Best Villains Ever #9
Revolver Ocelot (Metal Gear series)
At first, Revolver Ocelot appears to be just another one of the Metal Gear series’ bizarrely-named boss characters; only belatedly do we come to realise that Ocelot seems to be the one character holding all the cards. He double-crosses and triple-crosses everybody else so many times that we can never be sure where his loyalties really lie, and he always seems to be the man pulling the strings behind the scenes of every conspiracy.
Of course, we can’t overlook the bizarre cowboy routine either. He dresses like he came straight out of the old west, and he fights with a pair of antique revolvers; making things even more obscene, he’s actually Russian. This is a character fully strange enough for any winking gimmicky "ironic" game, but he’s played totally straight; the game never really seems to consider him a figure of fun even though you wouldn’t think a sixty-year-old Russian cosplayer would be able to get around it.
It’s this combination of Illuminati secret master and crazy old man obsessed with his cowboy fantasy that makes Ocelot stand out from the crowd. He’s clearly neither completely sane nor completely mad, but he’s certainly highly intelligent and dangerous, and willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants. That’s pretty much the definition of an effective villain.
