Evil Brit

"We play villains in your movies. Star Wars? The Death Star? Full of British people."
—Eddie Izzard

Any character with a British accent, particularly an upper class English one (which tends to be the only type you hear in American media) is likely to turn out to be a villain.

This includes all evil characters with British accents (where the rest of the cast has accents), whether or not they are actually stated to be British. Quite a few of these are not actual Brits, but have anomalous quasi-British (usually vaguely upper-class and English, as noted above) accents in settings where almost everyone else has some sort of American accent and no one is necessarily supposed to be from either country, just to mark that character as villainous. As you might expect, this version appears to be associated with films and shows in which the use of English is (at least weakly implied to be) a Translation Convention for whatever the characters are "really" saying, although it's not exclusive to them. See The Queen's Latin and Aliens of London.

Villains of this type come in two flavours. The first is usually wealthy and snobbish, and probably quite well educated. The second is the hooligan with the Cockney (or similar) accent.

This is fairly recent since during Hollywood's Golden Age it was acceptable for the good guys to speak with an upper-class English accent as well.

Probably related to The Mean Brit, although it appeared well before The Mean Brit trend began. The Romans, who generally are the baddies in most historical films, are almost always played by English actors. The British also are often the imperial bad guys in Hong Kong kung-fu flicks. World War II films using the Translation Convention usually have Those Wacky Nazis played by Brits as well. Perhaps surprisingly, they are quite rare in Irish films.

Given the way in which American fans often respond to British accents, fandoms sometimes turn this sort of character into Draco in Leather Pants.

Contrast British Stuffiness, which may be applied to a nominally heroic character who must nevertheless Die for Our Ship.

Doesn't really apply in British works, of course. In those, this role is often given to the French, Germans or (rarely, especially nowadays) Americans.

See also I Am Very British.

Examples of Evil Brit include:

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Anime and Manga

  • Dio Brando from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
    • Subverted. In part 1, it's set in Britain, so everyone is British, even the protagonist and supporting cast.
    • Guess that's why he has the voice of Tim Curry in The Abridged Series.
  • R.O.D. The TV. Britain basically IS the villain.
  • The world of Code Geass is dominated by Britannia, an imperialistic superpower that goes around conquering nation after nation with little or no internal dissent, thus making it entirely possible that most Brits are either evil, racist or just uncaring. Maybe that's what happens when you have a Britain that somehow repelled Rome and centuries later lost the Napoleonic wars, moving its central government to the American colonies. Furthermore, nearly all the minor Britannian nobles in the show have outdated hairstyles dating back 100 years, except for the Emperor himself whose fashion is even older just to make sure we know he's even more evil.
    • A Britannia that has defeated Rome (and become them) would be quite different to one that threw Rome out and reverted to a clan / local King system.
      • Of course, at the same time, it wouldn't be Britannia without major Roman influence.
    • Though it seems that the Britannian nobility is a tad more cosmopolitan than their real-world counterpart was—Baroness Viletta Nu for example has very dusky skin.
    • Britannia is basically a cross between the darker aspects of the British Empire and America. Despite what some people may say, it isn't actually either one of them, because in this Alternate History America never formed in the first place because the American Revolution failed. On top fo that, the British nobility were kicked out of Great Britain by the Scots after they had fled from a conquering Napoleon and were forced to go to the American colonies as a last safe refuge. There, they managed to thrive, resulting in the Social Darwinist Empire we all love to hate/love.
  • Bakura in the dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!!, although his British accent sounds more pronounced when he's his mild-mannered self rather than his Super-Powered Evil Side. The accent was how the dubbers tried to match his use of polite Japanese Honorifics in the original.
    • Florence on the other hand plays this straight.
      • Not quite, he himself has stated that he's actually NOT british, he's just gay.
      • And, from the same series, resident evil Large Ham Marik Ishtar plays it straight by sounding more British than Florence.
  • In Robotech, the Zentraedi Commander Khyron Kravshera sports a pseudo-British accent. The novels based on the series even note that he sounds just like James Mason. He really does. Interestingly enough, Khyron was voiced by actor Greg Snegoff who also was the voice of Scott Bernard, a character that sounds nothing like Khyron. Even more interestingly, the Southern Cross (Robotech Masters) segment had a minor character named Alan Fredericks who was also voiced by Snegoff in a Khyron-like voice. However, Fredericks was more erudite and reserved than Khyron. Appropriate since Fredericks was basically a good guy, even if he was a member of the GMP.
  • In the FUNimation dub of Dragonball Z, King Cold, Frieza's father, was voiced with a british accent, as was Perfect Cell/Super Perfect Cell. Strangely, in the dubbed versions of Dragon Ball, despite General Blue's not-so-subtle hints at being of German origin, Blue was given a British accent.
  • The Pokémon English dub went out of its way to show us what a bastard Ash's Charmander's original owner was by giving him a god awful Dick Van Dyke-esque cockney accent.
  • L in Death Note is stated by Word of God to have some evil in him, and is British as a character.

