10 Messed Up Marvel Villains You Won't Believe Exist

5. Barracuda

Punisher Barracuda
Marvel Comics

If there was an award for 'Hero with the Most Twisted Adversaries" in the Marvel Universe, Punisher would take the cake. Frank Castle's comics are among the darkest in Marvel's library and given the heavy subject matter of much of them, it was always going to be the case that he'd end up going toe-to-toe with the worst the Marvel Universe had to offer.

There are the usual suspects, like Jigsaw and William Rawlins, but among the worst of the worst is Barracuda, a former soldier-turned-mercenary-turned-gangster who Castle knew back during his army days in Vietnam.

Another character to make their big breakout during Garth Ennis' revered run on Punisher: MAX, Barracuda immediately distinguished himself from Castle's other foes by illustrating just how much he revelled in inflicting pain and misery on his victims. He was also a product of the American military, later becoming a CIA asset and helping set up a number of brutal regimes in South America, massacring civilians in the process.

After his army days, Barracuda became a feared crime boss known for his extreme antics, like snorting coke off his victims' corpses (no, seriously). He later murdered one of Castle's old SAS buddies along with his family, taking their rivalry from just strictly Punisher business to something altogether more brutal and personal.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.