People are fascinated by evil because it's mysterious and it doesn't seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.
“Drill instructors worked seven days a week, fifteen to seventeen hours a day in many cases, with no time off in between platoons.”
“Environmental disaster is the gravest threat to China's continued development. That's according to me, but it is not some wacko view.”