4) Lionel Luthor (Smallville)
One of the joys of Smallville was its portrayal of a very different Lex Luthor to the greatest criminal mind of our time that we all know and love to hate. As brilliantly played by Michael Rosenbaum, Lex began the show as Clark’s best friend. But in his place, the show needed another big bad. The answer was Lionel Luthor, Lex’s manipulative father and a completely original creation.
In the sense of providing an explanation for how Lex would turn out, Lionel is a neat narrative device. Just as Clark gets his sense of right and wrong from the Kents, Lex inherits his father’s amorality and lust for power and wealth. More than that, though, Lionel is a terrific character on his own.
Played with charm and a streak of steel by John Glover, Lionel goes through many changes across the show, but his core nature as a callous man and a terrible father remains the same. Once Rosenbaum and Glover bowed out of the regular cast after season 7, Smallville lost a large part of its appeal.
Still, at least Lionel’s influence on the Lex Luthor legend is still being felt. In Batman V Superman, we got echoes of Lionel when Jesse Eisenberg’s Luthor hints that his father was an emotionally and physically abusive man.