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"Strangle her in bed, even the bed she hath contaminated"

And when the burning thirst is quenched,
And when the blood oozes from the heart,
And when they groan full of terror,
Haha! What delight!
Lord Ruthven, Der Vampyr

The stage has been used as a storytelling medium for centuries. It's only logical that this would lead to some particularly vile villains gracing it with their presence.

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!


The following have their own pages

Other examples

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    A - M 
  • American Psycho: The Musical: Patrick Bateman is, as usual, a vapid stockbroker tormented by his own blandness, embracing his psychopathy and sadism to make himself feel unique. A proud narcissist who values his material possessions over his supposed friends and family, Bateman has dark fantasies daily of killing his co-workers, fiancée, and mother. Bateman began killing an unknown time ago and has countless murders from past years attributed to him, his motives being sheer bloodlust or even just petty jealousy as he knifes homeless men while imagining them as his friends, tortures a neighbor with a nail gun for mocking his taste in art, and kills Paul Owen with an axe for disrespecting his favorite band and having an account Bateman wants for himself. After a bloody, horrifying killing spree in which he cannibalizes dozens of victims, bathes in their blood, and dances around a pile of their corpses, Bateman brags that he has never once wanted to make anyone happy, and views himself as the only person who matters or is even truly alive in a world that won't respect him.
  • Anon(ymous), by Naomi Iizuka: In this surreal re-telling of The Odyssey, Mr. Cyclo stands in for the Cyclops, and is easily the worst character Anon encounters on his journey. The drunken owner of a butcher shop who boasts of being a Man of Wealth and Taste, Cyclo keeps a woman captive in his meat locker, something he did to at least one other person before the play begins, and torments her into a near-feral state with freezing temperatures and by feeding her the flesh of his people that he kills and turns into sausages, a fate that befalls Anon’s friend Pascal and quite possibly many more previous employees. Cyclo mocks Anon about his impending death while strongly implying that he eats human flesh himself and that all the meat he sells comes from his victims.
  • Batman Live: The Joker once again demonstrates his ruthless nature. Joker has Tony Zucco kill Dick Grayson's family before killing Tony himself, and proceeds to take over the Haly Circus after murdering the staff, holding Dick Grayson hostage. Abandoning Harley Quinn to be arrested, Joker later frees the inmates of Arkham Asylum and allows them to hold the staff hostage to draw Batman in, setting off bombs throughout Gotham to prove they mean business. When Batman and Robin manage to defeat the inmates, Joker attempts to escape in a hot air balloon, stopping only to mock Harley as she begs him to take her with him, and fires his machine gun down on random people.
  • Be More Chill: The SQUIP is a sociopathic, brainwashing supercomputer in pill form designed to make the user popular. The second he uploads himself into high school student Jeremy Heere, he is excessively cruel, making cracks at Jeremy's self-esteem and forcing him to repeat suicidal remarks the SQUIP makes about him. However, he advances beyond simple bullying when he attempts to have another student rape Jeremy via puppeting his body. From then on, he reveals that he desires to Take Over the World, and as he is rejected by Jeremy, in his last-ditch effort to achieve his goal, he offers up Jeremy's Love Interest as a mind-controlled slave.
  • Danganronpa: Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Fashionista/Ultimate Despair, is a young, chaotic psychopath obsessed with making everybody, even herself, feel despair. Corrupting and tormenting the students of Hope's Peak Academy's Class 77 to assist her in her plans, Junko was able to use them to launch countless wars, disasters, and terrorist attacks, with millions dying in the process. Seeking to further drench the world in despair, Junko wipes the memories of the Hope's Peak survivors to force them all to kill each other to escape while being broadcasted worldwide, even killing her own "boring" sister Mukuro Ikusaba to enjoy the despair of losing a loved one. Forced to live as her punishment, Junko installs an AI built from her consciousness into the Neo-World Program, forcing the recovering Class 77 students into another killing game to corrupt them all into becoming her copies to rule the world alongside her.
  • Death Note: The Musical: Light Yagami, aka Kira, may have a lower body count than his manga counterpart, but he is just as evil. Mere moments after getting the Death Note, he abandons his claims of justice in favor of his own interests, declaring himself God. He goes on a massive killing spree with the Death Note, killing countless, and when confronted by an FBI agent and L Lawliet's task force agent, uses the Death Note to cause them to commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide. Light manipulates his girlfriend Misa into killing for him, and, when he gets an opportunity, convinces Rem to write L's name in her Death Note, on threat of killing Misa, an act which kills both Rem and L. As L realizes that he is going to be forced to kill himself, Light continues to gloat over him, declaring that L was merely a pawn as L kills himself.
