The Most Terrible Things Wolverine Has Ever Done

Wolverine. Logan. James Howlett. Patch. Whatever you call him, the facts remain the same: Wolverine is the best there is at what he does — and what he does isn't very nice.

Oh, sure, Wolverine might fight on the side of the angels now — most of the time, anyway — but over the past 120 years he's been hunted, tortured, experimented on, and forced to live in the woods like an animal. He fought in World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. He spent time as a secret agent for the government, and when that fell through, he was brainwashed and turned into a living weapon. Even as a superhero, things didn't get much better. Wolverine has had the adamantium torn out of his body by Magneto. He's literally traveled to Hell — and back. He's died multiple times.

A person doesn't go through all that and emerge perfectly sane, and with Logan's hair-trigger temper and "punch first, ask questions later" attitude, it's no surprise that he's committed some truly heinous acts. Don't judge. Logan has been damaged goods since day one, and while he slips up every now and then, he's doing the best he can.

Wolverine's vendetta against his own flesh and blood doesn't start or end with Daken. In "Wolverine: Origins," James Howlett — the boy who would grow up to be Wolverine — kills his biological father, Thomas Logan, after Logan murders Wolverine's adopted dad.

And then there are the Mongrels, a team of supervillains that made its big debut in "Wolverine #1," when, thanks to some demonic shenanigans, Wolverine is stuck in Hell. As Wolverine's possessed body causes havoc for the X-Men and Logan himself battles his way out of the underworld (and confronts some unfriendly faces from the past along the way), the Red Right Hand — a group of villains united by grudges against Wolverine  —torment everybody he's ever loved, with the Red Right Hand's leader, the Old Man, and the Mongrels on the front lines.

Once Wolverine returns to the land of the living and gets his body back, he goes after the Red Right Hand directly. Logan dispatches the Mongrels, and as the final Mongrel, Gunhawk, bleeds to death on the floor, he reveals the Red Right Hand's master plan: they don't want to kill Wolverine. They want to make him hurt. The members of the Red Right Hand poison themselves before Wolverine arrives, and as Wolverine wanders among their lifeless bodies, a pre-recorded message plays: the Mongrels, who Wolverine butchered, were his children. "Now, at last, you know what it's like to be us," the Old Man cackles. "Welcome to the Red Right Hand."

There's no question that looms quite as large in the modern age as the one asked by the Watcher in "What If" #24: "What if ... Wolverine had become lord of the vampires?"

In "Uncanny X-Men" #159, the X-Men take on Dracula himself, with Storm delivering the final blow via lightning bolt — but it didn't have to go down that way. As the Watcher explains, in another reality, Dracula kills Storm and turns the X-Men into vampires, who he hopes to transform into super-powered servants. Even undead, however, Wolverine isn't much of a team player: Dracula's head is soon separated from his body and Logan proclaims himself king of the vampires.

Under Wolverine's direction, the infected X-Men go on a rampage, decimating foes (like the Hellfire Club) and friends (such as the the New Mutants) alike. Doctor Strange poses a problem for a hot second, but a vampiric Juggernaut catches him off guard and breaks his spine. As the X-Men feast on the citizens of New York, Doctor Strange's spirit possesses the Punisher, and together they set out to stop Wolverine and his servants.

During the battle, Kitty Pryde gets caught in the crossfire and loses her head, which is enough to snap Logan back to his senses — at least temporarily. Under the Punisher's direction, Wolverine recites one of Strange's incantations, and all of the vampires turn to ash, leaving the Earth free of monsters, but woefully unprepared for any super-powered threats that might head its way.

When you're an X-Man, you get used to traveling to alternate dimensions and divergent timelines. Still, it couldn't have been easy for the main continuity's Wolverine when he travelled to the Age of Apocalypse and discovered that not only did his doppelgänger transform into a supervillain, but that the rogue Wolverine took the place of Apocalypse himself.

The members of X-Force find themselves trapped in the Age of Apocalypse in "Uncanny X-Force" #11, and while the team tries to find a mystical object called the Life Seed, which could save their friend Archangel, Wolverine is forced to face alternate reality versions of his lost loved ones. He flirts with Jean Grey, who was married to the Age of Apocalypse's Logan. He runs into Kirika, the daughter of Wolverine's former flame, Mariko, and that dimension's Weapon X. And in "Uncanny X-Force" #12, Wolverine finally meets himself — a despot who wears Apocalypse's gear and goes by the name Weapon Omega.

