Updated: May 16, 2024

A rendering of an archetype of a villain as a late 19th-century businessman. A villain (also known in film and literature as the "antagonist," "baddie", "bad guy", or "black hat") is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist ( though can be the protagonist ), the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters. A female villain is sometimes called a villainess ( often to differentiate her from a male villain ). Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines villain as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot".

French villains in the 15th century before going to work, receiving their Lord's Orders. Villain comes from the Anglo-French and Old French vilain, which itself descends from the Late Latin word villanus, meaning "farmhand", in the sense of someone who is bound to the soil of a villa, which is to say, worked on the equivalent of a plantation in Late Antiquity, in Italy or Gaul. The same etymology produced villein. It referred to a person of less than knightly status and so came to mean a person who was not chivalrous. As a result of many unchivalrous acts, such as treachery or rape, being considered villainous in the modern sense of the word, it became used as a term of abuse and eventually took on its modern meaning.

Folk and fairy tales"

Vladimir Propp, in his analysis of the Russian fairy tales, concluded that a fairy tale had only eight dramatis personae, of which one was the villain, and his analysis has been widely applied to non-Russian tales. The actions that fell into a villain's sphere were: a story-initiating villainy, where the villain caused harm to the hero or his family a conflict between the hero and the villain, either a fight or other competition pursuing the hero after he has succeeded in winning the fight or obtaining something from the villain.

None of these acts necessarily occurs in a fairy tale, but when any of them do, the character that performs the act is the villain. The villain therefore could appear twice: once in the opening of the story, and a second time as the person sought out by the hero.

When a character performed only these acts, the character was a pure villain. Various villains also perform other functions in a fairy tale; a witch who fought the hero and ran away, and who lets the hero follow her, is also performing the task of "guidance" and thus acting as a helper.

The functions could also be spread out among several characters. If a dragon acted as the villain, but was killed by the hero, another character ( such as the dragon's sisters ) might take on the role of the villain and pursue the hero.

Two other characters could appear in roles that are villainous in the more general sense. One is the false hero: this character is always villainous, presenting a false claim to be the hero that must be rebutted for the happy ending. Among these characters are Cinderella's stepsisters, chopping off parts of their feet to fit on the shoe. Another character, the dispatcher, sends a hero on his quest. This might be an innocent request, to fulfil a legitimate need, but the dispatcher might also, villainously, lie to send a character on a quest in hopes of being rid of him.