  • The Dragon, by Yevgeny Shvarts (translation): The titular Dragon is a vicious tyrant who has terrorized the town for four hundred years, utterly brainwashing the people until their souls are barely human at all. He has exterminated all the Roma in the region, claiming they were dangerous. Every year, the Dragon orders the townsfolk to bring him a girl of his choosing whom he rapes and kills. When Lancelot challenges the Dragon, the latter tries to shirk an honest battle and then, when that fails, frantically attempts to blackmail Elsa, his next intended victim and Lancelot's beloved, into stabbing Lancelot. Putting on a façade of suavity and politeness, the Dragon is in the end revealed to be nothing but a depraved Dirty Coward, unrepentant about his kills and proud of the souls he has maimed through psychological torture.
  • Fuenteovejuna, by Lope de Vega: Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, introduced goading his superior from the Order of Calatrava to attack Ciudad Real, is the Commander of the titular town. Presenting himself as a holy man, the Commander tries to rape two female villagers. Interrupting a meeting between Laurencia and Frondoso, the Commander tries to rape Laurencia, threatening her with a crossbow before being interrupted by Frondoso. Later, the Commander orders his servants to whip a poor man trying to protect a villager before raping her and giving her to his soldiers. A loathsome man who believes that politeness is a virtue reserved for the nobility, the Commander is a lustful man who has no concern for anyone but himself. Killed in a popular revolt in the titular town, the Commander is the archetypal abusive authority figure in Spanish fiction, with his death being the ultimate popular justice.
  • Gynx: In this deconstruction of vigilante revenge against sexual abuse, Genevieve, aka Gynx, seems to be a empathetic and loving figure taking in girls damaged by their past of sexual abuse. She eggs on their fantasies of kidnapping their rapists and castrating them, going on to carry out such kidnappings. At least thirty two men are castrated in these escapades, and while their targets are rapists and child molesters, there's a suggestion that some of them could be innocent and falsely accused. It is soon shown that she is emotionally manipulating and is controlling of the women who follow her, until they have a cult-like devotion to her. Despite her speeches of revenge against victimizers and empowering female victims, it's revealed she is secretly working for a torture porn website that feeds a castration fetish, keeping the money for herself. When Petie confronts her about it, Gynx has her abduct a rapist herself to mutilate. When Petie ends up beating said rapist to death on the stream, Gynx and the other girls ultimately abandon her, with Gynx revealing that she is simply looking for believable victims to throw under the bus.
  • The History of King Lear, by Nahum Tate: Edmund the Base, stripped of all his redeeming qualities, becomes a vile, two-dimensional shadow of his presentation in the original play. Turning his own father, the Duke of Gloucester, against his noble-hearted brother Edgar by insinuating treason, Edmund poses as an honorable man before having his own father arrested, viciously tortured, and blinded solely to seize power. Struck with lust for Lear's daughter Cordelia, Edmund seeks to rape Cordelia himself to slake his evil lust, later having Lear and Cordelia set to hang while dying a sneering, unrepentant libertine thoroughly unhindered by his own conscience.
  • Incendies (aka Scorched): Nihad Harmanni, in stark contrast to his stoic depiction in the film adaptation, is originally portrayed as a loud and childish psychopath with delusions of being a misunderstood artist. Joining a radical resistance movement in the south of a war-torn Middle Eastern country as their best sniper, Nihad liked to take pictures of his many victims, including children. After defecting to an invading foreign army, Nihad changed his name to Abou Tarek and became the feared Torture Technician of a POW Camp in Kfar Rayat, where he raped several women for years, even impregnating his own mother when she was sent to him.
  • The Light Princess: King Ignacio is Digby's father and the King of Sealand. Years ago, Ignacio murdered his wife, driving his son to cut himself off from emotions and thus earning the nickname The Solemn Prince. Wanting to conquer the Kingdom of Lagobel for its resources, Ignacio decides to organize the assassination of Crown Prince Alexander and later tries to have Digby assassinate Princess Althea. When Digby falls in love with Althea, Ignacio tries to marry him off to his cousin and has him locked away when he refuses. Upon uncovering a secret lake that supplies water to Lagobel, Ignacio builds a dam to cut off the water source, causing a massive drought upon the Kingdom and leading to the Lagobellians dying of thirst. When Digby breaks the dam, Ignacio nearly kills him for his insolence.