Weapon Omega kills Kirika (because, even in an alternate reality, Wolverine isn't going to win any Father of the Year awards), then reveals that he's planning on picking up where Apocalypse left off by helping the ultra-powerful aliens, the Celestials, wipe humanity off the face of the planet. Wolverine and the rest of X-Force escape Weapon Omega and his horsemen and head home, but the Age of Apocalypse's Jean Grey stays behind to fight her husband — or whatever it is he's become.

Wolverine's unrequited love for the X-Men's fiery psychic, Jean Grey, played a minor role in writer Chris Claremont's early issues of "Uncanny X-Men," but the love triangle between Logan, Cyclops, and Jean grew increasingly important as his run continued. In the '90s, "X-Men: The Animated Series" made Wolverine's crush on Jean a major character trait, and director Bryan Singer went on to make the Wolverine-Cyclops rivalry one of the cornerstones of the very first "X-Men" feature film.

Still, it wasn't until "Ultimate X-Men" #29 hit stands in 2003 that the soapy romance plot reached its inevitable conclusion. While on a mission in the Savage Land, Cyclops takes a nasty fall off the edge of a cliff, barely grabbing an outcropping in time. That's not enough. Cyclops calls out to Wolverine for help, but instead of coming to his teammate's aid, Wolverine lets Cyclops fall — and then, with Scott Summers finally out of the way, returns home to woo a clueless Jean Grey.

Unfortunately for Logan, Cyclops survives the fall. Stranded at the bottom of the mountain, his bones broken, Scott survives for a month by snacking on plants and insects that happen to get too close. Eventually, Magneto's henchmen rescue Cyclops and nurse him back to health — and when Scott finally returns to the North Pole, let's just say that he's none too happy with his so-called "friend."

It's not often that a major comics character gets killed off, but that's exactly what happened to Alpha Flight favorite Northstar in early 2005. The stalwart Canadian mutant may not have been one of Marvel's most famous characters, but he's an important one in the history of comics, as the first of many Marvel superheroes who are openly LGBTQ. So it was notable when Wolverine murdered him in cold blood in "Wolverine" Vol.3 #25.

Though certainly not the first time that Wolverine killed an X-Man, it's another instance of him being under the influence of someone or something else. In this case, Logan is brainwashed by a new, dangerous alliance between the devious Japanese sect called The Hand, and Hydra, the age-old enemies of freedom and democracy. Logan's sent in by his new masters to kill old friend and hero Kitty Pryde — aka Shadowcat — but the assault doesn't go as planned. 

Taking a vicious slice at his target with his razor sharp adamantium claws, Wolverine goes for the kill only to have Kitty turn intangible. His claws pass straight through her and impale Northstar, who is directly behind her. Partly Kitty's fault for not clearing her backstop before phasing, Northstar's death is simply Wolverine doing what he does best — and what he does best isn't very nice, after all.

Fans have seen countless versions of Wolverine turning bad, and in one alternate reality (in 1998's "What If...?" #111), Wolverine became one of Apocalypse's Four Horsemen. In this instance he was the Horseman of War, who goes on a killing spree nearly unmatched in his history. He goes so far, in fact, that he becomes the target of his former teammates in the X-Men — along with the likes of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four — who hunt him down to stop his brutal reign of terror. 

That lone book isn't the last time we'd see Logan as a Horseman of Apocalypse, however. Back over in the main Earth-616 timeline, Wolverine also came under Apocalypse's spell. In "Wolverine" #145, Logan is abducted by the ancient mutant and given back his adamantium — after having had it ripped out of his body by Magneto. But that restoration comes at a price: After killing his brother and rival Sabretooth in a brutal grudge match at the behest of Apocalypse, Wolverine is granted the title of Horseman of Death, as shown 1999's "Astonishing X-Men" #3.

Wolverine stays in the role for a while, too, though he uses a sword instead of claws and wears a hood to hide his identity, making this more than a momentary misdeed. As the Horseman of Death, Wolverine comes to blows with his old team, who thankfully help free him from Apocalypse's control.

