When creating a villain in a story, does it grab the reader more when the villain is dark?

I personally stan goofy or silly villains who are genius but fail every time. It seems very relatable to me.

Think Doofenshmirtz or Doctor Draken

Or even better, Giovanni from Epithet Erased. He’s brilliant!

I personally love when villains are, well, villains. They do evil things and bad deeds and make such assholes that when your hero ram his/her fist into the villain, it feels so much satisfying.

One Piece has plenty of these villains and they make them so despicable... you just want to see Luffy bury his fist in that villain's face.

I don't mind sympathetic villains from time to time but please, don't make them to mopey. "WOE IS ME!!!" kinda villain. Those are annoying. Or the "misunderstood". It's nice to have a recovery arc but don't make it too often. At least, one villain per story to make things more variety.

I think it depends.

It is cool to have villains with dark backstories or motivations but you also need to be careful. I have also seen some people over do it and your left with "I'm 14 and this is deep." type villains. Like that "we live in a society" Joker which made people cringe.

As for DBZ, I never liked Frieza, mostly because his design was sort of goofy. I sort of preferred Piccolo and Vegeta who started out as villains but evolved into being good guys.

I feel like a lot of the reasons people like villain characters is due to catharsis. And same as anything, in order to get it right, it has to be written well.

People like sympathetic villains because it's cathartic to find reasons behind evil. You can understand where they're coming from, even if you don't agree with their actions. People don't like when a villain's tragic backstory is just there for cheap sympathy points—or worse, used as the basis for a redemption arc without actually addressing any of their evil actions. The goal is to explain their evil, not to excuse it.

Inversely, people like villains who do super irredeemably evil things because it's cathartic to be able to experience the deepest depravity of evil in a fictional setting. You're free to hate them, laugh at them, let out your deepest aggression, whatever you want, without harming any actual people. People don't like when characters do irredeemably evil things for no reason, unless it's firmly established that this is a villain who does irredeemably evil things for no reason.

In short, I don't feel like "dark" villains are necessarily more memorable than any other type of villain. But if those dark aspects of their character is handled really well, then there's a good chance that people will remember it.

it all depends of the kind of story you are telling.

For some stories darker villains may fit, for others sillier ones can work or anything in between.

What matters the most is that the villain helps the story to be better, which to be fair is the goal for every character.

I feel like it's a little lame to just exclusively make them dark. Personally I love it when the villains are the type that make you go "... I can see him in the main cast". I watched this essay on this Jackie Chan movie set in WW2 China and the Japanese villain guy was straight up just as inept and goofy as the main characters.

But it honestly depends. You can TRY to make them all dark, but it'll be repetitive.... (unless you find an ANGLE. That's the keyword here. Angle).

Personally I love it when the protagonists have beliefs that're just as/a little more uncomfortable than the ACTUAL bad guys... like Stroheim or Anasui in Jojo. When I write, I like to imagine a museum 1000 years in the future and just think about how people would react to the heroes holding certain ideologies and whether or not they think the villain was right or wrong (totally overlooking the grand picture). Granted, I HATE being grimm dark, so these characters take up like a small percentage (except for TSFI where all the Isekaier protagonsits are in rehab for being bigoted). It also makes things a bit... somber? Like "Wow, IF THIS GUY is willing to fight for the good guys, then why the Hell is this guy even bothering with the other side?".

A little screwed-up, but I also love stories that blatantly show that the villain would've been a good guy and he's THINKING about it, but the protagonist kills them before they could make the decision. Super did something like that before Dwight from the Office bashed his head to bits.

