Who are Your Top Five Evil Fictional Characters in TV or Film?

JimBowie1958

Old Fogey
Sep 25, 2011
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The kind of evil character I am talking about here is NOT supernatural, or a super villain or something out of fantasy, horror or science fiction. And not someone who is a psychotic character and hence marginally responsible for their deeds, like Hannibal Lecter would be marginally responsible for his actions as he has no moral framework. A truly evil character has that framework but will cross it at will, hence the greater ability of them to blend in with normal people and catch you by surprise.

I am asking for your top five (or bottom five) evil personas who could be right out of real life but some writer had to make them up, to some extent, so no one take right out of a real event like Whitey Bulger of The Departed.

The reason I dont think a discussion of such characters is interesting is that they are so over dramatized and over the top and yet fail to have the intrinsic evil of the kind of evil person I am talking about here.

I'm looking for believable evil characters that are fictional but have a touch of reality to them. I.E true fictional characters. The kind of people that if you got near them and came to know them for truly who they are, you would feel a brush with death down your spine.

So here are my top five Evil Characters.

5. Frank Underwood of House of Cards. This is truly one evil dude who will literally kill, poison, blackmail or corrupt anyone and anything to attain power. Very accurate depiction of today's Washington power brokers.

4. Walter White of Breaking Bad. This guy is evil, but he slid into it and he generally has a reason for when he kills, so if you stay out of his way, you might make it to safety before making yourself scarce in regards to him.

3. Silvio Dante of The Sopranos. This guy was a fairly normal person, who would kill anyone in cold blood on Tony's orders and not give in to the most desperate begging and pleading. Tony himself seemed to have remorse about killing, but Silvio, for him it always seemed to be business and nothing more than business. His killing of Adriana is just merciless and pathetic but Silvio still carried it out.....or did he?

2. Tommy deVito of Goodfellas. This guy would kill anyone he thought needed it, even just to make a petty point, but he was not a sociopath as his love for his brother and a few other demonstrated. His killing and use of torture were always to a purpose. The blood was just extra. His shooting of the kid in the basement poker game is just classic evil spite.

1. Ted Crawford of Fracture, and Anthony Hopkins role that was just fiendishly evil and chilling. He had never killed a person before in his life, but seemed to have always been capable of it and he designed and executed a well conceived murder and provoked suicide. He messes up in the end, but a very creepy, chilling evil bastard nonetheless.

OF course these are just the characters that have impressed me as tot heir willingness to do the ultimate evil fully aware of the immorality of it, fully feeling their own losses and enjoying the deaths of their enemies.

Unfortunately, the really evil people of real life are marginally better as they are puppeteers usually and dont often get their hands dirty personally, and hence almost never get caught.
 
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In no particular order -

Amon Goeth - Ralph Fiennes, Schlinder's List

Max Cady - Robert Mitchum/Robert DeNiro, either version of Cape Fear

Harry Powell - Robert Mitchum, Night of the Hunter

Frank - Henry Fonda, Once Upon A Time In The West

Captain Bligh - Charles Laughton, Mutiny on the Bounty

Honorable Mention: Hans Gruber - Alan Rickman, Die Hard
 
Well, until you said 'not supernatural', my #1 pick was Kilgrave, from Jessica Jones

I'll have to think a bit
 
The Joker - Heath Ledger Performance of a lifetime.



Amon Goth was a real person. And this guy certainly qualifies in the top ten of evil real people I'd say. A person that took pleasure in murdering others.

"On 3 September 1943, in addition to his duties at Płaszów (concentration camp), Göth was the officer in charge of the liquidation of the ghetto at Tarnów, which had been home to 25,000 Jews (about 45 per cent of the city's population) at the start of World War II. By the time the ghetto was liquidated, 8,000 Jews remained. They were loaded on a train to Auschwitz concentration camp, but less than half survived the journey. Most of the survivors were deemed unsuitable for forced labour and were murdered immediately on their arrival at Auschwitz. According to testimony of several witnesses as recorded in his 1946 indictment for war crimes, Göth personally shot between 30 and 90 women and children during the liquidation of the ghetto."
 
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