This is a list of all the eco-villains from the animated television series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
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The Ecovillains are a small group of villains who make appearances repeatedly in most episodes. They are well aware that what they do is wrong, yet continue because of greed, selfishness, or a desire for power. Due to conflict among them from their varying self-serving interests and backgrounds, they tend to work alone most of the time. Each of these villains represent a specific ecological disaster.
Among the known Ecovillains are:
Hoggish Greedly is a villain in the animation series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Greedly is an obese man with a pig-like nose, ears, and voice. Despite these pig-like appearances, Greedly is a normal human.
Greedly is a rather crude and careless person, going to whatever lengths are necessary to please himself, usually involving some illegal means of obtaining money. Greedly was the first to come to blows with Captain Planet, discovering his vulnerability to toxics, only to have his robotic oil tanker (called the "Land Blaster") destroyed after Captain Planet's recovery.
While Greedly is greedy, exploitative, and sometimes cruel, he is not devoid of human feelings. He shares close bonds with his family, and places their wellbeing above profit (although he often sees no difference between the two). In the episode “Smog Hogs”, he marketed a massively polluting car whose prototype was a birthday gift for his son, Junior. When the smog caused Junior to collapse from respiratory distress, a shocked and desperate Greedly surrendered to the Planeteers, begging them to undo the damage, sacrificing his profits for his son’s safety.
After all of his failed efforts at gaining money behind the Planeteers' backs, Greedly received word of his grandfather's death. Although Greedly thus inherited a fortune, his reaction revealed that he did care for his relative. Greedly eventually discovered that his grandfather, Hoggish Greenly, formerly known as "Don Porkoloin" in his younger polluting days, faked his death to determine Greedly's nature, revealing that he came to know the need to protect the environment and hoped that Hoggish would learn the same. At this point, Greenly seemed to have gentlemanly manners, a sharp contrast to his grandson. Consequently, Greenly/Porkoloin first "appeared" in an earlier episode in which Gaia told the Planeteers a story of five planeteers being chosen in the 1940s to stop Porkoloin, though the story was evidently made up in the end (and contradicted Gaia's earlier statements that she had been asleep at the time).
Greedly is also something of a gourmet, despite eating nearly anything and large quantities of it. His most famous meals have been his hunger for sea turtle eggs and the one occasion in which he killed and ate a horse just to see what it would taste like.
Greedly's sidekick is Rigger, a scrawny, pointy-faced coward. Though he loyally assists Greedly, Rigger is rather polite and often brings up the environmental damage that Greedly is causing. When Greedly used his Grandpappy's fortune, Rigger became somewhat environmentally aware, showing that his reasons for working with Greedly were deeper than a need for money. As Rigger once explained, despite his often disagreement with Greedly, he worked for Greedly as he felt no one else would hire him.
Rigger was later dropped from the show, taking a job with the more environmentally conscious Greenly, and replaced by Greedly's nephew, who became an honorary Planeteer, much to his uncle's shock.
Hoggish Greedly's personality is similar to an Energy Hog.
Hoggish Greedly is voiced by Edward Asner. Rigger is voiced by John Ratzenberger.
Dr. Barbara 'Babs' Blight is a mad scientist who carries out various schemes in the name of scientific experimentation and profit. Her trademark is a part of her hair that is completely white, which covers a horrible scar on the left side of her face, and she compensates for the deformity with overbearing vanity which leads her into some experiments relating to artificial beautification, as in "Guinea Pigs" and "Frog Day Afternoon". She also has the archetypal mad scientist megalomania, sadism, and maniacal laugh.
Blight often deliberately induces natural disaster as a pleasurable aside to profiteering or even to see theoretical catastrophes in practice, and does not balk at the prospect of destroying the entire biosphere in the process. She enjoys experimenting on live specimens, as when she ran an inhumane animal testing lab for cosmetics in "Guinea Pigs" and often expresses a desire to perform cruel experiments on humans. As she is blasé about life and the health of the planet as a whole, she does not hesitate to meddle in the integrity of the space-time continuum, having repeatedly developed time-travel systems for her own or other villain's use. She also collaborates with other Ecovillains more readily than is normal amongst them, usually trading their muscle and public image for her inventions and knowledge. She often flaunts her latest arcane invention, usually one of the stereotypical 'mad scientist' inventions such as various 'rays' and 'formulas' which she has invented for no obvious purpose save whimsy. She is often mentioned in episodes in which she does not appear, having sold another Ecovillain some piece of plot-important gadgetry.
