Ozymandias (Watchmen)

"I'm not a comic book villain. Do you seriously believe I would explain my master stroke to you if there remained the slightest possibility you would effect its outcome? I triggered it 35 minutes ago."

- Ozymandias, revealing his master plan.

Ozymandias (real name: Adrian Veidt), also known as the World's Smartest Man, is the villain of the graphic novel series Watchmen by Alan Moore. Described as the most knowledgeable man in the world, he is a former superhero who now runs a multi-billion dollar corporation that produces several products and technologies, including a children's franchise based on his superhero persona. He seems to be the most good and pure out of all the seriously flawed and corrupt heroes in the story.

At one point he is almost killed by an assassin in his office building, who dies before he can get any information out of him. This seemingly rules out Ozymandias as a suspect in the murder of The Comedian and confirms Rorschach's theory of a plot to kill off all the superheroes.

Towards the end of the story however it is revealed that Veidt is not only the one who killed the Comedian but is behind a massive conspiracy plot apparently with the intention of starting a nuclear war. Rorschach and Nite Owl rush to his secret lab in Antarctica to stop him, and during the confrontation he reveals that he killed the Comedian because he accidentally discovered his plans, anonymously arranged an assassination attempt on himself just to clear him of suspicion, murdered the retired supervillain Moloch and framed Rorschach for it, and secretly hired several friends of Doctor Manhattan and intentionally gave them radiation cancer, which caused Doctor Manhattan to be accused of causing cancer and exiling himself to Mars. All this was done to cover up his grand scheme of destroying New York City with a giant alien monster he created using genetic manipulation, the stolen brain of a dead psychic, and numerous artists he hired telling them the alien was for a movie he was making, and whom he killed afterwards by sending them on a cruise ship that exploded.

Eventually, he tells them that the only reason he is revealing all this is because they're already too late to stop him, as he triggered the event 35 minutes ago. Cut to a scene of Veidt's monster appearing in the middle of Times Square and exploding, killing everyone in the vicinity. Believing Ozymandias is bluffing, the heroes continue trying to fight him, and eventually Silk Spectre and Doctor Manhattan show up as well. Ozymandias manages to destroy Doctor Manhattan by subtracting his intrinsic field with a machine, only for him to reappear soon after.

At this point Veidt turns on a wall of TV screens, revealing to the others his true purpose for doing all these horrific things: in the aftermath of the tragedy he caused, the United States and Russia, who were previously on the brink of Nuclear War, have agreed to put aside their differences to defeat the alien menace. Thus, he created world peace through mass murder and global deception. Realizing that revealing the truth to the world at this point would only make things worse, the others agree to keep quiet about it, except for Rorschach, who absolutely refuses to compromise and as a result is killed by Doctor Manhattan. Ozymandias is last seen talking with Doctor Manhattan about whether he did the right thing, only for Manhattan to disappear after giving a very vague answer.

At the very end of the comic, a boy working for a New York Newspaper is seen picking up Rorschach's journal, which says that Adrian Veidt was the culprit, from the letter bin, meaning that his plot might still be revealed to the world and undone.