7. He Created Mister Sinister, Who Indirectly Created The X-Men
One of comics most iconic villains of the last three decades, Sinister was created only the year after Apocalypse, and later given an origin story that saw him being named as one of the immortal mutants creations. A brilliant scientist on the forefront of the emerging field of evolution and genetics in the 19th century, Nathaniel Essex was the first to discover the potential of humankind to evolve into mutants by means of genetic traits that he named Essex Factors. By the twentieth century, this terminology had become abbreviated to x-factor, the term which Charles Xavier would use when following those researches into mutantkind. Xavier would later retain the X for the formation of the X-Men and his own nickname, Professor X (rumours that the team and all of their affiliates are named after Xavier himself are exaggerated). Shortly after making his groundbreaking discoveries, Essex was to encounter and make a deal with Apocalypse, who rewarded him with a physical transformation into Sinisters white skinned, red-eyed form, also resulting in a vast regeneration factor and an enormously long life. Sinister would later add to his repertoire of post-human abilities with powers stolen from genetic experimentation on others, acquiring telepathic and telekinetic powers and the ability to project and manipulate energy, in much the same way as Apocalypse himself. Hes also got a small army at his command: he recruited the most bloodthirsty group of mutant killers around to become his Marauders, a group of murderers and bodysnatchers. Sabertooth, the perennial yin to Wolverines yang, was originally introduced as one of the Marauders, and the possibility of reintroducing him into X-Men movie mythology should not be ignored. Sinister follows a similar credo to Apocalypse, although the two are often at odds with one another. However, Sinister is more of a mad scientist, even having worked with the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s to find fresh bodies to experiment on in the concentration camps. Hes obsessed with finding the perfect mutant genetic heritage, a heritage he believes he has located in Scott Summers the X-Man Cyclops and his relationship with Jean Grey, aka Phoenix. In the comics, Sinisters experimentation on the Summers bloodline would result in more than one ultra-powerful child, but those stories involve yet more time travel and alternate futures, and are far too complex to translate to cinema. X-Men: Days Of Future Past has enough people confused as it is. However, with his obsession with Cyclops and Phoenix and the Marauders at his back, bringing Sinister into the X-Men movie universe with X-Men: Apocalypse could set up a whole swath of story possibilities for future films.