  • The Life:
    • Memphis, a brutal pimp feared by the dozen prostitutes working for him, prides himself on his talent for charming girls with false hopes of big dreams, only to lure them into lives of neverending, backbreaking sex work. Having his eye on Queen, Memphis has Jojo fuel her boyfriend Fleetwood's crippling drug addiction, leaving Queen with no one to turn to. Initially kind to Queen by giving her a beautiful dress, he reveals that he expects her to pay him back by pimping for him for at least a year, threatening the life of her and Fleetwood if she refuses. When Queen attempts to warn Fleetwood, Memphis horrifically beats her and decides to cast her down to the bums who will "screw anything", having his henchmen pimp her out at knifepoint, with the intent to fully break her. Catching Queen about to escape with the help of Sonja, one of Memphis's hardened women, Memphis attempts to force them back into the wretched life of prostitution, sneering that they can never choose to leave, before proceeding to stab Fleetwood to death.
    • Joseph P. Morse, nickname Jojo, is a hustler willing to do anything to climb up the ladder of success. Having been known to entice young women to sell them to his friend, Lou, for Casting Couch offers, Jojo helps Memphis in getting Queen pimped to him, purely for money. To that end, Jojo has Fleetwood hooked on hard drugs and gets him to cheat on his new girl, Mary, getting Memphis access to Queen, where he convinces him to follow through on his plan. When Queen attempts to escape Memphis and asks for Jojo's help, Jojo betrays her and brings Memphis for money, staying to watch her be beaten brutally by Memphis. Having warned Memphis of Sonja helping Queen escape, Jojo attacks and disarms Fleetwood to have Memphis stab him to death, and when Memphis is shot dead by Queen, Jojo attempts to persuade them to work for him now as Memphis branch opens new opportunities. After Queen escapes and Sonja turns herself in to cover for her, Jojo brags about getting away with everything, getting a new position at Lou's company to do what he wants behind close doors. Jojo ends the story by spotting a newly arrived 17 year old, going off to entice her to be his next victim.
  • Maria Kizito: Warrant Officer Emmanuel Rekeraho is a Hutu Interahamwe leader during the Rwandan genocide who turns a group of nuns—especially the titular nun Maria, who becomes his right hand—from a monastery into fanatical murderers who lure Tutsi refugees, including children, before murdering them in increasingly brutal ways such a burning a building full of multiple Tutsi or starving refugees to death. A cheerful fanatic that sees Tutsi as cockroaches and moderate Hutus as traitors, Rekeraho also broadcast hateful speech from his radio program, which he uses to continue to call for the extermination of the Tutsi people.
  • The Massacre at Paris: The Duc of Guise is a sadistic fanatic who initiates the titular massacre of Paris. Murdering members of Navarre for the chance to kill Huguenots and even attempting to kill royalty, Guise leads a violent purge across Paris to slaughter numerous Protestants and even takes advantage of the chaos to have his wife's lover murdered for spite. Unwilling to let the bloodshed end, Guise's ambitions almost lead to the beginning of a war when he sends his forces to kill Henry of Navarre.
  • Matilda the Musical: Agatha Trunchbull commits all the acts from the book, along with additional crimes. Trunchbull is a former Olympic hammer thrower, who is depicted in onscreen flashbacks as making money from a circus where she forced her trapeze artist sister—who was pregnant—to work at the circus or face jail, with Trunchbull eventually killing her sister by cutting the rope. The baby—Jennifer "Jenny" Honey—survived. Trunchbull was then invited by her oblivious brother-in-law to help care for Jenny, regularly abusing the latter when her father wasn't home and scaring her into submission. When Jenny's father came home early one day to find his daughter starved and tied up in the cellar, he went to confront Agatha, only for Trunchbull to murder him and frame it as suicide. In the present day, Trunchbull became headmistress of a school. She commits all the acts of child abuse seen in the book and locks Matilda in a torture box known as a Chokey, which she regularly used on children. The Trunchbull's cruelty expands in scope when the climax of the musical has her attempting to replace all classrooms with Chokeys to create a school system where children will be tortured and "neither seen nor heard". Already known as one of the most preeminent child haters in adolescent fiction, this version of the Trunchbull still stands out as truly monstrous.
