Most Tragic Villain

[Ponce Master-General]

Andrew Ryan. Everyday.

So much for wanting your own peaceful, capitalistic utopia.... Under the ocean

Uh... no, actually. He only created Rapture for his own ends, and his ideals were not capitalist, he was into objectivism. From what I gather, that basically means your only goal in life is to serve yourself and no-one else. He was a douchebag who cared about nothing but his own interests, and he got what was coming to him when that all collapsed around him.

Someone who follows objectivism would never create a society for like-minded objectivists (not sure if that's a real word) to live in, because doing something for other people is exactly what that philosophy opposes.

Thats kinda why I struck it out.

He was trying to create a world free of the oppressions of goverment and religion. And even tho he failed at that and became the villain a villain he was still, in my mind one of the most tragic villains I could think of. Because hey, who doesn't want to live free of the restrictive straps of the "enlightened" man?

Yeah, he probably got what was coming to him when his world collapsed around him. But isn't that the tragedy?

I think the tragic part of his arc is that he gets ended by way of a lobotomy with a golf club. By his fucking son.

 

[TheLoneBeet]

Quite possibly Victor Delacroix from Chaos Legion.

He relentlessly pursued his best friend for killing his fiancee, so blinded by rage he couldn't recall the true events that took place. Only in his dying moments, about to release the world's greatest evil did he see that, while possessed by the very evil he was about to release, he attacked his best friend, and his fiancee saved his life by jumping in front of the blade.

Realizing this, he tosses himself from the platform, committing suicide, having just unleashed an unstoppable evil.

Edit: I forgot to mention, the reason he's releasing this being is because he believes it can resurrect his fiancee.

Ninja'd.. I definitely second this. I remember feeling so bad for him at the end of the game.

 

[Blemontea]

Emporer Griffin Is what i would call something of a tragic villain though something is compelling me to say hes not fully, but hey I would have to get pretty creative to not repeat someone else answer. ANYWAY exposition!

Spoiler: If you somehow have NOT PLAYED THIS AMAZING GAME

Emperor Griffin originally named Sirus was a young Moon Person, who was living on earth. He had a fondness for all things flowers, and that's when he found Moon Flower Palace he wanders aorund then gets captured by one of the guards. He yells for help as the guard is dragging him away when the queen arrives halting the guard. Sirus is frozen in place as he gazes up at the beautiful queen Alexandria. the guard is ordered to leave and Sirus and Alexandria have a heart to heart. In which Sirus is given a new job as the Palace Gardener.

Years go by in which a war en sews and Moon Flower Palace is attacked by an Army. Alexandria orders Sirus to flee. He is hesitant but does so at the last minute as the army breaks into the palace. Sirus returns the next day. He gazes upon the ruined garden he once tended. He also find the corpse of Alexandria in the castle. His body fills with anger, he curses all humans for destroying everything they see and taking all he loved away from him. It is then that the Yellow
Atlamillia is bestowed upon him.

With the Atlimillila he creates the Dark Element which posses him and gives him the power to destroy the human race.

 

[micky]

I think Saint Astraea from Demons Souls.she accepted the Soul of a Demon in order to ease the abandoned. I just felt kind-of bad when i got through that stage. if you read the backstory of that place its really creepy and sad.

 

[Urdnot Perplex]

Lisa Trevor from Resident Evil. I can't say if she's a villain, but if someone is following you throughout the game trying to clobber you to death I think that qualifies.

SPOILERS!
Lisa is the victim of the Umbrella Corporation. She was used as a test subject to determine the effects of various viruses and what-not. The effects were not pleasant. But she survived and proved to be a good test subject. However, she grew increasingly violent and became more of a burden than an asset. They tried to get rid of her but failed. What's left of Lisa is a monstrous form of a girl. She's quite bonkers at this point. Driven insane by misery and pain and the deep longing for her long lost mother. When she finally does locate her mother's remains, she leaps to her death to join her somewhere beyond. However, due to the experiments Lisa is invulnerable to practically all physical damage. Not until the mansion where she lurks (and where the majority of the game takes place) blows up does she finally die. But still, what a tragic existence.

 

[thenuminator]

Definitly Necron from Final Fantasy 9

But On a more serious note i agree with snape from the last harry potter

 

[katsumoto03]

Snape, not truly a villain, but definaitly fits.

Always.

I also thought this applied to Draco as well. I mean, if you just watch the scene where he's about to kill Dumbledore, you can just fucking feel every emotion that the character should be feeling.

 

[zombiejoe]

The Beast from Infamous can be seen as tragic. Perhaps not the most tragic, but pretty tragic.

