I think Sparkly-elf means The Boss. I'd disagree, seeing as how she's not evil, just working for the bad guys. Believe it or not, I understood that final cutscene in MGS3.

I'm going with Kane. Mainly as he's a religious nut in charge of the biggest army seen in years. That's freaking scary.

I'd agree with Kefka and Jon Irenicus.

Kefka was an insane psychopath. Constantly getting in your way, then blowing up the world. Not to mention his laugh, a laugh that was very evil sounding even with the SNES's basic sound system. "Whoop whoop whoop whoop". It's on youtube, look it up. "Kefka laugh"

Jon Irenicus was an enigma at first. He seemed to torture you and Imoen just for the hell of it. He obviously knew you were children of Bhaal, but at first it seemed as though he was only interested in how your powers worked, and maybe how he could get them himself. It's not till later that you find out his real motives. You can say people are pretty evil, but it's not often that you can truly say that those evil people have no souls...

Also, an honourable mention to whats-his-face in CoD 4, the Russian guy. The fact that I can't remember his name makes him not that great of a villain to me, but he still made me want to kill him when he launched those nukes. And the end of the last level... they pulled that off extremely well. I've never been gladder to be able to pull the trigger on an evil villain... multiple times.

L4Y Duke:
I think Sparkly-elf means The Boss. I'd disagree, seeing as how she's not evil, just working for the bad guys. Believe it or not, I understood that final cutscene in MGS3.

I'm going with Kane. Mainly as he's a religious nut in charge of the biggest army seen in years. That's freaking scary.

Yes, sorry, force of habit calling her Big Boss, whoopsie.

EVIL

Though I never played the game, I recall reading somewhere that the main bad guy in Wing Commander III disembowells the player character's love interest in a cutscene towards the end of the game. That's strong stuff, even by villain standards.

Still, my vote would have to go to any Project Gotham Racing 4 driver encountered after the player has entered the "master" phase of his/her career. Seriously, what a bunch of sadistic pr*cks. They'll knock you off your bike, *then* run over you.

While both Kefka and Jon Irenicus are certainly evil, I'd have to say that Luca Blight of Suikoden II fame beats them both out.

Kefka poisoned his enemies and randomly blasted towns with magic, but Luca massacred Boy Scouts (while mascarading as enemy soldiers) just to get more people to volenteer for the war effort. While both Kefka and Luca murdered their way into power, Luca gets special recognition for having killed his own father to do it. As for his enemies? While both Kefka and Luca killed en masse, Luca had the habit of walking into towns and butchering them personally, while his future victims watched. Thats the sort of personal touch that simply outclasses random magical blasts from some distant tower.

Hell, Luca actually promised his sister to one of his generals, provided the General could triumph in a difficult battle.

That is Evil, with a capitol E.

I have to toss my vote for two in the aforementioned post.

Kefka is by far one of my favorite villains. And Kefka did kind of kill his "father" by incinerating Geshtal at the precise moment the old man had attained his dream: Unimaginable amounts of magical power which he would have used to rule the world with an iron fist. Not to mention "Run Run or you'll be well done!" was one of the most entertaining lines in the game.

And Luca Blight. I think his dying quote says it the best: "It took a hundred men to kill me, but I killed men by the thousands! I am Sublime! I am the TRUE FACE OF EVIL!" - Yeah, pretty effin' epic.

i have to say Solus from Breackdown. he was powerful enough that he mocked you when you had a kickass power arm thing, by grabbing it in the middle of your punch. also, he survived a nuke two feet away, even though he was just an "avatar" as he said himself. other than that tough to say. probably any character that is completly and utterly selfish.

Kefka from Final Fantasy VI.

Scariest, meaniest, eviliest villian ever.

General Leon: "My emperor...why?"
Kefka rips off the costume: "Cause I hate you Leo! And said I would kill you!"

Vivi_Orunitia:

DannyboyO1:
I'm going to go with Albedo in Xenosaga.

I'm gonna have to second Albedo. The guy is freaking insane. Honestly the guy really freaks me out, constantly refering to the little girl secondary/main character as his little "Peche"(french for peach).

being crazy =/= evil.

In any open ended rpg i would be of course.

