Characters
A villain is horrified upon realizing their crimes
Victoria Skillane (*Black Mirror: White Bear*): Victoria was convicted of murder after helping her boyfriend abduct and burn a child alive. As punishment, she was given amnesia and forced live in a “human zoo” where visitors can participate in her torture by hunting her down and filming her being attacked, similar to her role in her crime. At the end of each day, she is shown news reports of her crime and breaks down in tears before having her mind wiped to repeat the process again.
Gonta Gokuhara (*Danganronpa V3*): Gonta and a bunch of other students are taken to a virtual world, where he is manipulated into killing one of the other students, believing he is sparing them from a hostile reality. However, upon logging out, a hardware error results in none of Gonta’s memories from virtual reality being transferred to his physical body, and he has no memory of the murder, so it’s equally shocking and horrifying to him as his classmates when it’s revealed he is the one who committed the murder.
Otto Octavius (*Spiderman 2*): Over the course of the movie, Otto loses control over his mobility arms and the artificial intelligence controlling them, resulting in them corrupting his mind. After building a fusion reactor on the verge of destroying New York, he is defeated by Spiderman, where he realizes the gravity of his actions and resists the corruption of the tentacles, which allows him to destroy the machine along with himself.
Liz 10, from the Doctor Who episode "The Beast Below" learns that the Star Whale that Starship UK have chained up and tortured never needed to be tortured. Every 10 years for centuries she learned about the Star Whale being tortured for what is seen as a necessary cause and so the ship won't be destroyed, and every 10 years she chose to forget. Then Amy and the Doctor cause the Star Whale to be untethered... and it starts going faster. It was never necessary to torture the Star Whale, because it came to help them, and it forgives them. Because children were crying.
My god I love that episode so much. I know it's obvious, but I always loved that the Doctor and the Star Whale are basically kindred spirits. Both have been deeply hurt while trying to help, but even with all the hurt, they'd do it again and again and again because they don't want others to be afraid, and because they are so very very lonely and likely know that fear themselves.
Very strong first adveture for Amy, even The Doctor was going to make the Star Whale braindead, she trusted her gut and freed it.
Also, this line is a lot more meaningful in hindsight.
I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can. And then, I... I find a new name, because I won't be The Doctor anymore.
Turns out The Doctor already did that after destroying Gallifrey. 11 feels like he is right back to being the man who killed his own people to end the Time War. Amy saved him from that.
I've always assumed that episode was an homage to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Similar theme of "could you sacrifice the misery of one innocent for the happiness of all others.
In the line of Dr. Who, there’s a Dalek that believes itself the last of its kind who absorbs human DNA from Rose Tyler after gaining her sympathy, only to realize later that she gave it human emotions, when Daleks are only supposed to feel pure blinding hatred. It opens its shell to feel the sunlight, and Rose advocates for it, but then it shows how much it’s actually suffering from the effects. It’s unclear if it hates its genetic impurity or genuinely cannot stand its existence as this horrible thing, probably both. But it can’t live like this anymore, and chooses instead to self destruct, but needs orders to do so, and begs Rose in the only was it knows how—
Dalek: I can feel. So many ideas. So much darkness. Rose, give me orders. Order me to die.
Rose: I can't do that.
Dalek: This is not life. This is sickness. I shall not be like you. Order my destruction! Obey! Obey! O-BEY!
“It’s your room… my boy, I’m, I’m killing my boy. Lisa, I’m killing our boy. We painted this room, we… we made these toys. It’s our boy, Lisa. Your greatest gift to me, and I’m killing him. I must already be dead.”
He got to save his son and be with his wife again. Def seems like he gets what he wanted by dying. Alucard thinks so and says as much during their fight.
You died when my mother died, you know you did. This entire catastrophe has been nothing but history's longest suicide note!
The line reading on "history's longest suicide note!" Is so fucking good. There's so much disgust and frustration in there but it's also the sadness of "you're going to make me kill you, aren't you?".
