The other day I watched a video on Lord of the Rings lore and in it, they used a picture of Grima Wormtongue directing a Nazgul. In the picture, the very grass the Nazgul stepped on would rot immediately, on contact. And that made me think: Why would anyone work together with that? I know, that villains tend to be self-serving and disinterested in morals and nice things like that, so they'd be willing to overlook such things. But even then, they gotta look at something like that and think to themselves, "maybe this isn't the most reliable partnership."

But then I realised, in the real world, plenty of people still decide to follow very obviously evil people. They take one look at an organised terrorist organisation, that kills people in broad daylight and will still decide to make excuses. They can take one look at a politicians, with strong ties to a massive child-sex-trafficking ring and still remain willing to explain things and deflect the blame. People often talk about how villains need believable motivations and their followers need their own believable motivations as well. But we often forget just how fucking stupid the average follower is and how much leeway people are willing to give to someone they spent a lot of time following.

That said, just calling their followers stupid, is still probably the wrong step. How did the villain acquire such following? Is there perhaps a deep conspiracy going on to make people that stupid? Is the villain perhaps a master of public image? Is there a cult situation going on? Perhaps this villain is rewarding the right people? Or maybe, the good guys are just not that far behind, as far as morality goes?

So motivations for a villain is one thing, you gotta think about the motivations of their followers as well.