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Big Bad / The DCU

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"Darkseid is."

The DCU has several common Big Bads:

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The Following have their Own Pages

     Comic Books 

Comic Books

  • Darkseid, a Galactic Conqueror as well as a Physical God and the ruler of Apokolips, is one of the primary antagonists of the franchise and has made many attempts to conquer everything, often stopped by Superman, the Justice League, and the heroic New Gods of New Genesis, among them in particular he is the father of Orion.
  • Vandal Savage, an immortal who plans to take over the world and is the leader of The Illuminati, is one of the oldest supervillains, having opposed the Justice Society and the Justice League at every turn, though the Immortal Man, Alan Scott, and Wally West have been some of the heroes who've stood up to him the most.
  • 52: The series had several villains, as it was about several heroes. However, each of the seven main storylines had its own main villain.
    • The Metal Men's story: Chang Tzu (formerly Egg Fu). He's also the power behind the Religion of Crime (antagonists of The Question's story) and the Four Horsemen of Apokolips (antagonists of Black Adam's story) and can thus be considered the Big Bad of these, as well.
    • Steel's story: Lex Luthor.
    • The space heroes' story: Lady Styx.
    • Elongated Man's story: Neron.
    • Booster Gold's story: Skeets, of all people, Brainwashed and Crazy courtesy of Mr. Mind.
  • Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld: In the original series, Dark Opal killed Amethyst's parents and took over the Gemworld in the original series. His ultimate aim was to fashion a piece of armor with shards of each of the totem gems of the various ruling houses and become supremely powerful. Fire Jade fulfils his role in the first eight issues of the regular series.
  • Aquaman:
  • Armageddon 2001: Monarch, who's the future version of a hero, now turned to evil. The hero in question turned out to be Hank Hall.
  • The Atom: Chronos in The All New Atom.
  • Batgirl: The storyline The Attack of the Annihilator has the titular villain. Once a disturbed and selfish scientist called Kenneth Anderson, he was turned into a psychic super-being by exposure to alien energies, whereupon he decided to name himself "The Annihilator" and take revenge on those who supposedly scorned his latest discovery. Upon evolving further, the Annihilator modifies his plans to destroy Gotham and build his own private kingdom upon the ashes.
  • Batman:
  • Bloodlines: The Bloodlines Parasites.
  • Blue Devil: Nebiros, the demon who fused Blue Devil to his costume due to thinking he was an actual devil.
  • Booster Gold: Maxwell Lord, a former friend of superheroes who once oversaw the Justice League International, and murdered Booster's best friend Blue Beetle.
  • Captain Atom: General Wade Eiling, who blackmailed Nathaniel Adam into undergoing the experiment that turned him into Captain Atom, and used the same experiment to create the hero's Evil Counterpart Major Force, while also having married into his family. Being a manipulative villain, Captain Atom is largely unaware of his threat in the earlier years, until the general became a more open antagonist possessing the Shaggy Man and becoming the General.
  • Catwoman: Psychotic mobster Black Mask was the Big Bad of one series, his sadism driving her to have to kill him in the end to stop his crimes.
  • Convergence: Telos, the Genius Loci on which the story takes place, serves as something of this, having captured the timelines and set them against each other. Until halfway through the series when the Warlord's old enemy Deimos becomes the new Big Bad.
  • Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Anti-Monitor, an Omnicidal Maniac who desires to conquer the universe and replace it all with antimatter.
  • Dark Crisis: The Great Darkness, a multiversal darkness entity, takes control of various powerful Big Bads, as well as corrupting Pariah. As the Dark Army aims to take over everything in the multiverse, Pariah ends up casting out several heroes into paradise worlds, having presumed killed them. At the same time, Deathstroke has taken over the Secret Society of Super-Villains and becomes the commander of the Dark Army. However, it is later revealed that Pariah turned evil of his own will and is the one who corrupted the Great Darkness out of a desire to restore the multiverse, so he and Deathstroke both serve as the primary antagonists of the event.
  • Dark Nights: Metal: Barbatos, the master of the various evil doppelgangers of Batman from the Dark Multiverse.
    • Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Batman Who Laughs, a rogue alternate Batman who was turned into a new Joker and the commander of Barbatos' forces, lash out against the cosmos with the hopes of spreading chaos among the multiverse.
