15 Most Monstrous Villains In Television

Professional wrestling storylines depend on the bad guy, or ‘heel’, to function - it’s the clearest and most vital expression of that old saying that a hero is only as good as the villain he faces. The most monstrous villain in WWF/WWE history, however, gets the job done outside of the ring, not inside it.

After a legitimate backstage dispute resulted in the infamous pro wrestling scandal known as ‘the Montreal Screwjob’, real life boss Vince McMahon was cast by die hard WWF fans as the bad guy. Ingeniously, he decided to capitalise on the genuine hatred that his audience was developing for him.

Going forward, backstage political machinations and vendettas would form just as big a part of the company’s on-screen narrative as actual wrestling matches, and he would be the central heel in those storylines.

Over the last two decades the ‘Mr. McMahon’ character has made Vince McMahon his fortune all over again, with memorable feuds against every member of his own family and every significant good guy in the company’s history. He invented the ‘Kiss My A*s Club’, where hapless fools would be forced to smooch his posterior live in front of a crowd of thousands of people, and he humiliated star after star to further get himself over as a heel with that same crowd.

The object, of course, was to build up that hate until a hero would come along to give him his comeuppance, and to give the devil his due, McMahon’s never been shy about humiliating or physically injuring himself to do so. But the evil old sod always comes back, like the proverbial bad penny. You can’t keep a good heel down.