Films -- Animated

  • The Egyptians in The Prince of Egypt have British accents (and are played by some very fine English actors), while the Hebrews are "Americans." Moses also has an American accent despite having grown up in the Egyptian royal family.
  • Many Disney Animated Canon villains have vaguely British accents; some manage to have them while being Arabian or French. Or carnivorous cats.
    • The Lion King example is particularly notable in that Jeremy Irons' Scar is directly related to the rest of the (American-voiced) cast.
    • In Pinocchio The Coachman has a Cockney accent despite the story taking place in Tuscany, Italy.
  • Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda. Being voiced by Ian McShane just makes him more Badass.
  • In Secret of NIMH 2, when Martin becomes evil, he inexplicably switches to a British accent (voiced by Eric Idle, no less), only for it to change back to his American accent (and voice) when he becomes good again.
  • The Big Bad of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Cat R. Waul, is one of these. Voiced by John Cleese at that.
  • Every. Single. Barbie. Film.
  • In Cars 2, the mastermind behind the lemons' plot is Sir Miles Axlerod, who's voiced by Eddie Izzard no less.
  • John Hurt as The Horned King in Disney's film adaptation of The Black Cauldron


Films -- Live-Action

  • Victor Maitland from Beverly Hills Cop.
  • Evil Kryptonian General Zod and his Femme Fatale hench-woman Ursa were portrayed by Brits Terrance Stamp and Sarah Douglas in Superman II.
  • Tom Lincoln from The Island, who turns out to be an evil Scot.
  • Tiara Gold from High School Musical 3.
  • Ian in the first National Treasure movie.
  • Tim Roth plays Emil Blonsky (in the comics, a Russian) in The Incredible Hulk. Loosely hand waved as saying the character was brought up in England.
  • Another example from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Tom Hiddleston as Loki in Thor.
    • It should be noted that almost all Asgardians have Brittish accents in the film, up to and including Thor himself
  • Charles Dance has played an Evil Brit in at least two movies: The Golden Child (devil worshipper) and Last Action Hero (assassin).
  • The "hooligan" sounding tough guy variety of Evil Brit is exemplified by Vinnie Jones in the American film The Condemned. This is as opposed to his roles in Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, where most of the cast have some form of UK accent.
  • Tavington from The Patriot (who, in the person of Jason Isaacs, supplies the page picture), a travesty of the Real Life Banastre Tarleton. Sure, it's a movie about the American Revolution, but did they really have to make him so utterly cruel and despicable?
    • The trope showed up in other Mel Gibson films: in 1981's Gallipoli, the British soldiers are shown drinking tea on the beach while the Australians die in the battle, and Braveheart portrays the heroic struggle of the Scots against the evil English. All have been roundly criticised by historians for their wild inaccuracies, often involving playing up (or outright fabricating) British atrocities and general nastiness. In a particularly notorious example, The Patriot shows British soldiers burning a group of townsfolk alive in a church, an act actually committed centuries later by the Waffen-SS in France.
  • Basically, this is the driving force between Alan Rickman and Jason Isaacs' careers.
    • And Jeremy Irons'.
    • And, going back a bit, George Sanders.
    • If it was too late to be the Trope Codifier, Alan Rickman's villain in Die Hard certainly made the Evil Brit villain an almost obligatory character for a while.
      • Actually Hans and his brother Simon from Die Hard were German, but you certainly wouldn't guess that from their accents.
        • The topic of British villains in movies and Rickman in particular was discussed on Stephen Fry's panel show QI, while on Top Gear, Scottish actor Brian Cox suggested to Jeremy Clarkson that Brits were cast as the baddies in Hollywood movies because Americans 'fundamentally mistrust intelligence'.
  • Most of Sean Bean's acting career revolves around him playing Evil Brits. For example, Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye.
    • Then again, everyone was either British, Russian or American in this film. Including the protagonist. Trevelian was the child of Lienz Cossacks, making him probably Brit-raised-Austrian.
  • Star Wars, although that was more incidental, since union rules for British films at the time required a minimum number of speaking parts for British actors, so a lot were cast as Imperial officers. Both he Imperials and Rebels were played by mostly British actors but all the Rebels' voices were later dubbed by American actors. A few sources claim that the upper-class English accent is the default accent on Coruscant.
    • The late Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin), who actually played mostly good guys in his career—including Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who in Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D..
      • In fact all major bad guys were played by Brits, The Emperor (Ian Mc Diarmid is Scottish), Darth Vader (although not his voice actor, as the voice of David Prowse was too west-country, earning him the nickname Darth Farmer), Count Dooku, and even Darth Maul (London-based Scot Ray Park's voice was dubbed by British voice-actor and comedian Peter Serafinowicz).
    • A good number of good guys in Star Wars have British accents, however. Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor), C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), and Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson) and Mon Mothma, leader of the Rebel Alliance. In the first film, Princess Leia has a quasi-British accent in some scenes.
  • Jeremy Talbot from the British Consulate in the film Jumping Jack Flash.
  • Dreamcatcher has a particularly odd example- all of the characters start off with American accents, but as soon as one guy gets infected by The Virus and becomes the Big Bad he starts talking with an upper class British accent.
      • The same thing happened in the early (1970s) Battlestar Galactica Classic. Two teen boys who rejected the advice of Starbuck and Apollo ended up becoming evil, and acquiring British accents. Which they lost once they had learned the error of their ways!
  • There are two candidates for Big Bad in the movie Resident Evil: Degeneration. Between the spineless, obnoxious asshole Senator Ron Davis and the polite, smooth-talking Brit Frederic Downing, which do you think ends up being the true villain responsible for the outbreak? The first guess doesn't count.
    • And the holographic manifestation of The Red Queen is a British little girl.
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has a rather meta subversion. British actor Julian Glover played the main villain, but with an American accent. Similarly, the English Paul Freeman plays the French Rene Belloq in Raiders.
  • Batman Begins has Ra'as Al Ghul played by Liam Neeson.
  • The English dub of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has all the characters voiced by American actors except for the scene where Lisbeth gets mugged in the subway by a group of people who are given English accents.
  • The 1970s All Quiet on the Western Front had German characters played by English-speakers: all the likeable characters sounded American while the cruel drill-sergeant and the blood-thirsty new recruit sounded British.
  • Inverted in the John Goodman version of The Borrowers. The whole cast was British except for the villain, who was played by an American (Goodman himself, obviously).
    • Actually, the human family are American, but the rest of the humans aide from Potter and all the Borrowers are British.
  • Mister Funktastic of Bulletproof Monk.
  • Fat Bastard of Austin Powers is a rare example of one with a (faked) Scottish accent.
  • Blue Thunder gave us Col. F.E. Cochrane, complete with irritating Catch Phrase and requisite accent.
  • Bill Nighy plays the main villain known as Saber in the Disney flick G-Force, who wants to take over the world, and in the trailer even blatantly says he wants to do so.
    • It's actually a misleading. Saber did want to take over the world, but in a good way. The real villain was The Man Behind the Man, who double-crossed Saber into turning every single product made by his company into a weapon.
  • Christopher Eccleston in Gone In 60 Seconds. He shows he's evil because he doesn't like baseball.
  • Deliberately averted in Spider-Man 2, in which British actor Alfred Molina played Doctor Octopus as an American. Molina later joked about this in interviews.

