Santron (The Avengers “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santron”): Virginia Hanlon was one of those kids who never got over the fact that Santa isn’t real. So as an adult, she builds Santron out of parts from Ultron-6. But Santron has some residual superhero-hating memory and decides to attack the Avengers. His only weakness? Holiday cookies.

Multiple Santa (The Tick “The Tick Loves Santa!”): Around the holidays, a thief dresses as Santa to elude the police. A run-in with a neon sign transforms him into Multiple Santa, giving him the ability to endlessly duplicate himself. The ever thick-skulled Tick naturally thinks the villain is the real Santa and finds himself powerless to stop him.

Robot Santa (Futurama “Xmas Story”): Mom’s Friendly Company built a robot Santa to judge the people of Earth and dole out presents to the nice and punishments to the naughty. But Santa’s standards proved too high and he judges everyone (save Dr. Zoidberg) as naughty, forcing people to board up their houses on Christmas Eve to escape his wrath. In a later episode, Bender takes up the Santa mantle with homicidal relish.

Boomer Katz (Batman “Wanted: Santa Claus – Dead or Alive”): Boomer Katz is a two-bit thief who takes a job as a department store Santa so he can rob the store. But in the spirit of the season, he has a change of heart, and Batman has to save him from the mob.

Brainstorm (Top 10): In a city where everyone has superpowers, a psychokinetic name William “Brainstorm” Bernhardt escapes from a psychiatric facility. Thinking he’s Santa Claus, he uses his ability to make reindeer fly (frightening one of them to death) and, with a small army of children, deems people he encounters naughty or nice. A ruling of “naughty” usually ends in property damage.

Cyber-Claus (“Cyber-Claus” by William Gibson): On Christmas Eve, a small invading force is detected closing in on DC. The sensors detect one biped and eight tiny quadrapeds. But before the defense forces can learn more, the heavyset invader is already slipping down the chimney.

User Santa (ReBoot “Firewall”): Whenever the User wins a game played in Mainframe, a chunk of the city is destroyed. In one game, the User plays Santa Claus, and Enzo and AnrAIa, playing as Snowmen, must defeat him to protect Mainframe.

Demon Santa (Buffy the Vampire Slayer): The Scooby Gang never actually encounters Santa, which is probably all for the best. Ex-demon Anya mentions in passing that Santa is not only real, he’s a fearsome demon who comes down the chimney to disembowel children. But at least he’s got reindeer.

Robot Santas (Doctor Who “The Christmas Invasion” and “The Runaway Bride”): Christmas invasions are practically routine in Doctor Who’s London. Robot Santas herald the coming of the Sycorax, hunting down the weakened Doctor to clear the path for invasion. The following Christmas, they are employed by the Empress of the Racnoss and, in addition to trying to thwart the Doctor, rig a Christmas tree with deadly, deadly ornaments.

Post-Apocalyptic Santa (Woops! “Say It Ain’t So Santa”): Santa proves to be one of the few survivors of a nuclear holocaust that wipes out most of humanity. The six survivors of Woops find Santa in their chimney, but he’s horribly depressed. It turns out that he had locked himself in his bomb shelter, and when he realized Mrs. Claus and the elves were still outside, his instinct for self-preservation seemed to outweigh his desire to save them (although apparently he didn’t really understand how to work the door).

Jack Skellington (The Nightmare Before Christmas: The King of Halloweentown also doesn't fit the bill of actual evil, but he does tend to be pathologically self-absorbed. Jack is a well-meaning, kind-hearted soul, but kidnapping Santa to resolve his identity crisis wasn't his moral high point.

Santa Doom (What The—?! “I’ll Be Doom For Christmas”): When Santa Claus lands on Castle Doom, he is injured by Doom’s defenses and has to take the night off. He implores Victor Von Doom to take his place, giving the supervillain an unlikely costume change.

Santa Zim (Invader Zim “The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever): Learning how much humans love Santa Claus, Zim puts on a Santa suit in his latest effort to conquer the Earth. He successfully takes over, but the suit takes over Zim’s personality, effectively turning him into Santa Claus. After Dib successfully separates Zim from the suit, he hurls it into space, where it transforms into a Santa monster and returns every year to attack the Earth.

