Right in his catchphrase, Wolverine explains to us all that, while he is the best there is at what he does, what he does best is not very nice. So it should not come as much of a surprise to note that Wolverine has done a whole lot of not-so-nice things over the years. However, at the same time, Wolverine tends to have such a strict code of honor that it is still surprising to see him do things that are not particularly honorable. Of course, one of the major problems is that in the world of the X-Men, if you are a member of the team and have not been brainwashed to fight against your teammates, then you probably have not been a member of the X-Men very long. It is almost as much of a rite of passage as people saying, "Welcome to the X-Men, hope you survive the experience!" when you join the team! Wolverine is no exception, so a number of the worst things that he has done have been while he was brainwashed. They still count!
What does not count, though, is alternate reality behavior. As there is no set standard for behavior in different timelines, it really is not saying that much when you learn that Wolverine is a villain in some What If..? comic book. That's the whole point of alternate timelines, so that you can mess around with famous characters without having to worry about their normal characterizations. That is why we're not counting Ultimate Wolverine, either. Here, then, are the 20 worst things that the regular Wolverine has done in the comics over the years.
20 ENDED NORTHSTAR
One of the most notable instances of Wolverine being brainwashed came when Hydra teamed up with The Hand to kill Wolverine and resurrect him as a loyal solider of the Hand. He was truly evil, through and through, and attacked the X-Men to show off how far he had fallen.
He was meant to kill his old protege, Kitty Pryde, but at the last moment, she phased out of the way of his attack and he instead fatally stabbed the super-fast Northstar. Wolverine was then captured by Daredevil and S.H.I.E.L.D. de-programmed Wolverine from his Hand brainwashing. The Hand resurrected Northstar, as well. After initially being evil, also, he, too, was de-programmed later on.
19 BECAME DEATH
For a while there, Wolverine no longer had his adamantium-bonded skeleton, and was slowly turning feral as the adamantium had prevented Wolverine from developing a secondary mutation. Apocalypse, though, stepped in and used adamantium that he had taken from Wolverine's rival, Sabretooth, to put the adamantium back into Wolverine's body.
At the same time, Apocalypse brainwashed Wolverine into becoming his new Horseman known as Death. Wolverine fought his fellow X-Men and even murdered a Skrull pretending to be the real Wolverine before his friends broke him free of his Apocalypse programming. Apocalypse probably has to work on his programming, as everyone he brainwashes seems to eventually free themselves.
18 ALMOST STABBED STORM
One of Mister Sinister's most frightening Marauders was Malice, a mutant who exists just as a psionic being that can then possess people and take over their bodies and use them for evil. Malice's most prominent host was the former X-Men member, Polaris, but before that point, she just leaped from person to person. In Uncanny X-Men #214, she possessed Storm but Storm's force of will was strong enough to eject Malice from her body.
Wolverine, though, sensed Malice still being in Storm's body, so he went to stab Malice/Storm, but his senses led him astray and thus almost stabbed one of his closest friends for no reason!
17 KNOCKED OUT STORM
The next issue, Wolverine was still trying to make things up to Storm to try to prove that he could be trusted again, even though she insisted to him that she had not lost faith in him. She brought him on a mission to Sara Grey's house, which had been attacked. When they arrived there, though, Wolverine smelled Jean Grey's scent (Jean had visited her sister's house during the attack).
Wolverine thought Jean was still dead, so when he picked up her scent, he just snapped and bounded off after her, accidentally knocking Storm unconscious in the process. She was then captured by a group of mutant-hunters, who followed her for sport. Not a good way to prove you should be trusted, Wolverine!
16 WAS WAY TOO STALKER-Y WITH JEAN
One of the biggest retcons in the X-Men comics during the 1980s was the revelation that Jean Grey actually was attracted to Wolverine. That was a big change from the original comics, where Jean barely seemed to think anything of Wolverine one way or the other, while Wolverine was seriously obsessed with her.
His behavior towards Jean was actually quite disturbing, as he acted like a real stalker. He did the same exact thing to Heather Hudson, wife of his good friend, James Hudson, when the Hudsons rescued him after he escaped from the Weapon X project. He began to obsess over Heather just like he did with Jean. It was very uncool behavior.
15 STRANGE KISS
One of the most notable examples of Wolverine being inappropriate with Jean occurred when the X-Men finally met up with X-Factor during the "Inferno" storyline. Now, the X-Men were believed to be dead after a battle in Dallas and Jean Grey obviously was supposed to be dead from the "Dark Phoenix Saga." So this was the first time that the teams learned that the others were alive.
