In the world of film, novels and even in real life, it appears that you're not truly evil unless you have a side-kick pet. They're cute, good for comic relief, and provide script-writers with the excellent character development tool of showing that the villain has a slice of humanity inside of them (thus increasing their amazing evil prowess).
Many baddie's animals aren't much different to yours and mine - dogs, cats, or birds - as you'll see below, but occasionally villains do like to get creative. Either way, all of our favourites put your average Lucky, Beethoven, and Patch to shame.
IAGO
Now Osama is "dead" the title of the Middle East's most evil plotter can officially go to Jafar from the 1992 movie
Aladdin. He is a bad egg. Luckily Disney knew that, in order to not scare kiddies too right silly, every baddie needs a suitably comic side-kick. Enter Iago: "on a scale of one to ten, he is eleven".
ADOLF'S DOG
These delightful family videos were taken by Hitler's girlfriend Eva Braun. They're very homely to say the least. We're going to take it as more than a passing coincidence that the man behind the "blonde-hair-blue-eyes" Aryan nation called his German Shepherd "Blondi".
FLOTSAM AND JETSOM
In the magical world of Disney the villain's sidekick usually ends up letting them down a bit. Not Flotsam and Jetsom, however. What they lacked in comedic one-liners they made up for in magical prowess, spy abilities, and down-right slimy slyness.
MR. BIGGLESWORTH
Dr. Evil's cat, a satirical take on Blofeld's feline from the James Bond films, got ten times as creepy when it lost it's hair in a freak accident. We would also like to classify Mini Me as one of Dr. Evil's pets, too, but don't particularly want The Hollywood Guild for Midgets and Dwarves suing our asses.
CHECKERS
A man who loves dogs could never be a crook, right? Richard Nixon used his family pet to mooch up to American voters whilst under scrutiny for bribery during his Vice Presidency. The infamous 1952 "Checkers" speech paved the way for his subsequent Presidency and that little thing called Watergate. Check out the satirical film,
DICK, for his real thoughts on the pooch ("Shut up, Checkers, or I'll feed you to the Chinese").
SPIDER MONKEY
The Raider's of the Lost Ark's furry villain was no ordinary pet: the little dude was a member of the Third Reich and knew how to do the Nazi salute. In fact, he was so evil, that his owner was almost completely overshadowed by his prowess. The aptly named Monkey Man isn't in the following video but apparently another very "happy" primate is.
CHOPPER
The villain in
Stand By Me didn't even have a name yet his evil dog made history for every child who grew up loving this movie. Second prize goes to "The Beast" in the 1993 film
The Sandlot even though his owner turned out to be more lovable-Babe-Ruth-fan than evil junkyard caretaker.
WHATSIT
Zorg's wierd elephant thing in
The Fifth Element was treated as more of a garbage can than man's alternative best friend. We couldn't find a clip of the little dude but in our searches did stumble across this edit featuring Milla Jovovich half-naked to the film's theme song. Happy times.
THE KILLER PENGUINS
...and you thought March of the Penguins was scary (particularly the bit when the baby birds get eaten by Killer Whales). The flightless birds in
Batman Forever need no narration from David Attenborough to beef them up. DeVito's sidekicks even had little aiming reticules as backpacks.
NAGINI
Lord Voldemort's snake Nagini kinda lucked out with on-screen time compared to other villain's sidekicks. Despite this, he/she/something is still awesome. (Any excuse to re-post the trailer for the upcoming last Harry Potter installment will do. Spine tingles.)