Beard of Evil

Boldly Evilly going where no razor has gone before.

Dave: How can you have a goatee without shaving? Does it just materialize?
Male Helen: Well, yes. I'm evil.

A man with a beard is a man to be feared.

What is it about bad guys and facial hair? For some reason, we often take being clean-shaven as an indicator of being strait-laced and, under more traditional morality, a good person, pure of spirit. In older, simpler days, a traditional hero would not even have five o'clock shadow, even if he's been on the run and well away from his shaving mirror for a week.

Conversely, a man with facial hair is less pure, at the very least a Darker and Edgier Anti-Hero—more often, he's an outright villain, and his chin is deliberately contrasted with the depilated chin of the hero.

Note that this generally applies to small, well-groomed beards, especially goatees. Having a huge bushy beard turns one into a Nature Hero, sailor, grizzled old prospector or Boisterous Bruiser. Except, of course, for the beards recommended by certain religions that are in the public focus at the moment.

The characters who sport a Beard of Evil are usually either the Big Bad or a second-in-command. This may play into the fact that in both western and eastern culture, goatees are traditionally worn by members of the aristocracy, and Aristocrats Are Evil.

The Beard of Evil has a long history of being associated most closely with the Evil Twin or Evil Counterpart, and you probably already know why. It also scores extra evil points if combined with a shaven head. (Anybody with a bald head and a beard is pretty much guaranteed to be a card-carrying villain unless they are black or East Asian. Blame Alex Raymond and Anton LaVey.)

Satan is also frequently depicted with a goatee (which probably came from depictions of Goethe's Mephistopheles as a 16th-century gallant).

A subset of Good Hair, Evil Hair. Not to be confused with Growing the Beard or the Badass Mustache. No real reason why a beard can't be evil and Badass Beard.

Examples of Beard of Evil include:

Anime & Manga

Before him there was Gil Graham, the Treacherous Advisor of A's.

  • Lordgenome is about the only human on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann with any significant amount of facial hair. He's the main villain of the first half. (And it seems to be fireproof, given that it isn't too badly damaged when he gets serious and his head bursts into flames.)
    • His beard also gets significantly larger and begins to curl at the ends as he gets angrier (most notably when his head bursts into flames).
  • That first enemy that appears in Rurouni Kenshin wanting to take over the Kamiya dojo and claiming to be the Battousai.
  • One Piece
    • Eventually, Blackbeard finally grows one of these. New character Brownbeard, has three of them, even. Funnily enough, the original, Whitebeard, only had a mustache.
    • Also, four of the five Gorosei (the cabal that heads the World Government) have beards.
  • Jose, in Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds definitely counts.
  • The Count of Monte Cristo in Gankutsuou sports a sharp, blue goatee to complete his Byronic character. He isn't exactly pure evil, but definitely counts as a Manipulative Bastard willing to get innocents mixed to his pursuit of vengeance.
  • In The Familiar of Zero when he arrives, Ward is shown a few times in flashbacks where he acts kind to the main character, and has no beard. However, in the present, he has a beard, and is, well, evil.
  • Emperor Ganishka from Berserk.
  • Mephisto Pheles has one impressively sharp, blue, goatee. Interesting, considering what his name is an obvious pun off of. Whether or not he is evil however, has yet to be fully revealed.

Comic Books

  • While the titular hero himself might sport a trim goatee, Iron Man also plays it straight with Stane, who has a full beard and a bald head.
    • It's debatable whether this was deliberate on the part of the writers and artists, but Tony finally grew a goatee (after decades of having just a mustache) around the same time that he became much more morally ambiguous than he'd ever been before—first by becoming Marvel's poster child for transhumanism and incorporating elaborate upgrades into his body which may have distanced him from his humanity, and then by becoming a virtual fascist in the Civil War.
  • Serial killer/rapist Mr. Gone from The Maxx combines Bald of Evil with a wild Beard of Evil. After a Time Skip during which he does a Heel Face Turn, he no longer has any facial hair.
  • Rasputin in Hellboy has a Beard of Evil and Bald of Evil, as contrasted with Hellboy himself, who combines Topknot-but-Bald of Awesome with a Soul-Patch-and-Muttonchops Combination of Moral Ambiguity.
  • Seven Soldiers features the nefarious Subway Pirates, rival factions of which are led by the barbaric Allbeard (whose incredibly thick, long beard covers up pretty much his entire face) and the slick Nobeard (who has a Bald of Evil and is incapable of growing hair anywhere on his body). Mentions of other pirates from bygone eras of subway privateering are also made, including luminaries like Falsebeard and the like.