But if i had to pick it would be the

!!DEMON KING!! from Fire Emblem

A destoryer of worlds ... Mother of "Wild Arms" (PS1) her "Children" work to revive her after sometime spent on Falgaia so that they can make a new home on this planet an be the new ruling class. Although Mother after being reawoken has had different plans from the start of not ruling the world but destorying all life & the planet and devour her own children (like she did thier homeworld...) and move to a new planet an repeat.

(Overall) Destoryed home planet, ate her own off-spring to have them serve her on the next planet, betrays the plans of her children's plot to rule the world and says so to there face and they follow anyway (mostly), and when she is nearly killed she oozes into a new body like a parasite to rebuild her str. to then burst from his body to attempt devouring the world again.

Someone mentioned Silent Hill the town (good call), however I'd say Samael, the god of Silent Hill. Even in it's half-born form it uses the nightmares of a young girl to alter everyones' perception of reality and brings them into a nightmare state. It also amplifies peoples' own feelings of guilty, shame and rage and causes them to turn on each other. It's motive? It's just plain evil.

Dr. Steinman, Dr. Suchong, and Fontaine from Bioshock all get some serious props, they are all twisted and messed up. Fontaine gets my top though for the Bioshock trio... i hate getting used, and i started yelling and shouting angrilly at my monitor when he revealed himself.

Most evil enemy in my opinion...I would go with the Overmind from Starcraft, but i know better. His methods were evil, but his goals were so honorable. He wanted to lead his race to perfection. Zerg were naturally pure of essence, while the protoss were pure of form. Assimilate that and the zerg become pure. Kerrigan also goes very high on the most evil list at this point, her infested mind appears to be killing millions for little more than domination and sick thrills.

Dr. Breen gets some very high marks.... but his charisma makes me think twice about considering him MOST evil.

I think I'm going to have to go with Kerrigan. Her motivation for butchering millions was for nothing more noble than domination. Her spiritual and emotional torture of Zeratul, Raynor and Arcturas make her an amazing villian. Twisted, manipulative, sociopathic and evil to the core. The more I think about it, the more and more i believe she belongs in that place.

I have to give it to liquid Snake, you kick him of the metal gear you think he's dead but oh no he's just decided to get a jeep and chase you with a very shiny heavy machine gun because he loves you so much then he dies of fox die, i mean come on then the guy came back from the dead to take over an old man's body just for the sake of taking over the world, he didn't think oh cool i'm alive again, hey i now what i'm going to just relax take things easy don't want to die anytime soon no he came back and started causing trouble again and all he cares about is control and power the stereotypical traits of any villain and he's so good at it. Although you could say that's not being evil just a pain in the arse which i can't argue with got to give liquid credit for perservering though. He killed the original Gray Fox though, that's just mean!

Big fan of Sephy though he got to be up there or Revan from KOTOR, from the history before they wiped his mind he was one bad ass he owned everyone until he became the puppet for the jedi, Dance Puppet Man, Dance!

I have two I think definately qualify here.

One: Tycho. You just can't beat a psychotic AI bent solely on killing you and your AI ally. Plus, he can take over armadas of ships in a heartbeat. To make matters worse, you have to work for this freak a few times.

Two: The Leveler. Completely bent on destroying all life and enslaving what's left into a land ruled by him and his undead minions.

I have much respect for the Sephy, but you know, I have to go with Kefka on the "evil meter." Nobody's really and truly more selfishly evil than he is. Even Ganondorf has begun to take complex motives, what with Wind Waker and all. It's the villains WITHOUT the complex motives that're really scary. It's much worse than someone who's doing things for reasons that you UNDERSTAND, isn't it? You can't really reason with them. They just ARE evil and enjoy it.

That said...

The G-Man. Misunderstood servant of the people my eye. He's even WORSE than Kefka! He's as evil as they get! Though Luca Blight does sound like a good entry, too, but having never played Suikoden I can't relate.

Time to get esoteric: Lord Yuna from Breath of Fire 4. He's not the primary evil, but he's such a weaselly little bastard all throughout the game. Evil, to me, is less about grandiose plans and girlfriend-stabbing - it's about plain old mindless cruelty and self-interest. Lord Yuna did not quantitatively kill zillions of people - in fact, he didn't really directly kill a single one, given that he hid behind his pacifism to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. What he did was manipulate his homeland into a regressive puppet state in order to more easily do the crap he wanted to, send oodles of people to their deaths trying to keep his shadowy power intact, and that's not even mentioning the Carronade and the fact that it literally runs on torture. And that he purposely crafted an immortal being so that he could torture them continuously without all that bothersome dying getting in the way. And you never get to bloody well kill the guy - he stands free and alone at the end of things, barely scratched in influence or power, and you never do find out just what happens to him.

