10 Meanest Stephen King Bullies, Ranked (original) (raw)
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Published May 18, 2025, 7:34 PM EDT
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Of the various things that show up time and again throughout the stories of Stephen King, one of the most noteworthy (and noticeable) is the inclusion of one or more bully characters, especially if the story involves younger characters or takes place in high school. King’s keen on more supernatural villains for sure, but he’s also able to make people without fantastical powers just as terrifying and antagonistic.
Most of the following characters demonstrate this well, standing out as bullies in the source material and, for the most part, in the film or TV adaptations that such texts received. The first appearance of each on the page will be counted here, though, as some of the characters here haven’t shown up in a movie or TV show (yet). Also, one character here does clearly have supernatural powers, making him a little more than “just” a bully. He’s not a bully in the traditional sense, but he’s too prolific a villain – and takes too much pleasure from his misdeeds – not to include here.
10 Buddy Repperton
Appeared in 'Christine' (1983)
Image via Columbia Pictures
This is a good old-fashioned straightforward bully, and someone who occupies a secondary role within the broader story they feature in. That story is Christine, and the primary villain is, oddly enough, the titular vehicle: a 1958 Plymouth Fury that’s come alive and is very possessive of its (or her?) owner, Arnie, who also has to deal with bullying at school, most significantly by Buddy Repperton.
He's a typical high school bully, in many ways, but he serves his role in the story pretty well. He’s a more realistic villain who contrasts against the more unbelievable one, which is something Andrew J. Rausch notes King does quite well in more than one of his stories. Christine would still be a tense read without Buddy, but having him there does make the whole situation Arnie’s in more harrowing.
Christine
Release Date
December 9, 1983
Runtime
110 minutes
Cast
Keith Gordon
Arnie Cunningham
John Stockwell
Dennis Guilder
Alexandra Paul
Leigh Cabot
Robert Prosky
Will Darnell
9 Greg Stillson
Appeared in 'The Dead Zone' (1979)
Image via Paramount Pictures
Greg Stillson is the closest thing The Dead Zone has to a primary antagonist, which sets him apart from some of the other bullies being discussed here. As such, he does become more than a bully; he’s a threat to the safety of the world itself, seeing as _The Dead Zone_’s protagonist, Johnny Smith, can see flashes of the future, and such visions suggest that should Stillson succeed in becoming President, he might start a nuclear conflict.
But before he comes dangerously close to becoming President, Stillson is shown to be a cruel and petty jerk, especially if you read the novel and understand a little more about his history (compared to the David Cronenberg film adaptation). He murders a dog in the book’s prologue, for example, and if there’s one way to make pretty much any reader hate – and feel uncomfortable about – a character straight away, it’s having them do that.
The Dead Zone
Release Date
October 21, 1983
Runtime
103 minutes
Cast
Brooke Adams
Sarah Bracknell
Herbert Lom
Dr. Sam Weizak
8 The Kid
Appeared in 'The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition' (1990)
Image via Doubleday
There are a fair few things that make The Stand difficult to adapt, and the character of The Kid is one of them. He appears in only one section of the book, but it’s a pretty lengthy and considerably horrifying one, which sees him meet Trashcan Man and torment him in increasingly abhorrent ways. It gets to the point that even mentioning some of those things would exceed the PG-rating territory (so to speak) a ranking like this should probably adhere to.
The Kid appears in only one section of the book, but it’s a pretty lengthy and considerably horrifying one, which sees him meet Trashcan Man and torment him in increasingly abhorrent ways.
If you know, you know. There are other characters who might well do more acts of evil on the page than The Kid, but the fact that he’s so intensely focused on psychological and physical torment for almost all of his appearance makes him one of the more horrifying characters King’s written. His fate is grim (and he doesn’t get to do the kind of widespread damage he aspired to do), but it’s well-deserved.
7 Bogs Diamond
Appeared in 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' (1982)
Image via Columbia Pictures
Graduating from high school doesn’t mean you'll be free of bullies, by any means, and Stephen King makes that abundantly clear in his novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (later adapted into the much-loved The Shawshank Redemption). With this shorter story, King still finds room for more than one villain, the main one also being a bully, admittedly: Warden Samuel Norton.
But it’s Bogs who feels more like a bully in the traditional sense, with one very much getting the idea that he would’ve been terrible in high school (if he’d ever attended), too, on top of being an entirely awful person in prison. He targets Andy mercilessly, perhaps even more in the film version than he did in the original text, and is one of many things that make Andy’s escape attempt entirely understandable and ultimately cathartic.
6 Percy Wetmore
Appeared in 'The Green Mile' (1996)
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Another Stephen King story about prison (albeit one on Death Row and with a fantastical spin), The Green Mile has a fair few characters who've done terrible things. One of the prisoners, who goes by “Wild Bill,” is the one who’s technically done the worst deeds of anyone in the story, but it’s one of the guards on Death Row, Percy Wetmore, who stands as more of a bully within the same story.
