Top 10 Smartest Decisions Made By DC Animated Villains

All that mustache-twirling leads to some intelligent plays! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most cunning moves that villains made in animated DC movies. This list will get into spoilers, so consider this your warning. Our countdown includes moments from “The Lego Batman Movie”, “Superman: Red Son”, “Justice League: Doom” and more! Welcome to Viralworld Magazine, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most cunning moves that villains made in animated DC movies. This list will get into spoilers, so consider this your warning. Is there an intelligent scheme we missed? Enlighten us in the comments! #10: Darkseid Empowers Normal Citizens “Reign of the Supermen” (2019) Darkseid’s nothing if not methodical. After Superman seemingly died after a battle with Doomsday (a creature who was also strategically sent by Darkseid) the world was in mourning. To capitalize, he then set Cyborg Superman up to pretend to be the real Superman brought back from the dead. Once the cyborg won over the masses, the Cyber Corps was soon born. It was a replacement to the Justice League made of citizens who were given superpowers. But the mysterious means in which they got them was revealed to be from Apokoliptian tech. Tech that allowed Darkseid to take over the Corps and invade Earth via a boomtube! Darkseid was stopped, but moral of the story? If someone offers to give you superpowers, don’t trust them! #9: Starro Takes Over the World’s Finest “Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons” (2022) This is one alien starfish you do not want to cross. In fact, they don’t call him Starro the Conqueror for nothing. During the “Battle of the Super Sons” movie, Batman and Superman investigate a disturbance at the Justice League Watchtower. Once there, a possessed Martian Manhunter attacks Batman and Superman, infecting them with Starro spores in the process. When it comes to world domination, Starro’s approach was pretty genius. He didn’t just bend the World’s Finest to his whim. He also controlled other members of both the Justice League and Teen Titans. Not a lot of villains can do that and make it look easy. While Jon Kent and Damian Wayne were able to stop Starro, it was definitely a challenge. #8: Joker Gets Sent to the Phantom Zone “The Lego Batman Movie” (2017) Why doesn’t Joker get sent to the Phantom Zone? It’s a question many fans have asked over the years. And in the “Lego Batman” movie, we get to see how that scenario plays out. When Batman steals Superman’s Phantom Zone projector, he sends Joker into the prison dimension. But it turns out to be exactly what the Clown Prince wanted. Because when Harley steals the projector and frees him, he comes back with an entire multiverse worth of bad guys. The swarm of villains who invade Gotham are a wide variety of power players. We’re talking Sauron, Voldemort, even King Kong. Joker’s crazy to want to go into the Phantom Zone, but the payoff to that plan proves that there’s a method to his madness. advertisement #7: Veronica Cale Is the True Mastermind “Wonder Woman: Bloodlines” (2019) Veronica Cale has often been considered to be Wonder Woman’s own Lex Luthor. And in “Wonder Woman: Bloodlines”, we saw a side to her that justified all of those comparisons. While Wonder Woman spent the movie fighting Villainy Inc, it was revealed in a mid-credits scene that Veronica Cale was the one in charge of the supervillain group all along. She then boldly declared that she would continue raiding Themyscira for its profitable Amazonian tech. Admittedly, openly taunting someone like Wonder Woman doesn’t exactly scream “intelligent”. But Cale’s secret puppeteering of Villainy Inc and the successful infiltration of Themyscira meant she was a woman who seemed to hold all of the cards. #6: Batman Traps Superman in Red Light “Superman: Red Son” (2020) While Batman fought for what he believed to be a good cause, his brutal methods and disregard for others made him an antagonistic force during “Superman: Red Son”. And when this Dark Knight clashed with the Soviet Man of Steel, he got the one up on him. You could lazily defeat Superman with Kryptonite for the umpteenth time, or you could do what Batman did. Using special lamps to douse the area, he replicated the conditions of a red sun. This let him temporarily negate Superman’s powers long enough to deliver an insane beatdown. He didn’t just leave him in a pile of blood, he also captured and harmed Wonder Woman. Batman’s plans might not have passed, but he sent a powerful message. #5: Owlman Dupes Everyone “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths” (2010) Nothing matters. Atleast according to Owlman. Since every choice a person does or doesn’t make plays out in one alternate earth or another, Owlman believed free will was essentially a lie. So Batman’s Earth 3 counterpart then secretly decided to try and blow up Earth Prime with a QED bomb, snowballing into the destruction of the whole multiverse. The only other person who knew was Superwoman, who Owlman convinced of his nihilistic plan pretty easily. The Crime Syndicate thought the bomb was just a way to scare their enemies, but they were none the wiser. Owlman’s plan is beyond ridiculous, but the way he’s able to trick the entire Crime Syndicate into doing his bidding is not. #4: Riddler Goes Through a Rebrand To be honest, this is kind of all Batman’s fault anyways! In “Justice League Doom”, Vandal Savage intercepts Batman’s secret contingency files for how to defeat the Justice League. With that information, the Legion of Doom then begins methodically dismantling our heroes. Superman’s shot with a Kryptonite bullet, Batman’s buried underground, Martian Manhunter’s set ablaze, and other grim fates all await the rest of the League. Even though they eventually prevailed, the fact that Batman had contingencies against his teammates created a major rift. Who needs to come up with elaborate schemes to destroy the Justice League when you can just steal everything from Batman? Talk about working smarter, not harder! #2: Joker Returns via Tim Drake “Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker” (2000) Joker is back and just as violent as ever! The Clown Prince of Crime made his triumphant return to the DCAU in the fittingly-named “Return of the Joker”. Originally, he had captured and tormented the Robin Tim Drake, but when he forced Tim to kill Batman, he killed Joker instead. So his definitive death here only made his return to Neo-Gotham that much more puzzling. In a plot twist, the new and improved Joker was revealed to be the now adult Tim Drake. He had implanted his essence into a microchip which he installed into Tim. This allowed him to take over his body and essentially return from the dead. We should’ve known that Joker was going to try and get the last laugh. #1: Darkseid’s Paradooms Slaughter Everyone “Justice League Dark: Apokolips War” (2020) “Justice League Dark: Apokolips War” was one of those movies where there was truly no happy ending. This grim film sees the Earth’s heroes launch a preemptive attack on Darkseid only to fail miserably and fly right into his trap. With his new army of Paradooms, every hero that dared to oppose him was brutally struck down. And it didn’t end there. The ones who survived the slaughter were quickly enslaved and further broken by Darkseid. Very rarely have the heroes gotten their butts served on a platter like this. While they eventually stopped him, Darkseid’s actions were so severe that the only way to truly fix things was to reset the timeline completely. Oof, that’s tough.