When it comes to Disney villains, we’ve
covered a lot... but there are still plenty of
questions that need answers. We’ve figured who the most evil is… We figured out who
the most powerful is… But what about the brains department? Which Disney villains
have that Einstein level IQ, and which ones aren’t the brightest bulbs on the Christmas
tree? I’m Kyle with WickedBinge and this is Disney
Villains: Dumb to Brilliant. For this list, we’re going to be ranking
based on a couple of factors. Much of this will
involve how successful villains were with their plans and also how they ultimately met
their downfall... We’ll be discussing whether their failures
were due to their intelligence or something else. First up, at the very bottom of the IQ chart... The dumbest Disney Villain is Prince
John. While he is a heartless ruler, greedily taxing
and imprisoning his subjects, he is also not the brightest king. The thing is, with his position and the true
ruler being off fighting in the Crusades, John didn’t have
to be smart about what he did. He didn’t need
to be tricky or underhanded. He was very upfront with the fact that he
hated Robin Hood for all he did and represented. He made it clear he didn’t want to be mocked
by his own people. And he wasn’t subtle about the fact that
he wanted Friar Tuck to be hanged in order to send a message to Robin Hood, knowing the
fox would try and stop the execution. Protect your heads, because The Queen of Hearts
is next with the Silver Medal of Stupid. Though one of the most quick tempered, she
isn’t going to win any prizes using her brains. We see during her time on screen that she
is easily tricked and pacified most of the time. It takes her some time to realize that the
roses are painted red, which one would think would be obvious. She doesn’t seem to notice that the game
is twisted in her favor which is why she wins. The Queen is a force to be reckoned with when
angry, since no one likes to be sent to the chopping block, but if she’s this easy to
sway, how much of a threat is she really? All someone really needs to do is start singing
the un-birthday song and all of a sudden the trial
is dismissed. We decided to give the infamous Pete the bronze
medal of stupid. Over the years, Pete
has gone from being a dastardly businessman to someone seeking to take over the
throne to a somewhat neglectful father and pretty much everything in between. So it’s a
little tricky to say just how smart he is. What we can say is that even in his roles
where he’s more devious and has more thought out
plans, he still relies on very incapable sidekicks or uses methods that are outdated
and almost set up to fail. Pete seems to
rely more on the power of money... or links himself to someone stronger and more
influential to use their name, such as in the Kingdom Hearts games when he teams with
Maleficent or in the Three Mouseketers when he worked for Queen Minnie. We’re mentioning Chernabog next. Now, while Chernabog is no doubt a terrifying
villain that is one of the most incense depictions of the Devil ever made, he doesn’t
need brains to do his job. Chernabog is not shown to really have a rival
exactly. He can
build up his forces and destroy them at will. When someone-or something-is that
overpowered, they don’t see a lot as worthy of taking them down. Chernabog fits the
description of a leveled up boss in a game that no one knows the cheat code for. But his
abilities come from raw power, not from wit. Really, Chernabog is a just a force of
nature. This may be a surprise to some, but Bill Sykes
is next. Sykes was a well off man, but
he came into that success taking advantage of people like Fagin. Controlling those on
the fringes of society that are dependent on whatever they can get isn’t that hard
to pull off. Sykes is a lazy criminal that wants to do
the bare minimum. He controls dogs rather
than people, doesn’t have a luxurious setup for his crimes, and seems to only use his
money for his appearance and ego. Though she is a fun villain, we’re placing
the Mad Madam Mim next. She’s sneaky
enough when going against Merlin, but she was quickly defeated. We aren’t going to
say that this made her an incapable villain, but her cockiness got the better of her. And
she was proven to be defeated by Merlin thinking of a loophole to turn into a sickness
that would infect her. Since she’s gone against Merlin more than
a few times, you would think that she would be expecting this sort
of thing from him. Next we have to place Oogie Boogie. Much like Chernabog, he didn’t really have
to be smart in order to display his influence. Oogie does have a bit more of an advantage,
making up machines for games of chance and torture, but they are all a copy of things
that Oogie likely encountered when alive and aren’t really original designs. We also see
that he’s easily tricked by Sally’s decoy and is defeated because he couldn’t keep
track of his own threads. You would think if you were made of a potato
sack that you would be smart enough to be careful about dethreading
your skin. Next is Captain Hook. In the original series, Hook is displayed
to be a man of high intelligence and charm. But we don’t get much of that in the Disney
depiction of him. Hook is shown as ill-tempered, violent and
two-faced. His men fear him, but he doesn’t
accomplish anything he wishes to. And we dock him a lot of points for seeking
Peter’s hideout in Return to Neverland when the whole
ending of the first movie was him learning about Hangman’s Tree from Tinkerbell. Honestly, what a plot hole. Moving onto the underhanded Governor Radcliffe. While an ambitious man who is
able to make use of the fear his men feel, he isn’t the best leader. Wiggins makes the