Percy is a mix of incompetent and cruel, and is also the sort of character who could be described as “sniveling” (not something anyone really aspires to be called, to say the least). He’s a sadist to some people who've admittedly done bad things, but he overdoes it, considering the executions are seen by everyone else as punishment enough. His cruelty leads to what’s probably the most horrific scene in the book/movie: a botched execution that comes about because Percy doesn’t wet the sponge he’s supposed to (again, if you know, you know).
5 Chris Hargensen
Appeared in 'Carrie' (1974)
Image via United Artists
Stephen King’s never shied away from making some of his most villainous characters female, as Annie Wilkes from Misery demonstrates. She’s monstrous in her own ways, but doesn’t really “feel” like a bully, even if what she does is intense, as far as psychological and physical torment is concerned. Instead, the clearest example of a female bully in King’s work would have to be those who make the titular Carrie’s life a living hell in King’s debut 1974 novel.
It's Christine Hargensen (who mostly goes by Chris) who’s the ringleader of that group of bullies, and so she’s the one who ultimately emerges as the most responsible, of the school-age characters, for Carrie’s breakdown. Carrie’s mom certainly didn’t help either, and was also a bully in some ways, but Chris is the quintessential “mean girl,” and gives all of King’s male teenage bullies a run for their money when it comes to cruelty.
Carrie
Release Date
November 3, 1976
Runtime
98 minutes
Cast
Piper Laurie
Margaret White
4 Henry Bowers
Appeared in 'It' (1986)
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
With It, there’s certainly room to have a whole bunch of villains, the most iconic of which is the titular entity who can shape-shift and often – though not always – takes on the appearance of a clown called Pennywise. _It_’s a long book, and so having multiple antagonists, with a bunch of them being ordinary humans who are horrifying in more mundane ways (though they are sometimes under the influence of It, making them partly tied to the supernatural).
Anyway, the main bully worth highlighting is Henry Bowers, who torments the main characters in their youth, and similarly becomes an obstacle for them when they're adults, battling the titular antagonist 27 years later. He is a quintessential bully through and through, and does some alarmingly violent things for someone so young… but there is one other bully in It who might be more terrible than Henry.
It
Release Date
September 8, 2017
Runtime
135 minutes
3 Patrick Hockstetter
Appeared in 'It' (1986)
That arguably more terrible bully is Patrick Hockstetter, who trumps Henry here because Patrick manages to, at times, bully and control Henry himself. He’s more depraved and capable of even more grisly things, and his life is one that’s pretty much defined by the sociopathic things he’s done to basically everyone around him, including family members and those within the gang of bullies he’s associated with.
Patrick doesn’t have as much of an influence on the story of It as Henry or Pennywise/It, even in the lengthy original novel, but he’s bad news 100% of the time he is there. The only thing that holds him back from being the worst bully King’s written to date is that lack of… well, it’s not screen time, if the book’s being discussed. Whatever the book equivalent of screen time is, Patrick doesn’t have much of it, but he’s still an all-time mortifying fictional character.
2 Ace Merrill
Appeared in 'The Body' (1982)
Image via Columbia Pictures
Perhaps the most recognizably bully-ish character Stephen King has ever written (as far as the entirely human ones go), Ace Merrill is pretty awful in the novella, The Body, but becomes even more monstrous in the film adaptation, Stand by Me. Kiefer Sutherland is perfectly cast here, with his performance – and the screenplay – taking Ace from a memorably nasty minor character to a full-on sadist (and central villain).
Ace exists in the story to torment the lead characters and is persistently driven to make them suffer, seemingly only because it makes him feel good. He tops the bullies in It because, owing to that story’s supernatural content, you could give the gang some (very limited) benefit of the doubt, regarding how much It was influencing their evil. With Ace, he’s just a bad guy. It’s all him. And he’s absolutely terrifying enough without any help or influence from a shape-shifting being of ancient evil.
Stand by Me
Release Date
August 22, 1986
Runtime
89 minutes
Cast
River Phoenix
Chris Chambers
1 Randall Flag
Appeared in 'The Stand' (1978), 'The Dark Tower' (1982-2004), and 'The Eyes of the Dragon' (1984)
The rules are getting bent a little here, because Randall Flagg is a full-on demon and not of this world, but his motives still make him a bully. He often seems driven to commit evil for the fun of it, and is especially destructive in The Stand, where he is the central antagonist in a story full of monsters. The same goes for The Eyes of the Dragon, though he’s perhaps not quite as intimidating there (that story’s a little lighter than most Stephen King stories, inciting incident aside).
Flagg is also a key villain throughout the whole Dark Tower series, and is alluded to in a handful of other Stephen King stories, making him the most frequently recurring villain King’s ever written. He’s much more than just a bully, and has an arguably unfair amount of power compared to all the aforementioned human bullies, but he’s just too significant, petty, and unapologetically evil to not shout out here, existing across different worlds just to seemingly try his hand at tormenting every living soul in every single one.
The Stand
Release Date
1994 - 1994-00-00
Directors
Mick Garris