For added hilarity, it's commonly accepted that Allbeard and Nobeard represent Alan Moore and Seven Soldiers writer Grant Morrison, famously fur-faced and bald, respectively.


Commercials

  • In a Priceline ad William Shatner plays both his normal helpful negotiator self and his Evil Twin who's trying to trick people into paying too much for hotel rooms. Guess which one has a beard.


Film

Other than that, there are actually very few major Bond villains with a beard, only henchmen.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean, naturally. Jack Sparrow, Hector Barbossa, and Davy Jones (who has a beard made of tentacles) are all rather shifty, but the real Big Bad is clean-shaven, as is his second-in-command. "Good guy" Will Turner also has a goatee, to complement his pirate lineage.
  • Captain Corso of Titan A.E. had a goatee, and true to form turned out to be The Mole.
  • In nearly 80% of all kung fu movies made in China in the 60's and 70's from Run Run Shaw or Golden Harvest, the villain was always the old guy with the white beard.
  • In The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian the Telmarine aristocrats are bearded and bad, except for the eponymous Caspian, who is clean-shaven and a good guy.
  • The Matrix has Cipher's beard to couple with his Bald of Evil, as noted in that article.
  • In Die Hard, Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber sported one, contrasting a beardless Bruce Willis.
  • Averted in Once Upon a Time in the West. Henry Fonda planned to grow a beard as well as wear brown contact lenses to play the film's Complete Monster villain, but director Sergio Leone talked him out of it, since Fonda having his usual appearance in a role so different from his usual humble and noble characters would make it all the more shocking.
  • Count Dooku possesses such a beard in the Star Wars prequels.
  • The title character of Blacula grows some seriously wild sideburns every time he decides to drink someone's blood.
  • Fouché sports one in The Duellists. He was clean-shaven in real life.
  • The Big Bad McComb sports an evil beard in Time Cop.
  • Sentinel Prime from Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
  • Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane.
  • Although technically not a beard, Edward Norton's character in The Italian Job (2003 film) sports a rather evil-looking moustache.
  • Christo and Shabal from Act of Valor. Averted with Senior Chief who is bearded but good.


Literature

  • Inheritance Cycle: Galbatorix has a beard in the film adaption. During Brisingr, Eragon seems to assume that Galbatorix has a beard when he mentions him.
  • In the Discworld universe:
    • Lord Vetinari is commonly depicted with a tidy goatee.
      • He's not that evil, though. He does, however, have a 'menacing elegance'. Oh, yes, and he's awesome.
    • Parodied in Making Money, where the Head of Post-Mortem Communications is described as having tried to grow a beard like this, but not being evil, ended up just looking sheepish.

From the same book, we have the delusional Cosmo Lavish. He tried to copy the Vetinari beard of evil, but on him, it just ended up looking like a pubic chin.