Honorable mention goes to Mannannan the Wizard from King's Quest 3, just because he used to scare the jesus fuck out of me when I was six.

Saladin
Civilization 4
Can never make this man happy, or from fighting.

Pyramid Head???

Another person registering to respond to this topic. I do prefer Kefka's evil villain shtick, mostly because Final Fantasy VI is the first JRPG I ever played, and got me to enjoy RPGs as a whole.

However, if I had to go for actual "most evil villain ever", I'm all for Giygas. Since a lot of people might not have played Earthbound/the Mother series, I'll spoiler tag all the important bits. A lot of the things in there are relevant to making my case, and as such, spoil huge parts of the game, so if you don't want all kinds of spoiled information, don't read inside the spoiler box. If you don't care about JRPGs at all, or don't really care about having the ending spoiled, then feel free to read it.

All my other mentions will be characters that have not been mentioned yet.
- Nyarlathotep (Persona 2: Eternal Punishment)
- Odio in his many forms (Live-A-Live, Japan Only unless you find the translation patch for the ROM, which is illegal, and you shouldn't do that)
- I'm fairly sure neither Lavos nor Queen Zeal (Chrono Trigger) were mentioned.
- Red, Green, and Blue Diety (I forget their real names) (Eternal Darkness)
- The King of All Cosmos (Katamari Damacy) isn't exactly evil, but he's sort of a huge prick.

Kefka is probably one of the most evil villains.

Of course, he was still a terrible character and villain. Being just evil, does not a good villain make.

People are going to crucify me for this (Specifically, Hideo Kojima fans), but I can't remember then name of that guy in MGS3 who has powers of Electricity. Yeah, he was pretty evil, and I also have to say Ganon for the same reason people say Bowser. He's persistant. Only with Ganon(dorf) he's fought a bunch of different generations of Links, and he continues to lose. This takes place over hundreds of years, if Nintendo is to be believed. You'd think he'd change his plans or something.

Mstrswrd:
People are going to crucify me for this (Specifically, Hideo Kojima fans), but I can't remember then name of that guy in MGS3 who has powers of Electricity.

Quite frankly, I can't remember either, but anyways, I'll just make a list:
Albert Wesker:What can I say,he's a total prick,killing everyone, then getting ressurrected somehow.
EDIT:The guy is Volgin
Al Mualim:Lovecraft would be proud, a total plot twist(er).
Mehrunes Dagon:If you played Oblivion, you will agree, but if not,he tries to kill all life in the contienient and/or the world.
The guy who killed Commander Keen:Kinda obvious!
Outside of videogames:
Galbatorix from Eragon:Spoilers!He makes Eragon's brother attack Eragon,honestly, then Murtaugh takes Eragon's Sword!Spoilers end.
Jack Thompson:If you play ANY rated-M games, this is really obvious!
Meh, thats it for now.

I have to agree with qbert4ever. Sephiroth is definitly the most evil badass ever.

I mean, when you slaughter and set a town on fire using only a 6 foot long sword and an evil glare, then youre evil!
When you raze a tower, slaughtering every scientist and elite soldier in sight, just to get the rotting corpse of your mother, and then drag her across the floor to the roof, then youre evil!!
When you call forth a meteor and have it ram ito the earth, so that you can use the lifeless lump of rock and a vessel to travel across the universe, THEN... youre just stupid. But still, Sephiroth is a pretty mean bastard.

Many villains have minions and henchmen to do the dirty work, but thats just a normal thing. People have started to take the henchmen for granded. For how do you get about 800 henchmen to help you destroy the world? Sephiroth makes up to this by using the main character, also known as the good guy, to get the job done. I mean, I find it much more respectfull to twist the mind of the hero, to make him do your bidding, without him knowing. For example, in a scene in the game, the good guy goes on a quest to gain a powerfull artifact called the Black Materia, so that Sephiroth cant use it to summon the meteor. But as soon as he gets his hands on it, Sephiroth shows up, do some voodoo thing and make him hand over the materia, like an obidiant puppy.

