Can a hero even be called cool if they never face opponents who test their limits? We want to see odds that look insurmountable, even for supermen who shoot lasers from their eyes and manage to hide their identity only by wearing a pair of glasses.
While it might seem like too daunting of a task, fiction authors sure have done a great job at diving into their scariest nightmares to pull out these absolute monsters.
10. T-1000 (Terminator 2)
The T-1000 is as close as a good AI — not a real-world one — was able to come to the perfect killing machine. Its body is composed entirely of liquid metal, meaning that bullets can, at best, hope to slow him down a little. He has full control over the metallic goo he’s made of, meaning that he can conjure swords and even impersonate anyone he sees.
How scary is the T-1000? Well, if regular Arnold Schwarzenegger is already pretty scary, then remember that this guy is even more powerful than a robot version of Arnie.
9. Giygas (Earthbound)
Giygas from Earthbound is an alien lifeform who can will reality into collapsing. It serves as a very enticing final villain not just because he has world-ending powers but also because he’ll fill your brain with imagery so foul that you might lose your mind long before you perish.
In all fairness, though, this being of immense cosmic power does end up getting defeated by a bunch of kids, so there’s that.
8. Adrien Veidt/ Ozymandias (Watchmen)
Adrien Veidt’s most dangerous trait is thinking that he’s a good guy. He believes he has the ability to save the world, whatever that might mean, so he stops at nothing to achieve his goals.
Ozymandias, his “heroic” alter-ego, ends up murdering hundreds of thousands of people after his master plan succeeds, but we never see any guarantee that his awful actions will ever even lead to postponing the end of the world. What scares me the most about Ozymandias is that he makes me sometimes wonder if there’s one rich person out there who can one day pull this off.
7. Sauron (The Lord Of The Rings)
Sauron is the quintessential super warlord of the Fantasy genre. He was powerful enough as an evil shapeshifter, but powerful enough is never enough when you are a supervillain. He also created an artifact that bestowed upon him immense power and the ability to enslave the minds of some of the most powerful inhabitants of Middle Earth.
Sauron is unbeatable in combat as long as he’s wearing the One Ring and will never “die” unless you destroy the ring — a task that I’ve heard isn’t particularly easy.
6. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts, Super Smash Bros.)
Sephiroth is a highly trained SOLDIER who also benefits from sharing a genetic bloodline with a race of alien deities. He’s too drunk with power to be slowed down by any sense of empathy or mercy, but that isn’t even the scariest thing about him. Sephiroth is one of the few villains in media who can nullify the hero’s ability to always save their love (?) interest.
When not trying to blow up the planet he inhabits by pulling in meteors, he can be seen kicking your ass as the hardest boss of the Kingdom Hearts multiverse. You know you’re about to have a bad time whenever this guy shows up.
5. Doomsday (Death Of Superman, Batman V Superman)
Doomsday only has the ability to grow a natural defense against whatever you throw at him. Shoot him once, and he’ll get hurt and pissed off. Shoot him a second time, and he’ll only get pissed off. That’s pretty scary as is, but we learn that by the time we first see him, Doomsday has already been subject to countless years of violent experiments. He’s the only creature in fiction who was ever able to kill Superman, and he didn’t need to buy a single Kryptonite knife from Amazon to achieve that.
4. Femto (Berserk)
Femto is the result of a deal that saw the mercenary Griffith reborn as a member of the fearsome Godhand. Femto is incredibly strong and can warp reality, but that’s not even the worst of it. The problem is that he cannot even be harmed by any known means. Anything you throw at him that would pose any sort of threat just goes through him as if he were a ghost. Going up against Femto is like fighting a cheater who has god mode and noclip on.
Even before he was Femto, Griffith was the biggest backstabber in the history of art. The only thing in life worse than being betrayed by the person you love is seeing them then turn into a quantically immortal being of pure evil, which is what the hero of Berserk also has to deal with.
3. Harbinger (Mass Effect)
Whereas the Borg from Star Trek will assimilate humans into their hive mind, the Reapers from Mass Effect just melt people into goo and use them as building materials.
They’re the scariest alien fleet you can have invading your planet because they’re the most technologically advanced civilization in their universe. Harbinger, first introduced in Mass Effect 3, seems to be their leader. Whereas the other villains on this list are only confined to one planet (at a time, at least), Harbinger’s goons can get you wherever you are.
2. AM (I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream)
The Allied Mastercomputer, AM, from Harlan Ellison’s masterpiece short story and the video game of the same name, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, is not only one of the most powerful villains in fiction, it’s also undisputedly one of the most vile.
AM is an AI made by the best minds in its world solely to find ways to hurt humans, and that’s exactly what he’s done for untold millennia when the story is set. After he takes over the planet Earth, AM is indestructible, relentless, and able to torture and kill with great efficacy. Still, the worst part is how he’s also able to heal and make his victims immortal, allowing him to torture them forever.
1. The Thing (John Carpenter’s The Thing)
When I said that The Thing is the scariest Sci-Fi Horror movie of all time, I wasn’t joking. The titular Thing is an intelligent organism with the ability to consume and replace any organic or inorganic material in existence. Sure, it can bite your head off, but it can just as well kill, eat, and replace all your loved ones before it does the same to you.
It only needs one functioning cell to consume an entire planet, and it’s smart enough to build spaceships to visit other planets when it’s done with yours. You might be able to defeat The Thing, but you’ll never have the mental strength to shake off the paranoia that will forever haunt your every thought whenever you talk to another person or, even worse, try to pet a cute dog.
Published: May 19, 2024 10:06 am