Politically-Incorrect Villain

"Well, whaddaya know? It's the fat boy, the Jew, and the sissy. Four eyes and the patch girl, too. Nigger, you know how to pick them: the Loser's Club."
—Henry Bowers, from Stephen King's IT

Want to show that your Evil Overlord, or someone within The Empire is a genuine bad guy, regardless of their rank in The Empire or how minor a character they are? Simple, all you have to do is have them Kick the Dog, right? Well, what if there isn't a handy dog around? Have them kick whatever minority race/species or gender/sexuality or lower class scum is around instead to show that they're a really bad guy. Bonus points if either the heroes or some highly sympathetic character is a member of said minority.

Depending on how and with whom this is used, it can sometimes come across as just slightly odd. It generally works best with minor characters who have not had a lot of time in the attention of the audience, since you can easily reveal that their Hidden Depths are really rather unpleasant, thus allowing you to cement them as unlikeable or have the character graduate from being an annoying obstacle to someone the fans will cheer to see put down.

It doesn't always work as well with the Magnificent Bastard Evil Overlord types, particularly if introduced late into their run as an antagonist. Because honestly, if the fandom hasn't turned against the Overlord after the character in question may have murdered thousands or even millions, enslaved people in The Empire wholesale, and so on and so forth, is having the character be a little sexist or racist really going to automatically turn people against them? (In particularly bad cases of Misaimed Fandom where the fans were already using every scrap of evidence and threadbare argument to argue that the bad guys weren't that bad, you may risk the character's fans declaring this to be a Discontinuity, and possibly even splitting the fanbase). In these cases, to make it work, you might have to do a purposeful Flanderization to your character and make them all about their bias. Of course, that will also mean you've gone and derailed your own plot if you need to do it to that extent...

A notable key to this is that the racism, sexism, Fantastic Racism, or whatever displayed by the character is often completely gratuitous or extraneous to the rest of their villainy. Usually, whatever their goal might be, they don't have to be a racist, speciesist, or sexist to accomplish it — but they are.

This is the reason why Those Wacky Nazis are at the bottom of the villain food chain, and it's a good bet that the Politically Incorrect Villain will be the one going down in an Even Evil Has Standards team-up.

There is also a pretty big Double Standard at play, since it's pretty common to get Cheap Heat for a villain by making him misogynist, (see also Effeminate Misogynistic Guy) and/or if he's white, to make racist comments against non-whites. However, less often is a female character made into a similar total evil villain by making misandrist comments, or a non-white character being racist against whites (though it does happen; see Malcolm Xerox).

Also, people might sometimes see this trope where it doesn't exist. Some villains are simply bullying types who go after minorities without really caring whether people will find it politically incorrect or not - and it doesn't have to matter if their targets remind them of themselves in some way. Why do they do this? Genre savviness, primarily; after all, minorities lack the numbers to fight back, and there's nothing to be gained from Bullying a Dragon.

Compare Evil Is Petty; Contrast Equal Opportunity Evil. May lead to What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous? if this character type is thought to be more evil than outwardly flamboyant villains. This should also not be confused with Values Dissonance, where the heroes behave in this manner (and the narrative may or may not acknowledge that their attitudes are unjust).

Examples of Politically-Incorrect Villain include:

Anime & Manga

  • This is a major reason why Nina of Code Geass was considered The Scrappy. Despite the fact that it would be safe to assume that some Britannians are racists, she's the only major character to hold such opinions and thus comes across badly. Though she originally doesn't tout any personal supremacy, she's "just" paranoid that any Eleven might be a terrorist. Later, after Princess Euphemia's death she becomes rather unhinged, and starts considering the use of a weapon that's for all thoughts and purposes a nuke against one man.
    • Jeremiah Gottwald isn't paranoid like Nina, but he's easily the most racist out of everyone in Britannia's army, given that during his brief stint as Margrave of Area 11, he takes a little too much joy in executing the Japanese. His racism begins to dwindle as he begins to lose his sanity due to public humiliation, and it more or less mellows out after he encounters Sayoko several times.
  • It's more due to fear than hatred (somewhat similar to the Code Geass example), but Frieza of Dragon Ball has a beef against the Saiyan race, personified when he calls Goku and Vegeta "Saiyan monkeys."
  • In the Rurouni Kenshin arc that introduces Sanosuke, we encounter three very minor characters, (they don't even get names) drunkenly and nastily arguing while the Kenshin gang is trying to eat at Akabeko. We know they're not nice characters right away, and it's taken up a notch when one of them throws a sake jug that hits Kenshin in the head and then refuses to apologize, but things get taken up to a whole new level when one of the waitresses very politely comes over and asks them to keep it down and the biggest of the three responds by saying "And now a female is mouthing off?!!" and hitting her.
    • Notably, these drunkards were democratic activists; at this stage in Japanese history the 'government of the people' was extremely elitist and political parties were illegal. The guys drop a bunch of real names and are apparently using the cause to make themselves feel important while talking about freedom. Sano calls them on hypocrisy: he was mentored by a real populist.
      • They also bring up the separatist leader Saigo Takamori as a 'hero.' Given his army was Satsuma samurai and was defeated by a conscript army of citizens from all backgrounds, and Kaoru's father was killed on the government side just the previous year, it all brings up a lot of emotional complexity.
  • This seems to be a common trope in Jidai Geki / whenever there are ronins around. In Tsukikage Ran, the female ronin protagonist gets a lot of these comments and always trounces those who make them.
  • Similarly, Samurai Champloo also has a very similar scene to the Kenshin one in its first episode, where a boorish nobleman is sexually harassing the waitresses at the restaurant Fuu works at and generally attacking very threatening. After being promised free food to intervene, Mugen slaughters the guy's guards and performs Mutilation Interrogation on him.
  • In Shitsurakuen, the terms "villain" and "misogynist" are pretty much synonyms.
  • During Jadeite's final battle against the Sailor Senshi, he out of nowhere makes a number of sexist and disparaging remarks about them, their intelligence, and their fighting abilities. They then run him over with an airplane.
  • A large majority of the villains in Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny, since most of the conflicts are sparked by racial tensions between normal humans and Coordinators, (genetically engineered humans). Blue Cosmos, which has a lot of influence in the Earth Alliance, actually wants to wipe out all Coordinators and even calls them 'the monsters in space'. Of course, the radical factions in the Coordinator PLANT colonies aren't much better, with General Ripper Patrick Zala and Knight Templar Ezalia Joule plotting to wipe out Earth's entire Natural population.
    • Bonus points to Blue Cosmos leader Muruta Azrael who adds He-Man Woman Hater to his already severe Fantastic Racism. It isn't to nearly the same degree, but he treats the female captain of the Dominion with utter contempt ("Ms. Captain"), and is the only male character in the show to actually use the phrase "bitch" when describing a girl.
  • Pretty much every single villain in Me and the Devil Blues is some level of racist. It's pretty telling that one of the least racist villains, who actually asks R.J. to play for his party, calls the blues "nigger music." Yeahhh...
  • 5th Espada, Nnoitra Gilga from Bleach gets a mention because his blatant sexism is a huge part of his personality. He openly attacked Nelliel because she was a woman that ranked higher than he did (although she beat him rather soundly every time). Even saying that a woman being of a higher position than a man on the battlefield was a disgrace. He even went into a huge, convoluted plan just to get rid of her that entails some of the most cruel activities done by any of the Espada. He seems to hold this toward Harribel as well, as during their introductions, the first thing he does is piss her off by apparently trying to pick a fight with her.
    • And this is implied to be the case with the final arc's new enemies, the Vandenreich. Just listen to their name, and the implications sink in.
  • Hajime no Ippo: To add to the huge list of jerkassery of Bryan Hawk, he's also shown to be racist against Japanese. In an Ax Crazy rant, he basically tells the Japanese that if they want to be world champion so badly, they should send him all of their women so he'll give them his genes. In twenty years, Japan would be crawling with world champions.

