Mentally Ill

Mentally Ill or Deranged villains, are villains who are dangerously ill and have any type of psychological disorder and can be deemed as mentally unstable or villains suffering from mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or bipolar disorder, among others.

These characters can be tragic, since the trait of being mentally unstable is not being fully aware of their actions or not being in full control of their emotions, thoughts, desires, fantasies and might go as far as to hurt others including themselves. Examples of which include many "Yanderes", such as Kotonoha Katsura, Bae Su-mi, and Anniyan. In addition, many people (both in fiction and real-life) suffer heavily from mental illness and can struggle on a daily basis, so villains who have difficulties with their mental health can often be seen as sympathetic, if not, redeemable. However, there are also many mentally-ill villains that are merely insane, only living to cause whatever brand of chaos their mind craves. Regardless, it is often that these villains are prone to live in fear and tend to distrust others because of delusions of persecution, harm and doom.

Notes[]

• To qualify as mentally ill, a character must have some horrible behavior, some beliefs, and commit some actions which do not stem from their cultural beliefs unless it severely hinders the character's activities. In other words, the villainy is either non-cultural or self-sabotaging.
• Characters who have simple phobias (e.g. Hopper and Sylvester J. Pussycat Sr.) do not count, as nearly everybody has at least one phobia. They should go under Paranoid instead of this category.
• Not all villains are mentally unstable when they first appear. While some are, others who were sane to begin with suffer experiences that cause their sanity to snap, like Gil Yepes and Andrew Detmer. The primary causes for this are prolonged abuse and humiliation. A severe-enough degree of fear can do it too, but less commonly.
• Psychopaths/sociopaths usually never fall under this category as they usually are fully aware of reality and are not crazy, whereas mentally ill villains are not completely aware of reality and have limited views on it.
  • Please do not add psychotic villains or dissociative villains under this category as those categories are subtypes of mentally ill villains and adding all three categories on the same villain at once would be redundant.
  • The most evil ones may have psychopathic/sociopathic traits and tendencies; however, if they display the necessary requirements of a psychopath/sociopath while they simultaneously suffer from mental illnesses, then they should be added here instead (e.g. Judge Claude Frollo, Bellatrix Lestrange, High Evolutionary, Red Skull, Prometheus, Mysterio, Dabi, Kai Chisaki, Park Yeonjin, Jimmy, Scorpio, Homelander, Yoshikage Kira, Erzsebet Báthory, Jack, Rat King, Gary Smith, and Bullseye).
• Non-humanoid entities like robots, animals and demons usually don't count (e.g. Valak and Skynet), regardless of how evil they can be. To them, "mental health" isn't an important concept, it just means they can do their programmed/biological/spiritual function. If they cannot do that function, they just go under other categories. The only time they can count for Mentally Ill is if they clearly display human-like intelligence (e.g Skitzo, Ultron and his MCU counterpart, Bill Cipher, Megatron (Transformers One), Flesh-Eater, Koba, Plankton, Roxanne Wolf, and Zomom).
• Villains who only feigned mental illnesses and don't actually have any do not qualify, that is trickery instead.
• Lastly, some mentally ill villains can be Pure Evil if they lack redeeming qualities and have enough moral agency to distinguish right from wrong despite their warped views of reality (e.g. Zoom (Arrowverse), Frank Horrigan, Abomination (2010 Marvel Animated Universe), Judge Claude Frollo, and Bill Cipher).

See Also[]

• Mental Illness on the Heroes Wiki.