Molina: If we gave him a British accent, it's a bit like giving it away right from the start. It's a bit like, carrying a great big sign that goes "movie villain." And underneath that, "Alan Rickman wasn't free".

  • Word of God says that The Fantastic Mr. Fox uses a Translation Convention whereby the animals have American accents (so the director could cast his favourite actors) and the humans have English accents (as a nod to the author). It's pure coincidence that all the humans in the story are villains...
  • In Cliffhanger John Lithgow played the lead bad guy with a strangulated upper class English accent whilst most of his team was played by actual Brits.
  • Cutler Beckett from Pirates of the Caribbean is a very stereotypical evil British aristocrat. However, most of the other major characters are also Brits of various stripes, and some of them are aristocrats themselves!
    • Davy Jones was played by Bill Nighy. In the 4th film, Blackbeard was played by Ian McShane.
  • In Ip Man 2, the British are portrayed as opponents and racist to the Chinese, including a brutal policeman and a Complete Monster boxer called Twister who takes sexual pleasure in brutally beating sick and elderly Chinese Warriors to death.
  • Pretty much every character played by Rufus Sewell. Notably, Dark City was one of his few heroic roles, and that was as a Fake American.
  • David Warner is another British actor who can't help sounding evil so he might as well play mostly villains. He was Billy Zane's Battle Butler, Lovejoy, in Titanic, and Jack the Ripper in Time After Time.
    • He pulled triple duty as a baddie in Tron by playing human antagonist Edward Dillinger and the evil program Sark, as well as providing the voice for the Big Bad, the Master Control Program.
    • One rare aversion to this was an appearance on Babylon5, where he played a kindly (though tough) old man who politely asked the various alien ambassadors if any of them had come across the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, he was Too Cool To Last.
  • Seemingly subverted In Woody Allen's Scoop, where a charming high-society Brit, played by Hugh Jackman, is suggested to be a murderer. However, he's so charming and so handsome that the Hot Scoop played by Scarlett Johansson finds this impossible in the end, it is revealed that he was the murderer after all
  • The debonair, dashing and very deadly Devlin from The Net, who seduces Sandra Bullock's character in a bid to steal a disk in her possession, and then sets about trying to kill her.
  • As noted above Evil Brit characters are surprisingly rare in Irish movies but one place they do turn up is in films set during the Anglo-Irish War. See Michael Collins or The Wind That Shakes the Barley for good (well, evil) examples.
  • Inverted in the Chronicles of Narnia films, where the only characters in the series with American accents are the evil wolves and the heroes are all British.
  • Hannibal Lecter as portrayed by both Scot Brian Cox and, of course, Welshman Anthony Hopkins. The less said about the French kid and Hannibal Rising the better.
  • This gets played with in the X-Men movies due to casting decisions and a few Race Lifts - to date, Ian McKellen and German-Irish Michael Fassbender as the German-Polish Jew Erik Lensherr/Magneto, Ray Park as Toad, the aforementioned Brian Cox as Fake American William Stryker, Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut...
    • German Nightcrawler, who in the beginning of the second movie appears evil by attacking the President in the White House, was played by Scotsman Alan Cumming. Brian Cox also played a somewhat evil Fake American in The Bourne Identity.
  • If several Disney animated films feature British sounding villains, also do take note that Walt Disney himself was somewhat of an Anglophile and some of the films he produced in the 50's and 60's are set in Britain with British casts and heroes.
    • Likely because of his ancestory - the last name "Disney" comes from the village of Norton Disney in Lincolnshire (UK).
  • Averted in all of the James Bond movies, despite their being produced by Americans and targeted in large part at American audiences. The heroes are always British members of Her Majesty's Secret Service, and the villains most often Continental Europeans, Asians, or even Americans.
    • Except for Goldeneye, of course.
  • The Evil Brit is a common trope in Jackie Chan movies due to their anti-colonial themes, discussed in detail in here.
  • In Anacondas 2, the British team member is the only one to turn Well-Intentioned Extremist in the search for the rare and immensely valuable blood orchid, willfully sacrificing his colleagues to do so.
  • Christopher Lee, although he's a specialist villain actor anyway.
  • Underworld saw Bill Nighy as an Evil Brit vampire.
  • Ajax Francis in Deadpool. He's even identified as such in the opening credits.


