Most Psychotic Characters of All Time

For Halloween, I wanted to do something special. I decided that it would be fun to do a top 10 list of the most psychotic characters of all time. However, given the different target audiences of anime versus western animation, I thought it would be fun to do a top 5 list for each. For the anime list I decided to stick to series for older teenagers and adults. Basically, I looked at series designed to have psychotic characters. For western animation, I concentrated on shows for children. For the most part, the characters from the western animation series were characters that I found disturbing as a kid. Obviously in comparison to the psychotic characters from the anime series most of these will be much more tame. However, I was looking at these characters as if I was the designed audience. So what might seem tame as an adult might not seem as so for a kid. Without further ado I bring you my list of the most psychotic characters of all time. Potential spoilers ahead.

Honorable Mentions

Eric Cartman (South Park, Western Animation)– If I had not limited myself to kid’s shows for western animation Cartman would have been either number 1 or 2. He is extremely psychotic. We are talking about a character that killed someone’s parents and feed them to him over $16.12. He’s caused more than one character to commit suicide including the wife of psychiatrist because the psychiatrist called him fat. The wife did nothing to him. He also is so anti-Semitic that he tried to start a Neo-Nazi party with himself as a replacement for Hitler. That’s all ignoring him having potentially additional personalities that come out as Mitch Connor or his toy’s personalities. A couple of which are just as evil as he is. Specifically, Polly Prissypants who “murders” the rest of Cartman’s toys in extremely horrific ways because ‘she’ thought he needed to grow up. He is both insane and very evil.

Ken Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul, Anime)– I put this as an honorable mention based upon where I hope his character is going. Kaneki is one of my favorite characters in any media. The anime thus far has downplayed his character’s development. Within the manga he is very much an insane yet complex character. His insanity can be seen somewhat in the anime as he has an entire episode of him talking to Rize in his mind trying to convince himself to kill or be killed. Eventually, he chooses the former and royally beats up his torturer and eats his kakuja. He then stoically joins the Aogiri Tree to “protect” his friends. He later cannibalizes a lot of other ghouls. His character gets even more complex in Tokyo Ghoul:re which I am assuming season 3 of Tokyo Ghoul will be somewhat based upon. If they follow the story somewhat he will lose his memories and join the CCG. If his scene that he regains his memories is even similar to the one in manga it will show his absolute insanity and psychotic nature. Of course if season 3 never happens then this is all a moot point.

Western #5 Katz (Courage the Cowardly Dog)

Courage the Cowardly Dog featured a lot of insanely creepy characters. It was a show that thrived with a very dark storyline. Among the villains of the show there was one that stuck out to me as being the most psychotic and that was Katz. Now, I’m not saying that Katz was the most insane of Courage’s villains that honor would go to Freaky Fred. Well people could argue, if Freaky Fred was the most insane why not have him as the most psychotic? Freaky Fred never tried to kill anyone he just had a rather strange hair shaving fetish. Everything that he loved he felt he had to shave. Now in stark contrast, Katz tried to kill Courage or Muriel in every episode he was in. His reasons for killing them were all completely random as well. Everything from destroying his competitor’s business to making a gladiator sport between inanimate objects his plans were completely insane. What added to his creep factor for me also was his calm creepy British accent and his personal theme song. His most psychotic moment came in his very first episode, where he owned the Katz Motel. His motel is a front so that he can have a food source for his “loves,” which are giant spiders. He has this huge smile on his face as he is about to feed Courage to his spider. He is a complete insane sadist with no empathy for anyone.

Anime #5 Seryu Ubiquitous (Akame Ga Kill)

