The Fate of the Furious might be one of the worst Fast & Furious movies according to MetaCritic, but it was the first film in the series to feature a genuinely sadistic villain. Cipher is an outright murderer, a master manipulator, and completely selfish, but she isn’t the only one.
RELATED: The 10 Craziest Action Sequences From The Fast & Furious Franchise, Ranked
It’s no coincidence that Cipher from Fate of the Furious and Cypher from The Matrix share the same name, as the word is the meaning for a message written in code. Considering that they’re both hackers in their respective movies, they have a lot of similarities. Though Cypher won’t be returning in Matrix 4, he’s the series’ most sadistic villain, and the biggest difference between them might just be the way their names are spelled.
Cypher: Creepy
![Joe Pantoliano as Cypher in The Matrix 1999.](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Joe-Pantoliano-as-Cypher-in-The-Matrix-1999.jpg)
Though The Matrix would look a lot different if it was recast today, Joe Pantoliano was perfectly cast as Cypher, as he brings his typical antagonistic creepiness to the role. Pantoliano has replicated what he did in The Matrix in so many movies, whether it’s Memento or Daredevil, but the creepiness in The Matrix can never be outdone. The moment he’s whispering in Trinity’s ear about how he thought they’d end up together while sitting on top of her is especially disgusting, as there’s nothing she can do about it because she’s plugged into The Matrix.
Cipher: Hacking Genius
The Matrix’s Cypher might be good at coding, but it’s nothing compared to what Fast’s Cipher can do behind a computer. Cipher’s weapon in Fate of the Furious isn’t any kind of gun or blunt instrument, it’s a desktop computer.
Her evil lair is filled with dozens of touch screen monitors that give her the ability to do just about anything. She has been able to hack into vehicles and literally have them drive themselves out of a multi-story car park in the middle of New York, and even have missiles shoot out of submarines.
Cypher: Sinister
In many ways, Cypher is a much better theatrical villain than Cipher, but that’s also his downfall and the reason he ends up getting killed. Falling into the typical trope of explaining his grand scheme before killing Trinity and Neo, he takes too long and gets shot by Tank.
RELATED: Fast & Furious: 5 Reasons Why The Franchise Should Keep Going (& 5 Why It’s Time To Stop)
However, up to that point, Cypher was picking off all of Trinity’s friends one at a time right in front of her. They all knew it was coming and there was nothing any of them could do. Though Cypher was doing this so he could escape the real world, he went about it in such an evil way.
Cipher: Tries To Tear The Family Apart
As everyone knows at this point, the Fast & Furious series is about one thing; family. Dom and his friends are one of the tightest clans in movie history, but when Cipher gets her claws on Dom, it leads to a whole breakdown in the family dynamic. Cipher kisses Dom in front of Letty and then goes on to make the gang believe Don is completely evil and puts them in extreme danger.
Cypher: Manipulative
Cypher is smart, and as soon as he meets Neo he starts planting seeds in his head and tells him that Morpheus might not be as great as he seems. Cypher almost gets in Neo’s head by relating to him on a personal level and saying he wished he had taken the blue pill when he was first asked. Though the audience can clearly tell Cypher is going to turn on the crew, Neo is none the wiser. Even when speaking with Trinity, he tries to make her feel bad for falling for Neo.
Cipher: Even More Manipulative
When it came to the marketing and the trailers leading up to the release of Fate, the internet was shocked at Dom’s turn to the dark side. Many fans speculated that it was mind control considering how ridiculous the series has gotten and how there are no limits to where the next movies can go. But that isn’t exactly what happened. It turned out that Cipher was black-mailing Dom all along, making her much more overtly manipulative than Cypher.
Cypher: Actively Chooses To Go Behind His Friends’ Backs
Cypher had spent a long time with the crew in the Nebuchadnezzar, and none of them had ever wronged him, including Trinity refusing his advances.
RELATED: Fast & Furious: 10 Questions About Dominic Toretto, Answered
However, even if audiences can agree with Cypher’s personal beliefs, he made a deal with Agent Smith and turned his back on his friends. Cypher would go on to try to kill his former friends, and even succeeded in with some of them.
Cipher: Murders Elena
The villains in the series are why The Fast and the Furious are better as a series, there wasn’t much in the way of sinister villains in the later movies. The worst thing any villain had done in the series was when Carter Verone put a rat on a guy’s chest in 2 Fast 2 Furious. However, that all changed with Fate, as Cipher is completely ruthless and cold-blooded. Not only did she murder Elena in front of Dom, but she murdered Elena in front of her own child.
Cypher: Kills Dozer In Cold Blood
Dozer and Tank, the pilots of Nebuchadnezzar, were attacked by Cypher during his betrayal. Though it should not have been, Cypher made it personal. The villain had such a disdain for Morpheus for pulling him out of The Matrix that he took it out on everyone else. Essentially, Tank and Dozer were in the same boat as him, but Cypher still shot them with the lightning rifle. Of course, Tank ended up surviving and getting revenge on Cypher.
Cipher: Cypher Actually Makes A Good Point
It isn’t hard to understand where Cypher is coming from, and he’s arguably one of the villains that is actually a hero. If The Matrix was real and any normal human being was put in Cypher’s situation, most people would much rather live in blissful ignorance in The Matrix, just like him.
Sitting in a dingy hovercraft, eating the same old slop day after day, and being at war against an alien race is bleak enough, but being pulled from a life of socializing and eating steak to do those things is even worse. Cypher just wants a normal life, but Cipher, on the other hand, wants total world domination and is willing to start a nuclear war to get what she wants.
NEXT: Fast & Furious: 10 Characters That Deserve Their Own Spin-Off Movie