passing comment that Radcliffe came highly recommended and we can see why. Radcliffe definitely knows how to climb the
social ladder. He knew how to get positions
of control and he kept an ear open when it came to trade and politics, but he put all
of his eggs in one basket when it came to hoping
to get some of the gold and jewels he had heard of. And when he didn’t find any, Radcliffe grasped
at straws to find a reason for it, coming to the conclusion that the
Native tribe was hiding it from them to keep it for
themselves. To any reasonable person, that would make
zero sense. But to someone
whose reputation is on the line and who refuses to be embarrassed or admit he’s
wrong, it was logical. Moving onto The Duke of Weselton. Much like Radcliffe, he knows how to play
the game. But unlike Radcliffe, he is not subtle in
the least. The only real reason the Duke is
able to be deemed a little smarter than others mentioned so far is that the Duke has a
high standing among his people, is a respected figure in Arendale due to his long time
trade with the kingdom and he knows how to latch onto Hans and feed people’s fear. He was able to sneak his men onto the search
party with the secret order to take out Elsa on sight without anyone the wiser. But he was eventually called out for his betrayal. Next on our list is Medusa. One of the most vile villains in Disney for
praying on a small child. Now it takes some smarts and patience to know
how to train giant predatory reptiles. And Medusa knew how to distance herself from
the crime she was committing as much as possible to avoid suspicion. She also knew how to pick out a sidekick that
wouldn’t fight back with her, believing her when she said she would split the profit. But
Medusa was so focused on her one goal of gaining the Devil’s Eye and keeping it for
herself, she had no follow-up plan. She didn’t have a clear setup for how she’d
keep Snoops quiet. She seemed to assume Penny drowning would
keep all the evidence clear. And she didn’t really explain how she was
going to avoid getting unwanted attention once she sold off the Devil’s
Eye. We’re placing the animal rights nightmare,
Cruella DeVil, next. We would like to know
just how she expected to get away with wearing a dalmatian patterned coat around
town after a bunch of puppies get stolen, with the crime even covered by the
newspaper. She did well enough hiring men that would
keep the crime from being traced back to her, but Cruella made the choice
of hiring resentful and lazy men that were not willing to put actual effort into
anything. No one plots like Gaston. Now he was a little tricker to place. On the one hand, he is
clearly not good with reading a room… Or books for that matter. He’s so used to people
admiring him and praising his accomplishments, it never occurred to him that Belle was
unable to find him as a suitable husband. On the other hand, he knew that getting
Maurice locked away would either get the town rid of a pest or get Belle to finally cave
to accept his marriage proposal. One could say Gaston was playing a game of
3D chess… Well, probably not, but he did end up playing
his game strategically and isn’t quite as dumb as many might think. Next is the cat-napper Edgar. He didn’t have any sidekicks or a big operation. For a
great portion of his life, though he had his complaints, he was an honorable guy. He
served the lady he worked for and helped care for her home and animals and was nice
the whole time he did it. It’s important to know he isn’t seen as
an evil guy until he is determined to not come after the cats in the
will. But in that short amount of time, he
finds a way to get the felines out of the way in a manner that wouldn’t be traced
back to him and keeping his distance from whatever
would happen to them. If Duchess and her
kittens never made it back, Edgar would have gotten away with it. But he also was late
to realize how much evidence he had to cover up when it came to what he left behind
after his confrontation with the dogs. We have the spider-psycho Scroop next. Scroop is a good enough actor to avoid
suspicion, which is not easy to do considering he looks beyond threatening almost all of
the time. He was the one to call out Silver for being
too attached to Jim and knew that Jim would be a threat to their plan. He got Mr Arrow killed in a way that would
cover his tracks, knowing the man was too close to figuring
out their plan and setting things up in a way that distrust would be given towards
Jim. But he is another villain that doesn’t
plan ahead very well and is caught up in their own impatience to win, meeting his end
when Jim lures him to leap into his fate. Jumping ship to another pirate, we have John
Silver. A capable captain for a number of
years, he was able to get his crew to go along with being cooperative long enough to
get the treasure map. Not many can pull off a job like that, especially
when we realise how long all of these creatures had been traveling
in close quarters. He knew how to
distract Jim with tasks such as mopping and doing dishes, exhausting Jim to the point
that he wouldn’t catch onto things. He was also evenly matched when confronting
Jim after the crash, showing both frustration
and pride in being outsmarted. A well known baddy, we landed on this placement
for Scar in our spectrum of wits. Scar
did put a fair amount of planning into his plot to overthrow Mufasa. He was able to use
Simba to get the king into a vulnerable situation and used the fear and confusion Simba
felt to send him away. And rallying all of the scavenger hyenas,
promising them to be able to finally hunt and eat their fill was
