Even animated heroes need villains to thwart, and the 1998 classic Cartoon Network series Powerpuff Girls series is no exception. It wasn’t short on its series-long antagonists, nor on its monster-of-the-week type bad guys.
Every week, the Powerpuff Girls have to save Townsville, and in spite of the cartoon silliness, some of the villains’ dastardly plans are quite genuinely terrifying.
Fuzzy Lumpkins
As far as villains go, Fuzzy isn’t exactly the sort to leave its audience with nightmares. As a giant pink “beastly bumpkin”, whose main weapons include a banjo, a shotgun, and rage, Fuzzy is the third-oldest villain in the show.
In spite of briefly becoming Mayor of Townsville, Fuzzy mostly just wants to be left alone with his property - which he’s quite protective of, to the point of extreme violence.
The Amoeba Boys
In spite of being one of the oldest-appearing villains in the series, The Amoeba Boys aren’t exactly #1 on the Townsville Most Wanted list. Most of their villainy happens by accident - such as getting the whole town sick, or by giving everyone scurvy when they steal all the oranges after undergoing miosis to create copies of themselves.
Since they are just amoebas, they lack the sophistication and brainpower to be much of a real threat, in spite of wanting nothing more than to be taken seriously as a ‘gang’, both by the Powerpuff Girls and by other villains.
Princess Morbucks
Spoiled kids can be such a pain - literally. When Princess Morbucks can’t buy her way into becoming a Powerpuff Girl, she decides that there shouldn’t be any Powerpuff girls at all.
She tries to destroy them, funded by her distant, indulging father that gives her whatever she wants, as long as she asks nicely. She’s a bit like a tiny, evil, feminine Iron Man or Batman, as she uses her money to create super suits and gadgets of all kinds.
Lenny Baxter
Like Princess Morbucks, Lenny Baxter isn’t a monster in the traditional sense of the word - he has no powers, and he is in all ways human and mortal. However, he has human flaws, namely obsession… with the Powerpuff Girls. As if a grown man being obsessed with first-grade-aged girls isn’t creepy enough to think about as an adult, what’s really terrifying about him is that after he buys legitimately every single piece of PPG merchandise available, his obsession takes on a whole new level. He makes the girls themselves the crown jewels of his collection.
The Professor and the citizens of Townsville end up rescuing the girls and Lenny goes to prison where he belongs, with his collection utterly destroyed, but it’s still a petrifying reminder that sometimes the scariest threats - especially to young girls - are just other deeply disturbed human beings. (Sidenote: this episode is based on Stephen King’s novel Misery, and came out two years before the movie adaptation of the same name!)
Sedusa
It’s a basic fact of the Powerpuff canon that Professor Utonium is an unmarried single father, and Sedusa is a big reason why he should stay that way. Posing as Ima Goodelady (get it? I’m A Good Lady?) she worms her way into the Professor’s heart, but quickly takes on the ‘evil stepmother’ trope by enforcing strict rules, ranging from ‘no nightlights’ to ‘no crimefighting’.
When the girls sneak out and catch her committing crimes, she tries to maintain her hold on the Professor, but since he knew the truth, he could break free of her hypnotic charms.
Mr. Mime
In a bizarre Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde-Pennywise crossover, Rainbow the Clown (an otherwise ‘innocent’ clown, but really: is there such a thing?) becomes the evil Mr. Mime when a random happenstance accidentally bleaches him. In addition to sucking all the sound out of the world, Mr. Mime causes the entire world to be devoid of color, leaving a distraught Bubbles trying to fill in the color with her crayons.
However, when the Powerpuff Girls perform a song and restore Townsville to all its technicolor glory, Mr. Mime again becomes Rainbow the Clown, with no memory of what happened while Mr. Mime was causing chaos. However, he gets beat up and thrown in jail anyway, though evidently not for long, as he shows up later at a birthday party for the Powerpuff Girls themselves.
Gangreen Gang
It’s time to focus on the true villains of Townsville: teenagers. The Gangreen Gang doesn’t do much more than bother citizens, and the poor boys literally live in the town dump, but with the guidance of their conniving leader Ace, they do occasionally pull big enough stunts to get on the Powerpuff Girls’ radar
And they’ve shown up in basically every iteration of the show, so each member of the gang has a long and storied personality and backstory. Ace even got inducted by Gorillaz, the real-life (virtual) band!
Rowdyruff Boys
As the title credits inform us, ‘perfect little girls’ are made of ‘sugar, spice, and everything nice’. We finally learn what boys are made of, thanks to the Rowdyruff Boys - ‘snips and snails and puppydog tails’, which is already pretty terrible (sorry, boys). When this is mixed with Chemical X, the Powerpuff Girls are faced with themselves, but male, and evil.
Since the Rowdyruff Boys are just as powerful as the Powerpuff Girls, they can’t be defeated by their counterparts; the girls have to take a different approach. Instead of Blossom fighting her equivalent (Brick), she had to fight either Boomer or Butch. The Rowdyruff Boys reflect some of the Girls’ worst traits, and they have to know themselves and each other to beat the Boys.
HIM
In spite of looking like a deranged Santa Claus, HIM is actually a demon, and one of the strongest - if not the strongest - antagonist the Powerpuff Girls face.
He uses dark magic and psychological warfare to frequently turn the girls against each other, and they don’t ever really defeat him in battle - he just retreats and waits for his next opportunity to strike.
Mojo Jojo
Mojo Jojo is much more than just the series’ main antagonist. His backstory reveals that he’s something like the Powerpuff Girls’ estranged older brother, and at least partially responsible for the Girls’ creation. He started off as Jojo, and belonged to Professor Utonium, up until the point when he caused the Professor to accidentally knock Chemical X into the mix of sugar, spice, and everything nice.
The ensuing explosion affected Jojo as well, giving him his huge brain, and when the Professor’s attention turned fully to the Girls, Jojo ran away and became a villain who wants to take over the world (think Planet Of The Apes, but for kids). Is it any wonder he hates the Powerpuff Girls so much? Behind his funny accent and ridiculous get-up, Mojo Jojo is a sympathetic supervillain, and that’s part of what makes him so very dangerous.