead commanding his race in their mission to drive humanity to extincion, all because humans are descendants of the Samaarians and their existence is deemed by the Ganglion a big danger to theirs.
• Xenogears: Emperor Cain is the supreme leader of the oppressive Sacred Empire of Solaris that Fei and his allies are fighting against. Except Cain turns out to be trying to help the heroes. The real villains are Miang Hawwa, General Kahran Ramsus's supposed sidekick, and Krelian, the Mad Scientist true leader of Solaris driven by the death of his love; they in turn are working for Deus, the Greater-Scope Villain. Miang herself, or rather the Miang Factor personified as the Urobolous Snake, is the Post-Final Boss of the game. Defeating her means Deus cannot be activated and is utterly useless.
• Xenosaga makes particular use of Big Bads, specifically by using bait and switching the big bads multiple times. A routine of the Xenosaga games is that once a Big Bad has been "dethroned" from their role, their connections to the main characters are deepened and explained. In order:
  • Episode I has Margulis, Grand Inquisitor of Ormus who is willing to sacrifice innocents and destroy planets in the name of his cult and the betterment of humanity. However, he is upstaged by Albedo, the insane and immortal Arch-Enemy to Jr and MOMO who becomes the Final Boss.
  • Episode II has Patriarch Sergius XVII, Margulis’ genocidal boss who wants to Take Over the World. Once again, Albedo trumps him.
  • In Episode III, the ultimate Big Bad of the series turns out to be Wilhelm, head of Vector Industries and The Chessmaster who was manipulating all the previous Big Bads (and every other character as well), all as part of his plan to save the universe.

Y

• Yanderella: Depending on the ending, either Hinata or Honoka will go Yandere and Murder the Hypotenuse and Yatarou as well.
• The Yo-kai Watch game series has several antagonists eventually set to be fought in the final chapters of the main stories (thus this excludes the post-game and bonus bosses).
  • Chairman McKraken in the first game, as he was responsible of the sudden growth of hostile Yo-kai in Springdale -such as Slimamander, Dr. Maddiman and possibly Massiface-, having taken the section of the Yo-kai World corresponding to Springdale (as revealed in Yo-kai Watch 3: Sukiyaki) and trying to do so with the human world as well as the leader of the White Yo-kai party.
  • Yo-kai Watch 2 has Dame Dedtime, as she decided to avert the creation of the titular watch in order to sever the bonds between human and Yo-kai (through her Co-Dragons Kin and Gin) and infect the world with malice by creating Wicked Yo-kai.
  • Yo-kai Watch 3 has The Ghoulfather. The mysterious UFO seen by the FBY agents Blunder and Folly in the opening cutscene was hijaked by him prior to the events of the plot, and he uses its power in an attempt to remake the world to his image. Also, several of the new Bosses fought by Nate and Hailey in their respective storylines as well as in the later joint episodes are the executives of his family and most came into being thanks to him. He returns as the Big Bad in the Blasters T mode added in Sukiyaki.
  • Yo-kai Watch Blasters eventually sets Whisped Cream as one, as he was behind the transformation of three Nokos into an Slimamander, as well as the weakening of several Blasters teams near the final chapter of the main story, which prompts the protagonists (as they are the remaining Blasters team standing) to track and defeat him. It was revealed in the Moon Rabbit Crew update that he was even fought by the Blasters Legendary team in the past. The same update sets Zazel as the main villain of one of the extra chapters (as it is the rendition of the final events of the second movie)
  • Yo-kai Watch Blasters 2: Secret Treasure of the Legendary Banbarayar eventually reveals Kanaendesu as the endgame threat of the main story, as he was the wish-granting Yo-kai who brought princess Catleen's kingdom into ruin (back when she was a human) and prompted her to track and destroy him. Kanaendesu ends up possesing Catleen, which is the main reason her family (the Bundory family) goes into search for her, all while butting heads with the Blasters and thus being the apparent main antagonists for most of the game. Notably, it also plays with this trope as the Blasters' original goal was obtaining the treasures of Karakuri Island in order to pay a huge debt and avoid being evicted from their house, and after the main plot involving Kanaendesu and the Bundory Family is solved, their original goal is fulfilled by defeating Majin Banbarayar, which grants them a huge gold piece depending on how the battle went.
• Yoobiiverse:
  • Annabelle (RPG Maker):
    • Original game, The Dreams of Annabelle Sunray, and The Dreams of Melody Moonlight: Jason Sunray is Anabelle Sunray's abusive father and the main figure in her nightmares who torments both her and Melody.
    • Annabelle: Projection: Riley is the leader of Annabelle's bullies at school.
  • The Brains And The Brawn: Queen Jeanne Panini, aka Mean Jeanne The Ice Cream Queen, has taken over Ravena City through her Hypno Cream, until it turns out that Gale Ravena was manipulating her as part of his own revenge plan against his abusive father, Mayor James.
    • The Gambler (And the Incredible Overthrowing of the King of the World): The titular King of the World, who owns the World Grand Casino, is The Gambler/Taylor's chief tormentor who sets out to ruin his life.
  • Annventure:
    • Original game: The Spree Killer targeting Blackwater Country, actually the demon Tyrannia possessing Ann.
    • Annventure of a Lifetime: The Killer, Tyrannia, returns once again, this time possessing Emmet and trying to destroy the multiverse.
    • Annventure to Remember: The alternate version of Tyrannia residing in the Alternate Dimension is the leader of the demonic forces attacking Blackwater.
    • An Annventure to End Them All: The Mysterious Force, The Grand Creator Yoobii, is the one behind the mass disappearance of the people across the multiverse and wants to destroy it out of hatred at what his creation has become.
• Yoku's Island Express: The God Slayer, a mysterious being determined to kill all the gods of the island. The God Slayer is really your "ally" Kickback, who accompanies you for most of the game.
• Yomawari: Night Alone has the spirit who kidnapped the little girl's sister. Her sister reveals that it was a mountain spirit that was once worshiped as a god.
  • Yomawari: Midnight Shadows has the Spider Spirit who abducts Yui. It is the one who manipulated Yui into committing suicide and uses its control of Yui and Haru's Red String of Fate to try and kill Haru.

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