The methodology of wickedness: Data reveals the most evil Disney villain

Copyright Walt Disney - Canva

By David Mouriquand

Published on 19/06/2026 - EURONEWS

The House of Mouse has given audiences some cracking scoundrels over the years. Some heinous, some nightmarish, and some deeply misunderstood. And one is especially irredeemable...

“The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.”

Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t wrong when he offered these words of wisdom.

Heroes are great and all that, but a great antagonist makes a film.

From Hannibal Lecter to Lots-o-Huggin' Bear, via Anton Chigurh and the Joker, it’s plain to see that devious bastards are the ones that stand out.

Disney is no different in this respect. Beyond loveable protagonists and, let’s face facts, very creepy princes who need to learn that an erection is not consent, the House of Mouse has given audiences some cracking scoundrels. Some heinous. Some nightmarish. Some deeply misunderstood.

But which Disney villain is the most evil?

Everyone has their favourites in this respect – with the Euronews Culture team split between the devious Jafar in Aladdin and the business-savvy octopus queen of sass that is Ursula in The Little Mermaid.

However, the good folks at PixlParade have taken it upon themselves to take a data-driven approach to the question.

They have compiled a list of the most popular Disney villains, included some deep cuts, and stressed that their focus is on original Disney antagonists. So no Star Wars or Marvel characters.

The team then established point values to the crimes, violations and prejudices the characters are guilty of. For example, mass murder gets you 50 points; child abuse / cruelty adds 15 points to the rap sheet; and arson will cost an extra 8 points... The points were totalled to produce a final score and a ranking of the 50 most evil antagonists.

You can check out the full villain scoring rubric point values and their sub-divisions here.

The number one villain may surprise you...

Before we get to the top spot, we can tell you that Cruella de Vil ranks surprisingly low considering her crimes against animals (35th spot). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ Evil Queen is also quite low (33), despite attempted murder, abuse of power and assault. As for Master Control Program in 1982’s Tron, it comes in at 19 with charges including attempted genocide / mass murder, psychological abuse, and theft.

Trust AI, they said... It'll be fine, they said...

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Now to the Top 10.

Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent comes in at 10 with a total of 241 points; the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise’s Captain Hector Barbossa and Captain Salazar are at 9 and 8 respectively (242 / 253); The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Oogie Boogie is in 7 with 271 points; Scar from The Lion King just misses the Top 5 with an already impressive 284 tally; Mulan’s Shan Yu makes n°5 (313); Gravity Falls’ Bill Cipher is a surprisingly high entry at 4 (375); the Horned King from the lesser-known 1985 film The Black Cauldron steals the bronze with three extra points and a total of 378; and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’s Jadis the White Witch nabs the silver with 418 points...

Drumroll, please.

According to the analysis, the worst, most irredeemable, most evil Disney villain is... Judge Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Judge Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame Walt Disney

The religious fanatic and extreme xenophobe led a crusade of “moral cleansing” and earned the highest score of 425 among the Disney villains.

He is guilty of... Deep breath... Murder, genocide / mass murder, attempted genocide / mass murder, attempted child murder, attempted murder, assisting / ordering / conspiring murder, attempted domination, mass indoctrination / enslavement, attempted forced marriage, war crimes, child abuse / cruelty, terrorism, torture, tyranny, abuse of power, unlawful imprisonment, exploitation, kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, psychological abuse, psychological torture, stalking, animal cruelty, assault, hate crimes, mass arson, vandalism, mass property / environmental damage, deception / cheating / fraud, slander, treason / betrayal, harassment, sexual harassment, aaaaaaaaaaand conspiracy.

How does he find the time?? And good luck to any lawyer representing him. Not even Atticus Finch could get him off - especially when you recall his teaching methods with Quasimodo during that alphabet recital scene.

A is for Abomination. B is for Blasphemy. C is for Contrition. D is for Damnation. E is for Eternal damnation...

What do you think? Is Judge Frollo worthy of most evil Disney villain, or was another cheated of the top spot?

Just don't say Captain Hook. If ever there was a misunderstood "villain", it's the Captain of the Jolly Roger. How would you feel if some arrogant flying twink who kidnaps children chopped off your hand and fed the limb to a crocodile??

#JusticeForCap.

