Everybody loves a villain. Whether they are good people who tragically fall from grace like Darth Vader or just outright monsters who want to see the world in ashes like the Joker, we can’t help but obsess over their every move.
This past year brought a lot of great villains to the forefront, including some very unexpected faces that Fandom readers shot into the stratosphere, landing in our ten most searched characters of the year on our Villains wiki.
Read on to see who got in on the fun… Or mayhem. Or both!
Prior to 2023, the Spot was a C-list Spider-Man villain at best, with a handful of appearances spread across nearly four decades. But now? Thanks to his pivotal role in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as Miles Morales’ self-proclaimed arch nemesis, The Spot is gaining all-new fans. So many, in fact, that he managed to teleport his way onto this list!
Voiced by Jason Schwartzman in Across the Spider-Verse, this rendition of the Spot is retconned into being the scientist Miles hit with a bagel during his daring escape from Alchemax in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a clever twist on the character’s origin that gives him a humorous but meaningful connection to Miles, leading to him being the instigator of Miles’ next great adventure.
For those privileged enough to live free of the burden of knowledge about the secret world behind our world, learning of the SCP Foundation is likely going to blow your mind. This is some real Neo taking the Red Pill type stuff. The SCP Foundation is, in fact, a community-driven narrative made primarily of Wikis that detail the history of unexplained paranormal phenomena, from memory-erasing memes to an IKEA store that houses a pocket dimension.
And the Scarlet King is one of its biggest mysteries, so it’s no doubt that SCP die-hards are doing some digging to further their knowledge of this malevolent monster. Tales in the SCP universe detail him as a massive, evil god, so twisted and gnarled that he holds the chains of the people he’s enslaved tightly in his fists. There’s a whole wormhole to venture down if you’re interested, so be sure to block off some time in your calendar for this one.
There are few things more satisfying than a complicated villain, and Kokushibo from the manga and anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba certainly fits that mold. Kokushibo is a loyal and honorable demon, as far as that goes, despite his intense penchant for cruelty. Formerly known as a human named Michikatsu Tsugikuni, a deep-seeded but complicated disdain for his sibling led him from being a Demon Slayer to a demon in order to more aggressively act on the jealousy he feels for his brother.
Though he’s depicted as twisted and sinister, a compelling villain is often drenched in tragedy—and a powerful performance by voice actor Ryōtarō Okiayu ensures Kokushibo has that in spades.
Though not as tenured as The Spot, Red Death is another obscure supervillain with origins in comic books that made the jump to another medium in 2023, no doubt leading to placement on this list as readers dug for additional info. In the comics, Red Death debuted during the Dark Nights: Metal storyline as an evil version of Batman from another universe who was fused together with The Flash, giving him access to the Speed Force.
A live-action Red Death made their debut in the Arrowverse during the final season of The Flash, not as a variant of Bruce Wayne but instead Ryan Wilder—the Arrowverse’s second Batwoman, played by Javicia Leslie.
Things don’t get much creepier than a children’s television program gone sadistic, and that’s exactly the vibe the indie darling horror game Amanda the Adventurer gives. In a clever (and legally clear) play on Dora the Explorer, Amanda the Adventurer tells the story of a little girl named Riley discovering an old VHS tape of a children’s show only to quickly learn that things aren’t as innocent as they might seem.
Through Riley, we realize that the show’s protagonist is anything but the harmless and chipper little girl that the show seems to present. To make her even more diabolical, Amanda will even sometimes prevent the player from making the choices they want and even murder viewers of her show. It’s legitimately horrifying.
No, it’s not the famed Russian novelist of the same name, but a villain of the popular anime and manga Bungo Stray Dogs. For those unfamiliar, the series prominently features characters inspired by real-life writers—Herman Mellville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.P. Lovecraft, and Mark Twain are among the featured players, to name a few—as two sides of a battle for a supernatural book that has the power to alter reality.
Bungo Stray Dogs’ version of Fyodor Dostoyevsky leads an organization called Rats in the House of the Dead with the express purpose of obtaining the book in order to rid the world of people with special abilities. His own ability is fittingly called Crime and Punishment, which essentially lets him kill someone with a mere touch.
Though it was actually released at the tail end of 2022, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish wound up having nine lives at the box office at the start of the new year, bringing in movie-goers long after it was available for home viewing. In this unexpected surprise hit, the titular hero is on the last of his nine lives and searching for a way to restore them. As a result, he comes into conflict with the sadistic Big Jack Horner, voiced by a hysterically offbeat John Mulaney.
In true Shrek-universe fashion, Big Jack Horner is a play on children’s stories, with Jack’s motivation stemming from his jealousy that he was slighted in favor of magical beings, relegated to a mere nursery rhyme instead of an immortal fairy tale. On a mission to hoard every magical item, trinket, or creature he can find, anyone and everyone is just an obstacle in his way to unfettered power.
It seems a common theme of popular villains this year were terrifying renditions of seemingly-innocent children’s characters. In the indie horror game Garten of Banban, the Monsters are sweet-looking mascots who turn sinister and threaten to eat your pancreas if you don’t share (for real).
There are a variety of different monsters, all of them with pleasing child-like shapes that wouldn’t be out of place in any daycare or kindergarten class. Except these ones will, you know, kill you.
Kokushibo wasn’t the only appearance of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba on this year’s villains list, because it seems readers were even more interested in the clan to which he belongs, the Twelve Kizuki.
This organization makes up the primary antagonists of the anime, all of them under the command of the manga’s mega big bad, the terrifying Demon King Muzan Kibutsuji. The Twelve Kizuki is divided in two sects, the Upper Ranks and Lower Ranks, sorted as such by their level of power. The aforementioned Kokushibo is the most powerful of the entire group, but Muzan has been known to replace certain members who manage to fail his expectations.
It seems Big Jack Horner is not the only Puss in Boots villains readers fell in love with this year. To be fair, Death itself is tough to beat as far as antagonists go. In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Death is represented by a (big bad) wolf hellbent on killing Puss for good in retribution for what Death considers Puss’ squandering of his other eight lives. Death feels disrespected, basically, and is going to make sure Puss knows it.
As far as depictions of Death go, putting him in the form of a relentless hunter like a wolf is fitting, and provides an effective bit of terror to this kid-friendly adventure. And what better villain for a character like Puss in Boots to conquer than Death itself?
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