  • Day Of Judgement: Etrigan. While Asmodel is the bigger direct threat, he's only able to become so due to Etrigan arranging him for him to bond with The Spectre. Unusually for the Big Bad of a Crisis Crossover, Etrigan succeeds in his goal - getting his rival demon Neron demoted and gets off pretty much scott free.
  • DC One Million: Solaris, the Living Sun.
  • DC: The New Frontier: The Centre, a sapient island, is revealed to be an historical Big Bad, responsible for mass extinctions throughout history. The use of the atomic bomb makes him decide it's our turn.
  • Doomsday Clock: Doctor Manhattan, the true cause of the New 52 by way of erasing several heroes from history, altering the memories of the heroes remaining and generally using his powers to meddle with everything behind the scenes.
  • Doctor Fate: Wotan, an evil sorcerer whose power can keep up with Fate's magic.
  • Doom Patrol: The Brain is one of the primary members of the Brotherhood of Evil, and a former acquaintance of Chief.
  • Eclipso The Darkness Within: Unsurprisingly, Eclipso.
  • Final Crisis: A Big Bad Ensemble between Darkseid, who has finally discovered the Anti-Life Equation and used it to enslave Earth, and Mandrakk, the Dark Monitor.
  • Final Night: The Sun-Eater, a Non-Malicious Monster who devours Earth's sun simply because that's its food source.
  • The Flash:
    • The Flash has Reverse-Flash and Gorilla Grodd. The latter was his initial archenemy, a sapient, telepathic Killer Gorilla who believes apes should rule over humanity and was originally his only non-harmless foe, the former is a museum curator (and complicated descendant) from the future who idolized Flash, but changed his ways as his Loony Fan mentality drove him to increasingly cruel actions, like killing Flash's loved ones (his time travelling to kill Flash's mother and frame his father being one motivation for him becoming a hero).
    • Flashpoint (1999) has Vandal Savage ruin Barry's life and be behind the plot of the story, wanting to trigger Flashpoint and use the Speed Force to ravage the Earth.
    • Flashpoint does things a little differently, as the Big Bad turns out to be The Flash himself, making this a rare case of a Crisis Crossover technically having a Villain Protagonist, even if it was by accident.
  • Forever Evil: Being the direct sequel to Trinity War, the series naturally therefore has the Crime Syndicate as the Big Bad Duumvirate. Subverted. It turns out the Crime Syndicate was lying about destroying Earth-3. The real Big Bad, or possibly Greater-Scope Villain: The Anti-Monitor. Who has declared war on Darkseid.
  • Genesis: Darkseid.
  • Green Arrow: Merlyn is the one villain who can keep up with Green Arrow in terms of archery skills, but as an assassin.
  • Green Lantern:
    • Sinestro, a former Green Lantern, serves as this to the Green Lantern's as the founder of the Sinestro Corps, whose Yellow Lanterns are powered by the Green Lanterns' weakness of fear. In particular, Sinestro was also Hal Jordan's disgraced mentor.
    • Krona, whilst primarily a Green Lantern villain, is ultimately the biggest bad of the setting, or at least one of, in terms of the reach of his influence. The Anti-Monitor, and thus Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night and Brightest Day, along with the later Monitor problems that led to Final Crisis? Exists because of what Krona did In The Beginning that created Anti-Monitor. Manhunter rebellion, and thus the Red Lantern problem as well as the horde of killer robots? All Krona. Entropy responsible for ensuring that the universe is running on borrowed time and will eventually die? You can blame Krona for that.
    • Nekron, Lord of the Unliving, who commands the dead to drag the world of the living into death. He usually confronts Green Lantern characters, and is arguably their most powerful recurring foe.
    • Rise of the Third Army has the Guardians, after years of general douchebaggery, finally jump off the slippery slope and create the titular Third Army to absorb the universe in order to eliminate The Evils of Free Will. And when this arc ends and transitions into Wrath of the First Lantern, Valthoom (the titular Lantern, who the Guardians had been using to power the Third Army), proves to be Eviler than Thou, imprisoning the Guardians, destroying the Third Army, and becoming an immediate and direct threat to all of time and space.
    • Lights Out has Relic, the last survivor of a universe destroyed by overusing Emotional Spectrum energy, who seeks to prevent the same thing in this universe... by destroying all the Lantern Corps.
    • Godhead has Highfather, who is trying to assemble the life equation by assembling a white lantern ring from each of the various Lantern Corps power rings, and has no problem taking the rings by force.
  • Hellblazer: The First of The Fallen.
  • Identity Crisis (2004): Jean Loring, ex-wife of The Atom, who orchestrates the murders of the heroes' loved ones (such as Sue Dibny and Jack Drake) to get her husband to come back to her.
