How I love to hate you: TV characters that (almost) everyone hates

As we all know the best way to create a television hero is to put a villain or a creep by their side. But it's not just the villains that are hated. Individual characters can emit a strong, resonating dislike to the viewers.

To prove our point, we take a look at the most hated characters in the history of television. These characters have even caused problems for the actors and actresses who have played them.

Tobias Menzies, in addition to being a superb actor, has the perfect face for the role of Jack Randall.

A character prone to abuse and crime, as well as being the main obstacle to the love between Jamie and Claire. It has all the makings of an overwhelming hate.

His character has less empathy for humans than his theme park hosts.

Photo: Warner Bros.

Robert Ford is a megalomaniac genius who loves himself and his work above all else and does nothing to disguise it. Hopkins, as always, is simply superb in the role.

She was never really the lead role in the series. A character whose first-world problems were totally insignificant and minute compared to the rest of the characters.

Even though her problems seemed trivial, Piper insisted on being an obnoxious character. This attitude actually helped her become the leader of a group of white supremacists at one point. Not much to like.

For eight seasons, the HBO series showed the absolute worst of human nature in characters such as Ramsay Bolton and Littlefinger. But Joffrey made them all seem good. A depraved character, a textbook psychopath, devoid of feelings or empathy, who found significant pleasure in the pain of others.

The character had such a brutal impact that fans insulted Jack Gleeson for years in the street, to the point of making him quit acting. The world lost a great actor.

Of course, it is a series about the mafia. Lying, betraying and stealing is the name of the game; but Janice did it so badly that she never endeared herself to the audience.

An added problem for the character was that her brother, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), was one of the most charismatic in television history. It was always going to be tough to compete with that.

There were eight seasons of this iconic TV show, and in each and every one of them, Susan Mayer had a problem. Serious problems that you think, season to season, she can't get much worse. Most of the issues were almost always avoidable if she just showed a bit of common sense.

She burned down a house, ran over a neighbor, ruined her family... And while all this was going on, she constantly complained she was lonely.

There can't be a single person who, in 12 seasons, hasn't wanted to lock Sheldon Cooper in a room and lock the door. Even if you did, you know he'd bang on the door three times.

Selfish, unfeeling and egomaniacal to such an extent, he is the quintessential unbearable character. Jim Parsons certainly has one of those voices that you can recognise anywhere - and it's like nails on a blackboard.

Giancarlo Esposito raised the bar for TV villains with this two-faced psychopath who by day was a 'nice guy' on 'Los Pollos Hermanos' and by night, the show's most dangerous drug dealer.

His plans were as cruel as they were thought out. Everything was perfect, and everything always worked out well, until he ran into Walter White: the man who gave him one of the most legendary endings in the history of television.

Georgina was a villain who was able to get Blair, Chuck, Serena and Dan to unite against her as a common enemy. So she had to be someone very loathsome. And she was.

Her character was manipulation personified. She was someone who used lies as her weapon and did not care about the consequences of her actions, even if they led to her doom. It's looking like she'll be back for more.

'The Daily Beast' came to wonder if Marnie was 'the worst character on television'. We think that they gave her that title on a well-founded basis: she is simply irritating on so many levels.

Her obsessive personality, her eagerness to judge others, and her continuous making of wrong decisions meant that Marnie was singled out as the one we should hate - almost from the first episode. But the hate increased with each decision she made.

The entire cast of the series was actually pretty unlikeable, but in the case of Pete Campbell, we must say, he had the same traits but with less charisma and less forgivable vices. So he's the one who makes the list.

Plus, Pete Campbell had the added bonus of being that privileged kid who thinks the world owes him something and conspires against him. Obviously, in comparison to Don Draper, he came off short.

Hannah Kahnwald is the mother of Jonas (Louis Hoffman) and one of the characters that gives meaning to the title of the series. She is dark as night.

Her obsession with Ulrich Nielsen (Oliver Masucci) goes all the way back to the Institute, when she fell in love with him. Being rejected leads her to moments of cruelty and meanness that are almost inexplicable.

Bevers is every flatmate's nightmare. That roommate who has the worst qualities that a human being possibly can have.

He doesn't pay rent, even though he spends more time in the house than anyone else. He steals food that isn't his, he doesn't stop breaking things in the house and, to top it all off, he likes to walk around naked. It's normal for him to be hated.

Without a doubt, the most twisted, manipulative and intelligent character in a series. A series that actually has rather a lot of twisted, manipulative and intelligent characters.

As much as many people hated Cersei, we loved her because the whole world hated her. What's more, she seemed to escape her fate in the final chapter which angered many fans. Others breathed a sigh of relief. She was hated and loved for being hated.

Obnoxious as well as plain disgusting. Not only was he Leslie Knope's (Amy Poehler) nemesis on the show, but his arguments mixed the misogynistic with the paternalistic.

As if that were not enough, he had the 'You just got jammed' slogan as a recurring phrase that made it really easy to hate him. Despite the rateable character, we have to give big rounds of applause for Jon Glaser's performance.

Emma Kenney's character would need several lifetimes to redeem herself from her actions. They would shame even the devil himself.

The most serious, obviously, was the theft of a baby. Taking advantage of a disabled person and abusing a man is not far behind. Obviously, she wasn't the one to fill in for Fiona (Emmy Rossum).

The deep hatred for this character was something inexplicable. The reality is that Skyler was kind of Walter White's catalyst in her criminal escalation and, perhaps for this reason, the world singled her out. Heisenberg was an antihero and she was his nemesis.

The hate reached such a level that Anna Gunn, the actress who played Skyler, wrote a letter to the 'New York Times' in which, among other things, she blamed people's "own perception of women and wives" for the hatred toward the character. She had a really bad time, saying in her letter, 'The already harsh online comments became outright personal attacks. One such post read: “Could somebody tell me where I can find Anna Gunn so I can kill her?”'.

According to Donald Glover in 'The Hollywood Reporter', Chevy Chase looked more like Pierce Hawthorne than expected, ensuring that few people got along with him on the set.

The character was created on purpose to be hated.  Only when you understand he was created for this purpose, can you understand his macho and offensive comments.

It's been a long time since Lori Grames left 'The Walking Dead' but she's the first hateful character that comes to mind for many people. And they have reason.

Not only did she abandon her husband at the beginning, she made questionable decisions that endangered the group. Lori's demise was featured in The Huffington Post's list of "The Biggest 'OMG' TV Moments of 2012"

Introduced in the show because the writers needed someone to have a deep relationship and connection with Sarah Michelle Gellar's character, Buffy - yet it had to be non-romantic. Welcome Buffy's sister, Dawn, chosen by fate to be a Vampire Slayer. Chosen by many as one of the most hated TV characters ever.

The character of Dawn Summers made too many capital mistakes in a cult series. The first, she stole the spotlight from the main character. Second, where the hell did a Buffy sister come from after five seasons? The rest of the hatred is down to her bad-tempered nature.

It is the curious case of Ted Mosby, who went from the lead role and narrator of the series, to the unequivocal villain. In fact, this perception multiplied once the series ended.

Fans accused Ted Mosby of being selfish. A man who, on his way to utopian happiness, sucks away the desires and needs of those around him. Too hard?

April Kepner's friendly face hid one of the most haughty, selfish and generally dislikable characters in the history of the series. 

Abandoning her fiancé at the altar and then proceeding to steal someone's partner didn't help fans of the series grow fond of her either.