a clever tactic. But Scar bit off far more than he
could chew. We see when Simba returns that the Pride is
little more than a wasteland due to Scar being unable to manage the kingdom. His goals were ultimately short
sighted and he had no real plan for sustaining anything. He only wanted the title of king
and the power that came with it. Scar didn’t have any foresight and was very
impulsive. He was manipulative enough to take the thrown
for himself, but still too dumb to see that a kingdom under his rule was destined
for failure. Had Simba not come back and
fed him to the hyenas, the hyenas probably would have eaten him anyway given they
were already in the process of starving. The power hungry Jafar is next. Though wielding an impressive amount of magick,
Jafar was not able to really utilize his powers. He relied on his ability to hypnotize the
Sultan and we see when he’s trying to marry Jasmine that this trick doesn’t always work
on the first try. He comes off as suffering from tunnel vision
whenever he’s close to success, getting attacked by Abu and losing
the lamp, losing countless people to the Cave of Wonders before finding Aladdin and
being tricked by Aladdin to be turned into a
genie. We will grant him some credit that he was
able to hide his true nature for an unknown amount of time and was the one to
figure out who Aladdin was before anyone else. Jafar is definitely smart enough to be manipulative,
but he tends to put his guard down when he gets cocky. Next is one of the earliest Disney villains,
The Evil Queen. We covered before how
impressive the Evil Queen’s abilities are. She’s able to cast complex spells, has tools
to help her find out anything she wants to know
and is able to disguise herself beyond recognition. But she focused all of those abilities to
kill Snow White. And all because
she was envious. It would have been smarter to use her powers
to strengthen her kingdom, but she was short sighted and impulsive. The villain from Tarzan, Clayton, is next. He wasn’t a good actor, but he was able
to recruit a lot of men to follow his lead with
the promise of payment. He was able to join a
research team, disguising himself as protection since he knew he couldn’t pull off being
a scientist or even sympathetic to the apes he was hunting. He was able to channel his
need to find them as a desire for the trip to be a success so his efforts weren’t for
nothing, remaining off of the radar until he had everyone locked up. But his inability to
see Tarzan’s warning as genuine and being unable to register the vine tightening
around his neck was his downfall. Still, Clayton was a resourceful guy who was
able to adapt to the situation at hand and was no
dummy. Moving onto Hans. He’s seen as a master manipulator and was
able to use Anna’s affection for him as a way of asserting power
over others. He played the role of a caring
leader for the citizens of Arendale and a mourning fiance to the other leaders. He even
managed to find the dungeon set aside should Elsa’s powers become too much for
anyone to handle. Hans did his research and knew how to gain
sympathy and twist others to his will. But he was unsuccessful due to his underestimation
of Anna. Still,
Hans manipulation ability was a testament to his wit. We’re placing Ratagan here on our list. His success is mainly due to the fact that
those around him were easy to threaten or just weren’t
smart enough to come up with their own plans. Ratagan was not only charismatic, but he was
smart enough to escape Basil’s detection for years. But his desire for power and his arrogance
about being the smartest left a few strings untied. Though fool proof on paper, he wasn’t able
to eliminate Basil or the Queen. Next is The Horned King. The Black Cauldron is one of the most overlooked
Disney movies, but they had one of the creepiest
villains the studio has ever released. He was
efficient, able to gain the knowledge that he wanted, gaining the Black Cauldron. And an
army of the undead was something that was unique to his plot, with his men expendable
and able to fight longer than simple henchmen. Next is one of the most quoted Disney villains,
Yzma. Now she wasn’t exactly
concerned with making her kingdom more powerful either, but that was because they
were already wealthy. Yzma wanted the ability to control and oversee
everything. Unlike
Scar, who just wanted the title of ruler, Yzma just wanted Kuzco out of the way so she
could rule as she pleased. She had already been pulling the strings behind
the scenes for a number of years, and it’s possible
she’s the reason we never see Kuzco’s parents. After all, what better way to run a kingdom
than to raise someone to do as you tell them? She did already admit to pretty much raising
Kuzco. We have to throw in Doctor Facilier here next. A shady character who was clearly
good and wheeling and dealing. A clear ability to persuade others to go along
with his offers. On paper, his plan sounded good. Turn the prince into a frog and use his blood
to get someone more weak willed in power that would give him a life of luxury. But
maybe don’t place all of your bets on that working out. Maybe staking your soul on that
was not the best way to go. Next on our list is Maleficent. Placing a curse out of being insulted is a
lot of effort. But
we have to hand it to Maleficent: she really did well covering her bases. She was able to
find Aurora with the use of her raven, was able to get the princess to prick her finger
and kidnapped the prince as a further insult. Moving onto Lady Tremaine. Long before she had gotten a hold of the Fairy
Godmother’s wand, Lady Tremaine was an abuser that went far below the radar. She