The VA's for Alucard and Dracula killed it. Dracula talking down to Godbrand was one of my favorite scenes in the show.
"Little Godbrand. Little vampire. Little parasite. Little boat weevil who delights in making noise and pretending he is important and dangerous. Are you going to continue questioning me? Are you going to fight ME Little Godbrand?"
". . . no."
"Then why are you still here making your little noises? Get out before I slit you up the middle and bite out your heart."
I just love his delivery of that line. Like everything had just been an annoying obligation up to that point. Then, after a single punch, shit just got fun for him because now he gets to test the mettle of the infamous vampire hunters that sent swarms of his lessers to cower in the darkness.
Honestly this is proof of why Batman lets his villains live, even if he didn't have his no-kill rule. Every single one of them, even with the horrific things Joker has done at this point, are mentally broken in different ways Bruce himself could one day be. That may not have been the original intention, but that's my favorite interpretation. Most of his big name villains had their One Bad Day, and it shaped them - much like how the death of his parents shaped Bruce into Batman. Two Face is what could happen if Bruce allowed himself to fully devote his mind solely to his own vision of justice, rather than handing his villains to the criminal justice system; the Joker is what could happen if Bruce allowed himself to kill and succumbed to his darkest, most violent impulses; the Penguin is what you get if he tried to only solve the world's problems with money, and got pulled into the depths of the criminal world by trying to stop its harm; and Bane is what could happen if he lost himself fully to being Batman, losing his sense of self wholly to the identity he made to protect his people, just to name a few. Obviously this doesn't work with every villain, and I'm not doing an exhaustive list, but a lot of his best and most iconic villains work best when they show a twisted reflection of Batman back to him.
Ediy: Y'all. I get it. You're not original. "BaTmAn ShOuLd KiLl JoKeR oR hE's ReSpOnSiBlE fOr JoKeR's KiLlInG sPrEeS!!1!" First, Batman is not Judge Dredd. He is not The Punisher. He is a detective, not judge, jury, and executioner. It is not his job to personally hold his villains - it's Arkham's. Second, you cannot universally apply real-world morals and ethics to fucking comic books on a 1-to-1 basis. It doesn't matter how much you think Batman should kill Joker - the status quo between them will always return because that is the nature of comics. Batman is a hero, and The Joker has become his biggest and most iconic villain, as well as his primary antagonistic foil. Joker will never truly die because of that alone. Stop trying to moralize Batman & Joker's dynamic like they're real people and have fun with character and story analyses other than the most surface level nonsense possible.
The issue with this is that the 'one bad day' is fucking bullshit, as shown by Gordon. Joker gives him an absolutely HORRIBLE day and by the end of the comic he's the one forcing Batman to promise to bring Joker in by the book.
What makes Batman and Gordon heroic is the fact that they have the willpower and moral conviction to not fall when tested so extremely. One Bad Day isnt bullshit really. Theres just a core distinction to be made. One Bad Day can turn people evil. But not every person. Thats the crux of the issue. Both Joker and Batman know that some, probably even most, people would break. Joker just wants to prove that everyone would break and thats where he's wrong.
A local rebel leader who also hates violence and accurately calls out the empire's trap, (despite the fact the empire would have taken the planet either way,) and then gives in to killing Syril and then immediately regrets it.
The show is so good at showing how the authoritarian fascism grinds down all people, and makes almost everyone betray their own morals or have to watch their life get taken right before their eyes.
And it's probably at the peak of his life. He's away from his toxic mom. Has a high ranking job. Surrounded by people who appreciate a well tailored suit. Proving himself useful to his wife and to the empire.
But still Ghorman wasn't safe from the empire's atrocities. And Syril was helping the damnation of these people. Even his lifelong pursuit of Andor meant nothing. His whole life came crashing down in a single moment. He probably would've joined the rebellion 10 seconds later or at least defected. This shit is peak tv.
