#10:  Orcs

Orcs are basically a catch-all villain for any video game, movie or book involving swords and one or more old men capable of shooting gigantic gelatinous fireballs out of some part of their bodies.  Sure, Orcs are tough, imposing, brutally fierce in hand-to-hand combat and the sort of monster than can truly inspire your knightly emotions, but the truth of the matter is that whenever something involves Orcs the dorkitude level increases by a factor of twenty.  I'm not even kidding.  You could swing in on a rope, save a damsel in distress only seconds before she was going to fall to her certain death, and have her swoon in your arms but the first fucking time you mention that you had to fight Orcs to rescue her she would either laugh in your face or make that scrunched-up "I'm completely revolted by you" face that chicks make when they find out you've been wearing the same shirt for three days in a row (if you know what an Orc even is, then you know what look I'm talking about).  Sure, they make for good villains by virtue of their strength and their lack of humanity, but if you fight them and win you're ultimately going to want to brag about your successes with somebody other than your regular AD&D crew.

#9:  Drug Dealers / Crackheads

Drug dealers and crackheads are the high in the running for the lowest form of human life award, right up there with telemarketers, lawyers and celebrities.  In this sense, they're the perfect villains;  they'll do anything to get what they want, they're generally regarded as scumbags with no redeeming qualities, and you don't have to travel far to find one.  The downside to beating up random crackheads is that there really isn't a whole lot of challenge to it and there's nothing really noteworthy about it.  Cops do it every single day.  Attempting to take down a Colombian Cartel is a slightly more impressive endeavor, but drug dealers generally aren't considered such a major threat to human civilization that you'll be honored as a hero if you take them down.  Sure, vigilante justice is cool and all, but everybody knows by now that as soon as you take out one dealer, two more spring up to take his place.  It's an exercise in futility.

#8:  Terrorists

From the IRA to Hans Gruber to Al-Qaeda, the ongoing "war" with terrorists has been well-documented over the years.  Despite the fact that they are total jerks responsible for the deaths of countless non-combatants, they only rank eighth on my list.  This is because terrorists, as a whole, don't particularly make for good villains.  They're hard to find, they don't have a fortified base of operations and they don't stand out from the crowd at all.  If you wanted to go on a crusade against terrorists, you'd have a tough time picking them out from standard civilians.  While this tactic seems to work pretty well for them, it doesn't really make them the sort of villain you'd want to try and fight.  Ideally, when you're going to do something heroic, you want to spend most of your pump-up time gearing up to attack your enemies by tying on a headband, punching a speed bag and cleaning a machine gun while 80's pump-up music plays in the background.  You don't want to be wandering around like an idiot asking random civilians if they know where all the bad guys are.

#7:  British People

Now we're talking.  With all due apologies to Jack Shannon, Americans love to hate the British.  They're like the United States' irritating friend;  sure we're close, but nobody can piss us off like they can.  Maybe we're still bitter over having our White House burned to the ground in 1812, or maybe it's the air of foppishness, the way they spell the word "color" wrong, or the fact that every movie villain this side of Emperor Palpatine has had a British accent.  It's tough to say, but the fact remains that the British make for great bad guys, especially if you're into the whole Revolutionary War angle.  I mean just look at this guy on the right.  If he doesn't inspire you to grab a musket and a tri-corner hat and start raising a militia than there's something wrong.

#6:  Diabolical Super-Geniuses

If it weren't for Diabolical Super-Geniuses with their Rube Goldbergian plots to dominate the world with an iron fist and a fluffy ill-tempered kitty, the world's most intrepid spy agencies would be severely out of practice.  These guys truly represent the pinnacle of human ingenuity and prove that infinite monetary resources and an abundance of spare time can only spell disaster.  Since these guys represent the pinnacle of Capitalist excess, recruiting faceless private armies and building complex subterranean bunkers, it's hard not to enjoy any opportunity you may come across to try and save the world from their insane machinations.  They're great villains, since they're all power-hungry maniacs.  The only downside to fighting a super-genius is that at some point you're going to have to rely on your wits to get you out of a tricky situation.  If this is going to be a problem for you, maybe you should take a pass.

#5:  The Undead

It's hard to argue with the badassitude of the walking dead.  Whether it's the skeletal warriors of the Army of Darkness, a plague of brain-devouring zombies or even a good old-fashioned Dracula hunt, the undead make perfect villains because it's impossible to sympathize with them.  They're unstoppable, unflinching, unnatural killing machines, and any time you fight the walking dead you're doing the world a favor not only to humanity but to the natural order of the universe.  You're preventing the spread of their unholy forces and setting the world right again.  People are certain to recognize this and reward you appropriately.  The main reasons I haven't ranked them higher than this is the fact that any sort of wound you receive from an undead could potentially transform you into one of them, and because ghosts and shit really creep me the fuck out.

#4:  Robots

Robots are like the undead, except they can't really turn you into one of them and they're generally a little better equipped.  We should have covered by now the infallible truth that all robots are dicks, and they all flip out and kill their masters before going on psychotic berserk rampages.  That's when you need to step in an lay down some robot-busting justice.  I put robots below aliens on this list because they can be pretty fucking tough to take out if you don't have EMP or heavy ordinance, but if you're able to save the world from insane robots you're a hero.

#3:  Aliens / Mutants

Who doesn't love a good alien invasion of earth or a giant mutated radioactive spider these days?  And what can be better than rising to the occasion and saving the world from destruction by forces which we cannot hope to comprehend, or a creature capable of destroying entire cities for no reason at all?

Alien invasions make for great heroic battles, and xenophobic aliens make for great villains since they're either completely unwilling to tolerate any existence of their own, or they aspire to make all humans their slaves.  Whatever the case, you're saving your planet from a fate equal to or worse than death, and that counts for something.  Plus they all have crazy futuristic weapons like guns that turn people inside out, and it would be totally sweet to get your hands on something like that.

#2:  Nazis

Nazis make great villains because EVERYBODY hates them.  Even German people hate them.  The only people who say anything about Nazis without including the phrase "that fucking asshole Hitler" are either Neo-Nazis or History Channel narrators.  Seriously.  You'd have a very difficult time finding a more unanimously-hated group of people.  They make great villains not only because of their infamy and brutality towards mankind, but also because they elicit much stronger emotions from people than aliens or robots or whatever by virtue of the fact that the Nazis actually existed in real life.  They're as close as you can get to real-world monsters, and it would be tough to turn down the opportunity to fight against that.

#1:  The Soviet Union

The conclusion I came to is that there is that even now, thirteen years after the fall of their regime, there is no greater foil to Americans than the Soviets.  When it comes to villains you love to hate, nothing tops the armed forces of the Soviet Union.  Sure the Nazis were worse in terms of crimes against humanity and sheer malevolence, but the Soviets were around in all of our lifetimes.  And with the advent of nuclear weapons they were capable of destruction on a far greater scale than that of the Nazis.  I grew up during the Cold War, so there will always be a place in my heart for a little US-USSR rivalry.  The entire country fed on that shit.  Both countries pretty much existed solely for the purpose of countering the other guy at all costs, and it was awesome.  Sure there was the constant threat of complete extermination of the human race, but that just added to the tension and made the Russkies that much more dangerous and viable as an enemy.  While we never did end up battling them for control of the world, there has never been a more awesome villain than the Iron Curtain and the Commie Russians.  If you don't believe me watch some footage of the 1980 Olympic Hockey Game... if that doesn't get you pumped up about the rivalry, you have no soul.