10 Most Evil Batman Villains

8. Scarecrow

It takes a nasty piece of work to turn someone's worst fears against them, but that's exactly what Scarecrow - the man formerly known as Doctor Jonathan Crane - gets up to when he's out and about.

Introduced in World's Finest Comics #3 in 1941, Crane experienced trauma as a child and became obsessed with fear. Majoring in psychology, Crane took up a position at Arkham Asylum, where he proceeded to torture his patients with all sorts of fear experiments, eventually getting fired becoming the supervillain we know and love (hate?) today.

Everything about Scarecrow screams pure evil. He dresses up like a nightmarish distortion of the character from the Wizard of Oz, delights in realising people's worst fears and has concocted a formula to make it happen.

The only reassuring thing about Scarecrow is that his illusions aren't real, but even then so many of his victims can find themselves being driven mad by the ordeal. Point being, he's particularly evil - and a villain who's managed to etch himself into the annals of Batman's history by being needlessly cruel at every step.