19 most dramatic and over-the-top Disney villains

Hades — Hercules

Talk about playing the long game! Hercules’ nemesis Hades (whom we assume would hate to be referred to that way) has been concocting his evil plan for 18 years, only to have some little whippersnapper come and steal it all away. It’s enough to make anyone dangerous.

Hades is not the calmest of individuals. In fact, he has a rather fiery coiffure which reflects his mood, blowing red when he’s exceptionally angry. We say exceptionally angry because just plain angry seems to be his default mode.

James Woods, who voiced Hades (before he outed himself as the worst), does a stellar job, imbibing the character with a endless amount of frenetic energy, making it seem like he’s only one minor inconvenience away from giving himself a hernia and losing his mind (which he frequently does).

Hades is accompanied by two hapless henchmen named Panic and Pain. We can only assume these are the names he gave them, else he put out a very specific job advertisement. Can you imagine Hades’ assistants being called Soft and Gentle? Us neither.

He’s also quite jacked? We don’t see much of his frame due to his rather shapeless black toga, but we can assume from the width of his forearms alone that his biceps are the stuff of nightmares.

Plus, when he first meets Hercules he executes a flawless gymnastic loop around a bar, before doing some parallel bar work midway through the conversation. If those aren’t the actions of a dramatic villain, we don’t know what are.

Gymnastics whilst politicking – the definition of unnecessary. Welcome to the underworld.