Faux Affably Evil/Playing With

Basic Trope: A villain keeps up a superficial veneer of amicability.

• Straight: Stephen politely invites Kyle for dinner, only to beat the latter up.
• Exaggerated:
  • Stephen slowly tortures Kyle to death while hugging and kissing him like a father to his child.
  • Stephen kindly offers Kyle a hand towel after giving him repeated swirlies and punching him in the nose.
• Justified:
  • Despite learning to have impeccable manners to keep people liking him, Stephen has a severe personality disorder.
  • Stephen is an utter hypocrite.
  • Despite his friendly facade, Stephen has never learnt proper anger management and channels his impulses to evil.
• Inverted:
  • Affably Evil
  • Stephen calls his girlfriend a slut after treating him to a dinner at a fancy restaurant.
• Subverted: Stephen acts pleasant while committing horrific crimes, but it turns out he was only trying to fool people.
• Double Subverted:...except, acting that way is actually his normal personality.
• Parodied: Even Stephen's victims adore him because he is so polite and pleasant while committing crimes.
• Deconstructed: Stephen's affability causes people to treat his misdeeds far more seriously than he deserves, because it makes him look creepy and hypocritical.
• Reconstructed: ...but those people change their minds, deciding that said affability, though superficial, proves that Stephen is capable of redemption.
• Zig Zagged: Stephen is polite most of the time, but he is Not So Stoic when someone presses his Berserk Button.
• Averted: Stephen is a Complete Monster but makes no secret of what an outright Jerkass he is, inside and outside.
• Enforced: The writers want to make their horrific villain enjoyable to the audience.
• Lampshaded: "Stephen is only pretending to be polite so he can kill us."
• Invoked: Stephen decides to put up a pleasant face, because he knows that to be a powerful psychological tactic for scaring heroes shitless.
• Defied: Stephen decides acting all polite is a waste of time and that not pretending to be anything else than a monster he is helps him achieve what he wants the quickest route.
• Discussed: "Stephen's probably just trying to frighten and confuse us. Or he's just insane."
• Conversed: "It's kind of unrealistic how some villains in movies pretend to be nice even while murdering the hero's love interest. Although it sure is entertaining to watch."

---

Back to Faux Affably Evil