She and Zarm stand alone in that their schemes include direct attacks upon the Planeteers, as opposed to simply trying to prevent the Planeteers from coming after them. In the episode "Heat Wave" MAL calculates the location of Hope Island and they induce an accelerated greenhouse effect to smother the island, nearly killing Gaia in the process. She has also attempted to capture or destroy Captain Planet himself on more than one occasion.
She is accompanied everywhere by MAL, an evil artificial intelligence, to whom she has an almost romantic attachment. MAL manifests as a sinister face on a computer screen, though the hardware in which his program resides varies wildly from episode to episode.
In "Hollywaste", it is revealed that she had a sister named Bambi Blight who was an environmentally-conscious actress. They appear to be twins, as Dr. Blight has little trouble impersonating her sister, although she is slightly taller and has a huskier voice. During "A Good Bomb Is Hard To Find", in the sixth and final season of the show, her efforts to sell the secrets of the atomic bomb to Adolf Hitler in a time-travelling adventure actually results in the Manhattan Project, thus making Dr. Blight indirectly responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Dr. Blight is voiced by Meg Ryan in Season One and by Mary Kay Bergman in later seasons. MAL is voiced by David Rappaport in earlier episodes and later voiced by Tim Curry for the remainder of the series.
Duke Nukem is a supervillain from the Captain Planet and the Planeteers cartoon series. He wears a Hawaiian shirt along with shorts and sandals, over his irradiated body, which resembles dried nuclear waste. Nukem troubles the earth by spreading radioactivity. He first appeared in a season one episode entitled "Deadly Ransom". Though his origins are never fully revealed in the show, it is stated that he was a scientist and that his condition was a result of his own experiments (whether intentional or accidental is never clarified). He is once referred to by Kwame as "Doctor Duke Nukem".
Nukem is essentially a "living battery"; he absorbs atomic radiation to replenish his powers, and can fire beams of radioactive energy from his hands. He becomes weakened when his power reserve runs low. Nukem also likely has severe mutations to his internal organs, as he is capable of ingesting battery acid and toxic waste, which he consumes as food. Despite his nuclear abilities, Nukem can control his outputs, effectively shutting them off completely, allowing others to be near him without a radiation suit.
He is also rather strong, physically, with a thick skin and better resilience to injury than a normal human. He has taken severe punishment without any damage, often resulting in Captain Planet being a lot tougher on him in fights than he would be on the other Eco-Villains, mainly out of necessity to subdue Nukem.
Duke Nukem is accompanied by Leadsuit, a meek man who serves as his loyal assistant. While he is actually slender and wears glasses, Leadsuit's namesake lead suit is bulky and he looks rather large while wearing it. Nukem is impolite to him and usually calls him "Lead head". Leadsuit is effectively weak, often taking Nukem's verbal abuse and insults with little protest. Being called by his proper name by Nukem does give him great joy. He enters and leaves the suit through a door in the back. His real name is unknown. The multiplayer character of Envirosuit in TimeSplitters: Future Perfect appears to be a parody of Leadsuit.
Nukem's appearances tend to revolve around stories involving his attempts to seek out or cause radioactive disasters to energize himself, and to snuff out alternative energy projects that endanger his access to such sources. However, he also seems to harbour long-term intentions to render humanity into radioactive mutants like himself.
While depicted as vastly intelligent in the DiC episodes, the Hanna Barbera episodes depicted him as increasingly stupid, possibly a sign of his condition degenerating.
Duke Nukem is voiced by Dean Stockwell (though Jeff Goldblum voiced him occasionally) in the first two seasons and later voiced by Maurice LaMarche for the remainder of the series. Leadsuit is voiced by Frank Welker.
Looten Plunder is a villain in the animation series of Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Looten Plunder is a wealthy businessman who scours the globe for means of profit, regardless of who or what is sacrificed in the process. He also sports business suits with patterns of rare or endangered animals. Because of this careless greed, Plunder has come into conflict with Captain Planet and the Planeteers on numerous occasions.
Although Looten Plunder is often present for all of his conflicts, he rarely takes an active part in the action as more than a commander. Plunder is a charismatic villain, letting others do his dirty work for him as he manages to talk governments into handing over money for something that would be harmful in the first place.
Though Looten has hired many assassins and mercenaries in his time, he is almost always seen with his personal bodyguard, the mercenary Argos Bleak. Though Bleak typically serves as Plunder's shield and sword, he has been known to act on his own. For instance, in the episode “The Predator” when Bleak sells his services to a seaside resort as a shark exterminator, Plunder is absent and appears to have nothing to do with Bleak’s scheme. Looten Plunder's latest henchmen are the Pinehead Brothers Oakey and Dokey who are oversized lumberjacks.
