Final Fantasy: 25 Greatest Villains 

Garland only has a handful of lines in the original Final Fantasy script. His inclusion over more defined villains elsewhere in the series could certainly be questioned, but being the first villain ever encountered gives him a huge advantage in the memorability stakes.

The only character in the game as a whole that is given anything resembling a storyline, with the playable party being blank slate ‘warriors of light’ and every other named individual merely serving as a plot device, Garland initially comes across as nothing more than a rogue knight, swiftly dispatched after his kidnap of Cornelia’s Princess. Little further thought is given to him as the plot moves on to the four fiends and other short-lived adversaries.

Garland’s return as the game’s final boss, however, having created a time loop that revives him anew after every defeat he suffers at the party’s hands, cementing his status. His transformation into the demonic Chaos is one of the series’ first breathtakingly brilliant moments.

Whilst the Dissidia subseries would confusingly separate Garland and Chaos as separate entities, it fleshed them out tremendously as characters. As the prototypical series villains, homage has been paid to them on numerous occasions and this practice will more than likely continue as the franchise proceeds, immortalising them.