  • Metropolis (1989): Futura is a cognizantly sadistic version of Maria's robotic double. After having the heroic freedom fighter likeness grafted onto her by the orders of John Freeman, Futura is sent to disrupt the planned rebellion of Metropolis's working class by impersonating Maria. Distracting the workers through cruel manipulation, Futura gleefully tries to suffocate them all as the unmanned machines drop the oxygen levels, and takes a child hostage to keep them at bay, stabbing hero Steven when he tries to stop her.
  • Murder Can Be Habit-Forming, by Billy St. John: The "Mary Murderer" is revealed to be none other than Lt. Patrick McDougal. When his wife Mary wants to leave him for becoming too hostile and nasty to her, Patrick eventually strangles her to death and then, over the course of seven months, strangles ten other women to death as well just for being named "Mary". Stranded at a convent with other bus passengers the night he's trying to flee the country, Patrick strangles "Ask Mary" columnist Jerome Stacey to death for likely discovering his identity and then seeks to arrange for either caretaker Herman or college student Ryan Wallace, Mary Bishop's boyfriend, to take the blame for the killings. When Mary Bishop discovers the truth, Patrick—having made an attempt on her life earlier that evening—cruelly attempts to strangle her to death as well and then, when Mary Adams—an undercover police sergeant—catches him in the act, he shoots at and nearly strangles her too.

    N - Z 
  • Nabucco: The High Priest of Ba'al is a religious fanatic and bigot who exploits Abigail's ambition and wrath for his own ends. First introduced informing Abigail that her adoptive sister, Fenena, has released Hebrew prisoners, the Priest subsequently informs Abigail that he and his men have spread the rumor that Nabucco has fallen in Battle and encourages her to take the throne. Later, the Priest informs Abigail of Fenena's conversion to Judaism, and suggests that she and the Hebrews be exterminated, presenting a document for Abigail to sign as a death warrant for the Hebrews. In the final confrontation, the Priest attempts to carry out the death warrant via Human Sacrifice to Ba'al but is interrupted by Nabucco and his forces.
  • Pagliacci: The devious, hunchbacked Tonio is an Ur-Example of an evil clown in Western media. A Manipulative Bastard par excellence, Tonio deigns to ruin the life of his co-actor Nedda after his first attempt to seduce her—and subsequently rape her—fail. Tonio poisons the mind of Nedda's husband, Canio, driving him to homicidal insanity with the revelation Nedda is unfaithful to him, before sitting back and watching with cruel satisfaction as the mad Canio murders both Nedda and her lover on-stage. In the original script and many productions afterward, Tonio ends the opera by gloating that "the comedy is finished!" to seal in how thoroughly he has destroyed the main cast.
  • Prince Igor: Prince Vladimir Galitsky is Igor's brother-in-law, entrusted with the safety of his sister—Igor's wife—and the town of Putivl when Igor leaves for battle. Galitsky surrounds himself with drunkards and deserters, seizing power and starting a regime of debauchery, violently assaulting the locals and molesting the girls. His cronies kidnap a girl whom he holds captive and rapes, despite her pleas and the pleas of her friends. Galitsky wants to seize the throne of Putivl for good, planning to deplete the royal treasury, punish whomever he wants in whichever way he likes, and rape all the girls he fancies. Even when Galitsky's sister tries to reason with him, he merely mocks her. The women of Putivl reveal that Galitsky has always been like this and has simply ceased to hide his true colors after Igor left. They admit that Galitsky and his men are "worse than the enemies, worse than the Cumans", which says a lot, considering that the Cumans are responsible for multiple violent raids of Russian towns.
  • The Prince of Egypt: High Priest Hotep, so-called voice of the gods, is the Treacherous Advisor first to Pharaoh Seti and then Rameses. In truth, Hotep's divine miracles are all staged. When Rameses begins to slip out of line, Hotep threatens him back into place, claiming his power is nothing compared to the High Priest's. Far more evil than both his original counterpart and Rameses himself at the end, when Rameses redeems himself, Hotep commands the armies of Egypt to massacre the fleeing Hebrews himself.
  • The Scarlet Pimpernel: Citizen Chauvelin is a ruthless agent of The French Revolution who delights in sentencing people to the guillotine, opening the musical with the execution of the good-hearted Marquis de St. Cyr. Hunting others to send to their beheadings, Chauvelin also blackmails his former lover Marguerite by threatening to ruin her marriage to Percy Blakeney, also using the threat of her brother's execution to control her. Intending on killing them all when he realizes Percy is the heroic Scarlet Pimpernel, Chauvelin embraces nothing so much as spite and rage in his attempt to purge all he despises.
