8) Victor Zsasz
Yes, it’s another Batman villain, but there’s just so many good ones to choose from that we couldn’t help ourselves. Plus, like Mr. Freeze and The Riddler, he’s appeared on film (and even on TV, in Fox’s Gotham) before but has never been done justice.
Vastly underestimated, Victor Zsasz can possibly become one of the most terrifying villains in the Bat universe. A sanitized version of the serial killer appeared in Batman Begins, as a mere thug for Carmine Falcone, but his history cuts much deeper.
[zergpaid]Zsasz was a wealthy man who became a depressed gambler after his parents died. A botched suicide attempt involving a knife-wielding homeless man made him see existence as pointless and caused him to devote himself to increasing his body count. Since then, Zsasz has left a cut on himself whenever he killed someone, accumulating tally marks that are in most incarnations too many to count.
His entire body maps out all of Batman’s failures and his breakouts from Arkham are guaranteed to result in murder. There is nothing salvageable in Zsasz that Batman can reason with, no bargaining chips to pacify him with. He’s deranged without the theatrics of dressing up as a scarecrow or a punchline for an audience. He’s the sort of villain who could live in our world, and really put viewers at odds with Batman’s moral code of letting mass murderers live.