50 Fun Facts About DC Villains

Which New God rules Apokolips and hunts for the Anti-Life Equation?

Darkseid. The Equation would let him strip free will from every living being, and Jack Kirby first unveiled this cosmic tyrant in, of all places, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen.

Which android from the planet Colu shrinks cities, including Kandor, into bottles?

Brainiac. His name outlived the comics: dictionaries trace the everyday word 'brainiac', for a very clever person, probably to this 1958 Superman villain.

Which antihero from ancient Kahndaq did Dwayne Johnson play in a 2022 DC film?

Black Adam. In the comics, the wizard Shazam chose him as champion thousands of years before Billy Batson, then exiled him when the power went to his head.

Which helmeted underwater mercenary murdered Aquaman's infant son?

Black Manta. For decades his real name and motives stayed hidden behind that oversized helmet; only much later did the comics name him David and give him an origin.

Leonard Snart, leader of the Flash's Rogues, operates under which name?

Captain Cold. He sees himself as a working man's crook with a code against killing innocents, and he hates being mistaken for Batman's own ice villain.

Archaeologist Barbara Ann Minerva is the best-known version of which Wonder Woman foe?

Cheetah. Two women had used the name before her; Minerva became the third when an expedition into Africa ended in a ritual that cursed her into a bloodthirsty half-cat.

Which assassin, Floyd Lawton, did Will Smith play in 2016's Suicide Squad?

Deadshot. The marksman who boasts he never misses began in 1950 as a one-off crook in top hat and tails, then sat unused for 27 years before a revival.

Slade Wilson, archenemy of the Teen Titans, is better known as whom?

Deathstroke. An army colonel enhanced by a military experiment, he turned mercenary instead of soldier, a choice that cost him his marriage and the life of one of his sons.

Which horned alien warlord hunts the three Mother Boxes as the villain of 2017's Justice League?

Steppenwolf. In Jack Kirby's comics he helped murder the wife of a rival world's ruler, the killing that rekindled the long war between the New Gods.

Which monster killed Superman in the 1992 storyline 'The Death of Superman'?

Doomsday. Planning the story, editor Mike Carlin scribbled 'doomsday for Superman' on the board, and the writers took the word as their new monster's name.

Which telepathic super-intelligent ape plots conquest from a hidden African city?

A crashed alien spaceship gave his whole troop sapience; he has fought the Flash since 1959.

Which Batman foe began as a sideshow wrestler, gawked at for a rare skin condition?

Killer Croc. Mocked by the abusive aunt who raised him, he ran away to join the circus; later comics made him ever less human, adding claws, a snout and a tail.

Which Superman foe rules Warworld, a space empire where he stages gladiator games?

Mongul. In Alan Moore's 'For the Man Who Has Everything' he ambushes Superman on his birthday with an alien plant that traps its victim in a dream of an ideal life.

Aquaman's half-brother Orm Marius goes by which villain name?

Ocean Master. He was first written as Aquaman's fully human half-brother, jealous of his powers; later retellings remade him as an Atlantean royal after the throne.

Rudy Jones, a lab janitor mutated by radiation, becomes which Superman villain?

Parasite. The change left him with a hunger he cannot satisfy alone: he has to keep draining the life energy of other people simply to stay alive.

Which villain, in the comics a dark mirror of Batman, was the main foe of Arrow's fifth season?

Prometheus. In the comics his parents were criminals gunned down by police, so he swore to destroy the forces of justice: Batman's origin turned inside out.

Which discharged Green Lantern, modeled on David Niven, founded his own yellow-ringed Corps?

Sinestro. Once the Corps' most admired officer, he kept order in his sector by ruling his home planet as a dictator, and was thrown out when rookie Hal Jordan reported him.

Which swamp-born revenant was once a man named Cyrus Gold?

Solomon Grundy. Each time he is killed he rises again from Slaughter Swamp, often with a new personality: a mindless brute in one life, sharp and scheming in another.

Which alien conqueror, the Justice League's very first foe in 1960, was the giant monster of 2021's The Suicide Squad?

Starro. It conquers by clamping small copies of itself over people's faces to control their minds, until a whole species thinks as one hive.

Which world-conquering demon is the father and arch-enemy of the Titan Raven?

Trigon. He fathered children across the hundreds of worlds he rules to use as weapons of conquest, but his daughter Raven sided with the Teen Titans against him.

Which immortal Cro-Magnon warrior gained eternal life from a prehistoric meteorite?

Vandal Savage. For some 50,000 years he has schemed to rule the world, claiming a hand in the great empires of history, Rome's among them.

Who is the main antagonist of 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths?

The Anti-Monitor. Born in the antimatter universe, he set out to erase every other universe and was opposed by his own benevolent twin, who rallied heroes from every world.

Which flawed, chalk-white duplicate of Superman first appeared in a 1958 Superboy comic?

Bizarro. The imperfect copy usually wants nothing more than to be seen as the hero Superman is, which makes him a creature more to be pitied than feared.

B-list actor Basil Karlo was the original version of which shapeshifting Batman villain?

Clayface. Karlo snapped when a horror film he had starred in was remade without him, and began killing the new cast dressed as the villain he once played.

Bandage-wrapped neurosurgeon Tommy Elliot, Bruce Wayne's childhood friend, is which villain?

Hush. As a boy he cut the brakes on his parents' car to inherit their fortune, and never forgave Bruce's surgeon father for saving his mother's life.