[spoiler/]He was helping Cole, got ripped apart atom from atom, rebuilt himself, then had to go around killing hundreds of people, which is something he doesn't want to do, but does because he's trying to ensure humanity would be saved in the long run.[/spoiler]

 

[renegade7]

I recently started the Horus Heresy novels, so I'm gona go with the Primarch Fulgrim. Man that dude had a raw fucking deal.

Spoiler

Slowly corrupted and made insane by a Chaos Deamon of Slaanesh, tricked into turning against his father and killing his closest brother, then right after, realsiing what he's done and begging the deamon for oblivion. Instead the deamon takes complete control of his body and shoves Fulgrims consciousness to the back of their shared mind, leaving him trapped inside his own body, fully aware and sane, forced to watch for 10,000 years as the deamon rapes, tortures and brutalises half a galaxy for its own sadistic pleasure and drawing even more pleasure from Fulgrims constant screaming.

And nobody else knows what's happened to him, the rest of the galaxy just thinks Fulgrim turned evil, they have no idea he still exists, trapped inside his own head.

Talk about a fate worse than death.

I just read that too. Agreed.

 

[zombiejoe]

Mr. Freeze, obviously. And Kessler from inFAMOUS. And possibly Elphaba from Wicked... depending on how you view her character...

Kessler is actually pretty tragic. In a way, he was just like...
[spoiler/]The Beast. Doing bad things with good intentions[/spoiler]

 

[Zakarath]

I'd have to say Bisochim, from the Enduring Flame trilogy. He's a mage who falls in love with a dragon and bonds with her. However, he is torn up inside because bonding with a dragon makes it(/her/him) mortal. Saravasse (The dragon) is acceptive of her fate, but Bisochim searches for a way to make her survive, and ends up falling prey to a demon that corrupts him while promising him the life of his beloved.

He wasn't a bad guy to begin with; but he ends up being twisted by evil and causing the deaths of thousands.

 

[likalaruku]

Nostalgia Critic FTW.

The young boy from Please Save My Earth, Fuuma from Tokyo Babylon, Rezo from Slayers, Count Olaf from A Series of Unfortunate Events, The New Red Hood from the Batman comics (pre-reboot), Magneto....

I love tragic villains; you can't help but root for them sometimes.

 

[RussetRanger]

Off the top of my head?

Dave from Season 5 of Desperate Housewives.
Heathcliff...... Wuthering Heights, anyone? Especially Laurence Oliver's take on him.
Dexter


And with Mr. Freeze, never has such a guy bereft of emotion shown such sadness in how he speaks. NOT ARNOLD'S PERFORMANCE! Mmkay!?

 

[Nieroshai]

I nominate Anakin/Vader, even though he is a bit cliche. His entire motivation for going to the dark side is not lust for power but fear of loss. Everything he's ever called his own was stripped away from him, so when given a chance to gain power to make it stop, he siezes it. Of course his fear and consequential need to be in control result in him destroying what he loves, and is left with nothing, not even his own life, to call his own. Literally now owing his very existence to the Empire, he then tries to prevent its descent into chaos the only way he knows how; to control it with an iron fist to prevent all change, not just bad change. To this end, he secretly wants to destroy the Emperor so he can be the one to "save" the galaxy. His final closure lay in his son, who proved to him that even lost causes could be salvaged, and Padme's death was not the death of hope.

At least, that's how I look at it. While I have a few other favorites, Vader tops the list because of why he did what he did.

 

[The Shade]

Skull Kid from the Legend of Zelda, for sure.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

-----------

OT: Some of the best villains of all time are the tragic ones.

Personally, I would put forward Ben, from Lost.

Spoiler

I admit, he doesn't fall into the normal parametres of the tragic villain, but his emotional moments are heartbreaking in the show. His speech as he bluffs to Keamy (fans know the scene I'm talking about) is devastating. And don't even get me started on the confrontation when he takes Locke to see Jacob in the statue base. That line that Jacob says, "What about you? and Ben's look of utter devastation when he hears it... powerful stuff. I doubt I've ever felt so sorry for a bad guy as I did in that show.

EDIT: Also, Snape.

 

[octafish]

Preston Payne AKA Clayface from Batman. I always feel sorry for that poor sap.

 

[Outcast107]

A lot of good ones people stated.