Literature


Live Action TV

  • In one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories comes back in holographic form to menace the crew. However, he was played an American actor who miraculously effected a stunningly believable British accent. Justified in this case by the fact that, well, it's Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories—what else would he be but British?
  • Adam Monroe and Daniel Linderman from Heroes. Though Adam is actually played by an American.
    • More recently Edgar (sort of, he's not quite evil as much as misguided, and even has doubts in regards to Samuel's plans) and Samuel too, although Samuel's accent changes constantly, sometimes within the same episode or even the same scene.
  • Charles Widmore on Lost (actor's from New Zealand, but character seems to be British). Note however that after he was given the villain role in season 4, things have become a whole lot more morally ambiguous...Lost, however, also has several Brits among the heroes (Charlie, Charlotte, Penny, Desmond, maybe Naomi).
  • Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, before the Heel Face Turn and Badass Decay.
    • Other examples include Drusilla, Gwendolyn Post, and other Watchers. Averted with Giles, until he becomes an anti-hero in "The Gift".
    • Of course, neither Spike nor Drusilla are played by Britons. Which is painfully obvious.
  • Dead Ringers parodied this with a sketch where Alan Rickman and Ian McKellen battled it out for the role of stereotypical British villain. The winner was Brian Blessed.
  • Lila from Dexter.
  • Dr. Zachary Smith on Lost in Space was never specifically said to be British, but he most definitely fits the "vaguely upper-class" stereotype with his pompous personality, refined way of speaking, and haughty manner.
  • Gaius Baltar from the re-imagined series of Battlestar Galactica Reimagined is played by James Callis, who is British. Most of the cast speak in American or Canadian accents—even Jamie Bamber (Apollo), who is also British, puts on an American accent for the show. This can lead to surprise on the part of the fans when he uses his normal accent for interviews...
    • Lampshaded when James Callis put on a Yorkshire accent to demonstrate his poverty-stricken origins on Aerelon.
    • Which is weird for two reasons: 1. His 'fake' Caprican accent sounds like none of the other (North American) Capricans. 2. His 'posh' accent sounds more like Estuary English i.e. it sometimes sounds 'posh' but sometimes sounds slightly 'Cockney'.
    • Ironically enough, Jamie Bamber's Real Life wife (who is also British) plays one of the doctors assisting Cottle in Galactica's medical bay, but uses her original British accent. It should be noted that the show has used actresses from New Zealand (Lucy Lawless) and Australia (Stephanie Jacobsen) who also use their native accents.
      • Since Caprica started, things have gotten a bit murkier, since Clarice Willow speaks with Polly Walker's native English accent (not terribly different from Callis', although Walker is from Cheshire). At first, this lent credibility to the theory that the planet Caprica has lots of different accents—and then, we discover that Clarice was born on Sagittaron—and none of the Sagittarons on BSG spoke with British accents either. (For the record, Clarice is portrayed quite sympathetically, and doesn't really fit into the Evil Brit trope).
    • Jamie Bamber is actually half American, though it is true that he grew up in Britain.
    • According the commentary on 'Razor' everyone got to use their real accent for the most part; to imply variety in the Colonies. The only reason Bamber didn't use his British accent was to make him sound like Commander Adama to imply their familial relationship, which they needed all the help they could get on, considering the actors were different ethnicities (Olmos being an emphatically-brown Mexican and Bamber being as white as they come; Olmos wore blue contact lenses to return the favor, covering his brown eyes).
  • An episode of the original Battlestar Galactica Classic in which a bunch of boys living in a forest were cute tow-headed American boys, until they defied Starbuck and Apollo and became evil British boys! Then, when they had learned their lesson and were forgiven, they turned back into cute adorable American boys again (the fact that the mute sisters who lived with them had no purpose other than housework (forest work?) isn't better...).
    • Patrick Mcnee was the voice of the Cylons Imperious Leader and the villainous Count Ibliss.
  • Dollhouse gives us Adelle DeWitt, who isn't technically a villain, but is at best morally suspect.
    • Jamie Bamber's character in 2.01 "Vows".
  • Eddie Izzard talked about this in his show Dress To Kill.

