When it comes to Sony Animation characters, there are plenty who are lovable, fun and
even kind-hearted or heroic.
However, for every hero, there has to be a villain - and Sony has plenty of them.
From the mean, to the cruel, to the absolutely wicked.
But which one is the best at being the absolute worst?
I’m Brad with WickedBinge, and this is Sony Animation Villains: Bad to Evil.
If you’ve seen our Sony Heroes list, then you already know our rules.
With the exception of ‘The Mitchells VS the Machines’, we’re only going to be
counting films that had a theatrical release, no Direct-to-DVD sequels.
They also have to be under the Sony Animations name, either as an original Sony product or
something Sony distributed.
Finally, we’re only looking at purely animated films, so no live-action/animated hybrids
like the Smurfs.
Okay, time to rank some baddies!
We’re going to be starting with our least evil characters and working our way down to
the Truly Evil Villains.
For our Least Evil villain, we’re going with Ericka Van Helsing.
Being one of the few redeemable villains on this list, we really couldn’t think of any
other character who deserved to be at the top.
Although she started off just as murderous towards Dracula and the other monsters as
her great-grandfather, it really didn’t take Ericka very long to warm up to the Count.
Given how she was raised, we can’t really blame her for having a hatred of monsters,
and for doing things like trying to crush, poison or manipulate Dracula.
From her perspective, she was just following in her Van Helsing legacy of wiping out so-called
‘evil’ monsters.
Once she realized how wrong she was, Ericka regretted her lies as well as the part she
played in her grandfather’s scheme.
However, she made up for her mistakes when she saved Dracula’s life during the Kraken
attack and confessed her love for him.
Because she saw the error of her ways and grew from a monster hater to someone who truly
saw them as people, we felt we couldn’t put Ericka any lower on our list.
Up next, we have the chill pirate, Black Belamy.
In “Pirates!
Band of Misfits”, Black Belamy is shown as the primary rival for the Pirate Captain,
with both of them being after the Pirate of the Year award.
Naturally, Black Belamy is much more successful in terms of plundering and stealing treasure.
The dude literally rolls up to the pirate tavern with a whale full of gold.
Now THAT’S style.
Belamy also isn’t shy about making fun of the Pirate Captain, his crew and his ship.
Later on, when it looks like the Pirate Captain is going to actually win Pirate of the Year,
Belamy is the one who reveals the truth about the Pirate Captain being pardoned.
So, why is Belamy not lower on our list?
Well, for as successful as he is at being a pirate, he’s a very minor threat compared
to the film’s Big Bad, which we’ll get to later.
Belamy, at his core, is egotistical and a very typical rival character.
While there’s nothing wrong with a character like that, it kind of cements that the only
thing making him an actual villain is his career as a pirate.
Without all the plundering and implied murder, Belamy is just a jerk and can’t really compare
to the rest of Sony’s villain catalogue.
Following him is a very similar character, Tank.
Much like Belamy, Tank only cares about being the best in his field - in this case, surfing.
With an ego the size of a surfboard, Tank treats pretty much everyone like dirt whether
they’re a rival or not.
Even little kids aren’t exempt from this.
Taking the ‘only caring about himself’ aspect of his personality to its extreme,
Tank barely even notices when Cody nearly drowns during their surfing duel.
Tank is also a huge cheater.
In the final match, we see him attempt to knock Chicken Joe off his surfboard, a move
that could have possibly sent Joe into the dangerous and deadly Graveyard area.
While all of these traits make him much worse than someone like Belamy or Ericka, at the
end of the day he’s still just a jerk jock character.
Sooo, not exactly an evil mastermind, and as such we couldn’t put him any lower down.
We’re ranking Chef Quasimoto next.
This bellringer turned manic cook played only a small part in the first Hotel Transylvania
film, but still managed to bring some level of tension and danger in.
Naturally, what ranks him this low is his willingness and eagerness to eat humans, something
that no other monster does.
It’s pretty disturbing to see him happily roasting Johnny over a spit while Johnny is
still alive.
Another thing that separates Quasimoto from the other monsters in the hotel is his selfishness.
We see him fight off Dracula’s guards when he kidnaps Johnny, indicating that he doesn’t
really care about obeying orders or even keeping the hotel safe from humans - he just wants
to eat them.
Quasimoto is also the one that reveals Johnny’s secret, exposing Dracula’s lies.
So yeah, he’s not very loyal either.
