Complete Monster/Pokémon

""He's nothing more than a freak without a human heart! Do you think you're going to get through to a warped person like that?""

- Ghetsis in Pokémon Black and White after revealing his true motives to player, said about his son, N.

Despite its kid-friendly appearance, the Pokemon franchise has been sliding ever further into Darker and Edgier territory with each iteration, both in the main series and in the spinoffs. While Game Freak and The Pokemon Company continue to test how intense a concentration of Nightmare Fuel they can successfully put into each title without compromising its precious E rating, there are times when it shows, as these abominations demonstrate. Note that we used the word "abomination" - calling these folks monsters would insult Pokemon everywhere. Anime and manga examples are this way.

Pokemon Black and White

 * The true leader of Team Plasma and Big Bad, Ghetsis Harmonia, is known and hated worldwide for being the definitive Complete Monster of the main game series to date. What kind of person would take in an orphan child found in the woods, treat him with neglect, manipulation, and mental abuse, and let him be raised alongside Pokemon that he had his mooks abuse just so the child could be a pawn in his plan to take over the world? Ghetsis would, and he did. His scheming is at the heart of every deplorable action taken by Team Plasma, and everything wrong that occurs in the game. Though he hides beneath a mask of benevolence and good intentions, he really cares for nothing but himself. The crux of his plan is that if N could become the Hero of legend and force everyone in the world to release their Pokemon, Ghetsis would then be left as the only one who could use Pokemon as means of oppressing and enslaving everyone alive. He uses his pawns, his foster son included, as stepping stones in his rise to power, is cruel and abusive to humans and Pokemon alike, and is an unapologetic sadist as well. He admits to loving taking away hopes and dreams just so he can see people in that moment where they lose all hope and break down in despair. And he has the audacity to call his foster son N a "freak without a human heart", even though his plan hinged on him being just that! Unlike Cyrus, who had a Freudian Excuse for his heinousness, there's no excuse for the abuse that Ghetsis puts countless people and Pokemon through, and for all the lies and manipulations he seeded in his selfish quest as the mastermind behind Team Plasma.
 * In the sequel games, Ghetsis tortures a Pokemon in order to make it comply with terrorizing the entire Unova region, endangering many lives without any second thoughts or remorse. (He wants to put the whole continent on ice, putting a fatal chill over all the inhabitants of Unova until they submit and relinquish all power to him in fear for their lives.) And then he tries to have said Pokemon freeze the Kid Hero to death - the first time anyone in a Pokemon game has ordered a direct attack on the player character, without even a proper battle preceding it. Furthermore, after he loses again, he is actually offered a second chance by his "son" despite all that he'd done to him. Ghetsis' response? He verbally abuses him as horribly as an E-Rated game would allow. There is not a shred of goodness or decency in this guy.
 * What's really telling about Ghetsis is that he hits all major criteria required for passing the trope as much as a villain in this game genre possibly could. He is a depraved, pure evil, full-stop bad guy possessing no redeeming qualities or chance of redemption. He commits the most heinous deeds in the games' story. His terribleness is played dead seriously whenever he's a presence. Other characters in story (Cheren, Alder, N, Hugh, even Colress) show fear, hate, and disgust towards him for his sheer atrociousness. He lacks a Freudian Excuse of any kind: he does everything out of greed, power-lust, and self-entitlement. He is completely devoid of qualities that could be seen as altruistic, positive, sympathetic, redeeming, or even relatable. He expresses zero regret for his crimes, in fact feeling justified in committing them because he is "perfect." And he is never redeemed, even rejecting the chance when it's laid out for him. What tops it off is not only the shameless sadism he expresses in bringing down others to elevate himself, but his long-term goal is for a new world order where he, through being the only one who can use Pokemon, has unlimited influence and control over everything that lives. His treatment of his son alone put Ghetsis on the Moral Event Horizon: everything else is him going even further beyond that. Ghetsis is pure villainy Up to Eleven!
 * There's also the manner in which he is depicted. Giovanni was The Don, Archie and Maxie were Well-Intentioned Extremist eco-terrorist gang leaders, Cyrus was a Knight Templar cult leader, and Lysandre was genuinely insane yet also well intentioned and somewhat conflicted regarding the fate of all Pokemon. Ghetsis is the chief sage of the Team Plasma sages, who are styled like priests. Since N is the king and the Plasma grunts are knights, the sages would represent the Church, who were allied with the king and knights in holy crusades during the middle ages. To Team Plasma, freeing Pokemon is their holy crusade. Thus Ghetsis and his true intentions represents lies, hypocrisy, and corruption of a person who knowingly and maliciously takes advantage of beliefs held sacred by people and twists them into something to suit his dark, selfish ends. He even holds public sermons and preaches on the matters, when in reality he's full of crap. But it gets worse from there: he's outed as an Evil Sorcerer type person who's scheming to take power as a tyrannical, despotic dictator. Hiding this under the ruse of priesthood makes him the lowest scum possible for the series, so thus he gets a makeover once everyone knows what he truly is. He keeps his pointed, horn-like hairstyle, but now wears a black and red visor on his right eye (his left eye is already red.), wraps himself in a Black Cloak with creepy eyeball symbols decorating it, and carries around a staff with the Plasma insignia that is almost pitchfork-esque at a certain glance. So not only has Ghetsis gone from dark priest to all out Evil Overlord, but he's essentially styled as The Devil himself. His original name, G'Cis Harmonia, can even be translated as "the Devil in music." His battle theme sounds like a Dark Reprise to that of Arceus, the God Pokemon, and the opening for the "Episode N" arc of the anime even has him set against a red, fiery, flaming backdrop as he throws back his cape in a very Devil-like fashion. Based on the man's actions and behavior, it's hard not to see this depiction as fitting. And when you think back and realize that this Devil had been running Team Plasma's "Church", he becomes that much more of a monster.
 * Just to hammer it home, the villains of the generations before and after Ghetsis' planned on destroying the world and wiping out everything - and they still weren't as evil as Ghetsis, whose totalitarian end goals are arguably even worse than a quick death.
 * It also says something that the closest he seems to have to a personal relationship with anybody is with his underlings who believe owe him a life debt. Giovanni wasn't the best father to his son, but even his greatest crime in that relationship was negligence. Ghetsis has no love at all for his son, and it shows in the mentally abusive way he exploited him to serve his plans, as well as his hurtful words and actions towards him afterwards. What a prick.
 * Hell, just look at his Hydreigon's moveset in the sequels. It knows Frustration, a move that is more powerful depending on how much a Pokémon hates it's trainer. Hydreigon's Frustration does the maximum amount of damage it's possibly capable of. If this is any indication, even his own Pokémon absolutely hate the guy. At least Maxie, Archie, and Cyrus treated their Crobats well (Crobat evolve from a Golbat if it's happiness is maxed out)!
 * Even Smogon outright states, word for word, that "Ghetsis is a complete monster." When a site that focuses more on the competitive aspect of the games than the story outright calls him a monster, you know he qualifies.

