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Are villains simply born evil or do they become evil due to external forces in their environment? Psychologists' opinions are all over the map on the Nature vs. Nurture debate, but filmmakers tend to lean more heavily on the latter to explain their antagonists' nefarious behavior. With every second of screen time crucial, movie plots tend to be built around the protagonists' journey toward becoming a hero at the expense of their villains' development. Not only are accidents, deformities, and mutations expedient storytelling devices, but they also often serve as convenient visual cues to help viewers distinguish the bad guys from the good. So, why waste precious screen time on the antagonists' backstory when their evil inclinations can be explained away by one gruesome accident or life-changing event? Below is a collection of major movie villains who broke bad - or broke worse! - after suffering a physical transformation. Click HERE to VOTE UP the Physical Transformations That

Science fiction has always provided a tantalizing look at promising possible futures, techno-topias replete with capsulized food, flying cars, robot servants, and cybernetic or genetic enhancements that grant superhuman abilities. But the dire prospects of technological advancements instead ushering in fatalistic future dystopias are also a common theme in sci-fi movies, and not just in cynical contemporary cinema. In fact, the very first feature-length sci-fi film, Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis, gave us the gilded cyborg Maschinenmensch that inspired the helpful, if neurotic, C-3PO, but it did so in a cautionary tale about technology being usurped by the wealthy to suppress the working class. In the 1950s, moviegoers couldn't get enough of sci-fi films in which heroic protagonists in silver jumpsuits battled external threats to the Earth in the form of mutant monsters or little green men. And yet, movies like 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still pointed out that our own nuclear

Just like great heroes, great villains aren't born, they're made, and movie fans can tell the difference. Giving an antagonistic character a backstory filled with hardships and tragedies can go a long way toward explaining their bad behavior and possibly even make audiences sympathize with them. (We know you're out there, "Thanos was right" truthers!) But many of the best science fiction villains in cinema are the ones we never saw coming - ones who seemed like "one of the good guys" or maybe just a little bit bad, but not full-on "evil," until they snapped. This list of classic sci-fi villains focuses on the defining moment that made them who they are. These are characters - mostly human, some superhuman, plus an artificial intelligence thrown in for good measure - may never even have become the villains we know them to be if it hadn't been for a single catalyst. Each one experienced a trigger event that forever changed them, finally driving them over the edge of sanity and reason