Jervis Tetch builds mind-control devices as which Batman villain?

The Mad Hatter. Tetch is so obsessed with Lewis Carroll's Alice books that he sometimes cannot tell them from reality, and he quotes them as he works.

Dr. Pamela Isley is the real name of which Gotham villain?

Poison Ivy. The former botanist is less a thief than an eco-terrorist: she wants plants to rule the planet, and bends people to her will with her own pheromones.

Jonathan Crane, a psychology professor turned criminal experimenter, is which Batman villain?

The Scarecrow. Terrorised as a boy, he decided that mastering fear meant it could never master him again, and built a toxin that makes victims live their worst nightmares.

Which centuries-old Batman foe leads the League of Assassins and cheats death in the Lazarus Pits?

Ra's al Ghul. He judged Batman a worthy heir and offered him command of the League; Batman refused, appalled by schemes such as wiping out half of humanity.

25th-century scientist Eobard Thawne is best known under which villain name?

The Reverse-Flash. He grew up idolising the Flash and recreated the accident that gave him speed, then broke on learning he was fated to become his hero's worst enemy.

Which Kryptonian villain did both Terence Stamp and Michael Shannon play on film?

Zod. Superman's father had the rebel general banished to the Phantom Zone, so when he finally escaped he took his revenge on the jailer's surviving son.

Which villain, played by Tom Hardy in 2012, broke Batman's back in the Knightfall storyline?

Bane. Born in an island prison to serve out his father's sentence, he built his mind and body into weapons there, then picked Gotham to prove himself against its champion.

Which silent-film star's grin inspired the Joker's face?

Conrad Veidt. In The Man Who Laughs (1928) he played a man whose mouth had been disfigured into a permanent grin, and writer Bill Finger showed the artists a photo of him in the role.

In which 1988 graphic novel is Barbara Gordon shot and left paralysed?

The Killing Joke. The shooting stuck: Barbara Gordon gave up being Batgirl and re-emerged as Oracle, the wheelchair-using information broker to DC's heroes.

Which Robin did the Joker murder in 'A Death in the Family'?

Jason Todd. DC put his fate to a reader phone vote and had both endings drawn; a narrow majority chose death, and he stayed dead until his return as the Red Hood.

Alongside Bill Finger and Bob Kane, who is credited with creating the Joker?

Jerry Robinson. Kane's teenage assistant said a joker playing card he sketched was the character's seed; Kane insisted the card only came afterwards.

Who played the Joker in 2008's The Dark Knight?

Heath Ledger. He shut himself in a hotel room for about a month to find the voice and kept a Joker diary; the Oscar he won for the role came after his death.

Harley Quinn was created for which show before she entered the comics?

Batman: The Animated Series. She was written as a walk-on henchwoman for a single 1992 episode, and proved so popular that DC's main comics continuity adopted her seven years later.

Before becoming Harley Quinn, Dr. Harleen Quinzel worked at which Gotham institution?

Arkham Asylum. Sent there to study the Joker, she fell in love with him instead, helped him escape and reinvented herself as his sidekick.

Which Batman villain was played by Jim Carrey in Batman Forever and Paul Dano in 2022's The Batman?

The Riddler. Edward Nygma cannot commit a crime without leaving Batman a clue, a compulsion that keeps undoing his own carefully planned schemes.

What is Catwoman's real name?

Selina Kyle. She debuted in 1940 as a jewel thief called simply 'the Cat', and one modern storyline took her and Bruce Wayne all the way to the altar before she backed out.

What is the name of the Penguin's nightclub?

The Iceberg Lounge. The club gives the Penguin a respectable front for his rackets, and Batman sometimes leans on him there for news of the underworld.

Who played the Penguin in 1992's Batman Returns?

Danny DeVito. The film remade the dapper crook as a deformed outcast abandoned in the sewers as a baby, and DeVito hesitated until his friend Jack Nicholson talked him into it.

Which actress played Catwoman in Tim Burton's 1992 film Batman Returns?

Michelle Pfeiffer. She took over when Annette Bening withdrew, trained for months with the whip, and really did hold a live bird in her mouth on camera.

Mr. Freeze debuted in 1959 under which original name?

Mr. Zero. He was a minor gimmick villain until the 1966 Batman TV series renamed him Mr. Freeze, and the comics then adopted the show's name.

Mr. Freeze turns to crime to cure his terminally ill wife, named what?

Nora. She was invented for a 1992 television episode, 'Heart of Ice', which turned a gimmick crook into a grieving husband; the comics adopted the story.

Who played Lex Luthor opposite Christopher Reeve in 1978's Superman?

Gene Hackman. His Luthor hides the character's famous bald head under a succession of wigs, and he came back to the part in two of the sequels.

Which mob boss threw the acid that scarred Harvey Dent into Two-Face?

Sal Maroni. The clue that damned the gangster was his own lucky two-headed silver dollar, found at a murder scene with his fingerprints on it.

Before becoming Two-Face, Harvey Dent held which Gotham job?

District attorney. He fought Gotham's corruption inside the law until a gangster's acid scarred half his face; since then he lets the flip of a coin make his decisions.

Lex Luthor made his 1940 debut in which comic, home of the Man of Steel since 1938?

Action Comics. A 1960s story later traced his hatred to a boyhood lab fire that the young Superman put out, leaving the teenage Luthor bald and vowing revenge.