 

Can Pepper the robot be a good playmate?

Robots can actually be good playmates, but only if they behave in ways that make sense to people.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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Pepper and master's student Suraj De exchange information.

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Credit: Photo: Dafina Marku, NTNU

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have investigated what it is like to play a physical game with or against a robot that both looks and behaves like a person.

They conducted a controlled laboratory experiment with Pepper, a social robot designed to interact with humans.

“Our observations show that robots can actually be good playmates, but only if they behave in ways that make sense to people,” said Yavuz Inal, associate professor at NTNU’s Department of Design in Gjøvik.

So, humanoid robots can make good playmates, but their design must take into account gameplay modes, pace, role and order of play. If the robot suddenly acts like an overzealous seven-year-old who simply has to win, while also moving a bit stiffly and not quite understanding the rhythm of the game, we quickly get annoyed. We expect robots that are more natural, responsive and flexible than the current technology is capable of delivering.

When robots resemble us, we expect more

Humanoid robots such as Pepper are designed to resemble humans, in both their appearance and behaviour. They have heads, eyes, hands and facial expressions that make it easier for us to relate to them, but which can lead us to automatically expect them to behave somewhat like humans as well.

Previous research has shown that these types of characteristics increase engagement, whether the context is health, education, or pure entertainment.

Human versus machine in trash can basketball

In the study, the participants played a physical version of trash can basketball with Pepper. The human participants and Pepper the robot threw scrunched up balls of paper at a trash can from carefully chosen positions that made the game suitably challenging.

The researchers tested two gameplay modes: either humans and the robot were on the same team, or they played against each other. In addition, the order of play varied; sometimes the human participants started first, sometimes they let the robot start.

This enabled the researchers to investigate how gameplay mode and order of play affected engagement, motivation, emotional responses and enjoyment of physical activity.

“The study shows that even small adjustments in pace and order of play can be crucial in determining whether playing against a robot is perceived as fun or frustrating,” explained Inal.

The participants in the study enjoyed the game most when it was started in cooperative mode. However, there were also situations where the participants enjoyed playing against the robot. Many of the participants found competitive gameplay more exciting and motivating, especially when they were able to start the game themselves and thus felt more in control.

Beating Pepper produced a distinct sense of mastery, and some individuals admitted that it was especially satisfying when the robot missed the trash can. For these participants, competitive mode provided a clear goal and a sense of being challenged in a fun way.

Annoying when Pepper is too slow or too eager

It quickly became clear that the participants tended to get annoyed with the robot for many of the same reasons that we get annoyed with family members who are a little too competitive when playing Ludo or Monopoly.

Frustration increased especially when Pepper started the game in competition mode. The robot’s stiff movements, long pauses before each throw and slightly overzealous attempts to ‘win’ led people to expect more and become frustrated when Pepper failed to come across as either dynamic or particularly human-like. Some participants described the experience as like playing against an “overworked printer with arms”.

“When robots are invited to take on the role of playmates, we expect them to behave like proper players. If they don’t, we quickly become impatient,” asserted Inal.

The results offer a glimpse into a future where robots not only assist us at work and in the healthcare system, but also participate in everyday activities such as play, exercise and games.

Reference:
Yavuz Inal, Deepti Mishra, Suraj De: ‘The effect of cooperative and competitive human-robot interaction on player experience’ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875952126000273

 

Androgynous and 120 centimeters tall, Pepper is designed to be unintimidating in person. 

Credit

Photo: Suraj De, NTNU

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Journal

Entertainment Computing

DOI

10.1016/j.entcom.2026.101105 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The effect of cooperative and competitive human-robot interaction on player experience

WVU researcher develops soft and ‘squishy’ robotic hand for harvesting delicate fruits like strawberries

West Virginia University

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In the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources Robiotics Lab run by researcher Anand Mishra, a soft robotic gripper developed for fruit picking holds a strawberry.

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Credit: WVU Photo/Jennifer Shephard

A new robotic gripper designed to pick fruit could mean supermarket shoppers enjoy better quality produce as well as new options like pawpaws, a West Virginia University researcher said.

Anand Mishra, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, was part of a team of roboticists behind the development of a soft gripper capable of gauging the size, curvature, color and ripeness of fruits like strawberries and avocados.