  • William Shakespeare has produced timeless works with quite the incredible and diverse output. From some of his plays have come villains who are impressive in their depravity centuries later.
    • Othello: Honest Iago is one of the most famous examples of this trope to ever appear on the English stage. A bitter Venetian officer who resents the promotion of another man over him by his commander, the Moor Othello, Iago schemes for revenge by ingratiating himself with Othello and driving him to madness with insinuations his beloved wife Desdemona is having an affair with the officer Michael Cassio. Iago undermines Othello while acting as his friend. Iago murders his accomplice Roderigo and his own wife Emilia to cover for himself, and at the end, convinces Othello to murder Desdemona. At the end, Iago displays no remorse and refuses to speak one word more in his whole life. Throughout the play, Iago has various motives proposed for his evil—racism; envy; suspicion that Othello is sleeping with Emilia—but concludes he has no reason behind his cruelties beyond the fact that he simply enjoys them.
    • Richard III: Richard himself informs us early on that he is determined to prove a villain and ruin the day for everyone else. To that end, he seduces Anne Neville, whose noble husband he himself murdered, with every intent of discarding her later. He has his brother George, Duke of Clarence, sent to the Tower of London and murdered, drives his older brother King Edward IV into an early grave, and has Edward's two young sons imprisoned in the Tower of London, before having them murdered. He poisons Anne herself, and begins having his allies killed. On the night before his battle with Henry Tudor, he is visited by the spirits of his victims, who tell him to despair and die. Richard is left alone, deserted by all, and at the end, he admits that even he has nothing but hatred for himself.
  • Snow in Midsummer: Donkey Zheng is one of the oldest examples of this trope in Chinese theatre. Encountering Mrs. Cai and learning she has a daughter, Donkey forces her to marry his father so he can marry the daughter by threatening to strangle her if she disagrees. When her daughter, Dou E., refuses to marry him, Donkey tries to poison her mother, but accidentally kills his own father. Showing no remorse for this, Donkey then frames Dou E. for his own crimes, leading to her being tortured and publicly hung.
  • Sovereignty:
    • President Andrew Jackson is portrayed as a eugenicist who seeks nothing short of the total extinction of the Tribal Nations. Despite receiving aid from Major Ridge in the War of 1812, Jackson immediately works to force the Cherokee off of their land once he's in power, giving Governor Forsyth political backing to force them off and refusing to enforce the Supreme Court's ruling when his actions are deemed unconstitutional. The result is the Trail Of Tears and the deaths of tens of thousands of Native Americans, with thousands more being left homeless and vulnerable to rapes and assaults across the Cherokee Nation. Firmly believing that the Cherokee Nation is doomed to extinction and that the country would soon lose its "Indian flavor", Jackson's policies are responsible for over 150 years of rapes and murders of Cherokee women, with Native American women facing the highest rate of sexual assault of any demographic thanks to him.
    • Governor (John) Forsyth is the governor of Georgia and Jackson's partner in forcing the Cherokee off of their land. To force them off, Forsyth orders his militia to rape any Native women who refuse his orders to leave, then unconstitutionally imprisons Samuel Worcester to prevent the Cherokee from publishing their newspaper. Despite the Supreme Court ruling his actions unconstitutional, Forsyth continues ordering the rape of Native women, eventually driving them off of their land and into the Trail of Tears.
  • Starship: Pincer is an egotistical alien Bug with an appetite for human flesh. Having devoured a ship of Starship Rangers in the past, Pincer used brain leeches to communicate with them, solely to delight in their pleas for mercy before they died. Eighteen years later, Pincer acts friendly to trick Bug into becoming human in order to lure the newly-arrived Starship Rangers to him so he may dine again. When this fails, Pincer strikes a deal with the Rangers' corrupt leader Junior, giving him the weapons needed for him to wipe out the Bug hive in exchange for eating Junior's entire crew. When Pincer gets onto the ship, he forces Bug to reveal his true nature to his friends, planning to humiliate him before eating him and all the humans on board.
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: The corrupt Judge Turpin, who runs a Kangaroo Court in Victorian London, begins Sweeney's Start of Darkness when, lusting after the then-younger barber's wife, Turpin has him imprisoned in an Australian a penal colony for decades of hard labor so he can seduce his wife. When she refuses, Turpin has her lured to his home under pretense of offering to free her husband—but rapes her instead, and steals her daughter as his ward. Turpin guards her jealously, having a younger sailor brutally beaten for looking at her and plans to marry her himself. When she refuses and tries to run away he sends her to an asylum where he knows she'll be mistreated.