  • Infinite Crisis: The Big Bad was a three-way tie between Alexander Luthor (overall with his desire to create a new Earth), Superboy Prime (for the Superman family out of a twisted desire to be the primary Superman), and Brother Eye (for the Batman family due to having been corrupted by Maxwell Lord to aid in his plot to destroy superheroes, plus trying to tank Wonder Woman's reputation).
  • Invasion!: The Dominators, an alien race who discovers the metagene.
  • The Janus Directive: Kobra.
  • Legends: Darkseid, who plans to turn the people of Earth against the superheroes with the use of Glorious Godfrey.
  • L.E.G.I.O.N.: Some of the more prominent Big Bads that L.E.G.I.O.N. faced were Mr. Starr and Lyrl Dox.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes:
    • The Fatal Five is the primary villain team who opposes the Legion, led by Emerald Empress or Tharok, thought the former is more common.
    • Mordru, an extremely powerful evil sorcerer who became interested in taking over Earth.
    • The Time Trapper has varying stories, but resides at the edge of time itself as one of the Legion's most persistent enemies.
    • Lightning Lord (Lightning Lad's brother), Cosmic King and Saturn Queen often lead the Legion of Super Villains.
    • The Great Darkness Saga has Darkseid as the Big Bad. This was quite a twist at the time, since the character had been seldom used since the end of the New Gods comic.
    • The Condemned Legionnaires: Satan Girl, Supergirl's Enemy Without, infects the female Legionnaires with a strange plague which is killing them slowly in order to prolonge her existence.
    • The Earthwar Saga: Mordru manipulates one secret cabal and at least three alien armies in order to destroy the Legion and conquer Earth.
  • Martian Manhunter: Despero, a galactic conqueror. While Despero is largely a Justice League level threat, he has taken delight in tormenting Martian Manhunter in particular, being just as skilled a telepath as him
  • Nightwing: Blockbuster, a brutish villain who became a mobster in Bludhaven thanks to his deal with Neron, before he was killed off. Also for the Robins including Dick it tends to be Two-Face, who has been a persistent thorn in their sides (and the killer of Jason Todd's father). Thanks to being the leader of the Teen Titans, Nightwing also has a persistent adversarial conflict with their collective Arch-Enemy Deathstroke. Once Blockbuster was killed off again in the Infinite Frontier Nightwing run, and Deathstroke perished at the end of Dark Crisis, Neron deployed the Grinning Man, a mysterious shapeshifter, to become the new big threat Nightwing would face in order to claim Blockbuster's daughter (who Nightwing adopted), along with eventually facing Nightwing himself (and even tempting him with giving him powers).
  • The Other Side of Doomsday: T. O. Morrow kidnaps Iris West and Jean Loring to lure the Flash and the Atom into a death trap.
  • Our Worlds at War: Imperiex.
  • Robin (1993): Sir Edmund Dorrance aka King Snake until he's killed off by Bane, the son he abandoned to be raised in the worst prison on earth.
  • The Sandman (1989): Desire of endless who plotted the downfall of their brother Dream.
  • Shazam!: Doctor Sivana and Mister Mind. The former was a classic Mad Scientist villain during his earlier years, the latter was a worm who destroyed his home and is one of the few villains he hates.
  • The Spectre: The powerful being Phallax, but in the 2000s, the Red Lantern entity Butcher, another embodiment of wrath, became a worthy contender as the main enemy as well.
  • Static: Static: Season One has Agent Jones in the role, being the leader of the government agents sent to capture the newly created Bang Babies, though Hotstreak ends up being Virgil's main opponent.
  • Suicide Squad: The 2020s run sees Amanda Waller go to greater extremes in order to have her own force of heroes by becoming a full-blown Multiversal Conqueror, right down to having the Suicide Squad conquer Earth 3 and assimilate the Crime Syndicate. At the end of Dark Crisis, she is granted the resources to kill all metahumans by the mysterious Council of Light, paving the way for her to become the overarching antagonist of Dawn of DC.
  • Supergirl:
    • In the Supergirl storyline Crucible, Korstus attempts to take over the titular interplanetary super-hero school and turn it into his private paramilitary organization which he'll use to control the galaxy.
    • Lesla-Lar is the main nemesis of Supergirl storyline The Unknown Supergirl, coming very close to destroying both the Superman Family and Lex Luthor with nobody suspecting of her existence until it was almost too late.
    • The The Killers of Krypton has Gandelo, Empress of the Trilium Collective and member of a secret organization known as the Circle, who secretly helped Rogol Zaar blow Krypton up in the past and then covered up his crime, manipulates events behind the scenes to get Supergirl killed before she uncovers the truth and exposes the Circle.
