A Supervillain is a villain who displays special powers, skills, or equipment powerful enough to be a typically serious challenge to a superhero. The term has largely been coined by comic books, where superheroes fight similar to super-powered villains.

Supervillains exist not only in comic books from Marvel and DC Comics and are expanded to other media (in fact the honor of the world's first supervillain has often gone to Professor Moriarty of Sherlock Holmes, who predates modern comic books by many years):

• Good examples of supervillains in comic books are Doctor Doom, Red Skull, Venom, the Joker, Lex Luthor, Darkseid and the Shredder.
• Good examples of supervillains in movies are Elijah Price, Kevin Wendell Crumb, Richmond Valentine and Poppy Adams.
• Good examples of supervillains in anime and manga are Frieza, Isaac Ray Peram Westcott, Cell, Kurumi Tokisaki and Esdeath.
• Good examples of supervillains in cartoons are Black Hat, Lawrence Limburger, Dark Danny, Mojo Jojo, the Dark Lord, Syndrome, Yokai, Aku, Makuta Teridax and Dr. Drakken.
• Good examples of supervillains in video games are Bowser, Dr. Eggman, Dr. Wily, Ganondorf, Shao Kahn, King K. Rool, Yuuki Terumi, Herrscher of the Void, Heihachi Mishima and Dimentio.

IMPORTANT: Note that supervillains only appear within productions with superheroes; however, superhero genre is vast and has many different takes. In general, it can be considered that any super-powered protagonist who fights at least one other super-powered antagonist can be defined as a "superhero" (and likewise, the antagonist will be recognized as a supervillain). They do not have to dress up in fancy costumes or follow the usual trend of Western comic books to qualify; they need only display powers and ambitions beyond those of the normal population in their setting.