Or something like Jojo that makes you question whether or not he WOULD'VE been part of the protagonists. I sometimes think that Risotto (a huge, intimidating baddie in Golden Wind GOD that anime does morality well) would've TOTALLY joined Giorno's group had Narancia not filled him up with bullets. Like the guy is no different from Girono (aside from y'know... wanting to sell drugs and killing innocent people). He's very patient with La Squadra and he was the last to leave the Church when two of his homies were chopped-up. I wholeheartedly believe that Giorno would've changed his mind or something... or maybe he'd betray them in the very end so his homies deaths wouldn't be in vein (although I think Giorno would give him a swift death instead of putting him in the Hell timeloop that Diavolo was subjected in)(MAN that show does the whole Heaven and Hell concept well).

I dunno morality has always been a fascinating subject for me because a lot. I'd probably say that that's what makes a lot of my stories so unpredictable.

I WILL SAY THOUGH I do believe there are people who're evil for the sake of it (especially with the Cartel situation in Mexico like they outright pray to DEATH and reportedly do dark magic on their drugs like WHA --). I think people should stress that point that these people are VERY REAL (again Jojo with Yoshikage Kira).

Anyway thanks for asking a question revolving around writing :v

Not "dark". Memorable personalities and character writing that plays off the protagonists.

If Freiza had been another Red Ribbon Army mook that went toe to toe with Yamcha, he wouldn't stand out. That he made Vegeta start on his redemption and made Goku snap and go Super Saiyan is why he's memorable.

Sephiroth on his own would be just another anime pretty boy. Cloud's entire journey to get him/ get free of him is why he's remembered. Though it's impossible to deny the power of having an awesome theme song.

The antagonist is a means to an end. They exist for the protagonists to grow against.

Villains in serious stories are a great way to inject some darkness. Any story that takes itself seriously and explores the villains with any nuance will get really interesting in that way. Children's shows are notably at their darkest when they play with the concepts of hero and villain, centering a villain character as one of the protagonists or having a hero become a villain.

I don't think it's darkness as much as it is internal logic. The villain has to be written the same way as the hero - with goals, motivations and things that stand in their way. The goals and motivations might be completely evil and unsympathetic, but they must be cohesive and logical. Which is not the same thing as a villain audiences can empathize with, or who gets a redemption arc. Like maybe the villain's goal is to "end all war" and the way they've decided to arrive to this point is to destroy all of humanity. It's irredeemable and not something audiences will empathize with, but they can see the logic in the thinking (no humans left = war ends, yay), even if it's twisted. People liked the Nolan Joker because he had goals and a belief system, and his actions stayed 100% true to that at all times.

I also think that people like villains who are unique and surprising. Like, think of all of the forgettable villains who kick puppies and burn villages and do other twisted dark stuff. At this point it's expected. It's the baseline. So then desperate bad writers (cough superhero comics from the 90s cough) will often try to have them do something even MORE gruesome or bad, to try and shock the audiences into caring about stopping the villain, but often times, the audience response is apathy (because it's just more of the same predictable bad stuff turned up a notch) or disgust. I actually ran into that with one of my antagonists, where I initially had kinda fallen into the usual tropes where he was gonna be shown as a scary man because he beats and physically tortures the MC. And I read that and was like "this does not portray him as a uniquely scary individual at all". I mean, obviously not anyone you want to cross paths with, but I didn't feel like it inspired any particular dread. So I rewrote it, and had him treat the MC nicely, and that made him SO much more terrifying.

Unsurprising to anyone, I really love dark and gritty villains. That being said, there's a fine line between a dark villain that fits the tone of the story and just being overly edgy for the sake of it. Like Mallory said, it has to make sense with the internal logic of the story.

It grabs the reader more if the villain makes sense with their motivations, even if they may be twisted or skewed. Just making your villain murder puppies for fun for no other reason than to make them evil would do the opposite, and make them seem ridiculous in my opinion. I also hate when stories try to make villains who have done terrible things into overly sympathetic babies, like dude. You've killed hundreds of people, please stop crying.

As I am a horror/thriller fan, most of the villains I see do fall into being "dark," and that is a major draw for me. Villains have always been my favourite part of stories, and I generally like darker stuff so it makes sense that they'd fit that tone. And while sometimes it can be overly edgy and has me rolling my eyes, if I at least find it entertaining, I will keep reading.