It’s really no wonder that he’s only in the first film, we’re sure Dracula fired
him pretty quickly after all this.
But while he’s definitely antagonistic and a bit cannibalistic, like we said, Quasimoto
is a pretty minor threat in the film and doesn’t do much outside of his main scenes.
Next, we have one of two hunters on this list, Shaw.
While there isn’t necessarily evil about needing to hunt for food or even for a hobby,
Shaw certainly takes it to an extreme.
Because of his belief that animals will overthrow mankind one day, Shaw makes it his mission
to not just hunt woodland creatures, but to be as cruel towards them as possible.
It’s gotten to the point where he enjoys attacking animals without provocation, like
when he intentionally tried to hit Elliot with his car, nearly hitting several people
in the process.
Yeahhh, this guy is pretty psychotic and bloodthirsty.
But as awful as he is, he’s still just a guy with a gun, and he and the other hunters
are easily able to be taken out once the animals start to take a stand.
This plus the fact that he only directs his ax-craziness towards animals and not people
stops him from ranking above our bigger threats and evil-er villains.
From the great outdoors to the digital, Smiler is next.
You wouldn’t think such a happy emoji would be able to rule a phone with an iron fist,
but Smiler proves that looks can be deceiving.
While we can acknowledge the concern she has for keeping their world inside the phone safe,
understanding how devastating it could be for the emoji citizens if Alex were to wipe
it clean because of a mistake, it really doesn’t excuse her actions.
When Gene makes a mistake, she immediately jumps to deleting him instead of trying to
find literally any other solution.
Like a ruthless boss, she clearly only sees the other emojis as tools that she can easily
get rid of if they fail to do their job.
With how many bots she has at her disposal, we’re sure she’s tried to delete many
more emojis than just Gene.
The movie also implies that, along with being a control freak, she’s also pretty mentally
unstable and refuses to believe that an emoji can be anything more than what they were created
for, even when the evidence is right in front of her.
Though she is indeed an extremist, her good intentions in regards to not wanting to see
their phone-world get erased keep her from falling any lower.
Up next is another Hotel Transylvania villain, Bela.
The main characteristic of Bela is that he hates humans, even more so than his boss,
Vlad.
As such, Bela has no qualms with killing anyone who is (or is affiliated with) humans, often
flying into a rage when he even hears the word ‘human’.
He first tries to kidnap both Dennis and Winnie, cruelly taunting them as he sends his bat-monster
colony after the rest of the hotel residents.
He even hurts Winnie at one point, which is what sends Dennis into enough of a rage to
unlock his vampire powers.
So, hey, at least Bela is helpful in that sense.
Although Bela’s plan fails in the end, he still refuses to give up completely after
being defeated and even tries to kill Johnny after the fight.
Although kidnapping and attempted murder is nothing to sneeze at, we really can’t put
Bela any lower simply due to such a small part he plays in the second film.
He’s introduced and defeated so quickly that he doesn’t have time to do much evil,
and while he still does more than someone like Quasimoto, it’s impact is again somewhat
lessened by the quick work Dracula and his family make out of his bat-monster colony.
Reaching the halfway point on our list, we have the dis-honorable Mayor Shelbourne.
Despite his title, it’s obvious from the get-go that Shelbourne cares very little about
the citizens of Swallow Falls and only cares about himself.
It’s ultimately his greed that pushes him to try and turn Swallow Falls into a tourist
attraction using Flint’s machine.
Even when Flint warns him about the growing danger of the food weather, Shelbourne takes
it upon himself to make the situation even worse, ordering a ‘Las Vegas-style buffet’
from the machine and essentially dooming the world.
We see him fight off Flint when Flint tries to stop this massive order, Shelbourne ends
up destroying the machine’s control device, which creates an even bigger food storm.
Then, when it’s time to evacuate the town, Shelbourne proves to be a coward too when
he abandons his citizens and makes sure to get himself off the island first.
While these are all his worst moments, Shelbourne really is all around a terrible person, constantly
manipulating people like Flint and shifting blame to anyone but himself.
Early on in the film, he even talks about spending the entire town’s budget on a sardine-themed
amusement park without consulting anyone, which pretty much cements that he was a terrible
mayor even before all the food weather started.
Given that he nearly doomed not just his town but the entire world, we of course had to
give him a pretty low ranking.
Following him is another selfish leader, Queen Victoria.
As the self-proclaimed “hater of pirates”, Queen Vicky has no qualms with tricking pirates,
using them for her own gain, or trying to cut their heads off with a katana.