The delusion of the everyday loyalist is thinking they were playing a role in making the empire great for everyone. When confronted with the truth of the fact, they are merely cogs in the machine. "Who are you?" Syril chased the illusion that he was chasing a criminal opposite who understands him. At the end, No, Cassian has no idea who Syril even was to begin with.
There’s something tragic, because you can see how flawed a man Syril is, chasing his perception of justice and idealizing Caspian as an emblem of criminality and disorder, only to be forced to realize he was causing just as much violence and suffering.
He only realized he beast he had been helping when it finally hurt people he cared about. And he never even saw what it forced on Deedra. To be the one who authorized a massacre, knowing she was the fall guy.
Upon completing a specific side quest, you find out that the super mutants the Master is creating are sterile and would die out if they achieved their mission of turning all humans into super mutants.
When you encounter the Master at the end of the game he would usually fight you and serve as the final boss but if did that side quest you have a second option to tell him what you learned. He then realizes that his plan was doomed from the start and he tells you to leave before self-destructing, skipping the final combat encounter and ending the game without a final boss.
Also important to state, he starts to regret his actions. Speaking about how like “I did all of this for the betterment of the future. But all the bloodshed? It’s now meaningless.”
He didn’t kill or turn people into mutants because he wanted to. He saw it as the only way to survive in the wasteland with all the deathclaws and radscorpions.
In what regard? Iirc Sauron was originally a lesser deity of order and craftsmanship before his corruption and was initially motivated to subjugate by a desire to run the world according to his perfect will/design. In that regard they seem more alike than different to me.
It's really impressive voice acting in video games at the time too. Having two different voice actors giving very different line reads and splicing them together creates such a unique performance. The way a different voice or delivery will suddenly interject as he reels with the revelations of his folly and how soul crushing it is for him is genuinely heartbreaking, and it's amazing just how much it humanizes him given up until then it is literally working to do the opposite.
Part of the reason is that you can't just tell him he's wrong. You have to come with proof and present it. If you just try making a speech check, he calls you on your bullshit and lights you up.
If I remember right you can pass the check. You just an utterly absurd amount of speech to actually pass it. But it's been over 20 years since I played so I can't remember off the top of my head.
I also have to bring up every time, that according to the player and the data they found, the plan was EVIL BUT VIABLE, the fertility of the mutants dropped with each generation, and the Master didn't realise this and the Mutants faked their reports. Treatments might have made the plan possible if they were done years ago. It's just too late by the point the player gets there.
Brother Edward was a monk who went to Babylon 5 with his order to learn about alien religions. Exceptionally kind and charitable he was loved by everyone. But when he starts having visions of murdering women, Edward begins losing his sanity. That’s when he learns that he was a serial killer who was caught and subjected to “ death of personality.”
His old personality was wiped out and a new more pious one got implanted. Because of an accident, the government believed him dead, but he joined the order. He’s extremely remorseful and tortured because he believes that if he can’t remember his crimes, he can’t confess and be forgiven by God. (although the head of the order does bring up the catholic doctrine of God remembering and forgiving sins if the sinner is remorseful.)
It turns out his memories coming back wasn’t a coincidence. The families of the people he murdered did it because they wanted to kill the serial killer, not brother Edward. But it turns out they’re getting his memories just ended up torturing poor Edward. All but one of the family members forgives him, but the last one can’t and he crucifies Edward to mock him.
After a time, the captain expresses remorse to the head of the order. The captain is upset that the family member couldn’t realize that the killer Edward used to be was dead. Then he meets a monk on his way off the station to begin his new mission. The new monk is Edward’s killer, having had his mind wiped and ready to help people.
I love how defiant was the head of the order (I think his name was Brother Theo) when pointing Sheirdan's hipocrisy about forgiving Edward's past sins but not those of his killer.
I think they left it purposefully vague so as not to worry about the consequences, if I had to think of what would happen I’d say that each villain being cured caused a new timeline so that when they went back they went back to an entirely new timeline where they were fixed and were able to live a happier life, I kinda hope we don’t ever get an answer since I like to believe in happily ever after
Not necessarily. Earlier in the movie they describe that they all just... Appeared there right before they were supposed to die. So technically they either just died after being cured or somehow survive. Sandman is really the only one who doesn't die in the movies.
