Mister Danger

This is an imperialist or colonialist man who has just come to take advantage of the natives with a friendly smile and a rifle on his shoulder. He only cares about winning a quick buck at everyone else's expense and exploiting the poor natives since he is convinced his race/culture is superior. And since he is either rich and powerful or in the middle of nowhere where nobody can hear your screams, he becomes the king of the place. Or gets Chased by Angry Natives.

The character is usually depicted as a Western Caucasian (usually from England, France or Germany) but people from Eagle Land are more common in the last 60 years or so; if this is the case, expect some White Man's Burden excuse for his actions (which usually consist of taking over a place, exploiting the natives and the land, then leaving the place as an economic waste after the natives get fed up and kick him out).

It's fairly common in works from Africa, India and Latin America since those are places where Imperialism hit harder. It's also a stereotypical Soviet villain.

The racial opposite is Mighty Whitey, and the ideological one is Dirty Communists.

Named after the racist, drunken, Egomaniac Hunter Míster Danger from the Venezuelan novel Doña Bárbara. The term gained notoriety when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez used it to describe George W. Bush.

Examples of Mister Danger include:

Anime

• The American on the Hot Springs Episode in Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro.
• "Francisco Xavier" from Samurai Champloo, who claims to be a descendant of the original Xavier, the Portugese monk who brought Christianity to Japan. His constant condescension and firearms that are impressive by today's standards mark him as a Western-style villain... until it's revealed that he's actually a Japanese guy who was taking advantage of the Christian underground for his own profit.
• Leonard Apollo from Eyeshield 21, all the way. His racism is just so... incredible.
  • Compared with Mr.Don, he's nothing.

Comic Books

• Colonel Sponz exploits the president of San Theodoros making the entire county a puppet of Borduria. The last time Tintin visited San Theodoros in the 1930's they were on the verge of war with a neighboring nation under the interest of a foreign oil company while an arms dealer was selling arms to both sides
  • On a second thought, quite a number of Tintin villains are European (usually British) exploiters in China, India and the Middle East.

Film

• Andy Osnard from The Tailor Of Panama.
• Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now.
• Daniel Plainview
• Many characters in Milagro Beanfield War, but especially Kyril Montana, played by Christopher Walken.
• Referenced in Touch of Evil.
• Clark Nelson in Mothra.
• Cornelius Hatcher from The Rundown
• El Gringo in the Mexican film Herod's Law
• Clayton in Disney's Tarzan.
• Perhaps some of the characters in The Proposition?^[context?]
• Chinese martial arts movies set between the late 1800s and mid 1900s often have Evil Brit versions of this (see for instance The Legend of Drunken Master and Ip Man). Depending on the date of the setting, the Japanese will play this role instead of or in addition to the Europeans.
• The title character in His Majesty O'Keefe, played by Burt Lancaster, is one of these, an American sea captain who cheats and cons and gets himself named king of the island of Yap in his zeal to take over the island's copra trade. He's a little bit nicer than the usual example of the trope, being opposed to slavery and racism, but he still seems to view it as his sovereign right to take what he wants from the island, whether the natives want to go along or not. He eventually is shown the error of his ways... and becomes a Mighty Whitey instead.
• Peachy Carnehan and Daniel Dravot of The Man Who Would Be King, who plan to use their British military training and a supply of smuggled arms to take over the tribes of Kafiristan (now a part of Afghanistan).

Literature

• Kurtz from Heart of Darkness.
• Mister Guillermo Danger from Doña Bárbara, the Trope Namer. We get introduced to him by seeing him gloating on his hunting trophies, enabling the alcoholism of a character to appropriate his land, and preying in a fifteen-year-old girl ^[1]. While Bárbara, the main villain of the book, has a Freudian Excuse for her actions, he enjoys his horrible acts just because he's bored. When he realizes that he don't have the protection of the local caudillo anymore he immediately packs and leaves the place.
• Basil Fotherington-Thomas in Kim Newman's Alternate History novella Tedy Bear's Picnic, where he has become his world's equivalent of Colonel Kurtz.

Live Action TV

• Adam from Heroes.

Theatre

• Brutus Jones in Eugene O'Neill's play The Emperor Jones is a rare dark-skinned example. He goes from stowaway to Emperor in two years, and puts on the "fuss and glory part" of being Emperor while ruthlessly robbing the natives of their wealth. He intends to flee by the time the natives are ready to overthrow him, which comes sooner than he expected.

Video Games

• Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard, from Jade Empire, otherwise known as "The Outlander". He washed up on the coast of the empire and attempts to "educate" the "backward" culture.
  • This being Jade Empire, you get the chance to prove your culture's worth, first in a heated debate, then by kicking the living excrement out of him.

Western Animation

• Looten Plunder, and to a lesser extend Hoggish Greedly, from Captain Planet.
• Parodied in a Family Guy Flashback Twist where Peter becomes one for a group of Mexican mice.
  • What's even stranger is that he demands the wife of one of the mice in a Scarpia Ultimatum.
• John Ratcliffe in Pocahontas.
• The Family Guy parody listed above was surely a reference to a Looney Tunes classic where Daffy Duck plays this imperialist role to Speedy Gonzales and some other Mexican mice.

1. ↑ Granted, this is in an age where that girl was considered of a legitimate marriageable age and indeed she ends hooking up with the main hero, but the way Danger approaches and treats her is quite predatory