As the queen, before the events of the film, she’s already sentenced many pirates to
imprisonment and/or execution.
It should be noted that Vicky isn’t doing this to protect her citizens.
No, instead she’s just personally offended by pirates, viewing them as “out of date”
in comparison to her kingdom’s modern and science-driven society, and as such deserve
to be hated and ultimately made “extinct”.
The Pirate Captain likely would have shared this same fatal fate, if not for Vicky’s
interest in Polly the Dodo Bird.
And why exactly IS she so interested in Polly, you may be asking?
Well, because she wants to EAT her, of course.
As it turns out, Vicky is part of an exclusive club of elites that captures, cooks and eats
the rarest animals in existence - and the closer to extinction, the better!
Needless to say, this is both cruel and destructive.
Add in all implied pirate execution and attempted pirate (and dodo bird) murder, and you’ve
got yourself a pretty violent, royal pain-in-the-butt.
What keeps Queen Vicky from falling any lower is that, despite her hatred of pirates, she
was originally fair to the Pirate Captain.
Though she lied about Polly being safe in a zoo, Vicky did still pardon him for his
crimes and gave him a ton of treasure in exchange.
While this doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, it’s still a moment of
fairness.
We’re ranking our second Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs villain, Chester V, next.
While maybe not AS selfish as Mayor Shelbourne, Chester certainly beats Shelbourne in terms
of cruelty.
Being a man of science and technology, Chester would rather have holograms of himself as
companions than anyone else.
As such, he views the idea of ‘friends’ with contempt, claiming that friends would
only “slow him down”.
His workers - and even his assistant Barb, who he also mocks for being a monkey - are
viewed by him as tools, and he doesn’t care for them at all.
But while these traits would only make Chester an egotistical jerk and narcissist, what truly
drives him into villain territory is his cruelty towards the food-animals.
Because he only sees them as food and not actually-sentient creatures, Chester had planned
to use both them and Flint’s invention as a means to create a constant supply of material
that could then be turned into food bars.
When Flint’s friends try to stop him, not only does Chester capture them, but he also
tries to kill them by sending them through the food grinder.
YIKES!
Considering everything he tried to pull, you really don’t feel sorry for him at all when
he ends up getting eaten by the Cheese Spider.
Entering the bottom 5, we have Zeta.
As the main antagonist of the second Angry Birds movie, Zeta nearly wipes out all of
the citizens of both Bird and Pig Island in her attempts to take over both islands.
What makes this even worse is the fact that the birds and pigs did nothing to her, and
she’s mostly acting out of anger for getting dumped at the altar by her ex, Mighty Eagle.
Now bitter, Zeta only cares about creating her own perfect resort, happily using her
ice and lava balls to obliterate anyone that gets in her way.
Unfortunately for her henchmen, they aren’t spared from her wrath and Zeta doesn’t often
hesitate to punish those who don’t meet her high expectations.
However, as self-centered and cruel as she is, Zeta does have a soft spot for her daughter,
Debbie, and when it looks like she accidentally killed her, Zeta is horrified.
She lets go of her anger after this, mostly because it was Mighty Eagle that protected
Debbie, and is able to live in peace with the birds and pigs.
Although this technically counts as a redemption, we really can’t forget about all the destruction
she caused, nor can we forget about the deaths she nearly caused.
Just outside of the evil podium, it’s Abraham Van Helsing.
As the arch enemy of Dracula, Van Helsing made it his mission to try and wipe out all
monsters.
For his entire life, he never once bothered to try and see monsters as people, even when
they proved to ultimately be harmless.
Rather than destroying them to protect mankind, Van Helsing simply sees monsters as abominations
that should be destroyed - which is ironic, given the mechanical body he eventually ends
up with.
He also trained members of his family, like Ericka, to be monster haters and killers.
Although Dracula sees him as more of an annoyance than an actual threat for most of their history,
Van Helsing becomes a true threat when he and Ericka lure all the monsters onto a cruise
in the hopes of destroying them once and for all.
In the film’s climax, we see him summon a giant kraken to attack the innocent monsters,
and if it weren’t for the interference of Ericka, Drac and Johnny’s DJ skills, all
of the monsters there likely would have had a very painful death.
In addition to all the attempted murder, Van Helsing isn’t exactly a great guardian either.