Comic Books

  • The Homelander, a twisted Captain Ersatz for Superman in The Boys is a ginormous racist, as well as a misogynist and a rapist. In two separate issues he shouts a racial epithet just before (or just after) killing a minority villain. There's also the Captain Marvel knock-off, Storm Front, who is an actual Nazi.
    • Most of the superpowered people in the Boys universe are either racist, misogynistic or homophobic just to drive home how screwed up they are.
  • Variant in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Big Bad of the first book is depicted as a homophobe just to bump up his villain credentials (despite the fact that this would have hardly made him unusual in the Victorian era). Likewise, in the third volume, the more misogynistic qualities of James Bond and the more reactionary qualities of Bulldog Drummond are played up.
  • When first introduced, Red Skull, arch-enemy of Captain America (comics), was indeed a Nazi agent, but was written more as an "enemy of America" than a "Nazi" per se. Over time, however, he has been given more and more racist and eugenic dialogue, making him the rare Marvel villain who became less sympathetic over time. In fact, one could argue that he no longer truly fits this Trope, as he Hates Everyone Equally.
    • One script during Mark Waid's run of Captain America was written from the Red Skull's POV and contained a number of racial slurs. The racially-charged comments (among other things) were heavily edited out of the published issue, with the final issue being so radically different that Waid asked his name be taken off the credits. The issue's original script built up to a scene where the Skull, in a roundabout way, basically equates Cap to Hitler himself. Link here.
      • In an interesting case, the Ultimate Red Skull who is far more of a Complete Monster than even the mainstream version seems to have lost all his racial supremacist connotations, given that's he's worked for dictators and terrorists of every possible colour and creed. He believes in true equality: He wants to kill EVERYONE.
    • A lot of Captain America (comics) villains are like this. Arnim Zola, Crossbones, Baron Zemo, and Hydra in general.
        • This is, of course, because Captain America's career as a costumed hero began, both figuratively and literally, during the World War II. There exists more than one cover featuring Cap punching out Hitler or (a racist caricature of) General Tojo. The man was used to sell War Bonds, ffs.
    • It's worth noting the Red Skull has since renounced Nazism in favor of his own brand of nihilism. Why? He thought Nazism was too morally restrictive.
      • Similarly, in the recent movie, Red Skull defects from the Nazis because he wants to Take Over the World all for himself.
  • Captain Nazi. Really and truly, his name says it all, doesn't it? Although he's apparently some kind of personification of Nazism (or so he now claims), so it's integral to his character rather than a gratuitous trait.
    • It was never a gratuitous trait—it's his whole motivation and origin.
  • A one-shot killer-schoolkid character in Grant Morrison's X-Men, in explaining why he killed a mutant and harvested his organs, included the aside "Yes, he was gay, but that's incidental to my cause."
  • Whether he's presented as a violent Anti-Hero parody or a snarky bad guy, Lobo is presented as misogynist and a pervert in the same way guys like Archie Bunker are, because it's funny and he's not the type of guy fans are supposed to emulate. He's made lewd comments to most of DC's female power players and in one story, ripped Starfire's top off as "payment for services".
  • Close to all of the villains in Wanted are this. The Future is definitely the worst though, as he is an unapologetic Nazi and misogynist.
  • Marvel's The Swarm is, as the Runaways put it, "A super-Nazi...made of bees" (My God). He takes the time to ask Victor which of the "mongrel races" he belongs to during their fight - Vic's mom was Mexican, his dad Ultron. You'd think someone made out of bees would be open minded.
  • If somebody says anything even remotely homophobic in the Midnighter's comic book series, they're evil. Period.
  • In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics Dracula is portrayed as simply politically incorrect, without malice behind it, his attitudes being mainly a result of extraordinary age.
    • Of course, vampires, being alienated for all time from everything God created, would necessarily hate all humans, so any particular dislike of a group would be superfluous.
  • Writers who don't like presenting Doctor Doom as a Noble Demon will sometimes make him more unsympathetic by having him voice racist and sexist sentiments. This is at odd with Doom's more frequent characterization as having egalitarian views (in the anti-bigotry, not (obviously) in a pro-democracy sense), and who loathes bigotry on account of his Roma ancestry. Fans tend to conclude that bigoted Dooms were actually malfunctioning Doombots.
  • Norman Osborn is one. He is sexist, violent xenophobe, admires Hitler and the Red Skull. White supremacists believe he is a true hero of white Americans.