I know for my own work, having a dark villain is one of the big draws of my story. But people like him not cos he kidnaps and tortures people, it's his charisma, manipulative behaviour and twisted sense of logic that does. My comic explores parental abuse and trauma, and my villain is a father figure who justifies and excuses his own abusive behaviour for the sake of "discipline," while going out of his way to gratuitously child abusers. Like is it edgy? Yeah. But with the internal logic of the story and the themes I'm exploring it works

Yes and no. Being dark can be a form of being evil, but that's also a stereotype of evil. Sometimes, the worst evil is bright, cheery and pretends to be your friends, but is in fact manipulating you. I think what's really missing from villains these days is that they're not allowed to be truly evil. Almost all of them need to sympathetic to be fleshed out.

That's not true. Evil villains can be three dimensional too and they're not all dark. Just heinous.

A villain doesn't need to be dark to be compelling. They only need to be challenging to the hero, so that they force the hero to push beyond their own limits in some way and learn a lesson to overcome them, and to have strong convictions in something the audience can feel like they genuinely believe.

Heath Ledger Joker isn't scary because he kills people with pencils. He's scary because he places absolutely no value on life, including his own. He's embraced absolute chaos and nihilism; he can't be reasoned with, he can't be persuaded or bought because he doesn't want anything, and Batman can't just punch him until he stops, because he just doesn't care. He just wants to push people to their limit to show that anyone can become a monster if you do that. Ledger played him with a haunting, understated intensity that was a contrast to every previous, cartoonish joker. The Joker is Batman's most popular villain because he forces Batman to struggle with the idea that he might also be insane, and also that all his efforts may actually be meaningless. He represents the struggle of trying to do good in a chaotic world where it might not even matter, and the ultimate triumph of doing so anyway, but also the toll that takes on a person. Bane may be the villain who pushes Batman to his physical limits, but the Joker pushes him to his emotional limits, and that's why he's probably the most iconic villain for that character.

Compare another superhero villain a lot of people like for a very different reason; Killmonger. Killmonger isn't really all that bad a person in a lot of ways. His motivations are that he wants former colonial powers to give back all the stuff they stole from African nations and still hold in museums, and he wants the powerful, advanced African country of Wakanda to help out impoverished neighbouring countries and also oppressed Black communities around the world. He's mostly a pretty honourable guy and he takes the throne of Wakanda through fair combat. He's not dark or nihilistic or evil or anything, but he's a well-regarded villain. He's a challenge that can't be easily overcome, and I think that's why a lot of people don't like the ending fight of Black Panther (other than it kinda looks like a videogame); the hero ultimately just kinda.... fights again, but better? Ultimately Killmonger wins, because Wakanda does open up to the world, and starts helping communities, so he did force T'challa to change... but he didn't need to change to beat him, he was just changed by the experience.

If the villain is weak and non-threatening and easily overcome by the hero, like say Winston Payne, the minor Ace Attorney antagonist who tends to be the "tutorial boss" of those games, and who is an incompetent prosecutor, easily beaten, then they're not going to be a great villain (and to be fair, Winston Payne isn't meant to be a great villain, he's meant to be a tutorial villain).
But a villain can be super-dark and evil and still be a weak villain if the hero doesn't need to grow or change at all to beat them. If your hero is really good at punching, and the baddie is an evil monster who has killed and tortured thousands of people and eats babies and kicks puppies and leaves the toilet seat up, but then all the hero needs to to to beat him is to just punch him, that's a crap villain.

Whether your antagonist is a truly honourable, worthy opponent, or the most wicked and depraved killer possible, the key thing for me that makes them great is to have them undefeatable without your protagonist being forced to their absolute limits and changing in some way, learning a lesson and coming out of it with something powerful and profound that makes it feel like a hard-won victory.

Hello! It is I! The annoying writing gator to tell you that it's all about THE QUALITY OF YOUR WRITING rather than if the villian is "dark."

