My, how we do love a bad boy — and here are a baker's dozen of some of the worst of the worst that scifi movies, TV, and videogames have to offer.


SNAKE PLISSKEN

IMPRISONED FOR: Armed robbery of a federal installation

Kurt Russell in Escape from New York

If you're gonna spring a guy from the hoosegow to run hot and fast in a post-apocalyptic war zone, this is the guy you spring. Of course, there's gonna be hell to pay on the back end.


SIMON PHOENIX

IMPRISONED FOR: Murder, kidnapping, destruction of public property

Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man

While his sartorial crimes pale in comparison to his crimes against humanity — which include detonating a building filled with hostages — there's no denying that he'd be inmate No. 1 in fashion prison.

JACK

IMPRISONED FOR: Murder, larceny, biotic-arson

Voiced by Courtenay Taylor in Mass Effect 2

Locked away for a rage-driven crime spree the likes of which the stars had never seen. Dirty hot and crazy strong, Jack is the girl your penis is afraid of.


RICHARD B. RIDDICK

IMPRISONED FOR: Kidnapping and murder

Vin Diesel in Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick

Strong like bull, crazy like fox, Riddick was so much more effective as a screen presence when we didn't know much about him — other than that he was the only passenger on the Hunter-Gratzner transport shuttle in chains. And then they made that other movie, which offered us way too much of a good thing.




JAMES COLE

IMPRISONED FOR: Unknown

Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys

Who else but a man praying for a pardon would agree to a one-way trip back in time to stop the end of the world?


SID 6.7

IMPRISONED FOR: Everything

Russell Crowe in Virtuosity

He's a computer-generated amalgam of dozens of the worst criminals imaginable, so I guess he was born bad. And when he finds a way out of his digital prison into the real world, he goes the kind of predictably movie-crazy that only Denzel Washington can stop.


KHAN NOONIEN SINGH

IMPRISONED FOR: Attempted world-conquery

Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek's "Space Seed," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Charming, handsome, ruthless, brilliant — Khan was the best of the supermen that wanted to carve up Earth during the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. Khan and his coterie escaped in a suspended-animation lifeboat called the Botany Bay, until Captain Kirk freed them — and almost lost the Enterprise in the process. Kirk then sentenced him and his motley crew to exile on Ceti Alpha Five. Which went well.


DESOLATION WILLIAMS

IMPRISONED FOR: General bad-assery

Ice Cube in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars

Given that, early on in his career, Ice Cube only ever really played Ice Cube, the scariest aspect of Desolation Williams was that he came off like a banger from South Central who got stuck on Mars.


BEN RICHARDS

IMPRISONED FOR: Mass murder (framed)

Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man

Okay, he's not an inmate for that long, and he didn't commit the crime for which he was convicted. But it's Ahnuld, with a beard, taking down that most evil of institutions, network television!


LEIA ORGANA

IMPRISONED FOR: Inciting rebellion

Carrie Fisher in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope

Look at it this way, if not for how virginally tempting she looked in that prison cell, the Empire would've won. If she hadn't enraptured both Han Solo and Luke Skywwalker (ewww), then they wouldn't have joined the Rebellion. And they never would've destroyed the Death Star, which would then have been free to destroy planets willy-nilly.


ZOD, URSA, AND NON

IMPRISONED FOR: Treason

Terrence Stamp, Sarah Douglas, Jack O'Halloran in Superman II

Banished to the Phantom Zone for trying to take over Krypton, this terrible threesome got sprung by a rogue asteroid and found themselves on Earth, ready to do battle with the last son of Krypton. Plus, they had impeccably trimmed facial hair and nifty shiny uniforms.


THOMAS ZAREK

IMPRISONED FOR: Terrorism

Richard Hatch on Battlestar Galactica

Who knew that when the Cylon Apocalypse came, one of the few ships to survive the attacks and join Adama and Roslin's rag-tag fleet would be a prison ship? And who knew that biding his time on that ship would be a philosophically brawny malcontent who was willing to kill to get what he wanted?


NUMBER 6 (The Prisoner)

IMPRISONED FOR: Quitting his job

Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner

Okay, yes, he was an agent of sorts for Her Majesty's Secret Service, so he probably knew things that said secret service wouldn't want lolling about in the world. But just because a fella wants a mid-career change isn't cause to lock him away in a mysterious Village he can't escape from, lest he get pounced by a giant ball.