I've got two main villains in my campaign, and they oppose each other. One is super obviously evil, leans completely into it. The other is generally friendly on the face, but with evil intentions.

I've had a bit of a twist here, in that the party learnt that the "friendly" villain was evil quite early. But the villain was not aware that they knew about her intentions. So the party have been "working" with them and playing them from the start! They've not actually met the villain themselves, but worked as part of their organisations and with their underlings. All super friendly from the top down. Going so far as to save the villains daughter, which from the villains perspective makes them great hirelings, but from the players perspective they have been able to bring the daughter over to their own side.

The obviously evil villain on the other hand (a seemingly defenceless old man with a deformed face, black robe and in a wheel chair, all alone in a dark street in the middle of the night that no one in the city would dare walk down), intimidated the fuck out of them. Just straight up told them to go and kill an innocent man, and the party actually went so far as capturing the victim and debating whether to go through with it, before they eventually decided to spin it as saving him. Villains become a lich now, and just walked up to them on the road, power word killed one of them, and walked off. Just to show power.