The world of Akame Ga Kill is a horrible place. The rich and the powerful do whatever they want. There were a lot of potential candidates for this list from this show. You have the sadist spoiled girl of Aria, who tortured another girl to death simply because she was jealous of her hair. You also have Esdeath, the general who thinks only of fighting and war. Those are just two of several horrible characters. But the one that stuck out the most to me was Seryu Ubiquitous. She is a member of the Imperial Police. Apparently, a long time prior to the events of the story her father was killed in action. During the early events of the story, her mentor was killed by the main character of Akame Ga Kill, Tatsumi. Her mentor was killed because he was falsely accusing people of crimes they didn’t commit. The deaths of her father and mentor sent her on this path of  ‘absolute justice’. Basically, everyone that works for the empire no matter how corrupt they might be is good and everyone against the empire even people against their will are evil. In her eyes, all evil must be destroyed. She seemed to take pleasure in being the one to kill the evil-doers. The first indication of her psychotic nature is a passing comment she makes to her Imperial Arm, Koro. She tells him that when they get home she will feed him another couple of death row prisoners. The next time you see her she gets the jump on Sheele and Mine. Her real personality then shows up.  She proceeds to have Koro attempt to rip Sheele and Mine apart. When Sheele gets the upper hand on her she reveals that in order to serve up her ‘justice’ she replaced parts of her body with weapons. She uses backhanded tactics and finally has Koro rip Sheele to shreds. She then yells to the heavens, “Daddy…I killed one of the evil people, daddy,” which honestly creeped me out the most. This is before she joined Jaegars. After joining Jaegars, she kills several thieves and feeds Koro Chelsea’s body. Just as a note the previously mentioned Esdeath comforted her after Dr. Stylish’s death. Esdeath who is also pretty insane, knew Seryu was a complete lunatic. When a sadist lunatic comforts you because you are crazy, you are REALLY crazy. Her brutality during the Sheele fight and the pleasure she had after killing her, just stuck with me.

Western #4 Negaduck (Darkwing Duck)

This one goes straight back to my childhood. Within the Darkwing Duck series basically all of the Fearsome Five are insane but very interesting. However, there is one that clearly stuck out as the most psychotic and that would be Negaduck. Negaduck is literally the “Darkwing Duck” of the Negaverse. The Negaverse is basically the series equivalency of the Bizarro world where everything is backwards. Where Darkwing is the defender of justice Negaduck is the ultimate villain. Within the Negaverse he is the ultimate leader. This is because he is undefeated in battle and the most violent of its citizens. He sees the other universe as a means to get more cash and to expand his Negaverse territory. Although, those are his main goals he really just wants to utterly annihilate Darkwing Duck. What makes him psychotic is the fact that in a group of 5 insane characters, the other 4 cower in fear whenever he is angry at them. He literally uses a chainsaw as his main weapon. How many kid’s show villains try to chop up both their enemies and their allies? Just to add to his psychotic personality, if he sees anything cute or cuddly he will destroy it on sight. He is completely remorseless, devoid of all empathy, sees his allies as mere pawns, and enjoys seeing others in pain.

Anime #4 Hibana Daida (Deadman Wonderland)

Deadman Wonderland is another series that features a lot of psychotic characters. I had to debate who to include because both Genkaku and Hibana were both very much insane and disturbing. While I think that Genkaku was more insane overall it came down to a simple fact, Hibana had a moment that made me cringe and Genkaku did not. Hibana is a 7-year-old girl. She happens to be what is called an Undertaker which is a prison enforcer for Tamaki, the promoter. She was tortured by her mother as a means of punishment for any remedial mistake she made. This punishment according to Hibana’s mother would turn her into a “good girl” or “lady” if you prefer. Eventually, Hibana saw that mommy needed to be “punished” so she tortured her mother to death. Eventually, she had to punish the bad kids in her kindergarten class and so she killed all of them. She takes sick pleasure in dishing out punishment to the bad people. At a certain point, she explains what Lingering Death is. Then the moment that made me cringe was after that when she starts to perform a Lingering Death on Nagi with her sword-whip. If you don’t know what Lingering Death is, then as a basic explanation it is a torture technique where a person has small cuts taken from their body and they slowly bleed out until the die. The fact that they showed something so disturbing just made me feel sick. This was the reason I included Hibana on this list.

Western #3 The Joker (Batman: The Animated Series)

The Joker is a psychotic character that transcends all media. Every version of the character brings something new, fun, and completely insane. The version I am citing for this list is the one I grew up with The Joker from Batman: The Animated Series. He is cunning, abusive, brash, and extremely psychotic. His schemes run the gambit from killing everyone in town with Joker gas to something as small as putting Batman on trial for “creating” him. The one commonality is that basically all of Joker’s episodes feature him trying to kill someone, usually Batman. Most of the rest of the villains in B:TAS, show a desire for more money or power. The Joker until he was flat broke showed no desire for financial gain. All he wants is to have his “fun.” Whether that fun is killing Batman or taking back his image from a casino he wants to have it. He is not averse to using mental torture to get what he wants. This is never more abundantly clear than in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. The Joker and Harley tortured and disfigured Tim Drake who ended up having a complete mental breakdown because of it. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though. I mean he basically Jedi mind tricked Harley into becoming his assistant and he stalked and threatened a guy and his family for 2 years because he cursed at him. The only thing holding The Joker back from being higher is that honestly he is more psychotic in the comics. This is mostly because he can actually kill in the comics and he can’t on a kid’s show. By the way, I’m going to give a special shout out to The Joker from The Batman as while the performance in B:TAS is basically perfection the performance in The Batman is still very good. Also I found The Joker in The Batman to be almost more insane and definitely a better physical challenge to Batman. That said again, The Joker in B:TAS is still better and more psychotic in my opinion.

