4 Sci-Fi Villains Who Could Actually Happen (And 4 That Totally Couldn't)

Skynet is coming for you.

agent smith matrix
Warner Bros.

Every story's gotta have a villain - preferably dressed in black with a deeply menacing voice and a nuke fixation - and sci-fi has produced some of the best villains of the lot.

With the endless possibilities that evil scientists, alien races and rogue AI have to offer science fiction writers, it's no wonder that they've managed to produce some of the most iconic baddies of the age.

As with a lot of good sci-fi, there are some villains out there with a frightening basis in reality. Surely one of the most unnerving thing about the likes of The Matrix is the possibility that we could very well be living in a virtual reality right now?

On the flip side, as with a lot of other good sci-fi, the villains are made up of a little bit of science fact and a whole load of magic fictional awesomeness. They might be wildly implausible, but that's part of what makes them entertaining. After all, life (and movies) would be boring if we only stuck to the realms of possible.

So, in today's installment of massively-overthinking-things-for-the-purposes-of-science, we discover which great science fiction villains are more fiction than science, and which are worryingly plausible.

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