"Which mythology has the best Bad Guys?" Topic

Which religious Mythology has the best Bad Guys (Demons/ Daemons)?

Here's a sample but don't feel limited by this:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon

Are we limited to just Demons?

If so, I'd say both Japan and China have a lot of different demons that are scary and interesting.

If not limited to demons, I've always been fond of the Norse mythology monsters and beasts.

Djinn in Arabic culture are pretty darn terrifying and are definitely a type of demon.

Giants, trolls need more?

The Cthulhu mythos.

I would go with the Norse. Ice and Fire Giants, Trolls, A huge snake that takes on Thor and a massively huge wolf just for starters. Never have seen Demons as monster per sec, they are more occultish to me.

"Are we limited to just Demons"

Definitely not! Whatever you deem fits the "Bad Guy" role.

Think I'll stick with the classics, Greek gods of Olympus!
All the good guys are also the bad guys. Able to disguise themselves as human, so you never really know who you're dealing with. They suffer from the same petty jealousies and foibles of regular humans, only bigger, much much bigger.

Hydras, gryphons, gorgons, nymphs, lamia, scylla and Charybdis, cyclops, you have to go with the Greeks. Props to all, of course, but the Greeks have lots of things that are narratively and tactically interesting.

On the other hand, how much do I know about…

link

+1 for Glenngary5.

+2 for Glenngary5. There are no real good gods/monsters in Cthulhu.

Except that Cthulhu isn't a mythology in the actual cultural sense of the word. It's an entertainment construct, intended from the beginning as nothing but fiction, with no pretense or assumption that any of it was real.

I think it's clear that the OP means mythologies that were once accepted as fact, or at least metaphorical stand-ins for fact; in other words tales based on beliefs or explanations for things in the world— the products not only of belief but of culture. Thus:
Mesopotamian mythology (Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, etc.)
Egyptian mythology
African mythologies (more than one should apply)
Middle Eastern pagan mythologies (the various Biblical "-ites")
Greek mythology
Roman mythology
Norse mythology
Teutonic/Germanic mythology
Celtic mythology
Slavic/Balkan/Baltic mythology
Finnish mythology
Welsh mythology
Chinese mythology
Korean mythology
India mythology
Japanese mythology
Cambodian mythology
Polynesian mythology
Aztec mythology
Incan mythology
Mayan mythology
Olmec mythology
Native American mythology, which should be divided by at least region if not tribal and nation structures.
Australian Aboriginal mythology

… and so on. There are of course others which are tied with modern cultures and religions, but some might object to elements of their faith being included under the term "mythology," as they might feel it brands something they hold to be true to instead be false, and that's not something to get into. Perhaps "Folk lore" and "legends" are thus better terms in that context.

For the record, while Greco/Roman and Middle Eastern mythologies tend to have great "monsters," to me I don't view those as "bad guys" so much as "evil critters." Bad guys to me are things like orcs, goblins, trolls, ogres, giants, dark elves, vampires, and other intelligent foes. (That would include dragons, which are more clever foe than beast in some depictions.) Others might be evil wizards/sorcerers/witches/warlocks, various undead beings, demons, devils, and so forth— the very foes one finds in the classic Monster Manual.
Some of these are fictional (in an intentional sense), and some have been rendered fictional by modern interpretation, but where they find their roots in a mythology is where I would point. That would seem to branch towards Norse, Germanic, and Celtic sources over others, but mythologies are somewhat promiscuous in nature— Celtic ideas appearing in Slavic mythologies and vice versa. The dragon comes from ancient Sumer, or at least a form of it does, and in English we have labeled as "dragons" the familiar lizard-like quasi-god creatures of China. Where does the winged, fire-breathing, four-legged, intelligent serpent of European myth come from? Maybe there's an answer, but I don't know what it is.

"think it's clear that the OP means mythologies that were once accepted as fact, or at least metaphorical stand-ins for fact"

Yes you are correct. As much as I adore Warhammer 40k Chaos God's & Lovcraftian God's I'm looking for "real" (tongue in cheek) entities that were worshipped by humans at some point.

Maybe I can start a monthly worship group for the Chaos Gods.

Maybe I can start a monthly worship group for the Chaos Gods.

You're not already doing that? My group meets in a secure conference room on the day before each full moon.

Owww! Can I fill out an application? I can bring Khorne shaped cookies!

Aurthurian

Industrial Age and Information Age. People have constructed elaborate mythologies about how mechanical and now information technologies work and the things how they don't work. Given the ridiculous nature of these things, I constantly root for the Gremlins.

imdb.com/title/tt0037236

My vote is for many versions of Abrahamic mythology, when you consider nearly every other culture's mythological beings to be demons/devils it gives you a massive pool of potential "bad guys" to choose from. Even without that "quirk" those mythologies have a bunch of great homegrown demons as well.

I think Japan and China are pretty well positioned here

In the British census a significant number of people when asked what their religion is said Jedi dose that make star war's a mythology?

Also Celtic mythology doesn't really have bad guy's more like enemy's.

In the book of invasion's the formain sea demons catch the tuatha de danann by surprise and could have saluter them but the tuatha de danann complain about being surprised and the formain agreed to get back on their ships and wait for the tuatha de danann to ready them self's before the invasion could sart.

Lugh the sun god is Baylor's (the leader of the formain)
grandson.

Cu Cuchulainn comes across the fearsome fairy hound
cu sith after slaying the hound he finds out that it was just a sheepdog and when he finds out from the local farmer he agreed to take the hounds place and becomes the hound of ulster.

I might be wrong but if I'm not dose this make Celtic mythology unique?