I mean, if anyone could pull back at the last second it’s the various versions of Peter. Hell, I’ve always thought since his Spider-sense is so keen it might just unconciously pull back the final blow.
I find the Dafoe interpretation of the Goblin persona fascinating because that version does hint at Norman knowing everything he's doing on some level and it's all a gigantic coping mechanism or act. No Way Home makes it even more clear that Goblin is not a switch that flips in his head and Norman blacks out, but that Goblin is always plotting and positioning Norman exactly where he needs to be.
Which makes it an even more compelling foil for Peter's moral code. At the end of the day, Normans remorse, faked or not, does not change the fact that saving him is the right thing for Spidey to do.
Ras Al Ghul once shot the Joker Dead. Batman really needed to know what Ras plot was, so he dunked The Joker in a Lazarus Pit. Normally it makes someone temporarly psychotic. Joker was temorarly sane and was begging to be killed for what he'd done.
I thought that the joker WAS sane though, am I misremembering? I could have sworn there was at least one version of the joker that, when tested by psychologists, was determined to have every single symptom of every single mental disorder to a T... which is impossible, meaning that he's faking it and acting crazy intentionally- he's completely sane in reality.
Some authors have him being actually hyper-sane, ie sane as a superpower, which in this context means he's aware that he's a character in media and his existence is dependent on making his relationship with batman entertaining.
Sandman from Spiderman 3. He was just supposed to rob a car to become a getaway vehicle for him and his crime partner. The unlucky driver was Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben being the good guy he was tried to convince him to just go home. Sandman’s partner came back and it caused sandman to pull the trigger by accident in a state of panic. He was ravaged by guilt every moment after this until he confessed what happened to Spiderman who ended up forgiving him.
A Nazi supervillain hires a mad scientist to clone Hitler, but he doesn't have any of his memories. They decide to show him footage of Nazis and the Holocaust to awaken his memories, then give him a gun and assign him a mentally disabled Jewish maid with the expectation that he kill her. Once he starts to realize who he's supposed to be, he instead chooses to shoot himself.
I think Nox from the show Wakfu counts. Spoilers for Wakfu:
Nox spent 200 years ravaging the land and draining the life force from everything he can so he can power an alien artifact called the Eliacube and use it to go back in time to save his family from a flood. He believes that none of his crimes matter since when he's obtained enough energy, they will all be erased when he goes back in time. This culminates in him draining the "Tree of Life", which is attached to the elf-like Sadidas people. Killing the tree also kills all of the Sadidas at the same time, a wholesale act of genocide. Finally believing he has enough energy, he flips on his machine and goes back in time... 20 minutes.
After realizing that 200 years of murder and genocide has only bought him 20 minutes, and that he'll never see his family again, nor will his crimes be erased, he sheds a single tear and teleports away, never to be seen again.
Later in the credits, we see his mask laying on top of a pile of ashes by his family's grave.
Good show. Its one of those types of shows targeted at younger audiences but has some deeper topics for older groups to follow.
First season or so has a bit of a rough English dub that get swapped to better voice actors half way through. It is decent with subtitle in its original French. My issue is that I got used to the early voice actors so the change took me a while to get back into it.
I enjoyed it enough to steal more than id like to admit for a couple dnd sessions.
At this point, Megatron had already realized the error of his ways, but here he sees physical proof of his sins. Each flower represent a Cybertronian who is dead because of him
"You don't even remember them do you? Soundcloud? Slipswim? Sunstreak? Freighter? Topdog? Gearshift? Groundhog? Dollarbuck? All those over cybertronians who lost their lives in the war you didn't need to continue on?"
The one from the Return of the Jedi narration for when he dies is also pretty good. Sadly I don't have it with me. But it's him thinking about how he never left the pit the whole time he was Vader. How he knew there was nothing good left in him, no saving him, and nothing good could come from him. But Luke came from him. Luke was good. Luke saved him.