  • In The Corellian Trilogy the chief feature distinguishing Han Solo from his evil cousin Thrackan Sal-Solo is the latter's beard.
  • The eponymous character of Bluebeard.
  • The Moonraker book from the original Bond series by Ian Fleming. Pretty much all of the Nazis working on the Moonraker missile have mustaches or beards, as a way of 'disguising their identity'.
  • Simon's beard in I Capture the Castle makes Cassandra compare him to a gargoyle. And Rose makes him shave it off before she agrees to marry him.
  • Harry Potter illustrator Mary Grandpre always draws Severus Snape with a beard, despite the fact that he is never described as having facial hair in the books, in order to emphasize his sinister characteristics.
  • Older Than Radio example: Chernomor, Big Bad from the Ruslan and Ludmila (1820) by Alexander Pushkin, has a very long beard. He also has a Bald of Evil.
  • In Good Omens, Famine is described as having "a trim black beard."
  • In the Honor Harrington books, the viciously evil Pavel Young cultivates a goatee, partly to hide his double chin.
  • In Death: Complete Monster Isaac McQueen ends up putting on a goatee at the end of New York To Dallas.
  • In-universe discussion in The Hunger Games : during her first Games, Katniss notices that although many of the boys in the arena are old enough to grow beards, and have been away from razors for a good two or three weeks, not a single one has done so. She suspects that their Capitol stylists have done some sort of procedure on their faces to prevent this, presumably to keep them looking young and innocent.
    • And in the film version, Seneca Crane sports a particularly stunning example.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events has the man with a beard but no hair, who's apparently so evil that Lemony Snicket won't even tell us his name.


Live Action TV

  • The mirror universe of Star Trek more or less gave us the cliché of the Evil Twin with a Beard of Evil, as evil Mr. Spock has a goatee. Ironically, Evil Mr. Spock is far and away the least evil person in the mirror universe.
    • Recently given a Shout-Out in a Priceline commercial. You guessed it, Evil Shatner with a goatee.
    • And in Enterprise, Star Trek does a Shout-Out to itself by giving Mirror Soval a Spock-beard. (Common fashion amongst Mirror Vulcans?)
      • While, for obvious reasons, Mirror T'Pol couldn't have a beard, she did have long flowing locks of hair to distinguish her from her closely-cropped regular counterpart.
      • This seems to have been the fashion among commanding Vulcans. Mirror Spock's personal guard didn't have a beard, and neither did either of the Vulcans Mirror T'Pol enlisted to help her retake the ISS Enterprise from Archer. Mirror Tuvok from the Terran Rebellion was also clean-shaven.
    • An episode of Deep Space Nine where the Defiant was stolen featured who we thought was William Riker before being revealed as Thomas Riker pulling off his heist before removing his sideburns to reveal that he had a goatee, not a beard.
      • However, he wasn't really evil.
  • On Knight Rider, Michael Knight's Evil Twin, Garthe Knight, sports a Beard of Evil.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Master's most iconic appearance, as portrayed by Roger Delgado, is bearded, as is that of Anthony Ainley. Ainley was intentionally trying to look like Delgado. There was substantial disappointment that Eric Roberts did not "sport the goat" as the Master in the 1996 telefilm. The Master also had a beard as portrayed by Jonathan Pryce in the Comic Relief spoof "The Curse of Fatal Death," and as voiced by Derek Jacobi for the animated "Scream of the Shalka," though fans were sufficiently used to the idea that no one was seriously bothered when Sir Derek Jacobi and John Simm played beardless Masters in 2007.
    • Inverted in that the Brigadier has a mustache, while his evil-universe counterpart is clean-shaven. He sports an Evil Scar-and-Eyepatch of Power-combo instead.
    • And for maximum cross-trope linkage, in the 2007 Children In Need mini-episode "Time Crash," when the Tenth Doctor mentions the Master to the Fifth Doctor, this exchange ensues:

Fifth Doctor: Does he still have that rubbish beard?
Tenth Doctor: No, no beard this time...Well, a wife...

    • And now, the 2009 Christmas specials feature John Simm's Master with a Stubble of Evil.
  • Though he later redeems himself, Captain Bialar Crais of Farscape keeps his beard.
  • Ares has a Beard of Evil in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. Notably, his Mirror Universe counterpart, Ares, God of Love, is clean-shaven.
  • In Tom's first two appearances, in Lost, he has a beard and is very scary. Then we see him without the beard, and learn that it's fake, and he becomes much less scary.
  • Played straight in an episode of The Jamie Foxx Show in which Foxx's character is accidentally forced to switch places with a criminal look-alike who is physically identical in all ways except for a scrawny beard.
  • In the Charmed episode "It's A Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World," the Mirror Universe version of Leo has a goatee.
    • How could you tell that Gideon was evil? He has a goatee.
  • Heroes had the evil warlord known only as White Beard.
  • Stargate SG-1:

Mitchell: Well, you don't have beards, so I'm guessing you're not from the Evil Twin universe.