    • In Strangers at the Heart's Core, Lesla-Lar manipulates a bunch of villains behind the scenes to destroy Supergirl. When all of them fail, Lesla attempts to invade Supergirl's mind and take over her body.
    • Starfire's Revenge: The titular villain is a Queenpin who intends to take over the world. So no super-hero can derail her plans, she gets one of her scientists develop a depowering pill and tests it on Supergirl. When her pill fails, Starfire comes up with one trap after another to get rid of the Kryptonian hero.
    • In Adventures of Supergirl, Facet sends different super-villains after Superman in order to toughen her up by challenging her physically and mentally.
    • Supergirl (1984): The witch Selena takes hold of the Omegahedron, a transmuting-matter device which usually serves as Supergirl's hometown's life support system, and uses its power to take over one whole town.
    • In Supergirl (Wednesday Comics), an unnamed alien race is causing radioactive solar flares that are affecting Krypto and Streaky badly.
    • In Bizarrogirl a humongous planet-eater alien called Godship kickstarts the plot by getting to devour Bizarro World and forces Bizarro send his cousin to Earth. Godship is even called “Big Bad”.
    Bizarro Lex: Godship am Big Bad.
  • Superman:
    • Lex Luthor, a Corrupt Corporate Executive Magnificent Bastard of a Mad Scientist as well as the arch-nemesis of Superman and often of Supergirl. If there's ever a Legion of Doom anywhere, you can bet top dollar he's the boss of it, and often times he will hide among the public.
      • In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Lex Luthor killed baby Kal-El and sent a hitman to kill the Waynes, depriving Earth of its greatest heroes who would have saved countless lives and forcing their successors -Supergirl and Batgirl- to grow up quick and pick up their slack. He deceived and manipulated the Justice Society and Supergirl. And he allied himself with the Joker, hoping to get rid of both Supergirl and Batgirl.
      • In Gotham City Garage, Lex Luthor took over Gotham City, the last city on a post-apocalyptic Earth and has been ruling with iron fist and mind-control during decades.
      • The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor: Lex Luthor plots to destroy Superman psychologically by saving his life multiple times, and manipulating people's perception of him.
      • The Leper from Krypton: Lex Luthor cultures his own strain of Virus X and gets Superman infected with an incurable disease.
      • The Death of Luthor: Lex sets out to prove Supergirl is a Superman-fabricated hoax, and endeavours to destroy her when he ascertains she is real.
    • Brainiac is also one of the arch-enemies of Superman. He's -usually- a super-intelligent -and incredibly mean-spirited, temperamental and ruthless- alien who regards every life-forms as lab rats meant to be either destroyed or captured, locked and examined. Since Superman: Brainiac his power-set has been more or less consistent, a Genius Bruiser with Psychic Powers who can overpower Superman in a fistfight and totes some of the deadliest and most advanced technology in the DCU (which he invented), most famously his nigh-invincible skullship, his shrink ray, his force-fields, his mind control devices, and his army of Flying Brick robots.
    • In Last Son, General Zod, a Kryptonian general banished by Superman's father Jor-El for a coup of Krypton's ruling council, attempts to invade Earth and kill the Superman Family in revenge for being thrown into the Phantom Zone.
    • Mister Mxyzptlk -a prankster with reality-warping powers- is behind all conflicts in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? and Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade.
    • The Death of Superman has Doomsday, an ancient alien being from the earlier years of Krypton, that kills Superman. Since it dies in the process, The Return of Superman ultimately has Cyborg Superman, a man turned into a cybernetic version of Superman, take over as the Big Bad.
    • The Superman crossover H'el on Earth has H'El, a renegade ancestor of Superman who aims to bring back Krypton by any means necessary, and also targets Conner Kent due to clones being hated on Krypton.
    • The Superman storyline A Mind-Switch in Time has two Big Bads due to its time-travel theme: In the present day, Euphor uses his emotion-absorbing powers to take over Metropolis and throw Superman out of the city. In the half set in the past, Lex Luthor traps Superboy into a stable time-loop to get rid of him.
    • Superman vs. Shazam! has Karmang, a Mad Scientist and Evil Sorcerer who intends to destroy two parallel Earths to get power enough to set free the souls of one billion of Martians who were killed and stuck in a Limbo because of one of his crazy experiments.
    • In Reign of Doomsday, the Doomslayer is a genetically-altered Doomsday clone who, after gaining sentience and superior knowledge, seeks to eradicate Doomsday and all life on Earth.