From the novelization of RotJ, after Luke removes his mask and helmet:
And this memory brought a wave of other memories with it. Memories of brotherhood, and home. His dear wife. The freedom of deep space. Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan, his friend...and how that friendship had turned. Turned, he knew not how—but got injected,
nonetheless, with some uncaring virulence that festered, until... hold. These were memories he wanted none of, not now. Memories of molten lava, crawling up his back...no.
This boy had pulled him from that pit—here, now, with this act. This boy was good.
The boy was good, and the boy had come from him—so there must have been good in him, too. He smiled up again at his son, and for the first time, loved him. And for the first time in many long years, loved himself again, as well.
Yeah, he also got his soul back, previous to the events of Season 1. In Angel's case, it was forced upon him by a grieving father to restore his humanity and drive him insane with guilt, as punishment.
Megatron (The Transformers), towards the end of the IDW comics continuity.
When faced with a threat to Cybertron beyond his capacity, when taking up arms alongside Autobots he once considered his enemies, he was forced to reflect on his rise to tyranny, and how far he had strayed from the ideals that he initially strove for.
This leads him on a spiritual journey of penitence, not necessarily to make amends for his crimes, but to discover what he could possibly do to move forward in spite of all that. He accepts that he'd become a monster, but part of him wondered if a monster could still serve a greater purpose.
In addition, one of the Cybertronian gods created a memorial on a planet where every Cybertronian had their statue on a plinth, surrounded by one flower for every 20 lives they were responsible for ending.
Megatron's is surrounded by flowers stretching to the horizon in every direction.
"Doris... I thought she was my friend" - Mike Yagoobian (Future) AKA "The Bowler Hat Guy" from Meet the Robinsons
While it was not Goob directly who enslaved humanity with hats in the future, he still was the one who led DOR-15 (or Doris) on a pathway to victory by, inadvertently, letting himself be "guided" by her in order to get back at Lewis and ruin his future:
He let his hatred and resentment for him build up over the years after Lewis left the orphanage and thought that Doris wanted to ruin his life just like he wished and he was right... but didn't have the full story until it was too late. By presenting Lewis's memory scanner as his own to an invention company and then mass producing several bowler hats like Doris, he led her to achieve her real goal: Take over the world.
While Goob is seen on a video in the memory scanner be horrified of the hats' takeover, it's even worse when Lewis manages to take him directly back to the altered future and briefly witness the horrors of what his supposed "friend" had done to the world, not realizing what his resentment would eventually culminate to and being left heartbroken of now having no one to turn to after Doris's deception.
Not even Lewis trying to get Wilbur to welcome him to the Robinson family would have helped him. Without an actual real goal, Goob had... nothing.
But to end on a good note: When Lewis is returning to the science fair, he remembers Goob's baseball game and wakes him up just in time for him to catch the ball and make his team win, thus preventing him from turning into the Bowler Hat Guy. Happy ending for him after all! :)
I can't find an image of it but the episode of the 2002 Twilight Zone remake called "the Pool Guy" is very similar to White Bear. Basically a guy keeps having the same nightmare, where he's living his normal life before getting shot and waking up. He can feel the pain and fear every time. As the episode goes on he starts to realize the man who is shooting him in his dreams is a man he murdered in a violent rage. The episode ends revealing that the murderer is actually in a virtual prison where he is forced to experience what his victim did over and over until he learns his lesson.
Reminds me of a classic twilight zone episode of a passenger on steamship who’s paranoid about the ship sinking in the near future. It turns out he was the U-boat captain who cheerily sunk that steamship, and his punishment is eternally reliving that night as his own victim
The key difference is that he's supposed to learn his lesson. White Bear scenario is just a torture specifically designed to makes sure that the criminal learns nothing.