    • Note that they were in fact evil, or at the very least quite self-centered. Prime universe SG-1 may have cared more about their universe than others, but they at least didn't go looting the others.
    • In one Alternate Universe episode that had to be a reference to Star Trek's Mirror Universe, both evil Teal'c and evil Apophis do in fact have goatees. Though Apophis's beard is rather redundant 'cause he's already evil, and oddly enough, Teal'c ends up with similar facial hair a few seasons later.
    • In a non-alternate-universe example, recurring villain Ba'al sported a tidy diabolical goatee.
  • Lampshaded in Stargate Atlantis episode "Doppelganger": Sheppard inquires about the other Sheppard, "Did I have a goatee?"
  • Inverted in How I Met Your Mother with Barney's 'origin story' in the episode "The Re-Return." At the start of the flash back he's a wide-eyed, innocent, New Age Retro Hippie, complete with long hair and a soul-patch. When he becomes the Barney we know from, presented as the 'evil' version, he shaves it off.
  • Jack Bass is evil enough when he first appears in Gossip Girls second season. When he returns in season three he's even more evil, and is now sporting a goatee.
  • One of the themes in Breaking Bad is Walter's physical and mental transformation from nerdy teacher to Badass drug dealer. First he went bald, ostensibly due to chemotherapy, then he grew a rather sinister goatee.
  • In The Middleman's Mirror Universe, every single male character is bearded; most but not all are more evil than their clean-shaven counterparts.
  • Gaius Baltar was known for abusing this trope relentlessly. Made even more notable by his being perennially trapped in the Face Heel Revolving Door. It got to the point where you could tell how evil he was at the moment by the style of his facial hair.
  • The Collector: While meeting the younger Morgan in flashbacks, the Devil takes the form of a goateed Colin Cunningham, his most consistent avatar in the series by far.
  • On Community, Alternate Universe Abed, deducing that he and his remaining friends inhabited the darkest of the alternate timelines, decided that they should embrace the darkness and become evil. He therefore prepared false goatees for everyone until the men could grow theirs in properly. (Like so many things with Community, it makes more sense in context.)


Music

  • Kunt and the Gang's song Men With Beards (What Are They Hiding) has the singer theorizing all beards are Beards of Evil.
  • Hooray for Gooba! has a song titled My Evil Twin Has a Mustache wherein the narrator/singer bemoans the fact that his friends cannot distinguish between himself and his Evil Twin when he blatantly has a mustache. There is also the matter of the puppy-kicking...


New Media

  • Gaia Online has both mocked this and played this straight. (But mostly mocks it)
    • On the serious side: Vladmir Von Helson, the arguably most evil character in the story line, had a particularly sinister goatee before he was ashed.
    • On the other hand, recent micro updates starring Mr Wizard parodies Dr. Singh and Timmy have featured several characters with beards of evil (which is either The Virus, or a case of Body Snatchers). However, one of them is a 10 year old boy, the other is a Labtech who grew his beard on the outside of his face mask. And they both seem to be more concerned with getting into Singh's pants than actually doing anything evil. Hilarity Ensues.
  • The tabletop game Warhammer 40,000 has a home brew version called "Brighthammer 40k," where the endless GRIMDARK of the Warhammer universe is flipped on its head into NOBLEBRIGHT, and everyone is a generally pleasant, good group of people to be around. The Emperor of this NOBLEBRIGHT (yes, spelled like that every time) universe inverts the idea of a Beard of Evil- he wears a Goatee of Good, and is something like a million times more upstanding and noble than his Warhammer counterpart. He's also not dead and stuck in a chair, which counts for something, certainly.
  • This motivational poster, created during Mirrorverse Week on ONTD_STARTREK


