5 Best Cartoon Villains Of The ’90s, Ranked

What makes for a good cartoon? For the most beloved animated series of the 1990s, it was usually a bad guy. These were the villains who gave the heroes a real challenge on Saturday mornings, and the best of the worst became iconic characters in their own right. Some were more funny than threatening, while others were truly bad to the bone. One of the most iconic villains of the era was both, in fact.

Here are the five greatest cartoon villains of the ’90s, including a mad scientist, computer virus, intelligent chimpanzee, and more. Please note that this list only includes villains from Western animation, meaning you won’t find any anime antagonists. Iconic anime villains like Frieza from “Dragon Ball Z,” Elder Toguro from “YuYu Hakusho,” and Shishio Makoto from “Rurouni Kenshin” are very much worth recognizing for their evil deeds … but we’ll save that for another list.

In many episodes of “Dexter’s Laboratory,” one of Cartoon Network’s best shows, the titular boy genius’ biggest opponents are either his sister DeeDee’s chaotic impulses or his own hubris. Sometimes, though, he needs a proper enemy. Enter Susan Astronomanov, better known as the bowl cut-sporting evil boy genius Mandark. As brainy as his arch-rival but with a distinctively more sinister slant, Mandark is a worthy foil to Dexter. 

Originally introduced as Dexter’s better, Mandark gets humbled when Dexter exploits his rival’s biggest weakness: his infatuation with DeeDee. Yet even though DeeDee destroyed Mandark’s lab in his debut episode and forced him to rebuild and constantly play envious catch-up to Dexter, Mandark can’t help but pine for his nemesis’ free-spirited sister. Perhaps this affection betrays his origins, as the self-styled evil brainiac is the child of two peace-loving hippies.

Mandark’s megalomania and hatred of Dexter are played for laughs more often than not on “Dexter’s Lab,” but in the TV movie “Dexter’s Laboratory: Ego Trip,” he gets a chance to show off how evil he can really be when he takes over the world in a dystopian future. It takes the combined efforts of not one, but four Dexters to defeat him.

The Canadian series “ReBoot” was one of the first cartoons to be made using CGI, and while that means that the once-cutting-edge animation doesn’t exactly hold up decades later, the show’s villains certainly do. Set inside a cyberspace computer world known as Mainframe, “ReBoot” followed a pair of Guardians as they defended this virtual world from threats, and one of the biggest was a computer virus known as Megabyte. 

Voiced by Tony Jay — a Shakespearean actor who also lent his chilling-yet-charismatic baritone pipes to “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” baddie Judge Claude Frollo – Megabyte was cunning and ruthless in his quest to bring his own form of order to Mainframe, and he was a much more sophisticated villain than the show’s animation might suggest. Megabyte wasn’t the only great villain on “Reboot.” His sister Hexadecimal, an unstable virus who changed her emotions (and with them her face) at whim, just missed out on making this list on her own.

The Powerpuff Girls defeated plenty of villains as they protected the City of Townsville, and while HIM might have been the scariest and Princess Morebucks the most hateable, it’s hard to deny that Mojo Jojo was the Cartoon Network series’s best baddie. The subject of many of the best episodes of “The Powerpuff Girls,” Mojo was a super-intelligent chimp with gigantic brains and an even bigger ego. His tendency to redundantly bloviate about his own greatness and the brilliance of his plans led to his undoing more than once over the course of the series.

The actor behind Mojo, Roger L. Jackson, also played another iconic ’90s villain, providing the voice of “Scream’s” masked killer Ghostface. While Ghostface might be a more well-known villain, Jackson said Mojo was the better character in an interview with The Daily Times. “People are attracted to Ghostface, but they really love Mojo,” he explained. “I think part of it is that no matter how intelligent he is, Mojo is sort of a klutz. He really isn’t a nice person, but you can’t help but feel sorry for him. Mojo can be played for a chump, and I think most people can relate to that.”

A “Xanatos Gambit” is a plan that has a contingency for every possible outcome so that no matter what happens the schemer comes out on top — even if, at first, it looks like they’re losing. The namesake for this trope was David Xanatos, the villain from the somewhat forgotten Disney series “Gargoyles.” Voiced by “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star Jonathan Frakes, Xanatos is a calm-but-ruthless billionaire CEO who is originally responsible for freeing the Gargoyles, and he makes many efforts to regain control of them. Xanatos never lets his emotions get the better of him. There’s no need to take things personally or lose your cool when you’ve got so many backup plans and contingencies that it’s impossible to fail in the long-term.

“We didn’t want our villains to decay. We wanted Xanatos to be smart in a way that we hadn’t seen villains be in the past,” “Gargoyles” creator Greg Weisman told Polygon. “I didn’t want him to be petty, that was the main thing. I didn’t want him to be vengeful.” Xanatos eventually became an ally of the Gargoyles, putting those calculating powers of foresight to good use, but his many gambits have earned him a place in the bad guy hall of fame.

Unlike the rest of the villains on this list, the Joker wasn’t created in the 1990s. The most iconic villain in Batman’s rogue’s gallery made his debut in comic books in the year 1940. However, the version of the supervillain in the best superhero cartoon, “Batman: The Animated Series” is one of the best takes on the character. This Joker is undeniably one of the greatest bad guys in television history, animated or otherwise.

Although the Joker was originally meant to be voiced by Tim Curry, “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill ultimately got the part — and, in doing so, he snagged another iconic role in addition to Luke Skywalker. Unlike César Romero’s relatively silly take on the villain in the Adam West-led ’60s “Batman” show, the Joker in “Batman: TAS” has genuine menace. And yet, Hamill’s unhinged cackling and slyness do make the Clown Prince of Crime legitimately funny, too. The real magic of this version comes from how quickly and unpredictably he can switch from being hilarious to horrifying — and sometimes juggle both at the same time.

“He’s insane, and because he’s insane, he’s never boring,” Hamill told Wired. “It’s just fun to play a character that creates chaos wherever he goes.” The “Star Wars” star’s performance helped make many of the best episodes of “The Animated Series” so exceptional, and he reprised the role in other animated DC shows like “Justice League,” as well as in the “Arkham” video game series.