Looten Plunder has allied himself with other villains on numerous occasions, including the creation of Captain Pollution. During this period, Looten Plunder gained the power of deforestation. Plunder's was the only power not to be used for a purpose besides calling Captain Pollution, other than that of Dr. Blight.
In "Going Bats Man," it is revealed that Looten Plunder has a nephew named Robin Plunder who set up the bat attacks on a nearby town to in order to make his movie a blockbuster. With help from Captain Planet, the Planeteers defeated Robin Plunder and expose his bat-discrediting plot.
In "Horns A'Plenty," it is revealed that Looten Plunder has competition in the poaching business in the form of the Slaughter Family.
He is the only villain to have dealt the Planeteers an unqualified defeat: in "Who Gives a Hoot" he intends to cut down an old-growth forest, and by the time the Planeteers gain the legal grounds to stop him, he has already destroyed the forest they wished to save and then moves on to cut down the next forest.
Looten Plunder could be considered the show's own version of Lex Luthor and Roland Daggett, a wealthy evil industrialist who often trades blows with a near-invulnerable superhero. He is arguably one of the series' most 'realistic' villains in that his misdeeds reflect a simplified version of unethical corporate behaviour in the real world (especially exploitation of his workforce and manipulation of the legal system), and he exhibits the 'polluting for pollution's sake' cliche often attributed to Captain Planet villains to a fairly small degree. Likewise, Argos Bleak is not as comical a sidekick as Rigger, Ooze, or Leadsuit, being far more a wily and violent (if drily witty) thug.
His name is an obvious play on the expression "loot and plunder".
He is quoted in the show's Ending theme song ("You'll pay for this, Captain Planet!"), following the lyric "bad guys who like to loot and plunder".
Looten Plunder is voiced by James Coburn in the first series and later voiced by Ed Gilbert in the second series. Argos Bleak is voiced by S. Scott Bullock while the Pinehead Brothers are voiced by Frank Welker.
Verminous Skumm is a supervillain of the Captain Planet animated series which includes Captain Planet and the Planeteers and The New Adventures of Captain Planet.
Standing seven and half feet tall, Skumm is some sort of mutated rat-person, complete with a hairy face and a long tail. He is always shown wearing dirty, torn blue clothes and a red scarf around his head. He was born and raised in a sewer. Skumm hated humanity and declared war against mankind and the environment. He is, in effect, a kind of terrorist with no particular objectives apart from causing anarchy under his own name. On most occasions, Skumm would be accompanied by at least one of his humanoid rat underlings who serve as his henchmen. He also manipulates people to do his bidding.
He is also one of the Eco-Villains (the other being Zarm) who does not have a regular sidekick, although he has mutant hordes at his command and a talent for creating mind-altering poisons which make up for that. Furthermore, sidekicks like Ooze, Rigger, MAL and Leadsuit often serve prominently as comic relief. Skumm and Zarm seem to dwell in a level of pure villainy that leaves no room for humour. He and Zarm, further have the distinction of being demonstrably culpable for murder: in the episode "Mind Pollution" he propagates a highly addictive drug called "Bliss" in Washington DC, and personally grants Linka's cousin access to a lethal dose thereof.
In his first appearance ("Rain Of Terror"), he and an army of those like him start up an abandoned coal factory and burn excess coal to create a massive acid rain cloud to destroy a farming community.
He would later steal nuclear weapons and hide them in various "hot spots" around the world in including South Africa, Israel, and Belfast (the now infamous "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast"), giving the detonators to each side in a war, to prove to Duke Nukem that humans were self-destructive. And if they didn't use them, he would use his own detonator. The Planeteers stopped him and Duke Nukem before the bombs could go off, however.
Skumm was also the villain in the episode "A Formula For Hate", in which he spreads paranoia and lies about the AIDS virus to ruin a young victim's happiness. This was thwarted by Captain Planet who told the real facts about AIDS.
In the Hanna-Barbera produced seasons, Skumm would turn his focus away from his environmental war and focus more on stealing and selling artifacts to fund his operations, with environmental and monument defacement as a side project ("Nothing's Sacred"). He also had an interest in street gangs ("Talkin' Trash").
Verminous Skumm is voiced by Jeff Goldblum in the first season and voiced by Maurice LaMarche in later episodes.