    • Escape from the Phantom Zone: Xa-Du is a Kryptonian mad scientist who was sent into the Phamton Zone due to his penchant for making experiments with people.
    • The Phantom Zone: General Zod engineers another ploy to escape from the Zone and attack the physical world.
    • Death & the Family: Insect Queen takes over Lana Lang's body and tries to conquer Metropolis with her army of giant insects.
    • In The Day the Cheering Stopped, King Kosmos uses his mental powers to make people forget about Superman.
    • In Day of the Dollmaker, the titular villain, son of Superman rogue Toyman, is a serial child kidnapper who abducts Daily Planet journalist Catherine Grant to force her to be his "mother".
    • In The Plague of the Antibiotic Man, Amalak the Kryptonian-Killer causes a deadly plague in Earth as part of a scheme to exterminate the last living Kryptonians.
  • Superman/Batman:
    • Public Enemies (2004): Lex Luthor, who as the President of the United States, declares Superman and Batman as enemies of the state.
    • The Supergirl from Krypton (2004): Darkseid kidnaps Superman's cousin with the intent to brainwash Supergirl into becoming his loyal -and mind-controlled- soldier.
  • Swamp Thing: Anton Arcane, the uncle of Swamp Thing's primary love interest Abby who desires immortality.
  • Tangent Comics: Tangent: Superman's Reign, a 12-issue series serving as a Fully Absorbed Finale for the continuity via crossing over with the standard DC Universe, has the Tangent universe Superman as the main villain, having taken over the world after defeating the Ultra-Humanite and imprisoned or killed everyone who doesn't agree with his methods of improving the world. His attempts to expand his conquest towards the main DC Universe lead to the Justice League joining forces with the Tangent universe's few surviving heroes to take him down.
  • Teen Titans: Trigon, a powerful demon, is the strongest adversary of the Teen Titans, and as the father of Raven, he often tries to corrupt her to his side in his goals to conquer everything.
  • Trinity War: The events of the series turn out to have been engineered by The Outsider (Earth-3 Alfred Pennyworth), the leader of the Secret Society, in order to both weaken and defeat the various Justice Leagues, and get his hands on Pandora's Box so he can use it to open a portal to Earth-3 and summon his masters, the Crime Syndicate.
  • Underworld Unleashed: Neron, who offers heroes and villains a literal Deal with the Devil, offering them whatever they want in exchange for their souls, all in an attempt to tarnish and claim the purest soul on Earth, that of Billy Batson
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman has Circe and Ares. The former is a sorceress who is one of Wonder Woman's most persistent enemies, the latter is the God of War who manipulates and feeds on human conflict, motivating her to become a hero.
    • Wonder Woman (1942): While Diana only fights Mars on a handful of occasions his mentality and manipulation of others overshadows every other villain of the Golden Age, and he's implied to be behind the actions of the Emperor of Saturn who causes loads of trouble and with whom an overarching plot was being built at the time of the author's death.
    • In Judgment In Infinity, the Adjudicator intends to destroy all Earths should humans fails his test of "worthiness".
    • Wonder Woman (1987): While Ares is the villain Diana leaves her home to fight her defeat of him is quite absolute and his later realization that she is his granddaughter causes him to care for her and even save her life on occasion even if they'll never see eye to eye or stop fighting, Circe on the other hand becomes more and more unhinged as time goes on and comes close to destroying the Amazons entirely on several occasions.
    • In War of the Gods, Circe has orchestrated the conflict solely to ruin the Amazons' reputation and destroy Wonder Woman.
    • In Wonder Woman: Odyssey Nemesis turns out to be behind every other villain's actions and is working towards a goal of destroying all life not just on earth, but throughout the cosmos.
    • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): While it seems Ares is the cruel Olympian behind the Amazons' civil war it turns out Zeus, despite painting himself as more benevolent than Ares, is far worse and is trying to back Diana into a situation where she helps him destroy most life on earth and brutally subjugate the remaining humans, and it doesn't help he is her father too.
  • Worlds Collide (1994): The Rift, who causes problems for the standard DC Universe and the Milestone Comics universe by forcing them into one universe.
  • Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!: Parallax, former Green Lantern Hal Jordan who wants to remake the universe.
  • Zatanna: Brother Night, a powerful sorcerer and ruler of supernatural crime she fought in her solo run.