Newspaper Comics


Professional Wrestling

Tabletop Games

Video Games

  • Inverted in the Warcraft universe: male facial hair is directly proportional to goodness. Although the fairly unpleasant Blood Elves do tend towards goatees of the classic villain variety. It goes with their laugh.
  • Command & Conquer:
  • This seems to be a defining character trait in the God of War series, with all of the main villains (ie. Ares, Zeus, etc.) having massive scruffy beards. Kratos also has a Beard of Evil, which is pretty damn appropriate.
  • Lampshaded in Tales of the Abyss, where a skit involves Anise spinning a tale to Natalia how the Big Bad's beard is a source of his evil powers. Just one source, mind you: You don't want to know what his ponytail does.
    • Not to mention his eyebrows having the ability to tell him where his enemies are.
  • The Evil Zombie Pirate LeChuck from the Monkey Island series has a rather impressive beard for being, well, dead, and therefore technically not having hair growth. And this one is actually a source of his evil powers,[1] as Guybrush discovers in the second game. In case it wasn't clear for anyone that this was an evil beard, in the third game, his beard is composed of fire.
  • Bitores Mendez, one of the villains of Resident Evil 4, was both bearded and Bald of Evil. In fact, he looked a lot like Rasputin.
  • Rasputin (yes, again) in Shadow Hearts Covenant makes sure to retain the beard even after transforming into a horrible demonic sin against nature.
  • Played straight and inverted in Half-Life. Dr. Breen, when you finally see him, has a full beard and is allied with the Combine. Gordon Freeman, the hero, has what is best described as a Goatee of Asskicking.
  • The Older and Wiser Wind Waker version of Ganondorf sported an orange beard on charcoal-colored skin, and made it work. He retains the beard in his Twilight Princess incarnation.
  • Team Rocket Executive Petrel in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver sports a purple goatee.
  • Master Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, which is Hilarious in Hindsight now that Leonard Nimoy is playing him in the English version.
    • Luxord and that baby-blond beard of his.
  • The Prowler "La Lupo" from Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has a soul patch and close-cropped goatee, contrasting with Ezio's full beard-and-'stache. Cesare, Rodrigo, and the Engineer also have beards.
  • The Obviously Evil Ser Alrik in Dragon Age II sports one.
  • Rabid Cop Carter Blake has a small beard which contrasts with By-The-Book Cop Norman Jayden's clean-shaven face.


Web Comics

Having established his firm belief in the Beard of Evil as a guaranteed indicator of a character's untrustworthiness, Jim refuses to let anyone see his character sheet, claiming Qui-Gon is clean-shaven.

    • This is also mentioned in a later comic with Bail Organa.
      • Flat out lampshaded in the GM's notes for the campaign that took place in between the first and second movie (based on The Princess Bride). In his notes on Count Rugen, he notes "Has a goatee! Should be fun when others don't believe Jim that he's evil."
  • In Questionable Content, the characters are joking about a series of events leading to the creation of Martin's "Evil Twin." He mentioned the frustration said twin would encounter, given that he's "incapable of growing a decent goatee."
  • Invoked Trope by Van Von Hunter when Van drew a goatee on his Evil Twin so that they could be told apart.
  • In Mac Hall this was inverted here and then played straight here
  • In Dinosaur Comics, everyone has a beard in the mirror universe. And the strip is backwards.
  • In Irregular Webcomic, strip #2470 is a repeat of #2461 in the Mirror Universe, complete with backwards layout and goatees. Unfortunately, the Nazis are the same. (Maybe not.) And of course the comic links here.
  • In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Victor the obvious spy has one.
    • What? He's not a spy, he's a plumber! Clearly!
  • Invoked, discussed, and Played for Laughs in Jet Dream: This trope features heavily in Cookie Jarr's My Jet Dream Romance solo story, as a philosophical debate between J.E.T. T.E.E.N. Boy Booster Phil Philpott and "El Teen Gringo del Sur" over the good or evil of facial hair becomes violent!