"We play bad guys in movies, because of the Revolutionary War. No two ways about it."

  • In the fifth season of 24, Chechen terrorist Vladimir Bierko has a cultured, James Bond villain-style British accent (he's played by British actor Julian Sands).
    • Season 3 gives us former British Special Forces operative Stephen Saunders.
  • Lord Darken Rahl in Legend of the Seeker has a British accent. Craig Parker is a Kiwi who lived in England for a while.
  • In the British miniseries Jekyll the trope is inverted by having the boss-level baddies represented by Americans (albeit using British actors with poor accents).
  • In FlashForward, Simon is in charge of the secret project that led to the blackout, played by Dominic Monaghan.
  • Julian Sark from Alias (played by an American).
    • And Lauren Reed (played by an Australian).
  • Gilroy from Burn Notice is the "evil limey mastermind" for most of the second half of season three. He's also rahter... friendly with his partners in crime.
  • Crichton seemingly draws inspiration from this trope in Farscape when he has to imitate a Peacekeeper, while the series adopts it wholeheartedly with the character of Scorpius.
    • Presumably the reason Crichton uses that (atrociously bad) British accent is because most of the Peacekeepers use British accents, though most are played by Australians (as is pretty much everyone not John Crichton.)
  • BBC America is running with this trope, September is Accent Of Evil Month, all month long they will be showing movies featuring an Evil Brit (Die Hard With a Vengeance with Jeremy Irons, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with Alan Rickman, Star Trek Generations with Malcolm McDowell and Superman II with Terence Stamp).
  • Major Zod on Smallville has a heavy British accent. It actually makes him difficult to understand on occasion.
  • A few of the Downbelow gang leaders in Babylon 5 have thick British accents, and stood out as particularly nasty customers.
  • Suspect and double-crossing "busniessman" Badger of Firefly is this, being essentially your typical London Gangster--in SPACE!
  • Alexis Carrington on Dynasty
  • Recurring villains David Robert Jones and Robert Jerome Newton from Fringe.
  • Baron Harkonnen from the Dune miniseries was given a distinctly British accent, and in fact is actually portrayed by a british person. Also a bit odd, considering the fact that a Russian accent/Russian actor might have made logically more sense given the fact that his first name is "Vladimir," of all things.
    • And the last name, Harkonnen, is (if anything) Finnish.
  • The Cape (trope) has two characters named Peter Fleming AKA Chess and Scales. Peter Fleming speaks English with a posh British accent. Scales speaks English with either a Cockney accent or an Australian accent. Peter Fleming is the evil Big Bad of the show. Scales is the thuggish evil The Dragon (possibly graduating to another Big Bad) of the show.
  • Averted on The X-Files; all of the Syndicate have American accents, except for the Well-Manicured Man, who is British. The Well-Manicured Man (played by England native John Neville) is actually Mulder's informant, and ends up sacrificing his life to be so.
  • Vex is definitely the most evil character seen so far on Lost Girl and yep, he has a British accent.
  • Klaus on The Vampire Diaries even though he's supposed to be Scandanavian.

Music

Thomas Dolby's track "The Devil Is an Englishman", from the soundtrack of the Ken Russell film Gothic


New Media

  • On this very Wiki we used to have a trope called British Nazis, in which some Troll tried to convince people that British people are Exclusively Evil, while at the same time praising Scottish people for their "candid" portrayal of English people as absolute bastards in Braveheart. I wish I was making this up.


Professional Wrestling

  • William Regal sticks out from other British Prowrestlers as even when the fans take his side, he refuses to let anyone refer to him as anything but a "Dirty rotten scoundrel with hate in his heart!"
  • Dave Taylor, who has as much in-ring talent as Regal but a bare fraction of the charisma, plays the same gimmick.
    • Regal and Taylor formed a stable in WCW called the Bluebloods. They had a manager named Jeeves, and were joined by Bobby Eaton Earl Robert Eaton and Doc Dean at various points. Eaton of course was more famous as half of the Midnight Express and part of The Dangerous Alliance, and Dean was used as a jobber before and after his affiliation with them.
  • Sha Samuels, a UK based indy wrestler, uses the hooligan version of this trope as his gimmick.
  • No mention of former Nexus and Corre Leader, Wade Barrett?! Seriously, dude's kinda twisted.
  • For that matter, Scotsman Drew McIntyre, especially in the first half of 2010. He's never really been a good guy, but around that time, he threw temper tantrums over all his losses, would whine to the boss to get the losses revoked, would throw his weight around because he was apparently "The Chosen One", and went "officially" undefeated for six months.


