19 TV Villains Sure to Haunt Your Dreams

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TV shows are full of villains but not all of them live up to the name. The ones who made our list stepped it up a notch to become truly frightening. 

Villains are a staple of television and practically every genre of small screen has them. We've rounded up some who really made their mark.

Check out these 19 most horrifying villains on TV if you dare. We take no responsibility for the nightmares you may have afterwards.

1. Tony Soprano - The Sopranos

Tony is the best kind of villain. The kind you can't help but love. He's a family man, a man with so many personal issues he sees a therapist. He's also a member of the mob, a thief, and a killer. We shouldn't love him, we should hate his very soul, but how can you hate a villain who puts family and animals first? Our dilemma is probably very similar to Tony's.

2. Norman Bates - Bates Motel

Even if you don't know what he becomes, young Norman is frightening. Watching his dog get killed didn't devastate him, it drove him to taxidermy. He can fool a lie detector test and his mother. He even started dressing up in mom's clothes in order to blame her for his murders. Norman leaves us asking if evil is born or made.

3. The Borg - Star Trek: The Next Generation

"Resistance is futile." Join the collective. Anyone who watched TNG and didn't practically have a coronary when Jean-Luc Picard found himself as a Borg, his own worst enemy for a spell, really needs to rewatch. I still remeber sucking in my breath at that sight. What was really weird? I didn't hate the Borg any more than I hated the Cylons. That's good villainry.

4. The Reverse Flash - The Flash

The Reverse Flash was a doppelganger (our favorite) who was on earth by mistake. The mistake meant he had to champion Barry Allen to attain all the greatness he ever would before he was ready. In order to do this, Eobard Thawne (the Reverse Flash) became Barry's mentor and friend, and unbeknownst to any, his most vile enemy. The agony at the bait and switch was incredibly moving and terribly vile.

5. Black Jack Randall - Outlander

Outlander Played to excrutiating perfection by Tobias Menzies, Black Jack Randall seems put on the earth to make Claire and Jamie Fraser suffer. A Red Coat who wants his country to prevail, he's also eager to make Jamie pay for the sins of Scotland and all men because he himself cannot measure up. The pain and anger in Claire's eyes only fuels his passion for Jamie and Jamie's lament.

6. Gemma Teller - Sons of Anarchy

Remember when Gemma came across as a loving, protective mother and grandmother? Then we got to know her. We could write out a list of Gemma's crimes but we think bludgeoning her daughter-in-law to death with a carving fork in the sink and then lying about it and starting a murderous gang war tops that list.

7. Victoria Grayson - Revenge

Victoria was the perfect foil for Emily in the Hamptons. The things she did to David Clarke were terrible, but that was nothing in comparison to what she allowed happen to her own family along the way. In the end she was left with nothing and no one, but that didn't mean we weren't quaking in our boots while she lied, schemed and connived her way through the socialites.

8. BOB - Twin Peaks

BOB has been described as the manifestation of "the evil that men do." An evil spirit, BOB could take on different manifestations and appearances. While being possessed by BOB, Leland raped and murdered Laura Palmer and he eventually made Leland commit suicide. If Twin Peaks comes back, we wonder if we'll be seeing BOB yet again.

9. Natalie Davis - CSI

Every time we see a miniature doll house we get the shivers. CSI’s Miniature Killer was truly frightening. Whether she was pushing her own little sister out of a treehouse to her death, or killing multiple victims as an adult and then perfectly replicating her crime scenes in miniature, Natalie Davis scared the heck out of us. Even her little girl voice still creeps us out.

10. Amanda Woodward - Melrose Place

There wasn't anything Amanda wouldn't do to get to the top or with whom she wouldn't do it. Being a landlord in a Hollywood apartment complex gave her more men than she could shake a stick at, and damn if she didn't shake her sticks at all of them (and more). From that moment on, Heather Locklear became the IT girl to turn up the heat on any show.

11. Drew Marshall - True Blood

It was a truly terrifying moment when Drew Marshall dropped the accent, becoming Rene Lenier, and turned from loving boyfriend into sadistic killer. He hated people, human or supernatural, who loved vampires so much that he started killing them. It takes a lot to be scary in Bon Temps but Drew found a way. Unfortunately for him, Sookie found a way to take him out.

12. Hannibal Lecter - Hannibal

As if being a psychotic cannibal isn't bad enough, Lecter actually cut off a man's leg and then fed it to him for dinner. Yeah, after we stopped gagging on the very thought, we added Hannibal to this list.

13. Victor Newman - The Young and the Restless

For 40 some odd years now Victor Newman has been raising holy hell in Genoa City. He's never paid for his crimes. Until now. After bringing a doppelganger to town to take the place of a well known citizen, Jack Abbott, who was himself kidnapped and tortured while his wife, Phyllis, was repeatedly raped by said doppelganger (who was party to two murders), Newman is in prison. After a 40 year reign of terror running the biggest business as the richest man, he hasn't had a bad run, and we expect he'll be terrorizing the streets again shortly.

14. Sheriff Thomas McAllister - The Mentalist

Sheriff McAllister turned out to be the elusive serial killer Red John, the man who taunted Patrick Jane for over a decade after murdering his wife and young daughter. His calling card? He'd use his victim's own blood to leave a smiley face on the wall above their dead bodies.

15. Joe Carroll - The Following

Any killer who chooses to cut the eyeballs out of his victims automatically makes our most frightening list. Worse yet, the good professor with the fascination with Edgar Allen Poe was so charming that he was able to amass a cult following able to kill for him when he was unable to do it himself.

16. Stannis Baratheon - Game of Thrones

Yes, you'd think on a show like Game of Thrones there are plenty of scarier characters than Stannis and you wouldn't be wrong, until you take into account that Stannis was willing to set his beloved young daughter on fire in order to gain power for himself. That one horrifying act gave him the express ride to the front of our list.

17. The Trinity Killer - Dexter

Arthur Mitchell, aka The Trinity Killer, was the one man scary enough to scare Dexter! When what you do is bad enough to frighten another serial killer, you definitely earn yourself a spot on our list.

18. JR Ewing - Dallas

What made the "who shot JR" season finale such a crowd pleaser is that everyone was a suspect. The list who didn't want to shoot him dead was far greater (was there one?) than the one who didn't. And this guy? He was having a really great time being a villain, which made you want to shoot him even more.

19. Negan - The Walking Dead

Hey, we're rolling with it. Any man who can appear after scaring the hell out of all of our heroes and eeny, meeny, miney, moe them until he picks one and beats them to death with with a baseball bat named Lucille is afforded the privilege of being on this list. When the Hilltop is known before the man is seen? That means something, you guys.

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Game of Thrones, Bates Motel, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, CSI, True Blood, Hannibal, The Mentalist, The Following, The Flash, The Young and the Restless, Outlander
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