Anime #3 Lucy/Nyu (Elfen Lied)

Lucy was one of the hardest to place. The most cringe-worthy moment on the show was actually against her, where the bullies bludgeon her dog to death. However, I felt as a character she was way more psychotic than either Seryu or Hibana. It also helps that she’s the main character and the other two were side characters. She suffers from a sever case of dissociative identity disorder. You have Nyu which is the sweet innocent girl. Then you have Lucy the mostly psychotic but still has some good inside girl. Finally, you have her inner voice which is completely psychotic. We don’t really see too much of her inner voice except when it tells her to kill Kouta before he hurts her and when it tells her to kill all humans because she was jealous of Kouta spending time with Yuka. After listening to her inner voice, Lucy goes on a killing spree of dozens of people at a fair which finally culminates with her killing Kouta’s sister and father in front of him. This event causes him sever mental damage where he barely remembers any events prior to waking up from his coma months later. In killing humans she is completely ruthless. She will attack them without empathy no matter who they are, except for Kouta. She has been convinced that all humans are the enemy and must die. During her fight with Nana, she even used Mayu as a distraction so that she could get the upper hand. The weird part is that unlike previous entries on this list that show some emotion when killing, usually pleasure, she has the same expressionless face. It’s like she doesn’t even care that she’s taking lives. Something is completely wrong when a character is so used to death that they are completely apathetic to it.

Western #2 HIM (The Powerpuff Girls)

The Powerpuff Girls was a show very much made for kids. Most of the villains were very dumb and comedic. In fact, it was almost impossible to take villains like Mojo Jojo and Fuzzy Lumpkins seriously. But then there’s HIM. HIM may look like another joke villain, but appearances are not everything. Let’s just start by looking at his introduction. The narrator describes HIM as such, “This is a villain so evil, so sinister, so horribly vile that even the utterance of his name strikes fear into the hearts of men! The only safe way to refer to this king of darkness is simply…’HIM’!” Okay, now how many other characters can stake claim that no one utters their name. I can only think of one other one and he is not in on a kid’s cartoon. HIM is basically a complete devil incarnate. Every other villain on the show’s motivations are either money or power. HIM has no use for either of those. His only motivation is because he hates the Powerpuff Girls and wants to see the world in chaos. Unlike the rest of the villains that go for more traditional ways to beat the Powerpuffs he tries to mentally break them. There’s an episode that the Powerpuff Girls accidentally transported themselves 50 years into the future. When the PPGs, see Townsville it is in complete shambles and the townsfolk are either dead or completely broken. It’s then revealed that the one that broke the town was HIM. HIM brings the townsfolk over and they tell the PPGs that they blame them for everything that happened. Another episode has HIM give the PPGs nightmares of their greatest fears. He was clearly trying to destroy them mentally. The part with HIM that always creeped me out was he constantly changing voice. He would have this creepy effeminate voice and then it would change to this scary angry voice. As a kid, I found HIM to be the most disturbing character I had ever seen. Just to a point on how much HIM is feared among even his peers, Mojo Jojo, the “#1 villain on the show”, refers to HIM as “sir”.

Anime #2 Shion Sonozaki (Higurashi: When They Cry)

Higurashi is a difficult series to pick one character from. When the entire concept of the series is the entire town is infected with a virus that makes them insane and each story arc features a different character being the most insane, it’s kind of hard to pick just one psychotic character. Just to cite what I am talking about, the first arc of the series has Keiichi bash Mion and Rena’s heads in and then claw out his own throat from his paranoia. Each arc has similar events for the main character. The one that just stuck out the most though was Shion Sonozaki. The first arc you see her you think she is the victim of her sister’s insanity. It is later revealed that she had traded places with her sister and allowed her to take all of the blame for the events. Arguably the most famous scene from the series is beginning of episode 5 where she is laughing at Rika as she’s stabbing herself in the neck. During the arc that actually shows her as the villain, you see that she fell in love with a boy, Satoshi Hojo, that her grandmother did not approve of because he was a member of the “traitorous Hojo family”. Her grandmother made her remove 3 of her fingernails to atone for her sins against her family. Shion thought that by atoning that Satoshi would be fine. However, shortly there after he disappeared. She thought her grandmother was behind his disappearance. Shion then goes on a warpath where she systematically kills everyone that she feels was responsible for Satoshi’s death. It starts with her killing her grandmother using a taser and then whipping her corpse and setting her face on fire. Then Shion hangs her grandfather, imprisons Mion, has the scene with Rika. She then brutally stabs Satoko several times until she is finally dead. After that she shocks her sister who falls in a well and dies and eventually she stabs Keiichi in the stomach. The stabbing of Keiichi did not kill him but the horror drove him to have hallucinations of her attacking him finally caused him to have an acute heart failure. Now just to recap she tortured or killed basically everyone in the entire story usually with a huge smile on her face. She might be a little psychotic.