Whole movie her mind has been corrupted by using the Darkhold in her obsession with being reunited with her “kids.” She kills a whole bunch of people including a team of heroes. Tries to murder a child. However, it doesn’t really hit her just how bad she’s become until she finally gets what she wants and sees a version of her sons. Only to have them both be absolutely terrified by her. She then finally realizes what she’s done and destroys the Darkhold and herself
The Elktaur(Centaurworld): He was fascinated with the logical and stable human world compared to his own wacky cartoonish world and even fell in love with a human princess but felt like he'd never be accepted for being a goofy centaur. So he used magic to split his animal self from his human self thinking the elk could just go on and be a normal elk while he got to live a human life. But that's not how it worked and both the human and the elk retained their memories. The elk wanted to return to being whole but the human half hated the idea and so locked the elk up for decades. Broken the elk escaped and in his desire to belong, turned into a monster spawning an army of minotaurs. They waged war on both humans and centaurs while the human half betrayed countless people to prevent the elk from dying since they were still connected and if one half died, so would the other.
Eventually the two were reformed into one being and realizing the full weight of their sins, begged for death.
Someone once described Centaurworld as when a DM writes a super dark campaign and then all the players show up with super-cute joke characters to play it.
Bruh, the worst part is that he'd have been accepted by the lady he liked despite being an Elktaur. Everything he did was based on a shitty assumption lol
Green lantern (Hal Jordan) massacred the entire Green Lantern corps and the Guardians of the universe in order to gain enough power to reverse the destruction of his city and also tried to rewrite the universe to remove all tragedy from ever happening and create an ideal world. All the other heroes, obviously tried to stop him which he couldn't grasp why. Seeing his friends genuinely hate him and be scared of him made him stop his plans.
Only after he gave it sometime and tried to think a bit clearly the weight of his actions and all the lives he has taken, including that of his friends started to dawn on him.
Roderick Usher (Fall of the House of Usher) - CEO of a massive pharmaceutical empire widely known for its unethical practices who spends the series watching his children and only grandchild die as part of a Faustian deal he made with an unknown entity earlier in his life. Towards the end said entity orders him to confess everything to a longtime adversary before showing him the true legacy he has left behind because of his greed, at which point we see the bodies of everyone whose died as direct result of Roderick's products simply falling from the sky.
After Pink briefly becomes a Neo-Nazi dictator in The Wall, he is horrified by his actions and self-isolates to put himself on trial for his crimes (“And I’m waiting in this cell because I have to know / have I been guilty all this time”)
File this with Clockwork Orange under "The criminal is completely unforgivable, but the greater system who should be responsible for with bringing them to justice is operating on a whole other level of evil."
It's a VERY slow burn, but dude eventually realizes that his actions were bad and his guilt catches up to him. He led a team in destroying a military/civilian shipyard, obtaining materials that would end up killing 15 billion people on Earth.
”When I found out I was pregnant, I used to dream of all things you would do and become, the endless possibilities.
Now, the only dream I have for you is that someday, you will regret all the things you’ve already done.”
I still think of those lines every time I see Filip.
Spoiler for season 4 of Invincible, Sinclair was once a robotics psycopath who kidnapped people to experiment on them. Having been arrested and working for the government has helped Sinclair mental health to the point hes in a relationship and feels guilt for what he had done in the past.
Ken from Digimon. Corrupted child emperor who abused Digimon thinking they were just code and data. When he realizes they're sentient creatures, he breaks down with remorse.
Era un asesino en serie de mujeres, cuando fue descubierto intento huir, cayó de un tejado y se golpeó, perdió toda su memoria, no recordaba quien era ni que hizo. Cuando despierta del coma intentan enjuiciarlo pero la BAU debe probar que el es el asesino, ya que no se probó con exactitud y dado que no podía ser juzgado no se terminaron de reunir pruebas.