Sly Sludge is a fictional character and an eco-villain on Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Sludge is a con-man who loves to pollute the earth with his garbage and get rich schemes. He overflows landfills with trash with no regard for the envirorment. He also has a wacky assistant named Ooze, who helps his boss carry out his plans.
In the two-part episode "A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste", he obtained a body builder named Tank Flusher the III to be Ooze's replacement until he decided to keep Ooze around. He was also in collaboration with Looten Plunder and Argos Bleak in dumping toxic barrels in a mine.
He is rather remarkable in that in his last appearance on the series, the episode "No Small Problem", the Planeteers were able to convince him to 'go straight' by persuading him of the profitability of the recycling industry.
Sly Sludge is voiced by Martin Sheen in the first series and later voiced by Jim Cummings in the second series. Ooze is voiced by Cam Clarke while Tank Flusher the III is voiced by Frank Welker.
Zarm is a supervillain from the Turner Broadcasting cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers and The New Adventures of Captain Planet.
Prior to his first appearance in the series' first season episode "The Conqueror", he was a spirit of the Earth alongside Gaia and Captain Planet. At an uncertain time, he departed in search of other worlds to be their patron. There, he caused the civilization of at least one other planet to destroy themselves in nuclear holocaust. Later, he returned to Earth, and presented himself to the Planeteers as a visitor from a more advanced civilization. Under this pretence, he tempts the Planeteers with the ‘power of the iron fist’, gauntlets that have the same powers as their rings, but work on a much grander scale – raising islands, causing hurricanes, etc. Ma-Ti refuses, choosing not to spurn Gaia’s gift in favor of great power, and this leads to Zarm’s exposure and defeat.
He returns subsequently, usually acting on schemes to engineer supremacist contests among individuals, communities, and the world. Most prominently, in the second-season “Summit to Save Earth”, he unites the other Eco-Villains under his leadership and conspires to sabotage the Earth Summit. Many of his schemes are also motivated by spite against Gaia and he endeavors to destroy her and the Planeteers.
Zarm is, in a manner of speaking, a war god (coincidentally, his name is a near-anagram of "Mars", the war god, and is phonetically similar to "harm"). As he says himself, he lives by a creed of “might makes right”. He generally effects a martial appearance, with cape and emblazoned garb, though he often disguises himself to deceive humanity, either by changing his own form or possessing another’s. As a natural spirit, it appears that he embodies the principles of competition and natural selection, but without Gaia’s countering benevolence, he takes it to the extreme of fascism and Social Darwinism. He also seems to prefer industry and artifice to nature. Unlike Gaia and Captain Planet, his power is channeled through human beings and their machines, especially weapons. He sets people against each other, presenting them with a threat or a prize (power or riches) and then watches them fight for it. If the Planeteers did not foil these schemes, he would presumably continue to do so on increasing scales until only the ‘strongest’ were left and worthy of his patronage, or all of humankind was extinct.
Where most Captain Planet villains are devious businessmen or mad scientists, Zarm best fits the villain archetype of “Dark Lord” reminiscent of Darth Sidious. Unlike Eco-Villains Looten Plunder, Sly Sludge, Hoggish Greedly, Dr. Blight, Verminous Skumm, and Duke Nukem, who are concerned with profits or self-gratification, Zarm is concerned with raw power over human beings and fundamental forces. Indeed, it is his ability to deal in the self-serving nature of people like Plunder and Greedly that bring them under his rule in “Summit to Save Earth”.
From his first appearance, he is seen making use of a spacecraft as his transportation. The vessel is small, and externally a plain faceted sphere. The interior is of a classically science-fiction design, containing consoles and screens. Tellingly, it also seems to contain a quantity of the same crystalline substance that dominates Gaia's home of Hope Island. He seems to have no difficulty accessing Hope Island, being a spirit like Gaia, and he also seems able to move about space and time with relative ease, although he needs a ship to leave the Earth.
He is also one of the Eco-Villains (the other being Verminous Skumm) who does not have a regular sidekick. But his powers of manipulation (possibly coupled with psychic domination or possession) mean that he can readily get as many lackeys as his plots might require. Furthermore, sidekicks like Ooze, Rigger, MAL and Leadsuit often serve prominently as comic relief. Zarm and Skumm seem to dwell in a level of pure villainy that leaves no room for humour. He and Skumm, further have the distinction of being demonstrably culpable for murder: it is established in his first episode that he is responsible for the destruction of a civilization, and in "Scorched Earth", in the guise of a dictator, he is shown to have had made political opponents 'disappear'.
