AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains - The Characters

The Characters

• Batman, It's a Wonderful Life, Schindler's List and The Silence of the Lambs are the only films to have characters appear on both lists. Four franchises have both a hero and villain listed for separate films: the Alien is from Alien and Ellen Ripley is listed for the sequel, Aliens; Darth Vader is listed for The Empire Strikes Back, while Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi are cited for Star Wars; the Terminator is listed as a villain for The Terminator and as a hero for Terminator 2: Judgment Day; and James Bond is listed for Dr. No, while Auric Goldfinger of Goldfinger was the only Bond villain cited. In addition, The Silence of the Lambs and It's a Wonderful Life are the only films to have a character in the top ten of both lists.
• Four characters from four separate Stanley Kubrick films appear; three on the villains list (Alex DeLarge, HAL 9000, and Jack Torrance) and one on the heroes list (Spartacus).
• The Terminator is the only character to be listed as both a villain (The Terminator) and a hero (Terminator 2: Judgment Day). (Note that, in the series, these are two different robots using the same name, built after an identical model.)
• Only nine heroines appear (counting Lassie from Lassie Come Home) and fifteen female villains. Of the nine heroines, only 8 are played by actual females, as Lassie was typically portrayed by a male dog throughout the run of the TV show and the films that followed.
• Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist is the youngest human character on the list, being only 12 years of age. However, the evil demon that possessed her throughout the film, Pazuzu, is implied to be centuries, if not millennia old.
• In Bambi, the man listed is the man who killed Bambi's mother. In the televised special it is said to represent all of humanity. It is also the only character on either list not to appear on screen in any way.
• Lassie is the only character not portrayed by a human on the heroes list, and the Shark is the only character not portrayed by a human on the villains list.
• Only three animated characters appear, all in the Villains list (The Queen, #10; Man, #20; Cruella de Vil, #39). All three villains are from Disney Animation Studios films.