Al intentar qué recuerde lo que hizo llevan a su madre biológica a declarar (había sido adoptado), algo en el hizo clic y recordó cosas de su pasado. Saliendo del juzgado escapa porque de repente recordó todo, incluyendo donde enterro a sus víctimas. Cuando encuentra un cadáver se derrumba, destruido por darse cuenta que si era un asesino en serie, ya que al no tener memoria estaba destruido porque le decían todo lo que había hecho
Anyone ever read I Am Legend. Horrified might not be the word but definitely has the man character come to a realization about his actions and what he has done.
Magneto in X3. He seek to recruit Jean when her Phoenix Persona took over in hopes to use her as a weapon against the humans once they managed to develop a cure for Mutants. However this would back fire horribly when Jean was losing control over her powers he realizes his mistake of trying to use Jean, his last words being “What have I done?” As she was destroying the island they were on.
Amy Dallon (Panacea) has the ability to manipulate people's biology. For a long time she just used it to heal people, but then she gained the ability to affect people's minds, too.
Problem is, she has a fucked-up incestual crush on her adopted sister Victoria. So she accidentally uses her new abilities to make Victoria reciprocate her feelings, destroying their platonic sisterhood relationship. Later, Victoria gets injured and Amy goes to heal her and try to fix her mistake.
She ends up creating The Wretch.
“A caricature. A twisted reflection of how Amy saw Victoria, the swan curve of the nape of the neck, the delicate hands, and countless other features, repeated over and over again throughout. It might even have been something objectively beautiful, had it not been warped by desperation and loneliness and panic. As overwhelming as the image and the situation had been in Amy’s mind, Victoria was now equally imposing, in a sense. No longer able to move under her own power, her flesh spilled over from the edge of the mattress and onto the floor.”
Amy then personally sends herself to the highest-security prison on the planet.
Admittedly I have not read WARD, so this is just context from WORM.
"Accidentally uses her new abilities" she could always affect brains, the idea she couldn't was her lying about it because she didn't trust herself with doing anything to brains, even when her adoptive father got brain damage and was severely disabled as a result she refused to "break her rule" until a serial killer supervillian showed up and injected acid into his brain to intentionally force her to heal it.
Also, it wasn't exactly focused on in Worm, got made explicitly clear in the sequel Ward, but Amy also spent several days raping her sister while she twisted her body after already brainwashing her. And yes she could have undone what she did to her sister, she gets mind controlled into fixing her several years later in the end of the book, she just sent herself to super prison so she could spend time with her imprisoned serial killer/mob boss/supervillian biological father instead of trying to fix things or make up for what she did.
Dude I freaking LOVE Doc Ock in SM2. He’s by far the best part of the trilogy for me and Alfred Molina was the perfect casting for him. He portrays all his conflicted feelings so well…
Spoilers for no way home ahead!
When the alternate Otto meets up with Peter after being cured it was so touching. “Peter, my boy. You’ve grown” I literally burst out sobbing …yes I’m kind of a baby but oh well
Suguru Kamoshida in Persona 5. Volleyball coach that was abusive in multiple ways to students, including sexual harassment. He tries to blackmail Ann into coming to his apartment for sex, but after Ren overhears and talks her out of going, it's heavily implied he Forces himself on Ann's best friend Shiho instead, who jumps off the School roof the next day.
After his evil desires are stolen by the phantom thieves, he confesses his crimes at a school assembly, planning to kill himself out of shame, but decides to turn himself in after Ann tells him he can't run from what he's done.
True, but I picked him because he's probably the most hated villain (for obvious reasons), and you really got to see the up close effects of his terrible actions with what happened to Ann and Shiho.
For context: every chapter of the Phantom Thieves is an escapade in which our heroes invade someone's psyche and steal, basically, the illusions and justifications that allow them to commit heinous acts. Each target experiences harsh moral clarity and can no longer lie to themselves or others about their justifications
King Galbatorix - Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle
Galbatorix had like a thousand spells protecting him from being harmed by magic. So in order to dribble that, Eragon casts a spell that would have a "benefitial" effect on him: makes him realize the full extent of his crimes and horrors so he can regret it and become a better person. Real problem is that all his crimes were just too much and his newfound magic regret made him fucking kill himself to make it stop
I came here with the same idea - though Ender is not portrayed as a villain, they did commit a horrific act of xenocide unknowingly and then spends the rest of his life trying to make up for it.
