Bingo! I expect a false antichrist before the real one. Some kind of baddie for all the heretics to point at while they worship the real one. Perhaps it will be the last Orthodox emperor, hated by all the heretics. Perhaps it will be some obviously over the top Disney villain mass murderer. Who knows, perhaps there will be several and different groups will disagree on which one was antichrist while agreeing that the real antichrist (who might kill him) is his opponent. The old left-right false dichotomy which works so well in electoral politics.
St. Peter said there would be multiple antichrists and all sorts of false prophets before the antichrist comes. I know many recent teachers and such (I only know one of the New Calendarist variety who claimed this specifically) stated the antichrist will appear to "liberate" the world from secularism, Western decadence, degeneracy, etc., a tactic previous antichrist figures like Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin all used was setting up an enemy to look worse than them and I doubt the enemy of mankind wouldn't do the same. So there might be the "cartoonishly evil" person or entity like you said, for the antichrist to abolish and then be hailed a "liberator and hero" and later as "the Christ"
post scriptum: I add this just as spitballing my own opinion, but I honestly believe the WEF is one such entity meant to look as "cartoonishly evil" as possible to distract people from other cabals of antichristian, globalist cadres who are actually taking over the world. Though one more comment I'll add is that you know things are bad when we look at the levels of incompetence in say, the US government, and we hope there's some sort of grand conspiracy taking over the world, as otherwise, they really are just that incompetent. Heinlein's law!