Western #1 Bill Cipher

If you had asked me even as recently as a week ago who I thought was the most psychotic character in western animation of all time is I would have said HIM. But then I was introduced to Bill Cipher. When I first saw Bill I thought he was another cute villain of the day character on Gravity Falls. Within ten seconds of his introduction I realized I was wrong. In his first scene, he takes teeth out of a deer and gives them to Gideon. That was the moment I knew Bill was beyond insane. Bill later takes over Dipper’s body to gain access to Dipper’s journal. When he takes over Dipper’s body he reveals he is a masochist, who finds pain to be hilarious. Next time we see him he is within Grunkle Ford’s dreams telling him that he is coming. Finally, Bill uses the interdimensional rift to break out of his dimension and causes complete havoc to Gravity Falls. Now that’s when we fully see his personality. Within a few seconds of coming to our dimension he takes Pacifica’s dad’s face and rearranges all of his organs. He makes weirdness or madness bubbles which are designed to drive whoever goes in one to go completely insane. He stuck Mabel in a fantasy bubble that appears to be a perfect world but is actually a diabolical trick to get her out of the picture. Next, he turns the entire townsfolk into statues that he combines together to make a throne that he sits upon. He has no regard to life. That includes his own men who were playing a game of spin the person and then kill the loser. He also decides to kill one of the Pines twins, just in his words “for the heck of it”. He kills the Time Baby and the time police so that he alone, would control time and space. His entire mission is simply to destroy our dimension. His reason? He wanted to move from 2D to 3D to 4D. He just wanted to move on to the next dimensional space. That literally means he just wants to destroy everything and move on. This just shows he only cares about destruction. The most interesting part, when called “insane” he happily agrees. How many characters not only agree that they are insane, but embrace it? Aside from Bill the only one I can think of is maybe The Joker. Bill is by far the most psychotic character from any western animation show.

Anime #1 Yuno Gasai (Future Diary)

Let’s be honest here, did you really think it would be anyone other than Yuno Gasai? If you didn’t pick up on it from my review of Future Diary, I love Yuno Gasai as a character. We are talking about a character so completely insane that she completely transcends the series she is from. I mean just look at what she did over the course of the series. She starts out as a cute stalker girl. Then rather quickly we realize she is so willing to do anything for her beloved Yuki that she would happily let the rest of her school die so that she could save him. He later finds a couple of corpses in her house, that she blocks out ever having killed. Later she kills basically an entire cult of people so that he could live. She then plans to kill his mom if she wasn’t cool with their relationship, kills a 5-year-old because he’s a potential threat, and tries to kill two of Yuki’s friends because she didn’t want him falling for one of them. All of that is before we really realize just how insane she really is. The moment you realize just how insane she truly is when she drugs Yuki and locks him in a hotel in the mountains. In her attempt to help him she literally kidnaps him and keeps him drugged. All the while introducing him to “mom and dad” which are her parents’ skulls. Her complete willingness to not only keep him contained but to also kill his friends was nuts. But later you have her manipulate his feelings and cause him to kill his friends because she needed him willing to kill with no hesitation. Finally when he was unwilling to kill her and win the game she went on a rampage trying to kill him so that this game could end and she could start over with World 3’s Yuki. Now note to be with Yuki in this world she had already gone back in time, killed herself, and started over. It’s heavily implied if there is no God of space and time in a dimension that means the dimension falls apart. That means she literally allowed an entire dimension to fall apart so that she could relive her time with Yuki. Which basically means every person to have ever lived in that dimension is now dead. How many characters can claim they let everyone in a dimension die? That is completely beyond psychotic. With how insane she is in story, the amount of deaths she causes, and the amount of pain she inflicts on innocent people, Yuno Gasai is the most psychotic character of all time.