Remember a dark villian can still be bad, boring, or unmemorable if the writing does nothing to support them.

@AmysGames makes a good point about the different villains but we have wonderful examples of a recent movie: Puss in Boots, Last Wish.
We're we have the redeemable villians: Goldie and her bears
And the "I'm evil and Im loving it": Jack horner

Both types of villians exist in this one movie but they're both given enough screentime to explore these two aspects of a villian while not taking away too much from puss. They both have their reasonings for being the way they are which is stated marvelously to the audience with visuals and well written diologe. They both have reasons to go after a wish and they both have an outcome that makes sense to the lead up of the story.

Something I want to add to @darthmongoose I don't think "challenging" to the hero is quite right. Especially when we have movies like Joker where their isn't really a hero- or the protagonist IS also the antagonist to an extent. I think it's less about challenging and more about being a good foil/opposite/reflection. The joker is what author is when he gives up on "proper social norms" and just does whatever he wants. This is scary for anyone rooting for author to just get through life and be a normal person while also being fun for anyone who likes the joker aspect of the character AND it never strays away from the wonderful writing of properly depicting mental health and how people overlook/ignore people who are suffering.

Tho I admit when it comes to general audiences @IndigoShirtProd makes the best point when it comes to >immediate< praise be it long or short lasting. When you've been dealing with a goofy villian for a season/trilogy/volume it can be SUCH a breath of fresh air to have a serious villian and vice versa. There's a lot of people out there that adore shadow the hedgehog because he's just.... the most different character of the cast of happy go lucky friend. I also think this is why general audiences have been getting superhero fatigue from marvel and DC. There villians are very samey

YES!

Not only personally for me, but I've seen countless videos where people express displeasure in redeemable villains. To tell you the truth: I liked that trope for a while myself..

Villains that had bad backstories, and more depth to them were a fun and mind opening experience because it was rarely done. And this made them stand out from actual evil characters..

But when EVERY villain gained sympathetic backstories and arcs and plot twist, and development ect.. It got stupid, boring, and similar to a brainwashing attempt! You won't convince me that some dude who probably eat people's intestines is actually a "sweet person" because he just so happens to enjoy the taste of human flesh. And that "we should forgive him" because of "he can't help it!" ewe

If that last part was confusing and wacky, it was meant to be! Villainous characters should stay as that, except maybe telling a huge story with deeper themes that "Good guy saves the day", but since it's all for entertainment: people should try sticking to that, because a normal story and a fun time is all people want/need now

A lot of characters I most often feel an overwhelming urge to punch in the face actually tend not to be that dark, in the sense they they don't do anything 'objectively' that bad, like murder or blatantly 'severe' abuse It's the way they think; their double standards, their distorted but convenient narratives, their twisting of everything and anything to get their way; that makes me hate them XD

It depends on the tone of the story, the reader you're aiming for and the execution of the concept.

Maybe a dark, terrifying villain doesn't fit in a happy story about fun adventures, but the Lich exists in Adventure Time.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is to always remember that a villain is an element for your comic/novel. Then, you must see how the concept of the villain comes into play within your story, world and characters.

Why does the Lich work in a happy show like Adventure Time? Because of how it breaks that mold and gives so much lore and worldbuilding, and because of his presence.

Johan is the perfect villain for a manga as dark as Monster, for how cunning, inteligent and dangerous he is. Plus, the entire story wouldn’t have ever happened without him. The same with the likes of Griffith (Berserk) and even Light Yagami (Death Note).

Sometimes your villain cements the entire message of the story (Vegeta VS Goku is the trope of innate talent against effort).

In summary, if it afects in a good way your world (giving worldbuilding, for example), your story (expanding the lore or the story itself) and your characters (how that new baddie affects the other characters' relationships, the way it affects certain characters' evolution, etc).

In the end, it all sums into the writing quality and the World–Story–Characters trifecta