What is the work?[]
Oliver & Company, a 1988 animated musical film released as the 27th entry in the Disney Animated Canon. An updated version of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, except furries, we follow the orange kitten Oliver who meets a gang of misfit animals led by Dodger. They are owned by the not-a-villain-this-time Fagin who is in deep trouble. He has to pay back his debt posthaste. If not... well...
Who is he? What has he done?[]
Bill Sykes is the main antagonist of the film. A surprisingly dark villain for Disney where they do not try sugarcoating the fact he is a ruthless loan shark, Sykes runs "Sykes' Shipments" as a cover for his criminal background. Taking advantage of the downtrodden, a homeless man named Fagin, owes money to Sykes for unknown reasons, with Sykes making it crystal clear what would happen to Fagin if he failed to pay him back. It is also shown as being a regular practice for Sykes to order deaths; this is demonstrated with Sykes communicating with an underling who was in the process of killing someone. He instructs the underling explaining to prolong the person's suffering before killing them with cement shoes.
When Fagin learns about Oliver, he comes up with a plan to hold the feline "hostage" so that the Foxworths would pay handsomely for the cat's return. Sykes appears impressed with the idea and grants Fagin an additional twelve hours... but when the plan is about to be enacted, Sykes instead kidnaps Jenny Foxworth, Oliver's owner. Fagin is obviously horrified by it to which Sykes swears him into silence.
Sykes ties Jenny up to a chair and threatens to feed her to his two Dobermans Roscoe and DeSoto if he felt inclined to. He talks to the family's butler, but the parents were away on a business trip at that time. Oliver and the gang arrive to distract Sykes leading to a wild chase in an underground subway. The villainous loan shark continues his pursuit becoming increasingly enraged and failing to think reasonably. Roscoe and DeSoto fight the animal gang but they end up electrocuted on the railroad tracks.
Jenny falls on Sykes' windshield leading to Oliver biting his hand when he tries to make a grab for the girl. A subway train comes barreling down, but Fagin and the others are able to get off the tracks at the last minute. Sykes, however, catches the early train.
Freudian Excuse? Mitigating factors?[]
None. Sykes is a hauntingly dark antagonist in an animated family-friendly musical. While he does tell Fagin that he was off the hook when he kidnaps Jenny, that was not redeeming and/or honoring the deal as his article paints: he threatens him into silence when he tried to object. So, yeah. Nothing redeeming. He treats his dogs fine, but that does not mean he cares for them. He finds them useful.
Heinous standard[]
So this was where there was some serious disconnect when it came to what is called "genre baseline." Sykes was initially rejected because he was considered insufficiently heinous... by the standards of Frollo, Scar, Shan Yu, etc. But here's the thing: animated films shouldn't have an outrageously high standard in terms of things like horror films where you can make the argument that dark subject matter like murder and other crimes are supposed to be "shocking" (even though I think that for a one-off work they should not be compared to a huge franchise like Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween, but I digress). That, and the Disney animated films are not set in the same universe (though why they call their films the Disney Animated Canon is beyond me) so it'd be unfair comparing Sykes to the likes of Frollo and his attempted genocide on the Romani people.
Now, if we take Oliver as its own thing with its own heinous standard, Sykes meets it. He threatens downtrodden people he loans money to with torture and death; instructs an underling on how to hold off on killing someone with it being evident that it was not his first rodeo; he kidnaps a young child and makes it apparent that he'd feed her to his dogs. I think there is enough of a pattern to make him go over the baseline nicely.