     Films 

Films

     Live-Action TV 

Live-Action TV

  • Birds of Prey (2002): Harley Quinn, who rises up as the top crime boss of New Gotham to avenge the Joker.
  • Doom Patrol (2019)
    • Season 1: Mr. Nobody, who's the one responsible for kidnapping the Chief. However, his schemes eventually get out of his control when the Brotherhood of Dangerous Animals betray him in the season finale, and he has to pull an Enemy Mine with the Doom Patrol.
    • Season 2: The Candlemaker, Dorothy's dangerous imaginary friend who threatens to bring about the end of the world to force Dorothy to fight and kill him, making him no longer necessary for her protection.
  • Gotham
    • Season 1: The whole season is a chess match between Carmine Falcone, Fish Mooney, and Sal Maroni for control of Gotham's criminal underworld, with Oswald "Penguin" Cobblepott playing them all against each other in order to come out on top. Then there's also a Greater-Scope Villain in The Conspiracy controlling Wayne Enterprises.
    • Season 2A: Theo Galavan, who sows chaos in Gotham so that he can engineer his way into the office of Mayor, and position himself to avenge a blood feud on the Waynes.
    • Season 2B: Professor Hugo Strange, whose experiments on his patients at Arkham Asylum drive much of the plot. At the end of the season, however, he's revealed to be working for the above-mentioned Greater-Scope Villain the Court of Owls.
    • Season 3A: The Mad Hatter, Jervis Tetch, kicks off the "Mad City" story arc by infecting citizens with the blood of his sister Alice until he gets jailed in Arkham and the spotlight is stolen by Jerome Valeska, leader of the Maniax and previously killed off early in Season 2 by Galavan. After his revival, he knocks out Gotham's power, plunges the whole city into darkness and creates an insane circus of anarchy devoted to bringing down the rich citizens of Gotham - especially Bruce Wayne himself. And all the while, the Court's leader Kathryn is up to no good.
    • Season 3B: Penguin and the Riddler spend the whole arc working against each other for control of Gotham alongside their various allies. Meanwhile, Kathryn prepares to make a move against Gotham, but she's eventually revealed to be working for a man known as the Shaman, who plays Evil Mentor and The Corrupter to Bruce as part of his own mysterious agenda. Which is to bring him into the service of his master, Ra's al Ghul.
    • Season 4A: There's a series of brief Arc Villains — Scarecrow, Ra's al-Ghul, and Professor Pyg — but the true main villain turns out to be Sofia Falcone, who spent the whole half a season engineering a complex plot to take control of Gotham's criminal underworld and punish Gordon for her brother's death.
    • Season 4B: Sofia continues as main antagonist for a few episodes, before getting shot in the head. After this, Ivy Pepper goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for several episodes, and then Jerome returns to once again terrorize the city into madness. He's finally Killed Off for Real, but not before driving his brother Jeremiah insane. Jeremiah then becomes the Final Boss of the season, teaming up with Ra's al-Ghul to devastate Gotham and force Bruce onto the path towards becoming Batman.
    • Season 5: The season as a whole has Eduardo Dorrance/Bane and Secretary Theresa Walker/Nyssa al Ghul who are working together to destroy Gotham and get revenge against Bruce and Barbara for killing Ra's in the pervious season. Jeremiah is also still lurking around but he's focusing on driving Bruce mad and as such isn't a part of the season's main conflict. In the show's final episode Jeremiah returns, now on the cusp of finally becoming the Joker, after pretending to be in a coma for the past ten years, on the eve of Bruce's return to Gotham, and proceeds to manipulate the entire cast all to get back at Bruce for "abandoning" him.
  • Krypton
    • Season 1: Brainiac, who has traveled back into time to destroy Krypton and prevent Superman's birth, allowing him free reign over a universe no longer protected by the greatest hero it has ever known.
    • Season 2: Brainiac continues to be a threat alongside General Zod, who has taken over Krypton after Brainiac's attack.
  • Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman:
    • Season 1: Lex Luthor, a Corrupt Corporate Executive and Villain with Good Publicity who serves as The Man Behind the Man for most of the Villains of the Week. Superman is unable to expose his villainy until the closing two-parter where he attempts to trick Lois into marrying him after bombing the Daily Planet and gaining kryptonite to kill Superman.
    • Season 2: Intergang, a crime syndicate who take over from Lex Luthor in trying to run all the crime in the city. In their debut episode, they are led by Bill Church, another Villain with Good Publicity and an old friend of Perry White. Partway through the season, he hands over control to his son Billy Jr, who kidnaps Perry and tries to murder a narcotics agent.
    • Season 3: No overall Big Bad. The opening episode has Minnie Church, Bill Church's new wife, takes over as head of Intergang after both Bill and Billy Jr are arrested, but that ends up being an Aborted Arc: She only appears in one more episode, where she frames one of her underlings as the new head of Intergang, with Clark and Lois never learning the truth. Lex Luthor makes a Back for the Dead return in a mid-season trilogy where he kidnaps Lois on her wedding day and tries to get her to run away with him after she develops amnesia. The final two episodes set up Lord Nor as a Greater-Scope Villain, a Krytonian noble who challenges Kal-El for the leadership of their people by sending an alien assassin after him.
