One of Hollywood's favorite way to let you know you're looking at the villain in a movie is to give that character some sort of mark. Often it's a scar or other disfigurement from some tragic past accident or incident. Sometimes, it's body art.
Most often, you can spot the villain by his tattoos. Robert DeNiro’s appearance in the remake of “Cape Fear” was intense, as his rendering of the character came with a wiry prison gym physique, almost spray-painted all over with graffiti-like snippets of Bible verse. This character had revenge literally written all over him. It was an impressive makeup job, but the size of the typefaces used belied their ingenuity: they were huge for the camera to read, much larger than real-life scale.Mario Van Peebles got to have exotic facial piercings as the villainous immortal magician Kane in the forgettable HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER. These piercings don't fit in with his character or the time period from which the character evolved, so I'm not sure what the filmmakers were intending. They gave Kane a big and elaborate earl piercing, the one through the bridge of the nose.
In the "Silence of the Lambs" prequel “Red Dragon” we get to see another tattooed villain, painted onto British actor Ralph Fiennes. The novel has elaborate detail of the full back piece worn by the killer, a bodybuilder who believes he is transforming in more ways than one. Early trailers showed a black and white design rendered in a pseduo-tribal/blackwork style, with large curving horns coming down from the shoulders. The full release reveals the whole dragon-like design with scenes of Fiennes’ character working out and looking at himself in the mirror, as detailed in the book.In DAREDEVIL, Irish actor plays hired assassin Bullseye. Along with his razor-sharp wit and aim, Bullseye also has a variety of ear piercings and has a target shape into the center of his forehead. The design is very clean and precise, not really looking like the result of any of the most-commonly used methods of body modification. It sort of looks like a scar, but it's recessed, not raised. Almost all methods of cutting or burning on humans results in a skin texture that raises up, not a shallow and clean channel.
