(First off, spoiler warning - chances are pretty much everything with a villain in it will be spoiled in this thread, assuming it takes off)
For christmas, I got Bayonetta. Today, I finished it. It was a very good game in many ways, I thought - great fun to play, excellent graphics, amusing/awesome soundtrack and a very, very sexy lead woman - but what most surprised me was the villain, Father Balder. There are lots of villains who impress me (like the Prophet of Truth) and a few who are just a pleasure to watch (like Heath Ledger's Joker) but the last time I have hated a villain this much was in Game of Thrones. That guy was the smuggest douchebag in the world, constantly spouting these pretentious ten-dollar words and riddles, and for a goodly while it appeared as if he'd cruelly killed one of the game's most endearing side-characters. Then, in your fight, he kills a couple of the cool demon beasts you summon to fight him without even breaking his smug smile (seriously, I liked those things! They were badass!) and finally, in the middle of the heartwarming cutscene after the battle, he comes back to life and ruins it in the cruellest and most manipulative way possible, still smugly smiling.
So, my point is: What villains in media really (preferably, unexpectedly) succeeded in making you hate them with the burning fury of a thousand suns?