    • Season 4: The opening two-parter concludes the storyline with Lord Nor, as he is defeated after invading Earth and enslaving Smallville. After that, time travelling criminal Tempus (who has been part of the show's Rogues Gallery since Season 2) becomes the show's new main villain, as first a previous incarnation of him is revealed to be behind a curse that will lead Lois to die if she and Clark consummate their marriage, and then he uses a mind control device to have himself elected President of the United States.
  • Lucifer (2016):
    • Season 1 has Amenadiel, Lucifer's angelic brother who is determined to make him return back to Hell as its ruler, no matter what it takes. He has a Heel–Face Turn in the final episode, letting Malcolm Graham take the spot as the villain. Malcolm is a Dirty Cop who was brought Back from the Dead by Amenadiel; However, he Came Back Wrong thanks to the torture he experienced in Hell.
    • Season 2 has the Goddess of Creation, Lucifer's mother who spends the entire season trying to manipulate her sons into helping her reclaim control of Heaven from God.
    • Season 3 has the Sinnerman, an enigmatic crime boss and serial killer. Except not. Turns out he is not only a Disc-One Final Boss, but also a decoy-gone-rouge. The true Sinnerman and Big Bad of the season is Lieutenant Marcus Pierce, who's true identity is Cain. While he spends most of the season as a Villainy-Free Villain, he finally becomes a true villain in the last few episodes.
    • Season 4 starts off with Father Kinley, a Sinister Minister who tries to manipulate Chloe into helping him force Lucifer back to Hell. However, his incompetence leads to his arrest early in the season. After this, the closest thing to an antagonist is Eve — while not evil, her Toxic Friend Influence inadvertently undoes Lucifer's Character Development and turns him back into a selfish hedonist. Eventually, her obsession with making him stay the way she wants leads her to kill Kinley (even if in self-defence) and allow his corpse to be possessed by the demon Dromos, who serves as the Final Boss as he kidnaps Amenadiel and Linda's infant son to replace Lucifer as the king of Hell. Meanwhile, Eve would go through a Heel–Face Turn as she Wouldn't Hurt a Child.
    • Season 5 has Michael, Lucifer's Evil Twin, who comes to Earth to ruin Lucifer's life out of spite. Though as the back half of the season reveals, this is just part of a larger plan, which is to replace his father as the new God, with Michael and Lucifer ultimately coming to blows over who gets to be "promoted". Ultimately, Michael turns out to not only be the Big Bad of Season 5, but also the entire series. He's been the true mastermind behind every bad thing that has happened in Lucifer's life, starting with his rebellion against God and ending with Lucifer retiring from his job as king of Hell.
    • Season 6 for the most part has No Antagonist, being instead about Lucifer dealing with the emotional weight of whether to accept his new role as God, as well as his Kid from the Future Rory revealing that he's going to disappear from Chloe's life soon, leaving a mystery to unravel. However, there is a Final Boss in the series finale in the form of Vincent Le Mac, a mercenary previously employed by Michael, who kidnaps Rory in order to lure Lucifer into a trap and try to kill him, in revenge for Lucifer leaving him in torment since the previous season.
  • Pennyworth: While the first season has something of a Big Bad Ensemble due to all the political intrigue going on, the clear main threat is Lord Harwood, the leader of the Raven Society, who at the climax of the season kidnaps the Queen so that he can stage a coup and take control of the country. By Season 2, he's a full-blown Evil Overlord, being the High Chancellor of the Raven Union, a merger of the Society and the army that has taken over most of England in the Civil War he started between seasons. Midway through the season, however, Colonel Salt uses a combination of drugging and gaslighting to drive Harwood to a breakdown so he can take control of the Union and threaten to unleash Project Stormcloud on London to end the war.
  • Smallville initially has Lionel Luthor as the main antagonist of Seasons 1-3, although other secondary antagonists, like reporter Roger Nixon, Kal and Jor-El also took a stab at this role in each season respectively. Following Lionel's defeat and subsequent Heel–Face Turn, the situation got a lot more complicated, but played out more or less as follows:
  • Swamp Thing (2019): Avery Sunderland. He inadvertently caused the plague when he commissioned Mad Scientist Jason Woodrue to make the swamp's vegetation grow faster and bigger with his mutagens. Now, he seeks to get his plans back on track and, more importantly, cover up his crime.
  • Titans (2018)
    • Season 1: Trigon, who works behind the scenes to use Rachel as his doorway into Earth.
    • Season 2: Both Slade Wilson, whose appearance causes the Titans, both original and new, to team up, and Mercy Graves, leader of Cadmus Laboratories, who hunts the group after they begin hosting their creation, Conner.
    • Season 3: Scarecrow, who uses Jason Todd to engulf all of Gotham in fear.
  • Watchmen (2019): Senator Keene is the leader of the Seventh Kavalry and masterminded the White Night. He set it up in order to become President, but has changed his goals to capture Dr Manhattan and turn him and the Seventh Kavalry members into god like beings. Unfortunately for him, he is actually a Big Bad Wannabe and the pawn of the true villain, Lady Trieu. It turns out that the Seventh Kavalry/Cyclops have been following the plan Trieu laid out for them by giving them the resources to build the machine needed to capture Doctor Manhattan and use the Millennium Clock to steal his power for herself.