Phil: "I learned enough not to trust men like Trotsky, Castro, and Blackbeard! Men with beards!"
El Teen Gringo: "But what of Lincoln? Moses? Zeus? You're blinded by your dangerous obsession! Bah! You'll never understand. Taste some Teen Gringo Justice -- Fist Style!"


Web Original

"He's like... an evil me! Only he doesn't have a goatee...I'm gonna imagine one!" (does so) "So evil!"


Western Animation

  • Pastiched on South Park: in their mirror universe, everyone has a goatee, including the "Evil" Cartman, who, as the opposite of the "real world" Cartman, is polite, helpful, and a genuinely good person. The unbearded Cartman rips off his beard (as a unit...) after he finds out that Stan and Kyle want to send him to the alternative universe and keep the "evil Cartman."
  • David Xanatos, the Anti-Villain of Gargoyles fame well known for his convoluted plans sported such a beard. He bore more than a passing resemblance to his actor, who played Commander Will Riker and whose beard was notable for another reason.

In one dream episode set 40 years in the future, Xanatos has gone all Big Brother on Manhattan. He's still using his Steel Clan robot minions, but they now inexplicably have Riker beards.

Bender: Oh like you didn't see that one coming.

  • Vlad Masters from Danny Phantom. Also Skulker and even Danny's Evil Counterpart Dark Danny sports one.
  • This is played with in The Venture Brothers, with the character of Dr. Orpheus, a good guy who looks evil (the eponymous brothers describe him as looking like "a Dracula"). The Monarch and Dr. Venture, on the other hand, are both rather unsavory characters with beards.
    • Lampshaded when Hank puts on a fake goatee and 21 comments that he looks like the "Mirror Mirror version of Hank" in Showdown at Cremation Creek Part 1.
  • Several Birdman villains have this kind of beard, most notably Number One, the leader of F.E.A.R.. This is useful, since apart from this and a small skull insignia, he looks exactly like all of his henchmen.
  • An episode of The Tick (animation) involves the mystery of a mobile mustache super-weapon. When asked by Arthur why the government brought such a horror into the world, the only response he got was:

Jim Rage: "You don't understand, man... The Russians were already working on a beard... We had a facial hair gap!"

  • Parodied with Chad Ghostal, Space Ghost's Evil Twin brother on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. His facial hair is different every time he's on screen.
  • An episode of Codename: Kids Next Door featured this trope with Mirror Universe; the kids are sent into an Alternate Universe via a neighborhood swimming pool, where the KND is feared, evil, and lead by an evil version of Number 4, who wears a goatee. The original Number 4 calls him out on this, claiming that since he—the original—is brave, then the evil one must be a coward.
  • Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender, along with several other villains, including Long Feng and Combustion Man.
  • The Villain on the Jimmy Timmy Power Hour 3.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command:
  • The Affably Evil Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons.
  • Gargamel in The Smurfs attempts to grow his own Beard of Evil in his admiration of evil wizards with beards by using magical hair growth tonic, but his beard ends up growing up so long that it reaches to the Smurf Village.
    • Gargamel did sport a fake Beard Of Evil when he was masquerading as the dream date wizard Harlequin in order to get his hands on Hogatha's "magic whistle," which was really her bird call. However, during a kiss, the fake beard attached itself to Hogatha's face, revealing her dream date to be Gargamel, yet Hogatha doesn't notice it until after Gargamel is gone when she looks at herself in the mirror and says, "I have charm, I have beauty, I have a beard...A BEARD?!?"
    • Gargamel's godfather Lord Balthazar sports one.
  • Megamind has one of those not being a particularly malicious person and turning good in the end. And it is one "nice" goatee.
    • In contrast, Metro Man has no facial hair at all, until he faked his death to up the hero gig and grew a massive beard for some reason...
    • Also, Tighten/Titan/Hal has no beard to speak of, and is actually the main antagonist of the film. Then again, the movie makes a point of subverting the superhero tropes pretty thoroughly.
  • Dr. XXX of The Mad Doctor cartoon short
  • Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension has Alternate Doofenshmirtz who sports an eviler than thou goatee. Hilariously commented upon between Jeff Swampy Marsh and Dan Povenmire (the voice of Heinz Doofenshmirtz) during the comic-con 2011 Phineas and Ferb panel, pointing out this particular trope... and the fact that Dan sports a goatee as well.
  • Lampshaded and played straight with Cesar Salazar in Generator Rex after a six month Time Skip.
  • Double Subverted by Grune of ThunderCats (2011) first appearing as a heroic prodigal Four-Star Badass of Catfolk Proud Warrior Race the Thunderians, only to rapidly reveal himself as a Turncoat and Les Collaborateurs with Big Bad Mumm-Ra and his allies the Lizards.
  • Here's how you tell the male heroes apart from the male villains in Visionaries: If he's got a full beard, he's either a bad guy or he's a wizard, and wizards tend to be morally ambiguous at best. Good guys are usually clean-shaven, except Leoric, who has a Badass Mustache.

