Animated Disney Villains Ranked
20. Mother Gothel – Tangled (2010)
Rapunzel’s step-mother who keeps her locked in a tower in order to harness her long hair’s magical properties to unnaturally extend her life.
Gothel just wanted the magical flower with restorative properties to keep her young, but when the magic is absorbed by Rapunzel’s now-golden hair she is forced into grudging motherhood in order to keep leeching youth. She is the ultimate abusive adoptive parent, imprisoning a teenager and gaslighting her at a point where she needs to learn the truth about the way the world works for herself. Donna Murphy’s hiss-worthy performance is a gleeful highlight.
Gothel’s song “Mother Knows Best” emphasises her powers of deception, of omitting truth from a vulnerable teenager to further her ends.
Demise by: Rapid ageing and falling from Rapunzel’s tower when her hair is cut and the life-giving magic lost.
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19. McLeach – The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
An amoral hunter of endangered species looking for trophies and profit, particularly the second of a pair of rare golden eagles.
Something like an evil Crocodile Dundee, McLeach has a way with the animals but is far from their friend. Guilty of crimes ranging from illegal poaching to kidnapping a child and animal abuse (particularly of his pet monitor lizard Joanna), he is a bad dude just begging for his comeuppance.
Demise by: After escaping hungry crocodiles, he falls over a waterfall.
18. Dr Facilier the Shadow Man – The Princess and the Frog (2009)
A devious witch doctor with an uneasy alliance with his friends from the other side who is trying to engineer a blood sacrifice.
“Funny thing about voodoo: can’t conjure a thing for myself.”
Disney’s most flamboyantly entertaining villain of the modern era looks like Prince and acts like someone from old-school Universal horror. Street hustler by day, meddler with the dark arts by night, Facilier offers his victims temptation, their heart’s desire, in exchange for a monkey’s paw of a bargain.
Facilier’s song “Friends from the Other Side” is, to put it mildly, a bit of a banger.
Demise by: Their pact broken, the spirits of the dead drag him to hell.
17. Governor Ratcliffe – Pocahontas (1995)
The greedy and racist leader of an English expedition in the New World.
Ratcliffe is obsessed with the idea of the new land of Virginia teaming with riches and is willing to go as far as committing genocide to get it. He also gets a pantomimey number about lusting after gold (“Mine, Mine, Mine”) that gives David Ogden-Stiers plenty of chance to flamboyantly drawl.
Demise by: Survives bringing the European settlers and Pocahontas’ Powhatan tribe to the brink of war but is arrested and returned to England in disgrace.
Madame Medusa peeling her eyelashes off haunted me as a child!!