Welcome back, nerd squad.
My name is Amanda McKnight and today we are going to be counting down the top 10 supervillains
with mental illness.
We have recently been looking into the illnesses suffered by many superheroes and if you watched
our part 1 and 2 of the videos centring around superheroes issues revolving around mental
health, it should not come as a surprise to you that while they definitely have it bad,
many supervillains have it worse.
A lot of what shapes a character into hero or villain comes from their origins and how
they decide to reckon with adversity they have faced in their past.
Many of the characters on this list have been even more shaped by their mental illness than
their counterpart heroes, as such you may notice that many of them suffer more from
their illnesses, seemingly unable to get help.
Seeking help is such an important step when it comes to mental illness and it leaves me
wondering if rehabilitation could have the power to turn many of these villains hero.
Alright, let's get counting.
10 Mr Freeze
All of Mr Freeze origins typically revolve around the death or loss of his wife, Nora,
or in some instances just a random woman named Nora.
It his struggle with grief and his struggle with depression surrounding her loss that
he ultimately suffers from the most.
But even from a young age, Victor Fries is often presented as struggling with depression.
He was sent to a boarding school by his parents after becoming obsessed with cryogenics and
freezing a cat.
While in boarding school he often felt alienated from the other students and struggled with
depression until he met Nora, whom he fell in love and whom changed his world.
He often fights Batman due to the fact that he is either driven to crime by his grief
or using criminal activities to try and raise money for his research.
9 The Riddler
When we are introduced to Edward Nigma in the new 52 reboot he is seen in Arkham Asylum
as a patient, while this is definitely not a guarantee that he suffers from any kind
of mental illness as the Asylum should not be held in high regard for either diagnosis
of their patients or treatment, given everything we've learned about the potential corruption
of the place as presented in comics and video games, we have other reasons to believe that
the Riddler is suffering from a mental illness.
In his original origins story, he was a young boy when he became obsessed with solving a
puzzle in order to win a prize at school, cheating by sneaking it at night and work
on perfecting his speedy puzzle solving skills until he could do it in under a minute and
then winning the contest the next day.
He was rewarded by a book of riddles and ever since then he has become obsessed with puzzles
and riddles.
So obsessed in fact that as the villain, the Riddler, every riddle or puzzle he provides
Batman with must have a solution.
8 Maximus the Mad
Black Bolt's brother was driven to insanity when exposed to his brother's booming voice,
considered being close enough to Black Bolt for his power to alter his brain.
Maximus has always been a brilliant man and still was able to hold on to much of his wits.
However as a result of this exposure he became delusional, started talking to himself and
as such his grip on reality has often been revealed in the comics to be less than stable.
His obsession also often makes him ruthless to a fault in regards to the pursuit of him
becoming a leader and there is nothing he won't do in order to take it from his brother,
whom he also blames for his mental instability.
7 Ozymandias
While Adrian Veidt may claim to be the smartest man alive and a very competent villain when
it comes to achieving his goals, he too struggles with his mental illness.
Ozymandias can be classified as someone suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.
He is often seen looking down on humanity, feeling himself above it all.
He is an attention seeker who remains unempathetic to the plights of others, slaughtering millions
of people in order to be deemed a hero by the rest of the world.
Even more problematic are his feelings of self importance.
He feels that he is the one who has to save the world as though he is the only one good
enough to do it and is obsessed with success and power.
Manipulating others in order to get what he wants.
Thankfully, his plans are for the greater good of humanity but ultimately they are still
self serving when it comes to what Adrian gets out of it.
And what's worse, they don't even really take.
His narcissism actually leads to his undoing.
6 Harley Quinn
In DC's film Suicide Squad, Harley's backstory is painted as someone who fell for the Joker
and was willingly tortured by him to the point where she was driven insane.
Often she is a character whose blind love of the Joker led to her undying devotion and
within that her insanity.
She is often stated as suffering from battered woman syndrome.
This is a syndrome wherein a victim of abuse feels compelled to stay with their assailant
despite the abuse, stuck in a dangerous cycle, wherein they do not blame their assailant
for the damage done to them.
In fact we have seen Harley Quinn's character grow and develop as a more independent than
codependent character as she has gone through the four stages of battered woman syndrome:
denial, guilt, enlightenment, and grief.
