Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2175012-20170823181810/@comment-15895329-20170924211551

To re-iterate my choices, now with my addressing the "heinous standard" argument:

Frank Skimmerhorn: Genocidal towards Native Americans, willing to hurt Caucasians using his men disgused as Native Americans just to perpetuate continued conflict with Native Americans, shoots a man in the back who had come in surrender, and tries to punish one of his men for refusing to along with his genocidal actions and refusing to follow his orders.

Heinous Standard: Show me a villain from the same series who has done worse than him. I don't believe there is one. He fits a baseline standard by way of being genocidal and warmongering instead of merely trying to kill the heroes or a petty jerk, and there is no villain that setting who exceeds him in evil with his level of resources that I am aware of.

Grodd (Injustice 2): He tries to help Brainiac destroy Earth but then ALSO plans to betray Brainiac later down the line, because as he explains to Black Adam and Aquaman: his true loyalty is to himself, not Gorilla City, Brainic, or Earth. He also plans to forcefully extract the scarab from the teenage Jaime Reyes without regard for the cost.

Heinous Standard: Willing to let an entire planet die is more than heinous enough. In fact, a whole planet is more than one city, and Joker in Injustice attained Pure Evil status with his destruction of Metropolis. Grodd is planning to sell out and condemn the entire planet.

DCEU Luthor: Tries to frame Superman by murdering large numbers of innocents (including his own assistant Mercy) and making it seem like Superman is the perpetrator. He also kidnaps Martha Kent to blackmail Superman into fighting Batman to the death, and then creates Doomsday and unleashes him on the Earth just to be spiteful. All because he's a sadistic little twerp who enjoys bringing the powerful to their knees.

Heinous Standard: Luthor had dozens murdered, just as Ludendorff did. If one is considered Pure Evil, why not the other? And remember, that Luthor ALSO unleashed Doomsday on the Earth, and had he not been stopped, he would have eventually killed enough people to exceed Ludendorff's bodycount.

Mutant Leader: A psychopath who seems to just be into destruction and violence for destruction and violence's sake. Under his leadership the Mutant gang has indulged in everything from murdering nuns and children to rape and mutilation to just general chaos and anarchy.

Heinous Standard: Within the confines of his DCU, his gang was responsible for the deaths of children, something Joker in the same setting is never confirmed to be responsible for. Even if his bodycount is not exactly Joker's it ought to be close enough, plus the fact that his victims include children.

Ocean Master (Justice League: Throne of Atlantis): He tries to start a war between Atlantis and the surface world due to his hatred of the latter, and when his mother gets in the way, he kills her. Hardly remorseful over murdering the woman who gave birth to him, he instead mocks Aquaman (who he dismisses as a bastard child) about it. As to his wanting to avenge his father, Zander Rice's father was killed by Wolverine, and yet he is still regarded as a Complete Monster (even when he continually told X-23: "This is for my father")

Heinous Standard: Yeah...I think anyone who kills their own mother and also starts a genocidal war is pretty bad news, especially considering Deathstroke in that setting got Pure Evil status for doing way less.

Dottie Underwood: The sadistic and bloodthirsty Red Room Assassin and Peggy Carter's arch-enemy. Lacking any sympathetic reason for becoming a Red Room operative (and nothing to indicate she was even necessarily forced into it), Dottie took to her training with a fanatical zeal even as a child, snapping the neck of one her sparring partners even after said sparring partner had earlier showed her kindness. And Dottie snapped her neck anyway without any remorse. As an adult, she still enjoys killing, murdering several people over the course of Agent Carter's first season, including hitting a movie theater full of innocent people with a gas that makes said people violent and drives them to brutally kill each-other with their bare hands. As if that wasn't enough, she also actively helps Dr. Johann Fennhoff in his plan to inflict the same terrible weapon on ALL OF NEW YORK CITY. And unlike him, she has no sympathetic backstory, no dead brother to grieve, no nothing. Just a sadistic, faux affably evil sociopath who enjoys the violence. Even her obsession with Peggy Carter is more just a sadistic interest rather than genuine respect or concern for her, no different than Joker's obsession with Batman. Similarly, her helping Peggy Carter in Season 2 was motivated purely by self-interest. Peggy herself outright acknowledges that Dottie is "despicable".

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: Name me an MCU villain with a bodycount/attempted bodycount anywhere near Dottie's with her level of resources. It's impossible. And before anyone mentions Kilgrave, that is a bad comparison, because Dottie lacks his powers. She ALSO lacks Red Skull's powers, army, planes, or the Tesseract, so comparing her to him is also a bad idea.

