"He was obsessed with becoming the Devil. So much he killed his own wife; for that he butchered innocent people, too. He's the most vile kind of creature."
— Lady, about her father Arkham, Dante's Awakening
Even a devil may cry when he loses a loved one, but sometimes that is not always the case. These select few hailing from the Demon World and the Human World are the very worst of the foes that Dante and his allies had to face.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Original Continuity
Franchise-Wide- Mundus Key Appearances, the Prince of Darkness himself, is the Arch-Enemy of the Sparda family. A tyrannical demon king who waged wars against his own kind for power and sought to rule over the Human World, Mundus was driven back to the Demon World by his former right-hand man Sparda, and responded to this defeat by having Sparda's human wife Eva murdered out of spite, believing love to be a weakness. Setting his eyes on Sparda's half-demon children, Dante and Vergil, Mundus brutally tortures Vergil and erases his personality to convert him into his own obedient dark knight, Nelo Angelo, haunting Vergil's memories even after he's freed from Mundus. Making plans for a triumphant return to the Human World, Mundus, with the assistance of Trish—a creation of Mundus made to resemble Eva—lures Dante to Mallet Island, sending Nelo Angelo and other minions to kill him. Extending his immense cruelty to his own loyal servants when they fail him, Mundus sadistically disposes of Griffon and tortures Trish in front of Dante, taking advantage of his compassion for her to hurt him. Despite being sealed once more by Dante, the megalomania of the Prince of Darkness continues to be a threat to humans and demons alike, with Dante witnessing a timeline in which Mundus crushes the initial rebellion against him and uses Trish to massacre freedom fighters trying to challenge his iron-fisted rule.
Video Games
- Dante's Awakening: Arkham, seemingly working for Dante's brother Vergil, is revealed as a sinister, power-hungry man who sacrificed his own wife to become a devil himself, as his alter ego Jester. Arkham manipulates everyone to lure them into a battle, resulting in Dante, Vergil and Arkham's own daughter Lady—who Arkham has no issues brutalizing or even trying to kill—weakened enough for Arkham to step in and seize the power of Sparda for himself. When he unlocks the power of Sparda, Arkham plans to, as he puts it, "welcome Chaos" all through the world. When Lady confronts him at the game's end, Arkham angrily demands to know what he's done wrong, declaring he wants to be a God, and asking if sacrificing "one miserable human being" to do so was "really so awful".
- Devil May Cry 4:
- Sanctus, the apparent benevolent pontiff of the Order of the Sword, is a vicious hypocrite who unleashes demons on his own flock so he can have his Knights save the day. Summoning and experimenting on demons and his own servants to turn them into "angels", Sanctus tries to lure Dante into a trap to become a living battery for his false god golem, "The Savior". Deciding Nero was an easier candidate to capture, Sanctus has Nero's Love Interest, Kyrie, kidnapped, betraying the trust of Kyrie's brother and Sanctus' once-loyal captain, Credo. Mocking Credo's capacity for love and declaring that only power matters, Sanctus murders Credo and traps Nero and Kyrie within the Savior to be stuck for all time before ordering Agnus to open the Hell Gates, swarming Fortuna with demons for the Savior to destroy and demonstrate his power and "divinity" before going on to attempt world domination. When Nero is freed and finally corners Sanctus, Sanctus tries to threaten Kyrie to force Nero to back down. Sanctus is as vile as humans in the franchise get and disgraces everything his purported deity, Sparda, stood for.
- Agnus is the cowardly chief scientist of the Order of the Sword and a loud misanthrope with a vehement belief in the inferiority of humans. Gladly supporting the Order's goal of world domination, Agnus is behind the construction of the artificial Hell Gates and the release of the demons terrorizing Fortuna, capturing some of these demons and using their souls to create living weapons for the Order. Happy to be the one to set the Order's endgame in motion, Agnus enthusiastically unleashes a legion of demons upon Fortuna, reducing the entire town to burning ruins for the sake Sanctus's plan.
- First game prequel novel: The vicious swordsman known only as Gilver—revealed in Before the Nightmare to be an Evil Knockoff of Vergil—is an ice-cold mercenary who shares the elegance and arrogance of the son of Sparda but none of his noble qualities. Rising through the ranks of Bobby's Cellar, Gilver cemented himself in the criminal underworld by slaughtering everything in his path, leaving trails of mutilated corpses in his wake. Gilver's massive body count and sadism inspires many other hitmen to return to the old days where wanton destruction was the norm. While initially a nasty rival obsessed with beating Dante, Gilver is in truth a demon supremacist who has been summoning them to wreak havoc around the city and personally murdering Dante's friends to isolate him, showing his true colors by feeding the entirety of Bobby's Cellar to demons as his way of starting a plan to merge both worlds and let the hellish dimension consume all of humanity.
- Sid is a cowardly lesser demon who will do anything, including murdering children and fellow demons, to rise in the ranks of Hell. Killing a man, Sid wears his skin to manipulate his friend, Nina Lowell, and later threatens Nina's life to force her daughter, Patty, to activate his ritual to summon the great demon Abigail, to absorb his power. Summoning a demon army to slaughter the Human World, Sid cares nothing for the death and destruction as long as he gets to rule Hell, just to eradicate his own inferiority complex.
- "Not Love": Mayor Mike Hagel's butler is a seemingly well-mannered servant whose true loyalty lies with the greater demon Belphegor. Working alongside the good-hearted demon Bradley in making the preparations for their master's arrival, the butler stabs the mayor and uses his body in a ritual to summon Belphegor for him to devour Capulet City, and then the world. Almost exterminating his own race, and standing in contrast to his demonic partner-in-crime, the butler served as an example of how some humans are even worse than demons.
- "Wishes Come True": The warden of Devil's Prison is a licentious sadist known for killing all who come to his detention center. Indicated to force attractive inmates to submit to him sexually, the warden also hosts games of "tag", where he and his guards take their true demonic forms to hunt and butcher prisoners at leisure.
Continuity Reboot
- DmC: Bob Barbas, owner of the widely successful Raptor News Network, is secretly the face and voice of the demonic regime. Using his corporation as a front for monitoring and spying on the human population to prevent any opposition against Mundus, Barbas also hosts a popular news program where he blames the resistance movement for the chaos and destruction caused by demons. In his spare time, Barbas is the cruel warden of the Central Penitentiary, a domain in Limbo where so-called traitors and other enemies of the regime are condemned to suffer for eternity.