Radio

  • The Goon Show featured the entente cordiale of Evil Brit Hercules Grytpype-Thynne (whose voice was based on George Sanders) and Evil Frenchman Count Jim Moriarty as villains in most episodes. Other characters also could fit the pattern, especially Major Dennis Bloodnok, but sometimes even Wallace Greenslade, the announcer.


Stand-Up Comedy

"The British Empire at is peak controls one quarter of the world's population and landmass. This by the way is a small goddamn country. So how did they do it? It wasn't military might, it was contempt."


Video Games

  • Interestingly subverted in The Saboteur. Sean certainly doesn't like Bishop, since Sean is strongly hinted to be an Irish Nationalist. Bishop himself is most definitely secretive and dodgy and doesn't give the player too much reason to trust him. But in the end, he and the SOE are the most solid and powerful allies you have once Santos sells you and La Résistance out to the Nazis and things go to hell in a rocket-powered handbasket.
  • The imperiously domineering Isabella "Ivy" Valentine from the Soul Series, and femme fatale for hire Christie from Dead or Alive (both voiced with the applicable RP accent) are both great examples of the Evil Brit stereotype where it's used to enhance their Evil Is Sexy personalities. Averted with Street Fighter 's Cammy White - she's one of the good guys.
  • In the RTS RUSE, Nazi General von Richter talks with a British accent, although his aide-de-camp talks in English with a German accent. It is subverted though, as Colonel Campbell is actually British (with an appropriate dialect), and on the goodie's side.
  • Archibald Grims from Super Robot Wars Original Generation is a particularly Ax Crazy Wicked Cultured version of this. One of his ancestors in a side manga was pretty much this as well.
  • Liquid Snake from Metal Gear Solid is an Egregious example because his Good Twin (or at least, as close to one as one can get, if even that, if Psycho Mantis, Liquid Snake's, and Meryl Silverburgh's statements are to be believed) was raised as an American. (According to canon at that point they were both half-British biologically.)
      • Possibly justified as Liquid mentions having trained with the SAS. It's possible he picked up the accent during that time.
    • And of course, Metal Gear Solid 4 reveals that the leader of the Patriots was Major Zero, who started them, ironically, because of his admiration of an American patriot. Whether he starts out as a villain is ambiguous, but from the '70s onward he fits.
    • Naomi had an inexplicable upper-class English accent in the original Metal Gear Solid (it was dropped for the Remake and her appearance in part 4), and while not really evil (just vengeful), she created Foxdie.
      • Her accent comes from her being from Rhodesia, an ex-British colony. At least one parent of hers was probably British, or of British descent. Of vourse, she has very little memory of her parents and was raised by a globe-trotting American merc.
    • The opening chapter of 4 sees you going up against a whole army of them - Praying Mantis. Not that you're likely to know they're at all British.
    • According to the Japanese MSX manual for Metal Gear, Machinegun Kid, one of the Outer Heaven mercenaries that fought Solid Snake, was formerly a member of the British SAS.
    • Strangelove from Peace Walker is a subversion. Although she does serve the villainous team, the Peace Sentinels, at first, she herself is not exactly evil, as she simply has her own reasons for serving them (which is of course reviving The Boss), and makes it entirely clear that she does not actually care for Coldman's goals in regards to Peace Walker.
  • In grand Star Wars tradition, in Knights of the Old Republic many Sith have British accents (including coincidentally, a Sith lawyer who sounds exactly like Liquid Snake). Bastila also has one, though it becomes more pronounced when she falls to the dark side, wherein she starts to sound almost exactly like Naomi.
    • In Empire at War, every Imperial soldier who has a ground vehicle or, for space troops other than Broadside pilots, is above the rank of grunt who flies a TIE fighter has a British accent.
    • In Rebel Strike, most of the Rebels have American accents. The only exception is Sarkli. Would anyone like to guess which of the Rebels leaves the Alliance for the Empire and becomes the final boss?
    • Battlefront II almost lampshades this. As well as the commanders of Star Destroyers being typically well-spoken, one of the characters (played by an American voice actor) is listed in the credits as, 'Smarmy British Palpatine Ally'.
    • Apparently the upper-class English accent is actually a Sith Empire accent as of Star Wars: The Old Republic, acknowledged to such an extent that an undercover Imperial Agent will be advised early on to 'drop the accent' for the duration of his mission.