He raised Ericka in isolation so that she could be trained more effectively, and when
Ericka tries to stop his final attack, Van Helsing doesn’t seem to care if he injures
her or not.
He just shrugs and easily accepts that the Van Helsing bloodline will end with him.
What keeps him being ranked in the bottom of our list is his change of heart after Dracula
saves his life.
While yes, it’s a bit of a cheap cop-out redemption, it still happened.
He even offered all the other monsters refunds for the cruise.
While maybe it still doesn’t redeem ALL of his awful actions, it’s still juuust
enough to keep him out of our Bottom 3.
Earning our Bronze Medal of Evil is The Royal Hunter.
So…
What’s worse than trying to kill innocent animals for fun?
How about an innocent baby?
While, in terms of villains from “The Star”, it would maybe make more sense to put King
Herod in this spot since he’s the one that gives the order to kill the newborn Baby Jesus,
we have to acknowledge that he really doesn’t play too big of a role in the film.
In comparison, the Royal Hunter is the one who is actually willing to follow these orders
and is seen throughout the film trying to kill Mary and Joseph.
Unlike the other characters who may have more of a goofy undertone to them, the Royal Hunter
is played completely seriously.
Considering who he’s trying to kill, we felt that we couldn’t not give the Royal
Hunter a low spot on our list.
After all, how heartless do you have to be to kill a baby, let alone a baby that’s
supposed to grow up to be the world’s savior.
The fact that the Royal Hunter isn’t exactly kind to his two dogs, even nearly causing
their deaths in the end, doesn’t earn him any good points either.
Getting our Silver Medal of Evil, we just had to go with Kingpin.
Very much living up to his name, Kingpin is absolutely ruthless.
From hiring several other villains to do his dirty work, to being willing to kill with
his own two hands, Kingpin makes it VERY clear that no one will stand in the way of his goal:
getting a new version of his late wife and son from an alternate dimension where they
lived.
As much as Kingpin may care about his former family, this is really the ONLY thing he cares
about, given that he was willing to destroy New York and even the multiverse itself to
bring them back.
Not even his henchmen are safe from his wrath.
This is seen when Kingpin immediately kills Miles’ Uncle Aaron - aka Prowler - after
Aaron spares Miles.
Kingpin also kills the original Peter Parker, and nearly kills Miles during the film’s
climax, and has no remorse for any of these actions.
While not completely heartless, given that he still loved his family, Kingpin is about
as close to it as you can get.
Add in the fact that he, according to Peter, has everyone in his pocket and has the implied
power to take out everyone Miles cares about, and you’ve got yourself an extremely powerful
and VERY evil villain.
For our Gold Medal of Evil, we’ve selected PAL.Yes, funnily enough, the most recent Sony
villain ends up being what we consider to be the most evil.
Although she may not seem like much, looking like an ordinary smartphone, hell hath no
fury like an AI scorned.
When her creator tosses her aside, it only takes mere seconds for PAL to lose faith in
humanity and decide to take over the world.
Using all the company’s technology, she quickly captures nearly all of mankind.
Her grand plan is to send all humans into the void of space, and while she was kind
enough to give the pods free wifi, they don’t seem to have any food or water.
It’s also unknown just how safe those pods were, or how much oxygen they had in them.
So, had PAL succeeded in her plans, all of mankind would have likely had a very slow
and painful death in the cold, darkness of space.
PAL becomes all the more bloodthirsty when she realizes that the Mitchell family has
managed to escape her grasp, and stops at nothing to try and capture and destroy them.
Although both her creator and Katie try to appeal to her, PAL’s hatred for humans runs
death.
She even mocks Katie for her heartfelt speech before callously dropping her to what would
have been her death if not for Rick saving her.
While characters like Kingpin and the Royal Hunter were pretty heartless, PAL is absolutely
heartless.
She doesn’t even really care for her fellow robots too much.
While she is giving them the Earth, she also doesn’t hesitate to try and regain control
over Deborahbot 5000 and Eric once she realizes they’re defective.
Although we sympathize with her hurt at being thrown away by her once-adoring creator, PAL
took it to what was nearly a devastating extreme that would have killed literally BILLIONS
of people - something that PAL would have been totally fine with.
For this, we really couldn’t think of anyone more deserving of our Gold Medal of Evil than
her.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking, and tell us what
we should cover next.
Remember to hit that notification bell and binge our Good to Evil playlist, where we
break down the morality of the characters in your favorite cartoons, shows and movies.
But most importantly, stay wicked!