Even when at first it might seem the epitome of badassery and whatnot, whether it's in the latest CGI infested movie or the latest comic or novel, sometimes the so-called ultimate villain just doesn't seem right... they were not even plot devices at best but laughing stock at worst.

Then, we have the contrast with many of the villians I've encountered through film and fiction. Villians like Jadis in Narnia, Saruman and Sauron in LOTR, Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes, Iago in Othello, Claudius in Hamlet, Darth Vader and the Emperor in Star Wars, Kahn in Star Trek, The Shark in Jaws, the Joker in any interpretation of the Batman mythos, Lex Luthor with Superman, the Green Goblin and Spider-Man, Meganeto in X-men, Masalla in Ben Hur, Ramses in the Ten Commadnments, Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life... each of them had something about them that was so memorable to me.

Some times, like with Kahn it was because of what they did. I mean it was because of him that Spock died! Others like Joker or Lex Luthor are memorabel becasue in a way they define the hero. Where would Batman, Superman be with out those rivals to test their strength and skills?

It isn't just fictional villains that are so memorable, one of the many haunting parts of the film Schindler's List is when Amon Goeth goes out on his deck with his shot gun and just starts randomly shooting Jews. Then after he's done he relieves himself and goes back to his mistress like nothing happened, and if it did, it was like he just shot some animals. (even worse is the fact that he actually existed and did things like that.)

A truly memorbale villain takes a lot of skill to create... So what is it that can make a memorable villian in a film or a book?

Obviously there are exceptions, but I think the key to a really good villain is that they have a logic of their own as well as the power and smarts to be a challenge to the hero. Usually the villain functions as a counterforce to the hero, and without a good one, the story is thrown out of balance (to use a really lame analogy).

They need to have reasons behind their actions rather than just because they are evil. The reasons don’t have to make sense to normal people, but there should be some understandable form of reasoning that the villain has for doing whatever he or she does. The ones who think that what they are doing is justified and/or actually right are the scariest. I remember villains who really freak me out. They can sometimes be memorable just by doing really appalling/horrifying things, but if there isn’t a reason, then it’s like it’s just being done for shock value.

If they aren’t doing really awful things, I think the villains who just went a little too far trying to do the “right” thing are really memorable as well.

Of course, there are other ways to make them memorable, but that’s what I thought of off the top of my head.

While I dont know if there's any hard and fast rules about memorable characters of any kind, villain or hero or anything, but I think unusual mannerisms certainly help make a villain memorable.

One of my favourite, recent villains would be Anton Chigurh. His seemingly emotionless expression, deep and slow voice, bizarrely "un-cool" fashion and the whole insane moral code he follows. He just comes across as something other than human.

I’ll try and elaborate on my one word post. As I said, I think presence is the most important thing for making a villain memorable. Gravitas, credibility, whatever you want to call it, that’s the key. I need to believe the guy(or girl, or whatever it is) is truly one bad motherfucker, and is fully capable of ruining in people’s shit. The element of real menace is key, regardless of how willing your villain is to employ whatever menacing skills he/she/it has.

To provide an easy example, look at Vader based strictly on Episode IV, before they had a chance to do all the shading later. He’s got a name that actually sounds kinda silly, a costume that just looks sillier the more you look at it, and he spends all his non-speech time wheezing audibly. However, because he’s got such a strong presence, elements like his breathing become menacing traits rather than goofy ones. It signals the approach of a badass, not an asthmatic robot.

Also, I actually don’t think complex motivation and backstory and what have you is really all that necessary to making a memorable villain. Vader blew audiences away before we had any idea about him beyond his status as a fallen Jedi, and as MD said, Anton Chigurh was pretty much a supernatural force of destruction.