  • Tosca: Baron Vitellio Scarpia is the head of the police who relentlessly hunts down those deemed as "traitors" and subjects them to torture and execution. When he captures the painter Mario Cavaradossi, he decides to use the man as leverage to possess his sweetheart Floria Tosca. He has Mario brutally tortured, and convinces Mario that Tosca betrayed him to drive a wedge between the lovers. He then proceeds to offer Tosca Mario's safety if she sleeps with him, horrifying her. He promises to spare Mario if she does so, seemingly arranging a fake execution. However, even after Scarpia's death it is revealed he had no intention of honoring his word: the execution is real and Mario dies anyway. A venal hypocrite hiding behind his sanctimony, Scarpia glories in the fear he spreads over Rome and believes the best way to possess a woman is by force.
  • "The Vampyre" adaptations: In these plays, Lord Ruthven is just as horrible as he is in the book:
    • Der Vampyr, by Heinrich Marschner: Lord Ruthven is a Satan worshipper, who must drink the blood of three women over a twenty-four hour period or forfeit his soul to Hell. He kills a girl named Janthe, then fakes his death after her father shoots him, making his friend Aubrey, who he once saved, keep his being a vampire a secret. The next day, Aubrey finds Ruthven has hypnotized his Love Interest Malwina's father into engaging them; he has also begun preying on a girl named Emmy. Ruthven kills Emmy, handing her soul over to his masters, then goes through with his plans to marry Malwina, while using his supposed friendship with Aubrey and the oath that the latter swore, to keep him from warning her and her father that Ruthven will kill her. In the end Ruthven is struck down by his own masters, moments before he can kill not only Malwina, but Aubrey too, whom he regards as a traitor for trying to stop Ruthven from killing his girlfriend.
    • The Vampire, by Alexandre Dumas: Lord Ruthven attaches himself to the party of Count Gilbert, murdering Gilbert's love Juana and enslaving Gilbert with a vow to him, competing against the being known as "the Ghoul", an entity who serves Satan like himself but has fallen for Gilbert. Ruthven seduces and murders Gilbert's sister while framing Gilbert as a madman, returning again to try to kill Gilbert's new love Antonia while glorying in the immortality he obtain from so many innocent lives.
  • William Tell (Friedrich Schiller's 1804 play): Albrecht Gessler is the tyrannical deputy of the Habsburgs in Switzerland. Imprisoning, torturing and killing many with a law that failure to salute his cap is punishable by death, Gessler has an old man blinded for a trifling offense with hopes to provoke the Swiss so the Habsburgs may crush them. Upon arresting William Tell, Gessler forces him to shoot an apple off his own son's head for sport, later even showing himself willing to ride down a woman and her children for standing in the way of his horse.
  • The Woman in White (Andrew Lloyd Webber): Sir Percival Glyde is an ambitious social-climbing aristocrat who became infatuated with the young Anne when she was born. When Anne turned 15, Glyde beat and raped her, and when she gave birth to their child, Glyde believed it wasn't his and drowned it. Glyde then had the traumatized Anne locked up in an asylum to silence her. A few years later, Glyde marries Anne's half-sister Laura, whom he beats and abuses daily, in order to get their father's money, but when Laura rejects him, Glyde decides to fake her death by killing Anne in her place and then putting Laura in the asylum. On being confronted by Laura disguised as her sister's ghost, Glyde cruelly admits that he drowned Anne's baby and taunts that her secret won't ever get out. When Laura reveals herself, he tries to kill her as well.
  • Yotsuya Kaidan: Tamiya Iemon is a vicious Rōnin expelled from his clan for embezzlement. When his father-in-law requests Iemon divorce his dutiful wife Oiwa to give her a better life, Iemon murders the man and uses his death to manipulate Oiwa into returning to him. Seeking to eventually get a better match for himself, Iemon has Oiwa poisoned, resulting in her being horribly disfigured. Iemon then hires a friend of his to rape Oiwa so he can blame her for adultery, only for Oiwa to discover his scheme and accidentally kill herself, to which Iemon has no remorse. Iemon promptly murders a random servant to frame him as Oiwa's illicit lover, and when Oiwa returns as a ghost, Iemon accidentally kills his new wife and her father thanks to Oiwa's haunting, before killing his new mother-in-law of his own accord in anger.

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