Zarm is voiced by rock star/environmental activist Sting in his earliest appearances. Malcolm McDowell took on the role in the second series while David Warner voiced the character in Season Three
Captain Pollution is a fictional character and supervillain in the animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, first featured in the two-part episode, "Mission to Save the Earth" (Season 1 Episodes 22 & 23). Captain Pollution is a twisted clone of the main hero in the same vein as Bizarro, Superman's opposite and enemy, though Bizarro is unaware he is doing anything wrong, while Captain Pollution is fully aware of the maliciousness of his actions.
Captain Pollution is the opposite of Captain Planet, created from Dr. Blight's evil variants of the Planeteers' rings. He is summoned when the powers of Super Radiation, Deforestation, Smog, Toxics, and Hate combine, just like Captain Planet is forged from the powers of nature. Captain Pollution also gains strength when surrounded by pollution, recharging from it when necessary. In the feature episode, he can be seen bathing in a pool of toxic acid as a way of relaxing.
Captain Planet ultimately beats his evil counterpart by barraging him with an array of natural powers; running him through the ground, then through flowing lava before dragging Captain Pollution through water and finally taking him through the air. Afterward, a powerless Captain Pollution is dumped on Commander Clash's island and uses the last of his strength to return to his rings before they seemingly explode.
This is not the end of him since he later returns in the season 4 premiere "A Mine Is a Terrible Thing to Waste", when Commander Clash's island becomes soaked in nuclear waste. Captain Planet arrives alone to deal with the mess and is immediately attacked by a newly-revived Captain Pollution, who proceeds induce various ecological disasters while leading Captain Planet on a worldwide chase. Oddly enough, while the Pollution rings had seemed to have self-destructed and were explicitly revealed to have been destroyed, Captain Pollution is somehow restored via those very same rings as they are re-activated by the surrounding pollution. It is possible that Captain Pollution created a new set of rings from his own physical body, so that the components he was created from would have somewhere to rest. A more likely scenario is that the Planeteers could simply have been wrong and the rings were not destroyed beyond repair, but left heavily damaged.
During his confrontation with Captain Planet, Captain Pollution manages to absorb so much toxic waste that he not only grows in power but in size as well. However, the Planeteers manage to escape Looten Plunder's death trap and locate Captain Planet before rescuing him and recharging him with the Geo Cruiser's solar battery. The revitalized Captain Planet then tricks his doppleganger into driving them both into the ground and straight into an underground lava flow. The natural lava proves too much for Captain Pollution to handle and his body dissolves. Captain Pollution's final fate is questionable since it is never revealed if he was destroyed forever or merely sealed away and waiting for his chance to return.
Captain Pollution is a twisted visage of Captain Planet, with a sickly yellow skin (although some believe that his face appears Caucasian-toned in his second appearance), dark-red clothing with a cracked globe emblem and bright orange untamed hair. While Captain Planet is dedicated to preserving life and nature, Captain Pollution revels in the destruction he causes. In his second and final appearance Captain Pollution acts crazier and more unbalanced than his previous quirky personality reminiscent of the one of Captain Planet himself, doing some slapstick humor and cracking twisted jokes. That could be owed to the general change in mood in the last three seasons of the show, done by Hanna-Barbera, or to the ordeal surrounding his first death.
While Captain Planet is formed in a bright flash of light (excluding the occasions where he would rise from the ground), Captain Pollution's roots are much more sinister: The first time he was formed, Captain Pollution rose from a mass of pollution that formed on the ground as a result of the combined polluting powers of the rings.[1] In his second appearance, the powers converge and a skeleton forms in the center, while bands of dark energy wrap around it, bringing Captain Pollution into being. The fact he has an internal skeleton - which likely references the death and destruction pollution causes - contrasts with Captain Planet's crystalline body.
In both of his appearances, Captain Pollution was voiced by David Coburn, who distinguished Pollution from his good counterpart by speaking with a Californian surfer dude accent.
Within the pages of the Marvel Comics book based upon the cartoon, Captain Pollution was created by Zarm.
  | Looten Plunder page - Captain Planet: Looten Plunder |
| | Verminous Skumm page - Captain Planet: Verminous Skumm |
| | Zarm page - Captain Planet: Zarm |
| | Hoggish Greedly page - Captain Planet: Hoggish Greedly |
| | Duke Nukem page - Captain Planet: Duke Nukem |
| | Dr. Blight page - Captain Planet: Dr. Blight |
| | Sly Sludge page - Captain Planet: Sly Sludge |
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