I'd really like to agree with Sephiroth, but I keep coming back to the question of what makes a villain "evil". Saren, from Mass Effect, probably wasn't abjectly "evil", and was sincerely trying to stave off disaster. While Kefka was legitimately just a mean SOB. I dunno how to decide that, but I think it's an interesting question. So, would the characters from MGS be "evil" since they did bad things, or not evil, because they had a purpose aside from malevolence?

If we're talking sheer malevolence, Kefka is up there, along with any of the villains from Fire Emblem, or Advanced Wars.

The big Crow and the Giant Ugly Space Slug from Earth Worm Jim...

Mr. Perfect from nes punch out.

pisses me off.

The Duck Hunt Dog...

I'd have to say the most merciless is ME!!!! HAHAHAAHH Considering how I brutally rape and destroy every game I own by beating it to death with a concrete dildo and unlocking all the features if applicable

Unicron from transformers. What villain do you know of ther than him, who can eat a planet whole?
Oh, and I suspect that if Agrajag from the Hithiker's Guide books had'nt created a time paradox, I suspect he would've made an inmpressive villain too.

Bob Page, Deus Ex. No shame for this man, he wanted to rule the world, and was not averse to creating a horrific nanomechanical plague virus as a tool to get the job done.

On a related note, I accidentally typed "BoB" when I started writing this. Anyone who plays EVE will get the joke.

AngryMan:

On a related note, I accidentally typed "BoB" when I started writing this. Anyone who plays EVE will get the joke.

Ironically, they could fit quite well in a thread about videogame villains. I mean, one man's leader is another man's tyrant, right?

PurpleRain:

Seldon2639:
I'd personally go with Saren from Mass Effect, since he (a) thought he was doing something good for the universe, and (b) killed a whole mess of people. He wasn't pure evil, but that made it more of a complicated question when it came to fighting against him.

Sorry to be an arse but, Saren's a good guy that got his mind washed by the Reaper. He's pretty much just a pawn in the works of things. The Reapers needed to get someone to open the mass relay because the protheans stopped the keepers from doing their jobs to open it. If you tell Saren this he turns all good, see's that he was a pawn and kills himself. Don't hate the pawn, hate the playa! Word up. Oh yeah, Spoiler. A bit late but whatevr, everyones played this game by now.

Anyway, evilist guy. I still hold a long fear of Sander Cohen. Myself being an arty movie buff sorta guy, this guy strikes personaly close to home. He wanted beautiful art, different from all else, but that guy is an insane psyochopath!!

EDIT

Fleeches!! Who doesn't hate and fear the little worms with two mouths and tongues! Poor old Abe had to run and sneak through these things. One mistake and bamn! You're worm food.

Saren wasn't a good guy who was brainwashed, nor was he a villain that was brainwashed. He was a GIGANTIC ASSHOLE who was brainwashed. Though he ended up killing himself in a pretty noble way.

tiredinnuendo:
My vote is going to have to go to Kefka. There was nary a non-evil bone in that clown prince's body. Plus, he wasn't some 'up in the clouds' kind of bad guy, he was in your face, nipping at your proverbial heels throughout most of your encounters with him, then he became quite god-like and decided destroying the world for his own personal amusement would be a good weekend adventure.

Plus, he's the only villain on record that ACTUALLY destroyed the world.

I've yet to finish FF6 but I've heard he was quite a piece a work.

Anyway...evilist villian. I dunno. Any villain that has no moral reasoning behind their actions would work I suppose.

Wesker, that guy from Alone in the Dark, Joker...Sephiroth pulled some pretty shitty stuff, but he had a reason for it.

Whats the bloody deal with choosing Kefka as being the most evil...he's not evil..(just misunderstood) XD,lol but seriously,all he does is laugh fiendishly and insults,then hightails it at the first sign of defeat. He was evil in the 1980s...probably >.<

As for me - Sephiroth, cuz hes a badarse manipulator and carries a really long sword <.<

Werewolflord:
Whats the bloody deal with choosing Kefka as being the most evil...he's not evil..(just misunderstood) XD,lol but seriously,all he does is laugh fiendishly and insults,then hightails it at the first sign of defeat. He was evil in the 1980s...probably >.<

As for me - Sephiroth, cuz hes a badarse manipulator and carries a really long sword <.<

Then he destroys the world as it is known. Then, he randomly destroys towns just for fun and leaves the entire population living in constant fear. Yeah, Kefka's not evil.