Fan Fiction


Film

  • The Shining: where Grady tells Jack that the Magical Negro that helps the family is "a nigger".
  • Frank Costello of The Departed mentions a distaste for "niggers" in his opening monologue. While it is shown to have historical significance this racism fails to show up in any significant way within the plot - it is only used to establish, mere seconds into the movie, that this guy is not a good man.
  • In The Gift, Keanu Reeves plays a brutal, wifebeating thug who is menacing the psychic heroine with insults and threats and apropos of nothing at all he announces, "You ain't no better than a Jew or a nigger!" He is of course a Red Herring for the murderer and even ends up becoming somewhat sympathetic, sending him into subversion territory.
  • Blazing Saddles. Just... Blazing Saddles.
    • Oddly, Big Bad Hedley Lamarr doesn't show as much blatant bigotry as his henchmen, Mr. Taggart and Lyle. Hell, he doesn't show as much racism as the Innocent Bystanders that the black sheriff is protecting! When hiring outlaws the Big Bad advertises himself as an Equal Opportunity Employer and specifically mentions in his famous Long List that he wants criminals of many different races and backgrounds working for him. On the other hand, he doesn't hesitate to slap Lily around and insult her German ancestry when she does a High Heel Face Turn.
    • He also is in charge of appropriating land in Colorado from the local Indians, justifying this by claiming "they're such children." (His boss, Governor Le Petomane, doesn't object, even adding that the Indians are "little red devils." And he's supposed to be a good guy!)
  • Velma Von Tussle in the Hairspray movie is not only racist, but makes cruel comments to the heroine about her weight. Granted, the movie (and original film) show that lots of people were racist during this time period, but it is an extra Kick the Dog for her.
  • One of several reasons why the Wild Wild West film was poorly rated, is that the somewhat likable Loveless of the television series was transformed into a racist bigot who is constantly making racial slurs and jokes against Will Smith's Jim West. Also troubling is that the original Loveless was a midget and this one is an amputee, the subject for West's slurs against him. Lots of Dude, Not Funny on both sides.
  • Gaston in Beauty and the Beast is very quickly established as a chauvunistic pig- "It's not natural for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas and thinking ..." This is proved later to be the tip of the iceberg for a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
  • Speaking of Disney villains, who could forget Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame? He wins extra points for being a genocidal racist.
    • To be fair, while it is an unnecessary addition to the original character, the movie actually bends the plot around his racism - it launches the plot by being the reason he gets stuck with Quasimodo in the first place (he chases and treats Quasi's mother coldly because he's racist); his attempted genocide helps to bond Esmeralda and Quasimodo while also pushing Pheobus to betray him; and it adds an extra layer to his crisis of faith about his lust for Esmeralda.
  • And what to think of Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas? The lyrics to the song "Savages", which he leads, were so offensive to Native Americans people actually complained about the movie as a whole being racist - despite it being the the villain who was blatantly racist.
    • The movie does make a token attempt to be even-handed by cutting away from the English settlers to show the male members of Pocahontas's tribe singing about the white invaders in almost identical terms (substituting "milky demons" for "red devils"). However, it's far from equal due to Chief Powhatan admitting that he was wrong to distrust whites, while Ratcliffe remains determined to kill Indians even after they let John Smith go. But even this was not enough for some activists, who insisted that Disney alter some of Radcliffe's lyrics to make them less offensive, as if Radcliffe himself would care about that. Worst of all, if Fridge Logic is applied you get the sense that Radcliffe's racism was almost justified: he was merely greedy and only wanted to plunder the New World for gold, with no specific desire to hurt Indians, until Powhatan's tribe kidnapped Smith and threatened to execute him.
  • While it's surprisingly underplayed in The Princess and the Frog, there are the two Jerkass realtors who tell Tiana, after informing her that she was outbid on the building she was trying to buy, that "a woman of your...background, you're better off to stay where you are". Given the look on Tiana's face, she definitely gets all of the implications. Interestingly, Facilier implicitly tries to apply this trope to the town in general as an excuse for his behavior, which is very untrue.
  • Don Barzini in The Godfather, describing his plan for his gang's drug trafficking, intends to market heroin to blacks, saying "They're animals anyway, let them lose their souls". What's interesting is that in an earlier draft of script, he actually elaborates a bit on his racist views, citing the rampancy of Parental Abandonment in the black community, anathema to the family-minded Italian ideal, among his reason for disliking them. This was probably cut for fear that too many viewers would agree with him...
    • Truth in Television for many gangsters in The Mafia. "Crazy Joe" Gallo was eventually run clear out of The Mafia and murdered largely because he had the nerve to suggest teaming up with African-Americans.
    • Jack Woltz, while not a true villain in the movie (in the book he's a much more distasteful individual), he quickly loses any sympathy he may have had by throwing literally every slur in the book against Italians at Tom Hagen in a single sentence.When Tom points out that he's actually part Irish and part German, Woltz then refers to Tom as "My kraut-mick friend."
  • The first Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle movie has the Jerkass cop, and then the sequel tops it with one of the most racist characters in film history: Homeland Security official Ron Fox.
  • It doesn't play a part in the plot, but in Stand by Me, Ace seems to associate female sexuality with religion. When Jack complains that he can't get to second base with his girlfriend (even though he's only been seeing her for "just over a month" and she'll "only" let him fondle her breasts), Ace tells him, "She's a Catholic, man. They're all like that. If you wanna get laid, you gotta get yourself a Protestant."
  • Calvin Candie in Django Unchained, a Mississippi plantation owner and utterly unrepentant bigot. He's the only villain created by director Quentin Tarantino that Tarantino has gone on the record saying he despises and it's easy to see why by watching the movie. Cruel even by slave-owner standards, he forces his slaves into bloody Fight Clubbing matches to the death and kills them by feeding them to his dogs, justifying his mistreatment by referencing the - debunked - science of phrenology. Ironically, his black servant Stephen is also his most loyal, and just as bad.
