"And when he was ready he'd...cremate them in their houses...slaughter their children and wear their infants' bowels as necklaces."
"He no longer wanted to kill his foe in darkness and silence. His lust was to stand naked upon the moonlit stage, with his arm stretched high and his fingers spread, and with the warm fresh blood that soaked him sliding down his wrists, spiralling his arms and steaming in the cold night air—to suddenly drop his hands like talons to his breasts, and tear it open to expose a heart like a black vegetable—and then, upon the crest of self-exposure, and the sweet glory of wickedness, to create some gesture of supreme defiance, lewd and rare; and then with the towers of Gormenghast about him, cheat the castle of its jealous right and die of his own evil in the moonbeams."
—On Steerpike, Gormenghast
Before video games, movies, and television showed up, many forms of short stories and novels provided multiple kinds of twisted, abhorrent characters that are still remembered to this day.
Examples from Gamebooks can be found here, and examples from web literature can be found here.
The following have their own pages
Examples
By Author
By Work
- Alien vs. Predator (includes the Alien and Predator franchises)
- Assassin's Creed
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Battlefield
- Berserk
- BIONICLE
- Bleach
- Blood Books
- Bob Morane
- Buffyverse
- Charmed (1998)
- Conan the Barbarian
- The Crow
- CSI-verse
- Cthulhu Mythos and related works
- DC Literature
- Diablo
- Diagnosis: Murder
- Dick Tracy
- Die Hard
- Dirty Pair
- Discworld
- Disney
- Doom
- Dragon Age
- Dungeons & Dragons
- The Elder Scrolls
- The Expanse
- Fables
- Fear Street
- Final Fantasy
- Flash Gordon
- Godzilla
- Goosebumps
- The Hardy Boys
- Halloween
- Harry Potter
- Hellboy
- Hellraiser
- Highlander
- How to Train Your Dragon
- In Death
- Indiana Jones
- Jack Reacher
- James Bond
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
- Judge Dredd
- Kamen Rider
- King Kong
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes
- Magic: The Gathering
- Marvel Literature
- Masters of the Universe
- Metal Gear
- Mortal Kombat
- Naruto
- Nasuverse
- Night Huntress
- Ninja Gaiden
- The Otherworld
- Pokémon
- Red Sonja
- Redwall
- Resident Evil
- Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers
- RuneScape
- RWBY
- The Saint
- Sherlock Holmes
- Shin Megami Tensei
- Silent Hill
- Silent Witness
- Skulduggery Pleasant
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- StarCraft
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Sword Art Online
- Terminator
- The Walking Dead
- Tolkien's Legendarium
- Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series
- Transformers
- Warcraft
- Warhammer (includes Warhammer 40,000)
- Whoniverse
- The Witcher
- The World of Darkness