     Video Games 

Video Games

  • The Adventures of Batman and Robin: Mister Freeze, who Batman and Robin spend the game attempting to stop from freezing all of Gatham.
  • Batman: Arkham Series:
    • Joker in Batman: Arkham Asylum, masterminding the takeover of the asylum by the inmates while also seeking to strengthen himself through the Titan formula.
    • Joker continues to play a critical role in Batman: Arkham City, but it is Professor Hugo Strange who is responsible for the creation of the mega-prison, the unwarranted arrest of Bruce Wayne and all of the "political prisoners" in Arkham City who either knew too much about the prison's creation or spoke out against it (all without trial, no less), and even supplying the various supervillains with weapons in order to fuel their raging gang wars. At the end, it is revealed that Strange is a disciple of Ra's al-Ghul (who promised Strange immortality and his position at the head of the League of Assassins in exchange for his help), and Arkham City's purpose was to gather all of Gotham's criminals in one place so that the two could use the dangerously escalating gang violence as an excuse to cure Gotham City's criminal problem by exterminating all of the prisoners via a huge military airstrike.
    • Joker's also in Batman: Arkham Origins as the true man responsible for hiring the eight assassins to kill Batman after stealing Black Masks's identity. Though this time, the role of Big Bad is split between him and Bane, who poses a much greater threat to Batman's identity and serves as his final real opponent.
    • Scarecrow fills this role in Batman: Arkham Knight, with the titular villain serving as his Dragon who is actually Jason Todd and ends up pulling a Heel–Face Turn in the end. Joker is also present as a part of Batman's mind as the remnant of a virus caused by his exposure to Joker's blood in Arkham City which is strenghtened by Scarecrow's fear toxin and tries to take him over from within.
  • Batman: Dark Tomorrow: Ra's al Ghul is the game's primary antagonist, and is planning to create a huge tidal wave that will depopulate Earth. He even arranged for the other villains to provide "distractions" for Batman, so he wouldn't interfere with his plans.
  • Batman: The Telltale Series:
    • Season 1 has the leader of the Children of Arkham, Lady Arkham (aka Vicki Vale.)
    • The Enemy Within has Harley Quinn as the leader of the Pact, until John Doe becomes the Joker as either a villain or a vigilante as the main antagonist for the final episode.
  • Batman: Vengeance: The Joker, who manipulates Poison Ivy and Mister Freeze into committing various crimes to distract from his plans to pump Gotham's severs with Joker Gas.
    • Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu: Sin Tzu, a warlord who breaks out and brainwashes all of Gotham's villains for the purpose of making the city his new empire.
  • Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters: Amon Sur is revealed to be behind the Manhunter uprising and has orchestrated it to enact his revenge against the Green Lanterns for his father Abin Sur's ring going to Hal Jordan rather than him.
  • Injustice:
  • Justice League Heroes: Brainiac, whose assault to S.T.A.R Labs kicks off the plot and is responsible for many of the obstacles faced by the heroes. In reality, he is just a puppet to Darkseid, who is The Man Behind the Man that manipulated him into being released from his prison.
  • LEGO Batman
    • LEGO Batman has a Big Bad Ensemble of the Penguin, the Riddler, and the Joker, each causing various crimes throughout Gotham while commanding other villains, leading Batman and Robin to try to stop them.
      • LEGO Batman 2 has a Big Bad Duumvirate of the Joker and Lex Luthor, working together to defeat their respective heroes and to ensure Lex is elected President.
      • LEGO Batman 3 has Brainiac, who kidnaps individuals from each Lantern Corps to control all emotions.
      • LEGO DC Super-Villains has Darkseid, the mastermind behind the arrival of the Crime Syndicate to the main Earth, who seeks to acquire the Anti-Life Equation, causing the villains to band together with the heroes to stop him. Although the Anti-Monitor is revealed to be a Greater-Scope Villain.
  • Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: Shadow Khan, a Fusion Dance of Darkseid and Dark Khan who spreads a Hate Plague that forces the heroes of both worlds to fight each other in order to gain more power.
  • Scribblenauts Unmasked has Braniac, who sends Doppelgänger and the other DC villains to gather the starites for him so that he may use them, along with Lily's globe and a Mother Box, to summon and merge with the other 51 Brainiacs so he may destroy the multiverse.
  • Superman 64: Lex Luthor, who kidnaps Superman's friends and traps them in a virtual Metropolis that the Man of Steel must navigate.
  • The Wolf Among Us: The Crooked Man, a ruthless crime boss and the source of all the corruption in Fabletown.

     Western Animation 

Western Animation

  • Green Lantern: The Animated Series:
    • Arc 1: Atrocitus, leader of the Red Lanterns, seeks to get revenge on the Guardians for what the Manhunters did to his sector of space.
    • Arc 2: The Anti-Monitor is an exiled being who returns to the regular universe and has taken control of the Manhunters. Aya, one of the main heroes, later replaces him as the antagonist after she destroys it and takes control of its body
  • Superfriends:
    • While the prior series had no central villain and had all threats the Super Friends confronted being the work of one-shot antagonists, Superman's archenemy Lex Luthor takes the position of main antagonist in Challenge of the Superfriends by virtue of being the leader of the Legion of Doom and in every episode formulating a scheme with the 12 other supervillains to defeat the Super Friends and take over the world.
    • Darkseid holds the position of main villain in the last two series Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, as he is the mastermind of the conflict in nearly every episode of the two series.
  • Teen Titans (2003) followed a Big Bad per season formula:
    • Seasons 1 and 2: Slade, who seeks to take Robin and Terra as his apprentices in Season 1 and 2 respectively and use them to conquer the city.
    • Season 3: Brother Blood, the Headmaster of the HIVE and Cyborg's Arch-Enemy. After Cyborg resists his mind control, he becomes obsessed with Cyborg to the point of trying to be like him, growing increasingly frustrated with his inability to control Cyborg.
    • Season 4: Trigon, Raven's demonic father who seeks to use her as a portal to reach and conquer Earth, even bringing back Slade as an undead servant to convince her to accept her fate as a portal.
    • Season 5: The Brain, leader of the Brotherhood of Evil who recruits the Titan's Rogues Gallery to help him the eliminate the Titans once and for all.

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