He said the gripper’s soft “fingers,” made of silicone and polyurethane, handle delicate fruits gently, while multiple sensors enable precise decisions about which fruits are ripe for harvest.

“Our gripper’s quick, accurate inspections and harvesting can reduce spoilage of fruits and lower supply chain costs,” Mishra said. “Fruit inspections are critical for harvesting decisions that have traditionally been made by human workers. However, using human workers for harvesting involves challenges such as labor shortages, health concerns and inaccuracies in picking.

“Recently, robots have emerged as a promising technology to reduce spoilage and improve distribution efficiency. But most current robotic systems are designed for indoor greenhouse applications, even though over 99.9% of crops are cultivated in outdoor environments. And rigid robotic systems can bruise ripe fruit with their bulky, hard grippers, while struggling with sensor reliability.” 

In contrast, he explained, his team’s soft robotic gripper can inspect the fruit with both tactile and visual sensors that identify the perfect time for picking, and it can harvest a fruit like a strawberry simply by twisting the stem, no cutting required.

In a paper in Nature Communications, Mishra and his coauthors detail their findings from research originally conducted in the Organic Robotics Lab of Rob Shepherd at Cornell University, and now continuing in Mishra’s WVU lab. 

The five-fingered gripper they developed looks and acts like a hand — but it also resembles a starfish. Mishra said those associations with natural organisms aren’t accidental.

“My research group at WVU is called the Robiotics Lab because we focus on robots that mimic biology. We design squishy, squeezy, rubbery robots inspired by animals. These robots move differently than traditional hard robots. Imagine a robot that moves like an octopus, for example. Because our robots are soft, they absorb vibrations and mechanical forces differently than traditional robots. And their tactile sensing is different in the way they touch objects and discern pressure and shape.”

Those qualities are important for fruit farmers because ripeness is a major challenge in farm-to-market distribution. While some crops, like citrus fruits, can be commercially harvested over a period of weeks, others like strawberries and raspberries have a window of only a day or two. Making it harder, those fruits with shorter ripening periods are usually soft with thin skin, meaning they bruise and spoil easily. Strawberry farmers, for instance, can see post-harvest losses of up to 25%. 

But because many fruits, such as avocados, don’t reliably look different after ripening, visual assessments aren’t enough. Robots, like humans, often need to squeeze a fruit to know how ripe it is. In addition to driving significant financial losses for farmers and retailers, the difficult question of when to harvest means that some fruits, like the delicate, quick-to-spoil pawpaw, can’t be successfully distributed beyond their local areas.

The soft robotic gripper Mishra and his colleagues developed can mitigate those challenges. Within each of its fingers, stretchable optical fibers serve as tactile and curvature sensors, while the palm houses a miniaturized camera and distance sensor. After testing the gripper on supermarket strawberries and then a living strawberry plant, the researchers showed the gripper can open and close in under two seconds, lift weights of up to a kilogram — more than 16 times its own weight — and achieve nearly 100% accuracy in shape prediction. It can sense not only stiffness and bending, but also slipping, so it can detect when its grasp on a fruit is unstable.

While the gripper’s multifunctional soft sensing system is focused on reducing food waste and financial losses in agricultural supply chains, Mishra pointed to uses beyond fruit harvesting, and even beyond farming.

“This system offers applications in space exploration, health care, food handling and underwater manipulation,” he said. “In biomedical robotics, for instance, the integration of curvature and tactile sensing could enhance wearable and rehabilitation devices. There are many possibilities inherent in the technology’s capacity for multi-object grasping, manipulation and environment interaction. Like the animals they’re based on, soft robots can adapt to new situations.”

 

WVU researcher Anand Mishra’s robotic gripper is capable of gauging the ripeness of the fruit through sensors.

Credit

WVU Photo/Jennifer Shephard

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-70588-9 

Article Title

Sensor fusion of touch & vision in soft manipulators for fruit picking

CUTHULU STUDIES

Study shows octopuses' impressive ability to navigate space

Researchers demonstrate invertebrates can solve a spatial problem using a mirror.

Dartmouth College

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California two-spot octopus in front of a mirror in the Octopus Lab at Dartmouth.

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Credit: Photo by Mary Kieseler.