I nominate Anakin/Vader, even though he is a bit cliche. His entire motivation for going to the dark side is not lust for power but fear of loss. Everything he's ever called his own was stripped away from him, so when given a chance to gain power to make it stop, he siezes it. Of course his fear and consequential need to be in control result in him destroying what he loves, and is left with nothing, not even his own life, to call his own. Literally now owing his very existence to the Empire, he then tries to prevent its descent into chaos the only way he knows how; to control it with an iron fist to prevent all change, not just bad change. To this end, he secretly wants to destroy the Emperor so he can be the one to "save" the galaxy. His final closure lay in his son, who proved to him that even lost causes could be salvaged, and Padme's death was not the death of hope.

At least, that's how I look at it. While I have a few other favorites, Vader tops the list because of why he did what he did.

Yeah vader is also good. Yeah the first three had him acting like a little ***** at times. Though what do you expect from a guy who train not to use hardly any emotions, can't get attach to love ones and lost almost everyone close to him and is still losing them.

 

[shadow_Fox81]

Ever seen the death scene in throne of blood (or spiders web castle(i think it has two names)) its basically Akira kurosawa presensts Macbeth but that death scene i feel for the guy.

(mostly because i felt for Macbeth, something about a villain that was once good but corupted by social and spiritual evils appeals to me)

 

[Kenami]

Andrew Ryan. Everyday.

So much for wanting your own peaceful, capitalistic utopia.... Under the ocean

Uh... no, actually. He only created Rapture for his own ends, and his ideals were not capitalist, he was into objectivism. From what I gather, that basically means your only goal in life is to serve yourself and no-one else. He was a douchebag who cared about nothing but his own interests, and he got what was coming to him when that all collapsed around him.

Someone who follows objectivism would never create a society for like-minded objectivists (not sure if that's a real word) to live in, because doing something for other people is exactly what that philosophy opposes.

Thats kinda why I struck it out.

He was trying to create a world free of the oppressions of goverment and religion. And even tho he failed at that and became the villain a villain he was still, in my mind one of the most tragic villains I could think of. Because hey, who doesn't want to live free of the restrictive straps of the "enlightened" man?

Yeah, he probably got what was coming to him when his world collapsed around him. But isn't that the tragedy?

Also why is someone not considered tragic if they only live to serve themselves? That doesn't make them a bad person, just a selfish one. Big difference.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I'm probably gonna take some flak for introducing Michael Bay to this thread... but...

Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel played by Ed Harris from The Rock (1996).

First of all, I think this movie is somewhat of a fluke in the career of Michael Bay. Yeah, it's pretty obviously a Summer popcorn action flick, but for being one of those (and from Michael Bay no less), it's a surprisingly decent movie with a reasonably deep villain. Deeper than the average Summer popcorn action flick and Michael Bay movie, anyway.

So, back on topic. Hummel.

Spoiler

So the guy is pretty much a real-life GI Joe. To quote Chief of Staff Hayden Sinclair, "Three tours in Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Desert Storm; three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars and the Congressional Medal of - Jesus. This man is a hero."

The government he gave so much of himself for betrayed him in the end by refusing to acknowledge the deaths of a number of men under his command during covert operations. All he wanted for his men was at the very least military burials, but despite trying everything he could to convince the government, he got nothing from them for his men.

Feeling betrayed by his country and guilt for not being able to do right by his men, he began planning a way to force the government into giving his men their burials that he could enact after his wife passes away (he didn't want her to see what he felt he had to do).

Using his rank to fake an inspection, Hummel and his men broke into a naval weapons depot using non-lethal force to steal missiles containing VX gas. Hummel and his men then occupied Alcatraz island and set up missile batteries capable of launching an incredibly deadly strike on San Francisco.

Hummel demanded that the government give his fallen comrades their military burials, pay the men currently helping him using money from illegal government arms sales, and allow he and his men safe passage out of the country - or else he'd launch the missiles.

Rather than giving in to the threat, the government chose to send in a Navy SEAL team to disable the missiles. Hummel's men ambushed the SEALs, and though Hummel wanted to capture them alive to be released later, the situation turned to chaos - Hummel shouting for everyone to cease fire the entire time, but going unheard.

Later Hummel tries to convince Goodspeed and Mason, the last survivors of the SEAL incursion, to give themselves up by threatening to execute a hostage. Mason gives himself up, and accurately reads that Hummel isn't a monster, and had no intention or desire to kill anyone.

In the end a few of Hummel's men turn on him when they find out that all along Hummel's plan was a bluff based upon the threat of force with no actual intention to gas San Francisco. Hummel and his second in command, Major Baxter, try to stop the men who wanted to launch the remaining missiles but were both killed in the process.

In his dying moments Hummel expresses guilt over what he's done, and tells Goodspeed and Mason where the last remaining missile battery is so that they can prevent the attack on San Francisco.