  • In the Japanese Tales of Vesperia Jeager has a British accent.
  • In the English dub of Final Fantasy XII, the Arcadians all have British accents. And are mostly bad.
    • Accourding to one reviewer, the soldiers sound like they're Americans doing really bad impersonations of Monty Python members.
  • N. Tropy from the Crash Bandicoot series. The series is fond of characters with non-American accents.
  • Errol from the Jak series.
    • Gol and Maia seem to straddle the trope a bit. Gol's accent is a sort of hybrid, but Maia's accent is, initially, American (albeit with a few British pronunciations) - by the end of the game she's speaking with a completely English accent.
    • Krew also has a British accent, as does his daughter.
    • As does Duke Skyheed.
  • You can give the Villain Protagonist of Saints Row 2 a Cockney accent.
  • How did Fallout 3 clue those new to the series in that the Enclave was evil, hours before they show up? By having the president be voiced by Malcolm McDowell.
    • Sounding like Nixon.
    • I'm not sure if that makes them evil because he's British, or it it makes them evil..... because he's Malcolm McDowell. Probably both.
    • Not to mention the magnificent Tony Jay as the Lieutenant in Fallout 1.
  • Nick Greaves is this in Far Cry 2.
  • Harry Flynn in Uncharted.
  • Sofia Lamb from BioShock 2.
  • Jin Kisaragi's nationality is listed as British, though he was raised and lives in Japan.
  • In Red Faction: Guerrilla, Samanya has an apparently inexplicable British accent (well, I say 'British') on a planet populated mostly by Americans. That's your first clue as to the fact that she's a Marauder and the leader's sister (the leader also speaks with a similar British accent), although the trope is eventually subverted as the Marauders are allies for the last few battles and the villains are all American.
  • The very very very British game Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure has Weasleby as the Big Bad, a more typical example. Condescending, top-hat, very wealthy, Evil Laugh? He's got all that AND a flying robot machine in the shape of his top hat! Of course, Henry himself is the a great example of a Quintessential British Gentleman.
  • In Age of Empires II, the Brits are almosy always the bad guys, regardless of whether they're fighting William Wallace, Joan of Arc or William the Conqueror.
  • Subverted in Assassin's Creed. Despite his name, one may expect Robert de Sable to be British, as he works directly under the king of England, but, both historically and in game, he is French.
    • With Assassin's Creed III taking place during the American Revolution, Evil Brits will be in abundance; however, Templars and allies to Connor have been stated to be on both sides of the conflict, to avoid comparisons to a certain other one-sided depiction of the Revolution.
      • Worringly, not one piece of media shown so far has actually shown Connor attacking anything other than the Redcoats.
  • Kid Icarus:Uprising plays this straight with Hades and Arlon who, while not actually British, have distinctly British accents, Dark Pit has a slightly British tint to his voice at times.
  • The Helgahst from the Killzone series have mostly British accents and are basically just Nazis IN SPACE! Though its a little bit odd considering that the Helgahst home world of Helghan was colonized mostly by oppressed space settlers who were fleeing from the "oppressive ISA" and claim to be fighting for their freedom. Anybody notices any similarities between the Helghast and a certain other real world former colony?
    • Zero Punctuation takes offense with Killzone 3 because not only are the Helgahst Evil Brits, they speak with a Cockney accent, which Croshaw gets annoyed with. It's easier to accept evil upper class Brits, but Cockneys? Unforgiven.
  • It's worth noting that Wesker's evilness increases in direct proportion to his Britishness as the series goes on.
  • Mass Effect 2 has Zaeed. Bounty Hunter extraordinaire, very skilled warrior... And also not giving a shit about burning alive some civilians to get his stuff done and letting his Blue Suns soldiers getting killed due to him being a piss-poor tactician and a Bad Boss.
  • Wheatley, eventually, in Portal 2.
  • The first voice you hear in Baldur's Gate 2 is David Warner's emphatically evil Jon Irenicus, complete with British Accent.
  • In The Orion Conspiracy, at least one character speaks English with a British accent. Captain Shannon, happens to be evil as well as speaking English with a posh British accent.
  • Played up with the Penguin's appearance in Batman: Arkham City. Not only does his British upbringing show, he also has the accent and the word usage to back it up.

