Over the course of eight seasons of The Vampire Diaries there were a whole lot of characters that were truly monstrous bad guys. Honestly, sometimes even the main characters themselves wound up being the bad guys. But throughout the entire saga of the series there was one villain who really did seem to be the baddest baddie of them all. And that is of course the original monster, Klaus Mikaelson.
The Vampire Diaries was home to a lot of characters who were willing to do horrific things, and it was home to a few characters that actually loved to do horrific things, but no one really took more pleasure in causing the maximum amount of pain than Klaus did. It didn't matter if he loved someone, hated them, or anything in between. If they crossed his path that typically meant that they suffered because of it. Here are the ten worst things that Klaus Mikaelson ever did.
Daggering His Siblings
At this point it goes without saying that Klaus Mikaelson has a lot of issues with his family, and his family has a lot of issues with him. But in typical Klaus fashion, the OG hybrid regularly decides that instead of actually trying to work things out like normal people or just letting his siblings, you know, leave, he's better off just putting them into a supernatural coma for decades (or even centuries) until he decides to wake them up again.
Klaus is never one to shy away from abusing his power, but he didn't need to abuse his family.
Hunting Katherine To The End Of The Earth
Klaus is definitely a self absorbed meanie, and it's understandable that he wanted to break his hybrid curse and let his werewolf side run wild, but he may have slightly overreacted when Katherine decided that she didn't want to be the literal sacrifice in his quest to explore the dormant side of his supernatural lineage.
Katherine's method for escaping Klaus' plan is kind of baffling (I mean, killing yourself to avoid being killed? Really?), but Klaus' idea for punishment seemed to be a little over the top. It doesn't even seem like Klaus wanted to capture her and kill her either, he seemed to take pleasure in the prolonged torment more than anything.
Forcing Stefan To Go Ripper
Klaus may have had a thousand years to learn how to actually make some friends, but given how he treated Stefan once they were reunited it seems like he really didn't take any of his endless time to do that.
Klaus' interest in Stefan was baffling, that is until he revealed that he and Stefan had actually been friends nearly a century ago and Stefan was just compelled to forget about him until Klaus saw fit to let him remember. But Klaus decided that this contemporary version of Stefan was a bore, so he used Damon's impending death to force Stefan off the wagon and to go on a murder spree with him.
Killing Mrs. Lockwood
One of the strongest elements of Klaus Mikaelson as a character is how cripplingly lonely he seemed to be at all times. That singular fact seemed to be his entire motivation throughout the course of The Vampire Diaries. So then, his decision to brutally murder Tyler's mother after Tyler betrayed him has a lot of dark subtext for Klaus.
Klaus has murdered a countless number of people, but he chose to kill Mrs. Lockwood because he understood that absolutely nothing could be more painful and devastating for Tyler, and he essentially did it because he wanted Tyler to feel how he felt for his entire life.
Compelling Isobel To Kill Herself In Front Of Elena
Given Klaus' history with the Petrova doppelgangers it's not a huge surprise that he seems to absolutely revel in their torment, but sometimes he should just give it a rest. Tatia's rejection and then death was undoubtedly devastating for him, but Katherine and Elena had absolutely nothing to do with that, they just have the misfortune of sharing her face.
And while Katherine was a bit of a rebel, Elena seemed to be willing to play ball with Klaus if it meant that the people around her wouldn't have to suffer. The fact that he made them suffer anyway, and made Elena witness such a brutal death for her biological mom, was just adding insult to injury.
Killing Jenna
So in keeping with that same theme of unnecessarily brutalizing Elena for no other reason than that he enjoyed it, there was his decision to make aunt Jenna into the vampire component of his ritual sacrifice to break his hybrid curse.
As Elena said when she was begging for Jenna's life, she had followed all of Klaus' rules and done everything that he'd asked. She was willingly going to die so that other people didn't have to, and Klaus could have chosen literally anyone in the world to play sacrifice. The fact that he actually turned Jenna just so he could kill her and put in one last dig at Elena shows how monstrous he could really be.
Massacring The Hybrids
In case it wasn't already plainly obvious, the things that make sense to Klaus don't make sense to any other sane person on earth. While Klaus was desperate to create a hybrid army, he obviously didn't take the werewolves that he was turning under any consideration, and that was obviously a fatal oversight. Fatal for the hybrids, anyway.
Klaus sired himself a squad of mindless slaves who couldn't help but do whatever he wanted, but obviously a lot of the hybrids weren't willing to fall in line. However, when they stepped out of line, Klaus brutally murdered them. Murdered them for nothing more than the fact that they didn't want to be enslaved to him.
Murdering Katherine's Entire Family
When it comes to punishing the people that Klaus believes have done him wrong, he clearly has a flair for coming up with exceptionally violent and seemingly poetic ideas to exact his "justice". And yes, he treated Elena with exceptional brutality, but in comparison to Katherine she got off pretty light.
After Katherine turned herself into a vampire and fled Klaus, Klaus tracked down Katherine's family and killed every single one of them. Oh, and of course he left them in horrific disarray th at demonstrated the violence of their deaths, just so that Katherine could find them like that and it would have the most devastating impact possible.
Killing His Father
In all fairness to Klaus, Mikael is probably one of the very few people that he killed throughout his tenure on The Vampire Diaries that was actually somewhat justified. Mikael was an awful, abusive parent when Klaus was human and he made it his mission in life (or afterlife) to kill Klaus when they were vampires. However, there is just something fundamentally inhuman about killing your own parent.
Klaus has killed a countless number of people and supernatural beings, but those weren't people that he actually cared about. In the end he really did love Mikael on some level, so the fact that he was capable of killing him says a lot.
Killing His Mother
Clearly Klaus has a lot of issues with his parents. Klaus killing Esther is yet again one of his few kills that actually makes sense in some warped way, because he killed her when he had just become a vampire (and we all know how difficult it is for new vampires to control their impulses) and he had just found out about the deepest, most shocking betrayal of his entire life. But that's still his mom.
Obviously, the entire Mikaelson family is one twisted family tree, but murdering your own mother, someone you love more than everyone else in the world, is truly horrifying.