Real Life

  • Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, grew a diabolical goatee to go along with his Bald of Evil and to fit in the part.
  • Attila the Hun, the notoriously cruel barbarian warrior known (in Western history) as the "Scourge of God," reportedly wore a beard.
  • The Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan, who declared himself the "Wrath of God," and is remembered throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East as a brutal, genocidal warlord (but considered a hero by his own people).
  • Older Than Feudalism: The Romans had a fear of uncivilized peoples (for good reason, as it turns out). They marked civilized men as shaved, and unshaved ones as barbarians.
    • The Emperor Hadrian grew a beard. During his reign he was often considered to be something of a tyrant. (His modern image as a placid old man with a passion for architecture and pretty boys wouldn't be shared by the Jews he persecuted and drove out of Jerusalem, or the senators he executed without a trial...)
    • Beards eventually returned to popularity in the late Roman Empire, and the association between barbarism and beardedness eventually disappeared. On the other hand, Roman beards would tend to be very neat and well-kept, so there might have been discrimination on the basis of the style of beard.
  • Lenin had a very sinister-looking goatee as well as being Bald of Evil. Trotsky had a matching goatee, but he had hair and Nerd Glasses (and thus looked a little less evil, while actually being more evil, or at least more ruthless).
  • Joseph Stalin had a mustache that demanded obedience and respect.
  • Gaal of the black metal band Gorgoroth is infamously known as the most evil man in Norway. That he has a very impressive beard of evil certainly helps.
  • Blackbeard. How could you make your beard any more evil than stuffing it with burning firecrackers?
  • Italo Balbo, a Fascist militant and an Italian air marshal in the Mussolini era, sported a well-groomed goatee.
  • After being exposed for multiple affairs behind his wife's back and generally having his good guy reputation destroyed, Tiger Woods returned to the golf scene after a hiatus, and at his very first press conference... sported a Goatee!
  • Saddam Hussein wore a bushy mustache throughout his adult life. After being captured by American military forces, he also sported a graying beard (which he wore until his execution).
  • Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban have all sported large, bushy beards as part of their interpretation of Islam. However, the idea that it is preferable for a Muslim man to have a beard is actually rather uncontroversial, and there are plenty of Muslim men who aren't terrorists and prefer the large, bushy beard. Shortly after 9/11, this was satirized in a Capitol Steps song in which they warned Bin Laden & Company that the USA has "a new beard-seeking missile!"
  • Averted by many, many, many real-life, movie, and comic book stage magicians, only some of whom are evil.
  • Adolf Hitler, the size of his mustache being inversely proportional to his evilness! It also greatly reduced the number of toothbrush mustaches among the world's population after WWII.
  • Rasputin the Mad Monk, though it was more a Beard of Crazy.
  • The prolific serial killer Pedro Lopez (a.k.a. the "Monster of the Andes") wore a straggly beard and mustache at the time of his arrest. Frighteningly, he may still be alive and walking the streets today...
  • Charles Manson, whose beard (and appearance) has only become more unkempt and sinister with the passage of time.
  • Ted Kaczynski, aka the "Unabomber".
  1. ↑ As well as a separate living being
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