About This Quiz
Supervillains have existed in comics for pretty much as long as their hero counterparts have. In the 1930s, they started coming into their own, but most of them didn't have much personality or depth until people started taking comic books a little more seriously. Remember, for years comics were just silly books for children to many people and those villains were very one dimensional bad guys. They were mad scientists, Nazis, or monsters from another world who just wanted to take over the Earth, destroy it, or do something evil that they had not entirely thought out. But over time, the older villains had to grow to make new stories, give them new motives and make them almost human. Thus the real supervillains were born.Â
Since comic books are more significant than ever these days (look at how amazingly well "Avengers: Endgame" did at the box office) we're pretty confident you know your way around a supervillain's lair. But if you want to ace this quiz, you'll need to know more than just the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You'll need your own superpower, the kind that helps you identify supervillains, if you want to identify every single one of the villains in this quiz. Go ahead and give it a try.
Unlike most Batman villains, Harley Quinn got her start on "Batman: The Animated Series." She was originally intended to just be a single-episode character, but she caught on so well, she's become something of a phenomenon.
Bane is one of Batman's central villains and rose to prominence during a run of books in the 1990s that featured the villain breaking Batman's spine and Batman being replaced by a hero named Azrael who took up the mantle of the bat.
The Red Skull has appeared in live-action movies more often than you think. His most notable appearance was in "Captain America: The First Avenger," but he also appeared in "Avengers: Infinity War," "Avengers: Endgame" and in the very weird "Captain America" in 1990.
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Juggernaut has always been about of an over-the-top villain who is monstrously huge and nearly unstoppable. He's one of the few villains who was reused in X-Men movies, appearing first in "X-Men: The Last Stand" and later in "Deadpool 2."
A hero like Superman needs a villain like Lex Luthor who can battle the man of steel on a different level since no one can take him on physically. When Luthor first appeared in the 1940s, he was mainly a mad scientist character, but he's grown a bit since then.
Loki has been a villain to Thor in the comics since the early 1960s. His portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made the character so popular that in the comics, he's become more of an anti-hero, not unlike Venom, who still does bad things but in a way that makes you root for him.
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Rhino is one of Spider-Man's old school villains and one that never made a ton of sense if you thought about him too hard. In his earliest versions, he had a super-tough polymer rhinoceros suit permanently bonded to his skin, which seems like it just wouldn't work, but that's comic books for you.
Penguin is a staple of Batman's rogue's gallery. Not a man with physical power or superpowers, he's nevertheless a crafty villain who uses a curious array of weapons that are inexplicably hidden inside umbrellas more often than not.
Dr. Doom, who was born with the very suspicious name Victor von Doom, has been a staple villain of the Fantastic Four for years. He's not always a villain, mind you, and for a while, he even took up the mantle of Iron Man.
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Gorilla Grodd is one of the most unusual villains n DC Comics. He's a super-intelligent psychic gorilla with telekinetic powers, arguably something you don't run across every day. Despite his weirdness, he has appeared in a number of DC's animated films and shows, as well in live-action.
Sabretooth was conceived of by writer Chris Claremont with the intention that he would later be revealed as Wolverine's father. After Claremont left the X-Men, other writers followed a different path and the father storyline never came to be.
Catwoman has proven to be one of the most popular characters in DC history. She has been portrayed on film and television by Earth Kitt, Julie Newmar, Lee Meriweather, Halle Berry, Michelle Pfeiffer, Anne Hathaway, Camren Bicondova and Lili Simmons.
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Kingpin, otherwise known as Wilson Fisk, is a crime boss who often tangles with both Spider-Man and Daredevil. Though he's drawn to look like a very overweight man, the general idea is that he's actually all muscle that goes along with a criminal genius mind.
Vulture has been an enduring villain, first appearing in "The Amazing Spider-Man #2" all the way back in 1963. Throughout his history, there have been no less than four different people calling themselves Vulture, with different powers all based around flight.
Batman's ultimate villain is the Joker, a character made all the more fascinating by his total lack of origin. The character was inspired in part by the 1928 movie, "The Man Who Laughs," featuring Conrad Veidt who looks very much like a proto-Joker with a creepy, wide grin.
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Sinestro started off as a Green Lantern meant to protect the galaxy from evil but turned out to be a bit shady himself and ended up becoming a Yellow Lantern. For a brief time, he was also a Black Lantern, tried to become a White Lantern but was rejected by the ring.
