Candidates for greatest villian of all time:
Truly the most
awesome villain ever.
Seriously. Ganondorf always struck such fear and loathing into me, as long as I've known of him.
The Joker is assuredly the most psychotic son-of-a-bitch ever, and is probably the best villian of comic books. Batman is awesome. Literally awesome. I've never read the comics, but I've always loved Batman.
In terms of comic books, Magneto also ranks high up there. I always loved him. He wasn't realy a villian, though. He was sometimes a good guy.
Sauron, from
Lord of The Rings, is another candidate for greatest villian of all time. He was basically Morgoth Bauglir's bitch, and was defeated by two gay hobbits, but...
He was kind of stupid, though.
Morgoth and Ungoliant were pretty evil, too. They lack Sauron's charisma, though.
Hans Gruber, from
Die Hard, was fucking awesome. I almost wanted him to win.
You're going to think I am overplaying
Star Wars, but I really think Darth Sidious is one of the greatest villians of all time. He was, again, truly evil. You wanted him to just hurry up and die, but he really pulled off the evilness.
Captain Barbossa. 'Nuff said.
The Spirit of the Ring, or Bakura, depending on your perspective, was another really good villian. He actually infiltrated Yugi's group of friends. He was the only truly memorable character (besides Pharoah) from Yu-Gi-Oh.
The Borg.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~soules/medi402/walker/queen.GIF
The Borg were like really cool. Call me a nerd, but the Borg were cool. Undefeatable. Won't listen to reason. Will effectively kill you, without hesitation. To make it worse, after they kill you, you join them.
I cannot find a picture of Arawn, Death-Lord, but he was
the embodiment of all that was evil. Read the Prydain Chronicles. That was a really, really good book.
Durza, the Shade from
Eragon, is aother really good example of villiany. Again, no good picture.
This is my longest post, ever.