Who in your opinion is the worst written FICTIONAL villain in all of media?

Elon Musk

(You didn't say it had to be someone fictional. I mean, just look at him!)

Snoke.

I said this in another thread recently, but Ted Faro from the Horizon Zero Dawn series was so badly written. He was a one note guy, use technology to get profit at the expense of the planet, lying and dishonesty and being a douchey and thoroughly despised tech bro—

and then I realized, he’s incredibly well written. He’s fuckin’ Elon Musk but American. He’s Sam Altman. He’s all these fuckers, and they’re him.

Elon Musk would totally irradiate himself in a bunker to become an immortal monster. Hell, that’s literally what Peter Thiel goons his tiny dick to every goddamn night!

Ted Faro was a bad villain back in ‘18. In ‘26, he fits in.

Gru from Despicable Me. What kind of villain adopts and raises children and saves the world on purpose?

Caillou

Satan. Loses his job over a difference of opinion and then suddenly becomes the complete antithesis, and raison d’être, of his boss. How convenient. He just screams “plot device” to me.

The calypso twins in Borderlands 3. The streamer schtick got old quickly, and the game just took control away from you whenever they showed up so they could act with impunity. They were just annoying and kind of whiny so the "sympathetic" backstory didn't do anything for me. I remember the final boss being deeply unimpressive after all the build up, too.

Voldemort. He was so stereotypically evil there was just no depth. Also fuck JK., support trans people, I already regret talking and thinking about HP

Eddie Brock in spider man 3 comes to mind.

The Riddler from The Batman is poorly written because he spends the first two acts establishing himself as a person trying to right the wrongs of Gotham and honestly did a really good job at it, then had to switch to trying to destroy the city in act 3 because they didn't want the audience to get any ideas.

Anakin

Rose from Pokémon Sword and Shield. He wants to solve an energy crisis that won't actually be an issue for like 1,000 years. Then when Leon asks him to delay his plans for literally one day he massively flips out and decides to kick off the apocalypse. And no, it doesn't make any more sense in context.

MCU Thanos. Dude is a complete idiot. With the stones he could basically be a god and do whatever he wants, but chooses to half the universe in order to stretch resources... except that doesn't actually do that. He halved all life. Most resources are themselves alive. And even then he's only kicking the can down the road a bit. Why not double the resources? Why not fundamentally change life so that it doesn't have to use as much?

The comics version works because it turns out that his justifications are bullshit; dude just wants to impress Death because he loves her.

I will grant that MCU Thanos works in the sense that he's a tough-guy moron who surrounds himself with yes-men, which only enhances his danger. But I don't think that this was the intent in how they wrote him.

Oh, I got a real fictional answer. Dominic Toretto. His crew started as simple thieves who stole DVD players. Dom had no problem with Brian getting iced by the Koreans to throw off the feds. He played all sides against themselves and showed real potential as the villain who got away. Stone cold sociopath who drives 2 nice cars.

Fast forward 20 years and he's a super spy who has reluctantly saved the world three times while driving variations of those same 2 nice cars.

He's become the anti-villain. Not a hero but someone who stops other villains. There's also no real person anymore. Dom is just a guy who drives and has a one word catchphrase that's so boring it's a joke now. There is no more depth or nuance to him. And since he contractually can't lose fights in his films there is no chance the other villains succeed.

suggestion: edit the question so it asks who is the worst-written villain. Unless you really want boring political rants.

The Hamburgler

Willy Wonka is definitely up there. Slave labour, child endangerment, unsafe working conditions the list goes on. The man is psychotic

Edit: I didn’t read the whole prompt.

Rupert Murdoch.

Edit: I see the title has been edited and so Murdoch doesn't count (and it was a stretch given the qualifiers in the post text anyway.)

I'm probably gonna get a lot of flak for this, but definitely team rocket of the mainline pokemon anime. They basically kept harassing a kid, who I was so glad they replaced in New Horizons, and had no life after gen 5. Gen 5 was their absolute peak, before they went from doing serious spy type work for their boss back to harassing an annoying kid.

After a few series, they get kinda boring because they become nothing more than another box to check off for episode production. Felt like they didn't have anything cool left to do, outside the gen 8 episode where their alternate universe selves are using dialga and palkia fighting to turn everyone's pokemon into eggs so they can steal them.

I have only seen maybe the first 20-30 episodes of New Horizons and I am so glad they have a new evil team taking the reins.