Octopuses are remarkably intelligent creatures, as was demonstrated by Inky the Octopus's famous escape from the National Aquarium of New Zealand through a drainpipe back to sea in 2016.

A new Dartmouth study shows octopuses can use mirrors to find food out of sight, demonstrating spatial cognitive abilities. The results are published in Current Biology.

"Our findings are the first to demonstrate that invertebrates can use mirrors to understand their environment to find prey," says lead author Mary Kieseler, Guarini '25, who conducted the research as a PhD student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth and is now a postdoc at Switzerland’s University of Fribourg. "It's a skill that previously has only been documented in vertebrates, such as in some mammals and some birds."

The researchers trained three California two-spot octopuses (Octopus bimaculoides) in the Octopus Lab at Dartmouth to not attack a crab image that they see in a mirror but instead to infer and move to where the hidden stimulus was displayed behind them.

First, the octopuses were acclimated to the mirror in their habitat. Then, they were trained to understand how a mirror works using a live food reward—crab—which was placed in a glass jar that they could see in the mirror. To obtain the crab, the octopus had to make a 90-degree turn around a corner.

"We don't enter the world knowing how to use a mirror but learn how to use a mirror," says senior author and cognitive neuroscientist Peter Tse, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth. Just as new drivers learn to use a rearview mirror to track other vehicles, "Octopuses can also learn how to use a mirror to infer where things are in the world."

Octopuses have chemoreceptors that enable them to smell and taste by touch. So, for the experiment, the team used a virtual crab stimulus rather than a live crab. 

The octopus was placed in a start box open to the top and front and shown the virtual crab image in a mirror directly in front of the animal. The virtual crab image was projected from behind the octopus on the left or right side. Instead of the octopus going to the mirror to try and obtain the virtual crab, it went to the projection site, requiring a 180-degree turn, where it then received a live crab reward. In some cases, the octopus would climb up and over the box to the side where the crab was projected rather than exiting the box and swimming around to the side.

The results show that octopuses travelled to the correct side approximately 73% of the time.

During the trials, the team manually tracked a spot between the eyes on the mantle, which is like the head of the octopus, from overhead. The researchers also calculated the length of the paths the octopuses used to seek the reward. While they did not always choose the shortest way of travel, they became faster at going to where the stimulus was based.

"Octopuses are among the most evolutionarily distant animals from humans, as our last common ancestor was a worm that lived 350 to 500 million years ago," says Kieseler.  "Given that such a remote organism has independently evolved the means to use a mirror as a tool to process spatial cognition suggests that the underlying cognitive processes might be subject to convergent evolution, where different species evolve similar neural solutions to the same challenge."

The world in which octopuses live, mainly coral reefs and the ocean seafloor, are complex environments.

"Octopuses are like cats: they will sneak up on their prey and pounce, and they want to do so as fast as possible, so that they don't become preyed upon," Tse says.

"Hunters are very effective when they have a mental map of their territory, so that they know where they are in relation to their environments," says Tse. "Our work suggests that octopuses might also have internal maps, an internal representation of space." 

However, according to the co-authors, additional research is needed to prove this.

Kieseler is available for comment at: Marie-luise.Kieseler@dartmouth.edu.

###

 

Experiment setup for testing the octopuses’ ability to utilize the mirror.

Credit

Graphic by Mary Kieseler and Marvin Maechler.

Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2026.05.012 

Article Title

Octopus bimaculoides can learn to utilize a mirror to localize a reward outside the line of sight

Article Publication Date

3-Jun-2026

 

Is Europe's heatwave bad news for renewables? Surge in solar turns power prices negative

Copyright Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By Rebecca Ann Hughes

Published on 01/06/2026  EURONEWS

Soaring temperatures can actually hinder some kinds of renewable energy output, even sun-absorbing solar.

Europe has been baking amid its first major heatwave of the season, with the UK and France experiencing record May temperatures.

Sunny skies have caused a surge in solar power output, resulting in negative electricity prices in some parts of Europe - where the wholesale market of electricity dips below zero due to supply outstripping demand.

While this may sound like a welcome relief for consumers amid spiralling energy costs, this increasing phenomenon won’t actually lower your bills.