Over the years, Wolverine has crossed paths with just about every villain and hero you can imagine, even those who aren't even part of the Marvel Universe. Just as the '90s were getting underway, he also stood toe-to-toe with a hero from an entirely different realm — Conan the Barbarian. We saw it happen in "What If..." #16 in 1990, which was subtitled "What If... Wolverine Battled Conan the Barbarian?"

As the story begins, Wolverine is cast out of the Marvel Universe following a battle with the Shi'ar. He finds himself in Hyboria, the fantastical realm that Robert E. Howard's muscle-bound swordsman calls home. When Logan lands there, he first comes into conflict with Red Sonja, who tells him that because he bested her in battle she must consent to be his lover (cringe). But the real sin is when Wolvie attacks the King of Kalidor, Conan, after Sonja is injured.

Mystified by the X-Man's healing factor, Conan decides that he must be some kind of supernatural demon. The two show no mercy for each other, and Wolverine is forced to go full berserker, slicing off Conan's sword-wielding hand. Like his crime against Batman, slicing off the hand of the heroic Conan the Barbarian is a betrayal we can't forgive. 

On the surface, this next incident from Wolverine's '80s adventures might not seem like such a terrible thing — it might even come across as a little funny, in fact. It's 1984, and the X-Men — along with most of the Marvel Universe — are still licking their wounds from the epic crossover event "Secret Wars," which featured a number of notable deaths and universe-shaking upheavals. Colossus had fallen in love with another woman — who ended up dying – while in outer space, leaving his girlfriend Kitty Pryde heartbroken. The overly protective Wolverine isn't happy (he always had something of a big brother-little sister relationship with Kitty) and he wants to get Colossus back.

Instead of doing it himself, however, Wolverine goads Cain Marko — aka the Juggernaut — into a barroom brawl with Colossus. Even though Marko is without his Juggernaut armor, he's more than a match for the steely-skinned mutant. After a brutal bout of fisticuffs, not only do the two do plenty of damage to each other, but they topple an entire building, sending multiple floors crashing into rubble. Though the issue shows the crowds fleeing the scene before the building is destroyed, Wolverine's recklessness still puts countless lives in danger as bystanders are forced to escape by the skin of their teeth. If he wasn't so lucky, things could have ended much worse.

Of all of Marvel's most popular superheroes, Wolverine has perhaps the most tragic backstory. But for more than 25 years his origin went untold, with much of his mystique coming from his mysterious past and even his true identity totally unknown. Then in 2001, the team of Bill Jemas, Paul Jenkins, and Joe Quesada crafted "Origin," a miniseries that revealed for the first time Wolverine's early days. It also provided one of the most terrible acts of violence that he ever committed — an act so heinous that it shaped the very man he was to become.

Set in the late 1800s, "Origin" sees a young boy named James Howlett growing up on a plantation under the thumb of his violent grandfather and his animalistic half-brother known as Dog. Following a violent confrontation between John and the family groundskeeper, Thomas Logan — later revealed to be James' biological father — the future Wolverine goes on the run with his ex-girlfriend Rose. But after a showdown with Dog, Rose trips and accidentally falls into James' bone claws, which kill her.

If we're going to include the time that Wolverine was chosen by Apocalypse to be the Horseman of Death as one of his most terrible deeds, we'd be remiss not to include another instance when he served one of the X-Men's greatest adversaries. It all went down in the 2023 event series, "Sins of Sinister," which finds the entire Marvel Universe turned into a dark, dystopian nightmare, and where the titular Mr. Sinister has taken control of the X-Men as part of a plan to gain power over the island haven called Krakoa.

With X-Men like Cyclops, Emma Frost, Exodus, and Hope Summers doing his bidding, Sinister takes over, but it's Wolverine who is his greatest weapon. Wolverine is sent on a hunt-and-kill mission by the time-twisted genetic tyrant as part of his complex scheme. His victim, in fact, is Cypher, a former member of the New Mutants who'd been serving on the Quiet Council of Krakoa. To prevent Cypher from thwarting Sinister's plan, Wolverine stabs him through the chest in one of the most shocking moments of the series.