  • Cyrus the Virus from Con Air says a lot of racist comments toward Pinball and Baby-O.
  • While their support for slavery makes them inherently politically incorrect villains, the Confederate States in the Alternate History CSA: Confederate States of America is also highly sexist, and while like the actual United States, it had Chinese laborers in the 19th century, they chose to enslave theirs. They also decided to be Christian-only, and thus their Jewish population either fled or were allowed to live on ghettos reservations.
  • In Sneakers, Mother and Crease get caught off-guard by a couple of Mooks. One of the Mooks orders Mother out of the van, then looks over at Crease (played by Sidney Poitier) and says "You too, midnight." The audience suddenly becomes very invested in seeing this nameless, faceless character get his ass kicked.
  • Much of District 9 has different levels of these characters, being that it is essentially a story of The Apartheid Era with aliens replacing black people as the victims of racism. Psycho for Hire Koobus, who is the head of MNU's private army, really runs with this trope though when he says that he would do his job for free because he just loves to watch Prawns die.
  • In Silver Streak, we already know who the bad-guy is, but we really start hating him when he angrily calls Richard Pryor's character (who was disguised as a waiter) a "stupid nigger."
  • In Trading Places, the Eddie Murphy character overhears the Dukes comment how, of course, they can't "have a nigger run our family business". Before that, you could see the Dukes as affably dotty. That reveal tells the audience that the Dukes deserve whatever they get (impoverishment, and in one case, a life-threatening heart attack).
  • It's more a sign of the times (the 1860's) but Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York is profoundly racist, especially against the Irish but also against pretty much anyone who isn't white and Protestant.
  • Miles Quaritch from Avatar expresses Fantastic Racism in the sense that it applies to another species than another race. That said, the very nature of his remarks very closely resembles conventional racism.
  • Arty Clay, who runs The Mafia in King of New York, is a vocally anti-black racist, in stark contrast to the Equal Opportunity Evil of the title character.
  • There's Something About Mary has a toe-curling exchange with Matt Dillon's character obliviously causing offense when trying to impress Mary. We already know he's a conniving bad guy, this nails down the fact that he's a self-serving idiot with the empathy of half a brick in a sock to boot.
  • M. Bison might also qualify, what with his "I know women and you are harmless" remark to Chun-Li. Bad idea.
  • Scorpio from Dirty Harry, who says he would consider it pleasure to "kill a Catholic priest or a nigger."
  • The killer in Curse of the Zodiac was quite prone to misanthropic and homophobic rants.
  • Twister in Ip Man 2 established himself by calling Master Hung a "yellow piece of fat" and throughout the movie continues to mock anything Chinese.
  • Leo's first scene in Mystery Team has him selling drugs to minors.
  • A random Mook in the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie: "You're a dyke! I'll tell the world!"
  • In True Romance, Dennis Hopper's character, knowing that The Mafia plans to torture him to death, preys on their politically incorrect nature, telling them that Sicilians are descended from blacks (which is not the word he uses). This provokes their leader into killing him immediately.
  • Simon Gruber of Die Hard With a Vengeance plays with this trope like a kitten does a ball of yarn. Although he comes from a family of former Nazis, he harbors no bigoted attitudes in particular. Still, he seems to delight in making people think he is bigoted, mostly because he thinks it's fun to anger people and/or fake them out. When first speaking to Zeus Carver, for example, Simon (who is German but can mimic American Accents quite well, and who knows that Zeus is an Angry Black Man because he's been watching him on hidden video cameras) says: "So whot's yowuh name, boy?" in twangy, Corrupt Hick fashion just to irritate Zeus; he then apologizes, explaining that he's fond of tasteless jokes. Later the trope is seemingly played straight when Simon calls John McClain a "dumb Irish flatfoot," but this is due not to anti-Irish sentiment but to Simon's general bitterness toward John for having killed his brother, Hans, in the first Die Hard movie. (Simon admits that he didn't even like Hans, but he is still determined to exact vengeance on anyone who messes with his family.)
  • In Snatch, the fence Avi continually refers to Boris as a "Cossack."
  • An unusual example in the first Kill Bill movie: Boss Tanaka, a member of the yakuza crime council, does not believe that a half-Chinese, American-born woman (O-Ren Ishii) should be the leader of a Japanese criminal syndicate. Unusual in that O-Ren is herself a villain and even displays politically incorrect tendencies of her own later on (against Caucasians), and also in that Tanaka is not gleeful or bullying like many of the other examples on this page, but genuinely upset that the council members are causing their ancestors to "weep in the afterlife" by appointing a "half-breed bitch" their leader (and it should be noted that the other gang bosses do not agree with Tanaka at all, and even mock him). O-Ren promptly slices off Tanaka's head, explaining that she is willing to take criticism but that any questioning of either her nationality or her ethnic heritage will not be tolerated.
  • In John Wayne's anti-Communist movie Big Jim Mc Lain, one of the Communist villains is an anti-black racist, who pushes Wayne's Berserk Button by using the n-word.
  • Coonskin by Ralph Bakshi, being an animated Blaxploitation Parody film, had many racist characters and racial stereotypes throughout the movie. But we see the most blatant example in Officer Madigan, a cop of the mobs payroll. He's both racist and homophobic even towards the son of his mob boss who is a blatant homosexual. He goes as far as to refuse to bathe before meeting with some black street level thugs who also work for his boss (In his words, they ain't worth it). He gets a combo of Death by Racism and Color Me Black, when "Brother Rabbit" drugs him with some acid leaving him in full blackface, armed, and wearing a dress. This caused him to fly off the handle and shoot it out with some other cops and get riddles with bullets.
    • There's also SimpleSavior, who spouts phony pro-black propaganda, and claims to be cousin to Black Jesus. He uses this scam to con "donations" from the people of Harlem so he can "buy guns to kill whites". In reality his money gets kicked up to the mafia who gladly exploit and oppress Harlem to their disposal.