To further elaborate and also shill for The Wire, there’s a character that appears in the later seasons who’s really its only absolute villain, a young fellow by the name of Marlo Stanfield. Marlo’s the head of an upstart drug crew, and he’s in some respects as much an idea as he is a character, and he’s by far the most menacing character on a show full of bad dudes. He’s the ultimate avatar of the drug game, with no goals in life beyond ‘wearing the crown’ and having his name ring out across the Baltimore corners as the most powerful kingpin of them all, even if he dies because of it. He’s a true sociopath, and at points he’s an almost alien presence in a series populated pretty much entirely by realistic human characters.

Despite rarely killing anybody himself, his two chief underlings are both fearsome in their own right and spend a good portion of the fourth season as spectres of death, doing in anybody Marlo wants dead and boarding them up inside the slums’ vacant houses. The difference between Marlo’s behavior and the other, more familiar and sympathetic drug gang(the Barksdale crew), is that the Barksdales try to kill with purpose and efficiency to minimize the attention they’re paid by law enforcement(since there’s little risk of any organizational damage from drug charges, murder is the only thing they do that’s really risky), while Marlo has his people kill according to his whims. He has people killed because it was rumored they were talking shit about him, and he has civilians killed for almost no reason(something which is heavily frowned upon, at the least). Other human life truly has no value to Marlo except when it’s something he can use to advance himself.

It also helps that Jamie Hector completely dominates the role. Between his tightly coiled movements and often eerie lines, you can sense that there’s something truly monstrous lurking beneath the surface. He’s scary.

It signals the approach of a badass, not an asthmatic robot.

I agree with everything you said, even though this sentence is hilarious.

It also helps that Jamie Hector completely dominates the role.

Wasn’t he Knox “Fear makes me stronger” in Heroes? Good actor, that guy.

Not just that, but worry about what will happen if the villain wins.

By extension, that is actually what I meant. If Plankton wins, he gets what he wants – the secret formula. And then what? Mr Krabs goes broke, but Spongebob and Squidward can go work for someone who is nicer. No big tragedy there.
But if Frieza wins, or the first Terminator, or Dracula, or Doomsday, or Lucifer… well, you get the idea.

Remember: if you have to explain to the audience why they should be scared of the villain, you have failed.

Exactly. “His name was High Lord Devidemonogrius the Terrible, and he was the Emperor of the Evil Empire”
So what?
What’s he gonna do – evil-laugh me to death?

This is where the Establishing Character Moment comes in to play – like sansa also said. Many writers and directors still fail at using this properly.

I also liked Henrickson as an antagonist (he was my favorite secondary character) because… well he wasn’t wrong was he?

Henrickson was very well written. And yeah, you’re right; he wasn’t really wrong. In fact, one of the guy’s last scenes showed us that he was pretty much just like Dean (the muggle-version of Dean, if you will)... and that made his death so much sadder.

If Gordon had won… the world might have been better off…

Agree to disagree.
Also – Ruby?
More than half the time, you didn’t even know if she had a plan – never mind what she was planning.

To add more about my mention for 'In No Country for Old Men'

This movie could not and would not have been as good without Javier Bardem playing Anton Chigurh. Though I would say that it's not as much a moral code. I think it could better be defined as 'logic'. Codes, especially the 'moral' ones, are usually the cheesy and predictable weaknesses of a villain that are always spelled out for the viewer and will ultimately lead to his/her downfall. 'Logic', however, is usually too great a concept to fathom, too great a concept in a very long movie or in a huge book; it's something that defines one's entire life, one's mindset and one's actions, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it can be understood, or even followed by anyone else.

Furthermore, codes are things that can be followed by anyone, they can even be understood or make sense if you paint it with your own personal logic. It's the logic of a villian, however, that is truly the most terrifying and mysterious aspect of him/her. To never be capable of understanding a character's motives, to always remain in the dark, to know that he is just like you or anyone else save for his outlook on life - this is one of the most important aspect of any ultimate villain in my opinion. They're the ones that do not cackle like a mad scientist, or loudly laugh like an evil mastermind. They're the ones that just smile or, at best, chuckle at the hysteric begging and pleading of a scared, innocent young woman who's about to die. The question of why she has to die is something that makes absolutely no sense to me, yet makes perfect sense for an ultimate villain.