Plus, soaring temperatures can actually hinder some kinds of renewable energy output.

Heatwave turns power prices negative

A recent Bloomberg analysis found that the UK saw solar meet almost half of its electricity demand at around midday last Sunday (24 May) – the highest ever, according to NESO data – as temperatures climbed to a sweltering 32.2°C in London.

The surge in renewable power pushed hourly prices in France below zero at around 1pm on Tuesday, 26 May on Epex Spot – while the country suffered under a “highly anomalous and powerful” heat dome.

This is not the first time this has occurred this year. According to analytics firm Montel, negative electricity prices on the Iberian Peninsula hit a new all-time high in the first quarter of 2026.

Spain was hit the worst, recording 397 hours of negative prices between January and March, a significant spike compared to the 48 hours registered in the same period of 2025, while Portugal reached 222 hours of sub-zero prices during the same period.

Why do negative electricity prices occur?

Electricity prices go negative when supply exceeds demand. In Europe’s day-ahead market, energy producers submit offers saying how much electricity they will sell at what price. Normally, that price is positive.

However, ideal weather conditions can drastically boost solar and wind output – meaning more energy is being produced than is needed. This can often occur on public holidays, when people are more likely to be using less energy than they normally would.

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Generators can underbid each other, based on operating and restart costs, to avoid being switched off (curtailed). This is because they either still make money through subsidies/contracts or because they will lose more money through curtailment.

Last year, for example, Britain wasted a staggering £1.47 billion (around €1.67 billion) by turning down wind turbines and paying gas plants to switch on.

How can Europe stop negative electricity pricing?

Solving negative electricity pricing is no easy feat. Europe’s outdated energy grid was never designed for the renewables boom, and is instead set up for centrally-located plants. This means that wind and solar energy – which tend to be located in remote areas – often can’t get to where it is needed, like homes and offices.

While grid investment in Europe has increased by 47 per cent over the past five years to around €70 billion annually, experts warn it still falls short of what’s required.

A recent report by energy think tank Ember warns that more than 120 GW of anticipated renewables are at risk due to Europe’s “insufficient grid capacity”. This includes 16GW of rooftop solar installations, impacting more than 1.5 million households across Europe.

Giving away free or discounted energy is another way of tackling negative electricity prices, an incentive already being considered in the UK.

Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, which has long been pushing for reforms to provide cheaper energy rather than curtailing wind power, says such initiatives should be made permanent to persuade consumers to invest in electrification.

Can battery storage fix Europe’s outdated energy grid?

The main issue around negative electricity prices is that excess electricity is hard to store. This has resulted in calls to bolster Europe’s battery energy storage systems (BESS).

Last year, the EU installed 27.1 GWh of new BESS – marking 12 consecutive years of record growth.

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According to a 2026 Solar Power Europe report, despite a tenfold expansion of the EU battery fleet since 2021, reaching more than 77 GWh today, Europe remains “far from where it needs to be”.

To meet its 2030 targets, the EU must repeat its tenfold growth once again – scaling battery storage towards 750GWh within the next five years.

Five EU markets delivered more than 60 per cent of all new BESS capacity in 2025, with Germany and Italy leading the race. Bulgaria became the fastest-growing market, bumping up to third place, followed by the Netherlands and Spain.

Heatwave hinders other renewables

While solar output is surging, rising temperatures can be a hindrance to other kinds of renewable power.

There are concerns over hydro and nuclear availability this summer due to increased water temperature in rivers used for cooling French reactors.

The heat dome effect also slows wind speeds. The Bloomberg analysis reports that below-normal wind generation was forecast last week in Germany, Spain, Italy and France.

In France, output dropped to about 0.5 gigawatts around 1pm on 29 May, according to RTE data. It has averaged 7.4 gigawatts so far this year.

Even solar power is not immune. Intense heat can actually reduce efficiency while increasing strain on the electricity grid.

“It’s a common misconception that more sun always equals more power,” Ioanna Vergini, founder of wfy24.com, a platform that analyses weather data and climate volatility trends, tells Euronews Earth.

“Photovoltaic (PV) cells are semiconductors, and like all electronics, they lose efficiency as temperature rises.”

For every degree above 25°C, solar panel efficiency drops by about 0.4 to 0.5 per cent.