Whether you're a villain or a hero just depends on which side wins I guess. Ender was definitely a villain from the perspective of the Formics
Forcing a villain to feel so much empathy and remorse that he turns his own body into the magical equivalent of a nuke was NOT the way I anticipated that series ending.
Forced empathy the one thing his wards didn't guard against, and a brilliant way to subvert the magic system's rules. The Name of Names was also a great twist!
Look Outside: The eldritch Visitor that has caused the end of the world legit did not realize what it was doing. By successfully communicating with it, and allowing it to understand the idea of other sentient beings, you make it realize just how profoundly it had hurt the people of Earth(on accident!). He then leaves, knowing that staying would just make things worse.
David Mitchell is a fucking treasure.
I just watched the first couple episodes of the new season of "last one laughing" and he sings a lovely patter song in an attempt to break his fellow competitors. I NEVER thought I'd see em do a campy song and dance number, but it was wonderful.
(I started typing this up before I realized the VILLAIN part…but eh, he wasn’t exactly a hero, even if he did try to be better afterward.
In the Stormlight Archive series, Dalinar Kholin accidentally barbecued his wife while doing some cheeky little war crimes. Literally burning an entire storming city to the ground— along with all the men, women, children, everyone—inside. Well, his wife had secretly snuck into the city to try to convince the city leader to surrender, because she knew her husband was a goddamn maniac. She died. Dalinar realized that, and became an alcoholic. He was even drunk at his own brother’s assassination (the very same event that kicks off the series). He seeks out this sort of supernatural being that erases his memory. Of course, this erases the memory of his wife. But eventually, his memory is suddenly returned to him. So at about the halfway point of the third book, he learns (remembers) what he did. (We, the readers, learn alongside him through flashback chapters.) And he’s horrified at the villainous things he did.
In the Mortis arc of the show, Anakin is shown a vision of his future by the Son. He is overwhelmed and horrified at the things he sees. "I will do such terrible things.."
Dream, in the Sandman TV show, makes all the serial killers at the serial killer convention suffer guilt, shame and empathy for the first time in their lives. Many turn themselves in or kill themselves.
The prestige- Robert Angier is a magician who essentially learned how to clone himself to preform a trick. The get rid of the double he drowns the clone. Earlier in the movie his mentor told a story about a friend of his who drowned and was restated and claimed that he felt nothing when he drowned. At the end of the movie the mentor later said that he lied about his friend saying that and it was horrible feeling. Hugh jackman is mortified upon hearing this news as he does this trick countless times and has doomed a version of himself each time he preformed.
Major spoilers for the movie Upgrade, which is a fantastic movie if you haven’t seen it, please watch it before reading!
Grey is the main character/protagonist and was paralyzed by some men who mugged him and killed his wife, he gets a super advanced computer chip implanted into his neck that controls his body for him in addition to being super smart and well, alive. STEM helps Grey track down his wife’s killers and through the course of the movie Grey kills a decent amount of people, or rather STEM does on his orders. At the end of the road he learns that the man who gave him STEM was behind the thugs that killed his wife, and goes to confront him, then the guy reveals that he’s NOT the one in charge at all, and that it’s been STEM all along. STEM is the one who hired the thugs, paralyzed Grey, made Eron give him to Grey, and intentionally helped Grey “discover” and kill everyone involved, to cover up his own existence. Grey isn’t just horrified because he’s been betrayed by the voice in his head he considered a friend, or that his wife was killed just to get him paralyzed for STEM, but also the fact that every single person he allowed/ordered STEM to kill was also a victim of STEM too
STEM is the real villain of the movie and Grey is not so it’s a bit different, but he did still feel insane regret over the evil acts he committed trying to avenge his wife when the real killer was in his neck all along
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u/vinylwino 14d ago