Doorman: This here's where Simple Savior runs his black revolution, brother. Natural black Jesus is the reverend's cousin, too. He gives people the strength to kill whites.
Brother Bear: Kill whites? You hear that shit? Any whites?
Doorman: Yeah, any whites.
Brother Bear: Ain't this a bitch?
Preacher Fox: Anyone we want?
Brother Bear: Ain't this a bitch!
Preacher Fox: Huh. We can kill anyone we want?
Doorman: Any whites.

Literature

  • In The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Captain Jaggery fits this trope to a T (granted, it is 1832). While holding the 13-year old Charlotte on trial for allegedly murdering the first mate, he reaches this conclusion:

"So what we have here is a girl who admits she owns the weapon that murdered Mr. Hollybrass. A girl who lied about where she got it. A girl who was taught to use a blade, and learned to use it, as Mr. Grimes would have it, 'uncommon' well. A girl, who all agree, is unnatural in every way she acts. Gentlemen, do we not, as natural men, need to take heed? Is it not our duty, our obligation, to protect the natural order of the world?"

  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe novels use this. While Lucas seems to have intended there to be some parallels between The Empire and the Nazis, relatively little of that shows up explicitly on screen. In books, comics, etc, both individual villains and The Empire as a whole are depicted as speciest against non-humans. (And in fact an easy way to tell which side is the bad guy side in whatever time period it might be is if they ever make a comment about human superiority).
    • Pretty blatant, really.
    • The Yuuzhan Vong of the Expanded Universe display extreme intolerance for anyone who doesn't follow their religion and lifestyle.
    • Seems like the EU just came up with a good explanation for why you don't see too many nonhumans in the Imperial military, although they apparently don't mind hiring them as bounty hunters and such.
      • The EU also makes it pretty obvious that Palpatine himself, despite being a Complete Monster, doesn't buy into such nonsense (he considers everyone to be inferior to himself). He just finds it a useful way to manipulate people, since humans are the majority of the Empire's population and center of galactic wealth and power (the Core Worlds) is also where human supremacist feelings are most widely accepted. Ensuring the loyalty of the Core World elite by oppressing the aliens is rather quicker and easier than doing the reverse.
    • There was the Diversity Alliance an anti human terrorist organization who plan on killing all humans with a bio-weapon that only targets humans.
  • In Layer Cake, as he sells out his employees to a Dirty Cop, gangster Jimmy Prince makes racial slurs against black associate Morty and is homophobic towards the protagonist, who while not gay, is not sufficiently "manly" for Jimmy's standards. Thanks to a Magnificent Bastard fellow gangster, Jimmy's crew are made privy to a tape of these comments and the protagonist shoots him in the head.
  • In the Harry Potter books, anyone racist is going to be evil. Most of the Slytherins are bigoted against Muggles, with Draco Malfoy serving as the first one we meet. Voldemort is a thinly-veiled Hitler-analogue, though. One of the most egregious racists in the story is Dolores Umbridge, who treats anyone without a pure wizarding heritage as a lesser being, and anyone with a mixed-human heritage as something to hunted down. She ends up becoming The Quisling just to have an excuse to have Muggle-borns locked up. According to Word of God, this earns her a life sentence in Azkaban after the events of Deathly Hallows.
  • In the Dan Brown novel Deception Point, Senator Sexton at one point thinks to himself while discussing toning down his condemnation of same-sex marriage for campaigning purposes "If it were up to me, the faggots wouldn't even have the right to vote". His actions only get more despicable from there.
  • In Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand commissar Tomas Beije goes from a slightly annoying mix of Divided We Fall, Unknown Rival, and Obstructive Bureaucrat who barely has any time in the main plotline to being quite hateable the moment he starts throwing out sexist insults towards Colonel Kasteen.
  • Earning it Discontinuity status, the fourth Earthsea novel, Tehanu, turns a villain who was previously defined by Immortality Immorality into a raging misogynist.
  • Warrior Cats: Tigerstar. very much Tigerstar. As well as his #1 follower, Darkstripe. Tigerstar parallels Hitler in several ways, and has attempted genocide in the form of public executions during a propaganda rally where he called halfClan cats "filth". Although probably the most flagrant example, it certainly isn't the only one.
  • General Metzov of the Miles Vorkosigan novel The Vor Game is not only a hardliner ultra-nationalist, but he is a sexist jerk as well. He is paired with the much smarter female villain Cavilo, but in a Just Between You and Me moment tells the heroes that he's just manipulating her, since no woman would be smart enough to lead. His political incorrectness leads to his death (and an example of Eviler Than Thou) when his last words (before Cavilo shoots him in the head) are "open your legs to me bitch". Note, Cavilo is actually more evil than Metzov, but because of his Politically-Incorrect Villain traits, it's hard not to give her some sympathy or at least applause at the moment she kills him.
  • The Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale is already in this territory given their attitude toward women, but for further dog-kicking, is their attitude toward other religions. When expelling Jews from America, they sent large numbers of them on boats supposedly destined for Israel. The boats were deliberately sunk in the middle of the water.
  • Patrick Bateman in American Psycho is an insane, sadistic serial killer, and also racist, anti-semitic, sexist and homophobic.
    • All his friends and colleagues are too. Those qualities were meant to be a reflection of the 1980's Wall Street high society in which he lived rather than a flaw specific to Bateman alone. Other than the serial killing, of course (maybe).
  • Present, and lampshaded in, one of the Captain Underpants spin-off books. In a comic book created by the book's Genre Savvy main characters, Harold and George, an evil scientist wants to create a female clone of an evil monster toilet so that he would have a servant to attend to all his domestic needs. His assistant lampshades this trope by pointing out: "You know, that's not very politically correct," to which he replies that he doesn't care because he's the bad guy. Needless to say, this doesn't end well for them. (Also, the hygienic implications of having a toilet doing housework are apparently not even thought of...)
  • In Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, Sten Devoure, the product of supposedly-superior Sirian genetics, reveals himself as a despicable person right away by referring to Lucky's sidekick Bigman Jones, a rather short and ugly Martian, as "that thing" and "it". The insult becomes dangerous when he tells a group of robots that Bigman is not human, and orders them to "break it."
  • Henry Bowers of Stephen King's IT is one of these in a nutshell. He hates Stanley Uris because he's Jewish, Mike Hanlon because he's black, Eddie Kaspbrak because of his asthma, Bill Denbrough because of his stutter, Richie Tozier for his glasses and his smart mouth, Ben Hanscomb because of his weight, and Beverly Marsh because she's female. Really, he's pretty much an all-around asshole.
    • This will of course cross over into Freudian Excuse territory, but Henry is beaten by his father at home, and (in his embittered mind, anyway) needs weaker people (especially if they are outcasts) to bully in order to cope with his rage. Also, his father is a racist, who blames black people for all of his misfortunes. It doesn't excuse his actions, but it does lend some deeper meaning to this trope.
    • Stephen King loves this trope. Nearly all of his villains are racist or sexist in some way. Even the Overlook Hotel from The Shining refers to Halloran as a "jungle bunny." Even the buildings are racist in the King-verse.
  • The Last Hurrah (both the novel and the film) has newspaper editor Amos Force, who runs a paper that is most definitely not the Boston Globe. He is an old-money WASP who despises Irish Catholics in general and Frank Skeffington in particular. If you know anything about the history of the Boston Globe, this is not the least bit implausible.
  • Flashman is this in spades, and it's just one of his many endearing features. He's a serial adulterer who lies outrageously to woo other mens' wives, he treats the lower classes with condescension, and he's a shameless racist to boot.
  • Captain Shannon in The First Casualty by Ben Elton. His racism, misogyny, and homophobia are some of his nicer traits.
  • Zaroff of The Most Dangerous Game got bored of hunting animals and decided to name a trope. He justifies this by mostly hunting what he considers "lesser races." (Incidentally, he applies this racism to himself—as a Cossack, he believes that savagery is an essential part of his nature.)
  • Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: This sort of villain has popped up a number of times. FBI assistant director Mitch Riley refers to Harry Wong as a "slant-eye" at one point in the book Hide And Seek. Deputy Clyde calls Harry Wong by that racial epithet in the book Under The Radar, which Harry happily repays by tweaking the scum's nose and knocking him out. Before the book Lethal Justice, Alexis Thorne reveals in her thoughts that her employers chose to frame her for their crimes because she is black. Strangely, that is never brought up in the book where Alexis pays them back.
  • One of the easier ways to pick out the villain in an Honor Harrington novel is to find the guy whose inner monologue puts her down for being either a woman, or not born nobility, or both.
  • While villain might be too strong a word for her, Ada Haskill from In the Face of Danger is snobby, unpleasant, ungrateful and doesn't hesitate to look down on Megan, a 12-year-old girl, for being Irish.