Wolverine celebrated Jean being alive by grabbing her and forcing a big kiss on her, as if that was a normal thing to do and not a really creepy way to celebrate discovering that someone you had a thing for was alive. A hug would have sufficed, Wolverine!
14 DIDN'T LISTEN TO MYSTIQUE
Wolverine's relationship with Mystique is a strange one, as they've known each other for roughly 100 years. She's left him for dead, he's left her for dead, they've gone back and forth a number of times. However, after she was part of a plot that literally sent Wolverine to hell, he was intent on killing her when he escaped.
The issue is that she had information that would have saved him a lot of anguish. A group called the Red Right Hand had collected Wolverine's various illegitimate kids over the years and trained them as killers just to watch Wolverine kill his own kids. Wolverine didn't want to listen and killed Mystique instead, opening himself up to some terrible heartache.
13 STRANGE RULES FOR RACHEL SUMMERS
In Uncanny X-Men #207, Rachel Summers had her life turned upside down by the ancient mutant energy vampire known as Selene. Selene murdered a man who had helped Rachel out and she now wanted to kill Selene. Wolverine showed up to stop her.
Wolverine gave her this bizarrely hypocritical speech about how heroes don't do stuff like this. Rachel tells Wolverine that the only way he can stop her is to kill her, so he stabs her in the chest. She barely lives, but wow, what kind of backwards lesson was he trying to teach there? "You can't kill a killer, but I can kill you to keep you from killing?" Wha?!
12 HOW DOES HE LECTURE ABOUT WHAT 'HEROES' DO?
What makes Wolverine's attitude towards Rachel even worse is when you realize how many truly twisted things Wolverine had done over the years and still sees himself as a hero. For instance, the villainous Matsu'o Tsurayaba tried to kill Mariko Yoshida to take over her gang. He poisoned her and Wolverine had to kill her to save her from a painful death.
Wolverine then decided not to kill him, but to instead chop off one part of his body every year on the anniversary of Mariko's death, starting with his hand and then his nose. Matsu'o eventually convinces Psylocke to kill him to save him from the agony of Wolverine's yearly visits.
11 MIGHT HAVE BEEN BEHIND WEAPON X
For years, Wolverine wondered who was behind the Weapon X project that gave him his adamantium. He eventually discovered that Weapon X was actually part of a Weapon Plus Project, so it was only the 10th experiment in the project's history, with Captain America's Super Soldier Serum being Weapon I.
After fighting against an ancient mutant known as Romulus, Wolverine discovered that it was actually Wolverine himself who was in charge of the Weapon X project, working with Romulus. This has mostly been ignored since, but if true, that would be a truly awful side of Wolverine's history, as many soldiers died during that project.
10 CREATED A DAREDEVIL VILLAIN
Besides possibly being behind Weapon X, Wolverine also worked in a general capacity for the Weapon Plus program and some of the things that he did for them during that time period were incredibly disturbing. For instance, one of the projects involved working on soldiers to turn them into enhanced killers.
Logan kidnapped Frank Simpson as a boy and began his programming. Later, when Frank was in Vietnam, Logan captured him while pretending to be a Russian operative and tortured him until Frank's mind snapped and became the killer known as Nuke. Nuke later fought Daredevil a few times while working as part of a secret U.S. military strike force.
9 KILLED HANK PYM
During Age of Ultron, the villainous robot traveled from the future into the near-past and conquered the planet with a series of powerful drones under his command. Since he was safe in the future, he did not even have to worry about a counter-attack. The remaining superheroes gathered together at a secret base formed by Nick Fury and used a time machine to travel to the future.
Wolverine, though, then used the time machine to secretly go back in time and kill Hank Pym before he invented Ultron. He could have reasoned with him, but this is Wolverine, so when it doubt, stab someone.
8 BROKE TIME
Naturally, when Wolverine returned to the present, he discovered that there were some repercussions to murdering a famous person like Hank Pym. The world was actually worse off than it had been under Ultron's rule! So Wolverine went back in time once more, this time to stop his earlier self from killing Hank. This time around, he was willing to give Hank a chance to prove himself. Luckily, it worked out and Hank put a backdoor into Ultron that he then forced himself to forget until the time came to use it.
The problem, though, was that Wolverine constantly traveling through time began to break the Multiverse, which nearly led to the destruction of all reality. Whoops.
