General Thade

General Thade was the ambitious and brutal leader (along with his gorilla friend Attar) of the Ape armies, who passionately hated all things human and wanted them exterminated. His father, who had instilled this hatred in him, knew that humans were once in charge, and Thade vowed to wipe out any resistance to ape rule. He schemed to be given absolute power by the Ape Senate. General Thade pursued Ari romantically but seemed to never progress. Thade branded Ari with the mark of human slaves after she was found gathering with human rebels in the forbidden area of Calima. Thade ruled with cruelty and lived by a Machiavellian outlook on life. Any means justified the ends to Thade. When news of a crashed spacecraft reached him he personally killed those who told him, to ensure the information remained a secret. While willing to get a pet human child for his niece, Thade himself believed the world would be a better place if all humans were killed. When the ape army was halted by the appearance of a spacepod piloted by a chimp, Thade alone rejected the idea of the second coming of the ape god Semos. He chased the chimp and was eventually locked into the control room of the deserted space station.

He was shown again in the closing scene, where Leo had returned to Earth in his own time only to find technologically-advanced apes in charge and a large statue of Thade in place of Abraham Lincoln on the Lincoln Memorial.