passed Cinderella off as a maid rather than family so no one questioned her
mistreatment. When she did come into possession of magick,
she used it to twist the Prince’s perspective of Anastasia to gain
higher status and used said rank to get rid of
Cinderella for good. She was done in since she didn’t know of
all of Cinderella’s abilities to overcome her situation. Next up is Frollo. He rose to power due to his merciless tactics
and connections higher up. In fact, he probably played the game of politics
better than any other Disney villain. He was able to get away with a lot, using
people’s fear to keep them in line. He was
able to use Quasimodo’s need to help in order to find the Court of Miracles and was
nearly successful in killing the hunchback when he was grieving over Esmerelda. He
understood the power of shame, as well as fear… And used these things to rule over
others. Frollo knew how to use his position to get
what he wanted, but his ignorance and obsession ultimately worked against him. Still, he had himself something of a long
reign, and all of his tactics were well thought out. Next up is the sea witch herself, Ursula. Unlike the Evil Queen, Ursula did choose to
use her powers to gain control and strengthen her influence. She was able to use
Tritan’s youngest daughter against him, knowing how he despaired of losing any of
his family after the loss of his wife. She was able to plan ahead with using Ariel
as leverage, which is not something we often see with animated
villains. Really, Ursula knew how to
play the game to get what she wanted. She used tactics and strategy and understood
the concept of leverage. Next we’re placing Mother Gothel. What can we say about one of the most toxic
and abusive parental figures in Disney? We really didn’t think anyone would ever
come close to Frollo, but she proved us wrong. Now, much like Medusa, she knew how to
distance the child she kidnapped from the rest of society. Unlike Medusa, however, she
didn’t let Rapunzel know she wasn’t her daughter. It was a way of keeping the young
princess in line while Gothel used her healing abilities. Gothel’s plan would have worked
too had Eugene not taken her out of the tower. She’s definitely a character who has a
lot of wit given her strong abilities in manipulation. Representing a dangerous sort of
intelligence that exists in real life and often flies under its’ victims radar. This might come as a surprise, but we’re
placing King Candy, or Turbo, next. It takes a
lot of energy and coding to take over your own game like Turbo did. He was so
successful, no one had any memory of Vanellope being the true ruler in Sugar Rush. The only way he was exposed was when Ralph
called him out for Vanellope being on the game’s design and Vanellope’s glitch
exposing the real identity of King Candy. We
have to rank him especially high because he’s the only character to figure out how to
reprogram an entire game so that he could take control of it. He was also smart enough
to not draw attention to himself. With nobody else figuring out his true identity
for quite some time. He was a mad man, but he was definitely one
of the smarter villains in The Disney universe. Taking the Bronze Medal of Wits, we are going
to place Hades. Now, Hades didn’t
deserve all the crap he got. We completely sympathize that he did not want
to be the one in charge of the dead and he resented
Zues for the role. Hades was able to play the
long game, playing nice and thinking Hercules was out of the way. He was able to bide
his time until it was most likely he would succeed. When his plan was threatened, he
was able to figure out what to use against the hero. The one thing that he couldn’t plan
for was Meg dying to protect him. Which we find surprising considering Meg had
already sacrificed herself for love once. We’re handing the Silver Medal of Wits over
to Shan Yu. Shan Yu was not only a strong
leader for his people, but he was hard to take down. He was able to strategize to stay one step
ahead for a good portion of the film. His goal was to reach the Emperor and
intimidate the man in person, knowing that simply attacking army after army wouldn’t
achieve all that he wanted. Shan Yu was a strong villain, but also, a
brilliant strategist and tactician. Though in the Disney adaptation, Shan Yu was
defeated by Mulan getting him blown up, he never really faced justice
for all he had done. Finally, we’re giving The Gold Medal of
Wits to The Coachman. Seen in Pinochio, he
was the one running the carnival and luring young boys to indulge in whatever they so
desired. First of all, this is a big operation. Not only for the various rides, the kitchens
that make the treats, the endless supply of alcohol and whatever else just goes into the
island itself. The Coachman also had an untraceable source
of labor once the boys were turned into donkeys and he didn’t even
have to do the recruiting himself, having various people that spoke about his idyllic
getaway and entrancing all the boys to flock to the area themselves. As far as we know, in the film, the Coachman
is never caught for his actions. Given the fact this whole nightmarish operation
he runs seems incredibly complex, the fact that he also seemed to get
away with everything kind of solidifies his position as the brightest Disney Villain. But what do you think? Who are the most brilliant villains in all
of Disney? Let us know
in the comment section. Don't forget to hit that notification bell
and binge our Good-to-Evil playlist. Where we break down the morality of the characters
in your favorite cartoons, shows and movies. But most importantly, stay wicked!