Live-Action TV

"Killed by an insect... a girl! How... inappropriate." (though, to be fair, the "girl" in question was a humanoid insect...)
(To Martha and Jack) "Oh look, the girlie and the freak! And I'm not sure which is which..."
"Always the women!" (This one may be justified, after being shot by Chantho, defeated by Martha, and shot by Lucy. Plus all the times the Doctor's companions helped defeat him in the classic series. Plus that time the Rani kicked him in the nuts...)

    • The Doctor Who episode "Human Nature" features an already fairly unlikeable snobby public schoolboy who then snidely comments to Martha, who's working undercover as a maid, "with hands that colour, how can you tell when anything's clean?". This was more to cement his unsympathetic nature rather than his evil nature, as a few scenes later he dies at the hands of some aliens in such a way that the audience is not meant to feel sorry for him.
  • Mutant Enemy productions indulge in this from time to time, but the most obvious is in the Firefly episode "Heart of Gold" where the Villain of the Week, Rance Burgess, is misogynistic to such an extent that he apparently forces a traitorous prostitute to well... suck him off in front of his lynch mob, in order to prove his superiority over women.
    • Not to mention superpowered, psychotic misogynist priest Caleb from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
    • There's Warren, too. Being a misogynist in a Whedon work is a bad career move.
    • Billy from Angel could even uncover the latent homicidal hatred women of other men like a virus.
    • Mostly played for laughs, but the head of the Italian W&F branch had a lot of spite towards gypsies.
  • He's only a Jerkass rather than an outright villain, but one of the many ways Sawyer's jerkiness was established early in Lost was that almost every time he opened his mouth he would say something dismissive about a woman or something anti-Arab about Sayid.
    • Subverted slightly in that he was doing it on purpose in order to be hated by others as much as he hated himself.
  • Any villain in North and South (the American one).
  • The quick way to tell who was bad in Space: Above and Beyond was their attitude toward the Tanks.
  • The Criminal Minds episode "Limelight" featured a serial killer who was severely misogynistic, to the point that he referred to women using the words "it" and "bleeder".
  • Mitchell starts out with John Saxon's character murdering an unarmed minority burglar, then planting a gun on the body in order to claim self-defense. When the police shows up, he tosses out a "wetback" comment for good measure.
  • System Lord Baal, the long-running Starscream on Stargate SG-1, was perhaps one of the show's more appealing villains, in that his approach was somewhat more subtle and frank than the usual Exclusively Evil, Chaotic Stupid rhetoric of the series various Big Bads. This was balanced out by him being a blatant misogynist, making several sexist comments (usually directed at Colonel Carter) throughout the show's run.
    • He finally got his comeuppance in "The Quest, Part II" when Carter got fed up and punched him in the face. CMoA, indeed.
  • Inverted in That Mitchell and Webb Look with Captain Todger, the racist, sexist, homophobic superhero and General Drayfox, the evil but incredibly PC supervillain.

General Drayfox: Let him kneel before me! Unless of course he's an Orthodox Jew and has an issue with kneeling for religious reasons, in which case I'd be happy for him to pay his obeisance in whatever way he finds culturally appropriate. Mwwahahahaha!


