Animation
Maleficent
Sleeping Beauty · 1959
The most elegant design in the history of animated villainy
Threat index 85
Sorcerer · Literature
Lord Voldemort
An orphan who was so afraid of dying he stopped being a person
Attribute scores
Power91
Intellect86
Menace90
Fear factor82
Cultural impact92
Charisma58
Editorial estimates on a 0–100 scale, calibrated against every other character in the index. Not official canon.
Who they are
Voldemort splits his soul into objects to avoid death, and every split costs him more of what made him human, until he is a serpentine figure who cannot understand affection or sacrifice. That is the whole engine of the story: the most powerful wizard alive keeps losing to a teenager because there is an entire category of human behavior he cannot model.
Defining traits
Soul fragmentationLegilimency and mind controlParseltongueTerror-based recruitmentComplete inability to grasp love
What makes them dangerous
He cannot be killed by ordinary means while his soul containers survive, and he has infiltrated the government.
And what undoes them
He dismisses house-elves, children and loyalty as irrelevant, and each of those blind spots costs him.
Things you might not know
- His fear of a spoken name is a deliberate control mechanism; in the final book it is literally a tracking charm.
- The film design removed his nose to make a human face read as reptilian without heavy prosthetic bulk.
- The books establish him as an exceptionally gifted student long before he becomes a monster, which is the point.
Why number 6 in Most Iconic
An entire generation grew up with a villain whose name they were told not to say, which is possibly the most effective branding decision in modern fiction.