(while trying to shoot Batman with Mr. Freeze's cannon) Stay still, you wanker!

  • Nexus from Warzone 2100 speaks with a British accent, despite the setting of the game and all of its other voice actors being American.


Web Original

Pardon me for being predictable, but I am now going to complain about how all the bad guys in Killzone are British - because someone should be pissed about this, and it might as well be me. I stood up for the Russians when I reviewed all those fantasy Cold War wank games, and I don't even know any Russians. I'm fine with that thing where the main villain is a posh British guy, because lets face it: Cooing at rainbows sounds evil if you do it in a posh British accent. It is only when you make all the evil soldiers cockney that you enter the prejudiced parade. Cockney doesn't sound evil, it sound honest and cheeky-chips lovable. You can't picture Dick Van Dyke hiding in the bushes in a park popping children's balloons with a blow-pipe. You might say that I make too much of a fuss, but someone in the dev-team at some point said to themself: "We have a race where every individual member is so morally bankrupt that the player feels perfectly justifiable splattering them painfully against the ceiling. Now, how do we bring that across with some sort of vocal short-hand?" And the most bitter pill to swallow is this: They all look like Nazis. We helped defeat the Nazi!


Western Animation

  • Mumm-Ra in ThunderCats (2011). Voiced by Robin Atkin Downes, of course.
  • It isn't entirely clear why supposedly Cajun master-of-diguise Zartan had an English accent on the G.I. Joe cartoon series. It is clear that he was a villain.
  • Parodied on Monkey Dust in their version of Anne Frank's Diary. Yes the young Irish girl is holding out for the American love interest Johnny to save her and her family of line-dancing drunks. Meanwhile in Berlin, England, English Hitler is planning to capture Anne Frank and marry her. Needless to say Johnny and the gang end up beating up Adolf for President Churchill.
    • Monkey Dust did it again in their version of "The Crusades". A group of American Knights are shipped off to the holy land to rescue the Holy Grail from British-accented Saladin (or, as they call him: "Say-leddin! You English bastard!"). Along the way they use pretty much every trope from every Action film ever, and a great many humorous anachronisms. The film is dedicated to "all the Americans who died during the crusades".
      • It culminates in the final, 3rd season with a biting "Black Hawk Down" parody in which the same troop of American Knights (now modern day soldiers) wreck havoc on a fairly developed, once peaceful, and downright helpful African nation. The main character dies from a embolism in his leg that could have been prevented by "walking around the jet".
  • Interestingly averted in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Jason Isaacs plays the first season's Big Bad Admiral Zhao as a Fake American, seemingly to specifically avoid the most villainous man yet seen in the Fire Nation also being the only Englishman.
    • Even more interesting when we remember Jason Isaacs portrayed Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter films.
  • This trope explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that Stewie from Family Guy has a (supposed to be) British accent.
  • Both Megatrons in the live action movie and Transformers Animated have a vaguely British accent.
    • In fact, every Megatron played by David Kaye (Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Armada, Energon and Cybertron) all have an accent that oozes danger, brilliance and magnificent bastardy of an order barely concievable. Guess what nation of the planet Earth it is eerily familiar to...
    • Also, in the original cartoon Shockwave had a David-Warner-inspired British accent. His Animated equivalent (who has the same VA) retains this and his double-agent identity of Longarm has an American accent.
  • AntiCosmo: Accent, posh, outfit, FANGS! He's a textbook example. In fact, many fans have potrayed him as a Vampire.
  • Evil mastermind Ra's Al Ghul has a cultured British accent in Batman: The Animated Series, courtesey of David Warner.
    • David also voiced the Lobe from Freakazoid! - also an Evil Brit, as much as a comedic villain with an exposed brain for a face can be anyway.
    • David pops up again as Alpha, a major Big Bad in Men in Black: The Series.
      • This trope could practically be called 'The David Warner'. He's also Nergal, Lord Angstrom, The Archmage and so on. From what this troper hears, he's a pretty nice guy in real life.
    • In Batman: Under the Red Hood, Ra's' cultured British accent is provided by Jason Isaacs.
  • Superman's enemy Metallo was Race Lifted into an Evil Brit for Superman: The Animated Series.
  • Terrence from Totally Spies!. Even though his brother Jerry is a good guy.
  • A whole page of Evil Brrrrrrrrits and we haven't mentioned Long John Baldrrrrrrrry's take on Dr. Rrrrrrrrobotnik?
  • Most British characters on Phineas and Ferb are good, but there is an alien villain named Mitch that has a British accent.
  • The extraterrestrial but yet still-so-British Killface on Frisky Dingo.
  • The Kim Possible villain Monkey Fist is a British Lord...and one of the few villains who is genuinely nasty on a regular basis. And there is that Scottish mad golf guy.
  • Mad Mod in Teen Titans plays this to the hilt, though he's a mostly comical villain rather than a serious threat (and at one point it's remarked that even real British people probably can't stand him). Brother Blood, one of the major Big Bads also speaks with an aristocratic, vaguely British accent, though considering his whole persona it may just be something he affects.
  • Looney Tunes' Marvin the Martian started out with a nasally American voice, but then was given a snooty, sort-of upper-class English accent. This trope is so naughty, he could just pinch it!
  • Van Kleiss of Generator Rex. Seriously, his voice creeps me out.
  • Megabyte of ReBoot has a British accent, voiced by the late Tony Jay.
  • Gentleman Ghost in Batman the Brave And The Bold is one of these, with the distinctive voice of Greg Ellis.
  • David Ogden Stiers often plays either this or the "snooty Brit" in his voice acting roles, including the Penguin in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman and Governer Ratcliffe in Pocahontas.
  • Wow. So far into Evil Brits and no mentioning of Snidely Whiplash from "Dudley Do-Right". How did we manage to do that?
  • Peep the pickpocket in Jimmy Two-Shoes, though his accent is Cockney rather than anything distinguished.
  • Emma Frost from the X-Men comics is usually Race Lifted to British in any animated version, whetther or not they reflect her canonical Heel Face Turn.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures had evil Englishman Valmont.
  • Jem has got Jetta, the pathologically lying saxophonist with criminal connections from Britain who joins the Misfits in the second season. She's regarded as the Token Evil Teammate of a band that was already considered the bad guy group of the show. She's the only Misfit who's tried to scam her bandmates, as seen in Britrock, where she convinced her parents to help her convince Pizzazz she was British royalty by promising that they could bilk her out of millions. Of course, that episode helped provide something of a Freudian Excuse by showing that Jetta grew up in a lower class British home, and the fact that her parents were willing to go to such lengths to make money (and had already assumed the worst when Jetta contacted them), it's easier to understand what drives Jetta.
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