Spinoffs

 * Pokémon Colosseum features the despicable triumvirate of Evice, Nascour, and Ein, the masterminds behind the Cipher syndicate's conspiracy. Evice, the literally monstrous old man posing as the kindly mayor of Phenac City, engineered everything for Cipher (though in the sequel we find out that the syndicate was founded by Greevil, he took mostly a backseat role while Evice was his more involved proxy). Nascour, the demonic looking second in command, kept the other Cipher members in line and oversaw all of their most heinous and underhanded operations. And worst of all, Mad Scientist Ein developed the process to create Shadow Pokemon: Pokemon artificially powered by a dark force that makes them not only lose their minds but their souls as well, leaving nothing but dark instincts, turning them into heartless, savage fighting machines that can attack and even slaughter people and other Pokemon. This is Cipher's claim to fame, and Ein is continuously trying to improve on the process just to show that he can. He's basically the franchise's answer to Xehanort or Hojo. Cipher is the most abominable organization in the franchise's history, and these three sociopaths blend together into one monstrous leadership. Evice as the heart, Nascour as the muscle, and Ein as the brains.
 * Classical Darkrai is a well-meaning being with a ghastly self-defense mechanism, but the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon equivalent is a much more sinister beast. He makes Freddy Krueger look smalltime, manipulates gods, orchestrates a Time Crash, makes the future a very miserable time, drops children in eternal nightmares for kicks, and nearly drives the player characters to suicide. The guy is a vastly darker villain in any Pokémon work even by E or E-10 standards, and the punishment for his misdeeds is much too lenient. (Then again, his punishment is implied to be the loss of all his memories (a'la Regal), and it is hinted that this actually forced him to be good.
 * Also, his motives are never explained, leaving us to assume that it was For the Evulz.
 * Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs gives us Purple Eyes. Before we even learn he exists, he's beaten Rand within an inch of his life and kidnapped both his wife and daughter. Later, he beats the daughter up, too! It gets worse, though; he eventually mugs the elderly Societea members (though, admittedly, they deserve it), hijacks the villain's plans, makes himself immortal, pumps up Mewtwo's power higher than it should ever be, and then commands Mewtwo to finish off Dr. Edward. And when Rand takes the shot for Edward, Purple Eyes is simply amused and continues to attack anyway, even taunting Rand's daughter about it. After you beat him, he points out that the Sky Fortress is now plummeting and will wipe out all of Oblivia. And then he laughs.
 * Aaand he one-ups himself. In the last Extra Mission, in which an enraged Arceus is passing judgment on the human race, he arrives in person. His imprisonment and constant questioning has not redeemed him, but instead turned him into a Misanthrope Supreme who no longer wishes to rule over all humans, but instead Kill All Humans. He begins preaching to Arceus that it should go through with the destruction, but to allow himself to act as its Dragon due to their similar beliefs about humans. This only enrages Arceus more. After you defeat and calm Arceus, Arceus leaves back to its home world and drags Purple Eyes with it, to pass judgment on him. Yeah, even the god of the Pokémon world deems it unsafe for him to be in our plane.
 * For a while. Hastings says that Arceus will send him back eventually when (or if) he really has a change of heart. However, when you consider that Arceus acted on this but not when Cyrus was unmaking the universe right under it, it says something potent about Purple Eyes' capacity for evil. Of course, this is assuming he could prove that he has some manner of decency, and there's no telling where he'll be dropped off - even Hastings couldn't guess where he'd wind up. He's in this trope now; the odds are slim enough already.