Villain

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Villain" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A villain (masculine), or villainess (feminine), also bad guy, baddy or baddie (sometimes known as a "black hat"),^[1] is a stock character, whether based on a historical narrative or one of literary fiction. Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines such a character as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot".^[2] The antonym of a villain is a hero.

The villain's structural purpose is to serve as the opposite to the hero character, and their motives or evil actions drive a plot along.^[3] In contrast to the hero, who is defined by feats of ingenuity and bravery and the pursuit of justice and the greater good, a villain is often defined by their acts of selfishness, evilness, arrogance, cruelty, and cunning, displaying immoral behavior that can oppose or pervert justice.^{[citation needed]}