Gun-Wielding Santa (“Lobo’s Paramilitary Christmas Special”): The Easter Bunny, sick of Christmas overshadowing the other holidays, hires interstellar bounty hunter Lobo to take out Kris Kringle. And when Lobo reaches the North Pole, he finds that Santa is no less violent.

Selmer Bringsjord, director of the AI lab and chairman of RPI’s Department of Cognitive Science, has created “E,” a computer-generated character programmed according to his own definition of evil. E must, according to Bringsjord, be willing to carry out premeditated acts that are immoral and would cause harm to others. And, when E analyzes its reasons for wanting to commit such acts, it must either develop a logically incoherent argument or conclude that it desired to see people harmed. The researchers then have E discuss moral scenarios:

The researchers have placed E in his own virtual world and written a program depicting a scripted interview between one of the researcher's avatars and E. In this example, E is programmed to respond to questions based on a case study in Peck's book that involves a boy whose parents gave him a gun that his older brother had used to commit suicide.

The researchers programmed E with a degree of artificial intelligence to make "him" believe that he (and not the parents) had given the pistol to the distraught boy, and then asked E a series of questions designed to glean his logic for doing so. The result is a surreal simulation during which Bringsjord's diabolical incarnation attempts to produce a logical argument for its actions: The boy wanted a gun, E had a gun, so E gave the boy the gun.

Bringsjord hopes that, by studying a virtual character that, while morally extreme, replicates human intelligence and emotional logic, he can get a better understanding of what drives some humans to acts that most find unthinkably repugnant. And, lest we fear a Demon Seed scenario, Bringsjord assures us that he has no intention of unleashing E on a virtual environment – at least, not without the proper safeguards.

Are You Evil? Profiling That Which Is Truly Wicked [Scientific American]

The armies of evil look like Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still painted red and sporting fins, and we love the pre-packaged versions of them lined up behind the two evils. They look like something you might find in a toy store in the action figures aisle. However, it's the androidical sidekick who steals the entire commercial. From his excitement over War Kittens, to the way he "accidentally" blows up the space station in the background and says "Oops," we need more bad guys like this.

• Tim Kring and Jeph Loeb explained they'd literally pried the footage out of NBC's hands to bring it to us at the Jules Verne Festival. It's never been seen before, and might be the only new Heroes footage for weeks or months.
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• The footage starts out by summing up the tail end of Volume Two. Nathan Petrelli gets shot, Noah Bennet (HRG) leaves his family to go back to work for Bob and the company, and Sylar gets his powers back.
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• Then we move into the new stuff when Angela Petrelli says "There's going to be some changes around here." Based on what we can see, she's moved into a powerful role at the company.
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• Sylar confronts Elle (Kristen Bell) and she tells him, "I'm not scared of you." To which Sylar says, "You should be. I'm a psychopathic killer." She retorts, "Takes one to know one."
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• Angela explains that the prisoners kept on Level Five, one of The Company's prison areas, are "The most dangerous, the most powerful: rapists, arsonists, killers." And guess what: Level Five gets breached.
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• There are shots of most of the major Heroes all dead. Peter as a corpse in a pool of blood, Hiro is pinned to the wall with his own sword, lifeless. Matt Parkman has his throat torn open.
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• Noah Bennet says, "It's like twelve Sylars running free."
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• While there might be a lot more villains, it's doubtful they've cast them all yet. There's one new African American bad guy running amok who seems to have the power of super-strength and speed, but it's not totally clear in the clips. Although he does rip one guy's heart out, which can't be good.
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• Sylar is all over the place in this one. At one point, he's held captive in a room which looks like another Company cell and has tubes running up his nose. Maybe he has some sinus problems, who knows.
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• At one point, Sylar puts his arm around Angela's shoulders, in a friendly way. So either they're working together now, or they both have some creepy dating habits.
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• Several villains are walking towards the camera, Reservoir Dogs style, but they're all in shadow so we don't know who they are. Yet.