Who's your favourite villains?

[Heroine of the Dragon]

...from whatever you watch, read, play...?
Why do you like them so much?

[Deku Tree]

Favorite is always hard for me, but I can talk about a few I really like that come to mind.

Agent Smith in 'The Matrix' is really good. There's no winning a fight with him because he's designed to be better than humanly possible. Perfect in the way only a machine can be. He wears a tailored suit, speaks calmly and with a cruel sense of humor because he knows he's in control of every situation and he's just toying with our heroes. That's intimidating enough, but then at one point he confesses that he's not just a detached, unstoppable agent of the powers that be, but that he is personally disgusted by humanity and resents having to exist where they exist.

Lou Bloom in 'Nightcrawler' is just a great character. He's a well mannered sociopath with a lot of ambition and a disturbing understanding of how to capitalize on people's worst instincts.

Baldur is great in God of War. He's got this vibe like a drunk looking for a fight. There's a sad desperation to him, and a dark sense of humor.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Wind Waker's rendition of Ganondorf is very good. He's a bit of a sympathetic villain, that's not always easy to pull off. Here's one of his quotes:

"My country lay within a vast desert. When the sun rose into the sky, a burning wind punished my lands, searing the world. And when the moon climbed into the dark of night, a frigid gale pierced our homes. No matter when it came, the wind carried the same thing... Death. But the winds that blew across the green fields of Hyrule brought something other than suffering and ruin. I coveted that wind, I suppose."

Another is Bass. He's sort of the typical evil rival character, like a Vegeta-type, but his playstyle is very fun. He plays so smoothly that it helps me like him more.

Magus is a fun character because he was a legitimate villain despite his own motives, and you can finish the game after having killed him, leaving him in his villain role. It's sort of up to the player if he's allowed to be redeemed, a great instance of true player choice impacting the game significantly.

Plus, Magus is just cool. Great design and a strong character.

[SCARY WIZARD]

Archimonde the Defiler from WarCraft. Dude sounds like he was garbage even when he was a "good guy". As the story would go, he was an ambitious student who betrrayed his wizardly mentor, personally beheaded him, and then had his skull gilded and engraved. And, as we later find out, he had his sentience bound within the skull. Even worse, he willingly threw his entire planet under the bus for knowledge and power. Kil'jaeden admitted upon his own death that he sided with the demons because he saw no other choice. Archimonde? Nope, he just wanted personal gain, and probably thought that their master was right.

Lareth the Beautiful, one of the villains from The Temple of Elemental Evil, a very popular module for Dungeons & Dragons. Sure, at the end of the day he's a lowly lackey whose only purpose in life is to get smacked about by adventurers, but he's a great inversion to the "elves are always good!" trope that used to, and still, permeates tabletop gaming. In most versions, the dude fell out of favour with the Seldarine and turned to the service of the Dark Seldarine -- that means Lolth, the Drow goddess. This is almost unheard of, for a surface elf in the Greyhawk setting to side with the Drow! Interestingly, in some versions of the module he's a half-Drow.
I kind of prefer him as a high elf who turned on the Seldarine, because "outcast with no other place to go, probably got duped by a crazy goddess" is sort of boring, and... yeah, man, you're just kicking some kid who got dealt a bad hand when he's down.

[Booyakasha]

You know, I have to say, I quite like Team Rocket (especially the ridiculous Jessie, James and Meowth version from the Pokemon show. They're adorable). I think it's hilarious when people self-identify as evil--------I'm all about it.

...I want a Team Rocket shirt. Somebody sells them, I'm sure.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

They're actually really funny. Their "blasting off again" routine was a bit too repetitive for my liking, but they've got some of the funniest lines in the show. They are like The Three Stooges: Anime Edition.