Cletus Kasady, also known as Carnage, was born from a piece of the Venom symbiote that bonded to the criminally insane Kasady in prison. The fractured symbiote and the murderer merged to form something much worse than either of them together, and they were teased at the very end of the "Venom" movie.
Dormammu's history is a bit of a curious one as comic book characters go. He first appeared only as a name in a comic, but it caught the attention of fans. That meant writers had to dream up a character to match the name they'd made up.
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Ra's al Ghul is one of Batman's most enduring villains and well over 600 years old, at least in some timelines. Even though when Liam Neeson portrayed the character they managed to capture his criminal side pretty well, they neglected to point out that he has also mastered immortality thanks to something called the Lazarus Pits.
Bullseye isn't supposed to have any superpowers at all, but he does have an uncanny ability with marksmanship that ensures he never misses, or nearly never. Why that's not a superpower is anyone's guess.
The Green Goblin has been a villain of Spider-Man's since issue 14 of his comic in the '60s. He has proven to be so popular, that not only is there a Green Goblin who has been several different characters behind the mask, but there's also the Hobgoblin, the Demogoblin, the Goblinettes, the War Goblins, the Order of the Goblins and several other knock-off goblins.
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Darkseid is. Doesn't sound like a full sentence, but it gets repeated a lot in Darkseid stories. He has been compared to Marvel's Thanos, and the two do have a lot in common as immensely powerful cosmic villains, but Darkseid was created first.
Also known as Galan, Galactus is one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe and has even gone toe-to-toe with Thanos. In one timeline, Galactus turns the Punisher, who is now Cosmic Ghost Rider, into his herald to fight Thanos.
Doomsday made history back when he appeared in 1992 in the storyline that ended in the death of Superman. That story was so big, it made international news when it happened.
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Magneto dates back to 1963 and the very first issue of "Uncanny X-Men." He was pretty unimpressive as a villain when he first appeared, but writers managed to give him a lot of depth over the years, not to mention what Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender did with the character.
Clayface is one of Batman's oldest villains, though, to be fair, there have been a heck of a lot of Clayfaces. Throughout the years at least eight different characters have used the name, and that's just in the "normal" timeline, not including alternate universe stories.
Omega Red has been an X-Men villain since the early 1990s. The character also had a very brief appearance in "Deadpool 2" as an inmate in the Ice Box prison. You can check him out in a special feature of the Blu-ray release. Or you can Google it.
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Ego the Living Planet came about at a time when Jack Kirby was rather fascinated with the idea of the cosmos and everything in it. That's part of the reason Marvel has such a strong stable of interstellar characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy, Galactus, the Kree and so on.
Bizarro, sometimes called Bizarro Superman, was created as a counter to Superman and oddly, he existed in two forms. One appeared in Superboy's comic as a teen, and another appeared as an adult in the comic strip. Writers introduced both characters in the same month.
Ultron was created in the 1960s and has gone through a curious progression of resurrection. The character keeps rebuilding itself as newer and better models and was the first character to use adamantium when it created a new body for itself out of the alloy that would later be made famous by Wolverine's claws.
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Ozymandias is the chief villain of the Watchmen, as well as the movie of the same name. The name Ozymandias actually comes from ancient Egypt and was the Greek name of King Ramesses II.
Parallax is a villain who doesn't have its own body; rather, it acts as a parasite to take over others. It first manifested inside Hal Jordan in the Green Lantern comics. In the much-hated "Green Lantern" movie, it's depicted as a large, ugly cosmic storm kind of monster.
Mister Sinister was created in the 1980s by writer Chris Claremont. Claremont felt the X-Men had been recycling the same villains for too long and needed someone new to shake things up a bit. Thus, Mister Sinister was born.
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The Violator is one of the main villains from "Spawn" and also appeared in the much-maligned movie of the same name in the '90s. John Leguizamo plays the Clown in that film, and in one scene, he eats a handful of live maggots. That wasn't fakery for the movie. Leguizamo actually ate them.
The Saint of Killer was created by Garth Ennis for his comic book, "Preacher." The character's background is never fully explored in-depth, but it's pretty clear that he's one of the most powerful beings in creation and also brutal beyond belief.