Villains who have been the victims of brainwashing and/or possession. Possession means that the host's body was taken over by a demon or other form of evil spirit, and brainwashing means that the host was hypnotized, mind controlled, bitten by a rabid animal, etc. Possessed/Brainwashed characters only count as villains if they spend more time under the influence in the story than they do with their normal personalities and thus are better recognizable in their possessed/brainwashed states (Cynder and Koragg, for example), or if they are villains to begin with and are simply brought down into further depravity by the influence of other evildoers (examples of this particular case being Diabolico and Dhoulmagus). Sometimes, a villain being brainwashed by another villain will end up as a slave to said villain (an example being Shouko Aihara); and other times, if the villain ends up brainwashed, the villain may end up turning to the good side (Carl Hauser and Darth Revan are examples).

It's important to note that none of these characters are Pure Evil. No matter how cruel, sadistic or unnecessary their actions were, it's never completely their fault since they were being controlled by someone else.

Even if, in a very rare case, Pure Evil villains had been possessed/brainwashed by someone else (e.g. Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin was brainwashed by Tretji Rebenok and became Man on Fire; Makuta Teridax was taken over by the Mask of Ultimate Power and thus became a mindless puppet; Brajira of the Messiah had his memories erased by Robogog of the 10-sai and became Buredo-RUN of the Cyborg), it should go under Pawns instead of this category. Additionally, in rarer cases, a villain who's meant to LOOK pure evil in a flashback or the legacies of their evil actions can have their pure evil status retconned via snapping out of a possessed/brainwashed state and deciding they like their new life better.

IMPORTANT: do not create pages based on this category, as long-time heroes who are only briefly controlled by villains (Such as Sonic the Hedgehog who only temporarily turned into Dark Sonic due to fake Chaos Emeralds or Red who only temporarily infected by the Chef Pig's potion in the Angry Birds Toons episode Pig Plot Potion) do not count.