<p style="font-size:14px;">The Ogre (Gotham): A<span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);"> serial killer of women that he seduces, snatches away, and turns into his household servants before inevitably killing them after he either gets bored or they do or say something that annoys him. He also galvanizes Barbara Keane into embracing her dark side and murdering her own parents. Oh, and he also keeps police from trying to catch him by threatening their families and loved ones if they don't desist.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: Murdered/tortured multiple innocents and got a woman to kill her own family and become evil. And threatens men's families. More than one. In just three episodes, and without an army of followers like Jerome or Dollmaker, OR the scientific resources of Hugo Strange. Sounds pretty heinous to me.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Prometheus (Arrow): M<span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">urders scores of policemen and innocent civilians (including a single mother begging for her life), tortures Oliver Queen over several days into admitting that he enjoys killing people (as well as making him think he killed Evelyn Sharp), murders his own wife when she becomes too much of an inconvenience to let live, and finally kidnaps Oliver's son and tries to make him choose between saving his son, and saving all of his other friends and family that are still on a now rigged to blow Lian Yu. When Oliver manages to save William without killing Prometheus, Prometheus decides to kill himself to kickstart the self-destruct, even though all of his so-called allies are still on the island. Yes, yes, Oliver murdered his father, but 1) Zander Rice lost his father to Wolverine and is still considered a CM, and 2) Prometheus' anger and moral posturing on Arrow is utter hypocrisy in view of everything described above. Oliver even outright calls him a hypocrite. So he is not exempt.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: For someone who didn't have his own group of assassins or mercs beyond Talia's followers, he murdered a LOT of people, and engaged in sadistic and awful behavior that, while not murder, is still cruel and unusual enough to be worth noting. Murder is not the only deplorable crime there is.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Andrew Diggle (Arrow): Chose to join Damien Dahrk (as all the Ghosts did), abandoned his own family, and actively helps Dahrk in his plan to kill off most of the world's population. And unlike Dahrk himself, Andrew Diggle loves no one, since he (again), abandoned his own family, got Laurel Lance killed and mocks his brother over it, tortures his own brother with sadistic relish, and threatens to murder his own sister-in-law and niece. He nas no redeeming qualities at all, and yes, he took the yellow pill that made him obedient but...that was his choice.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: If he had had his way, his brother would be dead, his niece would be dead, and most of humanity would be dead. And this is a bloody henchman we're talking about. He's plenty heinous enough.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Riddler (Telltale): I<span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">n just one episode manages to cement his status as the most evil and twisted villain in that Batman universe to date via putting people in sadistic "murder boxes" that alternate between decapitating people, slicing off their fingers, and superheating beneath their feet. He tortures Rumi Mori by slicing off some of his fingers before trying to decapitate him (after earlier threatening his family to get him to sell missiles to him in the first place), murders Lucius Fox by blowing him up with a missile and then sadistically rubs it in Batman's face twice, tortures and murders a member of the Agency, and tries to murder every Agency member in Gotham City via the missiles he got from Mori while also forcing a trapped Batman to choose between letting Agency Agent Avesta be tortured to death by multiple ultrasonics blasts or letting her teammates be decapitated one by one. Depending on how Batman chooses, she'll either go deaf or at least one of her teammates will be killed. And again, all of this is just in ONE episode. Not to mention he's currently worse than even that game's takes on Joker and Zsasz!

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: Riddler in one episode was more despiecable than all of the Season 1 villains over the course of multiple episodes. The only one who threatened as many or more was Lady Arkham, and she has a tragic backstory that Riddler lacks.

<p style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">Simon Stagg (Arkhamverse):  <span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">While Simon Stagg is always a bad guy, he also usually has the one positive trait of caring about his daughter (in a twisted sort of way). The Arkham version on the other hand, despite outwardly appearing a nice guy, is in fact in cahoots with Scarecrow and alongside him performed unethical experiments on innocent people that drove them to madness and death, with Simon also sadistically taunting at least one of these people prior to their death. He dislikes Scarecrow, but because he views him as impractical rather than because he has moral standards. He also helps Batman stop Scarecrow's plot...but only because Batman scares him into doing so, not because he actually cares about anyone but himself. And, unlike his mainstream version, he doesn't even have a daughter to love or care about.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: For a minor villain who only shows up briefly, he stands out as more abhorrent to me than many recurring villains (such as Two-Face, Freeze, Ra's al Ghul, Talia al Ghul, Catwoman, Bane and others). Not as bad as Joker and Scarecrow, but again, his role was more minor then them, so he had less time to do evil.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Hitler (Marvel): <span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">Besides doing/attempting all of the atrocities his real life counterpart did/attempted, there's also his being even more into the occult and also knowing full well that he's evil and not caring. In fact, he acknowledged that his evil was unmatched and deliberately took in a young Johann Schmidt because he saw in him someone who he could mold into a monster like him (never mind that Schmidt was already one). The argument of "offscreen villainy" is nonsense, because multiple flashbacks to the WWII era of Marvel gives plenty of proof of the Holocaust happening, and the horrors of World War II. Of all the many versions of Hitler in fiction, the Marvel version is one of the few that actually shows, explicitly, the evil of the man, plus giving him extra evil AND him being a Card Carrying Villain.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: Hitler is heinous enough. I really hope no further elucidcation on this is required.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Ultimate Black Widow: M<span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">urders Hawkeye's family, frames Captain America for it, helps an army of supervillains invade America, and murders Jarvis and mocks Tony's loss. She has no remorse for anything she does, and is just a sadistic, America-hating terrorist who's misguided attempt of revenge against the USA is no more sympathetic than MCU Ronan's campaign of "vengeance" against Xandar.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: Please give me an Ultimate Marvel villain with her level of resources who was worse. Red Skull was vile, but...so is BW. He threw a baby out a window? She murdered a guy's family (including two children). He goes crazy with the Cosmic Cube? She helped terrorists invade the USA to bring it low. He killed Kennedy? She killed Jarvis. Albeit, the latter is not POTUS, but he was a good and innocent man, no less than JFK was. I fail to see much difference between them really.

<p style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">Cassandra Nova:  <span style="color:rgb(105,110,114);">Committed mutant genocide when she destroyed Genosha and in the process got a bodycount numbering in the millions.

<p style="font-size:14px;">"But TV Tropes doesn't have him!!!!": TV Tropes is not God.

<p style="font-size:14px;">Heinous Standard: Millions dead=heinous enough. Simple as that.