Bad guy motivations

[Brad Calkins]

I know it's not a video game or a movie, but by far the best villian I can think of, in series I've seen was Amon from the legend of Korra, because his motivation and goal were both beleivable and could actually have made the otherwise bland storyline interesting. Though it was all wasted, he's still one of the best villians I've ever seen.

Incidently, was I the only one who knew from the start that they were going to seriously screw up the ending.

 

[Greni]

GTA SA: Frank Tenpenny is a good bad guy. Too bad he often gets overlooked so much.

Look inside your heart, you know it to be true.

 

[Saregon]

Snip

0_0...not even one?...Okay, how about a very special BBEG:


Me, I like a villain with a sense of domestic pragmatism:

Being Norwegian, I don't know much about those two shows, as they were never really a thing here. Although Flash Gordon was awesome in Ted.

...
Illidan

--Snip--
1. Old Gods made them emo and evil
2. They're just evil, LOL
3. Fel energy made them drugaddicts evil.

No, seriously, name one greater villain in WoW that doesn't have any of these motivations for being evil.

Well, there are a bunch of people in the Warcraft lore that have revenge as a motive for evil, i.e. the Defias Brotherhood, having been denied their rightful rewards after rebuilding Stormwind. And then there's the whole "I'm not the bad guy, I'm trying to fix stuff and you guys are bad guys for trying to stop me, i.e. The Scarlet Crusade, they're trying to stop the Scourge, and no one, not the Horde (especially with the Forsaken), and not the Alliance, are going to stop them from doing so.


I also like the gentleman bad guys, the ones who still value etiquette and manners, no matter what is going on around them and what they're doing, such as Alistair Tenpenny in Fallout 3. I kinda like that old guy, despite his tendencies towards blowing shit up with nukes. Any other examples of those?

Also, are there any games/movies where the bad guy should win, and actually does? As in, he has the vastly superior force/strategy, and the good guys don't find some dumbass MacGuffin to win the day, as in, it's realistic?

And are you guys as sick as me of the whole "I've won, so might as well put the hero in an elaborate deathmachine and tell him my entire plan" thing? Bullet between the eyes, bad guy wins, the end, why is that so hard?

 

[Sean Hollyman]

I think most of them just wake up one day and just think 'Hmm, today I feel like being evil.'