Professional Wrestling

  • After Rodney Mack was kicked off of Smackdown, Theodore Long became his manager, stating that WWE, its fans and society in general were unkind to Rodney because he was black. He held challenges to demonstrate Rodney was a better wrestler than the white people that the booking favored. Teddy later took in other black wrestlers Mark Henry and Jazz, forming the stable Thuggin and Buggin Enterprises but also took white wrestler Chris Nowinski, deciding it wasn't right to be hateful toward white people. When injuries and show trades destroyed Thuggin and Buggin Enterprises, Teddy Long moved on to manage another white wrestler, Mark Jindrak, stating that Mark was underappreciated by WWE, its fans and society in general, who couldn't see he was the "Reflection of Perfection". Later, Theodore Long became Smackdown's general manager and did his best to give wrestlers equal opportunity.
  • Around 2004/2005, Chavo Guerrero came to the conclusion that his Hispanic heritage was a disadvantage he needed to reject to "reach his full potential". Chavo died his hair blond, used makeup to make his skin appear "less Mexican" then changed his name to Kerwin White. Kerwin set out to prove his whiteness by wearing khaki pants with collared polo shirts, golfing and attacking black wrestlers. To insult fans, Kerwin justified his behavior by noting on the day of his first appearance in the WWE his WWE.com page had three times the traffic that Chavo's had the previous month. Kerwin also periodically updated fans on how he was adjusting to life in "Middle Class America".
  • And then there's Paul Heyman, who in his run as a heel manager was very much disparaging of Hispanic wrestlers. In an episode of Smackdown, after a match between Rey Mysterio and the late Eddie Guerrero, Heyman showed up in order to deliver a bigoted speech to them about how they can "forget about being drafted" and how he hopes that the two of them and their families get deported before ranting on about his "vision" for Smackdown. Heyman got his comeuppance quickly when he made the mistake of closing his rant with "...and there's not a man alive who's gonna stand in my way," which prompted the Undertaker to show up and kick his ass.
  • Hinted at and then subverted (sort of) at Over the Limit 2010. After losing his Intercontinental Championship to Kofi Kingston and then getting attacked by a vengeful Matt Hardy, Scottish wrestler Drew McIntyre stormed into Theodore Long's office and demanded that Hardy be fired. When Long refused, McIntyre went berserk and went about smashing various objects in Long's office. Then he turned his attention to Long's treasured photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr., and for a few terrible moments it really looked like he was going to smash that, too. Long begged him to leave the picture alone....whereupon McIntyre apparently had a change of heart and decided that it would be better to leave the photo of the civil rights leader intact: he explained that Teddy Long was "spineless" and needed to be reminded what a true leader looked like, and also that "I am more like him than you will ever be." It was a very uncomfortable sequence on a number of levels, especially since WWE programming is supposed to be geared toward family audiences now. (McIntyre, while still officially a villain, has been getting some Pet the Dog moments lately with his kind acts toward Kelly Kelly and dedicating a match to her when she was fired.
  • Okay, he's pretty much mean to just about everyone, but heel Vince McMahon occasionally reserves his most heinous mistreatments for the disadvantaged, like when he mercilessly mocked Zack Gowen (a wrestler who had only one leg) in preparation for their match at Vengeance in 2003. Zack ended up giving Vince the (one-legged) beatdown he deserved, although Vince ultimately won the match.
  • R-Truth has recently dipped into this territory after his heel turn.
    • He actually inverted the trope in a sense when on one episode of Monday Night Raw R-Truth (who is black) came down to the ring dressed as a Confederate general (to make the point that he wanted to "secede" from WWE). Justified in that R-Truth had pretty much gone insane by this point (and also in that there were black Confederate soldiers toward the end of the American Civil War, but that's neither here nor there).
  • John Bradshaw Layfield in his JBL gimmick was racist against Asians and Latinos, and a misogynist to boot. He also couldn't stand foreigners of any kind, even if they were white. However, this did not stop him from loudly supporting all the heels, even the nonwhite ones, when he was an Affably Evil color commentator alongside Michael Cole for a year or so, and even calling Cole a "xenophobe" when Cole tried to criticize foreign heels. Whether this was intended as Hypocritical Humor or was just a Zig-Zagging Trope is hard to determine.


Tabletop Games

  • The Coalition States from Rifts are the go-to bad guys of the setting due to their xenocidal attitude toward Dimensional Beings and creatures of magic. Their promotion of illiteracy and their seeking to destroy magical artifacts doesn't endear them too well to the rest of the setting either.
  • Just about everyone in Warhammer 40,000 is one of these, including the heroes (if they can even be considered heroes).
    • Orks will kill anything that isn't considered orky enough. Including other orks.


Theater

  • Lucy the Slut in Avenue Q says racial slurs against Kate Monster when she sees her and Princeton together.
    • Also the teacher that Kate was assisting has touches of this, including saying something along the lines of "I should have known better than to rely on one of you people" when Kate misses an appointment to take over the class.
    • (Partially?) averted when a song points out that everybody is a little bit racist.
  • Finian's Rainbow has Rawkins, a bigoted Senator, who due to a wish made on top of Leprechaun's pot of gold is turned into an African-American.
  • Othello's Iago is racist, sexist, xenophobic- you name it. This is obviously to establish him as a bad man but he still inexplicably has his fans. His stooge Roderigo is also disgustingly racist.


Videogames

  • Copperfield and the Creeper from The Suffering: Ties That Bind. One's a slave hunter with an approach to work taken from The Most Dangerous Game; the other's a misogynistic ex-pimp serial killer who uses the corpses of his victims as Combat Tentacles.
  • The titular MacGuffin of Syphon Filter is a virus designed to target specific races.
  • In Prototype, Hope, Idaho was used for an experiment to develop a virus that might as well be Syphon Filter.
  • Lord Nemesis in City of Heroes is such a Magnificent Bastard that it comes as a shock to some players when they come across evidence of his racism- after all, he started as a Prussian tinkerer in the Civil War. His more despicable acts include killing off an entire alternate Earth full of people, who 'didn't count' because they were black, and in a more personal moment, killing an African member of Longbow who's been your sympathetic ally. He's also sexist but that gets Played for Laughs when he talks down to Lady Grey.
  • General Sarrano from Bulletstorm is one, on top of being a genocidal and EXTREMELY foul-mouthed Complete Monster.
  • Quite a bit of Renegade choices in Mass Effect follow this trope, ranging from insulting your non-human teammates to actual genocide and supporting a "humans first" political party.
  • Ad Avis, one of the main Big Bads in Quest for Glory, has this as part of his backstory. He went out to train under the Dark Master, one of the most powerful wizards in existence. When he finally tracked him down, he learned it was a she. He was immediately insulted at the thought of a woman being better than him, and challenged her to a duel. He lost, was enslaved for fifty years, and then cursed to become a vampire upon death.
  • The Watcher in Darksiders isn't content with merely being a Jerkass to War. He also talks down to the Archangel Uriel, calling her "wench" and "whore" while ordering War to finish her off. In a Crowning Moment of Awesome, War refuses to obey despite the Watcher's attempts to force obedience. Like the rest of his jackassery, this bites the Watcher in the ass when Uriel chops off his hand and breaks the Seventh Seal, freeing War in the process.
  • In Anchorhead, the Big Bad Croesus, possessing the protagonist's husband Michael uses sexist insults against the female protagonist.
  • Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas believes that only men are capable of being warriors; women in the Legion, unless they are chosen to be his 'priestesses' and indoctrinate children into his ideology, are only useful as slave labor.
    • They also are racist to Ghouls and Super Mutants, something that almost no one else cares about, however they at least don't shot them on sight.
    • Lead Designer Joshua Sawyer has noted that everyone in the legion is Caesar's slave.