7 TRIED TO KILL HOPE SUMMERS
In Avengers vs. X-Men, the Phoenix Force was seen returning to Earth. Everyone believed that it was headed for Hope Summers, the first mutant to be born after Scarlet Witch used her reality-altering powers to turn the vast majority of mutants on Earth into humans. The Avengers were afraid that Hope would turn into Dark Phoenix. The X-Men were hoping she would return the altered-mutants to being mutants again.
Wolverine, on his own, decided to kill Hope so as to avoid the problem in the first place. In the end, the Phoenix Force briefly turned Cyclops into a Dark Phoenix, but Hope then took over the force and did restore the mutants, with help from the Scarlet Witch.
6 WANTED TO KILL CYCLOPS
While he was Dark Phoenix, Cyclops killed Professor X, who was trying to bring Cyclops back from the Phoenix Force. Soon after that tragedy, Cyclops escaped custody and formed his own rogue team of X-Men. Beast decided to help break time a little more himself by bringing the original five X-Men from the past so that Cyclops could talk some sense into his older self.
Wolverine, naturally, decided that it made sense to just kill the younger Cyclops, so that he could never grow up to become Dark Phoenix and kill Xavier. That really does seem to be Wolverine's solution to everything, doesn't it? When in doubt, stab a teenager.
5 ALMOST STABBED HIS BEST FRIEND
One of the key points of Wolverine early on in his comic book career was the fact that he had to always deal with controlling his animal instincts. As he became more popular, those berserker rages began to be a bit understated. Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter, wanted them played up again.
Therefore, in Uncanny X-Men #143, John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Terry Austin had Wolverine instinctively lash out at Nightcrawler when he kissed Wolverine's girlfriend under the mistletoe. Only Nightcrawler's ability to teleport away kept him from getting stabbed. Byrne once joked that the perfect Wolverine scene would be someone walking into the X-Mansion's kitchen one morning and seeing Kitty Pryde stabbed after she asked Wolverine to pass the cereal.
4 STOLE THE BATMOBILE
In 1996, Marvel and DC had their biggest inter-company crossover yet when they had DC vs. Marvel, a miniseries where different Marvel and DC characters switched universes and the heroes were then pitted against each . Wolverine, Gambit and Storm were each sent to the DC Universe. Gambit found himself fighting Nightwing. He knocked out the former sidekick to Batman.
Then, Wolverine and Gambit decided to just steal the Batmobile! Amusingly enough, when the Marvel and DC Universes were then briefly merged together to form the Amalgam Universe, Wolverine was merged with Batman to form Dark Claw! So it was sort of like he was just getting an early ride in his own vehicle.
3 SOMETHING WEIRD ABOUT SQUIRREL GIRL
When it comes to Wolverine and Squirrel Girl, it is important not to jump to conclusions about the nature of their relationship. However, after Luke Cage and Jessica Jones hired the young college student to be their nanny, she and Wolverine clearly established that they had some sort of shared history. She even knew his real name!
Later, when Wolverine was in hell and the X-Men went into his mind, they entered a room where his fantasies lived and Squirrel Girl was in there, which certainly suggested that the ancient mutant and the college student had a romantic relationship in the past, which is pretty disturbing.
2 WEIRDLY HOMOPHOBIC
Speaking of disturbing, Wolverine and the Punisher crossed paths with each other during Garth Ennis' first attempt at a Punisher ongoing series, when Ennis was still playing the character mostly for laughs. So Punisher and Wolverine "teamed up," but it mostly included Punisher brutalizing Wolverine, even rolling over him with a steamroller!
Wolverine writer Frank Tieri got "revenge" by having a follow-up team-up where Wolverine embarrassed Punisher, including having the issue end with Wolverine discovering Punisher's collection of bodybuilding magazines, leading to Wolverine essentially doing the ol, "Ha! You're not the same as me!" routine of an unenlightened nine-year-old. Not the best comeback to Ennis' story.
1 SHILLED FOR GERBER PRODUCTS
In the early 1990s, Marvel became a publicly traded company on the Stock Exchange and therefore, had to release annual documents to its shareholders. Marvel being Marvel, of course, started to do these annual reports in the form of comic book stories.
Therefore, we had to see the unsightly image of Wolverine explaining to the shareholders why it is so great that Marvel had a new deal with Gerber baby food to release a series of dolls. It is one thing for Wolverine to try to solve all of his problems with stabbing teenagers, now he has to sell out, too!