10 Dumbest Supervillain Schemes You Won't Believe

Sometimes, it's hard for a supervillain to come up with a fiendishly dastardly scheme.

Dumbest Supervillain Plans
Warner Bros.

Superheroes fight many different villains. Crooks. Mobsters. Terrorists. These criminals are motivated by something petty like money, power, or revenge.

But supervillains are very different. Supervillains are as menacing as they are theatrical. They are never boring. Supervillains turn crime into an art form. They rely on misdirection, illusions, decoys, disguises, double-crosses, doomsday weapons, booby-traps, self-destruct sequences with visible timers, magic and, of course, overelaborate death-traps.

Die-hard comic fans will never forget some of the greatest supervillain plots. Joker tricked Robin to come to Ethiopia and then killed him with explosives. When Doctor Octopus learned he was dying, he swapped minds with Spider-Man, forcing the wall-crawler to die in Doc Ock's body. Magneto even once infiltrated the X-Men's mansion by pretending to be a teacher.

Now, not every dastardly plan works out. A supervillain's plot may fall apart because it's stupid, over-the-top, mundane, or it just doesn't make any sense.

A lot of times, it's difficult for the reader to understand the villain's plan because it's too convoluted. If Green Goblin's plot to defeat Spider-Man has 40 steps, how is the average comic fan expected to follow the story?

So let's have a look at the most illogical, silliest, and insane schemes in comic history.

10. Doctor Doom's First Scheme Is So Unnecessarily Complicated

Dumbest Supervillain Plans
Marvel

When Doctor Doom debuted, readers could never have anticipated that he would become one of Marvel's greatest villains. No, really. They couldn't have expected it since his first plan sucked.

In his first appearance, Doom covers the entire Baxter Building in an electric web. He then transports the Fantastic Four in a cage to his castle. He uses Sue Storm as his hostage and orders the remaining members of the team to travel to the past using his time machine so they can locate Blackbeard's treasure.

As the the group travel to the 18th century, they are attacked by pirates. Ben disguises himself as Blackbeard by putting on a fake beard that was just lying around. Even though his skin is made of orange rocks, the pirates are fooled by his costume. Ben finds the treasure but empties the contents before the FF return to their timeline.

When they hand the treasure chest to Doom, he reveals that it contains the Gems of Merlin, which will make him invincible. Since the chest is empty, Doom's plan is foiled.

Okay, there are way too many steps to this plan. Doom is so overpowered, why didn't he go back in time himself to get Merlin's gems?

Contributor
Contributor

James Egan has written 80 books including 1000 Facts about Superheroes Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about Horror Movies Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about The Greatest Films Ever Made Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about Video Games Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about TV Shows Vol. 1-3 Twitter - @jameswzegan85