Leading her to eventually feel empowered enough to leave the Joker.
5 Typhoid Mary
Mary is a lover and villain to Daredevil.
She suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder which was actually seemingly activated by
Daredevil despite her possessing this different personalities from a young age after she was
abused as a child by her father.
She had met Matt Murdock at the brothel where she worked and one night Daredevil came there
to track down a villain.
During a scuffle Daredevil knocked Mary out of a window triggering her DID and causing
her to vow that she would never be harmed by a man again.
Her three personalities are Mary who is often sweet and tempered, Typhoid who is often violent
and lustful and Bloody Mary who is often sadistic and brutal.
While her persona has had a romantic relationship with Matt, her Typhoid persona has had a relationship
with Kingpin.
4 The Green Goblin
One could classify Green Goblin as a psychopath.
Norman Osborn seems to suffer like many heroes for DID, dissociative identity disorder.
Using the term psychopath is not an actual diagnosis by the way, not that I possess the
qualifications to diagnose anyone, not even a comic book character.
Still it should be said that being a psychopath is not an official diagnosis.
Many people that are classified as psychopaths or sociopaths are most likely suffering from
the very real disorder of antisocial personality disorder.
In Osborn's case, his psychopathic tendencies stem from a combination of his brilliance
and the fact that his mind was warped by Goblin persona after he ingested the green goblin
serum.
He is unempathetic, violent, and able to mask his intentions through mimicking emotions
in order to manipulate others.
He also happens to be more obsessed with Spider-Man than anyone ever has been in the comics and
probably in the real world as well.
3 Two Face
Either way you look at Harvey Dent's back story, he was Gotham's young and bright DA
when he had his face disfigured when he has acid thrown in his face.
I personally like his back story post-crisis best.
In that retelling, Harvey Dent was a victim of abuse as a young boy.
His father would decide whether or not beat him based on the flip of his lucky coin.
Which lead to young Harvey becoming disconnected with the idea of having a reason or motivation
behind one's actions and becoming indecisive to the point that he would often make his
own decisions based on the flip of a coin.
He was diagnosed as bipolar with paranoid schizophrenia.
After being disfigured by the accused who threw acid on him during Harvey's cross-examination
in a trial, Dent turns to a life of crime.
Scaring one side of his father's lucky coin and flipping it to decide whether he will
perform criminal acts of charitable ones.
2 Carnage
Cletus Kassady is an accomplished serial killer and criminally insane.
He has psychopathic tendencies and suffers from antisocial personality disorder.
He is so focused on killing that even when he was in his inverse state and found himself
with feelings of remorse for all the vile things he had done, he didn't even know how
to go about his pursuit of being a hero.
He was still very violent and distracted by thoughts of wanted to eviscerate those he
found himself tasked with saving.
He has even confessed that when it comes to his crimes and all of the murders that he
has committed that he genuinely enjoyed them, which puts on psychopathic level unequivocally.
1 Joker
Joker has a few different diagnoses.
We obviously do not know about his past for certain as he is a man with many backstories
but none that have ever been confirmed by DC as being the true one and Joker often likes
to change his backstory as it suits him.
One this is for sure, he exhibits a blatant disregard for life, his own and others putting
him on a sociopathic level.
In fact I would even go so far as to say that Joker is more of a psychopathic.
When it comes to psychology many people believe the two words are interchangeable but in fact
they are not.
A sociopath still feels emotions but is often detached from the world, they don't feel remorse
but they often don't perceive their actions as being wrong or evil.
A psychopath often knows what they are doing is wrong and does not care.
They are generally more calm and organized than a sociopath.
They don't really feel emotion but are skilled at mimicking it often.
Psychopaths minds are more geared toward criminal activities as a result.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed exploring some of the minds and struggles behind our heroes that often
help to explain the why behind their criminal activities.
Especially for those villains who seem unmotivated.
Understanding another's psyche helps bring us closer to understanding ourselves.
Are there any supervillains that you feel we left out?
Are there any on this list that you think could be redeemed with therapy and treatment?
Let me know in the comments below.
And as always on your way down to the comment please be sure to like, share, subscribe and
ring that bell.
You know I love it when you do.
This has been top 10 nerd and my name is Amanda McKnight, reminding you as always to stay
nerdy, YouTube.