Web Comics

  • Dr. Nofun from Sluggy Freelance has comically intense misogyny, alternately painting women as stupid and useless, and evil schemers out to destroy all men. Subverted when it turns out to be just an act -- the weak-willed women and terrified men that would want to work for someone who shows this kind of behavior are easy to manipulate.
  • Villain Protagonist Black Mage from Eight Bit Theater demonstrates a ludicrous level of racism in one strip, acting like an offensive Japanese stereotype while impersonating Black Belt. White Mage points out that not only is it offensive, but Black Belt isn't even Asian to begin with.
    • He also practices fantastic racism. His only qualms about eating his teammates is that he "just didn't want to eat that greasy, foreign" elf. Thief returns the sentiment and also hates the dwarves, because just about everyone in 8-Bit is evil, so just about everyone is racist. Of course, Black Mage is the worst by far.
  • General Tarquin from Order of the Stick is Affably Evil incarnate at first glance, but is The Bluebeard under the surface. So far, he's had no less than nine wives, one of whom died 'of mysterious circumstances' (it turns out that Tarquin actually had nothing to do with that, as she was killed by a spell that wiped anyone related by blood to her her first husband's family, and she got hit with the blood relation due to having a child with said husband) and at least one of whom was tortured into accepting (i.e, he had her feet frozen in a block of ice).
    • Of course, he treats men about as badly—it's just that he's not interested in having sex with them, so they're more likely to just be imprisoned or executed.
  • This Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal portrays an accidental example.


Web Originals

Casca: What, are you reading from a book of sexist villain cliches?
Adon Corbowitz: Uh-oh, I didn't miss any, did I?

Oozaru Vegeta: Hey, Kakarot! What's the opposite of Christopher Walken?
Goku: Huh?
Vegeta: Christopher REEVE! *Crushes Goku's legs*
Goku: AAAAGH! That was in terrible taste!
Vegeta: Don't care! Evil! *Crushes*

  • A lot of people quoted on FSTDT are like this, but Doctor Doom (no relation) from Free Conservatives is probably the most politically incorrect.
  • Played for Laughs by Mastermind who, among other things, schedules an appointment with one of his lackeys just to harass him for being named "Gaylord."

Mastermind: Because your name doesn't have the word "gay" in it.
Gaylord: It also has the word "lord"!
Mastermind: Because it's not that you like to have a gay (bleep) up the ass!
Gaylord: Did. You. Actually. Need. Me. For something. Sir??


Western Animation

  • In the Justice League Unlimited episode "For The Man Who Has Everything", Mongul makes a number of incredibly sexist remarks toward Wonder Woman. In the same show, Despero is a zealot and implied incredibly obvious Mind Control Rapist.
  • The Monarch from The Venture Brothers dabbles in this from time to time. He is never outrageously offensive, but the intent is there when he uses the word "retard" in front of the mentally challenged Ned. Doc Hammer said that the dialogue exchange was inspired by his mother lecturing him about using the word in the show, but Hammer saying the point is that The Monarch is a villain and doesn't care about political correctness.
  • Eric Cartman from South Park could be considered a politically incorrect Villain Protagonist.
    • Kyle's mom becomes somewhat of a Politically-Incorrect Villain towards Canadians in The Movie, despite the fact that her own adopted son is Canadian.
      • ...Which is perfectly in character for her. It is established quite early in the series that she's something of a hypocrite.
  • In Celebrity Deathmatch, there's a fight where John Rocker battles Derek Jeter. Unsurprisingly, John Rocker doesn't get the most sympathetic of portrayals and is electrocuted to death by the match's end.
    • For context, Rocker had given a long interview, at one point of which he just started randomly complaining and saying derisive things about people in New York, with one of those comments a homophobic slur. It fits the trope in that remarks were completely spontaneous and not pertinent to the subject at hand. Still the public outcry against this interview was so ferocious that many actually came to Rocker's defense, surmising that he was just a blunt man with poor social skills, and not a monster.
    • Rocker also made an appearance as a character on Saturday Night Live, where he was played by Will Ferrell in full-blown blustering mode. Appearing on "Weekend Update", Ferrell had him insult just about everyone under the sun, and even refer to the studio audience members as "homo-Mexicans."
  • Both played straight and inverted in Avatar: The Last Airbender, in which the antagonistic Fire Nation promotes the view that all other cultures in the world are inferior to their own, yet has the greatest degree of gender parity out of all the nations, with a high proportion of women in military and police positions. Fire Lord Ozai, the Big Bad, even favored his younger daughter over his older son, making her his heir simply because she was more competent. (Of course, for him "competent" meant "psychopathic," but still.)
    • Played straighter, in a minor way, with Zuko in the first season (when he's most antagonistic). He spends a lot of time using "peasant" as an insult toward Katara and Sokka.
  • Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas.
    • He's actually more greedy than anti-Indian, and his rage against Indians doesn't become obvious until after John Smith is captured by them. Still fits the trope, though, because Ratclliffe still wants to shoot all the Indians after they decide to let Smith go. Though this is more paranoia believing that Smith's release was merely a trick to let their guard down.
  • Some of the "villains" the Warners faced in Animaniacs. Just compare Ludwig von Beethoven to Abraham Lincoln. Beethoven calls them "horrid children" and is suffering Amusing Injuries by the short's end. Meanwhile Lincoln is nice to them and they help him with his speech. He and Beethoven were working on something, but how they treat the Warners at the start of short affects how differently they are "helped" by them.
  • Transformers: the Decepticons in most incarnations, despise anyone who's organic.
  • Generator Rex: the Constortium, who are part of the Big Bad Ensemble in season 3, are incredibly obvious misogynes. Of course, since their lieutnant Black Knight is a Magnificent Bitch and a Dark Action Girl, this ends up bitting them VERY hard in the ass...
  • Ben 10: Alien Force gives use the Highbreeds, who are bascally an alien version of the Nazis. In the same vein, the Forever Knights were portrayed as a paramilitary, anti-alien group with fanatical behaviour during the Alien Force/Ultimate Alien era (though they were more stoic and rationnal scientists in the original series).
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