Sayid the Killer & Pop Culture's Most Beloved Murderers

Before we delve into today’s post, I’d just like to mention that I broke my HD Lost cherry last night and honestly, I feel blessed by its awesomeness. Magical moments like that don’t happen without a little help. With that in mind, I’d like to thank my employer and the not-as-fucked-up-as-it-could-be Canadian economy for letting me afford it, Samsung for making such beautiful toys, and my wife for accepting my geeky consumerism. I suppose I should also thank my mom for confiscating ninja stars and pellet guns from me in my youth… thanks to her, I still have two good eyes to appreciate Lost in HD.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program… but not before giving you this:

In last night’s episode of Lost (Season 5, Episode 10: He’s Our You), Sayid was presented as something of a natural-born killer. From his youth breaking chicken necks to his adulthood killing bad golfers to his current proclivity towards murdering creepy children who someday grow up to be even creepier adults (RIP, young Ben Linus), Sayid makes Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis look like a couple of bitches.

Obviously, the death of young Ben Linus raises the question of what the future holds for old Ben Linus and for the Dharmites medium-aged Ben Linus would have killed. If Back to the Future’s Doc Brown taught us anything, it was that you can’t change the past without changing the future… and that “Great Scott!” is woefully underused exclamation of surprise… and that a flux capacitor requires 1.21 gigawatts of power to operate. ONE. POINT. TWENTY-ONE. GIGAWATTS!!!

While those time-space continuum, theoretical craziness questions are all well and good, the more important question raised by last night’s episode of Lost was this: Is Sayid now among pop culture’s greatest and most-beloved killers? Our heart says yes, but our brain says we won’t know for sure without that old favourite of lazy online writers: the list.

So, without further adieu, Pop Culture A.D.D. is happy to present our list of pop culture’s greatest and most-beloved killers. Keep in mind that to qualify for the list, you need to be at least somewhat heroic and / or have some redeeming value. Sorry, asteroid from Armageddon, pencil-disappearing-act Joker from The Dark Knight, and eating disorder from The Simple Life.

10. The Punisher

Welcome back, Frank. Anti-heroes who are willing to kill have been a-dime-a-dozen since the dark-and-gritty ‘80s. Frank Castle / The Punisher makes our list not so much for his killing as his not one, not two, but three bad movies – and, of course, his willingness to punch a polar bear. Global warming isn’t the only thing endangering polar bears.

9. Cortez the Killer

No, not Hernán Cortés, Spanish conquistador and Aztec empire toppler, we’re talking about the actual song Cortez the Killer by Neil Young. Featuring a guitar solo which ranks 39th on Guitar World magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitar Solos, a spot (321st) on Rolling Stone magazine’s Greatest 500 Songs of All Time, Young’s seven-and-a-half minute, historically inaccurate, rock-and-roll indictment of Cortés was banned in Spain. For that reason alone, it’s more than cool enough for our list.

8. Mario

Created by legendary video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario has appeared in over 200 games and helped sell over 201 million copies of those games since his first appearance in 1981’s Donkey Kong. That equals a veritable avalanche of dead goombas and koopa troopas. Mario: lovable plumber or genocidal maniac?

7. Sayid Jarrah

Welcome to the big time, Sayid. All you needed to do to get here was sucker-punch one of your best friends and murder a defenseless tween. Well done, sir.

6. Clive Owen

Owen has played a number of memorable killers, including Dwight in Sin City, Smith in Shoot ‘Em Up. However, you’ll notice it says “Clive Owen”, not “carrot-wielding, sharp-shooting, cool-as-ice cartoonish character” in the title of this entry on the list. That’s because the real Owen is a straight-up, stone-cold killer… a lady killer, that is.

5. Ford Explorer

We’re not trying to insinuate that the Ford Explorer killed anyone during the whole rollover / Firestone tire debacle. We’re not even saying that the Ford Explorer has ever or will ever kill anyone by dumping carbon into the atmosphere. Nope, that would be cold… or stupid… or coldly stupid. The reason that Ford’s successor to the O.J.-haulin’ Ford Bronco is on this list is for killing an entire industry. When it debuted, the Ford Explorer was such a phenomenal success that it almost single-handedly created the SUV craze, which caused the Big Three to focus on developing bigger, more luxurious, more ridiculous, more profitable SUVs. While Detroit was pouring R&D money and engineering talent into putting fat-bottomed, heated leather seats and DVD entertainment systems into trucks, the competition from Europe and Asia was developing actually useful technologies. Now, North Americans are footing the bill to help pull the domestic auto industry from the smoking ruins. Thanks, Ford Explorer.

4. Jack Bauer

Jack Bauer is like the internet’s version of Chuck Norris without the height or stretchy jeans designed to let him kick you in the face. Bauer once ran up a wall to break a guy’s neck. He even inspired a website specifically devoted to his trail of death and comical destruction. ‘Nuff said.

3. The Killers

Apparently, The Killers are named after a fictional band from a music video created by English alt / electronic rockers New Order. Huh. Who knew? Here at Pop Culture A.D.D., we’ll just continue to assume the band is made up of blood-thirsty CIA spooks that got together to infiltrate organized crime in Vegas. It’s just more fun that way.

2. Dexter Morgan

Do you know what’s about a million times cooler than a hooker with a heart of gold? A serial killer with a heart of gold… who tracks another serial killer… who kills prostitutes… who may or may not have had hearts of gold. Oh Dexter, don’t ever change.

1. James Bond

As a double-O agent of MI6, James Bond has an actual licence to kill… and based on what we saw in Casino Royale, you don’t get that licence but parallel parking for a disinterested bureaucrat, you get it by being pop culture’s no. 1 bad ass.